Music:
bands are cool. I've booked a few shows in my day. My favorite shows were the ones where the bands would show up after having spent the night in a drunk tank in Oakland: Tight Bros from Waaaay Back When, for instance. MIRV was always a favorite band to create a spectacle by getting naked and running up and down West 2nd Street (still playing guitar!). Working with Wesley Willis several times, Archers of Loaf, Bonfire Madigan, Pedro and the Lion, Tilly and the Wall, Kinski, Ozomatli, Melt Banana, Uhm, Jefferson Starship..(anybody with me on that one?)...has made me realize that there are many ways to make great music........ Hella reggae bands, 'specially Prezident Brown and John Browns Body who could really generate some freaky heat in a room. Cuz when you get right down to it, the Rastas are the only ones with some sort of message in their music. Springsteen and Marley, Bruce and Bob played NYC together in the late 70s, and we don't really know what Bruce was trying to say, besides being a workingman is hard (which just carried on the theme of Haggard, Cash and Guthrie) but BOB? HIS Music dealt in the deep harmonic of a second coming............But when it comes down to it, I'm a Chico snob. I've got two favorite bands: The Mother Hips and The Imps!!! Check 'em out.And of course, Kool Moe Dee!
Movies:
From Here To Eternity, Animal Crackers, Animal House, You, Me and Everyone we Know, The Bank Dick, Staying Alive (HA!), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, I'm Gonna get you Sucka, Quentin Taratino, Akira Kurosawa, Festival Express, Truman Story, Yellow Submarine, who reads this stuff?
Books:
Harold and his Purple Crayon really changed a lot of things for me. Finally seeing a media character draw on the walls gave me the courage to be a wall scribbler (don't get me started on Winky Dink). Are you there God it's me Margaret gave me insight into the female mind. The Scholastic Book of the Month Club used to have alot more strange and subversive titles about ghosts, UFO's and psychic powers, those were the days.Really like The Phantom Tollbooth, and then, Butch Patrick, Eddie from the Munsters, starred in the movie version and it kind of killed it for me, because in the book, the kid looks like me, not Eddie Munster.For some reason I liked collecting Ian Fleming books as a kid, James Bond is cool. Then one day I found myself in the Psycholohy section of the public library and they had a extensive selection on the 60s pioneering movement of people like Carl Rodgers, Abraham Maslow, Jean Houston, Stanislov Grof, Richard Alpert, Carl Jung and many others. It was a large payday and focused my readings for years to come.Science fiction, especially Philip K. Dick held my fascination for a while.Books on world religions, especially work by Joseph Campbell is always worth rereading.Lately, I've been reading scripts....and reworking my first novel Memoirs of the Messiah.