Virginia Beer Museum and Shae Parker celebrate in-house Aries birthdays

Due to a rash of owner-staff April birthdays over the past week, on Saturday, April 17, Shae Parker headlined an “Aries Birthday Celebration” at the Virginia Beer Museum in Historic Downtown Front Royal. Parker, also an April birthday, of the River Driven band performed three solo sets, 24 songs in all, of original material.

Parker, proprietor of Hanna Signs in town, also produced the event’s very late-1960’s psychedelic-era themed poster that may have led some of the “more mature” attendees into time-space continuum flashbacks to the glory days of the “English Invasion” and Haight Ashbury-centered classic rock & roll they grew up with.

The solo Shae Parker, not to be confused with the River Driven band. Below, an event poster reminiscent of an earlier musical era featuring a rather psychedelically-horned Aries ram. Royal Examiner Photos by Roger Bianchini

So, Happy Birthday, David (April 14), Jeremy (April 17), Derek (April 19) and Shae (April 14), from this reporter (April 17).

The Museum proprietor and staff Aries Birthday Celebration cake.

And always remember, Aries, numero uno – the rest will always be followers of the Ram along the celestial path of the zodiac; and whose ruling planet, Mars, as of April 19, 2021, has the first man-made flying object hovering around the surface of another planet as mankind explores for signs of past or present life, and potential sites for future human exploration and colonization on the red planet.

And Derek should be able to remember the date the first human-made localized flying machine took to the air on another planet, as NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter took flight on his birthday, Monday, April 19.

But back on earth, things got rolling two days earlier with proper social distancing under the tent as slightly chilly mid-April early evening temperatures begin to dip on the blue planet – but it was still warmer than the red planet.

Appropriately for an Aries birthday celebration, the entertainment and media coverage were Aries too.

And it wasn’t just at the Va. Beer Museum that Aries were being celebrated on Saturday, April 17. Here staff at The Melting Pot light a birthday carrot cake for an apparently somewhat bossy customer named Newman. WAIT, a bossy Aries? – Nah, no chance, right Jerry?