CHRISTOPHER CROSS AND ARTHUR'S THEME

Christopher Cross was on the Howard Stern show. It was a good interview and for some reason, I got the idea of contacting him to do the show. For those of you who don't know, Christopher Cross had a debut album that won four Grammy Awards in 1981. Now that's a debut album. And to top it all off, he won an Academy Award for Arthur's Theme the very same year. Now that's an amazing year.

I contacted him thru his website and told him how much I enjoyed his interview with Howard and asked him if he would be interested in being interviewed for our podcast. I also promised him that, unlike Howard, we would not ask him anything about his sex life. We would only ask about his song. I mentioned that we were thinking of interviewing him about either Sailing or Arthur's theme. But probably it would be Arthur's theme.

I got a response that Christopher was interested in doing our show. He felt better doing the interview on Sailing rather than Arthur's Theme because Sailing was his song while Arthur's theme was a collaborative effort with Burt Bacharach and Carol Bayer Sager and Peter Allen. This was it. I was excited.

I replied that we were thrilled. We meaning me cause no one else knew except for my wife. I also said that we would much rather do the interview about Arthur's Theme because it is a much better story. We could ask him what it was like working with Burt Bacharach and about them winning the Academy Award. We could also ask him about the movie.

Well let me just say, I didn't hear from them again. I was bummed. Bummed because, well you know, we were in. It wasn't set in stone, but we got a yes. And then we were out. Just like that. I was bummed because doing an interview with Christopher Cross would be like having a date with a high school cheerleader. Once the word gets out that you went out with a cheerleader, forget about it. So once people found out we interviewed Christopher Cross, a Grammy Award AND Academy Award winner, once again, forget about it. Not many people can say they've won both. Perhaps the thing that might be even more prestigious than winning those awards nowadays, is being a guest on American Idol. Unfortunately, I think that's how it works now.

I'm not bummed that we didn't do the interview anymore. In fact I'm glad we didn't . We were just not ready for the likes of Christopher Cross. As I found out on the Jeremy interview. We were actually going to do Christopher's podcast before the Jeremy podcast. But as things turned out, we did Jeremy right away.

What happened on Jeremy is that I did not hit the record button when they started doing the interview. I realized this halfway into the interview and asked them once they were done if they wouldn't mind redoing the first half of the interview.

Fortunately they were good sports about it. I'm just glad this didn't happen with Christopher Cross. Imagine having to ask him to do the interview again? I would've asked him but it wouldve been a real drag. For all of us.

I think we will be ready for anyone, and that includes Christopher, in about five more podcasts. We're still learning as we go along and I truly am looking forward to it.

The thing that I am also looking forward to is that once girls know you've been with a cheerleader, they're going to be into you. And so once we do interviews with the caliber of a Christopher Cross, people are going to come out of the woodwork and want to be interviewed by us. This would make my job a lot easier. I can see Kanye West texting me and bugging me that he wants to do an interview with us. Just like that Charles Barkley commercial where Charles keeps calling Dwyane Wade. It'll happen. Just watch.

JEREMY BY PEARL JAM

Jeremy is a fantastic song, is what Steele Shephard said during the interview we did for the Pearl Jam song. And I couldn't agree more. That was our next podcast and we interviewed a guy who has a website devoted to the song "Jeremy." He has two million hits on his site, which is pretty impressive if you ask me. One of the things that really struck me about the interview was that the song changed his life.

A lot of people probably don't know that the song is about a real person who shot himself in his classroom. His name was Jeremy Wade and he was only 15 years old. Eddie Vedder, from Pearl Jam, read about it in a newspaper and inspired him to write a song about it.

Steele found out that Jeremy attended the same high school he attended, which is Richardson High School in Texas and that inspired him to do his website. It's amazing to me what inspires people to do things.

This was Matt Grossbart's first interview. Matt was one of the ones I picked from the people who answered the Craigs List ad. He did rather well for a first timer. He said in his email that he worked for MTV and had experience interviewing people. So that caught my attention right away. He was also well spoken and had a decent voice. So he was in.

I suppose you gotta have a certain amount of faith in people once the interview has been scheduled. Neither Steele nor Matt knew me and as I've said earlier, I didn't even have a website. So it could've been very easy to blow me off. I've gotten to know Matt somewhat during this time that we started doing this and would not hesitate to have him interview a Grammy Award winning musician. And believe it or not, we've had two of them interested in doing the podcast. I'll blog about this eventually. This also leads me to believe we're on the right track with this venture.

If it goes as planned, we might even have the ultimate interview. Or at least one of the ultimate interviews. That would be interviewing Paul McCartney about Hey Jude from The Beatles. I'm sure that's a ways off but I know we can get him. Eventually. I'm sure we can already get Ringo. Just kidding. A little bit. I went to Ringo's concert a few months back with my brother in law, which was, by the way, pretty good. And I could see us back stage interviewing him, while having drinks...in my dreams.

Paul Newman Music Video

Paul Newman died on September 26, 2008. You're probably wondering why I'm blogging about Paul Newman, this being a music blog. I was going to put just Paul. But putting just Paul doesn't seem right. He's Paul Newman. Anyway, the reason is
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And if that still doesn't mean anything to you musically, you should watch it again or for the very first time. Check out the part where Paul Newman rides a bike while the song Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head plays on. It's a very good scene with a terrific pay off.

Paul does riding tricks on the bike. Stunts like riding while standing on the bike seat and riding while facing backwards. Supposedly, the director, George Roy Hill, wanted a stunt man to do the tricks but they couldn't find one to do them as good as Paul. So he did the stunts on the bike himself. Except for maybe one. The one where he falls down. You don't want that happening to him.


Katherine Ross, who looks terrific, joins Paul as they ride the bike together while the song plays on. It's actually like a music video and maybe even better than a lot of real music videos. The scene is as romantic as a hayride. Suddenly Robert Redford shows up at the front door. Checks out the scene. Katherine is his girl. Paul and Katherine look nervous. Robert plays Sundance Kid in the movie, the fastest gun in the West. Or something like that. Redford could take them both out in the blink of an eye. Robert takes one more look at them waves his hand and says "Take her." Paul Newman comes back with, "Romantic bastard, aren't you."

It's such a great movie and was one of my favorite movies for a very long time. It is one of the best buddy movies ever. Check out Amazon's list of Best Buddy Movies ever. And actually, whoever made the list ought to have his head examined. It's number eleven and should be higher. The song is great too and BJ Thomas does a terrific job. I wonder if he's still known as BJ Thomas. It might not work too well for him right now. Or maybe never.


Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head would make an excellent podcast. I Just have to figure out who to interview. BJ Thomas would be good, as well as Burt Bacharach, who is the guy who wrote it. Burt has so many good songs to pick from. I will look into doing one.

A lot was said about Paul Newman when he died. We talked about how great he was while camping in Yosemite. I'm sure he would've liked that. May he rest in peace.

NORMAN GREENBAUM AND SPIRIT IN THE SKY

Another song from the sixties caught my attention. This time because it was in a commercial. The song was Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum. One of the things that caught my eye was that Norman has a website with an email address where he can be reached. Personally. I mean, how could I pass that up.

I'm sure there's only one Rock N Roller with the name Norman. It's such an unlikely name for a rocker. The song, however, is tremendous. It starts out with a great, distorted guitar intro. And the lyric "When I die I'm gonna go to the place that's the best." And of course the "I have a friend in Jesus."
That last part is interesting because it turns out he's Jewish. I wonder if he got any flack for the song. He could've sang Moses. That fits lyrically. "I have a friend in Moses." But somehow it just doesn't sound as good as Jesus. The same with " I have a friend in Buddha." It doesn't have the same ring. Mohammed doesn't fit at all. Besides, I don't think you can use his name in songs. In fact, I might be in trouble just for typing his name in this blog.

Actually the song Jesus Christ Superstar mentions Mohammed, so maybe in the seventies you could. I don't know. The Muslims were probably not as strict as they are now.

So I emailed Norman and forgot all about it because I truly don't expect a reply. But sure enough, about a week later, I got a reply from Norman himself. Dick Peterson was a big deal because he is a Kingsman. But I had never heard of him personally. I hadn't heard of any of the Kingsman by their names. But Norman Greenbaum I had heard of. I must admit, I was kind of excited.

He wanted to know more about the podcasts so I sent him some more info. After about a week and I hadn't heard from him I emailed him again telling him that I found a video on YouTube and would like to interview him about it. Is that a real video? Is that really him on the video? And so forth. I haven't heard from him. I want to email him again but I read in Nigel Dick's website that it is okay to contact someone three times. After three times it's just plain rude. So I'll go by that rule, which shall henceforth be called Nigel's Rule. I'm sure he probably got it from somewhere else, but he's where I got it from. Nigel Dick, by the way, is mostly known as a music video director and is someone I would like for us to interview. He's done over 280 videos with big name stars like Britney Spears and Guns N Roses.

So, anyway, I think I will wait until the website is up and running to contact Norman again. I hope he does it because there really is no one who could really do the interview better than he could. Some songs could have a number of people interviewed and it would still be good. But other songs, and this is one of them, the interview is only good if the major player is involved.

One of these days I'll contact him again. I keep getting reminded every time I hear his song in commercials.