Darrell Vickers: How I Got Really, Really Good Rolling Stones Tickets

Working in show business is like dating a girl that is clinically insane.  Sometimes it can be absolutely mind blowing and amazing and sometimes it can be like having your eyes eaten out by fire ants.  I shall now recount one such ocular bug buffet that would have given Leiningen himself, the cold shits.

The Beginning:

Andrew and I just been hired as co-executive producers on a so-so series about a genie (No, it wasn’t “I Dream of Jeannie” – I’m not that fucking old.).  These types of fictional endeavors are problematic from the get-go.  You have a mythical creature that can solve any problem by crossing his arms and nodding, so you spend 90% of your time trying to figure out the reason why he doesn’t.  On this show, that was the least of our worries.

Darrell Vickers: Duncing With the Stars

Having been employed in the entertainment industry since Netflix personally drove the actors to your house to perform your order, I have become friends with a small cadre of practicing thespians.  Additionally, having spent a regrettable amount of time wallowing in the fetid, festering spiritual cesspool that is children’s animation, I am acquainted with a number of talented individuals who make their living giving voice to artistic renderings of cute furry animals and intense do-gooders wearing capes.  For nigh on a decade now, these flexibly-larynxed entertainers have lamented their industry’s perplexing penchant for hiring celebrities.  In effect, they’re employing people with memorable faces to do voice work.  Why, that’s brilliant!  Talk about thinking outside the box.  Why pay dedicated professionals, who’ve spent a lifetime perfecting their craft, to weave their paralinguistic magic when you can pressgang some sitcom-star-of-the-week or pre-arrest cinematic idol to do it?   That’s like hiring the handsomest waiter at a restaurant to cook all the food.

Darrell Vickers: On the Isle of Caprice

Right off the top, I’m going to categorically state that I’d rather stick my head in an Asplundh Whisper Chipper than get into a discussion about Woody Allen and his present ex-familial travails.  So, for the purposes of this sociological treatise, let’s all pretend that the Woodster never drew his first neurotic breath.

That being said…this bespectacled “He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named”, this nerdy non-gentile who does not exist anymore than The Perth County Conspiracy, does shine a bright light on a peculiar and startlingly capricious aspect of the human condition.  I.E. the separation of the artist from the art.

Darrell Vickers: Guess Who’s Not in the Hall of Fame

Anytime anyone has put pen to parchment or thumb to I-phone to craft a well-intentioned list of things meritorious, people have lined up for days to ladle the cold and lumpy vomit of their disgust down the back of that individual’s shirt collar.   Today is no exception.  Pull out your shirt collar, Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, because I’ve got my whisky-barrel-sized ladle and it’s full to brimmin’ with the icy cold sick of my discontent.

Darrell Vickers: A Tale of Two Shities

Corporate greed can be a very comical thing at times.  Not when these soulless, maniacal money whores’ allow their unquenchable lust for gold to transmogrify into evil incarnate, of course.   Certainly not when these insatiable, insensate, vulturine feeding machines get so avariciously engorged that all bonds of human decency snap like Walmart chair legs and they vomit blood and misery over everyone in their path.  Recent history is replete with insidious incidences of these greenback gorgons happily committing acts of unmitigated commercial barbarism for the sake of expediency.

Darrell Vickers: Rock ‘n’ Roll Dumbnation

I don’t think anyone who has been graced at birth with two properly functioning ocular orbs and even the most unimpressive measure of cognitive facility could fail to notice that this world of ours is majorly fuckoed.   To bear witness to this once mighty civilization caught in an uncontrollable tailspin of death; one needs only to cast one’s gaze over to the shocking state of rock-and-roll.  No, I’m not talking about how bad music has gotten or how Jay-Z is the devil’s most cunning disciple bent on dragging our youth down into the fiery sulphurous pits of damnation with his piquant lyrical-stylings.  What I am bone-chillingly referring to is the ever-swelling tidal wave of do-gooders in the rock and rap community.  How bad have things gotten when we have fucking former punk rockers out raising money to save the rain forests!!???

Darrell Vickers: As the World Turntables

The Overview

Countless magical hours of mirth, tragedy and love that have been gifted to us by the miracle of the motion picture, yet these same cinematic divertissements have also given birth to a staggering amount of griping and controversy.  People have been caviling and kvetching in equal measure about the inappropriate depictions of violence, sex and ugly people kissing since the days of Fairbanks and Keaton.  And those very same bastions of moral rectitude and fiery condemnation become more and more convinced, with each passing annum, that the already horrifyingly low standards of propriety on the silver screen continue to spiral ever downwards.  Until the other day, I was proudly Not among their number but…

Darrell Vickers: How Bob Dylan Spoiled Me For Other Concerts and Turned Danny Devito Into My Bitch

The Easily Off-Track Intro:

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for almost 30 years now.  To quote Donny Osmond, “And that’s a long, long time.”  Consider, when I moved to The City of Angels, curling still used actual brooms instead of those ultra-high-tech sweepy things.  Am I the only traditionalist left on God’s rapidly-warming Earth who misses the majestic “Flappa Dappa, Flappa Dappa” of the mighty besom as stalwart men of iron will guided their beloved “rock” (I really know the lingo) to its date with other rocks of a different color and destiny?

Frank Gutch Jr: It Has Barely Started and Already 2013 Is a Kickass Year…..

In fact, this may damn well be the year I kick the bucket.  My life has pretty much been music, or music at its core, and it has never been better and I have to say that this next year promises to be the best yet.  Ever have that feeling that you can’t lose?  I not only have that feeling but am overwhelmed by it, politics be damned!  So pardon me while I crawl into my hole and surround myself with a future major labels only dream about.  Pay attention.  There will be a quiz.

Darrell Vickers: Best Releases of 2012…and, uhh…Aerosmith.

Well, the year is at an end and everyone has taken yet another, giant step closer towards their final days here on shopping-mall Earth.  That moment, when fate grabs us by the ankles and wrenches us kicking and screaming from the only existence we’ve ever known.  Every groove in the sidewalk is the fingernail scrapings of some poor lost soul frantically clinging on till the very last.  And mass shootings, horrific wars, starvation and unbridled suffering, in its many glorious forms; dog our weary days as we march relentlessly towards our own oblivion.

On the upside, there was a lot of great music in 2012.   Not much of it on mainstream radio, but still survives in the shadows.  There was also a lot of complete shit, but I won’t bore you with that.

Except for the number one example of 2012 auditory poo.