Sometimes meeting your heroes can be very disappointing. They could just be having a bad day or had a fight with their significant other or their manager, or recently received bad news about a pet project…or as is sometimes the case, they could just be an asshole.
On the other hand, some heroes exceed your expectations and then some.
Another week, another childhood music idol walks among the immortal choir. No sooner had we hosed off the glitter and put away our vinyl copies of David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” we learned that Eagles founder Glenn Frey had passed from complications related to his dependence on medication to control severe rheumatoid arthritis and acute colitis.
The sixties were a glorious time, unlikely to ever be repeated or rivalled. The fifties had been a cautious decade, where women stayed home after marrying to take care of their men, kids didn’t sass parents, and no one questioned authority in the family or in their country. Well, at least on the surface.
Rolling Stone Magazine recently released their latest ‘list’, “The 100 Greatest Songwriters” rollingstone.com). Let me repeat that title, “The 100 Greatest Songwriters”. Their descriptive line states “From Brill Building tunesmiths to Punk poets, from Woody Guthrie to Max Martin, the visionaries who defined music history.”
Hello everyone. Let’s give a warm welcome to Debbie and Cyndi. Two unique women who dance to their own drummers and whose talents encompass a variety of musical fields in two decidedly different decades. These ladies can pop and rock, disco down or jazz it up, sing the blues, or pour their soul into a ballad. Their many talents run the full gamut and they have led the way for a new kind of woman in music, adding their own twist and turns to rock and roll. Quirky, outrageous, individualistic, sexy, ballsy, entertaining, exuberant, clever, brilliant, artistic and really, really smart.
March 2 was the 10th anniversary of Hunter S. Thompson’s death and a picture of one of his quotes was making the rounds in Facebook. I found the subject matter rather timely! Many of us will find both the truth and the irony in what he had to say.
We are a species of adapters. We build on what we’ve learned before (we also forget about what we’ve learned before because we’ve got the retention skills of a black Labrador retriever chasing a stick in a field of grass, but that’s a blog for another time). The greatest inventions, the greatest works of art and specifically, the greatest music has come about from nicking, stealing, re-shaping and regurgitating what our forefathers have wrought.
OK, this is as good a place as any to admit this – I’m probably as close to being a ‘hoarder’ as you can get without actually being featured on the TV show. No, I don’t have piles of decades old newspapers and I can actually walk through my entire house without following a prescribed path through all the debris. My so called ‘hoarding’ is specifically related to materials from my 40+ years in the radio/advertising/interviewing/television industries.
WARNING: This blog contains political ranting…and sexual panting. I expect many will be offended by the sex part…but not by the politics.
By the time you read this the Stukas should be flying over Disneyland dropping bombs on Damascus’ strategic military targets in response to the 1300+ chemically assassinated civilians two weeks ago. Obama wants to spank Syrian president Assad for the killings despite having unanimous universal 
rejection of the plan from every nation on the planet except our own asshole Prime Minister -Harpo, The Marxist Brother.
Yesterday I was driving home from work, and listening to the intrepid Mr. Rich Terfry(aka Buck 65) on CBC Radio 2, and as usual, the velvety voiced radio host had many music related facts to impart upon his listening audience. The most memorable, one and the most shocking to me anyway, was a story that has been circulating about Robin Thicke and Marvin Gaye. One was accusing the other of song thievery, but you may be just as surprised as I was to hear who was doing the accusing, and the subsequent suing.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 