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Random Thu Jun 28 2007
Know When to Run...
Back when I was an art-school undergrad, our department was paid a visit by artist Roger Brown. The son of a local grocer from Opelika, Alabama, Brown was a hometown boy made good who'd gone off to attend the School of the Art Institute and become a Windy City cultural fixture via his affiliation with the whole Chicago Imagist movement. He'd brought some slides of his recent paintings, and among them was a work that depicted a cameo portrait of Kenny Rogers hovering over a pastoral expanse of the Great American Heartland. Asked why he'd put a likeness of the country vocalist in the painting, Brown replied, "Because I always thought Kenny Rogers looked a lot like God."
Well folks, if you were planning to hit the Chicago Country Music Festival in Grant Park this Saturday, then you'll have the chance to see a stage full of deific doppelgängers. Not only will The Man himself be performing, but the Festival's reportedly hosting a Kenny Rogers Look-alike Contest! And, for shizzle—this has the makings of a big event, as it appears that impersonating Kenny Rogers is something of a cottage industry throughout the country (see here, here, and here). Indeed, it seems that even Kenny himself has had to put some effort into looking like Kenny in recent years. So here's your chance to see the man who was once voted Favorite Singer of All Time in a joint USA Today/People magazine poll without having to make the haul to Branson. It all gets underway at 3pm at the Petrillo Music Shell, Saturday.