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

Rock & Roll Rehab Visitors Since 2004

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.

The TOONERS' James Bond Theme Song

The L. A. rock band The Tooners have released a new single that is their original take on a theme song for the upcoming James Bond movie starring Daniel Craig. No Time To Die is the 25th James Bond movie and will hit theaters this coming April. However, The Tooners’ song No Time To Die will probably not be heard in the film.

The Tooners' No Time To Die lyric video.

Although the band members and the song’s co-writers Neal Warner and Greg Piper are life-long Bond fans, their Bond theme is actually more inspired by shock rock group Alice Cooper. Also fans of the movie franchise, the original lineup of the band Alice Cooper wrote and recorded the song The Man With The Golden Gun as a proposed theme song for the film of the same name starring Roger Moore as secret agent 007. The producers of the Bond films felt using pop acts such as Paul McCartney, Carly Simon and Lulu (who sang the actual theme song for The Man With The Golden Gun) for the movie theme songs was appropriate but a hard rock band such as Alice Cooper didn’t fit the James Bond image and the song was rejected. The band went ahead and released it on their 1973 album Muscle Of Love anyway.

This inspired the independent band The Tooners to record their own Bond theme inspired by Alice Cooper’s initiative and even the Salvador Dali inspired look of their song’s logo has an Alice Cooper connection as Alice Cooper, the man as opposed to the band, is the only rock musician known to have ever collaborated with the surrealist painter.

No Time To Die is also included on The Tooners' full length CD, Theme To A Dream, available everywhere starting April 1, 2020.

Greg Piper's "I Wish You'd Love Me" Syncs Up Perfectly To The Wizard Of Oz

"I didn't believe it when I first saw it!"... Greg Piper

I WISH YOU'D LOVE ME

(Syncs up to 'The Wizard Of Oz')

G. PIPER - HEARSEE, BMI

BUY HERE

Admit You're A Rockaholic

If you're reading this you probably think the whole premise of Rock & Roll Rehab is a joke. Ha, ha, I get it, it's for people addicted to rock and roll, very funny. People don't get addicted to music. But think about it for a minute. If there was anything available to you out in the world that you spent much more money on than would be considered financially prudent, if it occupied not only an abundant amount of time to consume, physically (listening), but also an almost constant amount of time mentally consuming (thinking about music or humming songs in your head), and if it actually influenced your fashion choices, your health choices (drugs and alcohol) and even your social and political beliefs, wouldn't you worry it was becoming too influential in your life? 

Take a typical musician, a typical musician, not a millionaire rock star or even a gigging musician. A typical musician is probably what ninety-nine out of a hundred people who play a musical instrument is and that is someone who makes squat, financially speaking,  from playing music. Yet the amount of time, effort, love, desire, dedication and cold hard cash these people spend on their obsession is radically off balance from the gain they receive. If you ask someone why he will get up on a stage at a bar or a bandstand in a public park and perform his heart out for people who don't even bother to listen let alone pay money he'll tell you he does it for the "high". He plays his music for the feeling it gives him to perform in front of people even if the crowd's response would seem to be one that would elicit the feeling opposite than "high". When attaining a "feeling" becomes so important that you'll not only spend time, effort and money to attain it but also will disregard the potential dangers such as getting booed off the stage or becoming subject to ridicule, then my friend, you are technically addicted.

If you've read even this far it means you're so addicted to rock and roll that you're even willing to waste your time reading about it, not even reading about music or a favorite musician, but reading about an asinine concept such as Rock & Roll Rehab, which is obviously just a stupid joke. But you're not laughing, are you? Because you've just proven that you are, indeed, a rockaholic and that Rock & Roll Rehab isn't so stupid after all.