Broodings from Bear - 1998

Broodings from Barry
02/13/98 | 04/21/98 | 07/06/98 | 10/01/98
11/02/98 11/25/98 12/20/98

12/20/98 - Year-end thank you's

Last week I tried, in my own curmudgeonly way, to do a summary of our year. I ran afoul of my own dark side of the force, probably from watching too much CNN. Maybe it just stabs me to the heart every time I hear James Earl Jones, when I know they coulda had me for cheaper.
So all the thank you's I'd planned went down the oubliette, and were tangentially replaced by my own bitter screed. Time for an about face, say I. Now that I've begun to repay the debt of months of sleep deprivation, the years of counseling, self-denial and herbal antidepressants have kicked back in and I'm ready to be grateful. Here goes:
To you diehard, travel-weary, dedicated supporters of our musical ministrations we say a gigantic gracias. Seeing your vibrant visages at shows from Anchorage to Osaka really makes us feel like kings. To know that our performances inspire you to literally 'go the distance' with us is as big an up as a group can get. Maybe winning a Grammy would be a slightly bigger charge, but I doubt it. Your unbridled enthusiasm has started us thinking of a 'Pellamiles' program, which we'll start implementing next year. No promises, but it's a hell of an idea, huh?
To our management team; Keith, Anita, Steve - our undying gratitude for your unwavering faith in the magic, your continuing love, support, crisis control and humor. Also kudos to the nuts 'n bolts folks at our biz manager's digs, Burt, Alice, Joe, the bookkeeper du jour, and the hottest receptionists this side of Zoli. Blessings to our booking agent, Wayne Forte and his stalwart crew, who have to take poo from everyone who wants Rockapella to do anything and everything and can't understand why we can't do it yesterday - for free. And of course merci beaucoup to our ace attorney, Jeff Hafer, for saving our hides over and over from the wolves, sharks, vampires and morons of the world.
To our Public Relations Lady, Mary Arsenault, caffeine queen and reigning champ of radio rumpus, a Torontonian thank you, eh, for all your jammin'.
To Scott & Todd at WPLJ, our eternal gratitude for all your wonderful support and insanity, and their LA counterparts, Mark and Brian at KLOS, for lobster and chocolate cake at 8 a.m.
To Ann Edwards, fan club prexie, merch wizard, newsletter editor, FAQ transponder, etc., etc., etc., and her hubby Bob Parnes, our Web Master; thanks to the tenth power cubed. That's a lot, I'm guessing, since I never got passed Algebra II.
To Dandy Andy, the Mighty Mixer of Ear Candy and his honeypie Josephine, a huge thanx for making our recordings sound and look great.
To Phil, grazie for drivin' the van, countin' the tee's, and wranglin' Fred, who we need to thank as well for keeping his finger off the 'suck' button on the mixing board.
To the Nassau & Suffolk County Detectives....you're A-1. I'd love to explain that one, but it's strictly confidential.
To N.W. Ayer and the folks at Folgers, a doo-whoppin' genuflection for making us the best part of waking up.
To J-Bird records, a courageous chorus of bravos for having the cojones and the foresight to jump on the instrument-less bandwagon and bring our music to a commercial outlet near you.
And to all of you, for letting our voices and our music be a part of your lives, we send our deepest gratitude and sincerest wishes for a happy, healthy, joyous, musical New Year!
[Added on 12/29/98]
I'm not certain how I could have left these guys out of my thank you's, but I did. Musta been jetlag. They have been the direct cause of severe personal bliss. Supersonic thanks to Jack Kontney and Ryan Smith at Shure for not only providing us with their finest equipment and support for so long, but for developing and letting us use their in-ear monitor system. I thought performing live was fun before. Now it's into the pleasure zone. Your generosity has helped us get even tighter. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving!

Many, many thanks, Bear et al

11/25/98 - My mug sloppeth over

Darling Diehards;
My mug sloppeth over. Just when I thought that things couldn't possibly get any better, they did. Go know. The big giftie for us dwindling supporters of the arts came with a bow and a card. No Newt is good Newt. My heart nearly burst for joy. Then down the pike comes a - hold on to your skirts - Record Deal! Finally, after all the fizzles, disappointments, hair-pullings and screaming pantyline fits, the Average Consumer Needing Everything (ACNE) will be able to walk into a record store, book store, modem, roadside convenience, coffee house, or water closet and, yes, purchase our New Record. No more secret numbers, codes, complicated handshakes and gang signs or interminable waits, other than standing in line behind thousands of citizens clutching their copies of Newie to their fevered and blissfully expectant breasts. Start sniffing around your local music mart circa Feb.16.
Wait a second. Did he say New Record? Well, yes. But. Don't get all lathered up just yet. If you have 'Rockapella', you have about eighty percent of the new one. A couple tunes added, a couple dropped, fresh new artwork and a dazzling radio campaign spell new in the record biz. We're calling the opus 'Don't Tell Me You Do'. Duh...
But wait - there's more. We're putting out a boutiquey little cut down version of our DVD on VHS just for our pals here and in Nippon. We really are making only a few. Remember 'way back in January when, in my doltish optimism, I thought this thing would be ready in a couple of months? Well, after a back and forth with the production company that made the Keystone Kops look like a well-oiled fighting machine, we have something. If you've ever wondered what it's like to work in a power station (and you have wondered, haven't you?), then this is an absolute must.
And that ain't all, amici miei. What? A new CD, a new video, our treacly, feel-good java joy juice flooding the airwaves coast to coast, no Newt - and there's more? Oh yes. You're fave five are going to be in the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving. On a Float! Check this out: synchronized swimming in a giant, steaming coffee cup while singing and smiling and waving. No life vests. Awesome. The best part of waking up....
Sadly, there is a chigger in the vaseline. Not a bad review, but a scathing article in the Bedford, Indiana 'Daily Cow Pie' about our obscene and unreasonable pre-concert dietary requirements. They must be really hard up for news out there where the collective affect is about as flat as the land. Did the article mention the standing ovations? Nope. But they really got their knickers in a wad over the turkey platter "with sandwich fixings", the Baked Lays and the sodas. Did they mention any of this to us? Nope again. In fact, they were as sweet as Karo syrup and twice as smooth. Must be one of the reasons that the Klan is so Komfy in the Korn Kingdom. I'm so relieved that we didn't ask for anything more. Mighta been a lynching. Why, they said we were more persnickety than the Red Army Chorus! So who wouldn't rather sit through an evening of incomprehensible songs of slaughter and brutal repression than five guys singing about happy, understandable mush, just because the Russkies requested only enough bialys for a light, pre-concert snack? It's like - support the arts, but if the artists get a little uppity and ask for something let's get all het up cuz who do they think they are anyway? You mean we actually have to put ourselves out a little on account of those "spoiled brats" (sic)? The nerve! You'd think they'd be grateful just to be here, in the middle of nowhere, serenading us into bliss and toddling off to their Motel 6. We'll show them! Even though it was the best concert anybody in these parts has heard in years, those that can still hear, mind you, we won't ask 'em back! That'll show 'em, dad gummit! All I can say to that is thank you, thank you, thank you.
Happy Turkey
Love,
Bear

11/2/98 - THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!!!!

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!!!! shrieked the offended octogenarian who's hearing aids had compressed under the merciless assault of our normal concert volume. The first six rows of elderly concertgoers were all doing hear-no-evil, their faces set in a rictus of discomfiture, their dentures gleaming back at us like a Milky Way of malevolence. Any wonder that we're doing so few Community Concerts these days? Music that climbs past the sussurance of polite table conversation sends 'em tumbling up the aisles in their Zimmerman frames. So what did we do? You guessed it. As usual, we wussed out. Our enlightened engineer, Paul, who was about to be shishkebabbed with cane tips, turned us down to Muzak level, and we crooned soothing ditties to the silver-quoiffed throng. Everyone went home happy, and we probably won't be asked back to Medford, Oregon.
The next day found us driving under a sky that, as Tom Robbins said, looked like oysters and dead nuns, all the way to the home of Grunge, coffee and runaways, Seattle. At least the concertgoing population in that home of hip was ready to rock - even in an opera house. At last, a place where we could crank it up and have the audience screaming for more. But that wasn't the best thing about Seattle. Larry's Market, just down the slope from our Motel 6, was a dream come true. Zabar's on steroids, open at dawn and cranking out high-test java and nearly-NYC bagels, made three days in the 'burbs next to the constant rumble of I405 quite bearable.
On to Alaska. Vast, white and cold have new meanings. This oil-rich, ultra-conservative state is in the vanguard of homophobic legislation. They're trying to pass a bill that would allow any citizen with a high-powered rifle the right to shoot any moose suspected of liasing with members of its own gender. The law itself isn't as disturbing as the pre-election ads I saw on the tube. Three ratty-haired moms, sitting in a pluperfect Pleasantville kitchen, discussing the horrors of moose-on-moose cohabitation and the possible effects that sanctioning such abhorrent behavior might have on the impressionable minds of their little haters-in-training.
I was actually glad to get back to New York, where Team Rodent and the Little Mayor Who Lisped are busy waging their own urban assault against anything that isn't bland, white and happy. I think I 'll be sorry to see the elections come to a close - I'm gonna miss the spate of infantile screed that the opponents, in their flailing, puerile, overfinanced anxiety have flung at us the last few weeks. My fave was in Anchorage: A granny and her gap-toothed granddaughter grinning falsely at us hapless viewers and the little girl buttons the spot with "Vote for my Pappy!". I kid you not.

10/1/98 - S.C.U.M.

I sat on our ratty brown couch with a cold one and a stupid fourth-quarter whuppin' 'em kinda grin, watching the Tampa Bay Bucs' butts gettin chewed. I was elated cuz they're from Tampa, and that's where my mates and I spent three nights of cringing misery. And this wasn't a dream, dammit.
About two doors down from Bubba's Rent-to-Own, catty-corner from Big Lew's Lounge and Likker Store, across a patchwork sea of cratered asphalt, stands the Severely Crapped Up Motel, or S.C.U.M. Actually it's the 'Best Western @ Busch Gardens', everybody. Don't go there, unless you're spelunking for some exotic new pung or a heretofore undiscovered tropical mould. OK, in a nutshell - here's the comparo - if this place is 'Best' anything, Alcatraz is Club Med. Granted that it's not situated in the most attractive part of Tampa. At the 7/11 that huddles in the shadow of the motel, the cashier works behind two inches of plexi, and keeps cinder blocks in the pass-through. It's rough. And it's the only place I've ever been where the swimming pool is a Petri dish.....

Favorite Scene: A guest, in his boxers, arguing with a maid in the hall;

Guest: "My room is WET. Everything in it is WET. The BED is WET. The carpet is WET. My clothes are WET. The towels are WET. Even my PAPERS are WET."

Maid: "Sorry. It's a tropical climate. We can change your room...."

Guest: "You did. This is the new room."

Favorite moment: Watching Kevin describe how a phalanx of huge ants invaded his room and mugged him for his bagel while he watched helplessy.

Favorite word: describing the stuff that falls on you from the peeling ceiling while you're trying to shower off the stuff that fell on you from the room's peeling ceiling: unstucco

Favorite appliance: A/C that sounds like a small-block Chevy with two choices; fetid and freezeyerassoff

Favorite phrase: El to the manager: "....this place could really use a bulldozer...."

OK. Now that I've got that out of my system, maybe I can lighten up. When you're as high on life as I am, it's difficult to stay bitter for too long.

7/6/98 - I had the most godawful dream

I had the most godawful dream. Normally I wouldn't reveal the intimate details of my rich and extremely baroque dream life, but this one was such a doozy that I need to share, to bare my sick psyche to you devoted, caring, insightful souls, for the simple reason that, while I am normally a wizard at deciphering my own bizarre butter churn of imagery, I can't unravel this particularly Gordian slumberfest.
At first, I though it might be the aftereffect of my late night snack of dark beer, high-density chocolate chip cookies, undyed pistachios, lo-fat Neapolitan ice milk, aquavit, fluffernutter and leftover Caesar salad croutons. But then why wouldn't I have a dream this dreadful every night? It just didn't make sense. But enough of the circumstantial gristle. Let's get right to the meat.
In my procrustean subconscious maelstrom, I dreamed that we sat in an airport all day, fidgeting impatiently, waiting for a flight to a concert somewhere in Middle America. The plane was scheduled to take off at 1:30 in the afternoon, but there was a raging storm, so as flights were canceled the airport gradually filled with snoozing, snacking, restive travelers, until there were people so thick on the floor that one couldn't get a double mocha latte without stepping on bodies. Pretty frightening already, no? Our plane didn't board until 5:30, and then sat on the runway in the deluge until after 8:00. I was wedged into a middle seat between two quarrelsome women who jabbered incessantly in some unrecognizable Asian tongue while their babies screamed and soiled their diapers. The flight attendants fought with the strange women while their tots' infernal stench made my ears buzz. As compensation for my discomfiture I was given a small bag containing eleven salty, greasy peanuts. Why eleven, I wonder?
Our flight arrived in some nondescript midway cookie-cutter airport late that night, after a scarifying ride through a raving El Nino diatribe. I stumbled off the plane white-knuckled, woozy and totally freaked that, for the first time in the history of the band, show time had come and gone and we hadn't even seen the stage (my usual classic anxiety dream). Now this is weird - somehow Elliott had gotten there ahead of the rest of us, like he had wings or something. One of those unexplainable dream-things, I suspect. There were thousands of disappointed fans,and El had tried his best to placate them by singing all the baritone parts to every Rockapella song. It hadn't worked. We were met at the plane by some Joe in a shirt that said 'Big Stink America' across the back (maybe the recurring theme of olfactory offense is the key to this nightmare), "You're too late", he smirked. "But what about our fans and friends?", we asked. "Won't they be disappointed, even angry at us?".
Now here comes the strangest part of the dream. After spending the night in a Holiday Inn overflowing with prom-going revelers (the nightmare inside the nightmare), we actually sang anyway, albeit the next day. And we did it for no money. None. Zippo. That's when I knew I was in a dream, and a vile one at that. In my twisted twilight, we were actually given a wildly manic intro by our ex-bandmate, Sean (now what does that mean?), and then we did a kickass show. I was tempted to shatter the shackles of Morpheus at this point, but the morbid curiosity of the id in R.E.M. goaded me on. The grinning, sticky-fingered promoter refused to pay us, and when we tried to reason with him, snakes, nonsense and flubber spewed from all his various orifices. It was terrifying. The only relief, aside from awakening from such a fiendish fiasco, slowing my palpitating pulse and showering off the cold sweat, was knowing that these things don't happen in real life.
So after all that, what does this mean? Is it my own fear of failure, my subconscious desire to humiliate myself in front of all of you with hideously embarrassing antisocial miasmas, or the product of my own unsavory gustatory creations? Maybe all three? Or something else, some hidden reptilian menace lurking in the Loch Ness of my own debased cranium, waiting for us to reach the pinnacle of fame before it flashes to the surface in it's own self-destructive attempt to sabotage the lofty trajectory of our comet-like career. Is it just a horribly mixed metaphor, unsalvageable and ugly? My hope is that by exposing this creature of darkness to the bright light of loving scrutiny, it will be banished forever from my psyche. Help me, please.

4/21/98 - Maui, Molokai, Lahaina, Oahu, Lanai

The names slip off the tongue like coconut milk off a silver salver, like cocoa butter off the smooth brown flanks of a dusky wahine. Tropical paradise. Lei's and Luau's. Pork chops and poi. Exotic fragrant blossoms, swaying palm trees, rainbows over rainforests, the plangent calls of kaleidoscopic birds echoing off the trunks of massive hardwood trees, their canopies alive with chittering, jabbering, buzzing, yammering wildlife in massive tumbledown, vine-encrusted profusion. Have I seen any of this? No. But I did read all the swell pamphlets at the airport while waiting hopelessly for my lost luggage. I know that the magic of Hawaii is out there, waiting to seduce me with it's scope and splendor. I've spent most of my days and nights in that imaginatively named oh-so-very-Grand Ballroom at the Ritz Carlton Maui, crooning to the top doggies of the IBM sales force while garbed in a stunning variety of costumes of positively medieval discomfort and yearning for a few brief moments in the brilliant sunshine lurking mockingly outside the heavily guarded vault-like stage doors.
We've reached the apex, the zenith, the alpha and omega of industrial theater, my friends. If you could only see us waddling triumphantly about the small thrust-stage in our sexy, lime-green neoprene wetsuits, replete with booties and fins, dazzling in black light, your hearts would swell with proprietary pride. Or the custom-made gold lame shirts that make us look like one of the finest lounge acts the Flamingo ever coughed up. Or my fave, Jeffy in his robin's-egg-blue taffeta sweat pants and geriatric-Fire-Island-beach-set shirt. I could go on and on, but I think I've already violated some sort of confidentiality code thrice over, and I'm gonna get whacked. If not by IBM, then certainly by Jeff.
But don't waste your precious life force on pity. As I sit with my travel mug of steaming, fresh-ground Kona, gazing out from my condo lanai across the immaculate 9th green of the Kapalua course to the azure Pacific and Molokai rising majestically from the mists, fresh from my workout and a spin in my red 'stang ragtop, I ain't feeling too poorly. What's a little humiliation and discomfort when the upside is nearly a month in Eden? Not bloody much, that's what. The unholy alliance of industry and theater has its perks.
Coming soon to a small screen near you: A rockin Rockapella merch catalog thinly disguised as a Folger's coffee commercial. Two of them, in fact. Next month we spend four days in LA shooting an encomium for my favorite beverage and drug of choice. What began as a perky little radio spot has metastasized into a full-blown made-for-tv epic about us and our close, loving relationship to java and its all-important metabolic frenzy-enhancing jitterbug, caffeine. And say, have you heard our little pseudo-barbershop radio ditty for Hertz (they're number one) rental cars? Cute. Very cute. And of course our now-classic Mounds & Almond Joy spots are enjoying a renaissance on your wireless. The 'Where in the Universe is Carmen Sandiego' planetarium show is rolling out in the US and Canada, and our soon-to-be-legendary PSA (that's Public Service Announcement) video with newly-inducted TV Hall of Famer Bob Keshan (that's Captain Kangaroo) about the new tv rating system has just become available to any and all concerned citizens. And our very own full-length DVD videodisc with multi-channel surround sound for that 'you are there' feeling is only breathless moments away from release with legions of computers and DVD players around the world. We're riding the crest of a titanic tsunami of marketing toys, poised to flood, inundate, swamp the archetypal consciousness of our fair globe with our image and likeness and joyful noise.
Concerts? Don't be ridiculous. Too much work. And besides, who has time?

2/13/98 - NYC Happy Valentines Day!

© Barry Carl 1998

It's that time of year when rotund, chubby-cheeked Eros uses your booty for target practice, florists become Fagans, and we exchange cheap chocolate that nobody wants and fantasy lingerie that nobody wears, all in the name of Love! Stop the madness. Diamonds are worthless, furs just ain't PC. Give something meaningful, like a CD. Or us... something that will last past that first ephemeral rush of pleasure, something of true intrinsic value, something of undeniable, lasting worth. Don't fall into the edible panties gap, or mistake the gaudy, lace-encrusted ceremonial velvet heart filled with empty calories for a truly loving, heartfelt gift. If you must succumb to the overbearing commercial pressure of this faux holiday for a de-commissioned saint, do it with music. Ours.

Luv,

Bear

Press here
Broodings from Bear - 2002
Broodings from Bear - 2001
Broodings from Bear - 2000
Broodings from Bear - 1999
Broodings from Bear - 1998
Broodings from Bear - 1997
Last update: December 29, 1998
Created and maintained by Bob Parnes
Please send your comments to: