02-22-09 LA CA: 2042 hrs. It’s a Sunday night and I am sitting in the office writing this. I am listening to the 2nd Generation X album, Valley Of The Dolls. I did the whole weekend on about ten hours of sleep and tomorrow starts early. Last week was spent for the most part, working on the 2nd book we have set for release this year. A Preferred Blur went off to the printer days ago and threatens to make its presence known in a few weeks. Heidi and I have gone through the first 26,000 words of the book. The process is slow and requires a lot of patience. I guess some of you checked out the press release we sent out last week about me starting at KCRW FM Saturday March 7th at 1800 to 2000 hrs. Next week, I will post all the information about how to find the station online and every other way. I must say, I am looking forward to being back on the air live. I have really missed that. A few days ago, I went to the station and guested on Morning Becomes Eclectic with Jason Bentley, the host of the show. Jason is also the music director of the station and the one who gave me the shot to be on the station. We’ll see how it goes. People are very cool there, I am hoping I fit in ok. I never know how any of these things are going to go so I do the best I can and hope it works. You have had that feeling of being an outsider at least once on your life, that’s how I feel in those situations. I took advantage of the lead time before I start there to work on playlists so I can be ahead of the game. I am leaving them open enough to be able to add to them days before. I just thought it would be good to have some time to listen down to all the songs and see if I still liked the way they sat together. I work pretty hard on those broadcasts, I always try to make them as good as I can. I am really liking the ones I have put together so far. I have spent many hours listening to them and adjusting them here and there. One of the cool things about KCRW is that they archive the show for a week so you can check out from all over the world when you want to online. That’s makes it pretty easy to catch the show when you want to. Over the weekend, I took a break from things I was doing to listen to what people were saying about the dead chimpanzee cartoon in the New York Post that got many people’s blood a bit hot. What you think about the whole thing is your business and I could argue either side of the thing convincingly. The illustration, which I am not going to waste your time describing to you, falls into an interesting grey area. After so many people hollered about the thing, the NYP issued a lukewarm apology, which surprised me as I didn’t expect them to do that. Perhaps the paper’s master, Rupert Murdoch just wanted the damn thing behind him and gave the order to acknowledge the heat a little. I have thought about it quite a bit since the cartoon came out. The one thing that sticks with me is that there is no doubt to me at least that someone in a position of authority looked at the illustration and knew that it was going to cause some trouble and was perhaps not in the best taste to put out there. The New York Post is a lot of things, stupid is not one of them so I wonder if they were hoping for the hullabaloo they knew would result would sell some papers. One thing is for sure, and this is irrespective of this whole cartoon drama—there are a lot of people in powerful places that are mad as hell that Barack Obama is their president. I like the way the president handles this kind of thing—he just keeps working. I sure hope he changes his mind on going into Vietnamistan. There’s some histroy books that he might want to check out before he sends our finest in there. How mature of me, I went to a wake today. It was at a bar on Fairfax. The wake was for a man who was part owner of a studio I did a lot of work in over the years so there was no way I wasn’t going to show up and say hello to the family. I spent about an hour there and talked to the great Bob Ezrin for some time. Bob is a producer and songwriter. He’s had a few brief moments of moderate success. I can think of a few. He co-produced an album called The Wall for some band named Pink Floyd, co-wrote two songs, Detroit Rock City, and Beth and produced the album that those two songs are on called Destroyer. Then there was ALL those Alice Cooper records, and then there’s Berlin by Lou Reed and a few truckloads more. He’s done pretty well for himself. I have known Bob for many years and many times I have called him and asked him to come into the studio, listen to what I was doing production wise and check out what he had to say about it. He gave me many great ideas for overdubs, vocal approaches and so much more. He’s always the same—enthusiastic about what you’re doing, wants to hear what you’re listening to, etc. Great guy. I went from there to the garage, worked out and came here to work until I fall over. I am up in a few hours so I can somehow get through the week of proofreading, press and all the rest of the stuff. You know you’re all grown up when you crawl into bed alone, dragging your work with you. I am still deep in that book The Dark Side. I have been doing a lot of writing on a new project that’s a couple of year away and it’s been taking up the time I usually use to read so it will be awhile before I get through that one. I am learning a lot from it though and it’s been worth it although it’s not an easy read. It’s one of those ten pages of information per page kind of books that take me a good while to crawl through. Next Saturday is my last broadcast on Indie 103. It’s already in the can and I will post the broadcast notes on Friday. After I make the move to KCRW, we will change the page a little and make is as easy as possible to get to their site and check out the show. It’s late and I still have at least another hour of stuff to do before I can get the lights out so I better hit it. Thanks for reading. –Henry