I seem to neglect ‘The Reiki Rocker’ while pursuing my music career. I get caught up in the busyness… yes, busyness, almost the same as business but a bit more scattered with no income. That was a joke… of sorts.
So why do I do it?
First, let me give you a little background and then I’ll get to the point at the end. Please bare with me…
Last night I was having a conversation with a new friend. We were talking about growing up in the 70’s and how life was more versatile. We had radio stations that played a variety of music on the same station. Pop stations played everything from Deep Purple to Ace (If you aren’t familiar with Ace look up How Long has this been going on‘) to The Jackson Five to Led Zeppelin. We were exposed to many different types of music which allowed us to make our own decisions about what we liked or what we didn’t like. I think that is why I like such a wide variety of music. I’m not just a metalhead (as some of you might think.). I love old R&B, Funk, Soul, Hard Rock, Prog… Give me some Marvin Gaye, Al Green or my favorite… Rufus with Chaka Khan singing Tell me something good or Led Zeppelin doing Stairway to Heaven. As my friend had stated, we can place ourselves distinctly in an era and the music that had its influence on that era.
Every era had its music until we hit the 2000’s.
That’s when the tribute bands started popping up all over the place, where EDM started making it’s mark. Don’t get me wrong… singing in a tribute band is a lot of fun. I love the audiences and the feel of it all. But it’s fake. We are searching for something that once was. Few and far between are the new influential bands like Skynyrd, The Doors, Zeppelin, Deep Purple and the like. They moved us and we looked forward to hearing what they would bring us next. Long lines at Tower Records when the release date came around. We hungered for the message. The message is still there, but it’s now dulled. Where are the messages of today?
This brings me to the News.
Back then we had Walter Cronkite. Walter was a news reporter that gave you the news without glorifying it or giving you his opinion. I’m sure Walter had his own opinion, but you had to find that in a book or an exclusive interview somewhere. You NEVER heard him state his own opinion on the air. He allowed us to decide what we wanted to feel. We made our own opinions, we had our own thoughts, fears, objections to what we saw and heard. And the news was diverse as was our music like I mentioned above. We weren’t spoon fed what ‘they’ thought we wanted to hear or see. Today, again, as my friend said last night in our long conversation…
If you watch FOX you’re a right wing nutjob, if you watch MSNBC you’re a liberal fag.
Today, in this society… our music, our news, our ideas… it is given to us in a little package of what we want to see and hear. And when something we don’t like comes within our ‘box’ we rant and rave and make it go away instead of looking at it, expanding our box and maybe accepting it for what it is. We no longer want to hear the message.
So we think we think (how’s that for a mind bender?)…
I believe that every person out there longs for ‘The good old times’, as was stated by our now President. I don’t think we know what the ‘good old times’ are though. I think we just want to go back to having diversity, and yet we’ve let a minority of bi-polar people decide what we want for us. They’ve kept us busy. Busyness. All of this busyness of shopping for more stuff at Walmart (gag) or Amazon to take our minds off of thinking for ourselves. Working like slaves to get a little vacation that only affords us enough time to forget about our misery for a brief moment. I was in advertising. I was paid to create things that you think you want.
So… before I get completely long winded let me get to my point.
Why do I sing? Why do I write? Why not just stick with a tribute band and be done with it?.
Because I still believe that the world wants to hear a message. A message of today. Somewhere deep down inside they want to be able to scream and stop the madness and deep down inside they/you know that the madness will never stop unless we start living in the present moment. Living in the now, living with diversity and hearing a new message, a new song that makes us think… makes us feel again. I believe this is the only way that this madness will ever stop. I know that it will take time and that change can’t happen overnight, but I also believe that all people are inherently good. All people want the same thing. They want to be happy and bring joy to themselves and others.
When parents have a newborn they don’t look at it and think to themselves, “Uh oh… another Hitler, or Charles Manson.” No… they look at that newborn and see the possibilities of an amazing new life of love and acceptance.
In summary… I have a new album coming out. It has a message. Not only that, the music is awesome! That is where my soul feels alive. So… I’ll see you on the road somewhere soon.
Peace,
David