Fuddy Duddy

When my brother and I were young growing up in Upstate New York, if we heard a plane fly over, no matter how high or how far away, we would run outside and look up.

Even now in LA, if I hear something other than the all-too-common Bell helicopters the cops and TV news departments fly, I usually check it out. If there’s something really different sounding or particularly loud and large, Audra and I rush to the one of our balconies to see what it is. One of the undocumented perks of living in Hollywood is that every pilot—military or civilian—feels they have to do a Hollywood fly-over at least once in their career, resulting in an unofficial year round air show of sorts.

Yesterday, Audra told me she saw a large aircraft flying low while I was at work. After asking her some key questions and showing her pictures of several planes online, we determined she had seen an old Boeing B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ A WWII era bomber like the title plane in the movie “Memphis Belle”.

B-17s always make me think of my brother. I’m not sure how often he heads for his back yard in Eastern PA when he and his boys hear a plane, but in college he used another tactic to get his ‘plane on’: On at least one occasion, my brother stumbled from a weekend party and made his way down the hill from Geneseo State University to a small nearby airport that was home to a collection of flyable war planes including a B17-G nicknamed “Fuddy Duddy”

Fuddy Duddy Flying over Geneseo, New York

There are no locks on the hatch of a B-17G, so he climbed inside and felt his way through the surprisingly cramped aircraft in the dark and climbed gingerly, reverently, into the pilot’s seat.

I sat in that seat once myself during a tour that my father and I took during regular museum hours. We were the only two on the tour, so getting to sit in the cockpit and explore the inside of the aircraft was a rare treat.

That particular B-17, “Fuddy Duddy” never saw combat but has been in two Hollywood movies and lived on three continents. She was built in the waning days of WWII in 1945 and served in the peacetime Philippines until 1955. In 1959 she was sold to the civilian world. Columbia Pictures was one of her first owners. She was flown to England and used in the Steve McQueen movie “The War Lover” along with two other B-17s. In 1969, under a different owner, she was filmed in Hawaii for the movie “Tora, Tora, Tora”.

Fuddy Duddy was then converted to and flown as a tanker (probably fire or pesticide) in Arizona 1981-1985 and sold to the War Plane Museum in Geneseo where she was restored to a WWII era bomber and where my brother, my father and I encountered it. This was the first time the plane had actually gone under the name “Fuddy Duddy” the name of another aircraft that served 94 missions out of Rattlesden England before being lost to a mid-air collision in December of 1944.

I was in college and living in a vacation home on the Eastern shore of Canandaigua Lake when one day I witnessed Fuddy Duddy flying a mere hundred feet over the lake with a P-38 fighter giving chase, it’s propane guns blazing. I believe the stunt was promoting the Geneseo “Wings of Eagles” Air Show.

As far as I knew, until last night, Fuddy Duddy was still parked at the National War Plane Museum in Geneseo, but after a little research online, I learned that, after a short stay at the Wings of Eagles Museum in Horseheads, NY she was sold to Martin Aviation in Orange County. Now she resides on a tarmac at the John Wayne Airport in Costa Mesa, just a mile or two from a good friend of mine.

I actually found Fuddy Duddy using Bing Maps. It was like seeing an old friend as I zoomed in and saw that distinctive wing shape emerge from the planes parked around it.

 

The knowledge that Fuddy Duddy was so close made me both happy and sad. I think it’s cool that I could go see her if I wanted to and it’s conceivable that I might even be able to talk my way into a ride-along one day. I also feel for the air enthusiasts in the Genesee Valley. That aircraft was a great source of pride. I don’t know all the circumstances under which they sold it but I know it must have been very difficult for a lot of people to see it take off and from that airstrip for the last time. It must have been harder still when it left Horsheads, New York for Southern California. It just doesn’t seem right to me that VB-17 297400/Fuddy Duddy/K*E isn’t in Upstate New York anymore.

Some days it’s hard to accept that Joel T Johnson 01-29-65 doesn’t live in Upstate NY anymore either. Due to a series of circumstances, I haven’t even visited home in two-and-a-half years!

Many years before I moved to LA, the song “Hollywood Nights” by Bob Seeger always bothered me. Especially the line “He spent all night staring down at the lights of LA, Wondering if he could ever go home”.

Of course he could go home, why couldn’t he just go home, visit, move, whatever... ‘Can’t go home’; get in your car and drive stupid!

After having lived here for a few years, I heard that song again and it hit me like a ton of scripts (Hollywood bricks). Against any prediction, I had actually moved to Hollywood and taken up with a beautiful woman. Even though she had not left me, I understood the song now, I got that line that had pissed me off so many years ago.

As a result of my decision to move, I have changed. I’m no longer Rochester Joel, or Canandaigua Joel. No matter how much I love and miss my homeland I have become someone else: California Joel; “Malibu Joelee” if you will.

My snow shovel calluses are long gone, I bristle at cold I once laughed at, my skin is somewhat tan year-round and my Rochester accent has faded considerably (though a nasal “A” still escapes me once in a while I’m told).

On more than one occasion I have even used the word ‘dude’ and I wasn’t even joking.

I miss it my old home and the people who I know there. I miss the Lillac Festival, Red Wings games and Abbott’s Custard. I miss a place where four lanes of traffic seems like a lot. I miss My hometown: Canandaigua, the lake, the courthouse, Rossi Music, Cheshire, the Company Store. I miss my wonderful parents and the house I was raised in.

I miss Wegmans dammit!

Even though I love where am and couldn’t do half as well with my job skills anywhere else right now, I have this have a fantasy of one day being bi-coastal. Not just coming home for visits but reclaiming my New Yorkerness by hangin with my Upstate bretheren for months at a time, not days.

In any case, my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary is this August and, if I have to walk there on stilts I will be there for it. I am also going to be playing some of my original music at one or more venues in the Rochester/Syracuse area; exactly where and when I don’t know yet.

I have been rehearsing my songs and will be posting a video of my efforts with a different song each week. This first video you may have already seen on Facebook. It is a little humbling for me to watch as there are still many things to work on but that’s the reason I am making these.

I don’t know if my old friend “Fuddy Duddy will ever fly the skies of New York like I know I will, but here’s hopin’.

Hmmm. Maybe writing a song about her will help grease my way into at least riding along on a flight!

The Mechanics and Maintenance of Motivation

Greetings floggers.

Read on to get the reference.

Yesterday during my hill climb, I paused at the top, as I always do, to sit on the bench and enjoy the view and—let’s be honest—to catch my breath.

A family walked up behind me. A four-year-old child asked his parents “what’s he doing?”. The mom was doing her best to indulge this question-asking period with out letting on that it annoyed her.

It was clear it was beginning to annoy her.

“He’s relaxing and enjoying the view,” she said.

I turned instinctually because I recognized the voice. I found myself looking point blank at Nicole Sullivan from Mad TV. On the trail, or anywhere around here you don’t have to recognize a celebrity to know they are one some level. All you need is the look.

The look is different that what you might get if you glanced casually and a mere mortal. A celebrity—even if he was only had one line in that made-for-TV-movie eight years ago—will look back with an expectation of recognition. They may be dreading it, hoping for it, or both, but the look of expectation is there. Ms. Sullivan had that look as if she had let out some secret just by answering her son’s question.

Nicole playing "Antonia" on Mad TV

I pretended not to recognize her but between my instinctual glance and ‘the look’ everyone involved knew I had. Except the four-year-old who was only aware of his Mom’s general discomfort in public but not enough to stop him from asking every question he could think of.

“What are those dogs doing down there?”

“Making puppies.”

My hill-climbs have been only two or three times a week lately. I could partly blame a pulled muscle in my calf but I’m also finding it hard to get myself out there in the mornings. I’m not where I was at the height of my boot camp experiment, but then I knew I wouldn’t be. I have come to accept that I am a swinging pendulum, a hunter that sprints and rests instead of making the steady progress of a farmer.

I have known this about myself for years but I always thought of it as a character flaw, something about myself that I had to fix, change. I don’t deny that I can use improvement in many areas but in the past when I worked against the grain of my personality I always seemed to end up where I started and frustrated to boot. I felt I had failed and effectively gave up allowing myself to go months without exercise or picking up my bass and singing even. Now I try to work with my nature instead of against it. I get more done and end up liking myself more.

Always a plus.

Like being on a swing, if you kick at the right moment you'll go higher but at the same time it’s obsurd to try to remain at the apex of the swing. Being ‘up’ is caused by the momentum and the back-and-forth is caused the gravity of my personality. To get anywhere, I have to work with it and except the to-and-fro.

Six steps forward, four back. Even if I’m not doing as much, I’m further ahead than when I started with some better habits in place.

Another way to look at it is to think of a combustion engine, starting with a single cylinder, two-stroke engine. The piston is forced down by a burst of energy as the fuel mixture combusts then it returns back up to expel the exhaust. The momentum of the crankshaft keeps the piston moving even though the actual power occurs only through roughly one quarter of the cycle. With a single cylinder engine the toque (turning power) is relatively low and it’s easier to stall.

A four cylinder engine with, it’s pistons firing one after the other in succession, is under direct power at more points throughout the rotation of the crankshaft even if it’s a four-stroke engine (the piston moving up and down twice between firings).

Perhaps my cylinders could be different partitions of my life and my goals. While my exercise piston is in the power section of its stroke, perhaps the music recording is expelling exhaust, and yet another part of my life is drawing fuel and preparing to fire.

Obviously, any endeavor requires a certain amount of consistency and unlike an engine, different areas of life don’t have timing chains linking them together with optimum efficiency. I’ve found I simply can’t be ‘on’ all the time but there is a season to every purpose and I can maintain forward momentum if I work in concert with my own cyclical nature. In fact, I find that if I work hard on, say, a certain exercise on the bass, then put the instrument away altogether for a week or so, when I return to it the exercise comes together like magic.

The trick is not to let the engine stall. This is where I often fall off my game.

Engines, like fire, need three things: fuel, air and ignition. To work this analogy further to death: Having dreams like hearing my music on the radio or being booked at a festival, can be thought of as the fuel. Having urgent and specific goals, like weighing under 200 pounds by July 17^th, can be thought of as air.

The crankshaft and flywheel can be compared to habits. Even if the fuel and air are taken away briefly or I’m not firing on all my cylinders, my habits can keep me going for a short time before my dreams and goals, my fuel and air, return.

The ignition spark is harder to quantify and therefore harder to achieve consistently. It is that voodoo world of motivation that baffles me at times. Some people are driven by an overwhelming sense of inadequacy or a void in their life, some by a painful experience. Some people are especially driven by impressing members of the opposite (or same) sex. I cannot say these are prominent factors for me nor is a great desire for material gain. I am generally a pretty happy guy which can be kind-of a detractor in the “Type-A” department.

Like an engine, ignition doesn’t just occur once. I have to remind myself why I sacrifice having a ‘normal’ life, why I scrimp and save, why I have never allowed my day gigs to become satisfying full-fledged careers. I have to remind myself of my dreams, my spark, everyday. Not just to read them on a list but to imagine the feeling of being on a stage before a crowd a people that actually paid to see me. I vividly imagine when a case of my CDs are delivered to my door, the excitement of opening that box and pulling out the first disc and holding it in my hand.

I’m a fairly passionate person so I don’t have to dig deep to find my spark but also in keeping with us passionate types I have to work extra hard to maintain it throughout my cycles.

When it comes loosing weight and being in good health, I am motivated by a fear of making my young wife a widow someday and not wanting my appearance or apparent age to be a reason for someone not to give my music a chance.

When it comes to music I feel I have something unique, God given, and frankly, pretty awesome to share with the world. Once in a while I listen to my mixes and even scratch tracks of ideas and I think: this stuff could be really good if I can produce it professionally within my budget. Someone out there needs to hear this. There is someone who has yet to hear their favorite music: mine. Even if it’s just one pimply faced kid in Idaho, or a bored homemaker in Harrogate, UK, or a hip graphic artist in Stockholm, or a street vendor in Bangkok, I owe it to them to get this music from my head to their ears.

I’m not immune to a thirst for a little glory and recognition either. My goal posts have changed a lot since I was a teenager but I still want to be known for something I created. I want to hear the name “Canandaigua” (my hometown) mentioned by people in the music industry who’ve never been there. I want to inspire bass players everywhere that they don’t always have to be content supporting the endless guitar solo of popular music, that they can step to the front of the stage and find a unique voice in the bass that no one has heard before.

I want a Wikipedia entry dammit!

Delusional maybe? That’s one way of putting it, but the folks in this town who make it through this cut throat and cynical industry have a healthy dose of delusion. They might have a reasonable plan of action but they must have unreasonable expectations.

You know; dreamers.

Dreams of recognition, the delusions of glory and even higher ambitions of doing something noble tend to split the scene pretty early on though. When the chips are down and I am looking for reasons to quit, it’s anger and the fear of humiliation that keep me going.

A few years ago, I was on the road with a band traveling literally to every corner of the country. I was not making much money, playing my own music or even music that I loved but I was happy that I was finally a full-time musician. Then, out of the blue they fired me. “We need a ‘real’ singer” they said. I asked for a period in which I could work harder at it and have a chance to improve since this was the first time they mentioned it. They had already made up their minds, and my replacement had already been hired.

Few things in my life have angered me more. Even now it is difficult to write about it without getting nasty. Audra was even more livid than I was. In the sleepless weeks that followed, I thought of one thing: seeing to it that that band becomes famous, not for their performances but for being the idiots that fired Joel T. Johnson because they didn’t think he could sing.

I bought a book and CD on voice training and started working hard at singing. I started treating it like a serious craft and confronting the psychological blocks and fears about singing I had developed in Jr. high school. I am still on that journey but I am ten times the singer I was then. I can sing higher, stronger, longer and with better tone and more nuance.

That’s just stage one though. My singing skills won’t be rubbing anyone’s nose in it if I have not achieved some level of notoriety.

Being fired like that may have been one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Doubters are worth their weight in gold too. Friends and acquaintances alike who simply, and even reasonably, don’t think I stand a chance. Some are vocal about it, some you can just tell. Most are well-meaning but they all keep me going. I can’t let them be right.

“Behind every successful man is an amazed mother-in-law.”

This blog itself offers me a way to place myself on the line, to make myself accountable. It’s easy to sweep a challenging goal under the carpet if nobody knew it was there to begin with.

Again, I don’t make music to get even or prove myself to anyone but those things can sure help when I feel like giving up, when my pendulum is on its down-swing.

I need to keep all these motivators handy in my tool belt and use them at the appropriate moments: reading my goals every day, remembering my lofty artistic ambitions as well as vividly imagining the social and material rewards, narrowing my eyes at those who’ve cast me off and keeping myself accountable to you, my readers and blog followers.

Would that be “blollowers?” How ‘bout “floggers?”

Perhaps the next time I run into Nicole Sullivan I be giving her the look… even if it’s just because Jocquin Phoenix had started going gray it was harder to tell us apart.

My Life in LA, Part III, My Neighborhood

I have lived in my where I am for the past eleven years. Mann’s Chinese Theater (originally Grauman’s) , The Kodak Theater and the Walk of fame are a mile away in one direction with the Hollywood Bowl just a bit farther, the Sunset Strip and the spots where John Belushi and River Phoenix drew their last breath are a mile or so in the other. The houses that “Halloween” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” were filmed at are just a few blocks away (practically across the street from each other). The famous Route 66, though only a historic designation of Santa Monica Boulevard anymore, passes a block to the south on its final leg to the ocean. The building manager where I live quit his job because he got a better gig playing “Al” on “Home Improvement” (long before I moved in).

It’s a place like any other; people live and work, kids go to school, garbage is collected, shopkeepers display their wares and do psychic palm readings… Written, financed, produced, and distributed is entertainment that is experienced every minute of every day around the globe.

We live in Hollywood: ‘Tinsel Town’ La La Land, Hollyweird, Hollyhood…  All, and none, of what you’ve heard, is true. It is the center of the entertainment world, even though all but one of the major studio lots are located somewhere else. It’s a mecca of modern-day mythology. Dreams become concepts then images on a screen and eventually become real in the flesh; at least if you consider some out-of-work actor dressed as Superman or Chewbacca and taking pictures with tourists on Hollywood Boulevard ‘real’. Those lines of reality and fantasy are deliberately blurred a bit round these parts; it’s what we do.

 

Tourists

I can’t even tell you the number of times I have been walking down the street to have a car stop and ask me how to get to the Hollywood Sign. These are difficult directions to give because you can’t “go to” the Hollywood Sign, just to places where you can see it, and some better than others.

The truth is, secretly, I am a tourists too, along with many of the folks who have lived here for years. Even though we all follow the secret code of acting cool and detached, we get a kick out of seeing a celeb or driving past the tell-tale signs of a film location with its long line white trucks and trailors, road cones and the obligatory semi-retired LAPD motorcycle cop who has a screenplay of his own.

Everyone does.

Yes, everyone.

It’s interesting to wonder what band has their tour bus parked outside of Guitar Center today. It’s fun to be watching a movie and see a location that you know, or the reverse; to be watching life and see something from a movie you know. I love that when they pave Hollywood Boulevard they add crushed glass to the asphalt so that it sparkles. I enjoy seeing some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen buying eggs and frozen pizza at the store.

 I did not take this awesome picture, I don't know who did

All shallow pursuits I’ll grant you. Bookshelves and deep thoughts can be anywhere, but there’s only one place in the world quite like this.

Music Stores

As a teenager back in Upstate New York, when I first got my driver’s license there was no question about where my first solo flight would take me; I picked up a couple friends and we made the pilgrimage to ‘The Great, Great’, “House of Guitars” in Rochester, NY (Irondequoit really). Where I live now—on my block—there are six, seven, eight… nine music shops! This includes two major chains, two stores for companies that ‘have no stores’ (Carvin and Boogie), a quaint shop that only deals in wind instruments, a guitar repair shop and everything in between. Sadly, there used to be more, including a tux rental/dry cleaner that had a used record shop in the back past the pressing machines and a funky used equipment place that could have doubled as a museum.

There’s also the Sunset Grill right next to Guitar Center… yes, the Sunset Grill from the song.  The original has been torn down and rebuilt since Don Henley hung out there, but there are still music celebrities purported to be sighted there.

The Russians Are C… Oh Never Mind, They’re Already Here

The though there is a smattering of ethnic groups and a large Hispanic presence everywhere in LA, our neighborhood might be called Russia Town or Little Moscow but it doesn’t seem like the Russians care what it’s called. To them it’s just Hollywood, the place where they settled after the fall of the Soviet Union. They arrived at a time when everyone else was moving out of Hollywood. What did they care, they didn’t have to wait in line to get toilet paper anymore, it’s all good. The Russians may not have a strong allegiance to their mother country but they have a strong and tight community amongst themselves. The local park is always filled with old men playing chess and backgammon. Entire families will take up the better part of an apartment building.

Perhaps living under communism for years creates a general distrust but I have to say, I’ve never found them to be particularly friendly, especially the older ones, even for a big city. I once walked into a Russian Bakery just to experience the flavors of my neighborhood. Immediately, I felt eyes upon me like I was a skinny guy walking into a biker bar wearing a grey suit, high water pants and a red bow tie.

Not only was it obvious that I was an outsider (even before I spoke), it was clear I was not exactly welcome. I never went back. Another time I saw a nicely dressed old man pissing in the street like it was nothing.

On the East side of Hollywood is Thai Town and Little Armenia. Little Ethiopia is not far to the south and even closer is a rather large orthodox Jewish community.

Crime

Crime in Hollywood seems to be more myth and reality in the minds of those who don’t live here. Folks from my wife’s conservative hometown, just an hour or so away, react with horror when they learn we live where we do. Perhaps they think we have to dodge bullets on our way to the store and pass through lines of prostitutes to get to our front door. Like anywhere in LA, manicured suburban lawns, twenty million dollar mansions, and run down apartment buildings on the LAPDs frequent flyer program are all a stone’s throw from one another. Crime is a reality everywhere, yet I have only been robbed once in my time here and that was by someone I knew (or so I thought). By contrast, my house in Rochester, NY was robbed (by intruders) twice in my first five years there.

Drugs

As everyone knows, it’s nearly as easy to find meth in rural Iowa as I would presume it to be here in Hollywood. One difference worth noting is that social attitudes about marijuana are considerably more relaxed in Southern California. So far, we are still in prohibition and people are arrested for possession all the time, but from what I’ve seen the taboo stigma the pot has in the East is much diminished here when it exists at all.

Prostitution

Things have been cleaned up considerably in the last ten years but I’m sure with a keen eye one could find a ‘date’ if one looked hard enough. Here’s a general rule one might find handy around here: If you want a girl prostitute, Sunset Boulevard is a safe bet. If you’re on Santa Monica Boulevard chances are you going to get a boy prostitute (no matter how much like a girl or a woman he looks).

Clubs

There are more clubs, strip clubs and bars in Hollywood than you can shake a stick at. Since, outside playing music, I don’t do very much of that brand of stick shaking (blame age, prudishness and, most importantly, broke-ishness) you’ll have to consult someone else’s blog for that intel. It is interesting that, when I am coming home at 2AM from a music gig outside of Hollywood, instead of finding quiet streets, I find a rush hour that rivals a Friday at 5:30PM.

Restaurants

Because it so competitive, it’s not hard to find great food for very little money and anything in the world is available if you know how to find it; from vegan to steakhouse, from Thai food to Tunisian, from five star restaurants to two dollar burger taco stands and nearly any national franchise you can imagine. Some our favs just in our hood, Moun of Tunis (Tunisian complete with belly dancers), Canter’s Deli (a deli/diner that makes you feel like you just went back to the seventies when most of their present servers were hired), Zankou Chicken (Mediterranean rotisserie), Toi (“Rockin’ Thai”), El Compadre (Mexican), Pinks Hots, Inn-N-Out (burgers), Fatburger, Gate of India, Sunset Thai, Palms (Thai).

Expense

It’s not cheap living here, but it’s not Manhattan either. Rent for a two bedroom in a decent building runs from $1,300 to $2,000. A gallon of organic milk will run you almost $7 and it costs a couple to a few hundred bucks a year just to register a modest car. Gas is at its priciest here, around 20 cents higher than the national average. Salaries are generally higher too though so there’s just more money going through my fingers it seems.

Home Sweet Home

We like it here. Sure it’s not perfect but where is? There’s a nice park across the street with tennis courts and nice farmer’s market every Monday. I’m six miles from where I work, I’m right near a bigger park less than a mile away where I run and walk up a 1,300Ft mountain several times a week. We’re minutes from the beach. It’s pretty neat to me that people come from around the world to buy souvenirs, take pictures, to live and follow their dreams where I live. And that right there is probably my favorite part of living where I do; I know that I am in the company of dreamers.
 

Ten Things That Should Be Taught In School But Aren’t

I realize I promised Part II of “My Life in LA”. It will have to wait because you want pictures—yes, you do—and I did not have the pictures that YOU need so now I'm going to have to go out and take them which I will do this week. -Chah, it's like totally your fault and everything!

In the meantime here’s something else. My soap box please…

Ten Things That Should Be Taught In School But Aren’t

1. Critical Thinking or The Difference Between Truth and Advertising

There’s a fool born every minute and they’re being marketed to on all fronts not long afterwards. Education on assessing the value, relevance and reliability of all the information being dumped on us at an early age should be standard. Sure, kids get some street smarts on their own, but they are also buying a lot of stupid sh*t.

2. Personal Finance

There are hundreds of websites, blogs, Podcasts, TV and radio shows on personal finance. How many high school courses go much beyond balancing a checkbook?

3. Sustainable Living

Ok let’s forget about whether global warming is real for a second. Just think of the Earth as a tank of water. There’s a spigot at the bottom for what we use and supply pipe leading into the tank representing what the environment replenishes naturally over time. Do the math; if we are using more from the spigot that the supply pipe is replenishing, we are living on borrowed time be it fifty years or five hundred. The fact that this simple reality of give and take is so misunderstood and misrepresented is reason alone why it should be standard curriculum.

4. Your Kid is Your Kid, Not Your Master, Your Slave or Your Buddy

Should all the stuff I’m talking about be the job of public schools, of the GOVERNMENT??!?! Cue Star Wars “Empire Theme”. Where are the parents? Where indeed? Maybe the fact that we don’t teach effective principles of parenting before they start popping out puppies is one of the reasons we end up having to wipe everyone’s hinny for everything else?

5. Stress Management and Relaxation

Anyone can agree this has become a life skill that can make the difference between health and disease, between a pleasant productive life and one of misery. For that reason alone it should be standard curriculum.

6. Conflict Resolution

Everything we really needed to know we should have learned in kindergarten. If we did, we forgot it all by high school. I see so many adults deal with conflict three of the wrong ways: fighting with childish defensiveness and passive-aggressive stubbornness, or acquiescing to avoid confrontation with bitter resentment festering afterwards. There are some do’s and don’ts, skills if you will, to dealing with conflict, both professionally and when the cops show up because we need professionals to defuse our domestic disputes. The cops had that class, why didn’t we?

7. Understanding the Opposite Sex

Speaking for the males, we have a tendency to study the inner workings womankind just to the point that gets us laid (or not), then grudgingly take out the garbage and bring home flowers once a year to maintain. Marriage statistics make it obvious that this is not cutting it. Truth be told, I might not have believed anything my teachers had to say about relationships back in school, but it might have saved plenty heartaches and headaches even if I crashed and burned a couple times before I realized that perhaps my teachers actually knew what they were taking about.

8. Discipline & Leadership

This is a pipe dream I know. Even the military is too PC to teach true discipline at present. Discipline doesn’t have to come from being screamed at by a drill sergeant but it ain’t gunna come from wiping a kids nose for him and telling him he’s special either. I don’t think discipline should be a curriculum, it should be an expectation from school and parents a like. Leadership on the other hand can be. Like music, not everyone is going to be a Rachmaninov of leadership but everyone can handle learning a few scales. Understanding leadership doesn’t just make better leaders, it makes better teams.

9. Manners and Why Bother

Manners in some respects may be outdated and old fashioned but why is it that we let them collect that dust in the first place? Our tech-driven lives may have outlived ‘guys always paying on a date’ but nothing will ever outlive the relevance of “please” and “thank you” even network protocols utilizes “please”, “thank you” and even ‘handshakes’; networking simply wouldn’t work without it. Respect, whole reason for manners seems to have been the baby thrown out with the bathwater. What more basic social principle is there? Respect for others, respect for varying opinions, respect for property, respect for differences in race and background, respect for one’s self. It’s not easy to teach respect but if we teach and insist on manners, respect will follow. Can you imagine a world where this was commonplace?

10. Dreaming Big/Setting Goals

Overwhelmingly, the most successful people in the world know what they want, and have it written down along with a plan to achieve it. Any questions? Class dismissed.

Maybe all this stuff shouldn’t the job of public schools. We’re having a hard enough time keeping sports, music and art programs alive which all offer invaluable lessons in confidence, character and life skills far beyond making music, art and tackles. All I know is that some aspects the post war education system designed around the work-for-forty-years-for-the-same-employer paradigms is churning out ill-equip kids and ultimately an ill-equip society.

I’m out of school now it’s too late for me. I’m already just an ornery old man who occasionally complains in his blog.

Or is it?

My Life in LA, Part II, What Makes LA, LA

Some of the things that, to me, make LA, LA.

Roach Coaches

You can find a good New York Pizza in LA but it ain’t easy. On the other hand, some pretty decent Mexican food can find you if you wait around long enough. They’re called roach coaches, step vans converted to mobile kitchens of questionable sanitation and occasionally exceptional tacos. They show up at work sites, industrial parks and office parking lots blowing their distinctive horns to summon hungry, mostly Mexican folks out of the woodwork. 

 

Mexican Food

Like Superman on Krypton, in New York (state) I was always a culinary weakling. I was always getting yucky pickles and mustard kicked in my face at the delis and sub shops. Here in Mexican-food friendly LA my tongue has superhuman strength. When asked what I want on my burrito, I puff up my chest, sweep my cape off my shoulders, place my hands on my hips and bravely say “everything!”.

My victory is short-lived because whenever folks who speak English as a second language call out my name with my order, it’s always “Jo-el”, in my book, a girls name.

Celebrities

It’s not terribly often that I see celebrities out and about (not counting my work on studio lots— as I write this I’m sitting across the stage from three people you would surely recognize). I don’t go to the same clubs (or any clubs), I don’t frequent the boutiques on Robertson and Beverly Boulevards and I can’t see through tinted glass. It does happen though that I see someone in real life that I recognize from the screen. When it does it’s usually someone I can’t place right away. Weeks or months will go by until it hits me what movie or show I’ve seen them in. In my experience New York City is a much better place to seen big celebs walking down the street.

If one were inclined to actively hunt celebs in LA they aren’t too hard to find if you know where to look. I’m just not the right guy to ask.

Freeways

Freeways are a way of life everywhere in the US. In LA however they are a way of life the way that breathing or eating is. Directions are often given as a series of freeway exchanges. Every one of the twenty or so freeways in LA have a word name—The San Diego Freeway, The Pomona Freeway, The Hollywood Freeway—in casual conversation however, only the number followed by “the” are used: “Take the 118 to the 5 to the 170 to the 10 to the 710.

Driving and Traffic

LA is a big city and drivers in-general are bound to be more aggressive (read rude) than say, Minot North Dakota. Add to this the narcissism of the Beemer driving Hollywood types that actually believe they own the road and ‘what the hell are you doing on it?’ However, compared to Eastern big cities, car culture prevails in LA and the average person understands that they will need a break themselves at some point and are surprisingly likely to give you one when you need it. It also seems that, at least most people are aware that excessive laying on the horn accomplishes little and has, on rare occasions, gotten people shot in LA.

Traffic can be a major pain. People work around it in a variety of ways. One is to time your trips if possible to avoid the major rush hours. The result of this is that the freeways can be moderately busy at any hour of the day and construction is typical at night so delays are possible at 3AM too. When it comes to surface streets everyone in LA has their secret short cut. I have mine, but I’ll never talk!

People who commute from thirty or more miles from where they work have to spend hours looking at taillights every day. Radio, books-on-tape and blue tooth earpieces are their survival tools. In reality I’m sure there are a lot of folks texting and watching DVDs illegally.

The only things that bugs me about LA drivers in general is that they seem to have an aversion to using turn signals and if it’s raining, some of them loose there minds and start driving like little old ladies in a blizzard.

Car Chases

LA has no NFL team. That’s okay, our spectator sport of choice is the police car chase. It’s wrong to make someone’s flee from justice some form of Romanesque entertainment and wrong to encourage these fifteen minute celebrities into this ultimate attention-seeking behavior but reserve judgment until you’ve lived here and been sucked into the vortex of a police car chase yourself. 

It’s positively electrifying! This is not because of action—it is minute-to-minute one of the most mind numbingly boring things you’ll ever see, coupled with the inane improv the news folks offer as color/commentary—it is the potential of seeing some spectacular crash or wacked-out behavior in real-time that keeps your eyes glued to the screen and surfing the other channels for the best angle. Even cooler is seeing a chase enter your neighborhood and splitting your time between the screen and watching the fleet of helicopters out your window.

I never thought I would be the type to engage in such behavior but I’ve spent many happy hours riveted to these lo-brow spectacles.

It’s actually been a while since I watched a car chase. Did they go out of vogue when I wasn’t paying attention or have I just been away from the TV that much?

Helicopters and The Homeless

Why did I lump these in together? Alliteration aside, there are lots of both and they mostly go in circles.

Oh I'm terrible!

Four times in my time in LA have I had a police helicopter briefly shine its powerful “Night Sun” light in my bedroom window. LAPD, I once read, operates 9 aircraft from the top level of their downtown parking garage. Living near Sunset boulevard and not too far from the Sunset Strip it’s not unusual to hear a “ghetto bird” as they’re sometimes called, circling above some sort of police action on the ground, usually a high flight risk traffic stop.

I can tell police helicopters from news helicopters by ear. It's easy: news helicopters often hover in one spot, ghetto birds circle continuously for tactical reasons. One can also tell how sensational the news being covered is by the number of news aircraft parked in the sky.

The last figure I heard about the homeless around five years ago was that there were ninety thousand of them in LA. In my own personal experience it seems as though I see less sleeping bags and shopping carts on the sidewalks of Hollywood these days. I did have to run around someone sleeping on the sidewalk a couple of weeks ago. I see just as many if not more people with signs at intersections asking for money or work these days. There is controversy over how to deal with these folks and how many of them have nice cars parked around the corner.

The mild weather and politics as well as the allure of Hollywood have been attributed to attracting homeless people (and perhaps also the helicopters) to the area.

Weather

My old joke (and getting older all the time) about LA vs. Upstate NY weather is that the day I arrived in LA I looked up and said. “Wow, look at that, the clouds are all blue!”

It’s true that the skies in LA are almost always void of clouds. The exceptions to this near ‘rule’ are often before 10AM as morning overcast skies and occasional fog are ‘burned off’ by the sun. Summers are a good deal hazier than winters. Ironically, June, the month that in New York has the most California-like weather, has a reputation in LA for being the opposite. “June gloom” it’s known as. This is something I didn’t notice myself until I heard it talked about. The definition of “gloom” here compared to the standards of anyone from Upstate New York or the Pacific Northwest is a little laughable.

Statistically, LA gets around 40 days a year that yield some rain. I always enjoy these days because of the variety and the resulting old-home coziness that is rare in LA. I may go close to a year without seeing any lightning or hearing any thunder.

Once, Audra and I pulled back the curtains sat awake in bed in the wee hours of the morning to enjoy a rare thunderstorm that had awoken us.

Temperature fluctuation is less of a month to month phenomenon as it is a day to night phenomenon. This is effectively a desert and nearly every night year round dips into the 60s or lower. The overall temperature does vary over the year and weather reports sometimes actually include snow, which is reported by altitude more than by region.

Seasons

I was under the mistaken impression before I moved to Southern California that it has no seasons. There are indeed four seasons: Drought, Wild Fire, Mudslide and Earthquake.

Waiting for laugh track to die down…

Maybe I haven’t lived in LA long enough to feel as though there are real seasons as my native Californian wife insists there are. It’s a little cooler in the winter, a little warmer in the summer (unless you live in the San Fernando Valley where it’s always about ten degrees hotter), there’s a week or two of rain in February and there are six trees in Beverly Hills whose leaves turn brown and fall off for about a week in January.

To me a season must apparent in a photograph. Take an outdoor picture in LA, show it to someone and ask them when it was taken.

“Daytime” they’ll tell you.

Earthquakes

My first significant quake in California was over eleven years ago. Late at night the sliding closet doors began to rattle. I thought it was the cats playing but as I armed myself with a shoe the sound increased and I could feel the bed moving up and down and side to side.

Though it was undeniable what was happening I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. I felt a kind of all-consuming fear I had never experienced before. There was a force that was moving me, the room, the building and the entire city of Los Angeles. It’s one thing to understand scientifically, it’s quite another to confront it and feel it, not knowing how strong it will get and how long it will last.

Every quake I’ve experienced after that I’ve felt that primal fear less and less. The last quake I felt I was pretty non-chalant about.


There are some quakes that no one is nonchalant about. I did not live here during the big Northridge Quake in ‘94 but I know many people who were.

One friend of mine was trying to get out of bed during the quake only to have the wall next to the bed lunge at him and knock him back down each time he made it to his feet. They say entire city was a chorus of car alarms and fires broke out all over the Valley.

The one thing everyone says about that quake is how they thought it would never end. The violent shaking lasted for 45 seconds. I can assure you this is an eternity in earthquake time.

I would love to hear more Northridge stories from my LA friends or anything about LA you feel I’ve neglected/misrepresented, in comments here or on Facebook.

Droughts, Wildfires & Mudslides

I joked about the seasons but these three disasters really are seasonal. One leads to another in a cycle; the summer droughts dry the fuel (plants and bushes) for the fall wildfires and the bare patches of land left by the fires can cause winter mudslides when the rains come. The same rains that cause the slides also cause accelerated growth in the plant life which creates more dry fuel for the following season’s fires.

This cycle was going on thousands of years before anyone lived here. Early explorers referred to the LA basin as the valley of smoke.

The fires get lots of live news coverage as well which are technically more exciting to watch but somehow don’t have the addictive quality of car chases.

You can be fined for failing to clear brush from around your home in LA County.

Classic Cars

It’s no accident that so many of what I list here has to do with driving and cars. LA is cars and freeways, boulevards and parking lots. There are more registered cars in Los Angeles than men women and children.

In Upstate New York, where I’m from, there are classic cars. If you’re lucky you can see them out for a drive on Sunday afternoons in the summer or on their way to a car show on a trailer. Only a serious collector or enthusiast with a large garage or barn would attempt such a hobby. In LA however many classic cars are on the street and driven by regular folks as their everyday cars. There’s no salt on the roads to eat them away and there’s a world of inexpensive spare parts available. I work with a guy who drives to work in a 1970 Volkswagen Beetle. He bought it new!

There used to be a ‘60s Rolls Royce parked on the street in my neighborhood. Apparently the locks were broken because the owner kept a padlock and chain between the front and rear door handles (the handles met in the middle). You don’t have to wait around too long before you will see some amazing high-end exotic cars and one-of-a kind custom freak jobs too.

Only four, or so, miles from where I live is the Peterson Museum. A large privately owned museum dedicated exclusively to… you guessed it: cars.

Los Angeles is something different to every person that experiences it. This is just my little corner. We are among the first to poke fun at ourselves but we know that because there’s something for everyone to hate about LA, there’s also something for everyone to love.

Next week Life in LA, Part III, My Neighborhood

Life in LA Part I, A Drop in the Ocean

When meeting someone new here in LA, it’s perfectly acceptable to break the ice with “So, where are you from.” Even someone who’s lived here all their life will not balk at the question, simply answering “here”. That may be because it’s one of the more remarkable answers.

That being the case, my story is not at all a new one—arriving in LA and the culture shock that ensues. Moving to Canada—sort-of a foreign country—would have been less of an adjustment.

Measuring by the expatriate population, Los Angeles is Canada’s 4th largest city.

This transition is reflected in the music of the countless English rock bands who all seemed to move to LA in the late seventies and early eighties. “Breakfast in America” by Supertramp, “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac, “Aliens Ate My Buick” by Thomas Dolby. It seems everyone has their just-moved-to-LA album, just-moved-to-LA stand up comedy set, just-moved-to-LA drive-by shooting…

Everyone has an idea about LA and Hollywood before they get here that must be reconciled against the reality of the place once they arrive. Like most folks, my idea of LA came from TV and the movies: The classic low shot of a convertible cruising down a boulevard lined with rows of tall palms against a solid blue sky;  The Hollywood premier with the searchlights crossing the sky; the post-apocalyptic futuristic gangland where they play by their own rules… and it’s always nighttime somehow.

The first time I saw LA it was from the air. On my first trip in 1986 I was looking out the plane window during our initial descent to see desert give way to mountains then the mountains give-way to a medium sized city that I later learned was San Bernardino. I expected that city to end at some point separated from the next community by open spaces.

But it never did!

For seventy miles from San Bernardino to our touchdown at LAX, the developed space of residential, industrial and commercial land sustained itself the whole way without taking a breath. The vastness of LA was almost overwhelming.

California is home to lower 48’s largest and smallest counties: San Francisco at only a few miles and San Bernardino which stretches from bordering LA County clear to Arizona.

I could also see the Hollywood sign in the distance and we flew over that big concrete thing where they film all those car chases.

I later learned it’s called the LA River

Southern California started out like anywhere else, little towns with farmland or scrub desert in between. Then came the post war booms of first the twenties, then the fifties. All those little communities were like globs of cookie dough placed a bit too close together on a baking sheet; eventually they all grew together nearly indistinguishable from one another.

One big ass cookie!

The reality of LA is that it is the world’s largest suburb, or as some people put it “A 500 square mile parking lot interrupted by Seven Elevens."

When I arrived here to live in 1998 the vastness was intimidating in a different way, creeping along in a moving van bumper-to-bumper from San Bernardino to Hollywood for almost three hours. I began to wonder if I was making a mistake.

I was still wondering when I couldn’t find a safe place to park the truck overnight; a truck that contained everything in the world that I owned. LA seemed like a city of locked gates. From parking garages to private residences, everything seemed to have a gate and every gate was closed. The gates were also figurative: I had no job and knew absolutely no one.

Not long after I arrived I was driving on traffic-choked Santa Monica Boulevard on the gritty less fashionable end. It seemed to go on forever. I got this terrible claustrophobic feeling. I felt trapped in the middle of the tens of miles of city and traffic surrounding me in all directions.

That feeling was fleeting though and I experienced it only that once. I was also filled with wonder, a feeling that returns to me often. Here I was in the home of the modern fairy tale, my pen poised to write my own. There was ugliness and beauty everywhere I looked, and I was just a tiny speck in its midst.

It was hard not to feel small, but it was the fairy tale that brought me here and it was the fairy tale usually prevailed. No mistake, I was in the right place.

Next week, Part II of Life in LA, Settling In.

Rocky Diamonds, Not Larry

I received news this week that is not only a rather large financial setback but leaves the prospect for being able to have my album manufactured, let alone promoted, in a pretty dim light.

I’ll be honest, I’m not a happy camper right now. I am working this weekend while Audra and the cats are at her folks for Easter. There are times when I need and enjoy some solitude, but not one of them. It’s even been a little creepy being at home without even the cats. I keep thinking I see one of them stroll by or asleep on the bed.

I woke suddenly around 3AM to other night and was actually a little freaked out because I could not tell what woke me with such a start. Usually, my light-sleeping wife will inform me of what loud noise, or imaginary intruder has stirred me. Normally I would have simply gotten up and checked on said imaginary intruder, grumbling and complaining the whole time and returning to bed with a grumpy ‘I told ya so’. This time, instead of bravely getting up, I lie unmoving, listened intently for several minutes for the imaginary intruder to make his next move.

Boot camp 2.1 has suffered too. Between being busy working through this disaster and my motivation being low and my points (my system for tracking the things I need to be doing and NOT doing) took a serious dive.

Still, I have climbed the mountain several times this week. While at my in-laws earlier this week I ran what might have normally been a daunting hilly 5-mile course in the foothill community of Highland, CA. My mountain training made it seem like a joke and I easily ran the whole way. I even picked up my pace considerably on the return portion partly because it was downhill and partly because a twenty-year-old passed me.

Whippersnapper!

The other good news is that, after my inexplicable weigh gain last week, my weigh-in this morning showed that I am 6 pounds lighter this week and down around 11 pounds overall.

Fear not, I am not going to spend the rest of this blog making saddy boo-boo puppy faces and causing everyone get out the Worlds tiniest violin while I whine and moan.

Instead, I am going to celebrate and promote a couple of friends of mine who happen to have recently released recordings and one who has not.

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Rocky Jackson

I had placed my name on a local online musicians list eight years ago in an effort to get some more paying gigs. I had nearly forgotten about it when several months later I got a call for a gig. It was in Santa Clarita. My only phone number at the time was a company cell phone that had a Santa Clarita area code. As a result, 90% of the jobs and bands I got from that time on called for were the Santa Clarita area—about 35 miles North of LA.

I found myself schlepping my way up there and back countless nights. By the time I got a call from Rocky Jackson, I was loath to add more trips to the land of the canyons. I agreed to listen to some of his music however. It was a mixture of original and blues standards. One particular instrumental caught my ear.

I had really enjoyed playing blues with Ned Lucas back East and I found Rocky’s playing and singing impressive enough to change my tune a little. I agreed to meet Rocky and his drummer at an open mic blues jam in the Valley. We all auditioned for each other on stage in front of an audience of other blues players; professionals, wanna-bes, and ‘you-shoulda-stayed-homes’ alike. It was hurried crowded. I didn’t like the amp I had to play through and it was hard to hear much of anything clearly.

I didn’t feel I did well on the audition, and I didn’t think they did that well either. Between that and the Santa Clarita thing, I told Rocky on the phone later that I thought he should keep looking for a bass player. To my surprise Rocky wasn’t so easily put-off and eventually talked me into a rehearsal.

The dynamic of the rehearsal was quite different that the open mic. The music sounded more like the recording that had attracted me in the first place. I liked the drummer, Eliot “Lee” Witherspoon and his playing immensely—even before he told me I played beautifully. At the rehearsal was a young Hungarian-born harp player (harmonica) who was not at the open mic. He had whittled his not-so-blues-sounding Hungarian name down to “A.C. Blue”. He played great and was also a really nice guy.

A couple years later AC moved to Colorado and was replaced on harp my Micheal Fell who has worked with EVERYBODY. He has a solo album out which tells of his personality: “Michael Fell and his So-called Friends”. He plays on a couple of tunes on my album also.

I came away from the rehearsal with a much better feeling and decided to continue with the band. It meant more schlepping up North but it also would mean some new friends countless gigs and two CD credits to my name both as bass player and graphic designer. I am also Rocky’s Webmaster.

Rocky is a Texan bluesman via Chicago and LA sound and style wise. His singing and  guitar playing have deep feeling and true blues grit. He’s got great blues originals that are both rootsy and have an “LA attitude” as he likes to say. Rocky also indulges in blues classics both on stage and in the studio with reverence and stylistic accuracy.

The band line-up on stage has always been guitar, bass, harp and drums. On his recordings he adds keyboards and sax he and there.

He also pulls out a mean lap steel with a sound that can cure acne… or was that ‘cause’?

Either way, it sounds great.

Rocky’s second CD “Testify” just came out and is available on CD Baby as well has his debut recoding “Squeeze Here”.

Hear samples at:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rockyjackson2

Rocky’s site (the one I built):

http://rockyjackson.com

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Milking Diamonds

Years ago, I was in a singerless band (I didn’t sing lead then). It consisted of two of he best friends I have, or will ever have. Bringing in a fourth member was something we didn’t relish so we eyed Sam French with unfair suspicion when he tapped his chest and pointed to his vocal chords and said matter-of-factly “I got it”.

I wasn’t sure what he meant until he sang. It was clear, powerful and confident.

Yeah, he had it!

For reasons I don’t even remember, we ended up going back to a trio but Sam would get his day years later when two-thirds of our trio helped form “The Great Divide” with Sam on vocals and guitar.

Sam’s ability on guitar seemed to grow exponentially as the band developed. His sound too became an integral part of the band’s sound with its chiming lush atmospheric tones.

Sam was married by this time to a woman of uncommon beauty named Katherine Scholl. She was cool and smart but had never heard her sing. I heard later on that she was doing some singing of her own. If her singing voice is anything like the silky enchanting way she spoke, I thought, we should be in for a treat!

We were in for a treat indeed as you will hear in “Milking Diamonds” the indie project the couple formed with drummer Michael Smith in the Syracuse, NY area.

Listening to this band is like a vacation from the constraints of gravity. Reminiscent of “Cocteau Twins”, “The Chameleons”, and “The Sundays”, it all about atmosphere and Katherine’s heavenly voice. Don’t think for a moment this means there isn’t plenty of momentum to sway to though in Smith’s solid eighties-styled beats.

Sam saves his voice for occasional backing vocals but takes center stage for at least one tune reminding me that he’s still got it.

Check out Milking Diamonds on CDBaby and iTunes:

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/MilkingDiamonds

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Jim Schreck

A third of the aforementioned trio I was in was Jim Schreck. When I was just jamming with my friend Bill in my parents’ basement (bass and guitar) he told tales of this incredible drummer that went to his school. We schemed to steal this guy away from the band he was playing with. Our plan: to play better so we might be up to his standards. In that way Jim Schreck had influenced me before we even met.

Where we did meet was at a school jazz band competition in Bloomfield, NY. I also ran into him a few other places like, by astounding coincidence, in the middle of a Kansas concert.

Finally, we managed to lure Jim into my parent’s basement where he assembled a large Pearl silver drum kit that resembled the International Space Station and from that moment on began to gradually shrink until, after a year or so, it had transmogdified into an ancient red speckle three-piece Ludwig kit that, somehow, he played better on and that sounded more amazing than the big Pearl kit. For instance, he could play as if he had a double bass drum but on a single pedal and single drum...  But without 'machine footing' if you can figure that one out.

Back to the first jam: I was not disappointed. Jim lived up to his legend, and then some. Not only was his playing more original that I had ever heard (or since), it was daring: intricate and simple at the same time and never once lost the prime directive of the all-holy pulse.

Everything we played was magic; all completely improvised non-blues riffs that went on for hours until my parents flicked on and off the basement lights letting us know it was getting late (and that they had had enough of the furniture migrating across the floor in the din. My own playing felt effortless; natural; buoyant.

All roads leading too my present timing and feel as a bass player, a particular strong point in my playing, can be traced back to this jam.

Then we took a break…

Then Jim picked up the guitar…

O… M… F… G!!!

Everything he could do on drums seemed to be tripled on guitar!

Keep him away from my bass!

Yeah you guessed it. I didn’t hear it on that particular day but he also can play bass like nobody’s business and in original ways that have influenced me profoundly to this day.

These days Jim has focused most of his efforts on his first love: guitar. He is not only a schred-meister, but a taste and tone-meister too. He performs solo mostly, utilizing looping to gradually build up gorgeous lush harmonic and textural playgrounds to weave melodies and solos into.

If pressed to compare Jim to some existing entity, some of his influences are Pat Travers, King Crimson, and Alan Holdsworth.

Like myself, Jim’s released recorded material is pending but here is a link to his Youtube channel and videos to give you a taste of what is to come as well as witness his schredolicious virtuosity and pure joy in playing:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jimschreckplays

And a video from elsewhere:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXmnQhw2AtY

By-the-way, Jim’s playing will be featured in at least one of the tunes on my album. And despite claims in the National Inquirer and the Journal of the American Medical Association, he is not, nor has he ever been, Larry.

You can also find all of these folks here in my friends and pages. If you think they’re awesome like I do, let em know!