As the Pythons would say, "Now for something completely different" (at least from my last blog). I did read in the news that John Lennon's hand written lyrics with corrections to "A Day in the Life" were auctioned to an anonymous bidder from the US for an astounding $1.2 million! Obviously a big Beatles fan - or maybe not. I believe that there are many types of bidders for collectables; those that want to own a piece of history (Antique Road Show hello); those that want to possess a thing of beauty for the aesthetics such as a work of art or a vintage guitar; those that want a piece of an artist or athlete that represents an important era of the bidder's life (this also applies to car collectors); or those who simply want to invest in something that they hope to be able to turn a profit for in the future.
When John Lennon was scribbling those lyrics did he ever stop to think that someday those doodles would fetch that kind of cash? Hardly, even though he was a Beatle, he would have been quite amused. Once I had the privilege to work with my boyhood idol, baseball great Ernie Banks, on a fund-raiser for a children's charity. The friend who introduced us told me that Ernie would sign a few things for me. Knowing this might be my only chance, I brought several items I had acquired over the years including a dog eared copy of his autobiography aptly named "Mr. Cub." When Ernie signed it, he said he didn't even have a copy. I apologized that I couldn't give him mine because my brother Ed had given it to me for my birthday when I was young (you know, sentimental reasons). Then he asked if I knew where any of his old used bats were and when I told him that I didn't, he said, "When we cracked them, we just tossed them away. Who knew anyone would pay good money for them today?"
In the 1980's when I worked at Dean Guitars, we noticed Japanese businessmen coming to consumer guitar shows paying top dollar to take classic guitars back to Japan - not to be played, but as an investment. Same with classic cars from the 1950-'s and 1960's. (How many of us have seen a car we once owned from that era bringing in tens of thousands of dollars in auctions like Barrett-Jackson?) In was that period that I began to notice the prices of collectables being driven sky high. There are only so many vintage guitars and many artists will still pay top dollar and then to actually play them because like a fine wine, some instruments improve with age. Charity auctions bring out the best in some people as well. Clapton's famous "Blackie" Stratocaster guitar was auctioned for just under $1 million to benefit his Crossroads foundation. I personally have been involved with auctions of autographed guitars by the Stones and Eagles that each brought in just under $100K.
The point is should we hold onto stuff just because it might be worth something in the future? Barbie's, GI Joe's and other toys are even extremely collectable now. I can only answer for my own generation when I say I guess some baby boomers simply want to hold onto a little piece of the glorious era we grew up in. By the way, I think I just heard John Lennon chuckling.
Coda: I have to confess - I have a pretty nice collection of Beatles and Cubs memorabilia tucked away - and I will never sell any of it!
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The Superman comics I enjoyed in my youth had this very weird place that the "man of steel" used to visit; a cube shaped planet called Bizarro World (also called htrae or "earth" backwards) where everything good is bad and vise versa. Bizarros used to say that they "hated beauty" and "loved ugliness." In that world, one could be arrested for buying something but admired for stealing the same item. Reading the news, I can't help think that we live in an age of opposing world's - the "Bizarro" world where some show little compassion or respect for their fellow man, and one of good where we help each another - each being polar opposites with seemingly nothing in between.
Think of the stories that we read about in the just the past few months:
A CEO who runs the major oil company that is completely fouling the Gulf Coast, forever changing the lives of those that depend on the area for their livelihoods, remarks that he "wants his life back" and then proceeds to go sailing on his yacht, in the pristine waters halfway across the world.... A young girl, whose dream of sailing around the world is shattered by a storm that cripples her vessel, is saved by Australian and French responders who state they would hope that another country would do the same if one of their citizens's where caught in that situation.
Two opponents running against each other for the Republican Party's nomination for Governor of California, spend a combined $100 million on campaign ads that are nothing short of mutual character assassinations. Their Democratic foe claims "off the record" that the winner is planning a Nazi style propaganda campaign against him, while the Republican candidate for a California senate seat is caught "off the record" mocking the hairstyle of the Democratic incumbent...One of the biggest blown calls in all of baseball robs a young pitcher of one of the rarest of all feats; a perfect game, on the last play of all things! Afterwards, the remorse stricken umpire admits that he blew it and took away the pitchers chance at immortality. The next day the ump, with tears streaming down his face, and the pitcher embrace at home plate as tens of thousands of fans cheer.
At an anti-healthcare rally, tea-baggers heckle a man who is down on the street holding up a sign begging for them to support healthcare reform so he can get his Parkinson's disease treated. As they continue to shout him down, some begin throwing money at him crying out, "Is this what you want, free money?.....As several states move to block the healthcare reform, a group of doctors and dentists set up shop in Los Angeles to offer free medical care to those who don't have insurance and thousands gratefully show up.
I am sometimes ashamed at the one world I live in, but very proud to be a citizen of the other.
Coda: As I was working on this blog, two major music stars announce that they will be performing a concert fund-raiser to benefit the victims of the Gulf oil disaster while at the same time; several major country stars announce that they will be performing a fund-raising concert for the victims of the recent Nashville floods.
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Fear as a motivator in advertising is as old as advertising itself. If fact, fear has even manipulated us into going to the movies. It was widely reported that when the classic horror film The Exorcist came out, many viewers were visually shaken to the point of nausea, and a small percentage even reported having nightmares for weeks afterwards. It was a scary flick, but those reports certainly didn't hurt ticket sales; we know they had the opposite effect. To guarantee the scare factor, it was also discovered that production had placed several disturbing sounds (angry bees, pigs being slaughtered which sounded eerily like screaming children), and subliminal images (the devil's face outlined in breath vapor in the freezing bedroom scene) into the film that built the tension level in most, but also caused a severe enough reaction in a small susceptible percentage of viewers.
But we go to scary movies because it's fun to be scared as long as it's not real. Right?
Correct. But that's quite a stretch when it comes to commercials and ads scaring us when we haven't being given the choice whether or not we want to be frightened. I was always interested in marketing, even before I chose it as a career, and in high school I was fascinated with Vance Packard's "Hidden Persuaders" which exposed advertiser's manipulation of consumers through subliminal messages in their ads. My cousin Ken used to work for a major ad agency and denied that they ever did that. But I would sit down with his son Ken Jr. and he could easily pick out all the symbols imbedded in print ads. As a responsible uncle, I did shield him from the inappropriate content. Liquor ads were the most blatant - symbols of death in the cold ice in the glass such as sharks and demon heads, and symbols of life such as fish and couples holding hands (some overtly sexual images as well) in the warmth of the amber liquid beneath. Adults usually have to stare at an ad for awhile until the symbols begin to appear, but children and teens seem to be able to find them right away because they're minds are much more open and receptive - the 3D images in the Magic Eye books that would take me quite some time to decipher would appear almost instantaneous to my daughters Shanna & Holly when they were young. My stepson Kjell is 16 and when I showed him some recent ads in GQ Magazine he was skeptical at first, but nonetheless was able to easily find the symbols. But in those liquor ads the advertising message was always the same - the world is a scary place but you'll find solace in the warm embrace of a stiff drink, preferably ours. I feel rewarded when I find these little manipulators and I feel even better when I can reveal these to others so they can be aware of the ads that use fear in attempting to manipulate us into buying their products. But what I am really afraid of that even though we've blown their cover - they still seem to work and just like Freddy Krueger, they will be back to scare us again.
Coda: One of the really scary ads came out way back in 1975. Under the heading "Want to See a Grown Man Cry?" was a broken bottle of Crown Royal. The background was a sinister black and in outline of the spilt liquor one can easily detect the shape of a human skull (note: prints of this all-time classic ad are still available on eBay if you want to see this first-hand.).
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Warning: Get ready for a sharp left turn...
This blog is actually not just about Jeff Beck,
because I really wanted to talk about the resurgence of vinyl records
and what the local record store meant to us growing up. The first band I
was in, The Tobacco Rouges, used to hang out at Pearson's Music in
Niles, IL spinning the latest 45's in the listening booth. We would try
to figure out the chords to a new Stones or Kinks single - that was
until kindly Mr. Pierson would ask us not to wear out the merchandise
unless we wanted to buy it. At that time, Dee Hunt, the older sister of
our drummer Jim, recommended a lead singer from her college that was
looking for a band and she knew we needed a singer. Steve Nakon looked
just like Mick Jagger - shoulder length hair and all. Keep in mind we
went to Catholic schools so we couldn't wear our hair any longer that a
short "Beatle" cut so this guy was our idol. Steve took us to Old Town
where the hippies hung out to get cool rock clothes inspired by the
British Bands. Steve helped us almost look like we were a real rock
band, to the point that the black-leather-clad-slicked-
Anyway, Steve would clue us in on the latest records, particularly the British imports. One day he told me I had to hear this new record from ex-Yardbird guitarist Jeff Beck. I told him that I had just read a review in Hit Parader Magazine that liked Jeff but referred to his singer "Class Z." Steve said, "No you got to listen to this guy he's great - his name is Rod Stewart." The record was "Truth" and it changed my life and no doubt the lives of many future Heavy Metal musicians before we ever even knew there was such a thing. It was one of the few records that I actually wore out to the point that it would no longer function. Our band changed our style, name, clothes and everything else to become more Beck-like - and never looked back.
Those memories of the old record stores are not just nostalgic - those stores were the social networking of that era where music lovers congregated to discover and share the best new music like Bloodwyn Pig or Taste. Often we would gather before a store opened just to be the first in line to get the latest offering from Zeppelin, The Who, or Traffic. Recently I read an interview with Gary Calamar, the co-author of the new book "Record Store Days: From Vinyl to Digital and Back Again" and he talked about the stores as a music hub & more for the community and how they are making a slight return. When Michael Jackson died, people connected through the media. Calamar states, "I worked in Licorice Pizza when John Lennon was killed. I had the day off but I came in anyway because people needed a place to mourn."
Coda: The great thing about being an author and having a blog is just like the old neighborhood record stores, it connects you with new friends and it reconnects you with so many more old friends. In addition to Jeff Beck, this blog was also inspired by Steve Nakon contacting me after all these years through my website. He founded Northwest Yoga in Chicago and he's still introducing me to new releases - he just sent me his newest Yoga record "Yoga: Breath & Body."
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We all know that marketing can use strong motivators to trigger emotions, like lust and sex which pushed Tiger and Jesse James into rehab (as Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnell remarked while defending the obvious sexist album cover of Smell the Glove, "Sex sells") and greed which turned out to be a major contributor to the Great Recession. But fear seems to be way out in front as far as a top motivator. Rush Limbaugh and his "mini-me" Glen Beck have considerably increased their audiences with a steady stream of doomsday predictions. Rush said that "Obamacare" was so disastrous that if passed, he would move out of the country (last time I looked he is still here so maybe it wasn't that bad after all). But it wouldn't be fair to suggest that the right wing has cornered the market on fear. In fact, after healthcare passed, Democrats and Republicans alike received threats and Tea Baggers seem to see anyone in government as a threat.
Once again, we are not just talking about fear in politics.
Just watch the nightly news in LA. Immediately following a car chase or some other threatening story, that in reality doesn't really directly threaten us, we are barraged with parade of commercials offering to make us feel better - buy a new car and everything will be okay. Or better yet, take some medication for a malady we didn't even know we had that was created by a marketing department for a large pharmaceutical (restless leg syndrome?). The problem is like anything else; too much of anything can anesthetize us. Groundbreaking comedian Lenny Bruce used the N-word and F-word over and over again in his routine in front of a shocked audience to demonstrate that after so many repetitions, those words would eventually lose their impact. And so it is with fear - the more you try to scare us, the more scarier you have to be next time to get the same results. That's why Glen Beck is forced to be more hysterical and seemingly more out of control to get his point across. Funny thing is that his network mate, Bill O'Rielly, purposely has toned down his fear factor rhetoric and guess what? His ratings are way up as well so maybe there's still hope.
I was raised Catholic and even though the religion attempted to scare us kids into good Christian behavior with threats of purgatory & hell, I really wasn't that afraid of those places as much passing the house on my block with the dog who chased me home on a regular basis. Even then, my mom would try to calm me my telling me that nine out of ten things we worry about never come to fruition. And you know what? She was right. Yes, it's a scary world out there, but I have a wide circle of friends and co-workers and none of them really seem all that afraid. In fact, most people I know actually think things are improving as the economy is on the mend, healthcare reform passed and spring is in the air.
So what are worried about?
Coda: I left off music as a motivator in this blog because when it comes to good music, you can never have too much.
Maybe it was a last minute attempt to derail The Hurt Locker's chances of winning the Academy Award, but just days before the Oscars it was announced that the makers of the film were being sued by an Army Bomb Disposal Expert who claimed screenwriter Mark Boal had based the story on his life. He may or may not have a case but he does have a persuasive enough argument because Boal wrote a story about him in Playboy Magazine back in 2005. But how would Boal have come up with the real storyline if he hadn't at least gotten first hand info from the expert? On the other hand, Quentin Tarantino based the title of his Inglorious Bastards on a 70's action flick of the same name. Incidentally, that movie was a low budget "B" version of the hit movie The Dirty Dozen. My personal favorite this year, Crazy Heart, had Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges' character based on so many real life country artists who turned to booze as they got older and their careers began to fade. And Avatar? Well that was a retelling of Dances With Wolves; placing the story on another planet where the natives are 9' tall and blue - all, of course, in glorious 3-D! So when does "inspiration" for a movie actually turn into "plagiarism?"
That's a hard question to answer and I guess it's ultimately for the courts to work out when a lawsuit is filed, but the truth is everything has to start somewhere. I got the idea for his blog from reading the story of The Hurt Locker lawsuit, but I didn't steal the story; I simply used it as a launching pad. I think the same thing could be said for someone like Quentin Tarantino in that his Bastards is really nothing like the 1978 version of Bastards, which as earlier noted, some considered a rip of The Dirty Dozen. However, the great film buff Tarantino has never been shy about his influences and even stated in an interview regarding Bastards that the idea of actually "killing" Hitler came from an obscure 1939 film. Furthermore, his heroine who is the double agent was based on a real German double agent who was also an actress. So regardless of where it originally came from, a great storyline is worth retelling again and again. The legendary Japanese film The Seven Samurai, was remade in the US as the hugely successful The Magnificent Seven and then remade as comedy The Three Amigos (this time obviously with only three "soldiers for hire").
The most engaging storylines are built on powerful human emotions like love, hate, revenge, greed, sex and fear. The hero can hit the lowest of lows as long as there is redemption in the end. Based around these emotions, there are only so many ways to tell a great story, and to keep an audience's attention, you have to first have the great story, then tell it in an intriguing way without actually getting so close to original that you end up in litigation. Think of it as an "unauthorized" sequel as it were, but as my mother used to tell me, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Therefore, successful directors as diverse as Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island) and Mel Brooks (High Anxiety - spoof and tribute rolled into one) willfully pay tribute to the masters like Alfred Hitchcock who inspired them to pursue filmmaking the first place, but most importantly, hopefully in their own unique way.
Coda: While working on this blog, I was reminded of a story I heard many years ago. It seems a talented screenwriter was really struggling with writer's block and confessed to a friend one day, "Each night, I wake up from a deep sleep with the most fantastic idea for a movie, probably the basis for one of the most compelling stories I have ever come up with. But when I wake up, I can't recall a thing!" His friend suggested that he place a pen and paper next to his bed and when he wakes up, he should write down the idea then in the morning he'll have captured it. The writer did just that - scribbling the idea down and when he awoke in morning he was so excited to see the brilliant idea for a script - "Boy meets girl."
]]>The first time I met T-Bone was around 20 years ago when he came through Chicago on one of his tours with Hall & Oates. I was invited to the sound check to meet him and I was treated to an impromptu concert as the backing band ran through a warm-up set of Beatles' tunes. Being a bassist myself, I was amazed at how he captured McCartney's melodic style, but none-the-less had his own signature style. We chatted for quite a while about the Beatles, the fact that we both still had our original Hofner "Beatle" basses just like Paul's, and a strong bond was formed. From that moment on, whenever Hall & Oates came to town, T-Bone would always call and personally invite me and my guests to the show.
A few years later I joined Fender as Director of Artist Relations and because of his James Burton autographed Telecaster guitar and his original '61 P Bass, I knew that he was truly a "Fender" guy. But he never asked for anything special from me until one day after a H&O performance, he wondered if he could come out to Fender's Custom Shop with his beloved P Bass to have one of our master builders create an exact replica of the bass, down to every little ding and scratch. I knew how excited the builders would be to see this famous bass up close and personal, and to also have the honor of replicating it so he could use it on tour and leave the original bass safe & sound in his studio. Even with that, T-Bone insisted on paying for the instrument because he just wanted the chance to work with the best craftsman. And of course, as was his style, he couldn't have been more sweet and humble when meeting the Custom Shop crew.
The last time I saw him was at a Hall & Oates concert late last year at a local So. Cal Indian gaming resort. I had pushed the favor a bit by asking for enough tickets for my family which include my wife, stepson and my brother Ed who was visiting from Chicago, plus a few friends who also happened to be die hard fans. John Oates graciously took care of the request so T-Bone didn't know I was there until a few minutes before the show when he caught a glimpse of me backstage and came running over. In typical T-Bone fashion, his perennial "Porkpie" hat atop his head, he treated my family and friends as if they were, well family. He was stellar on guitar that evening and the band never sounded better and the audience reaction was over the top. For the following week, we exchanged text messages about how great the show went and how taken aback they were at the audience's adoration, my family, and even the cool retro shirt I was wearing that night. A nicer more genuine person you couldn't find and I was happy for him that he seemed to be at his peak.
"Amen" my dear friend!