Folks are asking me, “Lizzard, why have you turned your back on metal and are writing such wimpy shit these days?”
Well, first off, my original love of music is classical and progressive rock. The only reason that I started doing metal was because it was easy and fun to play.
Next off, metal limits the style of writing and places you can play.Now, mind you, I’ve got a scorcher called Corporate Thought, which I’m working on with RatmanDO…so I’m not completely soft yet…
But last, and most important,
Here is a picture of heavy metal fans:
And here’s a picture of rock fans:
Now you tell me who you want by your stage during a show…
Sitting in a various restaurants throughout Las Vegas I noticed that all the music being piped in to places as casual as Arby’s and Taco Bell, all the way up to fine restaurants at the casinos is all rock from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Admittedly those decades are considered the golden age of rock, mostly the 70s which saw the emergence of some of the greatest bands and music in modern history (Kiss, Journey, Boston, ELO, Doobie Brothers, Allman Brothers, AC/DC, Black Sabbath). When the 80s came it saw the advent of synthesizer pop (New Wave) and Rap, which pretty much was the nail in the rocker’s coffin.
But that led me think: where is the rock music from the 90s, 00s and now? In public places do you hear the music of Nickelback, Coldplay, Matchbox 20, Radiohead, et al? Could it be that rock music is no longer a relevant part of our society?
Back in 1973 when I had asperations of musicianship a buddy told me “The world doesn’t need another rock band.” And, in most cases, he may be right. As a matter of fact, when you think about it, does the world need music at all? We NEED doctors, nurses, scientists, teachers and laborers, we don’t NEED angst ridden guys playing guitar and yowling how miserable his life is.
I also think it’s interesting that we, as a society, are still actively listening to music from 40 and 50 years ago. In the 1960s nobody would be caught dead playing music from 1910. So, is rock music stuck in the 60s-80s?
Back in the sixties, those of us old enough to remember, the top 3 most popular bands were the Beatles, Paul Revere and the Raiders and The Monkees. The Beatles because they were a world phenomenon. PR & TR because they appeared as regulars on Dick Clark’s “Where the Action Is,” and The Monkees because they had their own show on NBC.
Anyone who was a kid or a teen back then had tons of records from these three, mainly because of their saturation in the market. Back then we didn’t have iPods or digital downloads. If we wanted a record (vinyl discs played on a record player/turntable) we had to bilk the money out of our parents and have them drive us to the nearest Sears or Montgomery Wards (Monkey Wards as it was called) where we would buy these albums for, like, three bucks from a record section, usually located next to the power tools.
My favorite was PR & TR, because they had pony tails, wore bitchin’ revolutionary war costumes, played sick Vox guitars, they had a choreographed act and Mark Lindsay was one of rocks’ first screamers. They did the fore-runner to hard rock.
However, the Monkees were whooping everybody’s ass back then, because they were likable, funny, and had great music.
Now the fact that they were actors in a sitcom didn’t stop people from thinking they were a real pop band. This is the same as thinking Sally Fields was an actual nun or Richard Chamberlain was a real doctor. I think the primary thing that blurred those lines of reality and fantasy was that NBC decided to let the band use their real names. If the cute British boy was Nigel Tufnel, played by Davey Jones, or the crazy drummer was Drummer John instead of Mickey Dolenz played by Mickey Dolenz, the TV world might have grasped the concept that this was a make-believe band fronted by actors. But by using their real names it gave the illusion that we were watching a pre-cursor to the Real World of a reality show on a real band.
The other lines that blurred were the fact that their music was written by the best of the best of the best of the 60s (Neil Diamond, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Carole King) and, combined with constant TV saturation made them instant pop hits. They started out as vocalists (Nesmith and Tork could play instruments) backed by L.A.’s best studio musicians playing songs written by giants and started morphing into a real band. Like Nesmith said, it was like Pinnocchio becoming a real boy. They started playing their own instruments, writing their own songs and producing their own records.
Even though Davey Jones was the lead singer the Monkee’s top hits were sung by Mickey Dolenz (Stepping Stone, I’m a Believer, Last Train to Clarkesville and Pleasant Vallet Sunday), but everyone’s favorits were the songs done by the “disgruntled Monkee” Mike Nesmith (Tapioca Tundra, Papa Gene’s Blues, Love is Only Sleeping, What Am I Doing Hanging Round). He was disgruntled because he was a true musician and wanted to be treated as such. That’s why he quit the band and has shown up two or three times in the past forty years.
Now the Beatles self-destructed in 71, some say because of John and Yoko and became a legendary band that no one will ever surpass.
Paul Revere has changed Raiders dozens of times and plays the casino and theme park circuit.
The three “ungruntled” Monkees continue to play reunion shows every now and then…
In the long run I still listen to these three bands and really enjoy them, even though I really like Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars and Cee Lo Green.
My topic this morning is Spam Morons…the fucking idiots who send us such ridiculous emails and website postings that only the totally stupid would fall prey to.
Like the Nigerian email that’s been going aropund since the dawn of email. Can you imagine some dumbshit anywhere saying, “Hey honey, there’s a deposed President who will give us $20 million if we let him use our bank account! Quick, what’s our account number?”
One of the things that’s always perplexed me is the forum/blog posts that go something like “xxxxxxyyyxyxycycycy7cggsdgsggdgdgdhghhhhhahahahahahahahah” for ten paragraphs. Unless that some kind of programming to hijack your website, I don’t really see what spammers have to gain by doing that.
Todays “20 on a scale of 10″ on the Moronometer comes from eddieh43@aol.com who says he’s FBI, and that he’s been tracking my online activity and has issued a warrant for my arrest unless I download the attached instructions and follow them.
I can maybe see some 90-year-old guy whose grandkids set up an email account so they can ask for money every week going, “Oh shit! I know I shouldn’t have gone to that porn site!” and downloading a super-virus onto their computer. Hell, I can even see the little shit grandkids who set up his account sending him that FBI email and bugging his computer so they can access his credit cards and bank account whenever they need some dope money…But two things (and I know as someone who works for the Federal government), first, FBI wouldn’t give you a heads up. You’ll be sitting at your computer at home and several trucks would roll up to you house and BOOM, you’re gone in sixty seconds. Second, FBI doesn’t use aol.com email addresses…they use fbi.gov addresses (like I have a .mil email).
Anyway, that made me chuckle. If anyone has any dumb-ass spam they want to add just post in comments.
The making of Things We Wouldn’t Do, or the million mile journey to here.
So, for a better part of a year now I’ve had four songs stuck in my brain that I’ve been trying to identify and purge.
Two of the songs belonged to cartoons that I watched as a kid in the 60s, one was an old MoonGlows song (which I have no clue why the hell that would be bonking around in my melon) and this fourth song which, I’m sure, was an old Beatles or a Byrds song.
I remembered bits of lyrics like “She wouldn’t do something…” and “Don’t want no compromises” so I began hitting the internet lyrics sites. That was just the beginning of a long journey. I remembered the whole song, the 12-string Rickenbacker bits and a lot of the lyrics. The lyrics thing yielded nothing. The year-long search for the Holy Grail began. The next step was to audition every song that the Beatles and the Byrds ever recorded. That also yielded nothing. Next came the Hollies, the Kinks, the Buckinghams, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and anyone who had a damned 12-string Rick in their band. Then I thought of the 12-string electric, so the internet graciously provided me with a list of the 100 best 12-string songs. In the process of auditioning (which meant sampling about 30 seconds worth) I came across a lot of great songs, which lead me to buy a guitar I had yet to put into my axe arsenal: A 12-string electric. I ordered the Dean 12-string, which was a decent guitar for a great price. I couldn’t wait for it to be delivered…I think they strapped it to the back of a 90-year-old man who walked it from PA to Vegas, since it took three weeks to get here. I also learned to play the three mandatory tunes that every 12-string electric player should know: Mr. Tambourine Man, Turn Turn Turn, and Ticket to Ride, so that by the time the guitar hit my door step I was able to play these three classics. The only thing is, it didn’t quite sound the same coming through the monster of all amplifiers, a Marshall, so I bought myself a small 30-watt Vox amplifier (much better).
The search went on. After auditioning a hundred 12-string tunes, with no luck, I discovered that this genre of music was labeled “Janglepop” for the jangling sound made by the sound of the 12 string. The Janglepop genre yielded several hundred tracks in everything from the Searchers (60s) to R.E.M (90s). Still nothing. Using logic I thought, since this is so clear in my mind, this must be a song I’ve heard over-and-over, which lead me to think that maybe it came from an old TV show or a commercial jingle that I’d heard many times. I went through about a half-dozen TV and commercial theme and jingle sites, auditioning, again, with to luck.
Next stop was those “I Got a Song Stuck in My Head” websites that you hum the melody or play on a digital virtual keyboard the melody and they match it up. Nothing.
So, I recorded a few seconds worth in my home studio and sent it out to some oldies radio stations in LV, LA and the internet. The concensus was, really catchy tune but no I.D.
Last step was to take my recorded snippet to some vinyl record stores in Vegas to see if they can identify. Again, catchy tune but no I.D.
I had to know if this was an existing song, and, if not, I was going to snake it because it is so memorable and, to quote Tom Hanks in “That Thing You Do,” it was “something snappy!”
I recorded an instrumental version of the whole thing and sent it off to Al (my manager Al Gomes) and said I think I have a Paul McCartney/Yesterday situation here (Paul McCartney had the song Yesterday stuck in his head for some time, but never pursued it because he was sure someone else had written and recorded it). Al replied back immediately that he had never heard it before, bounced it off some people and said that, not only does it not already exist, it’s a great song and I should develop it further. I wrote the lyrics in about 5 minutes while sitting at the breakfast table (since I mentioned earlier most of the lyrics were already there).
So, to give it the authentic sound, I recorded it was a Rickenbacker 360/12 borrowed from someone (the Dean was good, but it doesn’t have the treble) going through a Vox amplifier like they did in the old days (double mike about 6 feet away) and used a Hofner 500/1 “Beatle Bass” and an Epiphone Ej-160E John Lennon Acoustic-Electric guitar.
The next part was getting my aging Ozzy Osbourne vocals wrangled into shape to handle the pitch and tone perfect vocals and harmonies. I don’t know, I probable will have someone I know from a local Beatles tribute band re-record the vocals and harmonies in the near future. All in all, I came out with a finished product after about 18 hours.
So I present what is either my best song to date, or a hilarious rip-off of an oldies tune to which I’ll be a laughingstock and get sued. Hope everyone enjoys.
Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to a brand new LizzardWorld.
Instead of reviews and jokes and things that were getting old and stale, I’ve decided to start publishing a blog of my thoughts, open dialogs and opinions.
