The Decline and Fall of Theme Park Rock
Dan Snyder just acquired the entire Dick Clark video catalog. That means his theme park chain, Six Flags, can entertain patrons young and old with all the vintage American Bandstand clips they want. Snyder’s treasure chest now includes tape of lip-synchers from Buffalo Springfield to Dusty Springfield to Rick Springfield, and just about every other pop act in between.
So, given the chain’s newfound musical cache, the marketing campaign Six Flags is using to promote its 2007 summer season is amazingly lame. The TV ads being broadcast locally implore folks to come to Six Flags America in P.G. County for the “Starburst Thursday Night Concert Series,” which will feature “artists from the Jonas Brothers to Bobby Valentino.” Not that I’ve ever had my finger on the pulse of cool—”Supper’s Ready” by Peter Gabriel-era Genesis still excites me more than anything recorded by anybody since—but: Has anybody ever heard of the Jonas Brothers or Bobby Valentino? And that’s the cream of this year’s crop?
And for those rock snobs ready to suggest that only B-teamers play amusement parks, please look back to August 12, 1989, when Bob Dylan headlined at Six Flags’ closest rival, Kings Dominion. Steve Earle opened.
22 Responses to “The Decline and Fall of Theme Park Rock”
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June 26th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Please remove the picture of that old guy or the young guy wearing an old guy mask. This picture scares the shit out of me. For some reason, I also think this guy is bad luck.
June 26th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Jason, that’s no way to talk about Corrado.
June 26th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Cherkis, I am SO on board with you about this. I have to turn off the commercials this guy appears in. Something about the boppy techno dance music he grooves to and his herky jerky dance movements makes him look … well, like an epileptic flesheater in Depends undergarments. He is terrifying.
June 26th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
If there were a speech bubble coming out of this guy’s mouth, it would say, “Hi kids! See this hand? Well, Uncle Mortimer is going to stick this hand right down your pants and fiddle with your smooth young genitalia!”
June 26th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
What a droll comment, Carrie. Appearances, however, can often deceive, don’t you think?
June 26th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Dempsey: HA! Too funny–Six Flags guy defintiely looks like a bizarro Uncle Junior!
June 26th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Cherkis: I believe it’s actually a young *woman* under that old guy mask. So there you go.
June 26th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
If someone told me I had to spend an hour in a locked room with this guy, I’d hope to be wearing Kevlar underwear and a steel chest-plate to keep him from reaching in and removing my still-beating heart.
Six Flags’ marketing team should have come up with a more appealing spokesperson, like, say, Tommy Necker, The Little Boy Who Was Decapitated on a Six Flags Coaster.
June 26th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
My friend once played piano in an amusement-park show band. They had to do a 10-minute vamp on “Let’s Get It Started” every afternoon.
I guess that’s kinda like episode of “South Park” when Stan’s grandfather traps the kids in a room with Enya’s “Orinoco Flow,” just to show them what old age is like.
June 26th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
a lot of people have heard of the jonas brothers! they are an awesome band! dont hate
June 26th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Carrie, with all due respect, I find the geezer quite comical, actually.
As I live and flourish… SarahG, otro vez. Jolly good posts, by the way.
June 26th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I can see the comic potential, Ernest, but from a kid’s perspective, he combines the scariest aspects of evil clowns (exaggerated movements, weird smile, desire to get close and wiggle his pelvis) and old people (baldness, wrinkles, lack of teeth). If I were a kid and thought he was waiting for me at Six Flags, I would beg my parents to take me to King’s Dominion, even if Jonas Brothers and their rest of their fifth grade classmates were going to be at Six Flags, too.
June 26th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Let us just say he looks a tad eccentric.
June 27th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Dave McKenna’s music comments? Why do they let music bigots
do reviews? None of the acts he mentioned are lip syncers in concert!
They were and are all fine artists! Not everyone will remember
American Bandstand didn’t have the capability to tape an artists
performance for real. So that they used an artist’s 45 rpm record recording as the music. Not the same lip synching is notorious today.
AB showcased hundreds of amazing up and coming artists.
I’m glad to be able to look forward to live bands at an amusement park.
Growing up, amusement parks were one of the ways to build a band’s
career on the way up to stardom. I’ll also look forward to those
vintage video clips!
Wow, Carrie. It’s just a commercial. The old guy is meant to show young and old alike can enjoy Six Flags. It’s fun, it’s a party. I’ve seen all kinds of kids do goof take offs of the old guy and techno music. They get it. How hateful to say the guy looks like a predator! You can’t tell those creeps from their looks, but by how they are in person.
Old doesn’t mean dead. I’m disgusted with the whole concept of
“youth” culture and what is or is not appealing! The old guy is fit, can still dance and was smart enough to invest for retirement instead of spending it all on botox. I like that iconic old buzzard. I will
agree on clowns in make up being scary.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I can’t agree more in general and “youth” culture in paticular, Wolf Star.
Every year a new bunch of them young prats descend locust like upon this wonderful city from each and every provincial hole on the US territory. They share some crappy basement by a dozen during the night while subserviently serving lawyers, lobbyists, politicians and corporations during the day. They visit the National Zoo, Adams Morgan and Black Cat. They hang around Dupont Circle. They learn opinions. Before long the young dolts become deluded to such a degree as to think themselves urban sophisticates. They’re above Virginia and PG County, if you please. They think they have a taste in music while it’s quite evident the only taste they have is in their mouths. Doped with consumption and porn and TV, they think they’re clever and classless and free. But they’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see. Get back to where you belong, yo.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
While this guy gives me the heebie jeebies, I was exaggerating for the sake of comedy here, Wolf Star. A less smart-assed analysis: He’s creepy in part for the very obsession with youth culture you’re talking about. How often are images of old people used to sell a product not directly marketed to them — something other than Cialis, Rascal scooters, or Oops-I-Crapped-My Pants underwear? Hardly ever. People don’t want to be reminded of aging and death.
What makes Six Flags Guy an exception? He looks old, but he’s acceptable onscreen because he behaves like a child on a sugar-binge: dancing energetically, making goofy faces, grooving to youthful music, riding coasters. He represents the only acceptable kind of old person: perpetually healthy and childlike. (And given that there’s actually an athletic young woman inside this suit, I could even argue — tongue-in-cheekily — that this guy is sort of an age-ist equivalent to the old minstrel shows where white performers put on blackface. But if I went down that silly rabbit hole I’d never come out.)
Much as I’m tired of the Cialis ads (does every man taking erectile dysfunction drugs have an outdoor clawfooted bathtub and a vineyard?), at least they have a more graceful tone on aging issues.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Ms. Red
you are aptly named. you are indeed a true communist. i salute you.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Comrade Fyodorovich, it is the brutal dullness of the 9-to-5 capitalist system that inspires me to such longwindedness. Perhaps, after our next bear hunt, we can discuss it all over vodka and falafel. Za vas!
June 27th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
vodka and bear heart, never felafel. … am i right, professor carman?
June 28th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Ernest, you are full of exaggerated nonsense. That’s called Pursuit of Happiness, American dream, and all that. Haven’t read the Declaration of Independence lately, have you? Besides, many of “them” new arrivals are fairly well educated young people who know from arts and sciences. Furthermore, many embark on brilliant careers with the government to become the planners of America’s future! Lighten up.
June 28th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Cool it, Beaky.
Carrie, you loosened up a bit it seems. Was it a raise in salary or email from a suitor? Or both, perhaps?
Welcome to America, Alex – a land of plenty of kolbasa for everyone. We are all friends here.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
×òî òî Àâòîð ñîâñåì ïåðåñòàë ïèñàòü ïîñòû è äàæå àäìèíèòü áëîã? Ìîæåò ÷òî ñëó÷èëîñü?