Draw the blinds and close the drapes. Lock your doors and take the phones off the hooks. It’s time to talk about the one subject where no one dares to tread. It’s time to lift the curtain and expose the machinations behind every date, city and venue for Asia, Stanton Moore and Sevendust. It’s time to peel away the darkness and shed light on Walter Trout & The Radicals and The Bears Featuring Adrian Belew.

It’s time to expose who is behind the new tours.

It’s a well-known fact that a cabal of booking agents, managers and promoters has conspired to bring professional music entertainment to the local level. They hide in the shadows, plotting to bring Mary J. Blige to Los Angeles, Deborah Coleman and Tinsley Ellis to Virginia, and Lee Rocker, Flickerstick and Bowzer & The Stingrays to your town. But who are these insidious planners? Who are these people who, dare we say, “conspire” to present night after night of musical extravagance not known since the fall of Babylon? And what’s more, what do they want in return?

It’s really simple once you understand the workings behind shows by Jethro Tull, tours by Lee Rocker and the Go-Go’s and the assignation of support acts for Agnostic Front. The people who plot the routings for acts like Ratdog, Curtis Salgado and Bob Dylan want your money. That’s right. They want to give you an evening of incredible entertainment, and in return, they expect you to pay for it.

Who will stop this nefarious plan to charge you money so that you can see the best live entertainment the music world has to offer? Who will expose the workings of secret societies such as HoB, Clear Channel Entertainment and the Concert Industry Consortium? Who will dare shed light on the most fiendish collusion ever planned to bring Keller Williams and Link 80 to the concert stage so that they may play before a paying public? Who? Who?? Who???

Certainly not the RIAA, for they are much too busy stamping out the scourge that is modern technology so that they can sell you CDs by Dream Theater and A Flock Of Seagulls. Certainly not the NRA, for they’re too busy comparing muzzle velocities and stopping power with Charleton Heston down at Spagos. If the conspiracy is to be exposed, it’s going to be up to all of us fine, honest, clean-living Americans.

Or someday you just might wake up to find *NSYNC in a Star Wars movie. Remember, you’ve been warned.