“Men spend their time in following a ball or a hare; it is the pleasure even of kings.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
(image of a roadie loading band equipment /Arts hub Australia)
I can remember back in the day…back in the early 70’s when, as a teenager,
I began going, with friends and dates, to concerts.
A typical teenager, I loved music.
It often spoke to my young angst-ridden self.
So when Atlanta finally built her very first enclosed sports venue,
I was excited. This meant that not only did the arena become home to both basketball
and hockey teams, it also became a much larger home for concerts—beating out the
usual little intimate and smaller local theaters, bars, and civic center.
This meant more kids were now able to go to concerts.
And the whole idea of living a “band” life was reborn into a new generation
of daydreaming teens and young people.
Previous musicians and singers had already had their fair share of tagalongs
and groupies…but in the early ’70s, the idea seemed to boom alongside
a now booming music industry.
Dreams of being discovered sprung forth from many a garage and basement band.
The idea of following in the shadow of a band or singer seemed glamorous and even romantic…
for both girls and guys.
How awesome would it be to travel and see the world with one’s favorite band?
Think one generation wanting to run away with the circus while a later generation
wanted to run away with a band.
Young teenagers were finding the idea of being a roadie and or groupie
both fun and exciting.
But first, let’s back up a minute…
we need to stop and think about this groupie thing.
We need to stop and think about cult followings.
Mindless and dangerous worship from afar…all in hopes of entering the inner circle.
Why does Charles Manson now come to mind…
So think of those who actually quit life in order to become ‘Dead Heads’ following
the Grateful Dead from city to city
Or Mr. ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’ and his own following flock known at
Parrot heads.
Folks who follow/ed Jimmy Buffet from city to city…living the
half drunk beach life all over the country.
Sounds nice but…
And so I got to thinking about this whole notion of groupies, roadies and cult followings.
which in turn got me thinking about how these types of folks seem to mirror the various
groups of folks we are seeing today.
Think traveling troublemakers.
Think Antifa.
Think, yes, even Black Lives Matter…
groups who prefer fights, agitation and violence versus a level headed protest
movement.
Trouble makers, provocateurs, anarchists all traveling from venue to venue,
aka city to city, in order not to entertain or to be entertained,
but rather to wreak havoc while causing catastrophic harm.
Riding the bandwagon of pandemonium.
There are the die-hard cult members.
And there are the die-hard cult leaders.
Those card-carrying types.
The ones who hop in cars to travel halfway across the country hoping to insert their own
signature of hate within a city or town.
And then there are those who are the wannabes.
The ones who secretly hop on the hate train just for the momentary rush of angst.
Think of a Clark Kent antithesis— that mild-mannered reporter by trade and superhero at heart…
mirrored by folks we’re seeing in these riots who are probably mild-mannered without their masks
yet turn into super hate-thug adversary once the masks go on and the lights go out.
See this photo?
It’s a photo a friend of my son’s sent him from downtown Charleston of an incident
which took place near his office this past week.
Whereas I hate to ever see any American burn their own flag,
it wasn’t so much the flag burner that caught my attention.
See this close up of the guy in the back left on the sidewalk…?
See the sign he’s holding?
It’s a poster with a hammer and sickle along with the word solidarity.
A communist hopeful watching a comrade burn the flag.
Gotta love a secret anarchist at heart.
Does this young man, who is white, care about George Floyd or does he care more about
dismantling the nation with a communist manifesto?
I wonder.
And so when I was reading Citizen Tom’s latest posting on the Prince William-Manassas Family Alliance
regarding Parental Rights being in the Crosshairs…I thought, oh boy, here we go.
We already have the masses of minions to the madness…
those who I wonder about their roots of upbringing.
And now we hear government leadership wanting to make becoming a minion much easier
by officially taking away the right of parents to parent.
No mentoring, no nurturing, no guidance, no discipline.
I think we already know that the nuclear family is in crisis…in jeopardy of being
destroyed…and we, in turn, are watching a society implode upon itself.
Tom offers the following observation:
We’re in a war that is very serious and dangerous.
We must protect our freedom, we must practice our freedom NOW or our neglect will seize
it from us.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” (Edmund Burke).
When good men do nothing, the opposition has opportunity to move in and steal.
We cannot afford to let down our guard!
I was taught, perhaps you were taught, that there is a separation of church and state,
and Christians ought not be involved in politics.
WRONG!
Is it because too many of us have believed the lie that our nation is being usurped from us.
No longer!!
We are rising up to take control of our freedom!
NOW!
Visit the Parental Rights web site and get involved.
NOW!
(https://familyallianceonline.org/2020/06/03/your-parental-rights-are-in-the-cross-hairs/)
And so when we lose the ability to parent…
When we lose the authority within the family…
When Christianity is deemed irrelevant…
When lawlessness becomes the norm…
When the masses cry to abolish law enforcement…
When children are left to “govern” themselves…
a vast and dangerous void opens up… and that void must be filled.
Disrespect.
Selfishness.
Violence.
Hate.
Thuggery.
Cultism.
The death of the nuclear family will be the death of a nation.
There will be no roadies, dead heads or parrot heads, but there will be a myriad of
cult followers.
There’s not much time remaining.
cookiecrumbstoliveby 
Thanks for the link. That post is something Doris wrote, but I am happy to be associated with it.
Then my gratitude to Doris and to you Tom!!!!
A secret anarchist. I have been thinking about that, maybe researching it. The young think they are inventing something new, but anarchists have been around a long time. One of the Sherlock Holmes stories had an anarchist as a suspect. Could you not say that the Zealots of Jesus’ time were anarchists? As long as one group is in charge, there will be another group that thinks they could do better and they’ll use violence to achieve their end.
As for the concerts, I was never a rock and roll guy. I turned down the chance to see a free Elvis concert, although I did not know it was Elvis – billed as a local kid giving a free concert at the Tupelo Armory. He tried out his Las Vegas tour on his hometown folks first, and I wasn’t interested in seeing “just” a local kid. I saw Sonny and Cher. That’s about it. But if Glenn Miller and the band rose from the dead, I would be there.
My claim to fame was my grandfather talking us grandkids to see the Beatles. I was the youngest and don’t remember much— yep anarchists were quite prevalent in the lead up to the Russian Revolution and WWI— always the troublemakers!!!!
A flock of sheep comes to mind. Is that what we’ve become. We follow the leader, so to speak, without question. We do what’s popular. We mindlessly herd together, not knowing where we’re going. We certainly need a shepherd and God has given us one. All we need do is follow Him instead of the wolves of the world.
Let us be the voice of the Shepherd!!!!!
The fact that the flag burns so brightly frightens me. But there are more questions…. Is the young man protesting anger at the United States of America? Why would someone burn a flag that means the very freedom that he, along with others are fighting for? This isn’t what a citizen demonstrates.. it’s what a non-citizen who lives in the Mid-East does. It’s very sad when people are lead by the masses.
I know Ed— it is all so surreal— that flag is a symbol of their own freedom to be able to act like selfish fools
[…] Are you a roadie, a dead head, a parrot head or simply part of the cult? (cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com) illustrates the need for that. Julie, the author of this post doesn’t include this video, but I think it makes an appropriate addition. […]
Never felt a time so desperate to pray
you got that right!
When I hear news of Atlanta I think of your family
Thanks Jim— last night they were a bit panicked as the word was spreading quickly that most of the Atlanta police walked off the job— my son’s buddy who is an Alabama state patrolman called and told him that his group had been called into to help the Georgia stat patrol fill the gap and that they might think about heading back to us for the night but I reassured him it would be okay — that the sun would rise in the morning— which it has— but there’s something about the darkness that frightens us as we since all manner of harm lurking— Satan loves that
Man…still praying for Georgia; and our nation