When I was a kid, and I mean twelve years old, I was the lead guitarist in a rock band. The only "famous" rock band with musicians anywhere close to our age was Dino, Desi & Billy a band that featured Dean Martin's son on bass and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez's son on drums. Desi Jr. was nine months older than me. I suppose he still is.
One day while looking through my teen music fan magazines I saw a full page color photo of Dino Martin. I wasn't a big fan and related more to Desi who was closer to my age but I did feel a rivalry with Dino, Desi & Billy and I thought it was a particularly great photo of Dino. In fact, it was printed on the back cover of the mag. I used to keep photos that particularly inspired me and even made huge psychedelic photo collages on my bedroom bulletin board and as book covers for my school books but I kept this one because it made me feel that this was how I wanted to look when the time came for me to be on the back cover of Tiger Beat Magazine.
Years later I was in my parents room while they were watching a Bette Midler television special. I wasn't a fan of Bette Midler but I was real impressed with her choice of songs which included David Bowie's Life On Mars? and Tom Waits' Sailing Away, two of my favorites.
The reason I mention these two events is because after seeing them I later read letters to the editor, one to Tiger Beat Magazine and the other to TV Guide. The Tiger Beat letter asked how the magazine could print such an awful photograph of Dino Martin on its back cover of the previous issue and the TV Guide letter complained about Bette Midler's terrible choice of songs for her TV special and singled out Life On Mars? and Sailing Away. Not only did these two things really, really stand out to me as exceptional but that someone should have taken the time to so bitterly complain about them. For everything someone likes there is someone out there who equally dislikes it. The trick is not to please everyone but to please those people who will actually buy your product. I really liked that particular photo of Dino, for my own reasons, but it still wouldn't make me buy a Dino, Desi & Billy record and as much as I enjoyed and appreciated Bette Midler's versions of two of my favorite songs I still would never buy a Bette Midler album.
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