Thank you mama for the concert Tee

This is for the young rockers: Your Hedley is my Debbie Gibson and I know just how you feel. Tomorrow is your first concert. You're going with your three best friends (BFF -until Jacob Hoggard smiles at only one of you!) and you've arranged for a parent to drop you off at the K-Rock Centre and a parent to pick you up -and right away since it's a school night. "No dilly-dallying," your parents have instructed. Or, you're too young to go unaccompanied, so God bless 'em, your parents are going with you.

When I tell people about my first concert experience, I always say it was going to see The Tragically Hip when they played Ontario Place in Toronto to promote their 1991 album Road Apples. But that wasn't really my first concert experience; it was my second. (It's just so much cooler than my first show.)

My first concert experience was when I went to Canada's Wonderland to see Debbie Gibson in the summer of 1988. Her album Out of the Blue, released in 1987, was a smash. She and Tiffany were going head-to-head on all the charts and like all the great battles of my young life in the '80s - Orser versus Boitano, Jem and the Holograms versus The Misfits, and Bryan Adams versus Corey Hart - you were loyal to only one, and I was on Debbie's team.

I was 12 at the time of the 1988 Out Of the Blue tour, so I went to my first concert with my mom and dad and eight-year-old brother.

The show was the first time I encountered the sit-versus-stand concert crowd. Everyone in front of us was standing up, screaming and jumping and singing. But the people behind us wanted to sit, so they kept tapping my mom on the shoulder asking our family to sit down. My mother politely told them I couldn't see Debbie if I sat down, so I'd have to stand since everyone else was standing. (My mother can also vividly recount this night, she had such a good time).

Debbie did all her hits - Only In My Dreams, Out Of the Blue, Foolish Games and Shake Your Love - and I sang along to every one.

At one point, even my mom had a good time. The standers became sitters when some of the people in the row in front of us abandoned their seats for a few songs.

Back in my day, I would have come home to my diary and written about my great night at my first show. You'll come home, update your Facebook page, e-mail your friends the picture you got with Jacob, and then maybe blog about it. The technology is different, but the concert experience is still very much the same. Your heart is racing (Jacob is so cool); your ears are buzzing (the concert is so loud); and your wallet is aching (buy the T-shirt, not the commemorative program. You'll get more use out of it).

And who do you have to thank for all of this? Most of you need to give your parents a big hug and kiss and then go vacuum the house for them, because they've had a role in this night out. They paid for the tickets, or helped you order them on their credit card, or are picking up you and your friends to take you to the arena or are going to the concert with you.

You do need to tuck it in the back of your mind that they made Hedley happen for you because, 19 years from now, (hypothetically speaking, of course), you'll remember that when you went to that Debbie Gibson (er, Hedley) concert, that row in front of you did abandon their seats for a few songs - only to return with concert T-shirts, which they proceeded to whip over their heads like helicopter blades.

Which repeatedly hit your mother in the face.

Over and over and over again.
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Wanna make me smile? Wiggle that thang.

Spend a decade covering entertainment as a columnist, reporter and editor, and you can become jaded. When musicians, actors, comics and artists are starting out, they ask and plead for coverage and they're happy for any help they get. Sometimes, depending on how many events are going on in the city, how busy reporters are, and the size of the newspaper, all we can offer them is a listing: Their name, location of the event, time it starts and cost of admission.

Often, they're grateful and appreciative. Usually, we do much better: Every week, we publish [in the Ticket] photos and feature stories on local artists and out-of-town artists performing/exhibiting/ entertaining in the Kingston area. A story usually warrants a heap of love from the person being profiled.

You always hope that when they say they'll remember you when they make it big, they mean it.

Having the K-Rock Centre has ushered in a new level of frustration for those of us who cover entertainment. Bigger stars equal bigger shows, but bigger headaches, too.

We try to give our readers superior coverage but that's hard to do when Sheryl Crow would only do preshow interviews with two radio stations and Avril Lavigne's handlers levied a heavy contract on us about what we could and couldn't do with the photographs we took and refused to give her hometown newspaper an interview. Photographers in Canada are already buzzing on the 'Net about the fact they haven't been allowed to shoot the Bob Dylan show. (Kingston could change that on Nov. 15).

But it doesn't have to be this way. When the Little Guy becomes the Big Guy, The Guy can still be gracious and accommodating. I have proof of it from Anthony, Jeff, Murray and Sam.

It's true: Avril Lavigne could learn a thing or two from The Wiggles.

The Australian entertainers were in town Tuesday to perform for one of the toughest crowds: Children; hungry, overtired, overexcited, poopy-in-their-diapers, (Oh, was that just my kid?) children.

These four singers -middle-aged men who are known as the yellow Wiggle (Sam), the red Wiggle (Murray), the blue Wiggle (Anthony) and purple Wiggle (Jeff) - started the show by leaving the stage and walking around to meet the concertgoers.

What's scarier - Lavigne having to walk through a crowd of teens or Wiggles dancing through throngs of children who will be out for blood soon if they don't hear classics like Dorothy the Dinosaur and Fruit Salad (Yummy, Yummy). I think the Wiggles take the bigger risk by leaving the stage.

I may be the only person who saw Lavigne at the K-Rock Centre and thought the concert was a snoozefest. Everyone I talked to looovved her. She didn't interact with the audience and there was no dancing. Yes, the hot pink piano was sexy and her vocals were good, but her show, in terms of entertainment? Not good enough for such a seasoned performer.

The Wiggles, on the other hand, mixed song with dance - including the famed lift from Dirty Dancing - with acrobatics and comedy. Murray (Mr. red Wiggle) was outed by his band-mates, who told the crowd he was named the sixth best guitarist in Australia. To show the adults he has a sense of humour, he played the opening to Stairway to Heaven.

The Wiggles' publicist also called us and asked if we'd like an interview - and which Wiggle we'd like to interview. They called us?! Huh?

Yes, these guys are children's entertainers but they're rock stars for anyone under eight. And they're rich.

Maybe they're truly gracious or maybe they're brilliant self promoters, but it doesn't matter. I was entertained. Performers who come to the K-Rock Centre have a new standard to attain. They better Wiggle it.
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And the award for Kingston's best float goes to ...

Who's in charge of marketing at K-Rock 105.7?
Give that kid a candy cane!

We all know it's teens and 20-somethings who are the important consumers.

They know what's hip before us old fogies do. Do you know who Rocky, Tessa, Kyndra and Cami are? If you do, you're probably under 25 years old.

The kids know what websites are hot and which ones are not: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube.

They do the fashion thing way ahead of us. Skinny jeans, anyone?

And when it comes to music, they rattle off names of in bands long before they make the pages of People magazine (if, in fact, they ever do.)

The kids in Kingston also listen to K-Rock and the radio station does a good job of promoting itself to them. Every year, they hold BandSlam, a competition that pits local rockers against each other. The concerts have packed downtown bars on cold, rainy Monday nights. Now, that says something.

They've also got G and Shadoe, two very affable and easygoing guys (who, btw, are also popular with the ladies.)

K-Rock also has a rockin' float. Now, what I'm about to say could get me more snotty posts than Santa gets letters but it should be pointed out: Just because you pull a dead pine tree in a wagon covered with a string of red lights and you stick your three-year-old niece with a winter hat on in the car pulling the tree, doesn't mean you have a Santa Claus parade float. It means you have a pine tree in a wagon covered with a string of red lights and your three-year-old niece in a car wearing a winter hat.

If I had a nickel for every child who waved to me on Saturday night at the Santa Claus parade with a look of "Huh. I wonder if I'm missing reruns of Laguna Beach tonight. What did mom say we were having for dinner? Spaghetti. Must remember to wash my school uniform. Oh crap, forgot to smile. And wave" well, I wouldn't have to apply to be on Deal or No Deal, would I?

Good on you for being in the parade but let's put on our parade faces next year, shall we?

But K-Rock? Those crazy radio folks had a massive float, packed with a drummer drumming, a singer singing, a backup band, well, backing and a bunch of people there waving to the people - with enthusiasm.

Rocking around Princess and Regent streets, the band was doing AC/DC's TNT - but with festive Christmas lyrics.

So, to you hip folks at K-Rock, I'll say this: Santa knows if you've been bad or good. And you've been very bad - but in a good way.

Isn't that what the cool kids say these days - that bad is good?

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