Greenwich Village folk singers scene of the early 1960's

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.    

The inspirations

Woody Guthrie- "This Land is Your Land"

The Kingston Trio- "Tom Dooley" 

The Weavers- "Goodnight Irene"

John Coltrane- 1958

Jack Kerouac- 1959- reading from On the Road

Charles Mingus- "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" 1959

Thelonius Monk- 1961

Greenwich Village scene folk singers of the early and mid 1960's

Dave Van Ronk- "House of the Rising Sun"

Bob Dylan- "House of the Rising Sun"

Judy Collins- "Fannerio"

Danny Kalb- "Pretty Baby Blues"

Nina Simone- Live in 1961

Carolyn Hester- "I'll Fly Away" (with Bob Dylan on harmonica)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott- "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright"

Bob Dylan Live at the Gaslight (recorded at the Gaslight, in Greenwich Village, in October 1962)

Peter, Paul, and Mary- "If I had a Hammer"

Bob Dylan "Blowin' in the Wind"

New World Singers- "Blowin' in the Wind"

Harry Belafonte- "Midnight Special #1" (With Bob Dylan on harmonica)

Phil Och- "The Power And The Glory" 

Lou Gossett (known to most of us now as the actor Louis Gossett, Jr.)- "See See Rider"

Burl Ives and Glen Campbell- "Jesse James," "Cool Water," "Billy the Kid," "John Henry"

Dave Van Ronk "Clouds (Both Sides Now)" 

Judy Collins- "Clouds (Both Sides Now)"

Joni Mitchell- "Both Sides Now" 

Mitchell Trio (featuring John Denver)- "Violets of Dawn" 

Lovin' Spoonful- "Do You Believe in Magic" and "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice"

The Blues Project- "Projections" 

Bob Dylan- "Like a Rolling Stone"

There are no paid links in this post.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet Chincilla

This is English singer/rapper/performer Chinchilla.  What's an up-and-coming pop star doing on my blog?  This young woman can SING, and I think she's got the talent and drive and the look to have one hell of a career.  That's why I'm sharing this, for any of you who haven't heard of her yet.  Listen to this song above, maybe she'll put a spell on you, too.

A little under a year ago, when this song, Ren's "Hi Ren," video was about a month old, and had 3 million or so views, I first watched it.  Alex Leech, a cool BMX rider I know from the 1990's, put it up on Facebook, saying this song blew his mind.  Alex plays music as well, so I checked it out, and "Hi Ren" is one of the most amazing music videos I've ever seen.  I dove down Ren's YouTube rabbit hole that night, and for the next several days, and became a big fan of Ren's work.  "Hi Ren" is overpowering, you can't listen to something that intense every day.  But I found a few songs of his, tagged "Ren X Chinchilla," including these below:

"Chalk Outlines"

"How to be me"

"Sexual Healing" (Marvin Gaye cover- live)

Last summer, after diving into Ren's music, which made me seriously rethink my own creative work, I started listening to Ren and Chinchilla's "Chalk Outlines" every single day, for at least two or three months.  "Chalk Outlines" and "How to be me" are great original songs.  They aren't good songs, they are both great songs, with Ren's minimalistic guitar playing.  He can really play the guitar, but didn't need to, these songs didn't require much backing music to be incredible duets.  So this is how I came to be aware of this singer in the U.K. named Chinchilla.  "Chalk Outlines" is still on my personal mental playlist, along with a few other of Ren's songs.  I listen to it on a regular basis.  

A couple months ago, I ran across the clip at the top, of Chinchilla on The Voice.  I thought, "Cool, Chinchilla is beginning to take off on her own, good for her."  Over the last couple of months, I've seen some more of her new stuff.  Today, while working on this blog post, I've been listening to her live set from Pink Pop 2024, which happened just about a month ago (late June 2024).  

This set really surprised me.  From the couple of her newer music videos I've seen, I expected her stuff to be more pop.  But this live set (link below) is a mix of rock, R&B, Soul, a bit of Hip Hop, and it's a damn solid set.  Am I predicting this her latest EP will go platinum?  No.  But for a new musician on the mainstream scene, still working to get her name out there and draw a fan base, now with some industry backing, it's good stuff.  

You know who this Pink Pop set reminds me of?  This is going to sound crazy.  Her energy and theatrical flair remind me of Meatloaf.  For real.  Anybody remember Meatloaf?  He had an incredible voice, and did live theater when young.  But it took him teaming up with the weird, crazy, and incredible songwriter Jim Steinman to really find his calling.  Then it clicked, and together they made a bunch of great music, starting with the Bat Out of Hell album.  

I think it may take Chinchilla a couple of albums to really find her creative voice, to figure out what kind of songs best suit her voice and style.  Maybe she will write the songs that will really take her global, or maybe someone else will.  But I think there's a lot more amazing music coming from this young woman in the future.  She's not a Britney Spears type, bubble gum pop artist, or a techno dance club singer.  She's the real deal, and I think has the potential for a long and amazing career.  So that's my take on the still up-and-coming singer, Chinchilla.  Here are more of her recent videos:

"Little Girl Gone" Live

"Fingers"

"1:5" Live

"Cold Water" Live

"Shut You Off" 

Pink Pop Festival 2024- Full 45 minute live set

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The Last DJ... Jim Ladd has died

"The Last DJ," by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, played live on the David Letterman Show.  This song was inspired by Los Angeles radio DJ Jim Ladd, who really was the last of the old time radio disc jockeys.  Those deejays were the ones created a experience on the radio, rather than just playing the records the suits upstairs wanted them to play, to promote the latest hyped song.  Jim Ladd died a couple of days ago, on December 16th, at age 75.  He was truly the last of the great FM DJs in Los Angeles, who played the songs he wanted to play, doing what he called "free form radio."  He's best known for careers working at KMET and KLOS radio in Los Angeles, and for the last 12 years has been on Sirius XM, with a show called Deep Tracks.

The years between August 2003 and November 2007 are all jammed together in my mind.  I was driving a taxi in the Huntington Beach area during that time, working 70 to 110 hours a week.  A lot of really weird stuff happened in and around my taxi, but I can't even remember what year those events happened.  I worked 7 days a week most of that time, lived in my taxi, and never got enough sleep, that whole era is kind of a blur.  

I would work until the bar close rush was over each night, usually about 3:00 am.  Then I'd go to one of several parking lots, where I slept in my taxi, in the driver's seat, until about 8:00 am.  I'd wake up, go get a couple donuts at a donut shop, and the go park in the taxi line at the Huntington Beach Hyatt, near the beach.  I'd try to get a couple of more hours of sleep, a half an hour at a time, by the time most of the hotel guests checked out at 11:00 am.  

I'd work in the cab from 8:30 am until 3:00 am Tuesday through Saturday, week after week.  On Sundays I would work from about 7:00 am until 2:00 pm, then get a cheap motel room for the night.  I'd buy a cheap pizza, and spend three or four hours watching TV in the room, and just forget about everything.  I'd usually fall asleep in the early afternoon, and wake up about 1:30 am, right before bar close.  My body was geared to being awake then.  I'd watch a little TV, then go back to sleep.  I'd wake up again at 4:30 or 5:00 am, throw some dirty clothes on, and go run two or three Monday morning airport rides in the taxi.  Mondays were slow, and that $25 to $40 made early in the morning really helped.  I'd go back to my room, get a shower, and just hang out, watching TV, until 11:00 am, milking every hour I had the motel room.  Then I'd work on Monday, from 11:00 am until 3:00 am Tuesday morning.  That's what it took to survive as a taxi driver in those years, when the taxi industry was dying, due to the new technology of computer dispatching.  

I paid $550 to $600 every week in taxi lease, and spent $300 to $350 each week for gas.  After paying those two things, every week, I usually made about $250 to $300 for myself.  I spent most of it on food, and the motel room for one night.  Every single night, for several years, I drove drunk people home safely from wherever they were partying, focusing on Main Street in Huntington Beach, and the whole H.B./Newport Beach/Costa Mesa area.  The job took me all over, depending where rides went.  I'd drive people up to L.A. sometimes, or down to San Clemente, even deep into Camp Pendleton Marine base a couple of times.  As I said, a lot of crazy stuff happens when you deal with drunk people every night, and I'd drive all over Southern California.  

There were several things that helped me get by, day to day.  I didn't drink or do any drugs, we got random tested for both.  I drowned by depression and sorrows in food, mostly.  Pizza, Chinese food, and late night Del Taco meals were my favorites.  Some taxi drivers chain smoked instead.  There's a reason the average lifespan of a taxi driver was only 53 years back then.  It was a pretty fucked up lifestyle, but had a weird freedom to it, since it wasn't an actual job.  Taxi drivers existed in the gray area between jobs and small businesses.  We were gig workers before that term existed.

One of the things that helped me survive day after day was music.  I just had a standard car radio, and for a lot of those nights from 2003 to 2007, I had my radio tuned to KLOS in the evenings, to a show by disc jockey Jim Ladd.  He was the last of the old time FM DJ's, the guys who would pull out and play obscure album tracks, play music I'd never heard, or hadn't heard for years.  Many nights he would have a theme going, like "Songs with women's names in them," or songs about this theme or that.  People would call in with suggestions.  Jim would talk, like a human, in between songs, and he would tie the songs he played together, playing records in a order that had some sense to it, where it just seemed to flow.  There was a mood, a vibe, to the music he played.  

Jim Ladd, those weeknights on KLOS in the 2000's, played rock music the way it was meant to be played.  For him, and for many DJ's decades earlier, as FM radio rose to prominence side by side with rock n' roll, playing music on the radio was an interactive art form.  He called it Free Form Radio.  Every time he was on air, it was different.  Sometimes it was rocking hard and upbeat.  Sometimes it was music with deep lyrics, or paying homage to nurses or truck drivers or some kind of working person.  Other days it would get dark and moody.  Jim Ladd truly loved music, and he made listening to the radio an event, and that's why he inspired Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers to write the song, "The Last DJ," in homage to the art of being a great rock n' roll DJ.  Jim went on to work on Sirius XM, probably the only place he could do what he did, farther into the 21st century.  

One night in my taxi, in downtown Huntington Beach, I picked up a guy in a leather jacket.  He got in, and in a strong, New York/New Jersey accent, told me he was going to Whittier.  That was a big ride, so I was stoked at first.  But there was a vibe to this guy.  A bad vibe.  His leather jacket was straight cut on the bottom, not waist length, and not down below the knees, it hung to his hips.  It was the jacket of someone from the East Coast.  He also sounded Italian in background.  

A couple of minutes after I started driving, he began yelling, "Are you talking to me?"  Are you talking to me?!"  Yes, the same line Robert Deniro made famous in Taxi Driver, and with similar intensity, but a different tone.  My head snapped around, I wasn't sure if he was on his phone, or yelling at me.  The picture came together for me, this guy was a real world Goodfella.  A gangster.  As in Mafia-style gangster, the real deal.  And I was taking a half hour drive with him.  I'm pretty sure he threatened whomever was on the phone.  Luckily for me, he fell asleep before I got to the 405 freeway, several miles inland, on the other side of Huntington Beach.  

I wasn't exactly sure how to get to Whittier, so I was flipping through the Thomas Guide map book as I drove on the freeway.  I got on the 605 freeway, heading inland.  As I drove, Jim Ladd's show played in the background, it was a dark, melancholy night on his show.  Slow, oozing guitars, one song after another.  I took a wrong exit off the 605, realized it, and prayed the gangster wouldn't wake up before I got back on the 605.  I didn't want that guy accusing me of taking him the long route, as many taxi drivers did to people, to milk the passengers for more money.  

He didn't.  But he woke up right after, as Jim Ladd played a positively haunting version of "Amazing Grace."  The gangster woke up with a start, and got animated, as Italians from New Jersey do, and joked darkly about me not taking him the long way.  but he was pretty blitzed, and he passed back out again.  Jim Ladd played another, dark, soulful version of "Amazing Grace," and then another.  I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I'm about to get robbed and shot, and die in my taxi, and there's a fucking soundtrack playing as it happens."  I seriously felt like I was in a movie, in the tense part right before someone gets killed, with the soundtrack playing on the radio.  Jim Ladd was playing the perfect soundtrack to the end of my life, live on the radio.  That was so cool.  But I was scared shitless at the same time.  

The dark, haunting music kept playing, as I got off the freeway, and headed into Whittier.  The gangster woke up, found a piece of paper, read it, and gave me an address.  It was a dark quiet night, without much traffic.  The taxi death movie soundtrack kept playing, as I pulled over into a small parking lot to look the address up in the Thomas Guide.  The nap had sobered the guy up, and now he was in a pretty good mood.  But with a hard edge, a "don't fuck with me taxi driver" vibe.  I rolled up to the address, seriously half expecting him to get out and pull a gun.  Instead he said, "pull down that alley."  That's a huge red flag to a taxi driver, you never want a passenger to have you drive down a dark alley.  That's where taxi driver's get robbed and murdered.  Taxi driving was the #1 one job for getting murdered at the time.  But I was there, I'd rolled with it all until that point.  The meter was over $50.  I pulled slowly down a completely dark alley between two houses.  

As I passed the house on the right, a single, naked light bulb came into view.  There was a small house behind the first one.  The lonely light bulb lit a small brick porch.  "Stop here," my passenger said.  I stopped.  He got out of the right rear door, and closed it.  He walked slowly around the back of the taxi. I had the driver's window all the way down.  He leaned down and looked in, "What's on the meter?"  I told him the fare, sitting there, in the dark, in an alley, in a city I didn't know at all.  The music had lightened just a bit, but Jim Ladd's hour of dark melancholy continued.  The guy broke off a couple of twenties and and enough extra for the fare and a decent tip, and handed it to me.  "Thanks taxi driver," he said, and turned and walked towards the door, lit by the single, uncovered light bulb.  

I breathed out, and headed on down the alley, which I could just barely see opened out on the next street.  Still alive, I cranked up the most memorable set of songs I ever heard Jim Ladd play on KLOS, and drove back to Huntington Beach.  The mood of the songs lightened up naturally, as it should have.  I went right back to work.  Another night, another crazy taxi driver story, another drive slowly down Main Street in Huntington Beach, looking for the next fare, and the next adventure in my cab.  

I imagine there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people, who have stories like mine, of some show Jim Ladd DJ'd.  The night his music melded with the goings on of their life, in a way that seemed uncanny.  There are probably a lot of people who remember a an evening Jim played the soundtrack of their life, live on the radio.  That's the magic of Free Form Radio.  It blends together, and we can project our lives into the music as it plays on and on.  

A toast to The Last DJ.  Rest In Peace Jim Ladd, and thank you for sharing your gift, and for making radio something special, long after nearly everyone else had given up on it.  

I listened to the entire The Last DJ album by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, while writing this post.  I'm listening to to the most amazing version of Aretha Franklin singing "Amazing Grace," as I finish.  Music is the best thing human beings have come up with, and reason enough for our entire existence to have happened.  Amen.    

Jim Ladd on "The Last DJ."

Here's an actual YouTube playlist by Jim Ladd, which I listened to while proofreading this post.  

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Music I was introduced to while working at Unreel Productions (Vision Skateboard's video company)

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.  Since Skatevisions was 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.  

Creative Scenes: Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation documentary

When it comes to Creative Scenes of people in the United States, there are only a few that rank with Greenwich Village.  Hollywood for movies and TV, New Orleans for jazz, Nashville for country music, maybe Austin these days for music and technical innovation.  Greenwich Village in New York City had a long history of artists, writers, and free thinkers.  This documentary, Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation, focuses on the folk music music scene that formed in the Village in the 1960's, and sparked the singer/songwriter movement, along with much more.  It's narrated by Susan Sarandon.

I was raised as a dorky kid in small towns and rural areas of Ohio.  As a very little kid, the radio provided my music, I remember being 5 or 6 years old and listening to Jim Croce, Three Dog Night, and The Guess Who.  I didn't know who the bands were, I just loved the songs.  It picked what I heard, depending on the station.  My mom had a country station on wherever we lived, so that was the continual soundtrack of the kitchen or living room in our house growing up.  I wasn't a fan of country music, with a few exceptions, like Johnny Cash.  I got my own record player when I was 8, in third grade, and I could play a few of my parents' albums, and my mom's old 45's, mostly older standards.  Neither of my parents were into rock n' roll. 

The first album I remember owning, that I got to pick was John Denver's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2.  Between my mom's country music, and my dad's big band and swing, I became a fan of singer/songwriters, John Denver being the first.  While he wasn't a major part of the scene, he was one of dozens of musicians of that era that made their way through the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene in the 1960's.  

The odd little bit of Manhattan, clustered around Washington Square Park, had been a cloister of all kinds of unusual and creative people for 50 years or more when it began to attract musicians like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and so many more in the early 1960's.  Beginning as folk singers, they were singing songs often written decades before.  This group mingled around Greenwich Village, talking, singing, philosophising, drinking, arguing, sharing ideas, and playing music with each other, as musicians do.  Over the course of a few years, many began to write their own songs.  They inspired each other, and millions more people, directly and indirectly, through their music, and later through the musicians following their lead.  

As a kid in rural Ohio, listening to John Denver and looking out my window at the cow pasture, even I heard of Greenwich Village.  It was one of the only art and music scenes I ever heard about as a Generation X kid in the 1970's.  Now cities everywhere have "arts districts," many far to expensive for emerging artists to live in anymore.  But some are still filled with art.  But back then, in the early and mid 1970's, Greenwich Village was one of the only known "scenes" of creative people those of us across the U.S. ever heard of,  Hollywood, Broadway, Nahsville, and New Orleans being the others.  

This documentary features many of the musicians from that scene tell their own stories of what it was like, and how it evolved while they were a part of it.  In it we hear from Pete Seger, Arlo Guthrie, Happy Traum, David Amram, Richie Havens, Oscar Brand, Judy Collins, Don McClean, Jose' Feliciano, Tom Paxton, Tom Chapin, Carolyn Hester, Buffy Saint-Marie, Steve Earle, Carly Simon, and many more.  The later part of the documentary goes more into the social and political aspects of the late 1960's, and how the folk music movement of the Village influenced the folk rock and mainstream rock music of the late 1960's and 1970's.  This is a great look at an epic period in the timeline of Greenwich Village, and why it was a cultural and creative force in 20th century America

I'm going to be looking into all kinds of Creative Scenes in this blog, going forward.  I've been writing for years about the economic troubles I see us heading into in the coming years, and how I think the 2020's will be a major transformative period in human history.  I believe we are heading out of the final phase of the Industrial Age, and into the still emerging Information Age.  I think Creative Scenes of many different varieties, from groups of musicians to high tech start-ups, and many kinds in between, will be a huge part of the change happening in this decade, and beyond.  To get an idea of what makes great creative scenes, I'll be looking at lots of them, large and small.  Greenwich Village is one of the most influential Creative Scenes in American history, so this is a great place to begin.  

Lessons from BMX freestyle: Get around the people who make stuff happen

When I came to Winston-Salem last summer, and camped out in the woods since I couldn't afford a room anywhere, I started wandering around and showing my Sharpie art to people in restaurants and stores to see what they thought.  I went to McKay's used bookstore (AWESOME place, BTW), and the women working in the back said, "Go to Delurk Gallery."  I met several other people who said the same thing, most of them in their 20's.  Delurk, on sixth street, just off Trade, in the space where Urban Artware used to be, is the coolest gallery here in Winston to the college age crowd.

My Michael Jackson drawing above is hanging on the wall there right now, in the "Creatures of Fortune" exhibit, one of 17 pieces chosen from all the talented artists in this area.  If you're a young artist, or a "creative" of any kind, you're probably wondering how a homeless guy who draws in an obscure medium made that happen.  The truth is, I didn't make it happen.  I got around the people who make stuff happen in the local art scene, and my first piece to hang in Delurk happened without me even knowing it.

How did I get to this point, having a drawing in the hippest gallery (to young people) around?  First of all, I  put in the work to learn to make cool looking drawings.  I tried to draw a mural on big sheets of paper in my room with markers waaaaaay back in 2002.  It sucked.  I kept goofing around with markers, switched to Sharpie markers, and stumbled on my "scribble style" technique in 2005.  I started drawing on a pretty regular basis, using my unique style of shading to do different types of drawings, most of which weren't very good.

In late 2015, unemployed and living with my mom at age 49, I couldn't find ANY "real job" in this area.  I made a little money now and then drawing kids' names in their favorite colors, and selling the drawings for $20.  I decided that I could either keep trying to get a lame ass minimum wage job, or I could focus 100% on turning my art (and writing) into a small business.  It wasn't much of a decision.  Obviously, I went all in on art.

I sat down one night and spent over two hours looking at all kinds of artwork online, asking myself, "What would I want to put on MY wall?"  It's a simple, but powerful, question.  I love the colors in graffiti art, the wide array of street art, and I kept coming back to stencil art.  I found a very simple stencil art picture of Bruce Lee's face.  So I printed it out, blew it up on a photo copier, and transferred the outline to my paper, then I drew it and colored it in using my Sharpie scribble style.  It wasn't amazing, but I liked it, and I did actually put it up on my wall.  I realized I was on the right track, and I started drawing picturse of people,working from photos, mostly athletes at first, that had deep shadows and stencil-like looks.

In the time since then, I've drawn around 80 to100 drawings, most of which took 18 to 25 hours each, some as much as 40 hours each.  I stepped up my game.  I kept improving, and still am improving.  I learn little things on every drawing.  I promoted my work online, and sold a lot of drawings super cheap, $1 to $2 an hour for the time I spent drawing them.  Over the last two years, I got better.

I finally got to the place where my drawings, all by themselves attract attention.  Then I came over to Winston-Salem, broke as fuck, and left a toxic living situation where I never could have made a living with my art.  That was necessary, but it meant going back to homelessness.  I kept drawing every day, struggling to survive day by day at the same time.  It was tough.  Really tough.  But I knew it was the right thing for me to be doing right now, and I loved doing the actual work.

A couple of guys saw me drawing at McDonald's, and said I should show my work to the music shop across the street.  That shop was Earshot Music (3254 Silas Creek here in W-S), and the manager, owner, and the art director liked my stuff.  They put a couple of drawings up on the wall, then asked me to do a full show with 8 drawings.  I knew that was a launching pad for me.

To be clear, I don't actively "network."  I figure out who the people are who make stuff happen in the scene I'm interested in.  In this case, it was the Winston-Salem art scene, centered mostly around Trade Street downtown.  Earshot Music is not there, but it's vibrant part of the local art and music scene.  I went there, talked to Phred the owner, and we hit it off.  I don't try to push myself on people I don't really like.  I don't go around talking fast, using Neuro-linguistic programming, and hand my business card to everyone.  I hate that shit.  I go out and meet the people in the scene, show them what I do, and some people and me click, and some don't.  I don't worry about the ones that don't.  I learned that years ago in the BMX freestyle world.  Just meet the people in the scene, and you'll click with some.  Start working with those people.  Forget the rest.

Right when the Earshot show was about to open, I finally made it to the First Friday Gallery Hop on Trade Street.  I showed my drawings to several people, and a woman named Luba really liked my stuff.  She led me around meeting other local people.  She introduced me to Rachel White of Designs, Vines, and Wines, at Studios at 625 on Trade Street.  I talked to Rachel for a while.  A month later, at the next Gallery Hop, I talked to her some more.  She made me a featured artist in her space in February.  She liked my Michael Jackson drawing that I did for someone.  That person never got back to me when I sent them a picture of the drawing online.  So I gave it to Rachel to hang up, along with some others.  Then I had drawings hanging at two places in Winston-Salem.

I wasn't even there the day a person from Delurk Gallery came around, scouting work to have artists apply for the "Creatures" show.  Rachel took the initiative and entered two of my drawings.  Normally I don't like people doing stuff without asking me concerning my work, but it was near the deadline to enter, and I'm stoked he just did it.  As I mentioned, the Michael Jackson drawing made it into the show.  So now, while still homeless (hopefully for not much longer), I have drawings of mine hanging up at Earshot Music, Studios at 625, and at Delurk Gallery.  And to be honest, I didn't work hard to make those happen... recently.  But I put in the time to figure out how to draw with Sharpies, which I was attracted to for some reason.  I think that reason was mostly because I didn't want to learn how to paint.  I wasn't out to create a unique style.  That failed mural attempt just really pissed me off, and I was determined to find a cool way to shade with Sharpies. 

The recent part, working into the local art scene here, is based on something I learned in the BMX freestyle world in the 1980's.  In Idaho, I got into BMX racing, then freestyle, and went to a show by the only freestyle team around.  I met the guys, Jay Bickel and Wayne Moore, and started riding with them two or three times a week.  In a couple of months, I was part of the team and doing shows with them. 

When I moved to San Jose, California with my family a year later, I started a zine as an excuse to meet the riders in the San Francisco Bay Area, which included a few pro riders.  I didn't think I was a good enough rider to actually just hang out with them.  Within a couple of months, I met them all, interviewed them and shot photos for my zine, and I was part of the scene, which happened to be the most cohesive BMX freestyle scene anywhere then. 

Intuitively, I sent copies of my zine to the guys at the BMX magazines.  A few months later, at a big contest, I went up and introduced myself to Andy Jenkins and Lew from FREESTYLIN' magazine.  Much to my surprise, they said they really liked my zine.  That led to writing an article for the magazine, which was a huge deal in those pre-internet days.  Soon they offered me a job, and I "stumbled" into the BMX freestyle industry, and later the skateboard, video, and TV industries.  Along the way I realized that the two main things I was doing were: 1) Working hard to make a cool zine, (and later other cool stuff, like videos), and 2) I was finding and meeting the handful of people who actually made stuff happen in the BMX freestyle world.

In any scene (art, music, BMX, skating, whatever), or business, or industry, there are a relatively small number of people who make most of the stuff happen.  Do something cool, and then send it to those people.  Or meet those people at an event, and give them a small gift of your work.  That's a totally different mindset than say, stalking Kim Kardashian and trying to get her to give a shout out to your handmade jewelry or something.  Tons of people try to do that these days to get hype from "influencers."  Don't.

Work on whatever creative thing it is that you do.  Get to where it's pretty good... maybe even great.  Then give it to the people you admire in that world.  Lots of people ask those people for their influence or hype.  But not all that many people will just give the people they admire a small gift with no expectation of them helping you.  It's not hard to do, and the people who make stuff happen don't get that many personal gifts like that.  You will be amazed how many people will respond.  Many will remember your gift much later on.  But don't just do it as a quid pro quo.  Give a gift... a TRUE gift, without expecting anything.  Then just go on with life.  Some of those gifts will help you connect with the people who make stuff happen.  When you get around those people, opportunities will just start coming your way.  Yes, HARD WORK is a definite part of the equation.  But if you're doing something creative that you enjoy doing, it doesn't really feel like work. 

How crazy can this get?  At one point in the '90's, I made a little zine of my poetry, handmade, typed on a typewriter, and photocopied.  They were cheesy, but some of my poems were halfway decent.  I sent those zines out to several of my favorite writers.  Like real writers who published real books.  And then I just forgot about it and went on with daily life.  I got four or five thank you notes and letters back from my favorite writers, all very positive.  In fact, I got a form letter back from best selling novelist Dean Koontz, who gets thousands and thousands of fan letters.  He hand wrote two lines at the bottom.  That blew my freakin' mind.  Guess what, I read several more of his novels in the next few months.  If you happen to be a Koontz fan, write him an old-fashioned snail mail letter.  He has a newsletter he sends out to fans that write to him.  It's awesome.  That's his way of giving a little gift to his readers, the opposite form or what I'm talking about here.

This is one small part of getting to the point where you can make a living from your creative work, which is what I'm working to do myself.  And it IS work.  But in today's high tech, info age, hyper-connected world, there's a lot of work out there for creative people.  So take the time to develop your craft, work hard, and get around the people in your world who make stuff happen.  You'll be amazed what that can lead to.

What will we do with all those empty buildings?

This still of the thrashed escalator area at Rolling Acres Mall is iconic to many now.  This 2014 clip was an early look at what's now called the Retail Apocalypse.  A quick online search will show a consensus of articles and videos listing thousands of stores that have closed and people expecting about 400 entire shopping malls to close within the next five years.  That's if we DON'T have a recession anytime soon.  On a timeline basis alone, we're due for a recession any time now. 

While thousands of new stores have opened, more than 6,700 retail chain stores have closed in 2017 alone.  There were thousands more in the past few years.  There are a bunch of different reasons for this.  This Bloomberg News article (Nov. 2017) adds crazy amounts of debt to the picture of retail stores losing ground to online sales, and the millennials' penchant for seeking experiences over piles of material goods.  Any way we look at it, there are tens of millions of square feet under roof becoming empty.  That's in addition to all the old factories and warehouses from decades of manufacturing decline. It looks like that this year's closing stores are just the beginning.

I happened to be born just a few miles from Rolling Acres Mall, the one in the clip above, in Akron, Ohio.  I followed my parents around that mall, and many others, as a kid.  This mall has been demolished.  But hundreds more are still standing, and the term "dead mall" is part of our vernacular now.  There's a dead mall, completely empty, fifteen miles from me right now.  I'm sitting in the McDonald's in the parking lot of another mall that's packed right now with Christmas shoppers.  But it's definitely not packed the rest of the year.  The mall behind me is doing better than most.  But two of its anchor department stores are Sears and J.C. Penney's, which are both struggling.  For now, though, it's still alive and kicking. 

My point here is that we have a HUGE amount of buildings of all kinds standing empty in this country.  We have a lot more buildings that will become empty in the coming years.  So...

What are we going to do with all that space?

Here are some of my favorite ideas:

Indoor Skatepark- Van's store/skatepark- Orange, CA- large, two story mall store
Indoor Skatepark with Amazing Art- Iianera, Spain- old church
Art Colony- Santa Fe Art Colony- Los Angeles, CA- old industrial buildings
Indoor Mountain Bike/BMX Park- Ray's MTB- Cleveland, Ohio- 100,000+ sq.ft. factory
Indoor Dirt BMX Park- Burlington Bike Park- Burlington, Washington- warehouse
Indoor (underground) Mountain Bike Park- Louisville Mega Cavern, Louisville, KY- old mine
Indoor Ropes Course/Zip Lines- Lousiville Mega Cavern
Indoor Wood BMX Park- Daniel Dhers Action Sports Complex- Holly Springs, NC- warehouse
BMX/Skateboard/Gymnastics Summer Camp- Woodward East, Woodward, PA- warehouses
Indoor Climbing Gym- Allez Up- Montreal, Quebec, Canada- old sugar silos
Martial Arts Tricking Practice Gym- Various dojos/gyms- warehouse/industrial spaces
Indoor Parkour/Freerunning Course- Unknown location, warehouse
Indoor Slack Line- Somewhere in Canada, eh- dining room
Indoor Snowboard Park- Montana Snow Center- Westerhoven, Netherlands- warehouse
Indie Art Gallery/Performance space- AAA Electra 99- Anaheim, CA- industrial space
Independent Theater- Center Stage Theater- Naperville, IL- warehouse
Public Library- McAllen, TX- old Walmart store
$1000 Movie Stage- Unknown- old barn
Privately Owned Movie Studio- Tyler Perry Studios- Atlanta, GA- decommissioned Army base

Why I love drawing musicians

Music is one of the greatest forms of magic in the universe.  What else can bring people together from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of belief systems, and get them to tune into a single moment?  OK, the recent total eclipse, did that.  But not much else can.  Just like during that surreal moment when day turned to night and even the animals were quiet, music has the incredible power to overcome the things that push us apart.  A great live concert photo captures a faction of a second of that energy when a musician loses themselves in the bliss of creating magic in the moment through their music.

 I love the challenge of taking one of those photos and adding my own flair to it.  I don't want to just make a cool picture of the artist, I want you to remember that feeling of how great music can make you feel.  Then I add lists of songs or lyrics in the background.  I do that so that once someone gets past that initial thought of that musician playing live, they can be reminded of the songs or words that have really touched them at some point in their lives.  Even more, I want people to find songs or lyrics in the back of my drawings that they're not familiar with.  I want them to go look up those songs, and explore the work of that musician, that purveyor of magic moments, even more.

That's why I love doing drawings of musicians.  My Sharpie drawing of Prince above will be at my show at Earshot Music in Winston-Salem, (NC) which opens this coming Saturday, November 4th, from 7:00 to 9:00 pm.  Come by and check it out if you're local.  Check out my work on this blog or Facebook if you're not.  I'd be stoked to do a drawing of your favorite musician... as long as they don't suck.  Ultimately, I want to take my own photos to draw my Sharpie pictures of.

In the course of doing this Prince tribute drawing, I dove into his music, and discovered tons of stuff I'd never heard before.  This clip below is one of my favorites now.  Just let the guitar do the talking for you...