I'd like to meet:
Someone who can teach me pin striping. Someone who can teach me to tattoo. Anyone who wants to start a rockabilly band.You can find me online using the rockindaddymike screen name on myspace messanger, and on yahoo [email protected]
Music:
It all started with The Beatles when I was in elementry school in the 60s. After that, during junior high and high school, I moved from psychedellic to hard rock and glam to progressive rock in the 70s. By the late seventies, after 20 years of listening to music, I finally got bored of it all. I had hundreds of records but stopped playing them regularly. What happened next was exactly like that scene in the movie SLC Punk, when the boy pulls the Rush record off the turntable and puts on a new record he had just discovered. The first boy complains and hilariously defends Rushes"complicated sophistication" and then asks what is now playing.The second boy smiles and says"...something new" This may be the most authentic scene ever put in a movie about this time period of music. If you substitute Rush for Yes, and make the new record The Talking Heads , this was exactly what happened to me . My freind took off my Yes record,and asked me to check out this new music he found. It was Life during Wartime by The Talking Heads and it was completly different from anything I had heard before. I frowned, complained about it being just disco or something, and tried to explain the "complex sophitication"of Yes. But it was no use. I knew I was completly hooked on this new sound! Next of course came punk, then new wave, then post punk, and the rockabilly revival of the 80s. During the 90s though, my feelings started to waver again as I noticed that after ten years, no more revolutionary ideas were comming for the next generation. What have the new generation of musicians brought us? Rap? Grunge? Emo? generic recycled punk? Nothing. I got bored again and went looking. One of my favorite old bands The Cramps reinspired me. I tried to find more bands with that echo drenched twangy hiccupping sound that I loved. It sounded retro but somehow very new and fresh at the same time because no one sounded like this. From this as a new starting point I discovered psychobilly which combined that sound I was looking for with punk. Now I was on to something and I was getting excited! From here I went back further and further into the roots of these bands, because I discovered if you want the TRUE, PURE, UNDILUTED version of something, you have to find the original source. This is what brought me to the original 50s rockabilly, delta blues,and old country, and for the last 15 years or so has been my main love! Now I know why I was so excited when Andy Griffith would get his guitar out and jam on his front porch swing, or when I heard old Elvis songs. I still love all types of music from Led Zepplin to Bjork, but I get most excited when I hear rockabilly because I know its the real thing.
Movies:
Some of my very favorite movies are.....The Good,The Bad and The Ugly (Very possibly my all time favorite movie. I love the Clint man with no name character.The whole dollars trilogy is great and so are most of the other Clint spaghetti westerns but this is by far the masterpiece epic of the whole genre. Id start quoting great lines from it but it would take the whole page!), The Sting ( the 40s clothes are cool, the cars are great, con men are fun,great characters,plot and the best ending ever.redford and newman!), Whats Up Doc (screwbvall comedy at its best.The Oneil /Streisand chemsitry is great,more fun characters, very funny dialogue, Barbra is gorgeous in this, and sooo funny. Plus I love Jewish humor), Hello Dolly ( More Streisand and Walter Mathue is really funny),The Professional ( best action ever,Natalie Portman is cool as can be and amazing acting, Reno is very cool, actually everything about this is the best), Kill Bill ( both of them are masterpieces, the best ever homage to kung fu movies keeping all the fun without being a parady, plus all the usual brilliant touches by Tarontino like the film noir refrences, the music, the humor. I like this even better than my long time favorite Pulp Fiction), The Blues Brothers (Best music in a movie.Usually i hate comedies of this type but you have to love the whole idea of the blues brothers concept! The suits,the music, the dancing, the way over the top car chases,and Aretha singing Respect, John Lee Hooker playing on the street! What could be better?I watch this alot!), Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (just beautiful and amazing. Probably the most amazed I ever was watching a movie the first time I saw it.), Manhattan (beautiful black and white ,smart, funny,romantic, best ever New York atmosphere, all the best elements from all of Woody Allens movies rolled into one perfect movie!)
Television:
Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, Food TV, Gilmore Girls, House, Greys Anatomy, Desperate Houswives
Books:
Famous Monsters of Filmland
Heroes:
True artists such as.... Elvis Presley for taking Arthur "Big Boy" Crudups blues song, "Thats All Right(Mama)"and mixing the race music style, with his hillbilly style, thus inventing the rockabilly sound.Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records - For seeing the beautiful genius in this and devoting his life to producing and promoting this sound. Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaron- clothes designers, retailers, and music producers who started the Punk movement.The entire culture started in there London shop.Sergio Leone-creater of the spaghetti western.Trader Vic and Don The Beachcomber- drink mixologist,restraunters and inventers of Tiki culture.Von Dutch and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth- pinstripers, painters, designers, artists and inventers of Kustom Kulture.Alberto Vargas- there were many more greats such as Petty and Elvgreen, but Vargas is my favorite pin up artist.Nothing is more beautiful than a Varga girl.Dick Dale- Using expermental Fender reverb because he thought it sounded like water and mixing it with his famous guitar style he used to remind himself of the feel of surfing, he single handedly invented surf music.King of the Surf Guitar.William Gaines- founder of EC Comics and later MAD Magazine.Film makers, writers, artists, and musicians who explore and change culture.