HUMMINGBIRDS

In 1985 the Coca Cola Company made one of the biggest bonehead moves in modern business history by announcing they were going to discontinue producing Coca Cola, the premier soft drink for nearly 100 years and replace it with "New Coke". New Coke was essentially undrinkable which made many people think that the Coca Cola Company had actually held Coke hostage because their market share had been slipping due to rival drinks. Taking away beloved Coke made people appreciate it more while making it mandatory to at least try New Coke. It was soon that New Coke disappeared and original Coke re-emerged as "Classic Coke" (now reverted back to just "Coca Cola"). If New Coke had replaced Classic Coke for much longer rival soda companies could have reproduced original Coke's recipe and filled that void. However, the Coca Cola Company almost immediately returned to making "Classic Coke" so no abandonment of its brand could be claimed.

Now another iconic American company, almost as old and certainly as beloved as the Coca Cola Company, has seemingly abandoned its brand, permanently. It is The Walt Disney Company. Because computer animation (CGI) was considered less expensive to produce than hand drawn animation, Disney announced that its feature, The Princess And The Frog, would be its last traditionally animated feature film. That was in 2009 and so far they've been true to their word. Even Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck and the other classic Disney characters now appear exclusively as CGI characters. 

Since so much of the "Classic Disney" style is dependent on it being hand drawn, CGI gives everything its own unique visual look, it would appear that the Walt Disney Company has abandoned its brand. After all, the "magic of animation", traditionally, has been due to the illusion of drawings come to life. Therefore, we feel the time has come to not only re-introduce traditional hand drawn animation to the American audience but also to re-establish the classic "Disney" art style, a style they themselves abandoned over five years ago.

Not only has enough time passed that the classic Disney style is now sorely missed, but a new generation of young fans are being born. This new growing demographic is the main cause of animated features such as Frozen becoming blockbusters after years of lackluster ticket sales for children's movies and the glut of "adult" animation on television. There is a generation of classically trained American animators who should be in the prime of their careers but are instead chronically unemployed who are available to help usher in the reemergence of hand drawn, "Disney" style animation in America.

To contribute to what we see as a inevitable movement to re-introduce the magic and dream-like quality of hand drawn animation to a generation of children who only know animation created by machines, we would like to introduce the first in a series of original animated movie projects; HummingBirds.

 

Produced in traditional hand drawn 2D animation.

 

Hummingbirds character model sheet.

Hummingbirds tells the story of a young hummingbird named Robin, her hummingbird girlfriends and her friend, Jerry the Squirrel, who live in the yard of a suburban Southern California home. A major theme of Hummingbirds is that the seemingly ordinary and mundane location of a suburban neighborhood is actually a world of wonder and adventure when seen through the eyes of the wildlife with whom we share our world.

Here is a short story from the Hummingbirds comic book featuring Herbie the Hummingbird.

Like the classic Disney movies of The Second Golden Age of Animation, Hummingbirds is a musical with music by award-winning music director Greg Piper (Just Imagine, One Night Only, A Day In His Life, Rock & Roll Rehab) and award winning animator and writer Neal Warner (Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy Award), Chicago International Film Festival, Los Angeles Animation Celebration).

A Day That Never Ends

song from HummingBirds

Music by Greg Piper, lyrics by Neal Warner

The sun is shining and all my friends are here to help spend the day

It's perfect timing to have all of them near, I like it this way

I came to play with all of my friends

Spending a day with them I hope never ends, I hope never ends

We go out shopping, the stores are all in bloom so we hit the mall

Then we go bar hopping and all the boys make room, we never pay at all

Cause we're here to play with all of our friends

I hope today's a day that never ends, that never ends

But sometimes they say to me, "Please proceed more cautiously.

The world is not as you perceive" but I just laugh when they say, "Don't you see?

You're living a life of fantasy."

Why should I worry when I'm still cute and young and life is so long?

And why need to hurry when I have just begun and I'm where I belong?

Cause I'm here to play with all of my friends

I hope today's a day that never ends, that never ends

And when they say to me, "Be aware of what you cannot see"

I remain still worry free because, you see, I don't believe

I'm living a life of fantasy.

It makes me wonder why some feel the need to fly so high

In the wild blue yonder? They are wild indeed but why say,"Goodbye"?

Why not just stay with all of your friends

Spending a day with them that never ends

Yes, I came to stay with all of my friends

I know today's the day that never ends

That never ends

David Nigel Lloyd's "Back To The Bronze Age" presented by The Tooners

We’re posting this in honor of the 50th anniversary of my first hearing this song when Jerry Strull and I were roommates in 1975. (Neal Warner) 

I was only a few months out of college when I got an apartment with a friend from high school and future fellow Tooner, Jerry Strull. One day Jerry was going through a box of old cassettes and he played me some tapes of his high school band, Busters & The Penetrators (subtle), playing at a high school dance. They were very professional sounding and his guitar solos were incredible. I don’t think I had ever heard him play before this time. Then he played me a tape that actually kind of changed my life. It was a tape of him playing with the drummer from my old band in high school and also future Tooner, Pat Meehan, and a kid I had known from my high school Art class, David Nigel Lloyd. 

When I first met Dave I asked him if he sang or played guitar as he was the first person I’d ever met with a bonafide English accent. I would LOVE to have been in a band with a singer with an English accent. David said he did sing and played acoustic guitar a little but only English folk music. Not rock and roll. 

But now here I was, years later, listening to a tape recorded not too long after high school of Dave singing and playing Classic Rock! And his original song titled Back To The Bronze Age had the kind of ancient Celtic vibe similar to bands like Jethro Tull and Procol Harum. I absolutely loved it and made a copy by recording Jerry’s copy using my cassette recorder recording directly off his speakers.  A crappy copy of an amateurish original recording but the song was the song and the performances were actually very good. Especially Jerry’s solo. 

Years after this I bump into David Lloyd at Topanga Plaza where he was selling stereos. He told me that he and Pat had just recorded a Punk/Newwave single that was being pressed. I immediately offered (insisted) on drawing cover art for the record and that I would help him and Pat put together a live band so we could play the emerging Punk/Newwave club scene. A new opportunity after years of the Disco Era.  The short-lived live band was called Wild Oscare and changed to BLaM after I left to start Womanizer. 

One day Dave sent me a fairly nice recording of Back To The Bronze Age recorded on a four track machine without Jerry’s participation.  I had been living with the legend of this tune in my head for decades at this point so I asked Dave permission to “remix” his song. He sent me the original four track which I had digitized and then Greg Piper (from The Tooners) and I got Jerry to record a new solo inspired by his original recording, I added some acoustic guitars, Greg replaced the original bass tracks then we went a little nuts with an orchestration reminiscent of Game Of Thrones or Lord Of The Rings themes. 

David Nigel Lloyd is a bit of a minimalist and didn’t really appreciate my production and he had also incorporated Back To The Bronze Age into his rock opera The Assassin Of Venus. Be that as it may, here is my interpretation of David Nigel Lloyd’s song Back To The Bronze Age performed by DNL on guitar and lead vocals, Patrick Meehan on drums, Jerry Strull on lead guitar, Neal Warner on acoustic guitars and Greg Piper on bass guitar, back-up vocals and virtually everything else. 

 

The Legend Of Junior Hubbard

Ron Sloan

I met Ron Sloan in our high school English class. Years later he was an aspiring actor and my roommate. One day I was teasing him about how he would introduce himself as an actor to the women we’d meet in bars when he was at that time, professionally, actually a bartender. He’d defend himself by telling me he’d studied acting with Will Greer at his Botanical Theater and studied comedy improv with Harvey Lembeck but I’d point out that studying acting makes you a student, not an actor. This angered him and he’d tell me he’d get a real acting job then I’d be sorry. No I wouldn’t. I was only saying that to light a fire under him. I swear, it was barely one week later, certainly not even two weeks, that he got a role in an upcoming installment of the Friday The Thirteenth franchise. A very popular horror movie series we’d watch on our newfangled cable TV. “I bet you’re sorry now,” he said to me. No, I wasn’t. I was proud. Both in him and in myself for “inspiring” him. 

My wife and I were his guests at the movie premiere in Westwood where his date was a woman he’d just recently met. He looked like a movie star and his date looked up lovingly at him as she held his arm before the show. Then he came on the movie screen as Junior Hubbard, the stupid, dirty, hillbilly who lived with his ma in a cabin out in the woods. Junior and Ma were the comic relief, a first for the franchise that had four previous installments. This one, part five, was A New Beginning and had several aspects that broke with tradition such as comedy, full nudity and sex scenes and not the actual murderer, Jason Voorhees, but a copy-cat killer instead. The series eventually continued to include ten installments, getting weirder and weirder until Part Five became a fan favorite precisely because of what made it stand out when first released. Although Ron’s date was initially obviously thrilled to be the date of the star of a Hollywood movie, by the end of the picture she couldn’t even stand to look at him. We all went out to dinner afterward and she avoided him like the plague for the rest of the night. Which I found hilarious. 

In the years since its release in 1985, Friday The Thirteenth Part Five: A New Beginning has become so popular that its stars such as Ron Sloan who played Junior Hubbard and the late actress Carol Locatell who played Ma Hubbard became popular celebrities at Horror Movie fan conventions where they sign autographs and pose for photos with the fans. Since Junior Hubbard has become a legend The Tooners believe he deserves a theme song and so we proudly present a few different musical interpretations of The Legend Of Junior Hubbard. Enjoy. 

The Realm Of Rumph

(Featuring the Haunted Mirror and Puff the Magic)

In the Sixties my father was a teacher for the L. A. County School District and he was acquainted with another elementary school teacher who was throwing small “Medieval Fairs” at her school. He thought this was a novel idea and took the family to check it out. I remember it being on the school’s playground and was a “village” built out of plywood, cardboard, crepe paper and yarn. The teacher and parent volunteers, along with the school children “cast” all wore hand made costumes. It was cute but just another themed carnival put on by a grammar school. 

Years later I started attending Ye Olde Renaissance Pleasure Faire in a wooden area in Agoura. The school carnival had expanded. At one such fair in 1975 I met Jim Rumph. Rumph quickly came to represent the Renaissance Faire to me and as a cartoonist and animator I instantly related to his artistic style and appreciated his subject matter. 

A few years later in 1978 we collaborated on, what I believe is the only, Rumph-based hologram.  I had studied holography at San Diego State and had made holograms and I thought Rumph’s sculptures would make tremendous holograms. He sculpted a frame to hold the “HAUNTED MIRROR” and I used his two headed planter to make a hologram of the Sorceress which will appear within the center of the haunted mirror. At that time most holograms were viewed by shining a light through them which made viewing awkward but by mounting it flat onto a mirror we could light it from the front and have the light bounce off the mirror and through the hologram. 

My late brother also became a big fan of Jim’s and the three of us would venture out on occasion (but that’s another story). 

As a professional animator at the start of the Disney Renaissance, I pitched Jim on the idea of a movie based on his characters and design esthetic. I had prepared the standard pitch elements: a pilot script, character breakdowns, story bible and various design elements based heavily on Jim’s drawings and sculptures.  He wasn’t interested. I bring it up now because after recent health scares, like covid, and advancing age, I recently rummaged through old files and found these materials. One set of song lyrics I had written as a “music video” section of the story I’ve had friends complete and would like to present it as a reminder of the kind of friend or acquaintance that makes your life just a bit more magical.

 

The Realm Of Rumph

(Featuring the Haunted Mirror and Puff the Magic)

She seemed quite ethereal as we left the ball

And our chariot awaits 

So I drive us past her gates up to her hidden lair

With all the pleasures promised there

But little did I dream she was not what she had seemed

Or rather was exactly that

Just my imagination sorely lacked for she had made realities 

Of her romantic fantasies

The Realm of Rumph, a factory of slime

In the realm of Rumph is the circus of the mind

In the kitchen by the stove theres a tableaux to behold 

Of a wizard with a whisk 

While elfin fairies take the risk of being seen in broad daylight 

Next to the Priestess, stood straight upright. 

A sorcerer’s holding up a mirror through which the sorceress appear.   

And a troll with fern green hair 

Sits on the table, lost in a stare while a dragon in a pond 

Bids you puff the magic wand. 

The Realm of Rumph, a factory of slime

In the realm of Rumph is the circus of the mind

Little knickknacks here and there momentos of Renaissance fair. 

A time and place that’s hard to find 

Unless you look inside her mind. So I must soon decide

If in her world I could reside 

I’ve made no vow that I must keep so I guess tonight I won’t get sleep. 

But it’s only fair I stay around

And explore this land I’ve found if It’s my plan to triumph

Here, in the magic realm of Rumph

The Realm of Rumph, a factory of slime

In the realm of Rumph is the circus of the mind

420 Daze: LA Rock Band’s Easter Release Celebrates Cancer Recovery & Stoner Holiday"

 

The Tooners: 4/20 DAZE

This Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, LA rock band The Tooners unveils their latest single, “4/20 Daze”—a soulful stoner-rock ballad with a deeper message. Released on a day that’s both Easter and the unofficial cannabis holiday 4/20, the track goes beyond laid-back vibes to explore themes of healing, friendship, and survival. Co-written by band members Neal Warner and Greg Piper, the lyrics follow a man lost at sea, symbolically adrift in a never-ending THC haze. But for Warner, the story is deeply personal—he was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 ALK+ lung cancer, a rare genetic form of the disease that affects non-smokers.

Thanks to cutting-edge treatment at the Disney Cancer Center, Warner is now cancer-free—a real-life miracle that mirrors the song’s dreamlike tone. Fittingly, the center sits just across from Warner’s old stomping grounds, where he once worked as an animator on Disney favorites like DuckTales, TailSpin, and Chip 'n Dale’s Rescue Rangers. “4/20 Daze” features a guest appearance by guitarist Paul Keller (of Bay Area prog-rock band Hush and the '80s supergroup 3 with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer), along with solos from The Tooners' own Jerry Strull. From pain to peace, diagnosis to celebration, the track stands as both a musical journey and a testament to resilience.

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 THE OFFICIAL THEME SONG FOR ROCK-A-HOLICS

The ultimate tribute to all the musicians out there who have chased the Rock & Roll Dream only to ultimately discover the real success was in experiencing the journey itself.

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Paid To Die: The Exploits Of A Rock & Roll Bodyguard

In 1978 a new style of music came to America from England. It was rude, obnoxious and confrontational and the band spearheading this new British Invasion was set to tour the South, the least likely place they’d be welcomed. Anticipating a violent backlash to this coming culture clash, the band’s record label needed to hire a security team that could handle any situation that may arise. The man they chose for the job was Dwayne Warner, a bouncer in some of the toughest biker bars in Los Angeles County.

 Paid To Die novel on Amazon.com

For twenty years after that historic tour, Dwayne’s brother, Neal Warner, co-founder of the L.A. multi-media band The Tooners, insisted Dwayne’s ever expanding and exaggerated stories of life on the road needed to be recorded for posterity. But being a biker, the idea of being perceived as a “rat” was unacceptable and as a professional bodyguard who worked with bands such as Steppenwolf and Van Halen, telling tales about his employers was unprofessional so he adamantly refused to write about his experiences.

Neal, a professional cartoonist and writer, decided an acceptable alternative could be to write Dwayne’s stories in the form of a novel.  Names, except for Dwayne’s, would be changed and the “facts” of what happened on the tour would be buried under a mountain of action-adventure movie-style scenes. Dwayne had imagined his memoir being titled Paid To Die and Neal’s band, The Tooners, had already record a CD (Rocktasia) which included the theme song to Paid To Die so that was chosen as the novel’s title.

The novel was written in 1999 and was intended to be an elaborate joke for Dwayne’s eyes only. Stories of experiences shared by the brothers were included in the book knowing that Dwayne would recognize, and hopefully appreciate, this very personal novel which included a lot of something the two brothers had in common; a very sick and twisted sense of humor. However, the joke was ultimately on Neal, the author, when his brother refused to read the novel citing plausible deniability fearing those caricatured in the book might recognize themselves and sue. The joke fell flat and was locked away on a hard drive from another 22 years.

Sometime in the year 2020, fourteen years after the sudden death of Dwayne Warner at age fifty, Neal Warner was self-quarantining in his home when he realized that if he were to die from the Coronavirus pandemic, his finished novel, Paid To Die, the story about his only brother, would die with him. And so, on May 30, 2021, the 65^th birthday of the late Dwayne Earl Warner, a limited edition printing of the novel Paid To Die along with a release of the single Paid To Die from the album Rocktasia by The Tooners will be made available for the first time.

There Is Still Time For No Time To Die

 It has been about a year since the name for the new James Bond movie, No Time To Die, was announced. The movie was scheduled to premiere in April so that didn't give us, The Tooners, much time to write and record our own theme song to the movie and be able to include it on our latest CD, Theme To A Dream. There are several "theme songs" written over the years for various reasons that are included on that album so a James Bond movie theme seemed to fit right in.

And then the movie's premiere was pushed back one whole year. That means that although Billie Eilish has already written the official opening theme song there is still plenty of room over the movie's ending credits to include The Tooners' song.

So, we are now asking all of you out there, like us, with nothing better to do because we're all shut-ins now, to help us start a "grass roots" campaign to get the producers of the James Bond movies to include The Tooners' No Time To Die in the new movie since there's still time. Russia, if you hear us, please help us get our song noticed by the Powers That Be. Спасибо (Thank you).

The Tooners' No Time To Die video.