Favorite Things

 I've been very critical of the TV show The Blacklist. And for good reason. It sucks. But why would I care so much as to dedicate time to point that out? Well, because it had been my favorite TV show, that's why. And to see it "fall from grace" so to speak was a huge disappointment to me.

It seems to have been a recurring thing to me with the things I've considered my favorite things. The Raiders football team is another example. The Raiders were a great franchise. For a long time. And then they become a very bad franchise. And that has been going on for a very long time, too.

I had a favorite rock band. Black Sabbath. But they couldn't keep their line up stable for the life of them. And even though they still made good music, there is no denying the music suffered. One day I will list every song they did, or every album, and give an honest opinion of how I feel about it. 

As for Blacklist, being a TV show, they have more control of being able to maintain greatness. A football team probably has the least control. You have 31 other teams, all with professional athletes, some of whom turn out to be better athletes than others. And when your ability to judge talent suffers, your team goes down. And it's not atypical for rock bands to have problems with their line ups. How many times have we heard about egos and drugs interfering with a bands success? Often.

But a TV show should not have any of these obstacles. If you have the same line up of actors, which it does, and the same writers, which it does, then there is no reason for the show to tank. But Blacklist's writers seem to have forgotten what made the show great.

It was the character of Red Reddington that made the show great. NOT the character of Elizabeth Keene. And the character of Dembe, Red's African bodyguard. And the storyline that followed, which was how Red got the FBI to take down his competition in the underworld, all the while granting him impunity for his own crimes. That was genius. And the show was fantastic.

But after three seasons, they seem to have lost their way. Red's closest allies betray him, and the writers began focusing on topical issues that had no place in the TV show, (like that horrible episode about abortion) which was a very disgusting and disturbing story.

But my repeated criticism is the repeated idiocy of the writing that has Lizzy hating the man who had saved her life over and over again. And this stupid "secret" Red has, which she just can't get over. And now, it's starting to bother me, too. The show has teased its audience enough. Who the hell is Red? Is he Lizzy's father or not? He said he's not. He said she shot her father and then the house burned down. But there was one episode that they showed a clue. In a scene where Red was changing his shirt we saw horrible burn scars on his back. So, what does that mean? Could it mean he was there when the house burned down? Could it be that he is the "father' that Lizzy shot? 

Two things have to happen. Let the audience in on the secret. Reveal that Red is the "father" that Lizzy shot, that it was he who saved Lizzy's life that day, even though she had shot him, and he suffered burns for the effort. And stop this ridiculous hating of Red. He has saved Cooper's life, Ressler's life, and just about everyone else's life on that damn show. Can we please stay grounded in reason if not reality? If they can do that, then I can say once again it's my favorite show.

Blacklist Bottoms Out

 

Blacklist has been so bad the last two or three seasons, it's a wonder I watch it anymore. But I am, and it hasn't gotten any better. In fact, it has bottomed out. I mean it can't get any worse! Season eight is now underway, or maybe it's the conclusion of season seven? Whatever they were, whether they were season seven's conclusion or season eight's beginning, those two episodes were gawd awful.

So, we found out last season that Red is not the former lover of Lizzy's mother and had promised he would watch over her as if she were his real daughter. That was a flimsy way of explaining why he had shown the kind of affection and dedication to Lizzy as a real father would. And even though he has continued to show the affection and dedication of a real father to Lizzy for all seven seasons before this up to and including saving her life countless times, we have to watch this crap.

What crap? The kind of crap from Lizzy, I mean. Her entire role has bordered on boredom to stupidity to plain and simple crap.  Maybe it's not Megan Boone's fault. She has to play the role written for her, right? I mean, she doesn't have the kind of pull that a James Spader will have. Meaning, if he doesn't like what he's reading in a script, he can make it better. And if that's true, what the hell is he waiting for with the kind of crap we are seeing from Lizzy?

Is Spader content with shining, all the while allowing Boone to crap? Sheesh, is she nothing more than a foil to him? Does he believe that the worse she looks the better he'll look? Well, if he does, he's right and it's working. 

So, now, once again, for the umpteenth time, at the end of the last episode, (as in Season 8, episode 2) we have to watch Lizzy proclaiming how she's going to bring Red down, make him pay, utterly destroy him, and yadda, yadda, yadda. How many times has she made that declaration? I've lost count. Just like I've lost count how many times Red has saved her life!

And the combination of those two things truly makes this show suck. AND SUCK BIG TIME. I might use stronger language here, but I'm a teacher and I have to be careful what words I use. But this show sucks so bad that I wish I could use stronger language.

It's like the writers of this show had no idea that this show would last this long, and they don't know what to do with it. They probably had a good idea how the story would go for the first two or three seasons. But after that, it's like these writers are wingin' it. It truly looks like they are just trying to come up with something to last another season.

It reminds me of that other disaster of a show called LOST. They had something going for a bit, but then it was like they had no clue what to do with the story line after the first three seasons. They just winged it from there, and it had probably the worst series ending in the history of TV.

This is where Blacklist is going. For me, the ONLY thing that can save this show is if it is finally proven that Red really is Lizzy's biological father. How that can happen after he's already said he isn't her father, I don't care. Because if he isn't, then nothing about his show makes any sense at all. Because no one like a Red Reddington, or anyone I know even in the real world, would put up with a ridiculous character like Lizzy unless she really was his daughter. His real daughter. So let's see if that happens. Then and only then might I say, "Well, okay."

Blacklist is Back - But Do I Care?

 

Yes, season 8 of The Blacklist is underway. But do I really care? I do, but that care has been dwindling quite rapidly. Once upon a time this show was my favorite TV show. Oh, how times have changed. And during recent times, I have complained about this show more often than I have praised it. With good reason. It sucked the last two or three seasons.

I have lamented time and again how dizzy the female lead character Lizzy is. Thus the nickname for her, Dizzy Lizzy is more than apt. It suits her so well, in fact, that it should be her real name. Dizzy Lizzy. Yeah. Hollywood of late has become so obsessed with making strong female characters, (something I'm not opposed to, btw,) but in doing so, Hollywood has lost its grip on what, exactly IS a strong female character. Is this obsessive need for uncovering someone's "secret" something that makes a woman a strong character?

Rather, it makes Lizzy quite dizzy. Dizzy Lizzy. I would argue that respecting someone's privacy makes a character, any character, a strong character. In Dizzy Lizzy we have a woman who never knew her biological parents. But since becoming an FBI agent, she has come to know a man who has saved her life on multiple occasions. (I've actually lost count of how many times Red Reddington has saved her life.) She would be dead, dead, dead, if not for the intervention of Red Reddington. 

But does she have any appreciation of that fact? How about some gratitude? How about some loyalty or respect for the man to whom she owes her life? Um, nope. Instead, she can't get over the fact that he has a secret. It doesn't matter that he has proven time and again that he has Dizzy Lizzy's best interest at heart. What matters to Lizzy is that he has some kind of a secret and she just can't stand it.

So at the end of Season 7 we saw Dizzy Lizzy choosing to side with a mysterious woman, her supposed mother who she never knew, and after that same woman had put Dizzy Lizzy's only child into danger. And btw, she's a woman who had lied to Dizzy Lizzy when they had met to keep her own identity secret. (Talk about secrets!) On top of that this is the same woman who Dizzy Lizzy knows had murdered two of her fellow FBI agents even.

So yeah. Dizzy Lizzy sides with the mysterious mother who she never knew, and who was an enemy Russian spy, and who had lied to her, and who had put her daughter into danger, and who had murdered two of Lizzy's fellow FBI agents, instead of the man who has given her protection and has saved her life more times than I can remember. 

All of this is such crap, it's a wonder these writers are still employed by the series. I could write a lot better stories than this. I dare say anyone could. Except, that is, the writers who have the job. 

So I will watch the first two episodes of The Blacklist season eight during this holiday break, and see if these writers can pull themselves out of the hole in which they have dug themselves. It can be done. But it will take some mighty fine writing to do it. We'll see. And then I'll get back to you.

Catalog Complete

Volumes 2 and 3 are now up and ready to go on SoundCloud. And you can click on them on the sidebar if you care to. The music is great if I say so myself. My only regret is that I am not a singer. Nevertheless, the music is complete. It would be a dream come true if I had a real band and a real singer performing this music. But alas...

I was in a rock band years ago. It was a real rock band, with two guitarists, a bass player a drummer and a real singer. I was on the keyboards, of course, using an old-fashioned Vox Jaguar electric organ, and an upright piano.

But it worked. Unfortunately, my music writing at the time was in its infancy. I was only a teenager, and during that period of my life I had just begun writing my own songs. And I will admit even now, some of those songs were pretty darn good, even for a fourteen year old. (Which is when I wrote my first song.)

And during my teen years, I had written a small collection of songs, most of which I still remember. They are recorded on a cassette tape somewhere. Eventually I'll put  this collection of songs on another CD and call it Volume One - Rockin' the First Steps. They number about sixteen songs, which I wrote over a ten year period. From age 14 to about age 24. 

By then the band had dissolved and I focused on fine art instead of performing art. It wasn't until I was over forty when I went back to writing music again. I have chronicled what happened on this blog. To reiterate, it was after my fifth novel had been completed and published, I just got the music bug again.

So I bought new keyboards and got busy. And in the next three years or so, I wrote 120 more songs, which I put on volumes 2 through 13 and can be heard even now on SoundCloud.

I may get busy on my Volume 1 songs soon. But I'm getting back into my novels right now. I'm revising John Dunn; Heart of a Zulu and hoping to find representation or another publisher. I think that novel has the most potential, because it's a true story. And true stories are even better than fiction.

That's what I think anyway. We'll see how that goes. 

 I'm getting all of my music posted on SoundCloud. And now Volume 4 is on there. For a long time, Volume 4 was one of my favorites of all the albums I had written and arranged. Because of songs like Letting it Go, My Lady, and The Greatest, the first three songs on there, it held a special place in my heart. And then followed by songs like Rule the Day, and Legacy, I was particularly proud of this one.

Of course, that's not to say that the songs Never the Same, Those Were the Days, and Time Out were any less favored. And concluding with Wake Up and Crystal Ball were particularly encouraging to me. In fact, I was thinking Crystal Ball might have been the best of the lot.

The bottom line is they are all great. The playlist is as follows:

Letting it Go

My Lady

The Greatest

Rule the Day

Legacy

Never the Same

Those Were the Days

Time Out

Wake Up

Crystal Ball

I talked about this album in depth on an earlier post. I'll just conclude here by saying that I have redone the songs that needed to be redone. Particularly Letting It Go and Crystal Ball. Still I would prefer a real singer singing them. But I've talked about that too. It is what it is. Great songs, but less than great vocals. Oh well. It is what it is.

Volumes 5, 6, and 7 now posted

 I have Volumes 5, 6, and 7 now added to SoundCloud. I must remind anyone who happens to listen to them that I am not a singer. I only do the vocals on these volumes because, not only am I not a singer, I don't even KNOW anyone who is a singer. No relatives, no friends, and no colleagues or acquaintances of mine are singers. So what are you gonna do? You do it yourself.

Which is okay. No one knows my music as well as I do anyway. And maybe if I did know someone who was a singer, who says they would want to sing my songs anyway?

So whatever. If anyone can PRETEND that a real singer was singing these songs, then MAYBE they could use that imagination to appreciate the real music behind those songs. That remains to be seen. But if you are able to do that, then by all means, check out the music.

Volume 5 is filled with great songs. Volume 6 is filled with great songs too, but Volume 7 is filled with songs that can be called masterpieces, especially the first song, Dream. And even if I never write another song, these volumes would stand the test of time.

But who says I won't write another song? I'll get back to writing new music soon enough. Just have to post what I have up there first and then get Volume 1 finished. We'll see how it goes.

Volume 13 - Rockin' the Afterlife

Volume 13 - Rockin' the Afterlife wraps up my catalog of music. It's another concept album that didn't begin that way. It was just like Volume 12 in that I wrote all the songs independently of each other, but after the tenth song, when I sat down to write the lyrics, it became a concept album.

Song #1, Soul of Liberty is about life after death, but in the form of reincarnation. I do not necessarily believe in reincarnation. But the words were about that, so I went with it. And just like for the songs in Volume 12, each ensuing song became another song about that general theme.

It's a very controversial theme, I know, but it lasted right up to the final song on the album, Looking Back. Actually, both the music and the lyrics turned out to be very compelling. And just like for Volume 12, it's quite an adventure to sit and listen to this album, no matter how many times I have already. Sure there is mention of God, Heaven, Hell, different religions, and alternate realities. 

The bottom line is I don't care what anyone's religion is, or if they have or don't have one at all. But what is sure to come in everyone's life is death, as song #8 Sideways makes clear. And what happens at that point or after that point is basically what the lyrics are about. Come to think of it, the songs on this album explore that topic very deeply. 

So the playlist is as follows:

Soul of Liberty

Living in a Mirror

Not Your Show

Drum Beat

Time in the Sun

Kings Will Rise Up

Now You're There

Sideways

What Did You See

Looking Back

And Volume 13 in its entirety is already posted on SoundCloud. Just check the right margin of this blog. I had said I planned on posting all of my thirteen albums on there. And at this point volumes 8 through 13 are now up and running. (I just put Volume 8 on there this morning.) Just have to get 2 through 7 on there next, which I will in the very near future.

Volume 12 - Rockin' the Cosmos

 

So after 11 great albums of all original music, I created Volume 12 - Rockin' the Cosmos with one minor difference. It became a "concept" album. But it was not as if I wrote each individual song with a concept in mind. I wrote the songs like I always did, one after another and completely independent of each other. And after ten songs, like all the ones before, I decided to stop and write the lyrics. And it was then I started to realize I had a concept album in the works.

Song #1 turned out to be about an astronaut blasting off into outer space. I really didn't write the music with that in mind, but as the lyrics came into my head, and as I wrote them down, I realized this was going to be a concept album.

So Sensurround began the journey of a lone astronaut being launched into space and then getting lost "in a warping hole of time" as the lyrics explain.  And from there anything and everything was possible. Including the hallucination of a Green Lady dancing "along the edge of the wing" in song #2.

From there our space traveler laments the fact that he had been cut off from humanity In This Place as in song #3. And in song #4, his engines are dead, and he is drifting in a solar wind when he witnesses the Death of the Supermen, as he sees from his spaceship window a huge fleet of alien starships get wiped out by some unknown cosmic force.

But the alien space fleet was not the only thing affected. Our lone astronaut, being in the middle of the onslaught is somehow absorbed into the force and finds himself Merging with it in song #5.

In song #6, our protagonist realizes he is no longer what he used to be: a simple Spaceman. He is something else, with omniscient and omnipotent abilities to see everything and go anywhere.

And yet it wasn't so wonderful to him. In fact it was more Like a Curse, as he realizes in song #7 the consequences of being part of a life force that was so completely different than what he had known, that he has no ability to control its actions or the subsequent results of those actions.

And it was a realization that was most troubling in song #8. Because although this entity had the limitless power to create, its actions were almost always destructive. And considering the vast expanse of not only the galaxy, but of the universe, these actions were going to be Never Ending. 

Which meant there could be only one end result. Sooner or later this cosmic entity of which he had become a part would find its way to earth. And when it did, the fear of the consequence was a sobering thought to our protagonist. When that inevitable day occurred, he realizes in song #9 all he could say to his fellow human beings would be I'm Not the Bad Guy. 

Yet that day was years away. And after So Many Years, that day would finally arrive. But how many years had passed? So many, in fact, that the human race was hardly recognizable to our man. And thus the album ends in song #10 with that day approaching.

So even though I just listed the songs in italics above, the playlist is as follows:

Sensurround

Green Lady

In This Place

Death of the Supermen

Merging

Spaceman

Like a Curse

Never Ending

I'm Not the Bad Guy

So Many Years

Yes, this is the album I had in the right margin over the last couple of years. But the singing was so bad, I'm hoping no one listened to it. I have remade the songs now, editing a couple of them and re-singing all of them. That doesn't mean the singing is all that much better. Maybe it is a little bit. But I did eliminate that annoying saxophone track that had been on there.

And the album is available to be listened to now, posted in the right margin of this blog along with Volume 11 and my only other concept album, Volume 13, which I'll write about next.

Volume 11 - Rockin' the Heroes

On and on I went. Writing song after song. It was amazing really. No writer's block for me. And I wasn't complaining about that. But my wife was. During this period in my life, I was spending hours and hours on my keyboard. It was the latest electronic piano from Yamaha, which could synthesize any instrument, including drum kits.

I had two small children, but that didn't mean I wasn't spending time with them. Everywhere I went I took my little sons with me. But when I was home, it was a good bet I was on that keyboard, playing music and writing new songs. So I wrote the next ten songs and because the last song is called Hero, I thought that Rockin' the Heroes is a good title for my 11thh album. 

I was talking about controversial songs in my last post. You may notice song #1 is called Racist. I don't believe it's controversial, but some people might think it is. What it is, is a parody of how much some people use the race card. I got so tired of hearing about how this person or that person is a racist. It was like if you stubbed your toe, then that meant someone was a racist.

So the parody song Racist was born. And if you don't like it, then YOU are a racist! LOL, just kidding. I don't expect anyone to like any of my songs. I was just making a point.

Anyway, the playlist is as follows:

Racist

It Couldn't Get Worse

The Last Time

I'm So Glad

Diamond Ring

Hittin' the Road

You Told Me

Another Plan

Courage

Hero

And btw, I now have three of my albums on SoundCloud. Starting with this one. If you go to the right margin of this blog, you will see Volumes, 11, 12, and 13 posted, and if you click on any of the images, then you will be directed to SoundCloud where that specific playlist is located. 

And yes, I have the redone Volume 12 on there now, too. Up until yesterday, I had a version on there from two years ago. I had used cassette tape technology about twenty years ago to record it. But now, using digital technology I re-recorded it, so it's a little better now. 

I will post more about Volumes 12 and 13 when I have them on the blog here. But like I was saying, Volumes 11, 12, and 13 are available on SoundCloud right now.

Volume 10 - Rockin' the Dark Side

 So after nine terrific albums of great original tunes, I was in no mood to stop. In fact, like before, the original riffs were still pouring out of me. It was like I could come up with an all original riff in a heartbeat. And that is just what I was doing.

So Volume 10 was quick to materialize. That is, it materialized just as quickly as the next ten songs were composed, and that didn't take long at all. It's like I was an open faucet, and the water was pouring out full blast. I'm talking about ten volumes of original music created in the span of about three years.

I say that because I started Volume 2 in about the year 2000. And by the time Volume 10 was done, it was about the year 2003. So, yeah, that's nine albums in three years. That's about 3 albums a year by average, and I wasn't slowing down, either.

But there was something a little bit different about this one. For the first time I wrote some controversial lyrics. Well, it could be argued that my lyrics bordered on controversial topics before. But I had made it clear that the meaning was anything but clear. It was all up to the listener to decide what the lyrics were about, as I wrote the lyrics deliberately unclear.

But on Volume 10, there are two songs in which the meaning of the lyrics are very clear. And that's because the lyrics do not mince words so to speak. As a result, the songs could be a boon to one faction of people and a bane to another. But whatever. It's what I was feeling at the time, and the songs, regardless of the lyrics, are excellent. So the playlist is as follows:

So Good

Breakin' Down

Witnessing

Time Will Tell

The Dark Side

You Keep Talkin'

Sacred One

Who Saves the Day

What's in the Mix

Where is Justice

If you guessed one of the controversial songs is Where is Justice, you are right. The other one is Who Saves the Day. Like I said, it's not like I hadn't written anything controversial before. But the meanings were ambiguous, and deliberately so. But these two songs are not ambiguous. 

I suppose it doesn't really matter. No one is going to hear them anyway. But I do plan on posting all of these songs on SoundCloud one day soon. And maybe on Spotify, also. Let's see what happens then.

Volume 9 - Rockin' Your Heart Out

I was in a phase of creativity not like I had ever known or even heard about before. After composing 8 volumes of original tunes, complete with rockin' riffs, guitar solos, organ solos, from slow ballads to fast hard rockin' songs and everything in between, the songs just kept coming. So Volume 9 quickly materialized, almost as if from thin air.

Like I said before, I was writing new song after new song. And every ten songs constituted a separate album. A bit of trivia is that every song on every album is listed in the order that I wrote it. So once Volume 8 was done, the next ten songs became, of course, Volume 9. 

And I am glad to say the lyrics are just as good as the music. I can also say that the lyrics are not so cut and dry as to the meaning. Which is what I was saying in my prior post of Volume 8. Sure, Your Heart is about my wife, but that is the only one that isn't shrouded in multiple meanings and/or involving a deeper context than what might appear on the surface.

Crooked Cutlass is a perfect example of that. It was originally a different title. But I thought the original title might be a little too controversial, meaning it might have crossed the political correctness line. Usually I wouldn't worry about that, and I really don't have to because no one is ever going to hear any of my songs anyway. But just in case, I reeled it in and renamed it into a non-impacting title. The words might give clues as to what the original title was. But like I said before, it's up to the listener to figure out what each song is about, and it's not up to me to explain it.

The playlist is as follows:

Long Time

Your Heart

Word Is Out

What Do You Say

Crooked Cutlass

My Attention

I Can Do It

Once Upon a Time

Russian Roulette

I Was There       

Actually, Long Time was originally about a politician. And when a colleague of mine read the lyrics, he even guessed which one. (Don't forget, I wrote these songs nearly 20 years ago.) But I revised the song, and the lyrics, so it might not be so guessable anymore. 

As for the cover. Clearly it's based on the song Your Heart, thus the image of the heart. I found the image on the internet and liked it enough to choose it for the cover. That's all.

Volume 8 - Rockin' the Hot One

 Volume 8 - Rockin' the Hot One. This is yet another great album. Every song, like the album before, is a great song. It starts with a great song called We're Free. And the title is exactly what the song is about. And this is a good time for me to explain something. Or maybe I should say it's a good time not to explain something. I'm talking about the lyrics. 

It's one thing to write great compositions of great music. But there's another element involved. And that is the lyrics. Sure it's nice to have lyrics about a true love or a lost love, (both of which I have in my music.) But I remember hearing about some advice Bob Dylan gave to John Lennon.

Everyone knows what a great composer John Lennon was. He and his fellow Beatles made it big with great songs. But what I heard was this: When Bob Dylan met John Lennon early in his career, Dylan gave props to Lennon for his great songs. But he was not so impressed with Lennon's lyrics. 

And if you think about it, early on, anyway, the lyrics were nice, but not deep. Songs like I Wanna Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, Love Me Do, Please Please Me, A Hard Day's Night, etc, were all fantastic songs. They were big hits. They made the Beatles famous. Made them millionaires. 

But after his meeting with Dylan, Lennon's lyrics began to take deeper meanings. Sure he still sang about love and heartbreak. But not just love and heartbreak. You get my meaning.

As for me? My lyrics, like I said, do involve love, and even heartbreak. But that's not all. I too get deeper with lyrics. And thus, my point about not explaining. What I mean by that is my lyrics are meant to be self-explanatory. But that doesn't mean they are clearly self-explanatory.

Take the first song on Volume 8. We're Free. After hearing or reading the lyrics, it may not be clear exactly what it's about. And I'm not going to explain it. Many of my songs could be ambiguous in the meaning. It could be about this, or it could be about that, or it could be about something else. 

It is up to the listener to gauge the meaning of every song I write, especially those songs that are ambiguous. Like We're Free. Treading is another example on this album. And so is Believing. But songs like that are not limited to this album. I have songs like that on all of my albums.

So enough about that. The playlist is as follows;

We're Free 

Treading 

About You 

Believing 

Your Way 

To You 

Hot One 

Try Again 

A Chance 

Make an Offer

Btw, I still write lyrics about love and such. About You, Your Way, and To You are examples of that. After all, if you've been married to the same woman for 30+ years, you're bound to write a few songs about her. So why did I name the album after the song Hot One? I just thought it was a great song, that's all. I never said a song had to have deep meaning lyrics to be a great song, did I?

Volume 7 - Rockin' the Dream

 

After Volume 6 was completed, still no writer's block was setting in. The music was still pouring out. And all original tunes. I had just completed what I considered some of the best music I had ever written, but great music was sill coming out of me. The next song, which is the first song on Volume 7, was so great, I might have even called it a masterpiece. But that category was reserved for only two songs that my friend and I had agreed upon years before. And ever since those days, (which date back to the seventies,) no other song had qualified. 

I might have nominated a song or two since then, but again, my friend would need to second those nominations and we are no longer in touch. Doesn't matter. No one needs another opinion to believe for himself or herself what song is a masterpiece. And for me, the song Dream qualifies. I believed it when I was composing the song. And I still do. I put in lyrics that are reminiscent of Martin Luther King's famous speech. Thus the name Dream. And I named the entire album after that song.

And needless to say, the entire album is great. Once again, every single song is nothing less than a great song. So it's one of my favorite albums to date. But, again, I have a lot of favorites, and this album is most definitely one of them. The playlist is as follows:

Dream

Hollow

Tall Tale

Want to Run

Give It Up

Remember

The Real Thing

On a Roll

In the Future

That number of songs is not an error. This album is the only album I put together that only contains nine songs. It's because when I originally wrote the songs, they were all very long. And because I was at first putting these albums on a 60 minute cassette tape, I was keeping the total running time to that. So when the nine songs totaled 60 minutes I left it at that.

But when I came back to my music recently to revise all my songs, I have rearranged several, and I made most of them much shorter. Some quite literally are half as long as they used to be. So now the total running time for the album is 39 minutes and some seconds. Which now ranks it to be the shortest running time of all my albums. But that's the reason why.

No matter. It's 39 minutes of fantastic music. And the singing? Well, I'll never pretend I can sing. I've said that time and again. But at least it's not bad. Which is the best I might ever hope for. I look at it this way: as long as I can carry a tune and sing in key. And I do.

 

Volume 6 - Rockin' Every Nation

So once Volume 5 was completed, one might think writer's block would set in. After all, I've read about it happening to many big-name musicians and composers. I've heard of it happening after volume 4, to many, and after volume 3, for others, and even after Volume 2. Some bands only put out one great album, and that's it.

But for me, after five albums of great songs, the music just wouldn't stop. Meaning original tunes were still pouring out of me so I kept writing more music.

Volume 6, I might even say, contained some of my best music yet. I mean every single song on there is simply great. It starts with a great song, There's a Way, and it ends with a great song, Fool, and every song in between is great. Sure, I wrote them. And sure I'm biased, but whenever I listen to this album, I can't help but think to myself what great songs these are. They are all intricate compositions of interwoven melodies and instrumental solos that demonstrate music writing at its best.

Song #3, Every Nation, is so good that I ended up naming the album after it. But by no means does that suggest it's the best song. I mean this album is one example of every song being just as good as every other song. I remember appreciating that when I used to buy albums when I was young. And not too many albums actually did that.  But some did.

The playlist is as follows:

There's a Way
Eye Upon You
Every Nation
I Like It
Good Ol' USA
Another Day
Wind It Up
Put That Away
Change
Fool

The ONLY problem I had with this album is that Wind it Up is another one of those songs that was very difficult to sing. I mean the vocal track on that song was so difficult it took me over fifty takes to finally get a cut that was at least satisfactory. I still might want to re-sing it, like I'm doing for some of the other songs on other albums. I probably will for that one too. I hope it doesn't take me another fifty takes. It would be nice if I had a producer and a real studio. It would probably make it a lot easier. No, better yet, it would be nice if I had a real singer. Yeah. Oh, well.

Volume 5 - Rockin' the Big TIme

Once Volumes 3 and 4 were completed and saved on cassette tapes, I decided to purchase a new keyboard machine that would enable me to save my songs on something other than tape. I was still very much a man of the twentieth century, but I was keen to the new digital age and saving my work digitally was the way to go.

This was twenty years ago, as the 21st century had just begun, (the reason I named volume 2 Rockin' the Millennium) and new technology was coming out just as fast as my new songs. So I purchased the latest Yamaha electronic keyboard which enabled me to save my new work on a floppy disc. As I had indicated on an earlier post, those songs have remained on the floppy disc ever since.

But starting with Volume 5, my songs were now digital, and reworking them was far easier than if they were on tape. But that didn't stop original tunes from being created. And so I just kept on going. Several of these songs I am particularly proud of. Evolution is a great song, and I look forward to it every time I play this album. The first song, It Was You, is, of course, about my wife, when we first met. The Playlist is as follows:

It Was You
Evolution
Angel Face
Hiding
This Time
Helping Out
My Life
I know
The Street
Last Word

Unlike Volumes 3 and 4, which I named after individual songs on the albums, I went back to my method of naming Volume 2 and just came up with a name completely unrelated to the songs. I felt that the songs were Big Time and thus the name. Rockin' the Big Time. And depicting the Empire State Building in a view looking up seemed an apt image for the cover.

To me, at least, it's another successful playlist of songs that I can enjoy any time. And unlike Volume 4, none of the songs were too difficult for me to sing. The song My Life kind of was, but not so hard as Crystal Ball on Volume 4. So I won't have to redo any of these, like I will have to do on Volumes 2 and 4. Hopefully I'll be a better singer by then, but I won't count on it.

Volume 4 - Rockin' the Legacy

Volume 4 - Rockin' the Legacy is really a companion album to Volume 3 - Rockin' the Hard Road. I had just completed Volume 2 when I went full throttle into composing more songs, and - as I said in an earlier post - the flow of original tunes coming out of me was phenomenal. It was like an open water faucet pouring out water at full blast. That's how fast the new music was coming out of me. And before I knew it I had enough original songs for two more albums.

Even though Volume 2 has 11 songs, I decided to cap my albums at ten songs each from then on. It was because ten songs together approached one hour long and I thought an album shouldn't be longer than that. Most vinyl albums were actually about 40 minutes back in the day, which was good because as I'm revising my music at this time, I have been cutting down on the length of the songs, bringing the total time to about 45 minutes by average. So it all worked out.

Volume 4 contains one song that I had written for a former school principal of mine. She was the principal who had hired me, and when she left the district to take a position elsewhere I wrote the song called Legacy. It's a short song and has a catchy tune, and it ended up becoming the name of the album, as in Rockin' the Legacy. I felt the picture of the American flag on the moon was an apt cover that captured the spirit of the word Legacy.

The playlist is as follows:

Letting it Go
My Lady
The Greatest
Rule the Day
Legacy
Never the Same
Those Were the Days
Time Out
Wake Up
Crystal Ball

Letting it Go was originally called Holding the Line. But as I revised and rearranged the song, I found myself revising the lyrics as well, thus the new name. What distinguishes this song is that it begins with a killer organ solo. One of the few songs of mine that does that.

The Greatest is about the greatest human being to have ever lived, so that's all I'll say about that song other than the fact that it includes a great double guitar solo. It's another of my personal favorites.

Those Were the Days is NOT the song we heard Archie and Edith Bunker singing on that old TV show. It's a completely original rock song, but it does have a similar theme as the title suggests.

Another favorite is Crystal Ball. The vocals however were so difficult, I could barely sing it. As a result, the volume of the vocals is not loud enough. I will have to redo it one day with another effort to apply the vocals. So good luck to me on that.

My Lady is about my wife. She is, after all, my lady, thus the song's title. It's another favorite. And correspondingly this album has been one of my favorites overall. But like I said before, I have a lot of favorites. Look at it this way. I haven't written a song I haven't liked. And I can honestly say every song on this album is a great song.

Volume 3 - Rockin' the Hard Road

 

As happy as I was with my first rock songs on Volume 2, that didn't mean I was in a phase of kicking back and enjoying it at the expense of getting back to the keyboard and writing new music. It was strange at that point, really. I was entering a phase of my life where my creativity was peaking, and the songs were flowing out of me one after another. And I don't mind saying, that they are all great songs.  Of course, I can't sing, so I just left them on the floppy disc or put them on a cassette tape, and there they sat for years. I couldn't even let anyone hear them. Because with no one singing the songs, (which did include lyrics, btw) they just weren't ready to be listened to.

Which is why I'm singing the songs now. No I'm not pretending to be a singer. And no, I don't play them for anyone still. Just me. Because I can at least stand my own voice. I don't dare subject anyone else to my vocals yet. Another day I will put them on Sound Cloud or Spotify or whatever. The day will come. Right now I just want to finish Volumes 9, 10, and 11. Then I'll put the vocals to them and then I'll put the lot of them online. So stay tuned. The songs are great. Just wish the singing was too.

Volume 3 playlist includes:

Portrait
Long Hard Road
You're My Friend
Show Me the Money
If You Call Me
You Never Give Up
Crazy Days
Gone Already
Dark Society
The Reaper

A couple interesting notes on the origin of some of those songs. I was in the middle of composing the songs for Volume 3 just about twenty years ago. My son was three or four years old at the time. And when I entered my room he was there playing with some toys, and he was singing a song that apparently he had made up on the spot, and the words were "...you're my friend...I know..." and from that five note segment I was inspired to put it into an entire song from there.

And yes, it's the song titled You're My Friend.

Another interesting thing about this album is that during this same period I woke up one day having a dream about a new song. An original tune was sounding in my head, and I thought it was a great riff. So I ran downstairs immediately to my keyboard and played out the riff that had been sounding in that dream. And sure enough, I put that riff into a complete song. After writing the lyrics I called it You Never Give Up. To this day, it's one of my favorite songs.

But I have a lot of favorites. After all, I have 13 total albums and I have even more songs to put on even more albums. Can't wait to get them all done.

Volume 2 - Rockin' the Millennium

Like I said, Volume 2 Rockin' the Millennium does exist and here is the cover design. It's from some image I found on the internet. I don't know if it's a painting or a CGI. I just thought it was a cool image and would work for the title of the album.

This is actually my second choice for the cover design of Volume 2. My first choice was a simple sunset over an ocean setting, but then I thought  it just didn't have enough in the composition to make it interesting. So I switched to this image. It too is a sunset, but it looks like there's a city or some kind of urban environment in there. And there's some kind of tower in the foreground to the right and a smoke stack in the distance to the left. These elements contribute to a better image.

And because it also is depicting a sunset, it gives it pretty much the same color scheme as the first design I had chosen. Another factor that improves the image is the clouds in this design give the impression of an imminent storm. But exactly what that is just above the tower on the upper right is beyond me. I don't know if those are also clouds or is it smoke or what?

But whatever, the image in its entirety makes for a good cover design for my Volume 2.
The playlist is as follows:

The Maverick
Sinister Minister
Certain People
Demon Dance
The Woman
Inferno
Too Late
The Fast Life
Lessons
Rejoin Society
Journey

These songs are my first rock songs, thus the words, "Rockin' the..." in the title. And then I thought "Rockin'..." would work for all my album titles. And I have 13 albums at this time.

On CDs so far are Volumes 2 - 8. With 12 and 13 done before my new technology had been procured. So I will redo those once 9 - 11 have been completed. Stay tuned!

Volume 1 Rockin' the First Steps

My fist album of original music will be on this CD. It doesn't exist yet, because I skipped it when I decided to put my music on CDs. But I certainly do intend, one day soon, to get there. It's not such a rockin' album really. As I said before, these are mostly love ballads and slow tunes.

No, this is not a painting by me. This is a painting by Jean-Francois Millet and I thought it would make for a good first album design.

You can guess why I might call my first CD of music Rockin' the First Steps. Clearly it's because these were my first steps at writing original songs. But again, it's not really a rockin' album. And that's really not me. Which is why I skipped it.

But I'm on the home stretch of putting my music on CDs right now, and since the world of publishing is on hiatus at this time, (at least as far as I'm concerned,) I'm focusing on my music. And since this CD will contain the fist songs I ever wrote, I thought I'd post it first. So there you are. Next up will be Volume 2 Rockin' the Millennium. That one does exist.

Transition to Music Writing

From writing music to writing novels was my first transition. And although I don't aspire to have any music published, I have found it to be just as rewarding as writing novels. Yes, I've had all five of my novels published. And no, I don't expect to write any more novels. Because it just takes too long. After several years of writing and revising, and then editing, and then more revising, the return is just not worthwhile. Sure I like rereading the novels now and then. And sure every time I do it's just as entertaining as the first time. Just as much fun as writing them even.

But writing a song takes far less time. Even writing an entire album takes far less time. About twenty years ago, or so, before I entered my novel writing phase, I was into writing music. Since my early teens I had been writing music, really. I had always played the piano, and I was in a rock band in my teenage years. And it was then I had started to write my first original songs. Not many. But eventually I had written enough songs to comprise an album.

By that time my band had disbanded, and I never entered into another band. I was giving my artwork priority, by going to college and graduating with a B.A. in Art from SJSU. And even though I never became a professional artist, I did get a teaching credential and an M.A. and became an art teacher in the California public school system, thus enabling a career to support a wife and family.

And so it went. But I had untapped creative resources bubbling within me. And soon after my first son was born, I went back to writing music. The first thing I did was put together all of those songs I had written in my youth and put them on a cassette tape. I had remembered them only because I would play them now and again on my family piano which I had inherited. But I bought some new electronic pianos and recorded the songs using synthesized instrumentation.

I called this first effort Volume 1 and I wasn't particularly enthralled with it. I was, at heart, a hard rocker, and these songs were anything but that. Mostly they were slow love songs, since I was an over-the-top romantic, being the kind of kid who would fall in love with the pretty girl in my life at the time. So I wrote a song about each of them. By the time I was 20 I had written near a dozen love songs for as many different girls. But that wasn't all. I had written a theme song for the story had begun to illustrate. And a few other songs as well. I think 16 total on this first album.

But then I began to rock. It was something that just flowed from me. I hit a phase and for the next two or three years, I wrote another 120 plus songs. One after another. I mean the songs just flowed out of me. I put together Volume 2 with 11 more songs, then Volume 3, then Volume 4, then 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and more.

Each album averages 10 songs per album. To be exact, Volume 1 has 16 songs, Volume 2 has 11, Volume 7 has 9, and all other volumes have 10 each. It was two songs past Volume 13 when I stopped writing music because that's when I got the crazy idea to start writing books. And I wrote four novels in the next four years and one more soon thereafter.

And this blog chronicles the time I spent in that endeavor. But now, I have gone back to my music. I found upon my return to music that I had to do with my songs the same thing novelists have to do with their novels. Which is REVISE them.

Most of the songs were too long, so I had to edit them, as in cutting them down in length and making them much better just like a writer does with his/her books.

One of the biggest problems I had was vocals, as I am no singer. And I cannot pay a singer to sing my songs. So I became the vocalist. At first I was horrid as anyone who's listened to my Volume 12 can attest. It's posted right here on the blog. But with practice I'm getting better. Make no mistake, I'm not fooling myself. I know I will never be a singer. My best hope is that one day a real singer will want to sing the songs. One day. Who knows when that will be.

The good news is that I have discovered new recording devices; like the Zoom H2n, which is far superior to the old-fashioned cassette recorder I used to record Volume 12 and is currently on SoundCloud and can be accessed right here on the blog. I'm proud of the music, and not proud of the vocals. At this point in time I have revised and re-recorded Volumes 2 through 9. Volumes 2 - 8 are now CDs. (Thanks to King Tet Productions in San Diego.)

Right now I'm in the middle of revising Volume 10. And when I put the vocals on 9 and 10 I'll make them into CDs also. When I'm finished with all 13 volumes, I may or may not put together a complete Volume 14, but my plan is to put all of them on SoundCloud like I did for Volume 12. My ultimate plan is to delete the Volume 12 that's on SoundCloud now and replace it with a new and revised Volume 12. (I expect the vocals to be much better by then.)

So that's what I've been up to for the last couple years. Soon I will post my albums on this blog too; the music, the covers and the lyrics as well. All thirteen of them. Maybe more. Stay tuned.

Bad TV Shows

I was talking about bad TV shows the last time I blogged, but I was getting tired of writing about them after dissing my once favorite TV show, The Blacklist. Another one I was going to condemn is the reboot of Lost in Space, now airing on Netflix. And yeah, what a joke that is.

Original cast for the original show, (minus the robot.)
Set a precedent.

Lost in Space, when I was little, was one of my favorite TV shows. SciFi adventures were an intriguing concept and I was thrilled to watch anything on TV or the movies that dealt with futuristic stories, especially when they were about space travel and alien worlds. The 1960s Lost in Space series filled that bill.

It featured strong male characters such as the leader of the family, Professor John Robinson. He was a family man with a dominant personality, leading his family, as a father should. The image to the left describes actor Guy Williams as Professor Robinson to a tee: "...the ultimate father figure symbol, powerful enough to handle himself in perilous situations, yet sensible and compassionate in matters of the heart..."




In today's Hollywood, this kind of actor (or the role he played) is shunned. In fact, it's the opposite of what they want to portray. But in the Sixties, even secondary male characters held their own. As in the pilot of the spacecraft, Major Don West. He was another strong and competent male character. And there was the "boy wonder" Will Robinson, who was just an adolescent, and the family's only son, but he was a progeny of sorts, as he was a scientific genius even at that age.

But wait. There were strong female characters too. Maureen Robinson, the mother of the family, was a strong personality, herself. Meaning she was not a whimpering, frightened female that would draw the ire of women's libbers. Not at all.

There were the two older daughters as well. I might confess here that their roles were minimal, and that was a shame because the oldest daughter, a beautiful blonde woman named Judy was the love interest for Major Don West. There could have been many story arcs that featured these two, but again, sadly, the producers or writers missed that one. Then there was the middle child, the teenage daughter Penny. She had more interactions with her younger brother Will than any other cast member and her role was never elaborated as it should have been.

And there was the "bad guy" Dr. Smith. He was the traitor hired by the enemy faction of the world order at the time to sabotage the spacecraft upon launching. But he was stuck in the ship at take off and became a permanent crew member and cast member from then on. He was always the one trying to do whatever he could to get back to earth even at the expense of the safety of the others. I remember thinking back then that if I were the captain of that ship, I would have killed the dude from the get go. And there were several times he should have been offed, but I guess the writers figured the story needed his comedic element. (It didn't.)

Lastly there was the robot, which was an important element of the cast as well. It was one of the first shows to feature a robot as a main character, and the precursor to later "robot characters" like the android "Data" from the Star Trek Next Generation series.

So the show was great, until it wasn't. Meaning it devolved into a farcical tale of goofy antics fit for a slapstick comedy. The show phased out all the serious elements of an adult SciFi series and turned it into a weird (and stupid) tale of Will and Dr. Smith. They even turned the robot into a joke. That wasn't what I ordered. And it faded into obscurity. Which was a shame.

Cast of Lost in Space the movie.
(Minus Judy, Will, and the robot.)
No complaints here.

But it had a legacy from which a movie some years later was released. It featured pretty much the same cast of characters who were all pretty much true to the original series. There were some differences in the way the story evolved, but it was a one and done story so what the heck. It passed.

But the Netflix reboot is a sham. Because they are doing what the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises have done. Which is they turned the men into weak and incompetent characters. It's the women who lead and who are the heroes now. I quit watching when it was revealed that Maureen Robinson is the professor now, and she is the one with the brains and she is the leader of the crew. And John Robinson is just another idiot, much like we've been seeing in pretty much every show from Hollywood over the last twenty years.

The new leader and hero of the crew of
Lost in Space from Netflix. The professorship has been
transferred from the man to the woman.
I wouldn't have minded if both were professors.
But Hollywood doesn't work like that.
Not anymore.

So the Netflix version of Lost in Space is great if you're a women's libber and you love to see weak men dominated by strong and heroic women. But that's not me. I will say once again, that I believe women are strong. They can be just as strong and just as heroic as men. BUT....that doesn't mean that when they are strong, the men have to be weak and dominated by them. That's a very tiring element from Hollywood, and I'm wondering when they will figure it out. The answer is they won't as long as the money keeps rolling in. And such is life, full of goose-steppers willing to call a show good just for its title.