3 Mantras For Bev & Syd

This past Sunday we had a celebration of life for our folks, Bev & Syd. When our Dad passed, Mom wanted to celebrate his extraordinary life and not mourn his death. So that is what we did a few years back. And she produced an affair with readings, and music, and food. After this excruitiating winter, and then a crazed summer, my brother, Phil, and I finally got around to booking Waveny Estate, the property that one of the muckety-mucks who started Texaco sold to New Canaan for a pittance in 1997. Yes, New Canaan is that kind of town, rich, and bucolic, and sedate. And then Syd Greenberg came to town. But, that’s later. For our celebration had BBQ catered in, Phil printed out hundreds of pictures from Bev and Syd’s excellent adventure; living through Brooklyn and New Canaan and that war to end all wars, WWII and through the lives of so many friends and he put together a video from home movies, slides, and this cool film he created for Syd’s 90th birthday. Since Phil lives a bit closer to New Canaan, he did most of the heavy lifting. All I had to do was write, and give, a speech. The writing part usually comes naturally, the speechifying not so. And this one? Most everyone’s folks are amazing in some way, but, and this is not bragging, my folks were phenomenal—though it did take me a long time to realize that. Just read this little bit about my Mom and this one about my Dad and you’ll get a better picture of what I was up against to get them down into a speech. As well, since this would be after the drinks and the food, I also had to be succinct and pithy. Terse is not in my toolkit, that’s for sure. And then still have some of their soul and joy seep in between the lines? A big task. Here is my take on Bev & Syd:

Why I WANTED To Own And Operate A Small Seaside Cinema

A few months ago, Cape Ann Cinema & Stage, was up for grabs. All you had to do was cram down into 250 words all your wishes and desires and dreams and hopes of owning your very own cinema and performance space. Anyone who knows me understands how hard that would have been and it was. I think the first draft was over 500 words and that was cutting out a ton, or maybe two tons, of verbiage. One of the stipulations was to “be creative.” Yah, cut that meat to the bone. Bone isn’t going to be real creative unless you find a way to scrimshaw on it. Precise incisions ensued and I excised more, as much as I could while still making some sense. With more rewriting and then some.

Mom 1923-2015

As soon as you found out Beverly was gone, I know the first thing many in this room thought: I didn’t see her enough. Or maybe, I didn’t talk to her enough. Didn’t stop by for a chat. I should have taken the time…should have this, should have that.

Talking To Strangers

As a kid, I had always wanted to sell enough stuff to absolute strangers in order to get those amazing prizes as advertised lavishly in comic books. You know, sell an inordinate amount of Peony seeds, or magazine subscriptions, or wrapping paper, and obtain a shiny new Schwinn Stingray Bike with a banana seat. Unfortunately for both the seed company and my parents, I couldn’t walk up to strangers and sell them junk they didn’t need, even when I was desperate to have that very thing that would make me cooler than my younger brother. I had the dream but not the wherewithal, so I needed my folks to spend real money in order to get the bike.

The Marketing Dance: Doing The Jerk part Two

In The Marketing Dance: Doing The Jerk, our last bloggette, I dissected the wrong way to get anyone to be interested about you and your stuff on social networks; where you act like those cheap commercials on Late Night TeeVee with the announcer yelling at you: “Wait, WAIT, there’s more…”

The Marketing Dance: Doing The Jerk

Selling me crap in an email is justified, because I can label you junk and, hopefully depending on the reliability of my MacMail, never see you again. On TeeVee that’s a little different as I revel in a good advertisement, having been in that world for a bit back in the ’80s where I was even tapped to look at, and judge, animated commercials for the Clios. But sell me stuff on Facebook and LinkedIn, man, that’s like tossing a leaflet at my front door and having it end up on my lawn. I then have to go outside, take it off the lawn and walk to the back to throw it out. While I do need the exercise, is that anyway to get me to buy your stuff? By pissing me off? I don’t think you’ll find that method in any Dale Carnegie course.

So, why does anyone think they should advertise to me in social media? I’m not talking the soft-sell, like what I do (marketing, information, as opposed to lobbing a sales pitch over the bunker. “In-bound” marketing as coined by HubSpot, that “content marketing” thing.) Yes, there’s a potential world of goobers online who may possibly want to buy your–insert your “Hilary in 2016” and/or “Not Hilary in 2016” tstochke or some other equally appealing item–here. Or even how could you think someone would hire you with your plea to be considered hitting them at point-blank range? Especially if you inbox said someone, like me, who you have started to pester about a job without even asking if TKA has any jobs open! And, if we do, check the website.

Here We Go Again

To the cloud, again and again. When I first wrote this for MusicThinkTank, way back in 2011, Google was working on a hush-hush (though everyone seemed to know about it) service to shunt all your music up to a locker in the cloud. Since then, Apple has also pushed their iTunes up into the Cloud. The premise is you can play your music everywhere and anywhere on just about any device that the gods of I.T. can wrestle into submission.  Maybe.

Maybe not. You may not even own what you thought you bought. I knew the guys in Business Affairs at the labels wouldn’t let these kinds of services fly without some kind of hindrances, the weight of which could cause them to plummet to earth and die a slow but sure death. And here it is, a start of something sinister: be advised if you use the Apple service, iTunes Match, not all your iTunes tracks will stay as your iTunes tracks. Yes, those tracks you have purchased through Apple may disappear and you can’t get them back. “What?” you may be pondering, though with maybe an expletive sneaking in there.

Mud Has Been Flung

When the mad dash ended, publishing the Mud Folio after all, I wanted to feel exhilarated, complete, full of a high of some sort instead of an exhaustion compounded by a nagging feeling something is wrong, unmade, or maybe incomplete. Could there be a tiny bit left out? A wrong word in a bad place? A better picture to be used? Often, I go searching for the problem, soul searching the piece and myself; what have I done, could it be better, proof-reading, and tweaking. Usually a fool’s errand, as whatever problem I am looking for probably never existed. At least I should know by now how to finalize one of my own projects and fling it out there as soon it is finished. With a deadline looming and the possibility of a check in the mail, I can bear down on the project and “get ‘r done.” My own stuff, where I can diddle and review and it’s for free, coming to the end, finding where the finish is and stepping over that line, that turns out to be tough.

A few nights ago, I flung the Mud Folio files across the line and here it is, finally published. The 190 pages, comprises a compilation of my, mostly unsung, lyrics. Not complete mind you, full of the lyricals up to a point. Since, month by month, I am adding piecework to the unsung lyrical market, there are now quite a few doggedly recalcitrant lyricals to find their way into the second book of Mud. Seeing how long this one first one took, if I were you, I wouldn’t wait up nights for Mud Folio Dos to hit the book stands. I started compiling the first bugger back in New York during my former life in the film business, sometime in the mid to late ’80s.

Resume? Resume? I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Resume!

Well, of course you do, but aim to have a boatload of material so you don’t have just your resume to show prospective employers. And then, during your first job, find time to do your own thing, by any means necessary, so that you don’t really need that resume after that. I landed the second job of my career with the film production house, Second Story Television without any resume at all. That was because I started that company with a few friends after gleaning enough experience and connections from working at a small film production company/ad agency based on the famed Madison Avenue in NYC. And jobs after SST were mostly pulled in from my network of friends. That’s the key and the underlying thought behind this bloggette: building your career, yourself, again, by any means necessary.

Rubber Rodeo: How The West Was Won / Eat Records / Second Story Television

FreeDub Missive

A missive for the IR release 26.1 FreeDub. You can download it HERE, but do read on with what some might call liner notes, others might call a diatribe, which we call our infomercial for dub living. Basically pulsed out to the press and available to the public in each and every download of IR26.2, giving up the history of the IR label and the why and wherefore of the musical collective known as Indigenous Resistance. As culled from the writings of Tapedave and IR’s creative liason and traveling dignitary, The Ghost.
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FreeDub for the people. What does that mean exactly, specifically? It’s not exactly free as we are not exactly free as a people, anywhere. Where there is a power structure it’s never a zero sum game. There’s winners and losers, the losers just need to lose a little less and win more. That is where the words come from, that struggle for freedom, that struggle for respect, the struggle continues every day.

So it’s a double-edged sword this FreeDub, it is free — “getcha download here, extra dub on the side” — but it also speaks to being free, the urge, the want, the need. Revolution you can dance to has been part of the IR mission since the beginning of crafting and splicing spoken word dissent into deep bass-laden tracks of dance, dub, techo. Tracks that were crucial, but lacking interest from the wider music industry, and so limited distribution made even more limited when one record company courageous enough to take it on, went out of business, kaput, taking masters, artwork, and royalties down the rat-infested drain. With help from Dorado, another courageous outlier of the music industry (before they dissolved), IR regrouped, reinvested with time, spit energy and re-engineered itself. The music can now be found on iTunes (and elsewhere) through Believe Digital, with some releases in the earthbound form of CDs through CDBaby. But dems the dub that helps pay the way for getting the real deal back to the people; the indigenous, those who need to hear the words and dance to the music, to break down the barriers put up against the hand-packed brutality of their day-to-day, to push off the trod that downward, and incessantly, presses against their very soul. As well as you, reading this, slogging it out against selfishness and the grubbing for winning over losing, wanting for a bit of individuality and mindfulness, in this time and space we share.