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Rock Con: Weekend of 100 Rock Stars
(Calendar: Meadowlands Liberty Convention & Visitors Bureau
Location: Sheraton Meadowlands Hotel and Conference Center)
"\"Don\'t come around, leave me alone, don\'t bother me,\" George Harrison sang in 1964, speaking for all rock stars, everywhere.
In the old days – back before this weekend\'s Rock Con: Weekend of 100 Rock Stars, that is – that was the rock-star M.O. Fans were on one side of the frosted-glass limousine window. Stars were on the other – glamorous, remote, unapproachable. That was the rock star mystique.
Things are different nowadays – not least because in a post-Twitter, post-Facebook age, the very notion of privacy has gone out the limousine window.
\"There are those who, in their prime, felt they had to keep the mystique,\" says North Bergen\'s Carlos Alomar, ace guitarist known for his work with David Bowie, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. \"That\'s fine when you\'re young. But after you\'ve had that hit, you realize you\'re going to be doing this for the rest of your life, and you don\'t separate yourself from the fans to the point where you\'re disengaging from them.\"
Alomar is one of the 100 rock stars – now closer to 116, by official count – who will be showing up at the three-day blowout event this weekend at the Sheraton Meadowlands Hotel & Conference Center in East Rutherford.
Mary Wilson, Tommy James, Little Anthony, Beach Boy Al Jardine, Johnny Winter, Andy Kim and current or former members of The Rascals, The Animals, Vanilla Fudge, The Yardbirds, The Archies, Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Starz, Suicidal Tendencies, The Bay City Rollers, Paul Revere & The Raiders, Porno for Pyros, The Smithereens and Village People are among the rock icons who will be pressing flesh, posing for pictures (at typically about $10 a pop), and signing autographs (typically $5 to $20). They will also be playing and, in some cases, jamming together.
\"These are matchups that people have never seen and will never see again,\" says Charles Rosenay, co-producer of the event. \"You might see Ron Dante, the lead singer with The Archies, performing with Randy Jones, the cowboy from The Village People.\"
Conventions gain popularity
Three full ballrooms will be given over to \"merch\" (that\'s merchandise to you), to celebrity meet-and-greets and to the performances themselves, while \"breakout\" rooms will be devoted to screenings of rare rock footage, displays of celebrity artwork and more.
\"I\'m looking forward to it; I love doing this kind of stuff,\" says Fair Lawn\'s Richie Ranno, founding guitarist of Starz, the seminal metal band credited with influencing Motley Crue, Poison and Twisted Sister.
Ranno is no stranger to this kind of event: He organized the annual New York Kiss Expo that ran for 22 years, from 1987 to 2008.
Such meet-the-star events are common in the world of country music (Fan Fair, now the CMA Music Festival), comic books (Comic-Con) and other branches of fandom. They are less typical in the realm of rock music, where familiarity is thought to breed contempt. But that may be changing.
\"I think there\'s not necessarily been a wall, but maybe an image, a mystique, of a rock star who comes off the stage, runs into his limousine and is not approachable,\" Rosenay says. \"And I think that\'s changed through the years to an extent, because these celebs do their show, and at the end they want to sell their CD.\"
An old hand at these events, the Connecticut-based Rosenay has produced many in his time: Beatles conventions, horror conventions, baseball-card conventions.
But he\'s never done anything as ambitious as his Weekend of 100 Rock Stars, which he began to put together in February. \"The way it started out, the first 20 or 30 were friends, people I\'d been in touch with through the years,\" he says. \"Then it was friends of friends saying, \'Why don\'t you call such-and-such?\' Before we knew it, we were getting calls saying, \'How come we\'re not a part of your Weekend of 100 Rock Stars?\' \"
The chumminess between stars and fans will be exceeded – in theory — only by the good will the celebrities extend to each other. At least, Rosenay hopes so.
\"I\'ve gotten a few scenarios where people have asked not to sit next to other people,\" Rosenay says. \"But there\'s been more of, \'Can I sit next to such-and-such?\' I want this to be We Are the World, where everybody checks their egos at the door.\"
And then there are rockers like Ranno, still active in the area with his band Richie Ranno\'s All-Stars (he recently released an acoustic album, \"Americana\"). Ranno doesn\'t have to be told to be civil to peers and friendly to fans. That\'s how he – and Starz — roll.
\"When we play, we walk right off the stage and go for the crowd,\" Ranno says. \"It\'s like we\'re running for office.\"
For a complete list of guests, visit nationalrockcon.com/artists.htm.
E-mail: beckerman@northjersey.com"
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