Back in my day lipsyncers were called singers!

This is just so sad. The buzz that surrounds Hannah Montana concerts, that is. I am happy to say that my kids only have somewhat of a passing interest in the Disney pop drug of the moment (after all, she wasn't one of the actresses in High School Musical, now was she?). Yet still, my wife had to ask me the token question...

"So, should we look into Hannah Montana concert tickets?"

Luckily she wasn't overly serious. I mean, tickets are selling for something like five thousand dollars apiece, and you have to lie about your father being a casualty of war just to be considered good enough to go. And then, once you're at the concert, you're treated to pre-recorded tripe so overly mechanized that a body double subs for the performer while she does a costume change. Really. Didn't Milli Vanilli teach us anything?

I want my daughters to grow up right. I want them to respect talent. To want to see a concert because they love the talent displayed by the performer, not because it's what a cable channel told them they have to do. I want to pay for a quality performance, not a duplicate of what I can get on TV in better quality.

Back in my day, when TV was called books and when having to Wii meant actually peeing, I went to only a few rock concerts. The two that stood out were INXS and Smithereens. I saw INXS with my older sister. It was my first concert and my ONLY stadium concert. But I saw them because they were my favorite band. Not because of who they were, but because of what they did. I didn't know the band members' names. I didn't have an INXS lunch box. I just liked their music. And the Smithereens I saw after their prime in the early 90's. I'd always liked their music, and got to see them in a club so small that quite literally I got to sit next to him on stage, with about thirty other people, while he played an acoustic version of "Behind The Wall OF Sleep". Twenty years from now, I would like to ask any girl that attended the Hannah Montana concert this year, to see what she remembers about the concert. I bet it's her hair.

There ya have it folks. I'm officially a grumpy old fart.