If you were one of the 40,000-plus to attend this year’s Fort Rock Festival, held at Markham Park in Sunrise Florida just outside of Ft. Lauderdale, you were treated to two full days of some of the best current rock bands and legendary acts, such as Ozzy Osbourne on his “farewell tour.”

Club Play’s Ben Biernacki and Concrete’s Bob Chiappardi at Fort Rock

This year’s Ft. Rock Festival was of extra special importance to readers of ED Magazine and “The Pub” as it included a special promotion led by Bob Chiappardi and his company Concrete Marketing & StripJointsMusic.com. Concrete is music’s gold standard for marketing, promotion, and the producer of StripJointsMusic.com which provides great new music, info and promotions to strip club DJs nationwide (Strip Club DJs: If you have not signed up to this service, you are missing out. Check it out here!

Eleven Florida strip clubs participated in this special promotion, including: Scarlett’s in Fort Meyers, Thee Original Dollhouse Orlando, Thee Dollhouse Tampa, Rachel’s in West Palm Beach, Stars Men’s Club (Orlando), Diamond Club (Orlando), Club Play (Davie), Pink Pussycat in Pinellas Park, and the Gold Club and Emperors of Tampa.

“This this the sixth time the Concrete Marketing team executed this kind of strip club/festival cross promotion on behalf of Danny Wimmer Presents, which puts on over 14 festivals yearly that attract, cumulatively, over 500,000 attendees,” says Chiappardi. “We have done this in Philly (Rock Allegence Festival), Houston (Houston Open Air), Chicago (Chicago Open Air), Jacksonville (Welcome to Rockville) and last year in Ft. Meyers (Fort Rock Festival). Special thanks goes out to Lindsey Medina, Christopher Blue, Jason Snyder, Ricky Ricardo of phullhousemedia.com, Katherine Kulikowski, Dave Manack of ED Publications and my assistant Shannon Bligh for helping make the promotion such a big success.”

Free Fort Rock samplers handed out, courtesy of Concrete Marketing

The concert, held April 28th and 29th, started at noon each day, and featured hard rock’s royalty banging out the hits on two alternating main stages with 25 performers that included Stone Temple Pilots, Godsmack, Five Finger Death Punch, Hatebreed, Stone Sour, Shinedown, Power Trip, Breaking Benjamin and Pop Evil, and capped perfectly Sunday night as Ozzy Osbourne took the stage singing “Bark At The Moon” as a full moon positioned itself over the stage.

As always, Ozzy had a top-notch band that included his former lead guitarist, the legendary Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society. As this stop was part of Ozzy’s Farewell Tour, he hasn’t slowed down a bit and the voice and performance were almost as strong as when I saw him and his Black Sabbath bandmates for the first time on the “Never Say Die” Tour in my hometown of Indianapolis in 1978. On February 4, 1984 when I was a manager of Karma Records (remember record stores?), I appeared as a monk on stage with Ozzy during his song “Centre of Eternity.”

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OZZY OSBOURNE AND ZAKK WYLDE, PHOTO BY ROSS HALFIN
OZZY OSBOURNE AND ZAKK WYLDE, PHOTO BY ROSS HALFIN
OZZY OSBOURNE, PHOTO BY ROSS HALFIN
SHINEDOWN, PHOTO BY CHRIS SHOEMAKER
STONE SOUR, PHOTO BY CHRIS SHOEMAKER
HATEBREED, PHOTO BY CHRIS SHOEMAKER
POP EVIL, PHOTO BY CHRIS SHOEMAKER
GODSMACK, PHOTO BY CHRIS SHOEMAKER
POWER TRIP, PHOTO BY CHRIS SHOEMAKER
STONE TEMPLE PILOTS, PHOTO BY CHRIS SHOEMAKER
FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH, PHOTO BY CHRIS SHOEMAKER
40,000-PLUS AT FORT ROCK, PHOTO BY CHRIS SHOEMAKER

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