
__________________

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"Valhalla
of Decadence"
L.A. Rocker Tony Gamble
(left) has been through quite a lot over the past six years,
including album releases, rock tours, and shows at the annual
NAMM conference, where he represents ESP Guitars.
And...oh yeah, there was
that murder, that body found in a trash bag in a dumpster
wearing Tony's watch...
Oh-oh...
Tony Gamble is a RARWRITER
Featured Artist in this edition, where he discusses the book he
is writing on his experiences surrounding a highly publicized
murder case in L.A., his childhood in Malibu, growing up with
the Z-Boys of Dogtown and the children of famous rockers, and
his plans for the future.
Click here to read the Tony
Gamble exclusive.
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Artist
Management Series
Could DIY Mean the End of the
Paternalism that Killed Michael Jackson?
Chris
Daniels (pictured left) has been a frontline performer from
Colorado for three decades and counting. With his band Chris
Daniels & The Kings he has recorded a dozen albums, played
with B.B. King, Uncle Cracker, Blues Traveler, The Neville
Brothers, Delbert McClinton, Sister Hazel, Sheryl Crow, Robert
Cray, Taj Mahal, Al Kooper, Bonnie Raitt, Ziggy Marley, The Fixx,
and many others. His previous bands Magic Music and
Spoons were also important in Colorado music history.
All of those years of performing and
managing his own career have taught Chris a great deal about the
music business, which he has parlayed into an assistant
professorship at the University of Colorado, where he teaches
Music Business classes. Among his acolytes in the classroom have
been Colorado band The Fray.
In this edition, Chris Daniels adds
important insights to RARWRITER.com's
Artist Management Series.
Click here to read his article
on the new "Do It Yourself" ethos that exists among young music
makers. Will their Internet savvy and hands-on approach to
career planning change the way musicians do business? And what
will it mean to the traditional artist management industry?
"Who
Proofreads this Stuff!?!"
Colorado buddy Steve Ignelzi
writes to ask - "Colorado legend 'Christ'
Daniels? Who proof reads this stuff?"
The sharp-eyed bassist of Boulder's
Girls On Top party band, along with other jazz ensembles,
refers to an error in the most recent email blast for
RARWRITER.com that carried this bit of editorial carnage -
"Colorado music legend Christ Daniels,
who also happens to be an assistant professor at the University
of Colorado..."
"Chris was not that
popular..." writes Ignelzi of the errant elevation of Chris to
Christ status. "Maybe, John Lennon and Beatles were..."
Steve's point is well made. Not that
it will likely make any difference, but I promise to do better
or find a proofreader. - RAR

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Trower Drummer
Bill Lordan's Rock Life

Bill Lordan, pictured left,
has been in the high ether of the rock, funk and soul universe
for 40 years. Coming from humble beginnings in Minnesota, Lordan
caught on with soul groups The Amazers and The Esquires,
perfecting his chops at Harlem's Apollo Theatre, the only white
guy in otherwise Black ensembles. Success in that company led to
the big time with Gypsy, The Mystics, Sly and the Family Stone
and the Robin Trower Band.
Bill Lordan, working with
RARWRITER.com contributor Diana Olson, has written his
autobiography, From the Basement to the Coliseum,
charting his long and successful career. They are currently in
negotiations with publishers. Lordan remains an active player,
winning an L.A. Music Award as recently as 2004 for his
compilation album "The Best of BLX" (i.e., the Bill Lordan
Experience).
Click
here to read a brief excerpt from the book and listen to MP3
from his "Best of..." LP.
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Trauma,
Unrest and Need
Something Big Is Coming



by RAR
If social history means
anything at all - and it does, usually more than we can
comprehend as it is happening - we are about to
experience something fresh, new and revitalizing; something
through which the human spirit will be reborn, at some level,
and aspects of living will be reinvented for a new age.
What we may go through to get to
this new place may not be pleasant. In fact, it will likely be
awful.
What will transpire, however,
will inspire generations to come while antiquating the thinking
of generations that have gone before. Mankind will not be
transformed but as a global community we may feel that we
have been.
We will fall under the spell of a
new avatar, who will tap into that channel of communications
that exists incomprehensibly within our human beings and
vibrates at the core of our response to the world we experience.
It happened in
the 1930s, during the ironically dubbed "Great Depression", the
first world-wide socio-economic phenomena in human history,
which ushered in a new age of planetary engagement and
awareness. In that "event" we had the key ingredients of change:
traumatic disruption to the status quo, social unrest including
broad public disillusionment with ideas previously considered
"sacred", and open expressions of need.
We turned on the radio, tuned
into film, and opened our hearts in hopes that our voids would
be filled with something hopeful, imbued with salvation. And
while we met on the battlefields of Europe, Africa, the Pacific
Isles, and Asia, we slaughtered to the sound of an odd
entreatment,
of big bands crashing wildly on brass and skins and melodic
metals, Sinatra stepping forth from Tommy Dorsey's army of sound
to rev up the romance, and build the launch pad of the next
generation, which was pop culture.
It wasn't all for
the good, of course. In electrifying the young people of "the
Greatest Generation", Sinatra and his counterparts paved the way
for a transition to youth culture that had the unfortunate
effect of bidding adieu to some of the greatest contributors of
the first half of the 20th century: George and Ira Gershwin,
Cole Porter, Duke Ellington... Sinatra, to his everlasting
credit, always made it a point to introduce his songs with
references to their composers, their arrangers, and to his
supporting musicians.
The establishment of pop culture,
with its emphasis on youthful themes, became a catalyst itself
in the 1950s, in which trauma took the form of the "Korean
Conflict", there was growing civil unrest in the south, and the
needs of the nation included growing economic disparities
featuring pockets of devastating poverty, and this in a nation
that now stood astride the globe and claimed the 20th as the
"American Century".
This combination of societal
pressures coupled with technological change ushered in "the age
of Elvis", who married visuals with music in a way that changed
the way people expressed themselves thereafter, and in turn
opened the door for "race music" to enter into the panoply of
the new pop culture. Big wheels turning indeed.
Trauma to the new pop culture
world, which by then had become a televised event, came in the
form of a rapid-fire series of bullets discharged in Dealey
Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. It was a crack in
the newly formed cosmic egg, to borrow a title of the times.
Trauma, Unrest and Need, the holy triumvirate of
change, unsettled horsemen on the road to apocalypse, rode us
into the next age, the "Age of Aquarius" whose avatars were The
Beatles, whose spell we have remained under these many years.
Who will it be
now, that the cycle of trauma, unrest and need is upon us anew;
possibly not fully vested yet? The shock may be soon to come,
and it feels unsettling. The trials of life, gnashing of teeth,
rending of hair...it is precursor to what will eventually be,
which will likely be profoundly positive, for hard times tend to
strip humanity to its core, and while this often
reveals the worst in us, the thing that always prevails in the
end is love, the best in us. However dysfunctional we
become as groups and individuals, the one shared aspiration we
have without question is the need to love and be loved. The
Beatles got it right and they produced a brilliant tribute of
sound in celebration of the insight.
Now it is someone else's turn,
someone who is somehow gifted with light the way the previous
avatar's of change were. They will always be artists, rather
than politicians, business people or religious leaders, because
art, and particularly music, transcends all human experience,
speaking uniquely to each and every one of us even as the entire
world hears and shares its sound.
It is magic, and
the next Cosmic Magician is out there somewhere. Maybe this time
this person will
be a Black or an Asian. We haven't seen a female
avatar as yet, but it could be part of what will change.
Whatever color, and whether boy or girl, the person will be as a
Shaman, confident and wise in his or her ways, though likely
without pretension. He or she will be young and it is almost a
certainty that "we" do not know at this time whom he or she is.
Someone does though. Maybe there
are friends who notice a certain flash in someone in their
company that seems other than that coming from anyone else.
There will be charisma and nascent creativity that will start to
grow by staggering bounds. There will be fun and energy. There
will be organic phenomena, like people skipping work to go hear
this agent of change sing and play, drawn to the flame like a
moth to a light, and lines will grow around the block where this
"change artist" sets up to play. And word will get out through
the Internet and social networks, and the message will somehow
obliterate the competing, numbing buzz of those who don't yet
know that they are of a time already past.
They won't have
seen or heard anything like this.
And the spirits and the minds of
people worldwide will be changed through some future event, some
Ed Sullivan moment when some cosmic MC will step before the
cameras to say "Now yesterday and today our theater's been
jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all
over the nation, and these veterans agreed with me that the city
never has seen the excitement stirred by these youngsters
from..."
And the camera's
will pan to the new light, and the world will be born anew.
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The Beatles, 1964, rehearsing
back stage for the "Ed Sullivan Show". There is a nice account
of the story behind the booking of The Beatles for the series of
Ed Sullivan shows they did in early 1964, which introduced them
to American audience, thus bringing "Beatlemania" across the
pond from Britain to the U.S.
Click here to read the back story.
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Robert
Johnson and the Mariachi
RARWRITER.com's
residient musicologist Douglas Strobel has always had an
inordinate fascination with the stories behind every minute
aspect of our cultural history, particularly as it relates to
his favorite music subject, the Country Blues.
The snippet (left) of the famous
R. Crumb cover for the "King of the Delta Blues Singers" LP
that, quite after the fact, introduced iconic bluesman Robert
Johnson to most of the world, is the type of thing that would
capture Doug's attention. He would head off to the library to do
a little research the old fashioned pre-computer era way,
reading books on arcane topics, which would tell him about guys
like those depicted in the brilliance of the R.Crumb drawing.
This edition, Douglas Strobel
contributes "Robert
Johnson and the Mariachi" (click here to read).
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Stuff We Missed
While Away
As regular visitors to
RARWRITER.com no doubt know, this site has been paralyzed for
weeks while fighting off invasions of viruses that had us tagged
for avoidance by the watchdogs at Google. In the time it took to
overcome the security threats we missed some events we would have
otherwise shouted out about. Here are a few things that happened
in our absence.


Steve Conn and Chuck
Rainey Play Portland Show -
Nine-time Grammy-nominated singer
and songwriter Steve Conn
and legendary bassist Chuck Rainey
(Steely Dan, Aretha Franklin) played a special show at The
Venetian Theatre in Portland, Oregon in August. Joined by
guitarist Ken Scandlyn and
drummer Don Worth, Jr., the
old bulls opened for The Purple House
Big Band, a group of extraordinary young players from
the Portland area. This show represented a send off for several
of the young players who are departing for studies in Boston at
the prestigious Berklee School of Music this fall.



Lucas Ohio Premieres the
"New Shamblers" -
Lucas Ohio Pattie premiered his
next generation Shamblers with a show at the venerable
Armando's in Martinez (CA) in early September. Joining Lucas
were bassist Don Bassey (Volker Strfler Band), guitarist Don Fox,
and drummer Steve Trovao. Lucas' song "All Good People"
from his Steps Toward Home CD is featured on San
Francisco radio station KFOG's Local Scene 6 CD, which benefits
the Music in Schools Today non-profit organization. The program
promotes music education in public schools and youth centers in
low income neighborhoods, as it has since 1983. The CD and
merchandise related to Local Scene 6 CD are available from
KFOG’s website at www.kfog.com.
Also on the bill at Armando's were
Misner and Smith (Sam Misner and Megan Smith), whose
profile has oured since their song "Madeline" won the 2007 West
Coast Songwriters Association’s Song of the Year competition.
RARWRITER.com musicologist Douglas
Strobel opened the show.
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THIS WEEK'S REAL DEAL:
Notes from RAR
You're Stupid!
When Mia Michaels
says that - "You're Stupid" - on the hit TV show "So You Think You Can Dance" it is
a supreme compliment. Unfortunately, when I get told that same
thing it is invariably because of something I have done. I am
not astonishing in any way, just "stupid" in the traditional
sense.
This edition I have
posted a review of country showboat Michael ONeill's new
CD (click here to read the review),
and "stupid" is what he thought I was when I commented on the
strength of the players on the recording, prompting this instant
message from his iPhone:
"Holy shit the players on this
record are the best of the best,
Dony Wynn drums / Robert Palmer - Brooks and dunn
Will sexton bass. Charlie sextons brother
Lloyd mains Dixie chicks
Carl bromel -my morning jacket
Goggle these folks
Randy korhs"
So chastened, I did
some "Goggling" and learned about some great talent in the
process.

Dony Wynn, who plays drums on
Ain't Leavin' Your Love, is most closely associated with
the late Robert Palmer, with whom he played for years, but he
got his first big-time tour experience as a teenager playing
with Dr. John. Other of his associations have been with Brooks
and Dunn, Steve Winwood, Patti LaBelle, and Wang Chung. He has
one of the coolest Websites around at
http://www.donywynn.com/
, which is packed with clever design, intelligent writing and
memorable lines, like this: My good friends, Jim Keltner and
Jeff Porcaro, supreme drummers each, both subscribed to the fact
that beatmasters are old souls who were drummers in past
lives..."
That
introduction of Will Sexton as "Charlie Sexton's brother"
is understandable as a context setter - Charlie Sexton came to
prominence as guitarist with Bob Dylan through Dylan's
resurgence in the late 1990s and into the new millennium.
Charlie has gone on to produce Lucinda Williams, tour with Eric
Clapton, and launch his own band, Arc Angels, with Tommy Shannon
and Chris "Whipper" Layton of "Double Trouble" (Stevie Ray
Vaughn's rhythm section). For all these reasons, Charlie
Sexton's name has resonance, but he and his brother Will
(pictured left in a photo by Todd Wolfson) share a provenance in
Austin, Texas, where Will performs constantly, and both were
taught guitar by Austin legend W.C. Clark, the "Godfather of the
Austin Blues". Will and Charlie were in the same band, "Will and
the Kill", which in 1988 released an album on MCA that was
produced by Joe Ely and featured Jimmy Vaughn on some tracks.
Will went on to collaborations with Waylon Jennings, Roky
Erickson (psychedelic), and punker Johnny Thunders. He was in
the "New Folk Underground" and he co-produced Ruby James with
his brother Charlie.

Lloyd Maines is the
multi-instrumentalist producer of the Dixie Chicks, and
father of Dixie Chick Natalie Maines. He was a member of the Joe
Ely Band and played with Guy Clark, Butch Hancock, Terry Allen,
Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Golden Bear, and other Texas musicians. He
was a member of The Maines Brothers Band in the late 1970s and
early 1980s and has contributed to alt-country releases,
including Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne and Wilco's debut, A.M..
The Grammy Award winner has produced and recorded Butch Hancock,
Rita Hosking, Jerry Jeff Walker, Charlie Robison, the Lost Gonzo
Band, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Wayne Hancock, Owen Temple, Robert Earl
Keen, Terri Hendrix, Pat Green, Roger Creager, Two Tons of
Steel, and The Waybacks.

Carl Broemel
is an American rock musician. He currently plays the guitar,
pedal steel guitar, saxophone and sings back-up vocals for the
Louisville, Kentucky band My Morning Jacket. Broemel was listed
among Rolling Stone's "20 New Guitar Gods" along with My Morning
Jacket front man Jim James under the title of "Skynard-Art
Theorists." He released a solo album titled "Lose What's Left".
(from Wikipedia)
Randy
Korhs came to prominence playing with Hank Williams III and
Tom T. Hall, and later the Canadian band Continental Divide.
Other associations have been with Holly Dunn, John Cowan
and Dolly Parton. In 2001, he released his debut solo album, A
Crack In My Armour, on Junction Records. In 2004, Parton
recorded a duet with him, “It Looked Good On Paper,” for his
third album, I’m Torn, on Lonesome Day Records. It spent
eight months on the bluegrass charts, rising into the Top 5. To
date, Kohrs has played on more than 500 albums, ranging from
those by such legends as Hank Thompson and Jerry Reed to current
and recent chart-toppers Trick Pony, Dierks Bentley and The
Wreckers. In the bluegrass domain, he has recorded projects for
Larry Sparks, Rhonda Vincent, Mark Newton, Bradley Walker, Lou
Reid, and 3 Fox Drive, among others. (Largely from his
MySpace site.)