Sometimes its hard to take good advice and useful action plans to heart when you're in crisis mode.
Life lessons are hard to learn when you need them most, and they are the hardest to hear and absorb when you find yourself at that juncture.
The use of metaphor helps us to break through to a new found wisdom. It depersonalizes a situation just enough to provide a little crack of clarity through the chaos. A good metaphor can function as a small, narrow beam of illumination; it may be just enough to light your path out of the morass, espescially when the beam is clearly defined by the dust that you're kicking up all around you as you flail your way through life.
Here's today's metaphor: I don't know exactly what it taught me, but I recognized that something changed, and there was evidence of new growth. A little green shoot of new life that grew from what seemed to be a dying plant.
I had a friend who I spent alot of time with over the past four years. My faith and loyalty in this person was really ill founded in retrospect, and because of that choice, I suffered alot of damage. We all know that human dynamic and scenario, so I won't waste alot of time writing about it. It was my choice to persue the friendship, I ignored all the red flags, and eventually got spiritually fist fucked for trying to persue the relationship. Ain't nobody's fault but mine.
For the past year, I've been cleaning up a mess of epic proportions. The hole I dug myself in was deep, and its still an on going job.
I went through the steps of Anger, Denial, and Blame. But at my age, I've recognized to get through them quickly and only focus on my own personal responsibility.
That's the only thing that will lead you to a change, because ultimately it is only the self that you have control over. No matter how hard you try, you can never effect change in others.
So if you don't like the outcome, you have to change your own behavior.
That lets everybody off the hook, and will eventually lead to forgiveness. The last person to forgive in the chain is yourself, and the hardest path to discover is how to really forgive yourself without being a total sociopath with no moral compass when finally doing so.
There is a big difference between forgiving yourself honestly, and not giving a tumbling fuck about the consequences of your decisions.
Forgiveness is not deluding yourself in a blanket of denial, especially when trying to identify your own mis-steps. There has to be an awareness achieved before you get there; a step that is human nature to want to skip over.
THE METAPHOR
I collected art pottery at one point in my life, and had quite a collection of Roseville Pottery placed about my home.
This friend of which I speak spent a lot of time in my home, and quite frankly, was a bit of an emotional klutz, which manifested itself in physical reality. One by one, my precious collection of antique breakables got broken, and suffered damage.
Replacement of those items was always promised, and never delivered, and over three years, a lot of pottery got accidently broken.
That's a pretty clear metaphor for the relationship in and of itself. All I ended up with is a pile of broken, valueless pottery and a pile of broken, valueless promises.
I recently moved, losing my home of four years directly tied to my bad judgement and assesment of this person. Time to pack, and move on.
As I was packing, I not only was packing my precious Roseville pottery, I was packing shards and pieces of Roseville Pottery. The ridiculousness of this exercise did not escape me.
I had been holding on to those shards for over three years. Hoping that the promise of replacement would come, but knowing that it never would. Holding on to the broken pieces. Hoping that a person I loved would do the right thing and miraculously grow a conscience, but knowing that ultimately they were incapable of it.
When I landed in my new digs, I unpacked all those shards. I finally gave up the ghost, drove to the hardware store, and bought my ass some super glue.
Thoses pieces of pottery have no market value anymore. They are cracked, and they are damaged.
The upside however is that after three years, I finally made the attempt to glue them together and make them whole again. The may have cracks, and they may show damage, but they have life again.
Instead of being squirreled away in hopes of a better out come, they are back on the shelves and in use after a long period of stasis and "retirement". They are still beautiful, and I now can enjoy their beauty (albeit now flawed) once again.
So what's the lesson? I don't really know. But I do know this; Nobody will put Humpty Dumpty back together again for you, and its a waste of time projecting your value system on others....especially on those that don't have any.
You have to glue it back together on your own, and only when you're ready to accept the cracks and flaws that are now in evidence, and who really was responsible for creating those flaws in the first place. It isn't the person that broke them, it was the person that allowed a bull in a china shop in their "home".
If you are tempted to point a finger of blame, try aiming it at yourself first. That saves a lot of precious time and aggravation.
A quick look in the mirror is all I needed, but it took me three years to finally accept it, re-glue, forgive and let go.
Considering my own emotional track record, that's a pretty speedy recovery. I'm getting better at this, but some work still needs to be done to quicken healing time in the advent of the next relational screw up.
The first love of my life was Mary Von Zastrow. Her family lived next door to us on Gayle Road in the bucolic Finger Lake Village of Skaneateles, NY.
What does a five year old kid know about love? In retrospect, not much, but to me at that time, my undying love and devotion to all things Mary was very real.
With the exception of my older brother Alfie and Scotty Gregory, I didn't like playing with boys on Gayle Road. They were older, and they treated their little brothers like crap. They were rough. They hit, and they played with Tonka Trucks. I didn't understand them, and I never gravitated towards them. And they never lifted up their skirts in the back blue bathroom on 12 Gayle Road, and pulled their panties down around their ankles so I could initiate and then continue my life long interest in that particular area of female anatomy.
I guess I was an early bloomer.
She had a page boy haircut, and her mom always dressed her impeccably in little plaid or gingham dresses, white leggings, and patent leather mary janes. She was all girl to me, and she was my girl.
Mary and I were inseparable. She was the first person I wanted to marry other than my mother, and I would publicly declare my intent of betrothal at any opportunity, much to my mother's chagrin.
The only obstacle between Mary and myself riding off on a white steed into the sunset forever was her father, Etto.
Etto was an imposing figure. He was extremely tall and wiry, bald as a cue ball, and spoke in a low, thick and menacing Germanic accent. He had zero body fat, and his face looked positively skeletal. There was a rumor going around that he was a concentration camp survivor, or maybe a Nazi war criminal in hiding among the little kids of Gayle Road. He was mean.
All I knew was that he was having none of me. Probably because he knew just how much Mary and I were obsessed with investigating each other's genitalia every chance we got, but he never really directly confronted me with that particular parental conundrum. He just figured if he scared the beejeezus out of me, I'd keep my distance.
One Saturday morning, perhaps inspired cliche "Mad Scientist" and "Dr. Jeckyll" characterizations found in cartoons of the day, Alfie and I decided to play at fantasy chemistry. We got two plastic buckets, and started raiding the house for any type of toxic chemical we could find, along with other items such as condiments from the fridge.
We mixed lawn fertilizer with mayonaisse, a dash of vinegar, two teaspoons of comet cleanser, laundry detergent, kool aid, toothpaste, etc. All assiduously measured and the amounts recorded just in case we happened to accidently discover something of real value that might need to be re-created.
We were scientists, you know.
I think that perhaps the object of these experiments were two-fold. The first was to practice our Mad Scientist cackles and "MWU-HA-HA-HA-HA" evil laughs to perfection as we tried to best each subsequent attempt at creating the foulest mixture of toxic crapola ever known, stirring our respective buckets with Mother's wooden spoons.
The second was to hopefully come up with an accidental chemical cocktail that would smoke like dry ice, although at the time we didn't know what dry ice actually was. The reason Alfie was recording measurements and amounts was probably in case we did in fact, hit the right combination to cause that particular chemical reaction, we could re-create it for time immemorial.
So as the lazy day progressed, Alfie and I mixed noxious goo in buckets, laughed like "Eville" mad scientists, realized were weren't going to get the desired smoking result, dumped the buckets in the back field behind our house, rinsed them out, and started over again. It was a good way to pass a Saturday with your big brother.
By the time we got to the last batch, Alfie got bored. He floated a couple of ten-cent smoke bombs that were readily available at Talbot's Five and Dime on top of the goop in the buckets, lit them, and we had the cackle fest to end all cackle fests in clouds of sulpherous yellow and pink smoke.
Right at that point, I had a five year old epiphany of science.
What if the smoke bomb made the goop into something that we weren't originally looking for? What if the smoke bomb was some kind of catalyst? What if we had accidently created something like Flubber, but hadn't realized it?
Perhaps inspired by multiple Saturday morning viewings of "The Rabbit Of Seville" Bugs Bunny cartoon, where Bugs as the barber pours hair tonic and Figaro Fertilizer on Elmer Fudd's bald pate, and grows stemmed flowers on Elmer's head, maybe I had concocted my own five year old version of Rogaine and didn't know it. And if I had....
I would give it to Etto the next-door obstructionist.
If I could create a magic tonic that would grow hair atop his furrowed brow, he would finally love me as the discoverer of a miracle, delivering him from baldness and allowing Mary and I to live happily ever after with his consent!
I informed Alfie of my intent, and we designed an experiment.
So I collected six rocks, and placed them in a shoe box. Then I dug into the storage shed of the garage to find a trim paint brush, and on our backyard patio slathered five of the rocks with noxious goop, leaving one as a control. I can remember the sun setting in the west over Lakeview circle, the sky ablaze with red and purple as I did this with Alfie looking over my shoulder. It was a beautiful and hopeful moment, and I knew in my heart that I would succeed.
As I layed me down to sleep, it was just like going to bed on Christmas eve. I couldn't wait to wake up to see the results (hopefully succesful), and then announce my triumph of science and social engineering to mean old Etto. I nodded out dreaming of Mary, and our possible impending happiness.
Well, Alfie had an epiphany as well. After I went to sleep, he grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped just enough fur off of Harvey, our family basset hound, to make it look good. And then he artfully pasted clumps of Harvey's hair on the five rocks, leaving the control rock hairless.
Just like a kid on Christmas morning, I woke up early at around 5:00am with the rest of the Rossi clan still snoozing away. I looked to my box of rocks on the nightstand, and slowly lifted the lid with the Buster Brown logo on it, praying to God for the results I so desperately needed. Buster had a page boy haircut too. A good omen. Tige not so, but I wasn't aware of Alfie's chicanery.
EUREKA! I had done it!
I grabbed the shoebox, and dashed to the Von Zastrow's front door, practically kicking it in as I leaned on the doorbell screaming, "Mr. Von Zastrow! Mr. Von Zastrow!"
The gaunt visage of Etto appeared as he slowly opened the door. He was dressed in blue striped pajamas, that due to his frame, he was swimming in.
I excitedly babbled as a five year old kid would under these miraculous circumstances and explained to him my experiment: that I had discovered a magic hair tonic and that it grew hair on rocks, see? Here's the rocks and here's the evidence and if it can grow hair on rocks it will grow hair on him and he didn't have to be sad or mean anymore and I did it for him so he would finally like me.
I was positively beaming. Radiating with love.
Frowning, Etto reached down, and with his bony index finger and thumb, delicately pulled a clump of freshly glued dog hair off one of the rocks in the shoe box that I held up to him like a gift of the Magii.
In the morning silence, he held the clump of fur aloft and against the sky, backlit from the orange light of the rising sun. He slowly inspected it, rotating his bony wrist as he did.
And then without a word spoken, he gently shut the door in my face.
After that, the reciprocal agreement that my mother and Mrs.Von Zastrow had to watch each other's youngest children came to an abrupt end. Mary announced that she was no longer allowed to even speak with me, let alone play with me.
The Von Zastrow's moved from Gayle Road shortly thereafter.
THE END
"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound.
I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.
The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"
AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!
THANK YOU KINDLY, COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"
Author's Note: Many readers of "The Daily Dose" have asked that I continue to tell stories of my experiences as a working musician in Central New York, instead of some of the other subject matter I've been tackling.
I suppose that those requests have been made in part due to my thread contributions in the facebook group CNY Music Archives administered by Mike Donahue (do a search on it: It's a pretty cool site). I had somewhat an insiders view (or at least a unique perspective), and I can communicate it through the written word.
The reasons for my personal decision to initiate "The Dose" project (365 consecutive blogs in 365 consecutive days) are many. The main one is to just share what little I know and have learned in my fifty one years on the planet with people that might have use for that limited pool of knowledge.
But there are other agenda points as well. I want to improve as a writer. Diving into the craft of writing prose is a new found love, and I want to get better at it. Imposing the parameter of a daily deadline on myself forces me to write everyday, and as the old adage goes, "A writer writes". So yes, not all endeavors are solely altruistic, folks. I fess up on that point.
The blog platform is unique, however. It affords readers the opportunity to feedback through commentary, and because its the digital age, through metrics in some degree. Social network platforms are compelling to me. It's not just content driven, but driven by, in this case, the readers themselves. when you stand in front of an audience for a living, you know where you stand in real time. Writing and publishing blogs is slightly different, but not such a different dynamic that I'm totally alien to the process.
In the end however, it all boils down to this: I can bake the bread, and people can tear off a piece to eat.
But can you inspire people to pass the loaves down the line as they tear a piece off for themselves? That a question that at this point, remains to be seen.
I will say this however. 365 days is a long time, and although some parts of my life may be interesting to me, and may be interesting to you, there is no way it will be interesting to all of us for an entire year. That's unsustainable.
I fully expect that as I tell war stories centered on my personal adventures in musician land, that the well will run dry eventually... and I'm aiming to tell other people's stories as well, albeit through my eyes and perspective.
That's my invitation to all of my friends, fellow peers and even my detractors alike. Maybe through that, there may be a possibility of elevation, levitation, and participation through community unity. If you build a tribe of like minded individuals, this will happen. I know this for fact. I've seen it happen.
I try to frame these remembrances and run them through the final filter in the form of a question: "Where's The Gratitude?"
If you can answer that one, then you can more clearly identify the things of value that you harvested for taking the trouble of living through the experience. And at this stage of the game, those are the types of discoveries that I want to share openly with you. Maybe I can save you some time, maybe alleviate some kind of present turmoil, or at least give you something to chew on so you can chart your own course for yourself and avoid a few trees and potholes in the process.
"The Daily Dose" is a form of of snake oil. It could either cure what ails ya, or it could be just a bottle of valueless, repulsive bamboozlement. That's up to you to decide for yourself.
I would like to remind everyone that takes the time to read these essays that not only are you not required to pay for it, but that I am not monetizing this blog in anyway: It's important to note that when the snake oil salesman comes to town, he doesn't give the product away for free.
But yeah...if people start throwing away their crutches and miraculously start walking, you might want to greet that with a skeptical eyebrow arched over one eye.
I wouldn't blame you in the least.
So with that out of the way, let me introduce you to a new sub-heading of "The Daily Dose" called "The General Malarkey"; one that revolves around my adventures with a band called "The Bogeymen", which was the first time I experienced being involved in a group that had a legitimate record deal.
My experiences with this brain child of Tim Harrington's represented many critical turning points in my professional and personal life. There were many lessons learned, and there are plenty of opportunities to express gratitude openly for having the chance to learn those lessons. We have 365 days, so there's time enough for the complete backstory. Today's installment is just a snapshot of a singular one of many experiences.
But for those in the CNY Music Community that want a real look under that particular hood: Hopefully this will satisfy At least a small part your curiosity jones.
SHOOTING VIDEO IN A WARING BLENDER
General Malarkey Directs His Troops
Looking back at my tenure of serving as a soldier in General Malarkey's army, my hitch was punctuated by significant battles and events that occurred singularly, with great periods of waiting in between. Interminable waiting. Waiting to be called upon, in service of the band, and Tim Harrington's artistic vision.
Shooting this video was one of those moments. This one? This was one that not only did you not mind waiting for, this one signified that all the work that you had done for your first ten years of pursuing a career as a professional musician might work out as planned (albeit slightly behind schedule). All the training you went through: Countless gigs,years of exhaustion, the soaking up of real time knowledge like a hungry sponge, law suits and process servers, draconian agents, mind altering substances and booze in amounts too copious to cop to, epic failures, poverty, and mind crushing disappointment all lined up behind this moment. This moment was real and very tangible.
In the middle of a wheat field somewhere outside of Rochester NY, in the middle of a heatwave where the temperature was pushing toward 110 degrees, in the middle of the Irish whiskey fueled maelstrom known as The Bogeymen, we were making a film. A little short five minute clip, back then a critical piece of any international marketing campaign. Success or failure of your first realeased single hinged upon it. MTV ruled the roost back in 1991.
You didn't get too many shots like this, especially from the staging theater known as Syracuse, NY. How many other of your peers or mentors, present or past, had found themselves in this position? Not many. There wasn't a vast communal knowledge base of wisdom to cull upon. Greg "Creamo" Liss, the bassist of the band, had been there before through his work with 805, Tim and Vinnie had been to the big show rodeo with The Masters Of Reality as well. It probably would have helped to talk with them to get some kind of perspective, but The Bogeymen weren't that type of band where nurturing was up front. There was plenty of nurturing going on in back channels, but at the surface it took the shape of "Fighting, Fucking and Shoving Sore-Assed Ducks In Salt Water".
You either sank or swum. You either emerged from the fires of The General's Gauntlet steeled as a man, or you got crushed in the process. End of story. No one was going to appear to hold your hand. The fact that I was being guarded, and nurtured, was hidden from me at the time. My role in the Bogeymen had pretty much been defined by that point. The record had been recorded after a year of stasis via the legal wrangling to avoid being signed to Delicious Vinyl, but that battle had been lost. The actual recording and mixing of "No Such Thing As" was an epic battle as well, but one that was survived.... barely.
After recording, we went out to LA to throw some shapes basically, but ostensibly to mix the record. But when the final mixing sessions were completed, marketing campaigns, manufacturing of the record, art design decisions, and tour plans were being developed, as a sideman, it was more limbo. Be patient, and wait for the next trick. I did get to sit in on the mastering session during that period, and that was a thrill of a lifetime to watch Bob Ludwig at Master Disc master a record in real time.
Those type of experiential teaching moments were worth all the time you sat with your thumb up your ass.
Tim didn't have to include me in those types of activities, and yet he did. He was always teaching me; pushing me to meet my potential and dragging me across the benchmarks of his own incredibly high standards, even if most times he didn't want me to see a visible hand on the puppet string.
I was infantry. A soldier that followed orders on a need-to-know basis. A sideman, and the lowest guy on the totem pole, and the food chain. But I was there. I was on the ride, but I had no aspect of control of the ride. I pulled up in that wheat field pretty much clueless.
I was not part of any preproduction or conceptualization meetings. I'm sure they occurred, but my functions didn't include the need or want of any creative input from me. You just got in the car when your name was called, and showed up, ready to go to play your parts, and play your part, as written.
But I was in the hands of the most capable "playwrite" I had ever had the chance to work with. You don't get the opportunity to rub shoulders with genius everyday, and with The Bogeymen and especially Tim Harrington, rubbing shoulders with genius was my day job.
My personal agenda? Hoping that some of that genius would rub off on me permanently.
In retrospect, it did.
We walked out of the car that afternoon into Satan's Tropical Vacation climate: A brutal blast furnace of mind melting 110 degree heat with the added bonus of a 100% humidity index.
But this was the real deal. Trucks, trailers,looming grips, production assistants, and crew, little kid actors, a lighting rig, Arriflex Cameras, and Craft Services. Lights, Camera, Action! I felt like a space alien, but it was all very exciting.
The video was being directed by a guy by the soon to be ironically prophetic name of Markus Blunder, at least as far as the future of the band was concerned. Blunder had directed a Slayer video ("Seasons of The Abyss") that evidently passed Tim's. Management's, and Delicious Vinyl's muster. It was shot in Egypt amongst the Pyramids, also partially in black and white... there was a brief confab with Markus about some sort of "Children Of The Corn" concept of which I didn't understand 75% of what he was saying due to his special combo of thick Teutonic accent and broken English beyond repair. He was an enthusiastic, junior birdman, blond haired blue-eyed, Aryan Eric Von Stroheim in overalls. The basic narrative of the video was that there were to be four Mini-Us doppelgangers running around a wheat field that were attacked by nightmare crows, kept by a "bogeyman" in some sort of Adirondack bentwood style cart, interspersed with footage of the band rocking out. My role was not to question creative decisions, and certainly at the point where we're in the middle of a wheat field with a full crew would not be the time to make a "WTF?" peep.
Most of the "kid" footage had been shot by the time we got there, but they were still milling about for a few more scenes. I think the chubby one in the crew cut was supposed to be me, and compared against the physique of my childhood, not a wholly inaccurate portrayal.
We were greeted by Andy Gould, our manager, who had been slowly stewing in that crock pot of a location all day and looked it. Concrete Management was responsible for breaking Pantera, and Andy went on to post Bogeymen success with White Zombie, and I believe still manages Rob Zombie to this day.
Gould was quite a character. From across the pond with a thick British accent, Andy was always afflicted with some kind of massive upper respiratory infection. There was not a moment where he was either coughing, wheezing, hacking, or drowning in a sea of phlegm and mucous. In fact, we nick-named him "Mukey". So although he spoke The King's English, between his accent and the fact that his speech was always filtered through gallons of free-flowing sputum, you couldn't understand 75% of what he said either.
So the two responsible adults in charge of this bloody circus were basically unintelligible to an American ear. My best friend Bob Acquaviva was with us too, but he was anything but my best friend at the time.
Throughout the period of recording "No Such Thing As", Bob had become the "fifth Bogeyman". We recorded at Acqrok Studios in Utica, and he eventually assumed the role of savior of the record (probably the best engineer/producer I've ever been in a studio with), and Tim's consiglierre/facilitator. He was right there next to all us for the rest of the ride. Bob and I unloaded the van, and set the gear up in the middle of the field. Blunder threw Tim up on top of a 15 foot ladder, "Killing Ground" blasted out of the PA System... and away we went.
Throughout the day, we shot take after take, with Blunder shouting direction in his Germanic mangle. "GAY-OR-GEE! MORE OR-JENN!!!"
Or-jenn? What the hell is an or-jenn? Many "Blunderisms" became part of the band's vernacular and secret language, and vestiges of that language still linger. Organ will always be Or-jenn for me and Bob.
And so with industrial sized fans blowing Satan's hot fetid breath at us with great velocity and force, we melted in the Summer's sweltering heat. The heat of the sun, the heat of the battle, and the heat of the significance of the moment.
By the time night fell and the swarm of locusts came out to devour our dehydrated, sun stroked, heat prostrated bodies, you could have carved four better men out of bananas.
The only thing missing were frogs raining down upon or heads.
It was most definitely, a "wrap".
There was nothing to do but go back to Andy's hotel and get stinking drunk.
Which is what we did, and wasn't an abnormal occurrence for this crew of Salt City Madmen.
EPILOGUE
That spring and summer, I was dealing with many personal as well as professional issues. I finally confronted the insane philandery of my wife that had been going on behind my back for over a year. I was the last to know of my whole entire social network.
That's not entirely accurate. I felt it in my bones all along, but a marriage should be based on trust. For that entire period, I intentionally insisted that I get the truth from her and only her. I wasn't going to violate her privacy and go out into the field playing secret squirrel. As long as she didn't admit to anything, that provided cover for the affairs, and that whole year was a war of wills, and a waste of time, Mexican Standoff. What should have been the best year of my life was one of intense psychic turmoil instead.
So I was the last to have verification. Almost twenty years later I found out who engineered that verification and how.
It was by the unseen hand of The General, who always had my back, but didn't want me to know it. A huge lump of gratitude found and harvested in the pile of wreckage, although very much delayed.
But at that time I was feeling betrayed by all, not just my wife. Every single one of my friends had let me down, and I was feeling very much alone in the world. There was no apparent "Band Of Brothers" dynamic in my life to fall back upon.
It was a loss of innocence. I had gone through life never thinking that someone I loved would intentionally hurt me, with great will and determination. It was a hard lesson to learn, but a necessary one. Wisdom doesn't come cheap.
These blogs are snapshots, however. What I know now is not what I knew then.
As I sat alone in my former happy home on Russel Place, watching the premiere of "Killing Ground" on "Headbanger's Ball", it should have been a moment of triumph.
It was anything but that. The person I wanted to share those moments the most with not only didn't want to share them with me, she had declared open warfare on my very soul, and had been waging it for quite sometime.
So... I did what any red blooded American Boy would do. I would re-dedicate myself to the band of brothers with a vengeance. I would meet those benchmarks, and exceed them. There would be no more "dragging me across the goal line of greatness". I would make it by myself and on my own initiative. I would be a man, one of my own design, and on my own terms.
There would be no question in anyone's mind that I wouldn't be ready for the next upcoming battle. There would be no more waiting. Only "doing", in the form of training and preparation.
Those vows were made sitting alone in the dark, watching "Killing Ground" debut on MTV.
That swift kick in the ass was just what I needed, even though it wasn't asked for. It set me on the course of being a real musician, and a real man.
So in closing, and in all sincerest gratitude and with a forgiving heart, I'd like to openly express thanks to my Ex-Wife; for charting my course, providing the fuel, lighting my fuse, and launching my spaceship that would take me all the way to New Orleans.
I couldn't have done it without you, baby.
"You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound.
I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.
The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right"
AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!
THANK YOU KINDLY, COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"
I was chatting with my buddy "Fuzz", a friend who has been involved with the rock and roll “industry” for as long as I have, and the conversation always turns to the phenomena of brushing the brass ring with your fingertips, but it invariably always evades your grasp. It’s happened so many times to the both of us, that now we actually find these stories amusing, but at the time, they are the farthest things from it.
"Fuzz" road manages “Otis Day and The Knights” (the penultimate frat house party band of “Animal House” fame) as his bread and butter gig. He was advancing an upcoming gig for a private party to be held at the 2008 Republican National Convention, and was bitching about the amount of paperwork and hoops you have to jump through with the Secret Service and National Security wogs (basically, every member of the band and entourage has to be completely vetted, just in case a terrorist/axe murderer happens to be the bass player, for example).
And, yup, you guessed it, every one in the band either has a past as checkered as a chessboard, or long standing drug issues, so getting them cleared by various governmental security agencies is... a stone bitch. It’s a lot of extra work on top of the normal hurdles that need to be negotiated (either leapt over, walked around or crawled under) to make it a smooth experience for the act you happen to represent.
As he was kvetching about the succession of dis-organized assholes from the RNC and Secret Service that he was dealing with on an hourly and daily basis leading up to ushering a posse of substance abusing, non-payment of parking tickets, arrest warrants issued for various misdemeanors musicians to a high paying gig, I had to tell him about my own brush with the Secret Service and the N.S.A, one of many of the files stored in my “Epic Failure Folder” of memory:
It was the spring of ’97.
I had just booked The Shuffling Hungarians (for those uninitiated, a 15 piece greasy soul orchestra-circus, fronted by yours truly) at a club in Martha’s Vineyard called the Hot Tin Roof (owned by Carly Simon) for Saturday August 30th.
The premier club, at the premier Eastern Seaboard vacation spot, on the premier night of the summer season.
The Hungarians had a lot of national buzz behind them, as I had just released a double “LIVE” recording and was furiously trying to get it noticed, and doing pretty well at it, quite frankly, which is why I got the gig. (Insert the sound of me patting myself on the back here)
Immediately after the signed contract was returned to me, I got a phone call from a 202 area code -- we were doing a lot of marketing in DC at the time, so that wasn’t too unusual.
Me: “Good Morning, Queen Bee Brand Records and Furniture O' Rama. How may I help You?”
202 Area Code: “This is the Office of The President. May I speak to Mr. George Rossi, social security number XXX -XX-XXX?”
Me (in my internal monologue): “What the Fuck?”
Ok, here’s the skinny: somebody in Martha’s Vineyard talked to somebody in DC, and somebody on the Bill Clinton's PR team thought it would be a good idea to have him show up at The Hungarian’s Vineyard Wing Ding (we were pretty media “warm” at that point) and leak it to the press.
Sounds good to me. little did I know what I was getting into.
On a daily basis, I had to deal with some knucklehead from the Secret Service, the NSA or The Office of the President. I had to hire a lawyer to clean up all the arrest records of various band members (constant conference calling between the Embassy of Trinidad and Tobago, the Secret Service, and myself on the behalf of our percussionist was a particular “head in the pencil sharpener” exercise of note), which of course put a marginally profitable gig squarely in the red financial “loss” column.
The thing evolved from President Bill showing up, high fiving, and cruising back into the limo to President Bill wanting to sit in with the band. The set list had to be vetted for questionable lyric material. Charts were Fedexed directly to the White House. I had to go back into the studio and mix five songs in a “Music Minus One” format so he could practice along with a recording (Bill took his saxophonage seriously, evidently).
This was a ton of extra work and expense, but it was going to be a big break -- live feeds from every cable and “big three” network, print media, magazines...you name it, they were all gonna be there, all at once.
A global puff piece, but a piece shot ‘round the world. So well worth the monetary and sweat equity investment.
And of course, everyone in the band was well aware of what was going on, due to the total invasion of his or her collective privacy. But they recognized it a big break as well, and it was heartening to finally be able to deliver a big one to my extended “Hungarian Family”; all of us had been working hard, and it was morale-boosting to finally have something concrete in the form of a pay-off.
As we approached the big day, an Eagle Tour Bus was rented (you gotta fake it before ya make it, friends -- and another pre-programmed morale booster). The gear was stowed in the cargo hold, and we all piled in (getting 15 nut balls to collectively pile into a bus with surgical precision is a feat unto itself), and started the long trip from the East Side of Syracuse to the Wood’s Hole Ferry, for our date with destiny, well earned and long deserved. It was a fun trip.
When we arrived at the Hot Tin Roof for sound check, the parking lot was already starting to fill with mobile broadcast units from various global news agencies, their rooftop satellite dishes armed and ready to raise heavenward, for the eventual world wide broadcast of a sound bite of “The Hungarian Manifesto”, beamed into potentially millions of homes.
Everyone was frisked, metal-detected, every bag rooted through, every instrument case opened and every instrument thoroughly inspected, just in case the kick drum was packed with C-4 explosives or the trumpet was rigged for automatic rifle fire.
Amidst many individuals in black suits with earpieces, chatting into their sleeves, I relished this moment. It was time to go out and grab the ring, and I had been preparing for this moment my entire life.
The room was packed, and the excitement was palpable. The Novena candles were lit (about 300 of 'em... our trademark), the intro tape cued, the fog machine belching out its unique sickly-smelling cloud of noxious gas, and we started the show, a confident army of friends, battle tested and blazing. Five minutes before “The Prez” was about to make his grand entrance, a Secret Service Agent walks on stage and hands me a note. It read:
“Princess Diana has just died in a car accident. The President WILL NOT be appearing.”
That’s it. Just two sentences. The cabal of black suits disappeared from the wings of the stage, the camera crews de-materialized, and the limo pulled out of the lot. Just like that.
And I was left with the thought of my life and career crashing and burning around my brain pan just like Diana’s car crashing into the thirteenth pillar of a tunnel in Paris, all while looking at the lone fourth music stand in front of the horn section that would go unused that night and trying to entertain about 700 tweaking revelers and extended family members who had assembled for your big moment, fronting a band that was blissfully unaware of the disappointment that they were about to experience -- and making sure that know one knows anything that’s going on in your head, because that’s what entertainers do.
It ain’t your day kid. Only you can’t hit the showers. You still have to pretend that it is your day. Keep smiling, monkey boy.
This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened to me, and it was going to be the last. Unfortunately, I'm actually good at gracefully fiddling while Rome is burning. I've had lots of practice. The Universe likes to bat me down, hard, at the most inopportune moments it can pick.
I have become philosophical about these types of moments.
You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied, but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earthbound.
I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.
The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right.
I spent most of my third decade on the planet pursuing the dream of being a “Rock Star”.
I quit high school to travel on that road, and stayed on it. Throughout my twenties I came very close to realizing that dream… but it always persisted in being just outside my grasp.
I closed that decade out as a member of a band that had a record deal ("The Bogeymen”, Delicious Vinyl). Delicious Vinyl was a hot little indie at the time, Tone-Loc, Young MC, and The Brand New Heavies being their most recognizable roster talent.
The brothers Ross ran Delicious V, and its creative output was overseen by Matt Dike (sort of the “West Coast” Rick Rubin, at the time)…. They embroiled us in legal sleight of hand and sued us for a year due to a contractual technicality to sign the band (another “Epic Failure File” in and of itself; more on that little “music biz” tale later), so we weren’t exactly happy campers by the time management conceded to accept a deal that was way below our market value.
But they basically left us alone to record the first record… and all the outwardly appearing steps toward eventual success were starting to materialize (advance money, drunken junkets to LA for mix down, video on MTV in nominal rotation, preparations for a tour, tons of international press, endorsements, etc.).
But then they became cash poor. So it was decided rather than hit the road and play, the band needed to get back in the studio and get another one in the can.
We spent about a year on that one, and by the time we delivered the master, the label was bankrupt. A year’s worth of work was permanently shelved, never to see the light of day. No more record deal, and the dream was hurled off a cliff in a mangled ball of fiery metallic twisted wreckage... again.
When everything officially crashed and burned, and I found myself penniless, jobless, my marriage also crashing and burning simultaneously (another forthcoming entry in the “Epic Failure Folder”)… I decided to basically hide under my bed for a few months.
All dreams shattered, all at once… I was living the nightmare, not the dream.
Out of the blue, in the depths of depression, I got a late night phone call:
Me: “Yeah?”
Them: “This is Henry Hirsch…may I speak to George Rossi?”
Henry Hirsch was Lenny Kravitz’s partner/producer. After giving me a little background on who he was (I already knew, but his schpiel was obviously honed and prepared…and I love a good schpiel.)
Tracing the linear history of how he got my phone number (The fellas at Delicious Vinyl to George Drakulious (Rick Rubin’s engineer and future producer of The Black Crowes) to him... evidently Matt and Mike felt bad about how things ended at Delicious Vinyl, so Karma points were and still are awarded), he made this offer:
Henry: “Lenny’s looking for a keyboard player to tour with him for the next three years ...would you like to audition?”
My Internal Monologue: “Holy Shit!”
Me: “Uh…. yeah, I guess so….”
The only problem was that auditions were being held the next day at 10am… in Hoboken, NJ. I was in Syracuse NY, about a five hour drive away, I didn’t own a car that could even remotely make that trip…and it was midnight.
So with no preparation whatsoever, sleep deprived and road weary, I pulled into the Hoboken parking lot (in a rented car) of Lenny’s and Henry’s warehouse studio facility at 9:45 am.
I’d like to tell you that my invitation was an exclusive one, but it wasn’t. There were about fifty leather-clad rock and rollers, way cooler looking than me, in full dress waiting in front of the studio’s door. It was a cattle call, and I was the last steer, bringing up the rear.
When it eventually came my turn to sit with Henry at the piano (Lenny skipped the audition process), his first point was they weren’t interested in “New Orleans Style” piano playing…a huge liability for me, since this was my area of expertise…and although familiar with the “Let Love Rule” record and never having heard Lenny’s sophomore effort, the music was piped in the piano room, and I was expected to shine.
I didn’t. I flat out sucked. Shot the pooch, ran over it with a tractor, and then had anal sex with it’s corpse kind of sucked.
So with the classic utterance of “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” ringing in my ears, I took the long drive home back to Syracuse, hoping to get there before I got charged another day’s rent on the rent-a-wreck.... the acrid taste of failure in the back of my throat for the entire trip.
Two weeks later, I received another midnight call.
Henry: “George, it’s Henry…. can you make a call back at 10am tomorrow?”
Me: “Jeez ,Henry…. I’m five hours away…couldn’t you give me a little advance notice?”
Henry: “If you want the gig…. be in Hoboken by 10am”
Me: “ See you tomorrow”
And so my dance with Henry and Lenny had officially started, always following the same pattern…the midnight call, the car rental, the incremental counting of chickens before the are hatched along with the Lenny “carrot” getting dangled closer and closer, the sleep deprived and absolute suck-ass playing during the private audition with Henry, the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” unceremonious kick out the door, and the long cross-eyed drive of savoring complete and utter failure back to the wastelands of Central NY.
But Henry kept calling (at midnight…every fucking time!)…finally admitting after four auditions that a field of two hundred and fifty candidates had been winnowed down to only two: Richard Bell (one of the greatest NY session players of all time) and me (the cross-eyed, sleep deprived, clueless one-handed pianna-plunkin’ choke artist). One more 10am, next day call back. But this time, Lenny will be there.
“Do not count your chickens, Jack…” was the basic mantra on the drive down.
So I went and did a private audition for Henry, Lenny and his entourage (never once did I actually get to play with the band), cross-eyed, sleep-deprived and shooting the pooch for the fifth time, and taking the same solo drive of failure: Sitting on my tail, which seemed to be getting quite comfortable on these Hoboken NJ to Syracuse NY treks in its familiar resting position of being situated firmly between my legs.
The midnight call came two evenings later.
Henry Hirsch: “George, it’s Henry”
Here comes the lowering of the boom…I’d love to say that at this point, getting hit in the head with the boom didn’t matter, but at this point…it did matter. It always hurts, and I had experienced enough boom lowering to last a lifetime…I know exactly how much it hurts, and how much recovery time is needed after getting your skull cracked.
Me: “ Hey, Henry…. what’s up?”
Henry: “ Congratulations, you got the gig. The tour starts in Japan in two weeks…. get down to Hoboken five days from now…. Fax your passport info and lose fifteen pounds before you get here.”
My Internal Monologue: “ Holy Shit!!!!” I had finally won one…and this was like hitting the lottery.
Me: “Cool...”
So preparations were made and deals negotiated. I was to hustle down to NY to get “styled”, clothed, tattooed and pierced…. for three grand a week plus per diem for three years. No more living on Kraft Mac and Cheese. No more abject poverty. My moment has finally arrived. My ship has finally docked at port.
On the fifth moonrise, with my bags packed, plane tickets purchased and my incredibly bright future ahead of me, the phone rang one more time.
Henry Hirsch: “George…Lenny has decided to go out in a “power trio” format…. the deal’s off. I’m so sorry…I know how disappointed you must be.”
Me: “No worries, Henry. You’re a real mensch. Business is business. Tell Lenny I hope he has a wonderful tour, and thank him for the opportunity.”
My Internal Monologue: “ARRRRRGGHHHHH!!!!” (Insert the sound and visual of my life’s dream, once again being hurled off the side of a cliff in a mangled twisted metallic ball of fiery wreckage…here)
That boom can sure be a sneaky motherfucker when it wants to be.
"Are You Gonna Go My Way?"....evidently, not.
This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened to me, and it wasn't going to be the last. Unfortunately, I'm actually good at being graceful at fiddling while Rome is burning. I've had lots of practice. The Universe likes to bat me down, hard, at the most inopportune moments it can pick.
I have become philosophical about these types of moments.
You may shoot for the stars and end up in a back alley behind Pluto, beaten and bloodied…. but at least I dare to dream, and that’s better than being Earth bound.
I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.
The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right.
Flash Forward 17 years or so:
Lenny Kravitz hangs out quite a bit in New Orleans (my adopted residence of the past eleven years) nowadays. One of his former roadies ended up getting a post-Katrina no bid sweet-heart deal to start a garbage removal company, which basically is responsible for most of the city’s garbage removal biz. They’re pretty tight.
So a couple of months ago, as I was sitting on my Bourbon Street stoop smoking a cigarette watching the sky darken and the stars materializing, Lenny happened to walk by and I struck up a conversation…and I regaled him with the events just outlined in this tale of woe.
We both laughed our asses off, with the French Quarter sounds of clacking mule hooves, train whistles, and the wheezing melodies of a steamboat calliope functioning as a soundtrack as I spun the yarn… the unique, faint olfactory combination of the hot, fetid breath of the Mississippi River, stale beer, mule shit and night blooming jasmine washing over us, the brightest stars oscillating as they made their first entrance on the stage of the night sky.
