Musical ramblings from the manager
It is the summer of 1967. Herman’s Hermits and The Who are touring the United States. Which band is the opener and which is the headliner? This is a trick question because technically, the opening band was The Blues Magoos with The Who second on the bill and Peter Noones’ lightweight pop band Herman’s […]
Have you had a family grill out lately? If you did, it was probably on a gas grill or a good old fashioned charcoal grill, which is my personal favorite. Either way, we all owe a debt of thanks to Henry Ford for kick starting this little piece of Americana tradition. When Ford’s Kingsford, Michigan […]
As the pitchman for the XPRIZE Foundation, Peter Diamandis knew he had his work cut out for him when Dr. Yes (Richard Branson) said ‘no’ when asked to become a sponsor of the $10 million dollar XPRIZE. Peter drew up a list of people with deep pockets and began a six year courtship of […]
If the title above makes you think of the iconic line in The Wizard of Oz (Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), then your mind must work a lot like mine. When I hear certain strings of words together, my brain has a tendency to attach them to the rhythm of some song […]
Joan Baez was a big part of the 1960s and played a major role in defining the entire protest singer genre. I didn’t like her. I liked Donovan, Dylan and Arlo Guthrie, all artists who were supporting causes and writing songs very similar to Baez, but I could never quite get past her often prickly, […]
In the fall of 2016, we spent two editions of FTV discussing the end – as in “when a band comes to an end” and not “The End of the world” (9-28-16 and 10-5-16 if you care to backtrack a little). A couple of months ago, we spent sometime talking about the sudden end, and […]
Part one of this column began when I was ruminating about things that get passed along to graduates by various commencement speakers. Somehow things kind of swerved into a discussion of how bullying each other has changed since I was in junior high those many eons ago. Being mean to each other with pencil […]
It is always interesting to hear the sound bites that the news media gather in the graduation season. Every person tabbed as a graduation speaker will put their spin on “Oh the places you will go”, with some resorting to reading the whole tome of the same name written by the late Dr. Seuss. […]
For the purpose of this two parter, we are defining ‘Celebrity Sightings’ as casual encounters with persons who have a reason to be widely known to the public. Getting to see the Black Crowes first at the Hollywood Palladium and later at the Wiltern Theater don’t count as ‘encounters’. Seeing a celebrity standing five feet […]
One of my favorite cartoonists these days is Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis. I have never met him, but I always enjoy reading the introduction he writes for his daily cartoon strip compilations. Many of them involve his dealings with fans and/or other cartoonist. In his honor, I almost called this FTV Sometimes […]