The "Christian" Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are marching in Radford and Christiansburg on Saturday.
So far there are no plans for them to march in Roanoke. But you never know. Suppose some store at Valley View Mall has a weekend sale on sheets and the Grand Imperial Queen-Size Mattress hears about it?
Before you know it, a mobile white sale might be heading north on Interstate 81.
Roanoke is ready to meet just such a contingency.
"Rock Against Racism," subtitled "our loud but peaceful response to a KKK march in theRoanoke area," is going to crank up at the Elmwood Park Amphitheatre at 11 a.m. Saturday and go on until 8p.m.
The 10 band concert is the product of one of those barroom conversations that usually doesn't go anywhere.
A couple of weeks ago, Billy Foster of Roanoke ran into Kevin Jenks at The Barrel House in Salem. They got to talking about the Klan's nickel tour of Southwest Virginia.
As Foster, 27, tells it, Jenks said, "I'd like to see about throwing a rock against racism."
"I was really sorry I didn't think of it myself,"Foster said. "I went home wondering if he was really serious about this."
He was. Foster started working on it the very next day. The two made phone calls, lining up bands to volunteer their services. They had a tough time finding an insurance company that would offer liability insurance for a hard rock concert, but they finally got that, too.
The Record Exchange, Kaiser Music, the Sound Stop, Botetourt Seamless Gutters and a couple of anonymous businesses provided the money to cover the $150 insurance premium. The city provided the permit to have the concert.
"This is not a hateful confrontation against the KKK," Foster said. "We're just not into hatred. "The KKK is on tour. That's their right. That doesn't mean it is right.
"Usually it's rock bands that are on tour."
Will this be a good concert? You got me. The only one of the 10 bands I've ever heard, Counterpoint, sounded good when I heard it a summer or two ago. I can't vouch for the rest of them.
But the concert will be good, in the sense that a rock concert is uniquely suited to be an anti-racist platform. Rock 'n' roll is where black and white cultures meet and mix.
It is written: The blues begat rhythm and blues which begat rock 'n' roll.
Black artists like John Lee Hooker and Big Joe Turner pioneered rhythm and blues in the early '5Os. A white boy from Tupelo, Miss., Elvis Presley, heard the music, liked it, sang it and helped change it a little bit in the mid-'5Os, bringing in country-and-Western influences.
Whites and blacks have taken turns writing the rock/pop standards ever since, changing it all along the way. We're talking about Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Carl Perkins, Carole King and Smokey Robinson, Prince and Bruce Springsteen.
It is an international music today. But it started in America because this is the only place it could have started. It could happen only in a heterogeneous country confident enough, free enough and smart enough to take the best of what all its people had to offer.
The music is not always as good as the idea. But neither is America.
We don't want to get too philosophical about all this. Rock is no intellectual experience. It's just plain folks playing music and having a good time. But whatever it isn't, it sure beats watching people walk around in sheets.
To all the bands in this concert - Taker, Savita Blade, Fast Passion, Counterpoint, LPTV, Axis, Foreplay, Yer Mom, Inspector #12 and Young Cowboys - punk, metal, new wave and Top 40 - good luck.
You have the right idea.