Multimedia Artist: Musician (Guitars {Electric, Acoustic, Bass}, Keyboards, Vocals), Filmmaker (Director, Cinematographer, Editor), Writer (Poetry, Lyrics, Screenplays), Recording-Engineer/Producer. I am fluent in Studio One , Avid (ProTools & Media Composer), & Adobe Post-Production Software Suites.
In the right hands, music can change the world for the better. Music can uplift the soul and enlighten entire cultures.
To create beautiful and inspiring music, and to share it with live audiences everywhere,
Being a futurist, it is easy to intuit the major changes about to unfold before us all due to leaps forward in advanced technologies. The graphene revolution, fusion power, molecular replication, automated farming . . . the 21st century is the final century of capitalism and the entire concept/prison of money. Once the robots have all the jobs, humans will be finally free to spend all their time creating art. I want my music and screenplays to help prepare the human culture for the enormous paradigm shift that is about to occur. Most will adapt. Many will not.
Way too many to list them all. I was born into a house with music from the 40s and 50s playing all the time. I was 9 when the Beatles hit big; 11 when Jimi Hendrix stormed the world; 14 when Led Zeppelin took the crown away from the Beatles; 18 when Dark Side of the Moon dominated radios and juke boxes. I like so many different forms of music! I was lucky to grow up during a very inventive and creative period for music. 1965 to 1975 was my most informative decade as far as musical influences. Sadly, the music industry already had one foot in the grave by 1980.
The Beatles, The Yardbirds, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Tommy Bolin, 1960s San Francisco Psychedelia, Neil Young, Just about anything and everything between 1965 and 1975. I also love 40s swing and cool jazz; 1950s rockabilly; I like funky grooves.
Trying to change the world for the better. To inspire cultural evolution and enlightenment. Both Bob Dylan and John Lennon where huge influences and inspirations for my own writing. Historical perspective is really important, as is knowing the difference between spirituality and religion. The insights of philosophy are really important. It's just really important to be very well read. I have read thousands of books during my decades on this planet.
Cultural enlightenment is the pathway to cultural evolution and social progress. Even though there is a 30% minority of the human population that will waste their entire lives standing in the way of progress, they may slow it but can never stop it. Time is like water over rocks: It will always find its way forward, over, and around any and all obstacles. It can't be stopped. Vapid consumerism has created a lot of hatred and self-loathing in the early 21st century world. The people have lost themselves. They have forgotten that ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE. The 22nd century will be an entirely new world completely foreign to today's social consciousness. Just 80 years from now those people will look back on the early 21st century as an aberrant footnote to history. All the arguments and manufactured drama will be meaningless then. I want my creations to help people more easily accept the inevitable. Stop all the fighting. It's pointless. STOP THE HYPOCRISY!
Performing in front of thousands of people is a very big feeling. Very exciting and 'powerful'. It's also the most fun you can have with your clothes on (besides auto racing). Racing is a form of physical fitness for me. It keeps me in shape to perform on stage. For me, driving a racing car and playing rock guitar are very much alike, as far as an emotional experience. JUST FUCKING AWESOME!!!
The music industry has been destroyed by corporatist MBAs who lack either talent or vision. They have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming into the 21st century, instead of leading the way. They have groomed a generation of assembly-line pseudo-talents to mass-produce derivative pablum for a dumbed-down masses in a race to the bottom. Art will not be free again until the corporatists are overthrown and removed from power forever. There is a 'techno-socialism' coming to the world in the next 80 years. Robots will become income proxies for all the humans they replace/displace from the workforce. Humans will no longer need to toil for existence. Consumerism and the profit-motive will evolve out of human culture, and everything will be free. This is going to happen much sooner than most can imagine, and much sooner than those clinging to patriarchal chattel mentality will ever accept. Too bad, so sad. Progress is a certain eventuality, no matter how many tantrums emotional infantiles throw. It's simply a matter of time.
I joined a year ago and then didn't use it again until it reminded me it existed just today (more than a year later). I never hear about it anywhere else. Does it have a YouTube channel? Can it afford to expand? We'll keep an eye on it for the next year and see what rabbits it pulls out of its hat. Seems it needs to make a whole lot of noise! To be really successful, it needs to become an influencer channel, like TIKTOK to replace the radio stations of old. The tower of Babel that is social media is too cacophonous for the cream to reach the top. There needs to be a definitive channel influencing the cultural tastes outside of the insipidness of the major studio system and its Spotify (the Netflix of music). The great challenge is choosing the actual influencers who are not clueless clones. The influencers need to be culturally evolved. Well-read, with deep historical perspective. And a very advanced palette. A great sense of taste. The problem with media today is that those green-lighting the projects and products seem to have gone no further than middle-school. They are very lacking in experience and fully understanding or grasping the fullness of the human experience. It's why TV shows and Movies are song lyrics are so STUPID! Almost entirely nonsensical. There are some amazing art-forms that are being lost! right here and right now! It's a pay-to-play world. Bottom line: If you don;t have at least a billion dollars, you are wasting your time. This is why the corporatists must be overthrown, and the gilded fences around the tilted playing field be torn down. We must put an end to their exclusionary exclusivity! The pen is mightier than the sword, and the pen is most mighty in the hands of a great composer! Music is the only way out of this mess!
The cost of admission. The exclusionary exclusivity. That the illusion of the democratization of the process has unleashed hordes of third-rate wannabes as bottom-feeder cat-fish. That the internet has become the tower of Babel. That the major labels control Spotify. We'll see what Amazon and Apple do with 3D immersive audio in the near-future. We need a new version of FM radio with trustworthy DJs who actually have deep knowledge about the artform of music, and its cultural importance in speaking truth to power. The problem is that the corporate media has learned how to de-fang revolution by mainstreaming it. No, the revolution will NOT be televised! They'll just turn it into a myopic, soapy, tragicomedy. And cash in on it! Twist it to their own devices.
I moved to Portland just as the Pandemic was breaking out and locking everyone in. We'll see what 2022 brings. Right now, it appears that the death rate is far from finished as those refusing to get vaccinated will continue to die, and may very well force another shutdown. I'm not holding my breath. We shall see what we shall see. Might be millions less at the polls in 2024.
This question is double-sided. On the one hand, you can be a talentless hack that sells out to the lowest-common-denominator and behave like a bottom-feeding salesman. On the other hand, you could be a genius talent creating amazing art to lead the world forward. Which do you think the gate-keepers are going allow to buy their way onto the tilted pay-to-play playing field? Again, if you have money . . . money begets money. Even Taylor Swift has to spend millions to sell millions of albums. Don't be fooled. Even the corporatist influencers only have so much reach or staying power. Music has become its own 24-hour news cycle. I'm not being cynical. I am being pragmatic. Like the old Hollywood saying, "It's not who or what you know, it's who you blow." And nobody really knows anything.
My son, "The Infusionist" is right now producing an album that could best be described as the "Sgt. Peppers of the EDM world". Entirely new. Breaking down boundaries in every direction. So far, the inside reaction is enormously positive and exciting. I can't wait to see it's impact on that world in 2022. I am very proud of what he is accomplishing.