Taste Is A Matter Of Taste

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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Franchising Rock & Roll

Being made obsolete by the Animation Industry giving my job to a computer operator, a computer operator in the Far East, I've been looking for a job for several years now. When even college educated young people can't get even minimum wage jobs and if they can they only give them part-time hours, old artists like me don't have much of a chance. Finally my wife has decided that if I can't get someone to hire me we will have to buy a business and we'll hire me.

Checking a list on the Internet of the top 500 franchises one really popped out at me: The School Of Rock, number 211 on the list. This is an after school music education organization specifically created to organize young people into performing rock and roll bands. Since I've been organizing rock and roll bands since I was eleven years old this really appeals to me. 

Some of the Pros concerning opening a School Of Rock in my area is that there is no spoilage as you would have if you owned a fast food restaurant, it's an afternoon and evening endeavor so you wouldn't have to get up at 5 AM to cook doughnuts for policemen starting their day as you would if you opened a Dunkin Doughnuts. I wouldn't have to worry about burning anything as I would probably do if I ran a burger joint, there's no Health Department hassles or law suits stemming from food poisoning and I do have some experience teaching young people (Cal Arts and Comic Book Production for the Saugus School District's After School Enrichment Program).

Some of the Cons concerning opening a School Of Rock in my area is if the franchise owners insist that all the instructors pass a drug test since they will be working with children. Finding rock musicians willing to teach kids how to play will be difficult enough, finding rock musicians willing to teach kids how to play and actually showing up for class on time will be even more difficult but finding rock musicians willing to teach kids how to play that are completely drug free might be a deal breaker. My biggest concern is that Rock & Roll is no longer an important part of a young person's life, learning to play in a rock band isn't something most parents would want to actually pay for their child to learn to do and the sort of young person who wants to be in a rock band is someone who doesn't want to be told what to do by an adult. Rock & Roll is a form of rebellion, not something you work too hard at. Of course, that's just the illusion, the reality is that successful rock band members often took music lessons, started by singing in church choirs and were extremely diligent in their music education and rehearsal schedules, but it's difficult to fight that illusion.

Maybe I'm missing the point here and that the future is not in teaching young people to rock but in helping the young people of past generations who wasted their lives chasing the Rock & Roll dream  to kick the Rock & Roll habit once and for all. I should franchise Rock & Roll Rehab!

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Anita Moorjani Story

I recently came upon an amazing video on the Internet about a lady named Anita Moorjani who had a near death experience (NDE). She really had more of a death experience, one of those clinical deaths in a hospital, this one from cancer, but came back to talk about it. These are not all that uncommon these days but hers is different because she not only survived being clinically dead and regained consciousness but her cancer quickly disappeared and she became completely healed and healthy.

Anita Moorjani who died of cancer.

Why I'm mentioning her story is because she said something that I've heard everyone who has claimed to have a NDE say and I think it could be confusing. What they say is that they've learned from their experience that we are all, at our core LOVE. They never seem to elaborate and to say we, material beings in psychical form, are actually an emotion which has no form is a confusing concept. What does this mean?

Imagine you're in the position that these NDE people claim to have been. You are disassociated from your body. You feel you no longer have a physical body. What's more, you suddenly have the intimate first person memories of not just yourself but of many other people. You still have your own identity and individuality but you're also diluted by these other personalities who are also "you" and with their memories and emotions which are also "yours". Then what exactly is it that makes you, You?

It is not the memory or knowledge of your particular life that is you but that unique feeling that you identify as You. You don't think, therefore I am, you feel, therefore I am. You feel like you. You feel the You vibe that tells you you are you. And that vibe or feeling can best be described, at its core, by the emotion that seems to be its very foundation and that emotion, feeling or vibe is LOVE.

The more I hear stories like this and even more impressive, the more I read scientists talking about Quantum Physics, the more I believe The Beatles were more than just a rock and roll band. Of all the things they might have chosen to champion such as partying, sex, rebelliousness, politics, etc., they chose to stand for LOVE. It's even the name of their Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas (which I've seen FOUR TIMES).  I love The Beatles.



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Behind the Candelabra

 My wife and I watched HBO's original biopic Behind the Candelabra, the "untold" story of Liberace. Noticed how I mentioned "my wife" and I watched it and not that I sat alone eating popcorn in my pajamas and watched it. I just want to make that clear.

Back in the early days of my Newwave band Womanizer, our bass player's mother worked as a waitress at a coffee shop and one of her customers was "in the music business". She asked if we could play him our demo tape and he said we could meet with him down at the coffee shop. It turned out he was in business with Liberace and offered to present our tapes to Liberace's record label. This was a generous offer and I asked who Liberace's record company was, RCA, Capitol, Decca? No, it turned out he meant Liberace's own label. We couldn't see our rock band being signed to Liberace's personal record company and politely passed on his generous offer. If we had been a Glam band or maybe Disco it might have been a better fit.

Back to the biopic... Michael Douglas did what might be described as a fabulous job as Liberace. Liberace was one of my grandmother's favorites, along with Lawrence Welk, and she used to watch his weekly TV show religiously so I am reasonably familiar with Liberace.

What was good about the film Behind the Candelabra was that serves as an introduction of Liberace to a generation who probably has little or no idea who or what he was. His style of instrumental piano music isn't classical and certainly not rock or jazz and definitely out of style but his personal style is instantly recognizable to anyone who is familiar with Little Richard, Barry Manilow or Elton John. 

Behind the Candelabra puts the story of Liberace in the context of his sex life which was never anything more than a rumor until the 80s when he died from AIDS but has always been a big part of his persona. Again, it bears repeating that Michael Douglas did a terrific job as Liberace and Matt Damon did a good job as his boyfriend and biographer (on whose book the movie was based) but after seeing Michael Douglas' portrayal of Liberace I now think I understand why Kathrine Zeta Jones went into rehab.

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Ozzie, My Hero

 Before you say I've spelled Ozzy wrong I should mention that I am referring not to Ozzy Osborne, the Prince of Darkness and lead singer of Black Sabbath, but Ozzie Nelson the dad in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, a sitcom of the 1950s and early 60s.

Ozzie Nelson was a band leader in real life but his profession was never mentioned in the TV series. He always seemed to be home and the only time I recall him even referring to work was on my favorite episode. In this episode Ozzie wakes up one morning and decides he's just not going to go to work that day. He's going to spend the whole day in bed! I guess that was a radical thing to do for a husband and father in the 1950s. Finally, a TV character to which I could relate. During the course of the episode his family would come into his room one by one to ask him if he wasn't feeling well. After all, why else would he still be in bed in his pajamas so late in the day? He would explain that he just felt like staying in bed all day. That was crazy!

What really made me relate to Ozzie was when they showed him in bed with his acoustic guitar which was something I'd do a lot. See? It was perfectly acceptable for a grown man to spend all day in bed playing his guitar. The punchline of the episode was when his son Ricky came in to see how he was doing and mentioned that it was Saturday. Ozzie jumped out of bed yelling that he had wasted the whole day. Just like me, lazy and never knowing what day it is.


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Editing Is Important

 Creating a work of art be it a song or a book requires a lot of work and often all that work becomes too important. It is as important to leave things out as it is to keep things in and editing is often a difficult and even painful experience.

I recently learned that someone I used to know got a book of original poetry published as an ebook for the Kindle. Kindle allows you to download a free sample of a book before deciding whether or not you want to buy the whole thing. These samples seem pretty generous, including three or four chapters worth of material. I assume they just grab a certain percentage of the total book to use as a sample and this person's poetry book was 400 pages so its free sample was 85 pages. I downloaded the free sample.

The 85 page free sample started with a preface that read like an old 60s radical's manifesto then came a biography and a list of acknowledgements that included everyone from his grade school teachers to old girl friends. Then his philosophy of poetry and a bio on each of the poets who have inspired him throughout his life. The point is that I had to read (skim) 85 pages of text and never got to one poem. If this is meant to be a free sample, and a huge one at 85 pages, of a book of poetry shouldn't there be at least one poem included? Naturally I did not purchase the book.

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Who Owns A Band's Name

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Stone Temple Pilots accuse former frontman Scott Weiland of misusing the band's name to further his solo career and want a judge to strip the rocker of his ability to use the group's name or songs.

A lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles accuses Weiland of being chronically late to concerts while the group was together and having his lawyer attempt to interfere with the airplay of the group's new single "Out of Time."

Who does own the name to a band? Usually it's whoever bothered to take out a trademark on the name and usually that is the band's management or their record company. If no one actually legally laid a claim to the name then it's whoever is known to have used the name first. If your band is called Stone Temple Pilots and you're from Albuquerque, New Mexico and you've been together and releasing material (using the name actively) since the 1970s you can legally use your name in New Mexico and Scott's band may have a tough time breaking that particular market.

But what happens when a founding band member is fired or quits? Axel Rose got to keep the name Guns & Roses but that band seemed to break up completely and his surname is in the title. In the case of Stone Temple Pilots, like Journey and Genesis, the band continued intact without the lead singer and continued using their name.

I don't think Scott Weiland can be stopped from using Stone Temple Pilots' songs, even I can perform or record Stone Temple Pilots songs once they've been published but if he's using the band name such as Scott Weiland and The Stone Temple Pilots in concerts or on records that's kind of like me calling my new animation studio Neal Warner's Klasky-Csupo Production. It is this part of the Weiland / STP lawsuit I'll be closely watching as I think Neal Warner's Klasky-Csupo Production has a real nice ring to it.

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