01:00 AM EDT on Friday, September 10, 2004

One of the bands Chris Daltry contacted about playing at his fundraiser on Sunday on Kennedy Plaza has a Republican on drums. And that's just weird. For a rock drummer to sign on with the Grim Old Party seems as out of sync as elevator music at Lupo's.

So, not surprisingly, that band has declined to appear. The fundraiser isn't exactly a Republican kind of gig.

But a whole bunch of other bands Daltry called will appear.

"I was getting kind of mad, wondering what I could do," said Daltry as we talked at his tightly stocked basement antiques shop, What Cheer Antiques, in Wayland Square, in Providence. "I've been in bands for a long time and I knew I could put something together. It happened very quickly."

It happened because Josh Miller had a waterfront festival that had been bounced from the waterfront. Miller, the owner of the Hot Club, was granted a permit for his two-day festival back in July. The next day, the permit was pulled. City officials said there were safety issues. Miller says the safety issues had been resolved. He thinks other factors were at work.

But the city's flip-flop on the festival opened the way for Miller and Daltry to put their shared anger to work.

"I was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore on several levels," Miller says. "And one of those levels was Kerry-Bush."

At a meeting of the Downtown Merchants Association, Miller was offered the opportunity to move his festival to the Fleet Skating Center. But it would mean a third day. He had planned for only Friday and Saturday.

He heard about Daltry through mutual friends.

"Within a week, he had 18 bands," Miller says.

So the waterfront festival starts a short distance from the waterfront this afternoon at 4 and continues on Saturday with bands that include Max Creek and Roomful of Blues. And on Sunday, Daltry brings his lineup, including his own band, The 'Mericans, to the center for a cause that couldn't be clearer.

It's called "Rock On for Move On." It's a fundraiser for MoveOn, the organization working to defeat George W. Bush. There will be music and T-shirts and the opportunity to register to vote. It costs $5, more if you feel like it.

It kicks off at 2 p.m. with the band The Blind King.

For Daltry, it's personal. His brother Brendan was sent with his Army unit to Iraq last year for what was supposed to be a 10-month to 1-year deployment. That turned into 18 months. Then, when Brendan came home, he found that the enlistment he thought was over wasn't really over. The Army is holding on to him. The back door draft has hit the Daltry family.

"That year-and-a-half, with a family member in a very sketchy situation, and you can't do anything about it -- I wrote letters to the president, to members of Congress," Daltry says.

When his brother did come home, the family got together for a week in North Carolina.

"All that week, I was thinking about what I could do," he says. "And the simplest thing was a rock concert. The response has been tremendous.

"There have been a lot of offers of help."

There won't be much in the way of speeches. Daltry thinks that would "kill the good vibe."

He wants change. He doesn't want his brother going back to war. He is doing a small thing as thousands of others are doing small things to draw people into the process.

It's Sunday afternoon. The Patriots aren't playing. If you're concerned that this country won't be the country you've known after four more years of George W. Bush, head for the Fleet Skating Center.

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr [at] projo.com