But Davey, that is the way God intended it

”Clear Channel owns 1,200 radio stations and 37 television stations, with investments in 240 radio stations globally, and Clear Channel Entertainment owns and operates over 200 venues nationwide. They are in 248 of the top 250 radio markets, controlling 60 percent of all rock programming. They outright own the tours of musicians like Janet Jackson, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Madonna and N’Sync. They own the network that airs Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Casey Kasem and the Fox Sports Radio Network. With 103 million listeners in the U.S. and 1 billion globally (one-sixth of the world’s population), this powerful company has grown unchecked, using their monopoly to control.” So states clearchannelsucks.org.

When a local promoter recently teamed up with Bill Graham Productions (controlled by Clear Channel) to bring The String Cheese Incident to the fairgrounds, he thought that there would be some of the good vibes that BGP has become legendary for. The hard truth reared its ugly head when the conglomerate ended up squeezing the local promoter out of the picture both physically and financially. This is not the first time this happened, as the Chili Peppers show at Field of Dreams also took a sinister turn. In the end, a local promoter is out a bunch of money, and now it looks like Clear Channel, I mean BGP, will be bringing shows around without any local input. Score one for Goliath.

Today is Halloween, and by the time you read this it all could have been a collective anxiety dream or perhaps a true tribulation. In any case, the most perfect parody of “what could be” was written and performed by Liz Merry, Aaron Standish and John Bertoli at their most recent comedy show. I’m on my knees groveling here at the comedic genius of this trio, and while two of them do not live in Chico, the city should fund them.

I’m name-dropping here, but I saw Tenacious D perform about an hour set at Shoreline this weekend. For all you local bands that have a degree of theatrics in your act, get a video of the D if you can. Jack Black is the ultimate performer, using his voice and body to kill a crowd of 30,000. This guy is John Belushi without the drug habit. His CD is hilarious but not for the weak of heart, or mind.