Miscellaneous Musings about Magic, Music, Madness and Mortality...

It's been a while since I've had time to post and several subjects have been piling up in my head trying to find the way out, so even though I may be biting off more than I can chew in trying to keep this interesting and coherent, here it goes. (I started this 3 days ago but it's taken a while to finish it between all the other things I've had to do in addition to watching the mountains explode into flames not all too far from where I'm sitting.)

Many bloggers use their blogs as daily reports of what they did that day, where they went, what they ate, what they bought, who they screwed, you know, the mundane crap that nobody cares about. I never wanted this blog to sink to that level but this post may send it in that direction. This ones gonna be about where I went the other night, a recent book I've read and some other stuff that got attached to those topics while agitating around in my head.

The first topic for tonight's ramblings is Magic. A few nights ago I took my family to the Magic Castle in Hollywood.. This is a place we have been wanting to go for a long time but it is not open to the general public. You have to be invited by a magician member. One of our musician friends, who also happens to be a great magician, Phil Van Tee, had us as his guests. http://philvantee.com/ (For some reason the link feature is not working tonight so please just copy and paste the address into your browser.) Thanks Phil!!! I've never experienced so much magic up close. It really got me thinking about the nature of this universe and the creation of illusion. Well actually I'm always thinkin about that but it sort of intensified my thinkingness for a while there. What do these guys know about the nature of reality that the average guy does not? How much of reality are we actually perceiving or conversely how much of what we perceive is actually real? You look at a guy like Chris Angel and you have to wonder if he's even human! Perhaps a holographic image? I don't know...

Well at least I know Phil is human. If you ever need a magician for anything, hire Phil. You won't be disappointed. Here's a clip of him in action...



Next on the list is music, I'm kinda moving though the "M"s tonight. Actually this is connected to the book I just finished entitled "The Death of a Rebel", the story of Phil Ochs. This is the first book written by Marc Elliot back in 1979, who has gone on to write many books about icons of popular culture such as Springsteen, The Eagles, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant. I've always been a fan of Phil Ochs but lately he's been on my mind quite a bit because of all the insanity going on in the world today. I wish he was still around to provide his commentary, but actually many of his songs written some 40 odd years ago are still quite appropriate today. They are just not being heard on the corporate controlled media.
Now I'm gonna slip from music to madness because that is what the book covers, Phil's attempt to ascend to stardom followed by his decent into alcoholism, schizophrenia, leading finally to suicide.

As Phil wrote in the song "Chords of Fame", "God help the troubadour that tries to be a star". Being a star can be a dangerous profession, especially if you say and do things that oppose the system. Actually I believe the music business itself is not what it appears to be. Artists are very easy targets and people with evil intentions designed the business to use and control them for their own benefit and agenda.
A recent book by Michael Walker entitled "Laurel Canyon- The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood" is a great read that tells the story of all of the musicians that happened to come together in the '60s and made Laurel Canyon their home. It focuses on the people and their lifestyles and the music that was created during that magic time and place. But we are expected to believe the idea that all this came together simply as a matter of an amazing number of coincidences along with a healthy heaping of serendipity. For those not so sure about that and who have a more open mind may I suggest " Inside The LC-The Strange but mostly true story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation" by Dave McGowan. This online story is still being written but there are enough chapters already done to completely blow your mind and change the way you look at pop culture and world events. http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr93.html (again, copy and paste into browser. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
So I was talking about Phil Ochs and I seemed to have gotten sidetracked but I really haven't because Phil spent a lot of time in LA and hung out in Laurel Canyon. And he became just another casualty of the star machine. Madness is just another product of that machine and when it leads to the demise of the artist, well then all the better for the business because there is nothing more easily profitable than a dead pop star.
Here is a video of Phil's only network TV appearance. This should be the National Anthem!



Mortality is another subject frequently demanding attention lately. What's up with everybody dying recently. Is it just me, being that I'm getting to the age where I could keel over with no warning, or are any of you noticing that people are checking out at an alarming rate. Famous people, artists, musicians, writers. The latest loss to the music world was Ellie Greenwich, who was a songwriter of many early 60s hits, many recorded by Phil Spector like "Be My Baby" and "Leader of the Pack". She was one of the lucky ones who managed to be successful and avoid the star making meat grinder. Although I was a little too young to be emotionally connected to her music as I am to say, the Beatles, what really caught my attention was that she grew up in Levittown, Long Island, my home town! Her house was on the corner of Springtime and Starlight Lanes. How many times did I ride my bike past there when I was a kid and never knew....

So what is death anyway and why are we so afraid of it? There are a whole lot more people dead than there are alive so can it really be that bad? I'm wondering if it's not just like being in another room in the universe. All us people who think we are alive could actually be locked in a relatively small room totally absorbed in playing like this giant complex video game and we are oblivious to the big festival and feast going on on the other side of the door. In a world so full of lies and deceit, nothing would suprise me.

Not that I'm planning on checking out anytime soon but I wanted to put together a list of songs that I'd like to be played at my funeral. Really, it's ok, they can be played anytime, you don't have to wait for me to croak to listen to them. I've got most of them on my IPOD. These are a group of songs that I consider important and believe should be heard and listened to, because they reflect wisdom and insight and sometimes the sense of humor of the artist who created them. If I could figure out how to put a player on my blog I would load them all in there so that anyone who wishes to could hear them. But I haven't figured that out yet so I'm just going to put them up one at a time in whatever form I can post them. So to bring this long, rambling blog entry to a close, I'll leave you with this, which just coincidentally happens to come from someone who is dead. Go figure...