On Live Tuesday Night 10 PM EST

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"America Betrayed" with John Clark

on now.........waiting....lots of talk of ufo's

It's Come To This

Begging. Yes, old fashioned spare-changing-on-the-corner "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" begging. Hey, I learned from the best. If Robert Stacy McCain can scream at his readers to "Hit The Freakin' Tip Jar!" AND THEY DO!...then, by gum, here we go.

I have to get to California this weekend to shoot a video with the Pasadena Patriots people. If you're not familiar with their wonderful work, look here, here and, most recently, here. That last one is Victoria Jackson and her viral 'There's a Communist Living in the White House," which they shot barely nine days ago and it already has over 220k hits. (And this one has young Cassone as the innkeeper, my big break.)

I wrote a song, "King Obama," a spoof on the usurper-in-chief in "A Mighty Wind" retro-theme. So we will play the Free Radicals, singing our way through a Chase Peterson interview. And I am not going to miss it. So, hit the tip jar or I shoot this kitten:

(regrets to National Lampoon.)

OK, that IS over the top and not at all the Christian thing to do. No, the Christian thing is to give. Even Jonah Goldberg documents that we are the most giving nation. So don't let him down. My flight is $483 and my loving girlfriend is even splitting it with me (and she doesn't even know yet that I am dying to go to Searchlight for the Tea Party Express kickoff...shhh, I'll be the one to break it to her.)

So, come on...how hard is it to raise $241? I will sell space on my guitar, if you must, sort of like NASCAR ads on the driver's clothes. Prove me wrong...that McCain really sells crack to kids on the corner and the tip jar is just a ruse, but g-g-g-ive. Reminds me of the Henny Youngman line about meeting a bum in the street who said he hadn't eaten for a week. So he said, "Force yourself."

Really. This is the Arts, Conservative style, and we don't get big funding, nor, actually, do we want it.

Hit El Teep Jar ( a little Mexacali, as we will be shooting in SoCal) and if you do, I'll let you know where we will be shooting on the street in Pasadena...

more to come

A Great Loss: Tommy "T. Bone" Wolk

That's my friend, Tommy Wolk...better know in the music world as "T. Bone." He died last week at a young 58 and it has sent shock waves through the industry, the county (Westchester) as well as shivers through me. While we weren't a**hole buddies, we did spend a lot of time together in our formative years in the 70's and 80's (well before his fame in Hall & Oates.) In fact, that card he is so proudly displaying, a "Mumbo" card, is part of a secret handshake ritual of anyone who was granted the card by "Crazy Joe" Renda. One "member" could call the card of another, at any time...and woe to that Mumbo who could not produce his card! I called Tommy out backstage at the Seaport gig pictured here. He didn't flinch and pulled it out in one smooth motion.

Joe Renda owned North Lake Sound in the late 70's and early 80's with Chip Taylor and Chip's brother, Jon Voight. I was the recording engineer there and got to meet everyone Joe knew and played with. Tommy was everywhere, playing with everyone. I first saw him in the ubiquitous Big River, a blues band featuring the Gillette Brothers, Guy and Pipp.  He had a quirky style of playing his Telecaster, shortening his strap so it played high up his chest. And he would rock back and forth during solos. Captivated me as he had a Robbie Robertson style but played all those James Burton licks that sounded so simple. Wasn't long before he was playing with Billy Vera before Billy left for Hollywood and real success. But the roadhouses that they played rocked like nothing we had seen. Places like The Granite House, the Country House and the Left Bank. And I got to know Joe at the Siding in Chappaqua where Billy as well as Guy and Pipp would play with Tommy on guitar and bass.

As all the intensity and stress of a session would play itself out, Tommy was a pro before his time. He would always make it easy for me as an engineer, complacent, but with a sound that always killed and hardly ever needed to fix his tracks with overdubs. What I remember vividly was Tommy's eating habits. Many of us had terrible eating habits (along with the extracurriculars that were ever-present in those days...IYKWIMAITYD) and T. would show up with yogurt, fruit and nuts, with hot tea. And Renda would have so much fun mocking him. We all did. I eat fruit and nuts now myself and not a day goes by, I don't remember those days and Tom.

Wasn't long before he slid right up the ladder...a connection through Tommy Mottola, and he landed the gig of his lifetime...H&O, with that famous stint on SNL alongside G.E. Smith. Tommy was a locked-in bass player, the kind everyone in the band would rely upon. His fingering was often low, not "slapping" or flashy but tight, driving and always leading the piece.

I ran into the crew on a showcase that Mark Rivera arranged at the South Street Seaport in 2002. Here, Tommy pals around with Vinny Pastore, "Big Pussy" from the Sopranos. Only thing is, Vinny used to own one of those clubs everyone played in the 70's and 80's...a club called the Crazy Horse in New Rochelle.

Sometimes we don't realize the times are so special until they are gone.

Also on that gig was Bob Mayo (Frampton, Foreigner, etc. etc.) who also died suddenly in 2004. Bob played in H&O with Wolk for awhile.

G.E Smith, Mark Rivera, and Tom Wolk

Vinny Pastore, T.Bone Wolk, G.E. Smith and CC

For all that Tommy achieved and accomplished, he was a humble guy, and always a learner. I was recording Chuck Rainey out at Caribou Ranch in the 80's and Tom had just written a book on bass guitar that featured a section on Chuck's playing. He wanted desparately for Chuck to see it, as he was a hero to him (according to T.) So I packed it away in my luggage and one night (one late night) I pulled it out and Chuck was so pleased, signed it and told me to tell Tommy to call him. Well, when he got his own book back with Chuck's signature, you would have thought it was Babe Ruth's. I was glad to be a part of it.

I've been feeling mortal lately. Very mortal. So I up my running mileage and work out some more. All to stave off the inevitable but it is a ritual we bought into very early on. I am grateful for having known him.

Hey Tom,you got me! I can't find my Mumbo card.

Gaming Your Way to the NWO

Yes, mouseketeers, it's a new save-the-world online game! Get you decoder ring and help save the world. I know, let's start in Africa...

EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.

"Evoke," the $500,000 new investment from.....(wait for it...)

Yes, the World Bank!

And in very seductive anime cartoon panels, pulsing world beats and that ever-present deep, gargley Central African voice (reminds me of Geoffrey Holder in the UnCola commercials), all to get "young people" involved in solving our crises in a  "10-week crash course in changing the world"

The goal of the social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems.(emphasis mine.)

While it is directed at (South) African youth primarily, and the first "challenge" is to , well, they are not too clear on that. The player must wade through endless RSS files and blogs of African "problems." I followed one string that led to a BBC page that claimed the answer lay in a "free trade zone" for Africa (curiously omitting Somalia.)

Congratulations. You're off to a good start. You found your first EVOKE -- and you answered it. Most people won't come as far as you already have.

Now you must go further. You're ready for your first mission. You're ready to become a social innovator.

WHO WE ARE

Social innovators invent creative solutions to the world's biggest problems.

We don't wait for someone else to change the world. We do it ourselves.

They (the players) are after "economic opportunity, happiness, human rights, etc." I wanted to post the US Constitution and then tell them to eliminate the dictators that are ruining the continent. Critics in this Fox piece claim the obvious, that most (at least 50%) have NO access to the internet. One Herb London of the Hudson Institute suggested the half a million be used to fund internet access for the needy.

Oh, great. Just what we need, more emails from Nigerian princesses.

On the face of it, the game seems like a great way to engage kids in problem solving and deductive reasoning and some US social studies teachers will jump on this with both feet. But it has all the appearances of a subtle game changer, using the assumption that democratic capitalism cannot possibly work...that and:

The common root cause of economic decay, state collapse, ethnic violence, civil war, and humanitarian disaster in Africa is bad, abusive governance. Because most states lack any semblance of a rule of law and norms of accountability that bind the conduct of those in government, their societies have fallen prey to massive corruption, nepotism, and the personal whims of a tiny ruling elite. (The Hoover Institute)

I'll stay in the WII for now. At least it talks to me...and misses me when I'm gone.

Can You Hear This?

Ace of Spades (a great blog and a Fordham grad) posted this about hearing in teenagers. We are born with the ability to hear from 20 hz to 20K hz (a speaker salesman once boasted that his speaker could produce sound form 20 hz to light!) but sadly, IPODS, rock shows, car boom machines, and the military-industrial complex have all conspired to rob us of our hearing.

Historical note: As a recording engineer in the 80's, I tutored under the great Eddie Kramer who produced no less than Jimi Hendrix, Led Zepplin, Procul Harum and KISS.  Mr. Kramer, a savvy little South African who twirled knobs on a Pultec EQP-1A faster than an Eddie Van Halen solo...and with as much swagger, taught me the ropes as we worked on a record for the Simms Brothers Band at the now-defunct North Lake Sound in White Plains, NY. Among my many jobs was to position microphones out in the studio as he could get the best sound. As I was moving the Shure 57 around the Marshall cabinet (not a quiet amp) he said, and this is a quote, "Put your ear right into the speaker so you can find the true source."  But that was not as bad as the night in the Fillmore East when the Who debuted "Tommy". They were SO loud that I had stuffed tissue in both ears and it still felt like nails in my eardrums. Oh, and don't forget the Ramones. I mixed sound for them live at the Detroit Club in Port Chester in 1980. It was so loud that my wife, Dale, who was pregnant with our son, Casey, had to leave because "the baby is kicking and freaking out!"

CC and EK at North Lake Sound, circa 1981

For some reason I escaped serious ear damage. AND I can hear that 15khz tone. They say that malls use the 18khz frequency as a deterrent for loitering teenagers. I remember Macy's in White Plains had a burglar alarm that so annoyed me in the 60's, when I shopped there with Mom, I took a complete detour around the section (jewelry) where it was screeching.

So try your ears on the teenager audio test. Really, it is a test of your speakers as well. True audio testing takes place in a controlled environment, no light, in an anechoic chamber and with a series of ever-increasingly higher tones to test where you lose it.