March 17, 2007. I join about ten thousand people at and Vine Street in Los Angeles to rally and march for peace.
Foremost in our intentions is to stop funding the and bring home the troops, but, clearly, most of us demonstrators see this war as only part of a larger war of the and the upon the poor and middleclass of all nations, and upon the environment. We march for and all over the planet.
Dr. William Hooks, M.D.
, a radiologist from Rancho Cucamonga, was working for the day as a documentary photojournalist for , the organizers of the march. He is talking with an indigenous Bolivian woman, who is leafletting to gather support for President Evo Morales and the .
Eric Howard, who I met at last June, showed up on his bike.
welded and painted this beautiful, large peace symbol, titled Dreamcatcher Peacewheel. 
One very small counter-protest of Christian Fundamentalists appeared at the opening rally, but, otherwise, the world smiled upon our march.
A group of young men sang and played and a group of young women began dancing in the street.
This, in turn, got the women marching with to sing and drum ldquo;Give Peace a Chance, rdquo; and a woman from walked beside them, recording them for a program.
I carried my usual handmade sign with its positive message, and some of artist rsquo;s famous bumperstickers ldquo;My God Loves Your God, rdquo; which I bestowed upon anyone who spoke to me admiringly of them.
We walked to Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, where we attended a rally at an outdoor stage in front of the famous . US Congressional , founder of the , exhorted us to call, email and fax our congressional representatives and tell them not to approve the Pelosi/Murtha plan with its huge supplemental budget for the war.
We roared our approval and support. After Rep. Waters, actor spoke, thundering like God Himself, and after him, actresses (representing ) and .
Singer/songwriter , eerily recalling a young singing at peace marches during the , who also performed his own protest songs.
, a Grammy Award winning band from Los Angeles, played an entire set. It seems as if all of the band members play more than one instrument, sing, and even dance a bit, and they change roles to perform in a variety of ethnic styles, sometimes within one song: salsa, rap, Arabic, hiphop, and mariachi.
The , a feminist group based in the Philipines, protests in particular the effect of war on women and girls, in the form of abductions and rapes, and prostitution surrounding army bases in third world countries.
Jerry Rubin, not the (who died in 1994), sells political bumper stickers most weekends near the Santa Monica Promenade, and he was on Hollywood Boulevard for the peace march.
Pacifica Radio station , the voice of the left in LA for nearly five decades, had a canvas available for painting at the their booth, to advertise a day of boycotting gasoline on May 1.
Here rsquo;s a of all 51 of my photos from the demonstration!
On March 8, I set out to hear and perform (on hammered dulcimer and tabla, respectively) at , a combination recording studio and small night club in , near the corner of and Highland Avenue.
The Dragon caters to a youngish, darkly boho sort of crowd, epitomized by the friendly, informal and ticket seller.
I felt at home; I grew up in this neighborhood, and, when I was in high school, I would go out to clubs in Hollywood that allowed teens, like , places where we kids could chill out, listen to music, and talk with people older than we were who weren rsquo;t trying to tell us what to do.
The Dragon has a bar, so no teens, but the twenty-somethings talked with me happily.
There actually IS a red dragon in the Red Dragon, the sort that performs the and eats money at events.
It didn rsquo;t look red in the gloom of the ceiling where it hung, but when I aimed a flash at it, I discovered it really is quite garishly red. It presides over a gaggle of red Chinese paper lanterns, fans and umbrellas in a black painted room.
While Kraig and Cory set up, a blared and a series of projections of LA people and scenes in slide show rotation illuminated the stage.
By comparison, Kraig and Cory rsquo;s music was an oasis for the mind, heart, spirit and soul.
Kraig rsquo;s had magnificent overtones that sometimes sounded to me like a Muslim call to prayer. Cory brought four dayan (the higher drums of the set) and tuned each one to a different note in the scale in which Kraig rsquo;s instrument was tuned, so that the drum functioned more like a bass melodic instrument.
After Kraig and Cory packed up, the band Kaora took the stage, five young men in black with a purposeful rock demean. Their fans were pleased to see them. I rsquo;d already had enough high volume electronics for one night from the DJ, so I thanked Kraig and Cory, and headed home, very happy.
Another bright blue November day on Sunset Boulevard on the way to the Taxi Rally. In LA, you don rsquo;t have to look in the newspaper to see what movie is opening soon. Gargantuan movie posters take up the entire sides of tall buildings, as well as enormous billboards, and the sides of buses and bus stops.
I could hardly wait to hear rsquo;s lecture ldquo;Alternative Markets and Outlets for Songwriters and Artists Who Don rsquo;t Fit the Commercial Mold, rdquo; and I was not disappointed. I took six pages of notes, dense with information about alternative performance venues, radio stations, sales venues, and song markets.
I met Adam Rauf, mathematician, guitarist and percussion player, and Eric Belcastro, drummer, percussionist and guitarist, of the Pittsburgh instrumental group Kalon.
Eric bought a copy of my book, , which endeared him to me immediately. He said he wants to live off the grid someday.
Adam and Eric gave me their CD ldquo;Dark Sky, Bright Sun, rdquo; with a wonderful cover painted by Eric rsquo;s father , which amazed me because of my two related CD covers: (a naked goddess smiling at the sun and the sun at her) and (a girl waltzing with the moon over the ocean).
I cruised around the Music Biz Bookstore in the Silverlake Room, where the teachers and mentors offered their books, CDs, DVDs, and brochures. This lovely girl with rings through her upper and lower lips had devised a simple marketing strategy, which I know worked well for .
At the end of the day, I bought a for one third off at s booth in the Grand Ballroom.
My 1984 Roland TR 505 had exceeded its dotage, and a replacement had been on my shopping list a long time. It rsquo;s the second time in three years I rsquo;ve bought a piece of equipment from Noel Gould, their friendly and astute sales manager. And, yippee, he bought a copy of Living on the Earth, too.
Those two books paid for my first three days of parking at the Hollywood and Highland mall.
I decided that the best use my time at the TAXI Road Rally would be taking ldquo;Driver rsquo;s Ed rdquo; classes on marketing songs and performances. It was a good choice; I came away with dozens of new options to explore.
My first class was ldquo;Indie Artist Marketing, Touring and Promotion, rdquo; with , an Australian singer/songwriter with a lovely voice. She had just returned from a tour with of fame. ldquo;Think about what makes you and your act unique, rdquo; she advised.
ldquo;For me, initially, it was my accent. rdquo;
When she said that she often has to reassure students who tell her that they are too old to go on the road as singer/songwriters at, say, 43, I raised my hand and said, ldquo;I rsquo;m 57 years old, and I just came back from touring a month in Japan. rdquo; The whole room erupted in applause.
For the rest of the conference, people came up to me and said ldquo;I was there when you said hellip; rdquo;
My 15 minute individual mentoring session with ( ldquo;Composer/Producer/Songwriter/Multi-instrumentalist who has played with Bono, Frank Zappa, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, Aaron Neville, and many more. Has had songs and scores in many films and TV shows with Paramount, ABC 20th Century Fox, Comedy Central and on labels such as A M, Universal, Epic, Geffen and Warner Brothers rdquo;) consisted partly in his listening to and , and mostly in remembering our late, great friend in common, , who was a famous recording engineer in the lsquo;70 rsquo;s (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were among his clients) and who designed in 2000.
I didn rsquo;t sign up to pitch my music to industry professionals, but lots of other people did.
I rsquo;m content with self-producing and independently releasing my CDs and am not looking for a record deal. One thing I hear over and over again at this conference is that , and now what rsquo;s happening is that consumers are buying individual cuts over the internet and uploading them on their iPods, the more diverse in style, the better. That works for me.
Five days after I flew back to Los Angeles from my month-long tour in Japan, I drove over to the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel in the Hollywood and Highland shopping and theatre complex (above), to attend the Taxi Road Rally, a four-day songwriters convention put on by Taxi, an independent A R ( ldquo;Artist Repertoire rdquo;) company.
solicits performing artists, and compositions and songs from its members on behalf of record, television, and film producers, as well as for digital download companies and for libraries that sell music for advertising, video games, ring tones, and so forth. Taxi screens the submitted material and sends on what it considers appropriate.
Because it performs this valuable function, it attracts many music buying entities, and, because it attracts many music buying entities, it attracts many songwriters and composers. Once a year, Taxi puts on a convention for its members, free of charge, offering classes, panel discussions, mentoring, and an open mic each night.
I joined Taxi last summer after releasing What Living rsquo;s All About, because I thought I could license my songs for performance by other artists.
I realized quickly that the types of music I have created and the types commonly requested by the commercial music industry don rsquo;t overlap much, although occasionally I see a listing requesting something ldquo;quirky, rdquo; ldquo;like Tom Waits, rdquo; or ldquo;50 rsquo;s style jazz rdquo; that the WLAA songs might fit. When they say ldquo;singer-songwriter, rdquo; what they mean is someone playing acoustic guitar rock and roll style, and singing about weird circumstances in a breathy voice. There rsquo;s a big market for that these days.
I don rsquo;t know how many thousands of songwriters attended the conference. It looked like at least two thousand to me. I loved being surrounded by other people who hear voices in their heads and actually do something about it.
There was a sort of oximoronic quality to an event with a corporate format, attended by the very fringes of bohemian society, a convention of the unconventional.
Nonetheless, the hords of songsmiths and nightingales stood in long lines to register for the conference, receive badges, purchase luncheon tickets and carry away bags of advertising. We are a market, supporting magazines, professional organizations, music stores, equipment manufacturers, software writers, life coaches, career advisors, music and business teachers, authors and publishers.
These were all present at the conference, fishing. And we were there, fishing, too. Everyone looked hopeful.
After we registered for admission, mentoring sessions, and luncheons, we gathered in the Grand Ballroom, where Michael Laskow, founder and CEO of Taxi offered a heartfelt welcome, and his thanks to the many who worked hard to make this event possible. ldquo;Every year, rdquo; he told us, ldquo;I swear I will never do another one of these again. rdquo; It was an endearing remark.
Certainly none of us would have even done the first one.
Katie Campbell, Mark Winkler, Marissa Batt, and, in the background, Andrew Pandaleon, after the show at the Celebration Theatre in Hollywood.
Tonight I went with my lifelong friend Marissa Batt to see ldquo;Play It Cool, rdquo; a jazz musical comedy set in a secret gay and lesbian bar in Hollywood in 1953.
Our friend wrote the lyrics for all of the songs. I remember Mark from junior high school days, and Marissa was his date for the senior prom at LA High. Mark rsquo;s recorded nine CDs of original jazz tunes and written both music and lyrics for some very enthusiastically received musicals, including , , , and now , writing lyrics with jazz luminaries including , , and .
Mark has toured widely, singing his wonderful songs.
I loved every aspect of this show, starting with its newness, and that, therefore, the creators of the show are still changing things from night to night to see how they might work better. That, Mark explained to me, is how all musicals are when they first open.
The play, written by Larry Dean Harris and directed by Sharon Rosen, succeeded in bringing to life the denizens of the demimonde with wit, panache and pathos. All five of the singer/dancer/actors (Katie Campbell, , Andrew Pandaleon, , and Jessica Sheridan) in the small cast dazzled us, especially through the work of choreographer Marvin Tunney.
A jazz trio ( on piano, on bass, and Adam Alesi on drums), barely visible in the obscure back of the stage, exquisitely played standards in the style of lsquo;50 rsquo;s jazz before and between the acts, and accomplanied the recently composed but 50 rsquo;s style jazz songs for which Mark wrote the brilliant lyrics.
The band did not merely accompany the show, but were characters in the play, since all of the action takes place around their gig. The set rsquo;s black on black bar interior surrounded by audience on three sides drew me into the drama, while a swirling mist that looked exactly like cigarette smoke, but wasn rsquo;t, completed the mood, fogging the lights.
After the show, Marissa and I and her cousins and friend Patti went out for a late night gourmet meal, gazing into the wild windows of the Design District.
No more are gays underground in Hollywood. This is their town, and they make it so bewitchingly beautiful.
How much fun are you having with your house?
rsquo;s legendary artist house in West Hollywood has vanished (she sold it and moved to the tropics), but I was lucky enough to visit while she was still living in the midst of her ongoing creation. She painted the elaborate wall decor herself, collected the abstruse and mysterious furnishings during her travels, upholstered some of the furniture, and arranged everything like a set designer. Stephanie paints wonderful oil paintings, created two coffee table books, , and an upcoming book on the life and work of artist , and once made a video of Carnivale in Venice.
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