Morgan James singing "Take Me to Church," accompanied by Scott Bradlee on keyboard. Performed and recorded at the Paste Studios in New York City. A while back I made a Morgan James playlist on YouTube, and I added this song, even though I had never listened to it before. Then I listened to it, and it blew my mind. This song is a Hozier cover.
In the course of researching and writing blog posts nearly every day, I listen to a lot of different music on YouTube while I'm working. Because I listen to several different types of music, I get some cool clips popping up on the side to check out. Over the last couple of days, I realized there's a cool theme with a few of the songs I've been listening to recently, and one outstanding song from decades ago.
Personally, I think that on a good day you can learn more about God from a really soulful and well performed song than you can from the average church service. But hey, I'm weird. You're free to disagree. In any case, here our six songs that I think are all great pieces of music. They all have titles that sound religious, but contain lyrics that aren't actually religious, but are really powerful. Enjoy.
The Big Push covering Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," last summer in Bristol. This video just dropped last week on YouTube. The Big Push formed in 2017, in the U.K., and is made up of Ren Gill, Romain Axisa, Gorran Kendall, and Glenn Chambers. Ren, Romain, and Gorran switch off on lead vocals and backing vocals, depending on the song. Most of the time, Romain plays lead guitar. Ren plays lead guitar on occasion, as well as rhythm guitar and bass. Gorran plays acoustic guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass. These guys are best known for a whole bunch of great street performing videos playing a really wide variety of cover songs, with many millions of views among them. Simply put, they rock. This post will link a few of my favorite videos from The Big Push, as well as some of Ren's solo and duet work, mind blowing videos, and raps, and Chinchilla's work. If you like any of these, there are many more videos on YouTube, and probably elsewhere, to check these amazing musicians out.
And to all the salty, crusty, old geezers like me, The Big Push, Ren, and Chinchilla are proof that not all new music sucks.
This mind blowing original song and video changed my life. An old BMX freestyle friend in England, Alex Leech, shared this video on Facebook, shortly after it came out on YouTube. I think it had less than 3 million views when I first watched it, about three years ago, this video has over 65 million views now. After watching this video, and several other of Ren's videos that night, I started writing poetry again. I had only written 3 or 4 poems between 2008 and 2022. I managed to lose all copies of ten years worth of poetry, 165 of the best poems I've ever written, in 2008, when I got pushed out of California and wound up in living in North Carolina for ten years. After losing that much work (and all my video master tapes and raw footage), the poetry in me just left. I had no urge to write poems.
The utter brilliance of "Hi Ren" motivated me to try and start writing poems again. I haven't written that many, but most of the new poems I've written since (like this one) have been pretty decent, long epic poems. I also took a break from the kind of Sharpie drawings I had been doing for years, those based on classic photos of musicians, and I drew a couple of big Sharpie Scribble Style drawings straight out of my head. I did that just to get out of my personal rut, and challenge myself a bit creatively. Seriously, this song and video had an incredible creative effect on me. Thanks Ren. I still watch this video sometimes to get into a deep, creative vibe.
These five young people from the U.K. are all incredible musicians. If any of these tracks piqued your interest, dig into their work on YouTube and anywhere else you find music, there's a lot more out there.
I do most of my writing on Substack now, a platform created specifically for writers, check it out:
OK, there's a story behind this post, I'm not trying to be totally morbid. I was at McDonald's the other day, talking to a friend, and Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" came on in the background. I said, "I want this song to play at my funeral." He replied, "You're crazy." I agreed, laughed, and said, "Yeah, I want the hearse to be bumpin' this song really loud as they drive to the cemetery. He just shook his head.
But I was serious. OK, I'm homeless (living in a "tiny home community" at the moment) and basically broke. If I don't get my shit together at some point, there's a pretty good chance I'll just keel over on the sidewalk somewhere, some day, and get cremated or put in a potter's grave, with no funeral service. But on the chance I get my shit together, and someone actually has a funeral for me, or some kind of memorial service, I want people to remember the times I made them laugh, or the times they laughed with me, or even the times the laughed at me. I truly do want to put the "FUN" back in funeral on my way out of this life.
With that in mind, I wrote down two or three songs that I'd want to play at my funeral or memorial service. I started thinking about those songs this morning, and wound up with a list of 21 songs. To be clear, I'm in no hurry to kick the bucket, but I figured I might as well go ahead and make a funeral music playlist. I like to plan ahead. I just put the whole thing on my YouTube channel: Steve Emig's Funeral Playlist. So it's there, for anyone who wants to check it out.
Here are the songs I selected, in order. I lined them up so that if this music was playing in the background of my memorial service, or the hangout meal afterwards, most people probably wouldn't really catch the theme of the playlist until about halfway through. Yes, I have a dark, fucked up, sense of humor. It's served me well many times. This is another example of that.
Chinchilla's music keeps getting better and better. I first heard of her a couple of years ago, after an old BMX friend's post turned me on to Ren's "Hi Ren." Within a couple of days, I discovered the Rex X Chinchilla videos, "Chalk Outlines," and "I Forgot How to Be Me." Those are still my two favorite songs I've heard of hers, along with her rendition of "I Put a Spell on You" on the British version of The Voice.
I think there's a song out there with her name on it, something big and orchestrated, that will really let her show her skills as a singer and performer. When that song comes along, she will quickly blast into the ears of millions of more listeners. I'd love to hear her cover a Meatloaf song, or anything written by Jim Steinman, but that's just me. Anyhow, I clicked on to find this video with under 6,000 views, and it's my new favorite solo video of hers. It will have many, many more views by this time tomorrow. A LOT more views. Check this Chinchilla video out while it's brand new.
Dave Van Ronk with "Dink's Song" in the early 1960's.
I just picked up a new book at the library, Talkin' Greenwich Village, by David Browne. It's an incredibly well researched look at the folk singing scene that emerged out of Greenwich Village, in New York City, from the late 1950's, through the 1960's. This scene was full of young singers and guitar players, enamored by the earlier folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, and the folk musician tradition in the U.S. that went back 100 years or more before then. From public singalongs at the fountain in Washington Square Park, these young musicians began to perform the songs they heard from Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, and a whole slew of the folk and blues players of the early 20th century.
By 1957, when the book dives into the scene, the Greenwich Village district in New York City had a history as home to several prominent writers, going back decades. At the time, the small clubs and coffee houses of the Village were where jazz greats like John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk performed in small clubs while in NYC. The coffee shops were the stompin' and reading grounds of the beat poets, Jack Kerouac being the best known to most of us now. The young folk singers began to play gigs at these clubs and coffee houses, which were often hassled by police and city officials, because of neighbors complaining about the noise.
A legendary scene evolved, as more young folk singers were drawn to the scene. They all played music, drank, argued, worked odd jobs, fell in love, broke up, marched in protests, and got followed by the J.Edgar Hoover FBI in some cases. Most of them were on the far Left side of the political spectrum, often socialists and in some cases, actual communists. I'm more interested in the music scene, but the politics of the time was a part of it all.
In the early 1960's, with Village newcomer Bob Dylan being one of the first, they began writing their own folk songs, in addition to singing the classics. Ever heard of Dave Van Ronk? Neither had I. But he was an early and constant part of the scene, and taught several others to play guitar when they showed up on the scene, as well as writing many songs. The book marches through the happenings, and Van Zonk is a major thread in much of it. Browne chronicles the comings, goings, interactions, and key events of the main musicians in this scene, year by year.
I picked up the book for a couple of reasons. As a goofy, young kid in Ohio, I was a fan of guitar playing singer/songwriters. The first album I asked my parents to buy me as a gift (Christmas or birthday, can't remember), was John Denver's Greatest Hits, Volume 2. Our family had moved to a farmhouse outside the tiny burg of Shiloh, Ohio. Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" became my theme song. OK, we didn't actually work the farm, we just rented the house, but I wandered that farm, the creek, and woods every day. I did have to help chase the cows back into the pasture two or three times, when they got out. That was the extent of my actual farm life.
At 8 or 9 years old, I was a fan of bluegrass that I heard on Hee Haw, like Grandpa Jones,Roy Clark, and Glen Campbell. While I didn't like most of the country music coming out of my mom's radio in the kitchen, I did really like the music of Johnny Cash. So acoustic guitars, folk music were my favorites in my grade school years.
The other reason for picking up Talking Greenwich Village is because as a BMX freestyler in the 1980's, I developed an interest in what I call "Creative Scenes." To me, a Creative Scene is any group of people who come together on a regular basis to do something creative. That can range from a couple of skateboarders at a skatepark, to people like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creating Apple Computers in the 1970's. Art, music, creative businesses, action sports, there are creative scenes in all these things. I witnessed the early scenes of the BMX freestyle world, when there were little pockets of riders in different locations, promoting our weird, new, little sport. Since I moved around, and became a part of several different BMX and skateboard scenes, I saw how they helped riders and skaters progress, and how these scenes ultimately influenced many other people, and helped the sports grow and evolve overall. Over several years, I realized there are all kinds of different Creative Scenes, and that most of the progress in society comes from various Creative Scenes that spring up and thrive for a while.
The Greenwich Village folk music scene of the 1960's was one of the most influential musical scenes in the history of the United States, and that influence continues to ripple outward, in today's young singer/songwriters, like Alice Phoebe Lou, Jenn Fiorentino, and many more, covering the songs they grew up on, and then writing and performing their own. Generations of singer/songwriters in the U.S., and around the world, were influenced and inspired by the 1960's Greenwich Village folk scene.
I'm only about halfway through the book, but it has already turned me on to a whole bunch of singers and musicians I had never heard of. First, here are several of the people who inspired the early Greenwich Village folk music scene, people who were in and around the Village, coming out of the 1950's. Then I've linked a whole bunch of the early musicians that were part of the Village folk music scene in that era. If you have an interest in folk music, Greenwich Village, U.S. music history, or guitar picking, Talkin' Greenwich Village is well worth the read.
I'm not kidding, this is my favorite Christmas album, A Partridge Family Christmas Card. Really.
The Partridge Family was an early 1970's TV show with a family of musicians who had a crazy painted bus they traveled around in. Think hippy Brady Bunch musicians, something like that. The show ran from 1970 to 1974, and this Christmas album was released in 1971.
I think I was in third grade, my family living in Coshocton, Ohio, when my parents found this record album at a garage sale, and bought it for 25 or 50 cents. I remember listening to this album when I was in 4th grade, 9 years old, while making Christmas cookies with my mom and sister the next Christmas. We had moved to a big, yellow farmhouse, outside the tiny community of Shiloh, Ohio. My dad changed jobs that year, and was designing locomotives at Fate Root Heath, in nearby Plymouth. Somehow one of us managed to get flour all over this already used record, and thought we ruined it. My dad cleaned it off when we he got home, and it was playable again. We played that album every Christmas until I was in high school. To me, this is the quintessential Christmas album to get in the holiday mood. Watching Bad Santa is my other main source of holiday cheer. Yeah, I'm fucked up, but these two get me feeling festive. Enjoy.
Or is "Nothing Compares 2 U" Sinead O'Conner's song now? Her 1990, stripped down, soul wrenching cover and full face video is what really launched this song into the stratosphere. What about Chris Cornell's cover in 2016 with acoustic guitars, cello, and haunting vocals? Cynthia Erivo took it in another direction at the Kennedy Center Honors earlier this year.
"Nothing Compares 2 U" has been covered by P!nk, Brandi Carlile, Madonna, Annie Lennox, Chris Stapleton, actress/singer Kate Hudson, as well as instrumental versions by orchestras, pianists, a romantic saxophone player and a bass clarinet player, along with many more.
But it was this cover and video by Sinead O'Conner in 1990 took this song to a whole different place. Sinead and her crew reinvented this song. When it's a Prince song to begin with, that really says something.
I often learn things when writing blog posts, that's part of the fun. I get an idea for a post, and get drawn deep into one subject or another, falling down a rabbit hole that goes places I didn't expect. In the last 24 hours, I've learned that this epic song is not only 40 years old this year, but it has become a modern standard, with a whole lot more really good cover versions than I had any idea existed. There are 29 versions of "Nothing Compares 2 U" linked in this blog post. There are three versions by Prince and three by Sinead O' Conner linked, each a bit different from the others. Then there are 23 other versions. I discovered P!nk's cover with the orchestra yesterday, recorded in a BBC studio, embedded above. That blew me away. Then I just kept digging on YouTube, and finding more and more covers.
Here's how this blog post came to be. As a homeless blogger, I spend most mornings in a certain McDonald's, with a sweet tea, and a sausage biscuit on a good day. I'm usually hanging out with 3 or 4 other homeless guys, decent guys from different backgrounds. We sit there, talking about one thing or another, from the weather to politics to surfing and current events. We have some really cool conversations at times.
Yesterday, one guy mentioned something about Chris Cornell being in Soundgarden, which I didn't know. Yeah, they had several cool songs, but I was never a huge fan, and I'm not someone who knows every musician in every band. I just like music.
About a year ago, I ran into Chris Cornell's incredible SiriusXM version of "Nothing Compares 2 U," and I love his version. Yesterday, I realized I probably met him, way back in 1989. One day while working at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, a band walked through our studio. That happened occasionally, Vision was trying to get bands to help promote Vision Street Wear clothes. Gene Loves Jezebel, Antrax, and INXS all toured Unreel back then, along with several lesser known musicians. Our office was the coolest part of Vision, with a 7 foot high Statue of Liberty on the landing of the steps, an ocean view from two offices, and the $500,000 video edit bay. So when Vision owner Brad Dorfman wanted to impress someone, he brought them to Unreel.
As I walked out after work that day, one of the guys from the band said something like, "Hey, we're Soundgarden, want some stickers?" This would have been in their early, SST Records days. I may have heard the name of the band at that point, but wasn't familiar with them. But I was a BMX guy, I never turned down free stickers. "I said, "Sure." They gave me maybe 20 of the rectangular, "Soundgarden Louder than Love" stickers. I put them in the glove compartment of my truck, and forgot about them. A couple years later, my friend Keith was digging the the glove box for something and found them. He freaked, "Holy shit, dude! You've got Soundgarden stickers. Can I have a couple?" "You can have them all," I said. Did I meet Chris Cornell that day in the Unreel parking lot? Probably. But, I can't say for sure. But I remembered the band's name after that, though I never was a became a big fan. Yesterday, when I realized I probably met him, I got the idea for this blog post, thinking there were at least three awesome versions of "Nothing Compares 2 U."
In 2016, after the untimely death of Prince, Chris Cornell did his amazing cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U," as did several other people, as a tribute to the purple musical genius. As you can see in the links below, several people covered this song in 2016 and 2017, but I, personally, think Chris Cornell's cover rises above the others. This led to a resurgence of interest in Prince, and in this particular song, still best known for Sinead O'Conner's breakout, 1990 version.
Then, in 2017, Chris Cornell tragically died by suicide. His death brought another wave of interest in this song, since he had just done an epic version of it. Though my list of links below may not be in perfect order, you can see that there was a surge in people who covered this song, in that era. This brought "Nothing Compares 2 U" into the awareness of a whole new generation of fans, and the covers of this song increased.
Then, last year, 2023, Sinead O' Conner passed away, also at a relatively young age, of pulmonary issues. Whether she liked it or not, this was the song that unexpectedly launched her into mainstream success and notoriety. As a singer, songwriter, activist, and all around strong woman, Sinead had a huge fan base. Her death led to yet another wave of interest in her work, and in this song in particular. Another wave of young people was introduced to this song, and more began to cover it, in a variety of ways. "Nothing Compares 2 U" has become a true standard of our times, as it turns 40 years old this year.
As if the song is not haunting enough, the three people with the strongest ties to it all died in their 50's. Prince was 57, Sinead O' Conner was 56, and Chris Cornell was 52. That's as tragic as the heart wrenching song itself.
This blog post is my little tribute to this incredible song, during its 40th anniversary. This is a tribute to its creator, Prince, and to Sinead and Chris. This is a tribute to all the musicians who have given this incredible song a go, adding their own soul and style to the song, and the music world as a whole. If you've read this far, check out any of the links that sound interesting, above and below. Maybe all these variations of this song may spark some inspiration in you to write your own song, or do whatever creative work you do. Or maybe this song will help you survive your own broken heart someday. I think music is one of the great things human beings have come up with, and we need musicians to keep creating as a key part of human society. Music is a form of magic that, sometimes, just keeps growing and expanding on its own, even long after the creator of it is gone.
Photo of one of my favorite graffiti pieces I saw in Hollywood, in 2021, I think. Is it art? Everyone has their opinion, but I dig this piece. #steveemigphotos.
Is there a need for art?
The truth out there is plain to see
Yet humans continue to disagree
Sitting on a rock on a hill, enjoying the view
Of the city below, where humans do what they do
The good, the heroic, the evil and mean,
The city is the place of human fears and dreams
Though we still can't place where cities got their start
I asked out loud, "Is there a need for art?"
Take away Roman columns, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek plays,
Would it matter how humans spend their days?
Take away cave paintings, ivory etchings, and architecture grand
Would humans still see the guidance of a Creator's hand?
What if the music of a million years had never been heard?
No books, no movies, no poems spoken, only everyday words
What if every spark of inspiration had just fizzled dead?
Would civilization have happened, if all the great ideas had been left unsaid?
The answer is obvious, a definite, "No!"
Without arts of all kinds, there would be nowhere to go
So despite all the pain, all the hate, all the war
Perhaps there's a reason that we're all here for
Perhaps there's a reason actors act and singers sing
There's a reason novelists and poets are seeking something
It's why designers design and movies get made
Why directors direct, and put on their plays
Perhaps it's all part, of a story grand and strong
Playing out over the eons, a span longer than long
Is there a purpose to Art? An enthusiastic "Yes!" I declare
Music, dance, and stories are always found there
This truth came to me, on a rock on a hill
The grand story of humankind... creativity, drama, and free will
-The White Bear
I just wrote this one, in January 2024, while laid up in a sketchy-ass homeless recuperative center, where I couldn't access social media, write on my blog, and was listening to other people's music and chatter for over a week. There's such a strong surge of censorship being pushed onto social media and online platforms these days, by certain groups who hate books, art, and most of makes life interesting, that's it's like this continuous under current of hate and negativity. I've written very few poems in the last 16 years, and this one came out pretty messy, when it came time to write it down. But it captures a lot of what I feel these days, being creative in my own unique ways, in a world where there's so many forces coming down on arts of many different kinds, because they don't conform to certain ideologies.
I recently wrote a big post on my Substack about poetry, writing poems, and becoming a poets decades ago. If that sounds interesting, check it out:
Here's the Agent Orange music video for "World Gone Bad," shot in the legendary Combi Pool at Pipeline Skatepark, in Upland California. This video was directed by Don Hoffman, the founder of Unreel Productions, Vision Skateboard's video company. This music video was a segment at the end of Vision's first skate video,Skatevisions, which came out in 1985, I think. The entire soundtrack of the video was by Agent Orange. Powell-Peralta's Bones Brigade videos may have been more popular at the time, Vision's videos had way better music.
Many of you reading this have heard my basic story of stumbling into the BMX industry. But here's the short version for any of you who haven't. I got into BMX riding, and then racing, while living in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho, in 1982. I was heading into my junior year of high school. By the end of that year, us trailer park kids found the Fort Boise BMX track, and began to race. I raced until mid 1984, but got more into the emerging sport of BMX freestyle in 1983, and joined the only Boise area trick team, with Jay Bickel and Wayne Moore in the spring of 1984. By late 1984, about the time FREESTYLIN'magazine put out its first issue, BMX freestyle had become my life.
In the summer of 1985, my family moved to San Jose, California, where my dad got a new job. I worked my summer job in Boise, then drove to San Jose to live with my family. I found a job at a local Pizza Hut, and rode every afternoon, since I wasn't going to college. I knew there was a group of hardcore freestylers in the Bay Area, but I didn't know how to find them. I didn't get the first two issues of FREESTYLIN' in Idaho, and the first one showed the Golden Gate Park scene.
So I started a freestyle zine, and put it out in some local bike shops, to find other freestylers. That worked, and by October 1985, I made it to the monthly Beach Park Ramp Jam, put on by Skyway rider Robert Peterson. I met the Skyway team and the main Curb Dogs, and a bunch of really good amateurs. I rode alone all week, then went up to ride with those guys every weekend that I could make it up to The City. I published 11 issues of my zine, San Jose Stylin', which somehow landed me a job at Wizard Publications, home to BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, in the summer of 1986. In a year, I went from a freestyler in Idaho who only knew two other BMX freestylers, to part of the BMX industry. So I became a fanboy and industry insider at the same time.
Me on my Raleigh freestyle bike, my second "factory" sponsor, with a Shingle shuffle under the Huntington Beach Pier, in 1987. Raleigh was basically a flow sponsorship, but I got free bikes for a year, and a week in a motel at the Long Beach trade show, where everybody's riders did group demos. The H.B. Pier was a well known session spot, particularly on the weekends, with a few local BMX freestylers, and several top freestyle skateboarders, and dozens of other BMXers and skaters that came by once in a while.
But I was still really uptight and dorky, and had lots of issues, coming from a family that was a bit more screwed up than most. My moodiness and dorkiness got me laid off from the magazines, after a few months. We all got along fairly well, but I just wasn't the right fit for that crew. I got hired by Bob Morales, owner of the American Freestyle Association (AFA), to edit their newsletter, and do a million other odd jobs at the AFA. I moved from Hermosa Beach down to Huntington Beach, and worked there all through 1987. In early summer, I got the chance to produce a series of six videos for the AFA. Vision Street Wear was a major sponsor of the AFA, and they sent a cameraman from their video company, Unreel Productions, to every AFA contest, to shoot footage. The deal was that both Vision/Unreel, and the AFA, could use the footage for any projects they wanted to do.
They shot footage on a broadcast quality Sony Betacam video camera that cost $50,000. They also had a full blown, broadcast quality edit bay at Unreel. In those days, when shooting on video tape, that edit bay cost $500,000 to build. Today, a high end Mac or PC laptop now could do everything that room did, and a lot more, for about $3,500. But back then, shooting and editing quality video was really expensive. To edit the AFA videos, I went to Unreel, and they gave me VHS copies of the footage for each contest. I would log, or watch all the raw footage at home, making notes of the clips I liked. Then I'd go back to Unreel with my notes, and Dave the editor and I would work in that crazy cool edit bay. I'd tell him which shots to use, and he did the actual editing and effects, and walked me through the whole process. They didn't charge the AFA to edit, so we could sell a few dozen of each videos, and actually make a bit of money.
That year, I made a whole bunch of trips to Unreel, over in Costa Mesa, about ten miles from where I lived in Huntington Beach. I got to know everyone at Unreel, and when they needed a new guy for an entry level job, they gave me a call. That's how I wound up working at Unreel Productions. At the time, Vision Skateboards was one of the Big 5 companies in the skateboard industry, the other four included board manufacturers Powell-Peralta and Santa Cruz, and the two main magazines, Transworld and Thrasher. Skateboarding was still rising in the 1980's boom, the third, and largest wave of skateboarding up to that time.
Vision also owned Sims and Schmitt Stix skateboards, Sims Snowboards, and Vision Street Wear clothes. This whole Vision empire was spread out in several buildings in Costa Mesa, California. Unreel was the coolest, a two story office unit on the end of the building, the edge of the mesa, with an ocean view from the second floor. When Brad Dorfman, the owner of Vision, had someone he wanted to impress, he brought them over and showed them Unreel.
My nickname at Unreel Productions was "The Dub Guy," because I was the guy in the little room upstairs, where everyone went when they needed a copy of some Vision video for one reason or another. My little room, about 6 foot by 8 foot, had one video machine for every format we used, except the big one, the 1 inch tape reel to reel machine. I had a cable tied to that machine, through the ceiling, to my room. I also had three pro caliber VHS duplication machines, so I could make copies of whatever format someone needed. I made videos for the Unreel producers, I dubbed VHS copies of all the raw footage that anyone shot. That was cool, because I learned where all the pools and skate spots were, so I could go hit them on my bike later. I also made copies of videos for the promotions department, the art department, and anything else people in Vision needed.
Tape librarian. That was a big part of my job. Not the coolest sounding job. Across the hallway from my room was the tape library, which was a small storeroom with shelves on every wall. When I started there were well over 1,000 individual tapes, most of them the 20 minute Betacam tapes used in the camera. Those came in boxes of ten tapes. In most cases, the outer boxes would have something like "Tampa" written on them. Our producers were really lazy at labeling their tapes. So I had to go through every single tape, and figure out, "OK, this is Tampa Am contest," then I'd find out who was the cameraman for that contest, and ask them, "OK, is this 1985? 1986? 1987? What month was the contest?" Then I hand wrote the little card, and a label sticker, for every single tape. I spent months doing that, watching part of almost every tape, and fast forwarding through to note any key shots, like an interview or where the pros runs were. That's what I did when not doing other work. I usually didn't leave my tiny room for hours, just copying 3 copies of this, 20 copies of that, for different people in the Vision companies. By the time Unreel closed down, we had about 2,400 tapes in the tape library, every single tape and case hand labeled by me.
In a group of companies that grossed somewhere around $50 million that year, the 1987-88 Vision empire, there were all kinds of video projects going on, plus the occasional outside project. With Vision making so much money, Unreel didn't really have to make money as a separate business. We were always being called on to do some project for Vision or one of the other companies, from skate videos to fashion videos, or videos to show at trade shows for Vision Street Wear. But the main thing we did was a series of home videos, like Psycho Skate, Freestylin' Fanatics, Sims Snowshredders, and Barge at Will. Unreel also produced the first nationally syndicated action sports TV series, called Sports on the Edge, in 1989. Six years before the X-Games, we had a series of six TV shows that played on TV stations across the U.S., including Vision's Skate Escape event. That series featured skateboarding, snowboarding, BMX racing, BMX freestyle, body boarding. I had zero creative input on any of those TV shows or videos, I was basically a glorified production assistant. But now, 24 years later, it's pretty cool that my name is in the credits for Red Hot Skate Rock, the video we did with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, when they played at the big Skate Escape event. Who knew they'd still be kicking ass in 2023.
One really cool side aspect of working at Unreel was that I got introduced to a whole bunch of pretty cool, and some lame, music. When you make action sports videos, you always need background music, and the Vision companies were a collection of dozens of really creative people, many into the local punk and rock scenes. Unreel also had a woman who came in occasionally, who was a 20-something knockout brunette, when I first started going to Unreel. I think she was a hardcore groupie in Hollywood's Sunset Strip music scene, something like that. She would sit on the floor, in the downstairs waiting room, before they had furniture. She just had a phone, and she called all the musicians she knew, and had them send demo tapes and other copies of their music to Unreel. In addition, the producers were always looking for new bands. Dave and I dubbed all the good music that came in over to digital PCM music, recording the digital info on video tapes. Plus I made copies of the finished videos a lot, so I was introduced to a lot of cool music in the 2 1/2 years I worked at Unreel.
When I came from Idaho to California, I listened to top 40 and MTV music (MTV used to actually play music, kids), groups like Bruce Springsteen, Night Ranger, Queen, ZZ Top, and music like that. My cassette collection brought me a lot of grief when I started working at the magazines. Gork was a hardcore metalhead, and Andy and Lew were into punk and industrial music. I had just never been properly introduced to punk rock, except for a guy in high school who told me about the Dead Kennedys. While working at Unreel, the hardcore H.B. local freestyler, Mike Sarrail, started introducing me to alternative and punk music, then taking me to shows to see bands like Jane's Addiction, Social Distortion, Human Drama, The Dickies, and a whole bunch more. Mike really got me into punk, but I also found quite a few bands from working at Unreel, and some on KROQ radio, as well. So here are several of the bands I learned about while working at Unreel Productions, from 1987 to 1990.
JFA (Jodie Foster's Army)- We Know You Suck (full album) Some skater had shot home video of a JFA show, and it was in the Unreel tape library. We never used it in a video, but I checked it out when I found the tape.
Stacey Q-"Insecurity"- Someone at Unreel knew Stacey Q's producer, John St. James. Unreel was working on the original music video for her song "Insecurity," when I started there. I heard that song, over and over and over, for the first couple of weeks, coming out of the edit bay, as they edited it. At the time, 7-Up had just put out this Cherry 7-Up commercial. They spent something like a million dollars to shoot a video that looked like black and white film, but have just the pink show up.
Unreel had a component betacam edit bay, not composite, which meant behind the machines there were three cables for everything, instead of one, which separated the three main colors of video. Dave Alvarez, our editor, figured a way to do the same effect as the 7-Up commercial, just by patching cables a certain way. So the fairly low budget Stacey Q "Insecurity" video, the original version, had the same look as the million dollar plus 7-Up commercial. But for some reason, the record company had another video produced for the song later on. Stacey Q was completely unknown, a wannabe pop star at the time. She came by Unreel a few times. She later had success with the song "Two of Hearts."The song made it to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Definitely not my taste in music, but this was the first new music I heard when I started at Unreel.
The Descendents- "Coolidge"- For context, snowboarding was really new in 1987-88, and still largely unknown to a lot of the public, when I started at Unreel. At the time, 95% of ski resorts banned snowboarding on their mountains. But Tom Sims, who started Sims skateboards and Sims snowboards, is the west coast inventor of snowboarding. Unreel was working on the second Sims Snowboards video, Snowshredders, when I started. There was a version mostly edited, with pink lawn flamingos being tossed around in the intro, for some reason. Brad Dorfman, or someone, didn't like the intro, and so the video underwent a major re-edit, over the winter of 1987-88. I had a 3/4" copy to make VHS promos copies from, and first heard The Descendents song, "Coolidge," there. I just really liked the song, not knowing who the band was. I used to play that in my room, over and over, on the big 3/4", cassette, just because I liked the song. I later found out what the band was, and The Descendents and All became favorites of mine.
On a side note,I also got the job of making a snowboard tuning video with Tom Sims himself, my first cameraman and lighting job at Unreel. On the second day of shooting, Tom brought in the first snowboard he made, in 7th grade shop class, in 1966 or so. That board is now famous as, arguably, the first modern snowboard. When I saw it, I asked "What is that?" and Tom told me the story behind it. Snowboards have come a long way since.
Tom Sims with his first homemade snowboard, from about 1966, made in shop class in school.
Agent Orange- "Bloodstains"- I think "Bloodstains," was the first video I ever saw show skateboarding on MTV, back in the mid 1980's. After The Descendents, I discovered Agent Orange at Unreel. SinceSkatevisionswas already a couple of years old when I started at Unreel, I didn't get asked to make a copy of it for quite a while. I had never seen the video before working there. When I did dub it, I recognized a couple of songs that I'd heard on KROQ, but never knew what band it was. This is another video I'd put in and just listen to every once in a while. Just great music, from my point of view. But my favorite thing about Agent Orange and Skatevisions come from an whereYouTube video Moby interviews street artist Shephard Fairey. At 7:12 in this interview, Shephard says that watching Skatevisions, with the Agent Orange soundtrack, had a big effect on him, and that was his introduction to punk rock. Without Skatevisions, Andre' may have never had a posse, and Obama may not have had much hope for change. So I'm stoked my old boss, Don Hoffman, made the video that helped get 14-year-old Shephard started down the alternative path to all the cool stuff he's done since.
All- "Don Quixote"- Brian Gillogly, one of the Unreel producers, worked at Skateboarder magazine, years before, and he directed Freestylin' Fanatics, and other videos. He used the All song "Don Quixote" in one video, and again, like "Coolidge," I just liked the song, and started listening to it at work sometimes. All is basically The Descendents with a different singer, something like that.
Big Drill Car- "In Green Fields"- One of the people in Big Drill Car worked at Vision, in the art department, I think. They have a great sound, which I first heard dubbing videos at Unreel. I picked up their album "Casette Type Thing," at Vinyl Solution in Huntington Beach, and listened to that tape a hundred times or more. I still listen to them when writing or drawing, on a regular basis, and I saw them play live 3 or 4 times in the early 90's.
Drive, She Said- Drive, She Said (full album)- I think we used a song or two from this album in some video. Mostly I just remember seeing the album laying around. The name, "Drive, She Said," stuck in my head. Sounds like an 80's hair band.
Blind Dog Lost- "Pete's Theme"- This is one song that I just liked, having heard it play while dubbing it many times.
Slammin' Watusis- "Skt Skt Skt"- This is another song I just heard a bunch while dubbing tapes, and liked the song.
The Splatcats-"Even Steven"- This is the intro music for the Freestylin' Fanatics video, after the Vision Street Wear commercial at the very beginning. It's another just really cool song I liked back in 1988. Brian dug deep and found some really cool music for the videos he worked on, I'll give him that. I thought this was The Descendents when I first heard it. Listen to the lyrics of this song, it's pretty crazy, but they get lost in the groove of the music.
Joe Satriani- "Satch Boogie"- So... someone at Unreel talked to Joe Satriani's people, and got a verbal "OK" to use his music, from the Surfing With the Alien album, before it came out. The deal was we could use any of the music for $300 per song. Our producers loved "Satch Boogie," and several other songs, and we edited the music into several places in the Sports on the Edge TV shows. Then... Surfing With the Alien took off. When they went to pay Satriani's record label, the label said, "Uh... no... we want $3,000 per song." So Unreel found a good local musician, and had him do similar music, hitting the same beats of the edited video, for much less money. They had to edit out every Satriani song we used, it was just way too much money to spend for background music. Lesson of the day, get written contracts to use music, if you're producing videos, folks. On the bright side, the groupie woman I mentioned above, she got Dave and I tickets to see Joe Satriani and his band play live at a closed event at the NAMM trade show in early 1988. It was a great show, in a room full of hardcore musicians. Satriani's bass player was even more amazing than him. I think Paul Stanley from KISS was standing next to me, one of maybe 200 people in the room, for that show. I'm not 100% sure, with no make-up, but I think it was him. Thanks groupie chick!
Yello- "Oh Yeah"- This is another song that everybody in that era heard. Someone at Unreel did get the rights to use this song in writing, and we used it in several videos, I think. It was in the intro of Snow Shredders. But you all probably know this song from this commercial, which came out later, or maybe this one, much later on, or maybe from 80's dance club mixes of the song.
Skatemaster Tate-"Year O' Tate"- Gerry Hurtado, aka Skatemaster Tate, was a skater and musician in the 80's skate scene in SoCal. He was one of the live hosts of Skate Escape, along with radio DJ The Poorman, from KROQ, and pro vert skater Ken Park. The producers at Unreel decided to not only make a music video of Tater, but to make a 3D music video. This was shown on the big screen, above the ramp, at Vision's big Skate Escape event in 1988. It's also the reason you see a bunch of kids in a crowd wearing 3D glasses (at 1:00) in some of the videos. But since it was shot in 3D, this clip was never used in an actual video. I just found this clip online recently, and hadn't seen it since 1989 or 1990. Skatemaster Tate went on to host Sk8-TV on Nickelodeon in 1990. That's him on the left with Lance Mountain and the co-host guy, in that clip.
The Stain-"I Know the Scam" "Flashing Reds"- One day, street skating pioneer, Mark Gonzales, walked into Unreel with a record album, put out by a punk band in Toledo, that none of us had ever heard of. Mark bought the album just because he liked the cover art. The band was The Stain, and the producers at Unreel contacted the leader of the band, Jon Stainbrook. It turns out Jon had some really good friends who were musicians, and one had a home recording studio, so Jon and The Stain, became one of our main sources of cheap, good, video music from then on. I called him up, and used a bunch of The Stain's music when I made my own BMX video, The Ultimate Weekend, shortly after leaving Vision, in 1990.
Uniform Choice- "A Choice" - This is a punk band I had heard of, but never actually listened to. Then I got to shoot all the video footage for amateur vert skater, Mark Cernicky, for Barge at Will(19:03), and they used Uniform Choice for his segment. I love that segment now. Cernicky of DEATH!
Red Hot Chili Peppers- "Fight Like a Brave"- OK, I saw the movie Thrashin', featuring the Chili Peppers, in a drive-in, in Gork's van, with then magazine co-workers and roommates, Gork and Lew, in 1986. So I knew who they were. But I never really heard their music until the Skate Escape event. I ran from Don Hoffman's side, in the event director's booth, at the back of the arena, and into the pit for the Chili Pepper's live show there. Great set. Then the Unreel later put out the Red Hot Skate Rock home video, so I heard their music a bunch of times back then. I like their 1990's and beyond music better, to be honest. We had no idea they would still be playing more than 30 years later, back then. They still really fuckin' rock. More power to the Peppers.
Bad Brains-"Big Takeover"- Someone at Unreel, possibly one of the skaters, introduced me to Bad Brains. Then, in 1990, when I worked with Christian Hosoi and his guys for three days, shooting for the Tuff Skts promo, he said he was a fan of Bad Brains. So when I made the original 7 minute promo video for Tuff Skts, I used Bad Brains and Muddy Waters music (for the slo-mo part). I lost my copy of that promo in 2008, in a move, and there's no version except that super short clip from Sk8-TV, above, with lame music. But the real version of that promo had Bad Brains in it.
Muddy Waters- "King Bee"- When I shot footage at Christian Hosoi's ramp for the Tuff Skts promo linked above), he had kind of a one man media day. There were 3 or 4 magazine photographers there, his team skaters, Block, Little Man, and Joey Tran, as well as surf filmmaker Herbie Fletcher, shooting film. Christian Fletcher was also there, skating. Hosoi had a full sized halfpipe on the top of this hill in Echo Park, where he lived in a house once owned by W.C. Fields. Herbie had some movie footage of Christian from an earlier shoot, and we all went into the little side house, and watched it on a movie screen. The footage was all in slo-mo, shot in high speed film. Christian put some Muddy Waters blues music on the record player while we watched the film, and it worked really well with the slo-mo. So I bought a Muddy Waters cassette and used the song "King Bee" in the Tuff Skts promo video. I later realized I like blues music in general, so thanks Christian for turning me on to Muddy Waters.
The Offspring-"Jennifer Lost the War"- In January of 1990, as Vision was in a downward spiral thanks to the slowdown of the 80's skateboarding boom, we had a meeting at Unreel. The decision had been made to dissolve Unreel. All the producers and our manager got the boot. The two lowest (and cheapest) people on the payroll, a woman named Laura, and me, were kept on. But we had to move to the Vision main office in Santa Ana. Don Hoffman would work freelance when needed. Laura found a "real" TV production job in about a month, which left me, in a big office, with a bunch of the basic video equipment. Every call that came in for Unreel was then directed to me. Remember, I was a lowly production assistant, and eventually a cameraman, for 2 1/2 years. I had nothing to do with any official business at Unreel.
Suddenly I had distributors from Portugal on the phone, or shops who needed a new copy of a video because one was a bad tape, and other weird, random phone calls from around the world. One day I picked up a call, and a really mad guy said, "You used my band's music in a skate video without paying, and I'm going to fucking kill you!" Naturally, I was kind of curious who the hell this guy was, because I had no idea. So I asked, "Who the hell are you?" It turned out he was Frank from Zed Records, a huge indie music shop in Long Beach that had a small record label. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, and explained my side of the story at Unreel. Eventually he calmed down.
The best I could figure out, some skater brought in a ghetto blaster recorded tape with the band he wanted to use for his segment on one side, and a young punk band called The Offspring, on the other side. The tape wasn't labeled. In the course of making Barge at Will, somebody turned the tape over, and used one of The Offspring's songs in the video, thinking it was cool. Keep in mind, this was four years before their breakout album, Smash, came out. Nobody knew who the fuck The Offspring was in 1990, except maybe a few local friends and punkers. Ultimately I drove down to Zed Records after work one day, talked to Frank, and we worked it out. I was able to get $1,000 (retail value) of Vision Street Wear clothes sent to The Offspring, and everyone was reasonably happy. A year or so later, I saw them play (opening for Citizen Fish), with Mike Sarrail. Mike started talking to them and I ended up having a beer or two with them before the show, at Al's Bar in downtown L.A. That's how I first heard The Offspring's music. These Huntington Beach locals became one of my favorite bands over the years, and I 've seen them live 3 or 4 times.
No Doubt-"Oi to the World" (The Vandals cover)- When Unreel shut down in January of 1990, we had two really nice office units to clear out, Unreel's suite, and the Vision promotions department, which was next door. Tom, Vision's facilities manager, gave me the job of making a list of every single piece of video equipment in the Unreel office, and writing down the serial number. Much to my surprise, I found over $10,000 worth of equipment that wasn't on any previous list. Being the ridiculously honest goofball that I am, I didn't steal any of the equipment and sell it.
While doing that job, I dug into every nook and cranny of the office. In the closet by Don Hoffman's old office, I found a big box of albums, CD's and maybe 40 or 50 cassette tapes. Remember the hot groupie chick I mentioned? I think a lot of that music was stuff she had musicians send to Unreel in 1987 or early 1988, along with other music people had sent later on.
At lunch at Vision, I mentioned this to a guy named Dave, who worked in the mailroom. He said I had to let him have some of it, being into punk himself. He came by my apartment the next weekend, and we split the music between us. There were multiple Anthrax picture disk albums, still shrink wrapped. Those were already collector's items then. There were a couple of The Offspring's first album, unopened, and a few other records. Dave and I went though it all. He picked one thing, then I picked one, then he picked one. At the end we both had some really cool music, and I had about 20 hand recorded cassettes. He wasn't interested in those. So Dave took off with his haul.
I went up to my bedroom, and put each cassette in my little ghetto blaster, and played parts of a couple songs. If I really liked the music at first listen, I kept it, if not, I tossed it in the trash. One of those cassette had "No Doubt" written in a girl's handwriting on it on the cassette card, and on the tape. Again, this was 1990, a full two years before the "Trapped in a Box" music video came out, and five years before their breakout Tragic Kingdom album. I played the first song, there was a guy singing. It didn't really move me. I fast forwarded a ways, and listened to a bit of another song, also a guy singing. The music didn't grab me, so I tossed the garage recorded, ghetto blaster taped cassette, probably hand labeled by Gwen Stefani, recorded in 1987, into the trash, with about 20 other cassettes. Yeah, I kind of wish I would have kept all those. Or at least that one. Lesson learned.
For those of you not aware, the band No Doubt was formed as a ska band, by Eric Stefani (Gwen's older brother) and John Spence, in 1986, and the original lead singer was John. John tragically died by suicide in late 1987, and a very reluctant and shy Gwen took over lead vocals. Obviously, she rose to the task, and eventually kicked major ass on vocals. But the tape I had still had John singing lead, so the self-taped songs I had on cassette were from some time in 1987, three years before I heard of the band, and eight years before they broke out big time with the Tragic Kingdom album in 1995. Eric Stefani left the band in 1994, and became an animator on The Simpson's show.
So there's a bunch of the music I got introduced to while working at a pretty cool job, at Unreel Productions, back in the late 1980's. This post is done and I'm hungry. It's time for a little something refreshing.
On August 1, 1966, a man named climbed, unobserved, into the tower of the University of Texas in Austin. Over an hour and a half, he shot at many people, killing 14 people, and the fetus of one of those women, who was pregnant. He wounded 31 others. He was shot and killed by police. Harry Chapin later wrote the song above, "Sniper," about the mass killings, something which was nearly unheard of in that era. This is probably the single most intense song I've ever heard in my life.
Many things inspire works of art. Tragedies, both personal, and catastrophic events involving groups of people, have always been a source of inspiration for artists throughout history. Here are a few pieces of art inspired by tragedy, at a time when the world witnessed the effects of one tragic attack on civilians, on TV and social media, and what may turn into a much larger civilian tragedy emerging in retaliation. As a 75 year period of strife once again flames up into warfare in the Middle East, people there, and around the world, struggle to cope with all kinds of traumatic events.
There are many ways to grieve, cope, and try to deal with the wide varieties of tragedy we see, feel, and experience in life. Creating art is one way to both work through the trauma of tragedy, and also to remind other people, in real time, and in the future, of the darkest events that human beings are capable of.
Personally, I'm shifting towards writing more about writing, drawing, art, and creativity itself, ideas from my own weird, path of coming to grips with the urge to make art and write down ideas. The events we've all seen this past week led me to the idea for this post, to look at some works of art that were inspired tragic events.
The song "Amazing Grace," sung here by the Gospel Touch Choir, has been a standard in churches across Christianity for over 150 years in the United States. It was written in 1772 by an English pastor named John Newton. Newton was a former slave ship captain. He saw, and was an active part of, the worst aspects of slavery. Newton was even held as a slave himself, for a time, off the African coast. After a storm nearly sank his ship, while still in his 20's, he turned his life around. This 14 minute documentary tells the story of the song, "Amazing Grace." The tune we are most familiar with now is not the original music for of the song. It may have come from a type of Scottish folk song. Here's "Amazing Grace" on bagpipes. If you have ten minutes, good headphones, and really want to hear the true power of music, listen to this version sung by Aretha Franklin from 1972.
In 1983, the young band U2 had a big hit with the song "Sunday Bloody Sunday," another song inspired by a tragedy. For most of the 20th century, some groups of Irish wanted to become independent from British rule. Other Irish people wanted to stay a part of the U.K.. This led to decades of trouble in Ireland, attacks, car bombs, and religious tensions. On January 30, 1972, during an Irish catholic march for freedom and civil rights, in Londonderry, British troops ended up shooting at protestors. Thirteen protestors were killed in by the troops, and several more were injured. A 14th protestor died several months later from the injuries of that day. That event inspired U2 to write the song "Sunday Bloody Sunday" years later. This short video explains the main events of January 30, 1972.
Guernica, the painting by Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso created well over 1,000 works of art in his life. The best known work, to most people, is a huge painting called "Guernica." The painting is 4 meters by 8 meters, about 11 feet tall by 26 feet long, to us Americans who don't use the metric system. On April 26, 1937, the Basque town of Guernica, Spain, was hit by an air raid, the first time of a large air raid on a civilian population. An estimated 300 people were killed in the bombing, and as many as 1,700 later died from injuries from the attack. This short documentary tells the story of Picasso and the painting of Guernica.
In 1979, the band The Boomtown Rats put out a single called called "I Don't Like Mondays," which went on to become their biggest hit. The song was inspired by a mass shooting in January of 1979, where a 16-year-old girl, Brenda Spencer, shot at several people, in a school near San Diego, California. She killed the head teacher, and wounded 8 children and a police officer. When asked why she did it, Brenda said, "I don't like Mondays, this livens up the day" This short video tells the basic details of that shooting. Brenda Spencer is still in prison for her crimes, and her next parole hearing is in 2025.
The song "Strange Fruit" was made famous by singer African American singer Billie Holiday, who was known for singing the classic ballads and standards of the early and mid 20th century. The song was written as a poem by Abel Meeropol, in 1937, and was inspired by the lynching of black men in the United States in the late 1800's and early 1900's, primarily in southern states. It was a photo of a lynching that took place in Marion, Indiana in 1930, that sparked Abel to write the poem. He put it to music, and his wife sang it as a protest song at times. In 1939, the well known, talented Billie Holiday recorded it. This really spread the haunting song to a much larger audience, and it became a part of the growing civil rights movement for Black American, then usually referred to as Negroes. This news segment tells the story of the song.
Probably the most famous historical painting in the United States, the 1850 work, "Washington Crossing the Delaware," is known to school children and adults from American history classes. General Washington's revolutionary army had lost 80% to 90% of its forces, and was on the run from the British, in the weeks leading up to the famous crossing. The troops were tired, low on supplies, and battling the cold weather, and a better trained British army, along with German Hessian troops, mercenaries brought in and paid for by the British. Things were looking really grim for the struggling colonial army. Washington made a big bet by crossing the Delaware river at night, on Christmas night, 1776. They moved in the early morning down to Trenton, and attacked a group of Hessian soldiers stationed there, surprising them and achieving a victory. This helped raise morale of the colonial army under Washington, and became a turning point in our Revolutionary War. Though this scene has been painted multiple times, the 1851 painting by German American artist Emanuel Leutze became the iconic image of the dangerous river crossing.
On February 3, 1959, a small plane crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa. The crashed killed three young rock n' roll stars on board, J.P. Richardson, known as The Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the planes pilot. They were three of the biggest names in the young music movement of rock 'n roll, at the time. Inspired by the airplane crash, in 1971, singer/songwriter Don McClean released the song "American Pie."In this news segment, he tells some of the story behind the iconic song. The early lines of the song reference Don reading about the tragic plane crash, which became known as "the day the music died," in the newspapers. Don was 13, and a big fan of Buddy Holly, at the time. Years later he put it all together in the 8 1/2 minute song that has been heard by millions since, and became an iconic song in American rock music.
These are just a few works of art, songs and paintings, that have been inspired by some tragic events. But to many people reading this, these works are all from decades ago, are people still creating art and music inspired by terrible events. Yes, of course.
This kid goes by the name MC Abdul, and this song is called "The Pen & the Sword," and it's about the thirst for education among kids like him.
This video has serious production quality, so he had some help putting this video together. MC Abdul lives in a Palestinian region, I think the Gaza Strip, in Israel. He puts his thoughts and feelings into his raps, and he's been doing this for more than two years. This video is dated from about mid September 2023, about three weeks before the current war started in the region. Here's another video he put out, two years ago, which is much more low budget and raw. This is an amazing piece by a 12-year-old. "Shouting at The Wall."
There are a lot of reasons to write, rap, play instruments, paint, sculpt, design, or do any kind of artistic work. Getting through the tough times in your own life, working through the things that trouble you, whatever kind of trouble it is, is one great reason to focus on creative work.
I'm doing most of my new writing on Substack now, check it out.
.jpg)
