One of the most difficult and frustrating activities in the world right now is online job searching, but every now and then I’ll find a posting that tweaks my interest enough to actually get me imagining myself in a job I am absolutely unqualified for. They could take a chance on me; after all, writing is a skill set with a wide variety of applications, right?

Well, let’s test that theory. I go and find a listing on one of my favorite job sites, Media Bistro. The NRA’s publication is seeking a writer/editor… How hard could that be? I like guns. I grew up with a father who is an avid gun collector. I’ve even spent my fair share of time in the Bisti Badlands shooting cans off of stumps and sandstone hills.

But while I sit in my fantasy of making my daddy proud by becoming a writer for one of his favorite publications, I realize my knowledge of firearms extends to knowing the difference between a rifle and a handgun– oh, and knowing the pain of a BB piercing my right shoulder (yeah, my brother shot me once while we were playing in the backyard… at least he gave me a running start).

Well, there is one area I can actually offer some expertise, and that’s the subject of firearms and music. Do you know how many great songs are out there mythologizing holster-happy cowboys, bottle-shooting rednecks and gun-loving everyday Americans? There are a few vigilante tales of murder and woe in there, too. Take a listen to these tunes, and if they don’t make you wanna head to your local Walmart to buy a gun rack, I don’t know what will … (more…)

A December article in the The Amerian Conservative reports on some startling revelations from John Lennon himself in a number of interviews that took place near the end of his life. Obviously, the MSM and their co-conspirators in the entertainment media shoved all of this down the memory-hole.

American Conservative’s Jordan Micheal Smith:  

In the last major interview Lennon gave, to Playboy in late 1980 (and later released unedited as a book, All We Are Saying), he and Yoko Ono offered opinions that can fairly be described as chastened, jaded, even provincial. …

When it was pointed out that a Beatles reunion could possibly raise $200 million for a poverty-stricken country in South America, Lennon had no time for it. “You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. After they’ve eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles.” It’s a critique of foreign aid readers of P.T. Bauer would be familiar with. “You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I’m not ready for it.”

This was not the ’60s revolutionary who hung out with Yippies and Black Panthers. Not only did Lennon dismiss his earlier efforts, he rejected the entire idea of social change through political action. “I have never voted for anybody, anytime, ever,” he said. “Even at my most so-called political. I have never registered and I never will. It’s going to make a lot of people upset, but that’s too bad.”

(more…)

Sounds at though John Lennon might have grown up before his untimely death:

John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death – according to the tragic Beatles star’s last personal assistant.

Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon’s death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.

In new documentary Beatles Stories, s thought he was while he was his assistant.

He says, “John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.

(more…)

It should be no surprise. People who actually want to help others don’t put on tight leather pants and play guitars for screaming women. They usually go into quieter professions like medicine, social work, or ministry. So when a Rockstar actually claims that he wants to be an altruist, his motivations are usually as phoney as his hair plugs.

I understand where it comes from. Musicians usually become Rockstars by appealing to the common man. When they become rich and famous, they have to find ways to appeal to the demographic they abandoned. So they take up causes. Sheryl Crow feigns concern about the environment, for example, even though the energy required for just one tour could satisfy the energy needs of a small American city.

When Bruce Springsteen started singing about blue-collar teenage angst, he was an angry blue-collar guy, barely out of his teens. His jeans would fade from hauling amps, just like any other working stiff. A billion dollars later, he has to work hard to remember the old days; and like most Grammy winning musicians, has a Guatemalan sweatshop put holes in his jeans.

Unlike the other European Rockstars of the eighties (who are forgotten, but for their haircuts), U2 frontman Bono has been able to keep himself relevant for a generation with his Saint Bono routine. He is not just a champion of the working class, he is the superhero for the impoverished and oppressed peoples of the world. He has met with presidents and dictators, leaders of every political and religious stripe, and set up programs where you can still be a commercialist with a conscience by buying a Red™ iPod. He successfully petitioned 23 nations to forgive Third World debt; debt that will eventually have to be picked up by the taxpayers of those 23 nations. (more…)

“How I Won the War,” released on DVD over four decades after its theatrical debut in 1967, is notable for two reasons. First, it’s the only film that Beatle John Lennon appeared in without his fellow band mates in tow, and second, it’s a liberal, anti-war film that was reamed by Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times and Bosley Crowther in the New York Times.

Lennon plays a bit part as a soldier under the command of British lieutenant Earnest Goodbody (Michael Crawford), whose incompetence continually dwindles his troops as they fight the Axis in North Africa and Europe.

Director Richard Lester, the man behind Beatles films “Help!” and “A Hard Day’s Night,” splices grainy, tinted documentary footage into his film, but detracts from the weight of this footage through gag comedy and an apparent lack of direction throughout.

Charles Wood wrote the screenplay, though it’s hard to understand what he wrote exactly. The dialogue is spoken so fast that with the British accents it’s nearly impossible to understand. And the storyline is mashed and incoherent, seemingly without a purpose or end-point in sight.

I think the acting is good, I think, but I couldn’t really tell since I didn’t know what the actors were saying. Lennon’s pretty funny, but his character is a prankster, whose gags are immature and childish. (more…)

An e-mail exchange with John Lennon’s ex-lover May Pang set Seth Swirsky on a crash course in documentary filmmaking.

The singer-songwriter with both a bevy of chart toppers and a respected solo career to his credit, met Pang about six years ago following an email introduction. Swirsky asked Pang if they could take an impromptu tour of Lennon’s infamous “lost weekend” hot spots circa the early 1970s.

Camera in hand, Swirsky captured some of Pang’s memories on film as merely a video scrapbook, nothing more. He figured he might make a short film from the experience – “A Day with May in LA” sounded about right.

—–

But when he started quizzing other rock luminaries on their favorite Beatles anecdotes, like Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues and Denny Laine from Wings, he realized he had the makings of a documentary.

“I’m an artistic person,” Swirsky tells Big Hollywood. “I never know exactly what I’m doing at any moment. I allow that process to occur.”

“Beatles Stories,” the culmination of six years of guerilla interviews, recently had its world premiere April 3 at the European Independent Film Festival in Paris. The film, dubbed an “epic and timeless masterwork” by director Cameron Crowe, lets the famous and not so famous share their connections with the Fab Four.

Swirsky didn’t want to hear people talk about a Beatles song playing during their high school prom. He wanted more personal stories, tales that illuminated the band’s influence as well as the speakers’ hearts. (more…)

Okay.  First of all let me start off  by saying that I have been a musician (piano and more recently guitar – and the spoons) since I was a youngster.  And very few bands influenced me more than the Fab Four.  And of said mop-tops from Liverpool,  Paul was my favorite but I always thought John Lennon was a little cooler in his edginess and willingness to explore musically…sometimes brilliantly (“She Said, She Said”) other times embarrassingly (“number 9?…number 9?…number 9?)

It was with great sadness this thirteen year old heard the news from Howard Cosell, thirty years ago today in fact, on Monday Night Football, that he’d been murdered by that scumbag Mark David Chapman.  Actually, if I may borrow from Dennis Miller, I take that back for that would be an insult to bags of scum.  

Fact: John Lennon changed the music scene for the better and enriched rock-and-roll and all off-shoots from the Sixties onward in a profound way that only a truly gifted artist could.  Still, like his partner Paul, John’s music was never quite so there after the Beatles broke up, showing that a unique synergy did exist, even if by the end they were writing by themselves and for themselves.

That last observation is just a hint of honesty that I think is necessary to remember him properly.  To eulogize Lennon the man rather than just the music takes some frank talk.  And no Lennon song so instills in me the urge to have an adult discussion with the legions of fans who see not just a musician but rather a  mystically enlightened figure than his anthem of the hippy pacifist culture:  “Imagine.”  It is a beautiful piece, elegant in its simplicity of melody.  But the lyrics, quite frankly, irk me.

“Imagine no possessions.  I wonder if you can.”   What I wonder more is whether those who sing this modern-day kumbaya, an homage to an equalitarian society that Orwell would scoff at, are aware that the man who penned these words was worth an estimated $150 million when he died – much if it in real estate, including five apartments claimed in the Dakota co-op on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Three units just for storage—for all those possessions he couldn’t imagine … I guess.  It sort of deflates the message, does it not?  At least it reveals that, for all his talent, Lennon was at his core a textbook limousine liberal who bounced from four-star hotels, to luxury private jets, to castles in the country and posh penthouses in the glitziest of cities to pontificate his world without class, borders, countries, God or, of course, possessions.  (more…)

”What it comes down to for me is this: Will the technologies of communication in our culture, serve to enlighten us and help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?”  - Roger Waters

Roger Waters’ presentation of Pink Floyd’s seminal rock opera The Wall, which I saw at Staples Center in Los Angeles, is nothing short of a total triumph at all levels.  More than just an outstanding rock n’ roll concert, the addition of story-driven spectacle and anti-authoritarian thematics elevate this experience far above any other live music experience one is likely to see.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Waters’ work, and for those who need a reminder, The Wall charts the autobiographical tale of Mr. Waters, whose father dies in WWII, and how a series of subsequent traumas forces him into a self-imposed isolation behind a metaphorical wall.  This alienation drives him mad, eventually forcing him to face an internal trial, in which his inner judge tears down his wall.

Heady stuff for a rock album, much less a concert.  Yet Mr. Waters succeeds in transcending his personal story, delivering a moving allegory, calling for each of us to tear down the walls we have erected to separate ourselves from the proverbial “Other.”

The work presented is utterly faithful to the original, complete with sound effects and background voices familiar to Pink Floyd fans, played with passion as well as technical sophistication.  It is also apparent that Mr. Waters’ voice is as fit as ever, complete with varying foreign accents, hisses, groans, and whispers. (more…)

In a world of Starland Vocal Bands, Lady GaGas, Bon Jovis, Snoop Doggs and 1910 Fruitgum Companies, it takes real talent to write a song so unbelievably horrible that it transcends mere awfulness and crosses the frontier into a whole new realm of sheer crappiness.  An artistic, musical and philosophical failure of staggering proportions, John Lennon’s “Imagine” is the worst song of all time.

Many feel this ballad is a touching hymn that gives voice to man’s yearning for a better world.  They are wrong.  “Imagine” is a cloying, boggy, sonic swamp of numb-skulled sentiments that sound like they were recycled from a bong-fueled, 2 a.m. bull session between a couple of pampered, credulous UC Berkeley lit majors.  It’s the national anthem of the hopey/changey crowd — all at once pretentious, smug, tiresome and intellectually bankrupt.  (more…)

Though hailed as one at the time, the Beatles masterpiece Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was not Rock’s first “concept” album.  Per John Lennon:  “It doesn’t go anywhere…  It works, because we said it worked…  Every other song could have been on any other album.”

Flash forward to the latest cacophony from “spoken word” Grammy winner President Obama and his Lefty Health Club Band’s radical “concept” album, A Health Dirge Night; examine a few select tracks; and, recognize the reprised promotional chicanery.

The album opens with the derivative 8-track era chestnut, With A Little Help from the Feds.  Here, President Obama’s Lefty Health Club Band warbles that a radical bill must pass – now! – because our broken health care system is in crisis.  Why?  Because they said so.  Yet, while concerned with rising costs, the vast majority of Americans believe our health care system is good or excellent, and they are satisfied with their current plans.  Why then did Obama’s band try to rush release a radical bill before the public could hear how it impacts their current health care plans? (more…)

Forty years ago this week the cover photo for the “Abbey Road” album was taken, representing the final walk of the Beatles as a rock group.

Fourteen days later, on August 22nd, they posed together for a final promotional photo shoot, which was their last appearance together at any Beatles event. Although one more album was released (“Let it Be”), “Abbey Road” was the last album recorded by the band, which was already virtually dissolved as a unit. Yet the album was a great artistic and commercial success. The “Let it Be” album was intended to be released first, but the group did not think it ready. They moved on to record “Abbey Road” and released it on September 26th and October 1st, 1969, respectively, in the UK and the US. The cover photo, fittingly designed by Paul (as he was the only member who had a passion to keep the group together; even as he finally sued to end the partnership), depicts the band’s final crossing of “Abbey Road,” toward their studio home of the prior eight years. Ironically, even bizarrely, convicted murderer and “wall of sound” creator, Phil Specter, did the final mixing in 1970 of several songs on “Let it Be,” almost as an audition. He was not aware there would be no more Beatles, although he did some work for Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band. (more…)

So yesterday on the Huffington Post, Deepak Chopra published yet another anti-American screed – this time lamenting the fact that we’re the last remaining superpower. He says the world would be a better place if the US just packed it in as a leader, and to quote Lennon, “give peace a chance!” In it he writes, “America leads the world in arms dealing, starting wars, and developing new methods of mechanized death,” conveniently leaving out all the incidental stuff that comes with being a heavily armed, supercool, superpower. Meaning, saving millions of lives by ending world wars, getting rid of dictators, stopping famine and assorted civil conflicts, and preventing mass disease. Chopra also hilariously vomits that, “Peace is achieved by being peaceful, no matter what the military-industrial complex claims to the contrary.”

Tell that to the Iranian voters, jackass. (more…)

What exactly is the proper response to the news that the most famous and most talented accused-child molester in America has died? Talk about mixed emotions.

Like most shallow, self centered knuckleheads in show business, I place an inordinate importance on talent. I love talent! It’s the one thing I wish dearly I had more of (and, on many nights, comedy club audiences throughout the tri-state area have wished the same…)

I’m a great audience member. I laugh easily, I applaud heartily. I’m always impressed with performers who can do things I can’t (which is why I’m impressed with most performers). Show me the hackiest ventriloquist act in the business, and I’m just amazed they can talk with their mouth closed. I once sang and danced in a Broadway musical (I played Vince Fontaine, the libidinous deejay, in the 90’s revival of Grease – ramma lamma lamma ka dingidy ding da dong…). I can’t sing or dance. I love people who can, even those who can’t do it very well. (more…)