Being the 20th anniversary of The Tooners' rocktasia CD I'm writing about the three co-writers of songs included on the CD. The last article was about Don Coorough, writer of They Died Young and this one is about my brother, Dwayne Warner, listed as co-writer of Paid To Die.
Dwayne was a bodyguard for the English Punk rock band The Sex Pistols on their 1978 American tour and titled his autobiography (since novelized to protect, well, him), Paid To Die. Since I wrote the song about his stories about being on the road with a band as their head of security and since I took his autobiography title for the song title I credited him as co-writer.
Seven years ago this month, on Labor Day of 2006, Dwayne died of a Cerebral Aneurysm. I find it very coincidental that Dwayne, who was born on Memorial Day would die on Labor Day, two holidays I always mixed up. He also lived as long as his hero, actor Errol Flynn, fifty years.
Tim Piper's The Shot Heard Round The World
My old friend and world class Beatles tribute
artist Tim Piper is releasing a new original song to commemorate the
50th Anniversary of The Beatles coming to America (The British
Invasion). The song is called "The Shot Heard Round The World" which
refers to the start of the American Revolutionary War and the original
British Invasion. Check out the video at: http://www.timpipermusic.com/
Along with Tim's brother, Greg Piper, and keyboardist Morley Bartnoff,
they also had the great honor of having Gregg Bissonette (Ringo Starr's
drummer) play drums on the track. Also featured are Kat Raio (the
singing voice for "Elmo"), and Clifford Carter (who plays with
Letterman's Will Lee as well as other top-notchers) on strings and
Hammond B3 organ.
95.5 FM KLOS's Chris Carter will close his next broadcast this weekend of "Breakfast With The Beatles" as the first DJ to play the song. Then, on February 9, Rodney Bingenheimer will play the track on his 50th Beatles anniversary show on 106.7 KROQ FM.
A video of the song can be seen on TimPiperMusic.com and will be available on iTunes this Sunday and hopefully this will lead to Tim releasing all the great music I and his other friends have enjoyed over the years but his "Beatles Tribute fans" don't even know exists.
95.5 FM KLOS's Chris Carter will close his next broadcast this weekend of "Breakfast With The Beatles" as the first DJ to play the song. Then, on February 9, Rodney Bingenheimer will play the track on his 50th Beatles anniversary show on 106.7 KROQ FM.
A video of the song can be seen on TimPiperMusic.com and will be available on iTunes this Sunday and hopefully this will lead to Tim releasing all the great music I and his other friends have enjoyed over the years but his "Beatles Tribute fans" don't even know exists.
Tim has performed in three different live musical stage shows performing as the late Beatle John Lennon; One Night Only which ran at the Stella Adler Theater in Hollywood, A Day In His Life which was represented by the William Morris Agency and toured the country and his current show Just Imagine which recently finished an extended run at the Hayworth Theater on Wilshire Blvd. in L.A.
After the successful run of his show A Day In His Life a show was written especially for Tim as a follow up called Fanatics. This show was intended to appeal to his Beatles audience and was about an extreme Beatles fan such as Tim who lived his life under their influence but comprised of Tim's very Lennon-McCartney sounding original songs. Not parodies, Tim Piper just naturally has the Lennon-McCartney style and much of the magic in his own original tunes.
The late leader of the very Beatles influenced band, The Knack, Doug Fieger, produced the soundtrack CD to Fanatics as one of his last projects and the music has the authenticity of a great meeting of original Beatles' fan minds. However, Tim does have more material and tends to get excited about his new music rather than what he's done in the past but I'm hoping that the success of The Shot Heard Round The World helps introduce his music that I've loved for years to the public at large, at last.
Biocentrism
On my kitchen table is an old copy of Jonathon Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. I don't know how it got there. It came out when I was in high school as one of the first "New Age" books popular with the kids. I never read it. I think I will now. I knew Richard Bach primarily as the writer of the screenplay for The Beatles animated Yellow Submarine movie.
One of my favorite new shows is Beyond The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman (also called Through The Wormhole, I don't know if there are two separate series) which is a science show that explains some of the new concepts of science such as Quantum Physics, String Theory and ideas that were once the domain of Science Fiction writers, New Age writers and crackpots. In one episode exploring the possibility that reality isn't in fact real at all, author and renowned scientist Robert Lanza talked about the concept he calls Biocentrism. Basically, Biocentrism says that if a tree falls in the woods and if there's no one there to hear it the tree not only does not make a sound but that the tree, the woods and the entire universe does not exist. Your brain creates the world around you otherwise it does not exist. I've been reading the same thing in the Seth books since the early Eighties but Lanza's book describes the process in scientific terms. His book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe is for those of you who want the details. A lot of people involved in science as well as religion are angry at this philosophy and repute it. Read crackpot Robert Lanza's bio HERE.
Reading Biocentrism I kept waiting for him to use my personal favorite analogy to describe his "consciousness forms matter, not the other way around" concept but although he mentioned "a computer simulation" to really get an average Joes like me to understand it all he needed to do was describe reality as a video game. Like all ideas about reality, death, the Hereafter, etc., if you're contented with your religious beliefs then you really don't need to explore all the other possibilities.The nice thing about "reality" and life is that whatever is going to happen is going to happen no matter what you believe and although what you believe will certainly help you get through it all, eventually you will learn.
Disney, The New Rome
Pop culturally speaking, all roads lead to Disney. The Walt Disney company is becoming the great depository of pop culture. A museum, not in the old stodgy, lock it away type, but in the "let's preserve this because we like it so much way". As the National Parks keep alive the Great Outdoors for future generations the Walt Disney Company is keeping alive for future generations the pop art of artists whose work may not survive them on its own.
Disney had already absorbed such cultural landmarks as The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, The Jungle Book by Kipling, the stories of The Brothers Grimm, the classic fairy tales of Europe, the books; Bambi, 101 Dalmatians, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Wind In The Willows, Alice In Wonderland, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and Tarzan and even modern movie mythologies such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Now they've acquired The Muppets, The Marvel Universe and all the Pixar characters. They even made a stab at The Beatles with a proposed but ultimately jettisoned remake of Yellow Submarine.
Many people lament that Disney seems to be turning into a children's entertainment monopoly since they have a tendency to "Disneyize" the properties on which they get their hands. The "Disney version" is a censored and cuter version of the original made for small children to enjoy while the original source material such as "The Hunchback Of Notre Dame" most certainly was not intended for children.
This criticism of Disney doesn't bother me as I see what they do as similar as to what a band does when it covers another band's hit. The original still exists and must have achieved a considerable level of popular awareness for Disney to have been interested in absorbing it to begin with, but their version is just another artistic interpretation and usually intended for a different audience than the original. Disney's guaranty that the work will survive, at least in one form, for future generations is enough to make their cataloging of the world's great stories a very valuable service. It is also nice to think that Disney is not destroying the opportunities for new artists that some may see as its competition but like the huge company that they are, they're there to buy you out if you succeed enough and insure that your work won't be forgotten even if you are. Remember Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan or only Disney's Tarzan?
Even MORE JFK Stuff
As crappy the stories thus far of the 21st Century, the 20th Century had some really great stories. I'm not going to include the wars, war stories really aren't "great", but other unbelievable stories. Some of my personal favorites are the story of Nicholas Romanov, the last Czar of Russia, his wife, four daughters and hemophiliac son who were all murdered by the Bolsheviks. A royal family being murdered is a terrible story not a great story but add the intrigue involving the "mad monk" Grigori Rasputin and you have a story you'd think only Hollywood could write.
Another GREAT story is the one of The Beatles starting in 1964 (50 years this year!!!) and ending with the Beatles Anthology and their last ever new music released in 1995. If you really think about it the story of The Beatles is totally unbelievable.
Another really bizarre and unbelievable story is the JFK assassination. This being the 50th anniversary there have been some great TV documentaries I watched and about which I've commented in prior posts. But looking at that famous and damning photo of alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald posing with the murder weapon (who would keep a picture like that around if you wanted to get away with it?) something popped out at me.
How considerate to pose for your own WANTED poster ahead of time.
First, his head does seem a little large for his body but maybe he has a big head. But look at the shadows on his face. His nose is working as a sundial and the shadow it cast is pointed directly down, almost exactly center with his upper lip. The shadows on his eyes and ears and lower jaw are all even which means the light source is directly above him and slightly forward. Now look at all the other shadows in the photo. His neck, the shadows on the fence behind him and especially his shadow on the ground. The light source for all those shadows is much lower and coming from the right of the photo. If this picture was taken indoors there could have been two separate light sources but it's taken outside in the sunlight. The shadow cast by Oswald's nose should fall across the right side of his face in the same direction of his shadow on the ground not straight down. If this picture was taken these days it wouldn't even be considered a good Photoshop job. No wonder his head looks big, it had to be large enough to cover up whoever's head was originally on that body.
Fifty years and the JFK assassination is still the story that won't go away.
Happy New Year!
Happy 2014. Things seem to be improving which isn't too hard considering what crap the 21st Century has been thus far. First we had the big panic over Y2K which was back when we liked to get excited over nothing like the president hitting on White House interns. Then we had 911 which lead to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then we had the space shuttle Columbia disaster of 2002 then the disaster of Hurricane Katrina which a recent poll of Republicans in Louisiana said that 24% blamed the government's bad response as the fault of President Obama (?!). Don't forget the BP Gulf Oil Spill which mysteriously disappeared (from the press) and the Great Recession (near Depression) of '08 to now.
On the plus side we did elect the first non old white man as president which is really only because the Democrat's real choice, a Southern white man with Kennedy hair (got to have some JFK appeal) and with a cancer patient wife completely self destructed in the most douche bag way possible leaving the Democrats with their token black man and lady candidate who were only running in the primary to attract minorities and women to their side before throwing all their supporters to the good looking white man. The Democrats were doomed... unless the Republicans did something even dumber like deciding to run a woman of their own, not as a Presidential candidate in the primary but as the Vice Presidential candidate. They did run an African-American in the primary but since McCain was in his seventies and had a history of cancer a vote for John McCain seemed very likely a vote for the first woman president, Sarah Palin. The big question in 2008 was Is America More Racist Or Sexist?
God Bless America, we're more sexist.
More JFK Stuff
Have
you been watching all those History and Discovery channel shows on the
JFK assassination? I love this stuff and there's been a ton of great
footage that I've never seen before. Surprisingly, after 50 years all
these shows seem to believe that Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald,
all by himself.
Vincent
Bugliosi who wrote a book defending
the Warren Commission said that Jack Ruby, who ran nightclubs owned by
the mob, wasn't a mobster
himself. His "proof" is that official phone company records show that
Ruby made 50 (50!!!) phone calls to known mobsters in the weeks before
the assassination. How is that proof Ruby WASN'T a mobster? It is
because the reason Ruby made the calls was because the Strippers' Union
(strippers have a union?) was giving him problems, the Union was run by
the mob and he was calling the mobsters to try and work out the
problems. Why would Ruby have Stripper Union problems if he himself was
in the mob? In other words, a dog is an animal, a cat is an animal,
therefore a dog is a cat.
If
the Motion
Picture Screen Cartoonist Union was giving me problems I would not make
50 calls to the various union officials' home phone numbers unless I
knew them personally. I would be calling the Union office. How did
Bugliosi get this info? Is this the reason Jack Ruby gave to explain
calling mobsters 50 times?
I
love how these "science" shows will state a fact (phone records shows
Ruby made 50 calls to known mobsters) then follow that with a "fact"
that is completely unsubstantiated
( he was calling about Union problems) which leads to the
"obvious" conclusion (if Ruby was a mobster he wouldn't have Stripper Union problems), or "a dog is a cat".
There
was a great show about the "lost bullet" that did make sense. That one
said that all the witnesses heard three shots and the Zapruder film
showed Kennedy getting shot twice. They assumed the first shot hit him
in the back and the head shot was the last one fired. Therefore, the
second shot missed, hit some curb which
sent a chip up and hit a bystander drawing blood. But the Zapruder film
showed the limo making the turn then was turned off for a few seconds
and picked up the limo again right before the back shot. The "first"
shot that hit Kennedy was not the first shot heard. That one was
reflected, bounced off the curb and hurt the bystander. The second shot
hit Kennedy in the back and the third one hit him in the head so the
shooter didn't need to shoot all three shots within 5.6 seconds but only
the last two.
A
few days after the
assassination investigators shot some footage from the window
seeing what the shooter saw and that film shows a hole in the metal
frame of a traffic light that was suspended over the street and under
which the limo passed at right where you'd think the shooter would have
had the best shot. This show said that Oswald's first shot, when the
limo was the closest, hit the traffic light. The ejected shell fell
across the floor. He then had to reposition himself to make the next two
shots and those shells lay next to each other on the floor, away from
the first shell.
This show was good and pretty
convincing.
Happy JFK Death Day
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination. It was the Crime Of The Century, the 20th Century. The crime of the 21st Century, thus far, was whatever happened in '08, or maybe 9/11 if you don't view that as a form of modern warfare.
It's been fifty years and we still haven't solved the JFK case. At this point it seems pretty likely it was a mob hit. I say that because of the few facts we really know about the case we do know this; Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby was a mobster. Ruby ran several nightclubs and strip joints which were owned by the Mob.
What we know now that we didn't know then was that the mob hated JFK and that a low level mobster like Ruby would never do anything to draw attention to himself or the Mob without their ordering him to do it and even if Ruby did like JFK he certainly would not want his employers to know that.
One of the reasons some people give for Ruby not being a Mob assassin was that he was too "low level". First of all, he was high ranking enough to be put in charge of running Mob businesses and secondly, a hit man would be a "low level" employee. He had to be deemed expendable as he was going to live the rest of his life in prison, or be killed. A Mob boss doesn't pull the trigger, he has a "low level" associate do it for him. And as for Ruby's reason for killing Oswald; he loved JFK so much he wanted to avenge his death and save Jackie the pain of an Oswald trial, even if that was true he must have known his bosses hated JFK and RFK and to so publicly involve himself would have assured their wrath, and his death.
The Mob was powerful enough to intimidate Ruby into giving up his own life. Maybe he had no choice. Maybe he had to do it to protect his family. Whatever happened to his family? How did they support themselves after Ruby's imprisonment and death from cancer four years later? Did Ruby even have a family? Did he already have cancer before he pulled the trigger? Did he really die of cancer in prison and if he did could he have been "given" cancer while there? Why didn't anyone ever seriously interview Ruby in the four years he was in prison? The only reporter he was planned on granting an interview to, to whom he said he would explain it all committed suicide just before the interview was to take place. Why would a famous reporter kill herself on the eve of the biggest story of her career?
Who could have orchestrated all of this? The government? Really, the government? The government can barely get my mail delivered in time. They couldn't kill Fidel Castro or win a war in Viet Nam. Why do people think the government is behind everything when they can barely do what we've voted them in to do? No, this conspiracy stuff is a full time job. This is right up the Mob's alley.
One question some people have is since it's now common knowledge that JFK's father, a former bootlegger, called in some favors from the Mob to help his son get elected in 1960, why did JFK turn his brother, Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, on them so viciously? Why would the Kennedys, who actually knew the mob existed while J. Edgar Hoover kept insisting it was a myth, attack the hand that fed them?
The answer to that question is clear when we realize that our perception of the mob is incorrect. We always refer to the mob as "Thee MOB", as in there is ONE MOB. There is not one Mob but many Mobs. If there was only one Mob or Mafia then "mob wars" would never have been created. The Kennedys were supported by one particular Mob whom they defended and protected while in office and the Mob they attacked was a rival organization. The Kennedy Assassination was a classic Mob hit. It wasn't so much, in their eyes, the Mob killing the President of the United States as much as it was hitting rival gang members.
Some people like to say that the Kennedy Assassination was not a typical Mob hit. A typical Mob hit is done at close range with a handgun, like the way Ruby shot Oswald, a classic Mob hit. But it was the Mob in the 1920s that made famous the "drive-by shooting" and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the Mobster and Father of Las Vegas, was shot from a distance using a hunting rifle. There is no "Mob way" except to get the job done.
One last point; Lee Harvey Oswald is the only political assassin in the history of political assassins from Brutus and Cassius to John Wilkes Booth to the Worm who shot John Lennon that denied having done the killing. Assassins throughout history have felt their deed was a calling and that they were heroes for having done it. They wanted to change history and were proud of their place in it. Oswald steadfastly denied killing Kennedy and called himself "a patsy" which is someone who's been set up to take the blame.
Fifty years later and we still don't know the truth. I guess whoever killed President John F. Kennedy was "too big to fail".
Rock N Roll and Google search
Rock N Roll and Google search
I just thought I'd write a little update on Google and what they list as the top 10 search results for Rock N Roll, DECEMBER, 2013. Obviously, Rock N Roll today has a much different connotation than in the glorious past. Here is Google's top 9 search results for Rock N Roll.
(For me, the #10 search result shows my live Rock N Roll Rehab show date of almost 2 years ago, as if Google is trying to appease me. It only comes up for me and won't come up for you because you are not me!)
Google Search top 10 results for Rock n Roll:
1 - Rock and roll - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2 - Los Angeles - Rock n Roll Marathon Series Rock n Roll Marathon ...
3 - Rock n Roll USA - Rock n Roll Marathon Series Rock 'n' Roll ...
4 - Rock n Roll Marathon Series Rock n Roll Marathon Series
5 - Avril Lavigne - Rock N Roll - YouTube
6 - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
7 - The Rock n Roll Autograph Show
8 - Rock n Roll Camp for Girls Los Angeles | Empowering girls through ...
9 - Amazon.com: Rock N Roll: Music
10 - ROCK N ROLL REHAB LIVE SATURDAYS - 8PM (FREE ... from Jan, 2012
(Dear Google - My RockNRollRehab.com site here is much more current and up to date with over 500 posts on Rock N Roll subjects. If you're gonna list me, how about this instead of a dated show from over 2 years ago?)
Put on your running shoes! Get cute! Rock N Roll is passé . . . It's a new world!
Google - You wanna rock? Then Google Search needs to rock more! Don't just go with the 'who pays me more, business as usual" tactic.
Rock N Light!
Rock N Peace!
Rock N Lifestyle!
Rock N Party!
Rock N Google Search! UGH!
Join Rock & Roll Rehab NOW!
I just thought I'd write a little update on Google and what they list as the top 10 search results for Rock N Roll, DECEMBER, 2013. Obviously, Rock N Roll today has a much different connotation than in the glorious past. Here is Google's top 9 search results for Rock N Roll.
(For me, the #10 search result shows my live Rock N Roll Rehab show date of almost 2 years ago, as if Google is trying to appease me. It only comes up for me and won't come up for you because you are not me!)
Google Search top 10 results for Rock n Roll:
1 - Rock and roll - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2 - Los Angeles - Rock n Roll Marathon Series Rock n Roll Marathon ...
3 - Rock n Roll USA - Rock n Roll Marathon Series Rock 'n' Roll ...
4 - Rock n Roll Marathon Series Rock n Roll Marathon Series
5 - Avril Lavigne - Rock N Roll - YouTube
7 - The Rock n Roll Autograph Show
8 - Rock n Roll Camp for Girls Los Angeles | Empowering girls through ...
9 - Amazon.com: Rock N Roll: Music
10 - ROCK N ROLL REHAB LIVE SATURDAYS - 8PM (FREE ... from Jan, 2012
(Dear Google - My RockNRollRehab.com site here is much more current and up to date with over 500 posts on Rock N Roll subjects. If you're gonna list me, how about this instead of a dated show from over 2 years ago?)
Put on your running shoes! Get cute! Rock N Roll is passé . . . It's a new world!
Google - You wanna rock? Then Google Search needs to rock more! Don't just go with the 'who pays me more, business as usual" tactic.
Rock N Light!
Rock N Peace!
Rock N Lifestyle!
Rock N Party!
Rock N Google Search! UGH!
Join Rock & Roll Rehab NOW!
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