Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution
Hey there, all you middle men
Throw away your fancy clothes
And while you’re out there sittin’ on a fence
So get off your ass and come down here
‘Cause rock ‘n’ roll ain’t no riddle man
To me it makes good, good sense

Coming Soon Mindfield News 007!

Coming Soon Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo!!

Click onto CRAPtv Forums – where it’s all happening right here right now.

Happy Summer! Or I guess its really about Fall right now – time flies when you are having fun. The Summer of 007, which is of course the 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, has blown right by in a swirl activity. There has barely been time for web updates this summer – so welcome to the Summer blogathon compilation!

This blogathon compilation is getting started at the Austin City Limits music festival, where I plan to see everyone from Bjork to Bob Dylan, so that should be good. And of course I have recently returned from Ye Olde Burning Man out in the Black Rock Desert, which was chock full of adventure to be sure.

It’s a miracle and congratulations to David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen and Alex Van Halen who are finally back together for a real Van Halen Reunion; too bad bass player Michael Anthony got the boot, but we shall see how young Wolfgang Van Halen holds up. Just to date myself, Van Halen was my very first rock concert and I have seen hundreds of concerts since that very formative experience in the Sixth Grade! Now I have just heard that Led Zeppelin is getting back together with all the original members and Jason Bonham is sitting in for his father John Bonham. Amazing! Someday Jason Bonham and Wolfgang Van Halen should get together to form Van Zeppelin – that could be really huge.

Hopefully we will be presenting some new short videos from Lollapalooza 2007, where we had another great year doing Mindfield, the text messaging prankster game and comedy stage, which is now in its fourth version. This year we presented the Mindfield News, featuring some fine young talent from The Second City and Mission Improv, who created guerrilla comedy all over the grounds of Lollapalooza. We will let you know when those get posted on-line! The music at Lollapalooza was most excellent, of course although I missed most of it due to my working status there… But what I saw I liked! For example I caught some of LCD Sound System and all of Daft Punk who ripped it up! Of course Pearl Jam was the headliner drawing the big crowd of maybe 60,000… The PJ show had an Interpreter for the deaf, which was kind of puzzling to me – I was thinking how many deaf people are muscling to the front of this enormous crowd so they can see what she what this chick was signing from her little perch to the side of the stage? Who knows? But after plowing through most of their classic tunes they brought out Ben Harper for the finale and then Dennis Rodman jumped on stage and put lil Eddie Vedder (aka the Cheesy Devil) on his shoulders for a victory dance… The next day I found out that Eddy got censored on the AT and T webcast for dissing the BP Oil Company for polluting the great lakes. Eddie and lots of eco rockers (and all those wacko freedom of speech people) were pissed off and there was hell to pay! I bet Ed Sullivan, the original rock ‘n roll censored/broadcaster had a boner in his grave! I did actually feel sorry for AT and T Blue Room this time, because they do webcast lots of great music all summer long, but as a corporation they really need to be more supportive of people hating corporations!

Burning Man 007 was ass backwards and all about Mother Nature kicking our asses for better and for worse. I always like to go one a date with myself on my first out in the desert and I didn’t let myself down this year. I had a grand old time chilling out by this orange trash fence in the middle of nowhere with front row seats for an amazing lunar eclipse. “Monday became the new Saturday” at Burning Man, when some super freak actually climbed way up on top of the pavilion that supported The Man and torched his ass before things had barely begun. Apparently it is the first time this has happened in the 22 year history of the event. “Where were you when the man burned” became the new “Where were you on 911” for Burners. Supposedly the torching man is sporting some goofy face paint in his mug shot and this act of defiance was “an old school burner prank of protest that Burning Man has become too much like Alterna-Disneyland with too many spectators.” I am all for mixing it up and keeping the prankster spirit alive, but I think the guy did the deed for sheer personal PR grandiosity and five minutes of fame and now the poor bastard’s facing arson charges. It’s amazing how seriously people take this strange desert festival on so many different levels. Regardless, they still have me totally brainwashed, but it ain’t no weenie roast that’s for sure.

We set up our best version yet of this little installation called The White Rabbit’s Blingy Bubble Bath, featuring The Bear and The Armadillo for 007. It looked great right on The Esplanade for about 42 hours before it got blown into a pile of twisted steel and leather donuts. Fortunately, I was able to salvage the key hardware and artwork for this piece. I guess we weren’t quite prepared for high winds and dust storm white outs that greeted us a couple of afternoons in a row. It was the dusty beat down if you were caught off guard this year – I am still trying to get the sand out of several cracks…. We had scheduled to host Hunkamama to play with The Miss Black Rock City Beauty Pageant, but the gig coincided with these nasty white outs two days in a row, so the show didn’t go on… Show business in the desert can be a bitch sometimes, oh well next year perhaps. We did have our house band – The Morning Dues play their annual breakfast jam, which really took shape this year. On the fashion front orange and pink were still in vogue for this camper.

After Burning Man, I just had to head to Texas for the Austin City Limits Music Festival, in order to promote Electric Apricot: Quest For Festeroo and see a bunch of my Lollapalooza co-workers. Needless to say I had a great time there too – that festival is excellent and so is the whole town of Austin. The people in Austin are super cool and the culture runs as deep as their natural springs. There was a wide spectrum of music there. I really enjoyed seeing everyone from Charlie Musselwhite to MIA to Rose Hill Drive and this Cross Canadian Ragweed band. I really really enjoyed My Morning Jacket, Stephen Marley and that old Bob Dylan guy, even though he needed some warming up early in his set. It was a hot time in Texas!

The summer tour was not quite over yet. I still had to head north for my Grandma’s 96th birthday and see the closing of The Sweetwater, a legendary old school local music club that is sadly shutting it doors after many years of rocking…. My Grandma certainly isn’t closing her doors, she just got her driver’s license renewed at age 96! We were fortunate enough to book a local group called The Tourette’s Sisters who serenaded dear old grandma at this fat garden party my mom organized. It was sweet.

Now I am back in the saddle and it’s all about the upcoming release of Electric Apricot Quest for Festeroo coming to theaters this November 9th!
Check out http://www.electricapricot.com right now!!