StinkFight.com

I asked my father-in-law (a self-described “curmudgeon”) what his politics are and he said “It depends on the issue. If it’s abortion, I’m left of Nancy Pelosi. If it’s social welfare, I’m right of Genghis Khan.” (Keep in mind this is a guy who votes Republican but has long been a registered Democrat so he can vote against the more capable democratic candidate in the primaries.)

(And I really like the guy. He’s kind, funny, and far more intelligent and interesting to talk to than a lot of people I know.)

While I don’t agree with his extremes, it really got me thinking….I’m kind of the same way. I oppose unbridled spending on social welfare, and I am pro-choice.

But the thing me and my father-in-law have in common politically in a larger way is “It depends on the issue.”

Republicans with fiscal policies that I consider sound probably want to put me in jail for saying “fuck” on the Internet (or in my back yard). They’re usually not pro-choice, and are often convinced that the Rapture is coming soon anyway, so “Why NOT let industry dump battery acid into a river, why not kill little brown people on the other side of the globe because their shacks are built on top of the oil that God meant for us, and why not secretly read Michael Dean’s e-mail because he likes to say ‘fuck’ on the Internet? I mean, hell, Michael Dean was once involved in some sort of underground organization called BOMB!”

Conversely, the liberals with views that match mine on the importance of civil liberties, and of having a defensive rather than offensive military, keeping abortions legal, having well-funded schools (even if they teach evolution), having freely available medical marijuana, being able to say “fuck” on the Internet, and a lot of other issues, are often the same people who want to, at best, tax me to death, control every aspect of my life, regulate everything in America to an absurd degree, dissolve even a defensive military, grant the rights of citizens to non-citizens….etc. And some of them recently passed a law in Calabasas, California (one town over from me) that makes it illegal to smoke a cigarette in the backyard of a home you own. And if you rent, you can’t smoke IN YOUR APARTMENT in that town.

In a word, I feel like liberals want to protect me from my own ignorance. I feel this is counterintuitive to the relatively sound ground plans of the founding fathers.

But I have an idea to write a sensible, compassionate book about this subject….the subject that “In a two-party system, there’s no one on either side who really represents me. At all. Why can’t I do it take-out menu style, picking one guy to represent one issue from column A, another from column B, etc.?”

I’m tossing around the idea for this book now. I think a need and a market exists for it. True, there are a few books that touch on the subject, but most are written by loons like Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter and Glen Beck.

I’ll keep on the book idea. Stay tuned for further developments.

–MWD

 
Article I wrote on the O’Reilly Digital Media site:

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007/11/29/anarchy-vs-digital-copyright.html

I’m now using a really cool Flash-based MP3 player on my voiceover site. I love it. Check it out and try it here.

The player is free from http://www.premiumbeat.com (who also have royalty-free music). You can also pay a little bit more and not have their logo and link on it. I have it like that on my page.

Prices vary from $19.95 for the mini Player to $29.95 for the Multiple Player with menu. The regular single track player and the Multiple Player without the menu are at $24.95.

Download episode 0059

BOMB STORIES FROM BACK IN THE DAY, WITH JEFF RAMON, RABID BOMB FAN!

Thur, 29 Nov 2007

Michael W. Dean visits with his dear old friend Jeff Ramon in Phoenix. They talk about the early days of Bomb, seeing Bomb open for horrible metal band ‘Flotsom and Jetsam’ in Chicago, and people wanting to kill Bomb, people (including Jefff) stealing Bomb records, Jeff seeing Bomb play with Toxic Reasons in Palatine Illinois in 1988, Michael and the crazy stuff he did on tour, Jay Crawford trying to warn young Jeff about how being a Bomb might ruin his life, Tony being “the band Hitler”, some amusing Bad Brains stories, GE Smith, how to get Spin Magazine to write about your band at an empty show, why you shouldn’t beg for an encore…..and how it all worked out in the end for Jeff and for Michael.

Entire episode recorded on location with the Zoom H2 portable handy recorder.

From the Clone The Homeless podcast.

A cool, well meaning dude wrote me an e-mail critiquing my new voiceover resume site, www.michaeldeanvoice.com.

I won’t reprint his e-mail here, because I didn’t ask his permission, and he took a lot of time with it, and I don’t want to look like I’m slamming him (I’m not). But here’s the reply I sent him:

—-

Hey sir,
I appreciate you doing this offlist, and for taking all the time to critique it. Some good comments here.

First, please look at the site again, I believe I already changed it before you wrote your letter…My podcast link is gone, the font colors are changed, and there are Flash players so you don’t have to leave the page.

As for the “1997 design”, well, I learned HTML in 1996, perfected my style with it in 1997, and actually haven’t changed a bit since then. But I like it. I think it looks good in this day and age, and not like most other sites. You think StinkFight looks better, but it’s a Word Press template, and looks like all the other Word Press sites. People often tell me to update my Web sites’ look, but they invariably suggest I homogenize it into the latest flavor. That’s not for me.

Yes, having a YouTube video seems “below the fold”, but that video has gone viral, it’s had 127,000 hits in about ten days. I’d like to think my voice contributed in some small way to that.

I’ll look into the site you suggested, Voice123.com, I did briefly a few months ago, but it seemed like a lot of wannabes to me. I’ll look at it more closely though, and consider buying space to put a reel on there. But I’m generally offended by sites that “talk to me” when I load them, and the voices that load at me as soon as I go to that site, the ones put there by the site’s owner, sound horribly generic to me.

I sound like a stoned surfer with a slight lisp. I’m not going to get work doing dog food or hemroid cream or Chevy truck commercials. Nor would I want to, even if it paid a lot. But a lot of people really love my voice, and keep asking me to do free work, so I think there’s a demand for me to get more paid work. I just don’t want to do it the “normal” way. I never do anything “the normal way.”

Basically I make a living making media, and I mostly do it my own way.

Check out the CV link I’ve added to the page. None of it is “below the fold”. I do a lot of different things: writing books, making films, producing and creating music, writing for different media sites, and I’ve done paid voice work.

Usually when I’m starting out with new things, people tell me to “do it the way everyone else is doing it”, I don’t, and end up making a name for myself doing it my way anyway.

Most of the work I get from any of the many different things I do for pay is from referrals from people I know anyway, so I’m not that concerned with looking like the latest flavor.

Respectfully,
MWD

My new voiceover resume website, www.michaeldeanvoice.com

Michael W. Dean: high-quality work at reasonable rates, years of experience, full-service in-house recording facility, and a smile.

Today, as part of our honeymoon, Debra Jean and I drove on a whim to the Grand Canyon. It took almost four hours each way from where we’re staying near Phoenix, and was TOTALLY worth it.

The Canyon is awesome, and I’ve never seen it before. DJ has been there, but not as an adult.

We loved every minute of the day.

There’s a few pix here on StinkFight, but the rest of them are at

http://www.debrajeandean.com/GrandCanyonWeb/grand.htm

I know it sounds like a cop-out, but I don’t really have any words to describe the awesomeness of the day. I’m speechless. And the pix speak for themselves.

Me representin’ for my homies, The Echo Park Film Center.

Me representin’ for my homies, The O’Reilly Digital Media site

There’s a post today on BoingBoing about the band The Romantics suing the makers of the game Guitar Hero for using a “sound alike” band to cover their song “What I Like About You” for the game. (Using a sound a like means the company still has to pay royalties for the use of the song, but about half what they’d have to pay to use the origional recording.)

A bunch of people posted replies basically slamming the Romantics for suing. I posted this reply:

——–

I know copyright enforcement seems really unhip to a lot of folks these days, but copyright is a right guaranteed in the US Constitution. (”…To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries….”)

I happen to really like the US Constitution, ALL of it, and really hate to see it stepped on. It seems to me that a lot of people these days yell loudly when their rights are violated, but then want to violate the rights of others whenever it feels convenient.

Do the commenters here who are bemoaning the enforcement of this Romantics issue think the Constitution should be changed?

And if copyright law should be enforced for one, it should be enforced for all, regardless of perceived artistic merit. (By the way, most of the music I like is really dark: Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bauhaus, etc, but I think “What I like About You” is a particularly well-crafted pop song, it rocks, and I respect it for that.)
I know that old-school media companies tend to be WAY overly proactive about going after all perceived “violations”, really selfish about trying to extend copyright law for too long, and often slam Fair Use as illegal use. And I think the Internet has changed the playing field to the point where copyright law needs some reinterpretation.

People are making inroads. Among them are Creative Commons. I dig Creative Commons and use it on some (not all) of my projects. I also give away some art, and there are millions of people doing that.

But I also maintain copyright on some projects, for a number of reasons. And I feel strongly that the underlying principals of copyright law are sound, and should be upheld. For all.

Tom Waits successfully sued Frito Lay when Frito Lay used a “sound alike” singer to record a song SIMILAR to one of Waits’ songs (it wasn’t even one of his own songs) for a commercial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Waits#Lawsuits

I’m fine with that, but probably for different reasons that some folks here, who probably are fine with it because Waits is good and the Romantics are “shitty”.

Michael W. Dean
http://www.stinkfight.com

So, tomorrow is Black Friday, the most insanely busy shopping day of the year. It’s also the day, historically, that the festivity-industrial complex rolls out the cheezy xmas decorations and music to get you in the mood to celebrate the birth of Our Savior by selling you lead-tainted plastic crap and amazingly realistic first-person shooter video games.

My sanctified offering is this song “GOD REST YE MERRY BONZO”. It’s sort of perverted xmas music…. me doing the classic xmas tune “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman” over a loop of a drum beat by John “Bonzo” Bonham, from Led Zeppelin.

I sang, played bass, sleigh bells and piano. My friend George Earth played guitar (he recorded it for me over the Internet.)

Dig it, share it, use it, love it. And pass it on.

Jesus, I’ve had two friends younger than me die in the past two months. I’m depressed about it, depressed about the loss of Brian and of Liza, and don’t really have the energy to write an obit for Brian that does him justice, but….

Brian Childers was a great guy. Met him in Charlottesville, Virginia 1984 when I started playing guitar in his band, The Beef People. We stayed in touch, and he later moved to New York and was in the popular hardcore band, Crawlpappy. At some point, Brian joined my band Bomb for one tour, singing some and playing bass some, to free me up to just sing.

Brian lived in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, which is literally the Last Exit To Brooklyn, and the setting of the novel and movie by the same name. Rough place. Last time I saw him (when Bomb played at CBGBs and was recording with Laswell at Greenpoint Brooklyn in 1990), we stayed at Brian’s house (directly across from the Red Hook Projects, the largest housing projects in the world, and a damn dangerous place to be). Brian showed me the spot three blocks from his home where some kid had shot him through the shoulder from a distance for target practice. He thought the kid was aiming for his head and missed. Brian was a tough motherfucker, and sweet as hell.

I am told Brian died of kidney failure.

Brian died last Saturday, November 17th, 2007, in Washington DC. I’ve confirmed this with two friends of his, including Rick from Crawlpappy.

Photo at top of Brian from six years ago sent to me by J Braltar. Thanks man! More photos of Brian are here.

(I have been trying to find Brian on the Internet for a few years, and don’t have a photo more recent than the one below, of me playing guitar and him singing, in the Beef People in 1985. If anyone has a more recent photo, please e-mail it to me and I’ll post it.)

We bought a new shredder yesterday. I’ve wanted one for a while. The old one I had (gift from Lydia) worked for a long time, but could only do three sheets at a time and didn’t crosscut, and couldn’t do plastic.

The new Staples SPL-QW120D one was $120 bucks (before rebate), can do 12 sheets at a time, turns paper and credit cards into tiny little diamonds that would be damn hard to put back together.

We thought it looked boring, so we put some stick-on lights on it as eyes. We think it looks a little like R2D2 now.

50 sheets of paper, four credit cards and five CDs:

It’s that time again…….

So, kitties……More from our new series, “Dirty, filthy blues quote of the week.”

Each week around Sunday night (the longest period before more church, lol…) I’ll post a new quote from my friend Debra DeSalvo’s book, The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu.

I love this book.

The quotes won’t always be dirty and filthy (though sometimes they will), but they’ll always be great. And they’ll always be dirty and filthy in spirit, because it is, after all, the blues

Here’s this week’s quote:

—————-

blues

(part three) 

Although very early blues did not have the twelve-bar, three-line AAB structure of the classic blues of the 1920s, the three-line structure of the blues verse that eventually emerged was a function of call-and-response singing. The lead singer would repeat a line twice while waiting for another singer to improvise a response. African spiritual chants often repeat an important line. Yorubans, for instance, rely on the poetic chants of a divination system called Ifá for insights into their personal problems[i]:

            The life of Ifá surpasses water’s coolness

            The life of Ifá surpasses water’s coolness

            The speaker-of-all languages married a woman

            Who herself bathed only in water that is cold

            The life of Ifá surpasses water in its coolness

Work songs were primarily sung primarily a cappella, but after Emancipation, the guitar and harmonica made it possible for traveling country blues singers to earn money playing for juke joint dances, passing their songs along in the process. Over time, the blues developed into music played and listened to for pleasure, not for work. It became music that expressed the singer’s individual struggles and passions, both carnal and spiritual. It is interesting that the idea of the instrumental solo, relatively unimportant in West African music, became very important in the blues, which emerged in a country that idolized the individual and had steamrolled over the concept of tribe altogether.

Unlike Africa’s wandering griots, who keep tribal histories intact over centuries, emerging blues singers, according to musicographer Samuel Charters, used “little history and even less political comment.” Most observers believed, Charters wrote in The Roots of the Blues, that “The blues function in American black society as a popular love song~~in the early period almost obsessively concerned with infidelity.”[ii] It is possible, however, that all those songs about wreaking revenge on a “no-good woman” who kept a man “in chains” were metaphorical expressions of the determination of African Americans to free themselves from oppression.  (See also signifying.)

While Charters was in Africa, he observed that although their songs served different purposes: “The voices themselves [of blues singers and griots] had a great deal of similarity in tone and texture. If a griot like Jali Nyama Suso had sung in English the sound of his voice would have been difficult to distinguish from an Afro-American singer. There was the same kind of tone production, the same forcing of higher notes. In the gruffness of the lower range and the strong expressiveness of the middle voice I could hear stylistic similarities to singing I had heard in many parts of the South.”[iii]

Blues guitarists transferred African vocal devices to the guitar, and bent the strings to mimic singing but to mimic singing by reach intervals beyond the limitations of the frets. They flatted the thirds, fifths, and sevenths into quartertones~~blue notes.

Alan Lomax offered an interesting take on this in The Land Where the Blues Began. He theorized that “interval size is correlated cross-culturally to those factors that restrict the social independence of the individual.”[iv] He noted that where strict castes have developed, such as in India, musicians use quartertones and other intervals smaller than a second. In contrast, hunters and gatherers from more easy-going societies, such as Native American and African Pygmy, sing songs filled with great leaps, such as octaves and fifths. In sub-Saharan Africa, “where only a modest level of social layering stiffened social intercourse,” the most common intervals were thirds and fifths. These were sometimes flatted but not nearly so much as they are in the blues.

 Lomax attributed this favoring of narrowed intervals among blues musicians to “the painful encounter of the black community with the caste-and-class system of the post-Reconstruction period.”[v] Freed by the Civil War, yet hemmed in by racism, African Americans wound up on very bottom of the social heap as day laborers and sharecroppers. “Homelessness and orphaning were the order of the day for Delta working-class blacks, creating the wellspring of melancholy whose theme song was the blues,” Lomax wrote.[vi]

This very expression of a tough situation, however, became a way out of poverty for some African Americans. The country blues, sung by one singer accompanying him- or herself on guitar or banjo, evolved into the classic blues of the 1920s and 1930s, sung by such stars as Bessie Smith in front of a big band or piano-led combo. The blues gave options to women like Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith, who without it might have spent their lives scrubbing white peoples’ floors and washing their clothes. [M: I changed Ma Rainey to Memphis Minnie cause Ma Rainey worked a lot as a housekeeper.] The blues drew together the descendants of once-disparate tribal people who had suffered sickening humiliations in a foreign land.

[i]Flash of the Spirit: African &and Afro-American Art &and Philosophy, by Robert Farris Thompson, p. 37 (New York: Random House, 1983).

[ii] The Roots of the Blues: An African Search, by Samuel Charters, p. 123 (New Hampshire: Da Capo Press, 1981).

[iii]Ibid, p. 119.

[iv] Lomax, p. 354.

[v]Ibid.

[vi]Ibid.

—————-

(Excerpted from The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu by Debra DeSalvo. Published 2006 by Billboard Books, an imprint of Watson-Guptill Publications, a division of VNU Business Media. Reprinted with permission. ISBN: 0823083896)

Acknowledge-Me

Saturday Dec 1st. 8PM-2AM. Scoot Inn (1308 E. 4th Street) www.acknowledge-me.com
Join Raji World and iLoveMikeLitt for a celebration of all things indie in the ATX. (Austin, Texas).

Festivities include:

• a d.i.y. Crafts Market
• Zine Fair
• free Vegan Fare
• Documentary Screenings: D.I.Y. or Die: How To Survive as an Independent Artist, and Handcraft Nation
• Local Music: the Mysterious H, Canopy, Screamin Baby Heads, Billy Harvey, Brazos, Toko-Ri Get High, Omega Monster Patrol

$5 cover benefits Habitat on Wheels, a local non-profit project that helps homeless people in Austin get on payment plans for RVs.

Every month we pull out our couches and vacuum under them.

These photos show what awaited us yesterday…..A cornucopia of cat toys, both store bought and improvised.

Wife: “I’ve been LOOKING for that bobbin!”

The fake emo commercial that Alan did (that DJ and I did the voiceover for) has gone viral, 34,000 views in a few days. The comments section has devolved into a bunch of kids arguing about “what is emo?”, with a bunch of other kids saying that emo is for pussies.

Some adventurous anthropologist on there decided to look up “emo” in Microsoft Vista Library:

Emo (pronounced /ˈiːmoʊ/) is a style of rock music which describes several independent variations of music with common stylistic roots. As such, use of the term has been the subject of much debate. In the mid-1980s, the term emo described a subgenre of hardcore punk which originated in the Washington, DC music scene.

Old man Dean decided to set ‘em straight on the history. I posted this:

I saw the first emo band, “Rites of Spring” in DC (at “Food for Thought” restaurant) in 1985. It was NOT a wimpy gig, except for the hippie sound guy. He was worried about the slam dancing and split with the speakers mid set. The singer (Guy - now of Fugazi) finished the set yelling, without a mic. A fist fight broke out in the crowd. Nobody cried.

By the way, one of the parties in the fist fight was Ian MacKaye. And the other band that played that night was Grey Matter. I don’t remember a lot about the show because it was so frenetic, and almost over before it started. It was a great night. Oh yeah, Grey Matter played the coolest cover of “I am the Walrus” I’ve ever heard.

Maybe emo is wimpy now, but it wasn’t back when I first heard the term.

–Michael W. Dean

Interview for Verbicide Magazine I did with Alan FallOfAutumn (guy who made the YouTube emo commercial).

My interview was printed in small excerpt in the magazine, along with bits from three other indie filmmakers. But the link above is my full interview.

Covers a lot of where I’m at in my life right now. Sort of a mission statement. It begins:

I always wanted to reach the world from my bedroom. When I was a kid growing up in a small, boring town in Upstate New York, I sent lots of letters to magazines, had pen pals, and worked on science projects that I thought would plug me into an endless historic brotherhood of thinkers. And I practically lived at the local library, because I loved information.

DOWNLOAD AS FREE EBOOK HERE.

This is my first novel, “Starving in the Company of Beautiful Women“. Published as a paperback book in 2000. (Out of print, but available used on Amazon here.)

“Like On the Road as written by Dean Moriarty.”

–Author, and Penn State English professor, Michael Bérubé, Ph.D

“It reads a bit like a Henry Miller novel without all the meandering bullshit. I’m glad the book is selling well. It deserves to.”

–Ben “Weasel” Foster

“This book is about perspective. Cash Newmann is a fictional character who carries more truth than even the self-absorbed author would know.”

–Your Flesh magazine

Excerpt from the book: “I pulled the half-smoked ciggy butt out of my pocket and lit it. I took a deep drag and thought about the politically correct lesbian who had taken me home and seduced me. I met her at the VD clinic. She smiled at me and she was alone. I said “Hi, come here often?”

Some of this book translated into Lithuanian.

Download “Clone The Homeless” episode 0058

Mon, 18 Nov 2007

Interview with A-list podcasters Tee Morris and Matthew Wayne Selznick, recorded in the Deans’ hotel room at the 2007 pod expo.
Matt and Tee talk about Podiobooks, “Brave Men Run“, “Podcasting for Dummies“, iTunes, Creative Commons, and the future of new media.

Entire episode recorded on location with the Zoom H2 portable handy recorder.

(From the “Clone The Homeless” podcast, Michael W. Dean’s educational podcast that remembers when sex was safe and music was dangerous.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RDw9yx7gEM

“Now That’s What I Call Emo : YouTube Edition”

Fake commercial my friend Alan ( fallofautumndistro) made. Pretty damn funny.
I did the voiceover (and Debra Jean did the “apathetic diary girl” voice).

–MWD

Whenever you’re dealing with the “biz” or a “mogul”, and they say something like “I really like your demo, I think we could do business”….Ask them, “Which song do you like best, and what do you like about it?”

(Or if you’re a writer, ask them which character they like, or if you’re a filmmaker, which scene they like.)

The reason is this: Businesspeople often sign bands they don’t understand. This isn’t always a bad thing…Sometimes the person who gives you a good deal but looks at your art simply as “units shipped” can do a better job marketing it then then well-intended person who loves art but doesn’t understand business. But it’s good to be able to tell if the person you’re dealing with really “gets” you. It will help you make better decisions.

When Bomb was getting courted by the majors, a guy from Atlantic records told us he really liked our music. When we asked, “Which song do you like?”, He said “You know, the one about….um…..girls.”

MWD

(Post on Web forum board of Cavern Club, a very cool bar in the city of Exeter, UK where I showed DIY or DIE. Post is some punker’s response to the club owner posting my “DIY or DIE on Zune” press release. Below the punker’s response is my response to him.)

———————

edx wrote: Am I missing something here?
I presume the films makers at the very least empathise with the subject they are documenting? Actively choosing to hand this over to a multi national like Microsoft hardly seems inline with what I imagine the subject of this film to be.
The film itself might be available for free but it’s not being hosted by Microsoft for any reason other than to help shift some corporate product.
Hey! Maybe this is some sort of ironic comment on the relationship between DIY and corporate ideals circa 2007?!?

——-

Michael W. Dean replied: This is a ridiculous statement. And these sentiments are usually posted by someone who lives with their parents, or eats out of a dumpster. And the poster was usually six years old when I started putting out my own records booking my own tours.

I’ve been defending this film for five years.

I made this film to share art and to reach people, not to make money. And no money was exchanged in either direction with Microsoft (they got content, I got hits.)

And for what it’s worth, Microsoft came to me, I did not go to them.

I made money at the film over the past five years, but put it most of it back into promoting the film. (Not that there’s anything wrong with making money, but personally, after food and shelter, I basically spend all my money on art supplies, and on getting my art out to the world.)

(I toured US and Europe with the film, among other things, to bring it to the people. Showed it at Cavern Club too, had a blast. Thanks guys!)

I’ve replied to this “punker than thou” accusation at length, by the way.

Here:
http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/11/13/punker-than-thou/ (post “Punker than thou”)
and here:
http://tinyurl.com/39u6ur

Here is a list of the artists in my film who are selling their songs on the Zune Marketplace: Mike Watt, Fugazi, Lydia Lunch, Dave Brockie (in Gwar), J Mascis, Madigan Shive (in Bonfire Madigan), Steve Albini (in Big Black), Lynn Breedlove (in Tribe 8 ), J.G. Thirlwell (as Foetus) and Eric McFadden.

They are all selling their songs on Apple’s iTunes store too, except Steve Albini (though the record he engineered for Nirvana is certainly on there.)

I had nothing to do with getting these artists on either site, but none of these folks are fools. (Which is why I chose to interview them.)

All these artists’ songs, on both sites, are encoded with DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions. And are for sale.

Not that I feel there’s anything wrong with selling music, I do it myself with my own songs.

But note: I am GIVING away “DIY or DIE” for FREE, in NEAR DVD QUALITY, with NO DRM.
————————

All of “DIY or DIE” is also free on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDE5vvs1WxY

–Michael W. Dean
Director, “DIY or DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist”

The new dedication for the update of “$30 Film School”:

——————

  To my daughter Amelia Laine Worth, a really good artist who lost the luxury of time. January 10, 1984 - November 7, 2006. RIP.

Check out this MP3 of “The PCP Song”.

The piano on this song is Vince Welnick (RIP) from the Grateful Dead, sounding a lot like Liberace.

The hilarious lyrics are about something that took place (partially in someone’s head) in my home 20 years ago.’

It’s by my old roommate, Bean, from his band The Beanweevils

 I am working on several writing projects for several companies right now. I recently sent a letter to one of my editors. The letter is below. (By the way, the editor dug it, and knows I’m printing it here.)

—————–

Howdy,

Doing the “how-to, with software screenshots” stuff like in the new article is something I’m quite capable of doing, but it hurts my brain. I’m much better at writing about myself and my experience in the world of media production, like in the other article I sent in yesterday.

I’ll write whatever you need, but if you want to keep me doing the most kick-ass stuff, please keep that in mind, and maybe point me to write stuff that’s more “paragraphs explaining processes and life lessons in art” rather than “Step 1, do this (screenshot here), step 2, do this (another screenshot)…..etc.

I think doing articles that contain more of the “experience” and less of the “for dummies”-type tech writing will really bring more of my A-game to the playing table.

There are thousands of people people who can write tutorials better than me, but no one does the other stuff quite the way I do.

(For proof of this, there are 150 customer reviews for “$30 Film School”,
95% of them mention nothing about the tutorials, but rave about the life-changing aspects of my “punk rock cheerleading” http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1598631896/ and
http://www.amazon.com/30-Film-School-distribute-no-budget/dp/1592000673/
)

Just a thought,
MWD

The only shows I watch are “Cops” and “The Colbert Show”. “Cops” doesn’t have writers, so it’s still airing. But I needed my daily dose of the man who will lead our Nation to victory, so I bought his book I Am America, and So Can You!

It’s pretty damn funny.

I especially liked the line “Upper-middle class is a meaningless term created by the Upperclass to keep the Middle class from joining with the Lower class when the revolution comes.”

And for you Chinaphiles in StinkFight land, the disclaimer on the back of the book reads:

WANING! Several reportages of illegal produced issues of this book from Glorious Peoples Republic of China stealing into bookstores. Do not! Buy only likely copies only authorized STEPHEN COLBER’S I AM AMERICA AND SO ARE YOU books like this one itself!
-Yours, U.S.A. Publisher

I am working on a book about dealing with loss, inspired by, among other things, dealing with the death of my daughter.

One problem I see with such a book is that if it’s successful, people will read it and send me long e-mails about their grief.

I get long e-mails from the readers of “$30 Film School” from people telling me about their projects. I love getting these e-mails. But I don’t know if I could deal with many many e-mails from people about their grief, when I’m still in my own mourning process.

In a similar way, popularizing “DIY or DIE” by mass-releasing it free on Zune Marketplace, I knew I’d be opening myself up to the same “You’re not punk enough/you did something wrong with your art/I’m jealous of your tiny success” etc. etc. that I’ve faced my whole life, and especially, since that film came out in 2002.

Below is an interaction I had on the Yahoo Podcasting board today. You probably don’t need (or want) to read the whole thread, but if you want to, it starts here.

Basically, someone spammed the board (a place I call home) with an ad for “Hollywood sound effects”. I felt they were misrepresenting themselves (the people involved are NOT “Hollywood”) and the sound effects are in a compromised audio format, MP3, which is NOT of the level of quality used in real Hollywood films and television.

Ostensibly, I think the guy (”MissPeter”, and yeah, it’s a dood…It’s always a dood posting crap like this…girls just dig art and don’t get as chest thumpy about the semantics as doods) who responded to my response to the spammer, was taking me to task for putting something called “DIY” on something from Microsoft.

I see no problem doing this…anyone making new media is using tools - at least hardware - made by major corporations. Digital cameras and microphones are made by corporations. Guitars are made by Gibson and Fender. And when was the last time you saw some punker running Linux on a laptop with integrated circuits burned in his own sterile laboratory? Can’t be done.

And besides, my line in the intro of the film about “…this DIY ethic drives everything from garage bands to the largest software companies in the world” is a direct reference to Microsoft and Apple, which were started in a dorm room, and a garage, respectively.

(And in response to anyone who complains at someone taking advantage of useful opportunities, I usually say, “Would you turn it down if it were offered to you?” I wouldn’t put a beer ad in the middle of my film, but I’ll let a huge new player in new media showcase it. No money was exchanged either. Microsoft Zune got content, I got mass downloads and press. )

(I’m tired of 25 years of defending my art. And I’ve written more than one 500-page book that covers the subject well. Buy ‘em, or download ‘em free on Bittorrent.)

So…..I made a handshake bet with my wife that someone would try to take me down a peg on the Yahoo Podboard for the Zune feature within 24 hours.

It only took 12.

Below my DIY bar code is the guy’s stab at me, and my response (I corrected a few of my typos, and tightened up my wording - I wrote the original Yahoo post in a haste - but I left the tone and exact meaning for the reprint here):

— In podcasters@yahoogroups MissPeter <peter@…> wrote:

> Why does any of that matter? Are you saying that it’s not REAL unless
> it’s the same one that everyone else is using? or it’s not REAL if it
> isn’t by a big name? Not very DIY of you…
> p
======

Peter-

First of all, “not very DIY of you” is very grade school of you.

And I’ve handled “punker than thou” assaults on my integrity in person from tough German anarchists when it’s just me and them in *their* squat, and taken the same from drunken skinheads in British pubs, so I can take it from you on the Internet.

Anyway, it’s an absurd allegation. People determine their own definition of DIY. If you have integrity, you will make choices that work. I do that. DIY is not a banner or buzzword for me. It’s my life. I often turn down work that pays a lot and do something else that I feel like doing instead, and frequently end up giving it away or selling it really cheap.

Second, I wasn’t saying using certain tools isn’t cool. I love tools, and avail myself of any I can grab.

I used the Hollywood Edge collection on my last film. The guy who did the sound mix owns the whole collection (about the price of a nice car). He owns it to use in his constant employment mixing sound on number-one Hollywood films.

On the other hand,, I also regularly record my cats, and sounds out on the street, to use in my podcasts.

What I was saying (I guess not very clearly) is that I don’t like people using “Hollywood” as a selling point when they’re not really involved in Hollywood. It strikes me as B.S. If you lived in Los Angeles, you’d probably have a much lower tolerance for it. It hits you CONSTANTLY. It seems like everyone everywhere in LA is trying to claim credits and associations that they don’t really have.

I am also not saying *I* am “Hollywood.” I am very much not, though I have had some genuine dealings with it on some serious levels.

I have no desire to be “Hollywood”.

–MWD

P.S.

Sometimes I question the usefulness of poking at, and pointing out, this kind of “Hollywood hustle” stuff in the world. But I feel that it’s so prevalent that if I completely ignore the weenies they just might take over.

Mission Accomplished.

I got an e-mail from the company today casually asking out of the blue if I could compile all of my updates for the next printing by, oh, say….Friday.

It’s not a new edition, just little touch ups of the second edition, but there’s always a lot of them. People move, people die, Web addresses change, software gets updated, etc.

I’m busier this week than a long-tailed cat in a room fulla rocking chairs.

But that’s what they call “a quality problem”……..I’m damn happy. It sure beats having nothing to do, and I’ve done that before.

…..And I’m damn happy. It stands to get hundreds of thousands of downloads.

Here are two screenshots:

It’s in the top-four video podcast picks on Zune Marketplace, alongside “Ask A Ninja”, Diggnation, and Peter Tong’s (from the BBC) cast.

(Download the free Zune software here. No Zune needed.)

Yay!

(director Michael W. Dean with a copy of DIY or DIE: Burn This DVD)

SO….I sent out press releases last night for the upcoming DIY or DIE download giveaway on Zune Marketplace.

Eight people e-mailed me already today and told me I “should put the film out under Creative Commons”.

Here’s my reply:

I am very dedicated to sticking with the choices I made on this film, and I stand by them.

I love Creative Commons, and think it makes the world a better place. I did put a out book Digital Music – DIY Now! under CC, and even gave away the Quark files and high-rez images so people could translate or “remix” it.

But I’m very weary of people suggesting (and sometimes telling me) what to do with my art. Nothing against you, and you’ll have to excuse me while I climb up on my soapbox….See, you have to understand you’re probably the 300th person to tell me “You should put the film out under Creative Commons” in the past four years, and it wears me out.

In calling this article “How I invented Creative Commons”, I am certainly not implying that Lawrence Lessig copied my idea (he didn’t), but rather I’m saying that he was working on Creative Commons while I was simultaneously and independently coming up with a similar distribution model for DIY or DIE…with no knowlege of what Lessig was up to.

I released DIY or DIE commercially through Music Video Distributors on VHS on 10/29/2002 (PDF sales sheet), six weeks before Creative Commons published their first licenses. I released it on DVD as DIY or DIE: Burn This DVD (the name kinda says it all) on 1/28/2003 (see same sales sheet.) But the DVD was authored and already named by October of 2002.

From Wikipedia: “The initial set of Creative Commons licenses was published on December 16, 2002.”

Basically, I feel I invented something very much like Creative Commons myself, before I ever heard of CC, before CC went public, with the way I released DIY or DIE (copyrighted, but giving people permission in the license of the VHS and DVD to make 10 copies for friends, and allowed each of those ten people to make 10 copies. I am also selling the DVD cheap, 8 bucks.)

Many people don’t realize that CC is not always an alternative to copyright, but sometimes a set of parameters within copyright. CC material is often copyrighted, and the various CC licenses simply give the end user more options, within the scope of the existing copyright.

I did the same thing with my DVD. It was copyrighted, and I made exceptions for non-commercial use.

The DIY or DIE DVD is, as far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong), the first instance of a commercial media product being released under copyright but giving users express permission to make non-commercial copies. Also, the DVD was released with no copy protection, and no region encoding.

–MWD

p.s.

The reason I didn’t include anything in the DVD license about downloads is that in 2002 the bandwidth didn’t really exist to cheaply give away massive numbers of copies of a movie online.

DIY or DIE was the first independent film (and probably the first film) ever released on DVD with subtitles in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

When I toured with DIY or DIE (fun photos here), I was probably the second or third person to tour Europe with a self-booked tour of a digital film, in 2003. (Scott Beibin did it before me, with the Lost Film Fest.)

Next week’s high-quality DIY or DIE giveaway on Zune Marketplace (and eventually as a direct download from the Libsyn blog where I’m hosting it) is NOT the first instance of a commercial DVD being given away free as a high-quality download. It’s probably the second. (I thought it was the first, and embarrassingly, sent out press releases to that effect, then sent out an updated “Please us this instead” press release an hour later when I was corrected).

I thought it was the first, but someone pointed out that Jason Scott allowed friends to put his BBS Documentary (great film, by the way) on BitTorrent in 2005, and he linked the Torrent on his site.

Even though Jason didn’t host the media files himself, due to the nature of how Bittorrent works, I feel that a director linking someone else’s torrent really *does* constitute giving the film away himself.

DIRECTOR’S GIVEAWAY OF AN ENTIRE COMMERCIAL FILM,
ENCODED IN HIGH QUALITY, WITH NO DRM

“D.I.Y. OR DIE: How to Survive as an Independent Artist”
Free on Zune Marketplace and Zune.net

Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace launches Tuesday, November 13, 2007, and Zune.net launches the week after. Both are giving a high-placement feature to the documentary film “D.I.Y. OR DIE: How to Survive as an Independent Artist“. Film info: http://www.diyordie.org

(Download the free Zune software on Tuesday. No Zune needed.)

Director Michael W. Dean is giving away the entire film as eight episodic chapters over eight weeks’ time, one per week as free video downloads, in the “podcasts” section of Zune Marketplace and Zune.net.

These free downloads are encoded in high quality (30 fps, 900 kbps MP4 files, 640 x 480 size, with 128-bit audio, and no digital rights management or copy protection). It looks great on a Zune or other portable media devices, and damn good full screen on a computer. The entire film will stay online until at least April 2008.

Seven extras from the DVD (including interviews with Ian MacKaye, Steve Albini, and Lydia Lunch) will also be available for free download, one per week, after the final chapter of the film posts.

FILM DESCRIPTION:
This film is a celebration of the artistic underdog! FEATURING interviews and performances from: Lydia Lunch, Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), J Mascis (Dinosaur jr.), Jim Rose (Jim Rose Sideshow), J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Richard Kern (Filmmaker),
Ron Asheton (Stooges), Madigan Shive (Bonfire Madigan), Dave Brockie (Gwar), Craig Newmark (founder Craig’s List) and more.

Directed by: Michael W. Dean.
Edited by: Miles Montalbano.
DVD architect: Blaine Graboyes

Director Michael W. Dean says, “People keep asking me, ‘Why are you posting the whole film when it’s still selling on DVD? Are you CRAZY?’”

Dean’s reply (in part): “It’s my gift to the world. People write me every day and tell me the film got them off their ass. I made the film to spread a message, not make money. And somehow, it still made money. That’s how I do things - it’s how I pay my rent on planet earth.”

“Many people have also asked me (often in an accusatory manner), ‘DUDE, how come there’s a copyright notice at the end of your film? Why isn’t it Creative Commons?’”

Dean replies: “Well, first of all, Creative Commons had just launched when I finished the film, and I hadn’t heard of it yet. But mainly I copyrighted the film to protect against uses I wouldn’t dig….someone putting a beer ad in the middle of it, or large-scale commercial bootlegging. But I’m pretty free and easy with people sharing it. Hell, the DVD is called DIY or DIE: Burn This DVD, and I’ve always encouraged people to make free copies to give to friends.”

Michael W. Dean’s full explanation of his reasoning for this giveaway: http://tinyurl.com/39u6ur

(Also see related article “How I Invented Creative Commons“.)

—–

Hi-res press photo of DVD cover: http://files.dvdnote.com/images/300dpi/dr-4347.jpg
Web-res press photo of DVD cover: http://www.kittyfeet.com/DIYDVDCoversmall.jpg
Print- and Web-res stills from film: http://www.kittyfeet.com/DiyPromo.htm

At 924 Gilman in Berkeley California on December 2nd they are a having a Zine Fest. It will include Matt Holdaway and Erick Lyle (Scam Magazine) talking about the history and creation of zines. The film $100 Dollars and a t-shirt along with 2 five-minute films about offset and letterpress printing.

Tables with Rich “The Roadie” and Amy Watson from www.1984printing.com, a table with the Zine buyer from Comic relief and tables of zines for sale, free and trade. B.Y.OZ.(Bring our Own Zine).

It will start at 2 pm and it costs $3 Dollars. For more info contact www.myspace.com/924gilmancommunity.

Download episode 0057 of Clone The Homeless

THE FINAL INSTALLMENT OF THE BECKY CHAT TETRALOGY!

Fri, 9 Nov 2007

Michael W. Dean and Debra Jean Dean have a chat with our special little friend, Becky Haycox. (Part 4 of 4)

Why Becky enjoys the lusty pleasures of life, why gelato is almost as good as sex, if you live alone and die and have cats - they will eat you, why we like saying “Yessssssssss”, “Jill had touched the chick”, why women like gay porn, Judith Krantz, why everything should be digital, all about the “Urban Food Log group”.

Photos of the day here.

Entire episode recorded on location on the street in Ventura, California on the Zoom H2 portable handy recorder.

Smoke is not only bad for humans, it’s bad for condenser mics. Coats the element with tar, makes them sound bad over time. And unlike humans, mics don’t regenerate when they sleep.

We were putting the mics away all after each use, but it’s a lot of work (we will sometimes record three or four short sessions, and one longer one, in a given day.) And it’s more wear and tear on the mics.

Our solution is so simple, yet it works. We now leave the mics on stands, but drape a towel over them when we’re not using them. Keeps the smoke out, but far easier to get ready to record than taking them them out of the box in the closet and putting them on the stands and hooking up the cable. All you have to do is pull the towels off the mics.

It really works! No smoke smell on the microphones, and the mics stay happy. Also keeps dust out. Great if you smoke, also great if you run a studio and find that you get more clients if you allow smoking (some studios do).

I would recommend tossing the towels in the wash once a month, but make sure they’re totally absolutely dry before putting back on the mics.

(Photo of me with Amelia, July 2, 2006, Echo Park)

(More pix of Amelia, some talking I did right after she died, and her obituary.)

My daughter, Amelia Laine Worth, died November 7th, 2006, from complications of leukemia. She was 22. She was an amazingly wonderful person.

It’s been a tough year for me. I’m sleeping more now, but still having troubling dreams and trouble sleeping a full eight hours.

But I’m hopeful. There’s not a lot to say that I can fit in a blog post, so I’ll just say I’m not despondent. I’m thinking a lot about Amelia, but am going through the routine of a semi-normal, if very introspective, day.

(I wanted to share with my friends on here about this. Feel free to reply on here, but  except for family, I ask that you please not call me on the phone about this today. I’m having a OK day considering, and it’s honestly not going to make me feel better  to talk on the phone about it. It might make you feel better, but it might make me feel worse. Thank you very much.)

I petted my cat Charlie today, and thought about how Amelia loved Charlie, and how much she loved cats.

I’ve decided to reprint here a few e-mails here that Amelia wrote.

The messages are personal, but not intimate in any way I think Amelia would have found embarrassing to share. I mulled it over, prayed on it, and also ran it by my spiritual adviser (Debra Jean).

I just want to share a bit of Amelia’s sparkly spirit here. These e-mails are from right before Amelia got very very sick.

I saw her again after this, and was about to fly up and see her again when she died.

—————————

7/2/2006

Hey Dad,

I had a great time hanging out with you two today! I can’t stress how much I enjoyed your new movie. I feel like for a while now I’ve just been surviving, getting to the next dr’s appt, the next class, trying to survive and trying to graduate and not focusing on the little things…I guess in the overarching things, you know, not the day to day.

And maybe it’s the day to day that I feel that’s getting lost, even though I’m making my art, and growing, and creating, and doing what I need to do, you know? But really, the movie put it all in perspective. Reminded me not to be so fucking selfish. I’m not the only one in the world that will overcome hardcore stuff. It really struck a chord with me that a lot of people mentioned that he looked like he was on his dying bed for like fifty years and you can still live, create, survive tragedy and bullshit like that and come out a really great and powerful little buddha man.

I thought all this today watching the movie but didn’t have time to tell it all to you in person and besides, it’s all still stuff I’m going through and trying to sort through and it just didn’t seem the time or the place. So these are all kind of jumbled thoughts as I sit in a room with four other people listening to AFI blasting from computer speakers. But mostly I just wanted to let you know that I really dug the movie and it was a bittersweet reminder that life is worth a lot more than I may give it credit for when I’m bummed about cancer.

Anyway, yeah. DJ seems like a super rad sweet gal and I’m really excited for you. You two compliment each other a lot and she seems to have calmed and centered you in a way I’ve seen no one else be able to - all without damaging your radness or ruining your grooviness. I really hope nothing but the best for you both and was super happy to meet her. She’s nifty.

Anyway, I really am glad that we got to kick it today. Thank you so much for dinner and ducks and the observatory and everything.

love,
amelia

====

8/4/2006

hey Dad. sorry I didn’t answer your call today, the doctors were in here. Here’s what I wrote in my blog today which basically sums up the last few days:

First off, YAY! I’m in remission!…but they still wanna do another biopsy in a week because there’s like…1-2% blasts still present. But isn’t under 10% in remission? Whatever.

Apparently I’m an anatomical anomaly. That bronchioscopy thingie that I had? Apparently I have like, an extra bronchial tube thingie in my lungs. So…cool. Right? haha right.

I had the spinal tap yesterday, and of course it was clean. Those fools. The doctor who did it looked like she wasn’t even legal and when I asked her how many spinal taps she’d actually done, she was like “less than ten.” Um…1? 2? 3?…9? And then she didn’t use enough lidocain to begin with. It turned out okay, except for this FUCKING HEADACHE that I’ve had all day today. Gooooooooooo morphine!

so…yeah. Have a fun time at DJ’s!

love,
amelia
“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today,” James Dean
====-

8/15/2006

I may or may not be out for a few days as soon as we get this stupid infection under control. I’d like some time alone during that time, if that’s okay. I don’t know when I’ll be back in the hospital, but when I know, I will let you know. You will be welcome to come then.

love,
amelia

“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today,” James Dean

====-

8/22/2006

those are great pix! I’m glad you had a good time.

I’m still not going to be admitted because of the infection. I’m kind of bummed and kind of relieved. I’m staying in Portland since I have more appointments later this week. Andy’s stayed with me during the weekend, but he has to work, so kym came up. Not much else is new.

love,
amelia
“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today,” James Dean
====-

….You only have to be a little bit smarter than your target audience. And a lot more clever and driven.

I wouldn’t dare say this out loud if I weren’t convinced the studios have probably also already thought of it, but………a show called “American Screenwriter”, an “American Idol”-type contest to find scab writers.

p/s Last week I heard someone here remark that the SoCal wildfires were spontaneous combustion from all the unpublished screenplays.

–MWD

It’s that time again…….

So, kitties……More from our new series, “Dirty, filthy blues quote of the week.”

Each week around Sunday night (the longest period before more church, lol…) I’ll post a new quote from my friend Debra DeSalvo’s book, The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu.

I love this book.

The quotes won’t always be dirty and filthy (though sometimes they will), but they’ll always be great. And they’ll always be dirty and filthy in spirit, because it is, after all, the blues

Here’s this week’s quote:

—————-

black cat bone

Europeans consider black cats unlucky, but African American hoodoo practitioners believe that every black cat has one magic bone that is a powerful mojo, or charm. Some hoodoo practitioners claim that carrying a black cat bone grants invisibility; others say it can be used to draw a roaming lover home or to dissolve a would-be lover’s resistance. But the black cat bone’s most notorious use is to bring fame, followed by an untimely death, to musicians who can’t resist its lure.

When Muddy Waters recorded Willie Dixon’s “Hoochie Coochie Man” in 1954, he added a list of charms guaranteed to “make you pretty girls lead me by the hand.” First on the list was a black cat bone:

I got the black cat bone and I got a mojo, too

I got the John the Conqueror Root, gonna mess with you

But how to get the bone out of the cat? According to bluesman Sam Taylor, who was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1934, there is only one method: boil the unfortunate animal alive.

Taylor recalled that as a little child he eavesdropped behind the kitchen door while a touring harp player came by each night for a solid week to beg Taylor’s grandmother, the neighborhood hoodoo lady, for a black cat bone. When, despite her dire warnings, he kept coming, she finally told him, “I’m not goin’ to get you one, but I’ll tell you how to get one for yourself.”

Grab hold of a black cat, she told him, and plunge it into a pot of boiling water. Boil until nothing’s left but hair and bone. Take the bones down to the creek and toss them in.

“All the bones ’cept one will float downstream with the current, but that one will float back up to you,” Taylor’s grandmother told the young harp player. “That’s your black cat bone.”

Other methods include placing each bone upon the tongue until one makes you invisible, 

or choosing the bone that floats to the top of the pot. Some use the oil of the cat that 

rises to the surface of the pot to anoint the bone and other charms for luck in gambling. 

A less gruesome method is to buy a “black cat bone,” which is most likely a chicken 

bone painted black, from an occult store. 

According to Taylor, the harmonica player in his grandmother’s kitchen was John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, the peerless innovator who did for the harmonica what Louis Armstrong did for the trumpet. (John Lee Williamson is sometimes called “Sonny Boy” Williamson I; Aleck “Rice” Miller, who also used the name “Sonny Boy” Williamson, is “Sonny Boy” Williamson II.) Williamson brought the harmonica front and center as a lead instrument and created new techniques that were widely imitated and formed the foundation of modern blues harp playing.

Raised in the South, Williamson migrated to Chicago (with a black cat bone in his pocket?), where he recorded the hits that made him famous by the early 1940s. On June 1, 1948, at the height of his fame, Williamson was murdered by a mugger. He was only thirty-two years old. His wife, Lacey Belle, found him that summer morning on the doorstep gasping his last words: “Lord have mercy.”

Taylor grew up to play guitar for many legendary artists, including Etta James, T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, Otis Redding, and the Isley Brothers. He was the musical director for the Sam and Dave band and wrote the gold record smash “Do It ‘Til Your Satisfied,” recorded by B.T. Express. Taylor is still performing in his seventies with the popular Sam Taylor Band.

Songs:

:“Got My Mojo Working”~~Willie Dixon

“(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man”~~Willie Dixon

“Shootin’ Star Blues”~~Lizzie Miles

—————-

(Excerpted from The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu by Debra DeSalvo. Published 2006 by Billboard Books