Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 17, 1990 TAG: 9005170012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TRACY WIMMER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Big trouble.
Those were fighting words.
How does the thought of being shagged, a.k.a. rhythmically trampled, by 240 people wearing madras pants and backless sundresses grab you?
Few things can shake up a group of shaggers more than a city's special-events coordinator saying beach music is out - or simply on the decline.
"Out? Out? I'm going to out him," Pete Kidd said. "Did he really say that?"
Kidd is the social chairman of the Roanoke Valley Shag Club, a group of beach music disciples - 10 months old, 240 members strong. He is also Johnson's cousin.
Not one to fuel family feuds, Johnson was trying to answer a question about the popularity of beach music in Southwest Virginia when he stomped on a few toes.
"What we're seeing is a massive case of over-exposure brought on by a real hard-core group of people who keep propping it up," Johnson said of beach music. "I mean once you've seen The Embers 50 times . . . It's a little stale."
Personally, Johnson said he likes beach music - a good thing since the Roanoke Special Events Comittee throws one of the biggest inland beach bashes in Virginia each summer, with some 22,000 attending the event on the Roanoke City Market.
Still, the average beach music band has been together 20 years. And there have been only so many beach tunes recorded. If you go to more than one concert, you're probably going to know the words.
But hard-core fans don't care. And as one local disc jockey who asked not to be named put it, "You don't want to tick these people off."
He likened beach music believers to Deadheads, fans whose loyalty to rockers The Grateful Dead periodically borders on fanaticism. He said he doesn't get a lot of requests for beach music; his station usually plays it only around summer festival time.
Therein lies the mystery: You can't hear it on the radio - with the occasional exception of WROV-AM. You can rarely find it in record stores - except for a few compilations here and there. And in case you haven't noticed, we're nowhere near the ocean.
But in Roanoke, Stuart, Appomattox, Danville and the Smith Mountain Lake area, beach music is being performed - a lot.
Much of the popularity of beach music comes from nostalgia for good times at the Carolina beaches where the music evolved from '50s and '60s rhythm and blues.
Shagging clubs now flourish from Richmond to Bristol, and twice a year - spring and fall - converge on North Myrtle Beach for a weekend of dancing. Sponsored by the Society of Stranders, a shag-support organization named for the wide beach at Myrtle, the event recently drew 7,000 people.
Closer to home, organizers hope Stuart's annual "Hot Fun In The Summertime" Beach Music Festival will draw 10,000 people this year, 1,000 more than last year's rainy event.
And today marks the kick-off of the region's most concentrated beach music effort yet.
Valleypointe After Hours is a summer-long weekly concert series featuring a different beach music band each week through September 20. Held at the Valleypointe Corporate Center, proceeds from the events will go to the Easter Seals Society.
Organizers hope to have at least 3,500 people attending each concert by the end of the summer. They compare the series to the Innsbrook concert series in Richmond, which averaged crowds of 5,500 and raised about $80,000 for the Easter Seals Society last summer.
Friday, the Catalinas will perform a benefit for the Leukemia Society at the Valley Sports Arena.
But what the planners of the events - especially the Valleypointe series - haven't planned is that beach music is already widely available, Johnson said.
The familiarity of the music has brought a decline in overall attendance at most events, he added. Just half of the expected 4,000 people attended the beach festival in Appomattox last year. And only 3,500 people attended Roanoke City's Martha and the Vandellas/Four Tops concert two years ago. Johnson said city officials expected 10,000 to 15,000. And what rain there was, he said, likely could not account for the 11,500 absentees.
Last fall, the Advertising Federation of the Roanoke Valley sponsored a beach music fund-raiser at the Sheraton Airport Inn. The 80-member group expected 500 people. They got 100.
Frieda Carper, president, said she felt a combination of poor promotions and over-exposure kept people away.
Aside from Bishop's and Holiday Inn Tanglewood's Elephant Walk Lounge, most clubs have cut out their weekly beach nights.
Perry Caligan, owner of King's Entertainment Agency, has been promoting beach music bands in Virginia and surrounding states for 10 years. He says overexposure may have begun to work against some groups. Often the bands work five to six nights a week and have very little time to spruce up their floor show.
According to Kidd, the Roanoke Valley Shag Club refuses to book The Embers, because their floor show is always the same and cuts in on good dance time.
"Beach music is still very popular right now, but that popularity has leveled off," Caligan said. "But you can hear it just about anywhere you want - the country club, private parties, clubs. . . . People are saturated with it."
But beach music runs in cycles, and if it is on the decline, it will come back again, Caligan said.
And there's good news for Pete Kidd and friends, Caligan said. "Shag music is as popular as it has ever been. . . . Basically, you could shag to almost anything."
by CNB