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 The Delco Times reports that Bethlehem's annual concert festival, aptly titled Musikfest, kicks off
tonight. Over the next 10 days, artists from Avril Lavigne to Kool and
the Gang to Stone Temple Pilots will be headlining what is easily one
of the most diverse destination festivals of the summer.
Tuesday
night, glam-metal stalwarts Poison will be taking the top slot in its
first of two area appearances this summer, Hershey Park being the other
next Friday. And while it's good to see the boys from Harrisburg back
on the road, a few months ago any tour at all looked unlikely after
drummer Rikki Rockett was arrested on strong-arm rape charges at LAX.
He was later exonerated; it turns out an impostor at a Mississippi
casino allegedly lured a woman to his room and claimed to be the Poison
skin basher.
Rock Music Menu caught up with Rockett during tour
rehearsals in Salt Lake City where he spoke freely of how his band
manages to keep t together after more than two decades, and the horror
of being accused for a crime he didn't commit.
"I'm completely off the hook because they admitted they had the wrong guy," Rockett said.
Arrested in the airport as he returned from a trip to New Zealand, the drummer had no idea why he was being picked up.
"Rape was the furthest thing from my mind --- I've never raped
anybody," he said. "I thought maybe I had insulted somebody or there
was a bill I didn't pay. And when they took me in and sat me down and
told me it was criminal, and that I had a rape charge, I've never felt
that kind of a rush go through my body."
"That's like being told
you have cancer. I mean, when somebody attaches that to your name,
there's not a whole lot worse that can be attached to it. I think child
molestation might be worse, murder might be worse, though in some cases
it might be better if it's in your own defense. That's just one thing
you don't want tagged with your name."
Almost immediately after word of the arrest hit the wires, many people
considered him guilty until proven innocent, and weren't shy about
expressing their opinions.
"There were a lot of people just poised
to say something about me or my band or any member of our band, so when
this came out they were all over it," Rockett said. "Immediately I
started losing some of the products I was putting out, people refusing
my posters in stores, it was a gnarly, gnarly thing to happen."
Read the full story here.
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