The Oppenheimer Report 2/29/16

I must hurry to write this report because I simply must watch the Academy Awards ceremonies tonight. It doesn’t matter that I cannot remember the last time I actually saw one of the nominated movies before the awards were presented; I am star struck. It must be the American in me, because I’m told that celebrities are not deified in other countries the way they are in America. I’m not sure how it is in Canada. I was talking to a new friend of mine who is a Canadian actor, and he suggests that Canada is like Europe in this respect. I’ve been in Toronto during film festival week, and there is a bit of fandamonium there, so I’m not sure I agree.

Shauna and I used to spend spring and part of our summer out in Banff, and our visits usually coincided with the Banff T.V. Festival. It occurred to me that there were a lot of inflated egos in that crowd, complaining about wilted arugula in salads and climate control in hotel rooms. It always seems that it was the obscure, semi-celebrities that were the biggest knobs. I remember standing at the front desk of our hotel while some low level food channel celebrity complained bitterly about housekeeping. He uttered the words that cause every hotel employee to jump to attention: “Don’t you know who I am?!” But my favorite I-hate-the-Banff-TV-Festival story involved one of our only visits to the famed Banff Hot Springs. Shauna and I had been hiking all day and decided that we would indulge ourselves in a therapeutic soak at the famous hot springs. Having paid our fee, we were no sooner in the pool when a large crew began to set up for some high level private function hosted by Disney. Television monitors were being set up, cables run, guys with headsets were scampering around furiously checking things off on clipboards. In sharp contrast to the bucolic splendor of the surrounding Canadian Rockies, these employees of The Mouse were only interested in one thing: Disney razzle dazzle. Though the hot spring was open for business for at least another hour, the surly Disney drones did their damnedest to make us paying customers feel like unwelcome guests on a closed set. I didn’t know the mouse handshake, so I was part of the unwashed masses.

Today, I penned a song from a melody that has been rattling around in my head for weeks. The song is about regret, one of my favorite topics of late, and the setting is our former summer cottage in Ft. Erie. I did something I rarely do; I sent a first draft of the lyrics to my friend James Carroll. James has been very supportive of my song writing efforts. My lyrics typically change substantially from a first draft, often written quickly to flesh out phrasing and meter. Sometimes meaning is forged from the first draft, and sometimes the song changes a lot. Rarely do songs come easily to me. My new friend Jon Brooks, perhaps the best songwriter I have had the privilege to meet, says an average song takes him 4 months to finish, sometimes a lot longer. I am revisiting songs I began to write over 20 years ago.

Final notes – we have now watched the 2016 Oscars, and I can say that they were marginally better than the 2016 Grammys. By 2020, we will likely have seen all the nominated films. I was interested to hear how host Chris Rock would address the issue of racism in Hollywood. In my opinion, he did what a good comedian can do – he made us laugh at the reality of our dysfunction. My favorite segment was a video short wherein he interviewed several Black people about the movies that were nominated for awards. The majority of the people interviewed had not even heard of any of the nominees, but most had seen Straight Outta Compton. I thought the James Bond theme, which won an award, was awful. Happy February 29^th. I think this is my first leap year report!

- Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 2/22/16

Next Year's Grammy Award Winners

I know this is old news, but did I hear that singer Kanye West was $53 Million in debt and that he asked Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to bail him out? My heart bleeds for Kanye. I saw a funny post the other day, depicting a group of people in a crowd with labels indicating their net worth. Of course, Kanye was the one most in debt, but almost everyone in the picture owed money. The only person with a positive cash flow was a homeless man with seven bucks in his pocket. Funny, but maybe true. Admittedly, I do not know much about HipHop or Rap, but  - I never thought I’d say this -  I do like some of the music. I appreciate the poetry and meter of the lyrics, and some of the storytelling intrigues me. Although it’s a little out of my wheelhouse, I like the performances I’ve seen by Rap artist Kendrick Lamar, and I like it when artists mix up genres. I’m impressed by what I’ve heard of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new hit musical Hamilton. Miranda has broken new ground and made Rap more accessible to dumb white guys like me. Whenever music can unify, I’m all for it. I think that hosting the "Lyrical Workers" radio show has made me a little more open-minded about all the music I hear. I have yet to see or hear any performance by West that I liked. The fact that he is deluded enough to think he deserves to be bailed out after losing millions, when there are five million guys waiting for their shot, seems ludicrous to me. Also, he married Kim Kardashian, a woman who had surgery to make her butt into a coffee table. Life is a carnival.

On my radio show, I occasionally play Pop songs from the past fifty years that somehow drew me in. These days, I am more inclined to deconstruct songs and to listen to the arrangements more carefully than I once did. I find much to admire about even the most vacuous Pop songs from the past decades, and this in turn has influenced my song writing. The more I research artists that interest me, the more offended I become about what is going on today. I compare a song I absolutely HATED back in the 70s –a song like “Dizzy” by Tommy Roe – to almost any one of Beyonce’s songs, and I am astounded. By comparison, “Dizzy” sounds like a classic.

Speaking of my growing alienation from today’s Pop music, a week or so ago, Shauna and I sat through the entire Grammy Awards. We do it every year. This might have been the worst one ever. Last year, I thought the Grammys were somewhat entertaining, but whoever produced this year’s event really dropped the ball. There were only several performances that moved me, including Stevie Wonder and various artists doing an a capella cover of an Earth, Wind, and Fire song, and Chris Stapleton’s performance of B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone.” Nashville needs more guys like Stapleton and less of the formulaic, soul-starved tripe they’re churning out now. There were so many technical glitches (Adele for instance) in this year’s Grammys! How does that happen?! Any of you reading this probably wonder why I even bother to watch the awards ceremony, and I suppose my rationale is that I want to follow the direction of contemporary Pop music. I’m a glutton for punishment, but I like watching a freak show. I can’t stop myself from staring at the spectacle, any more than I can stop eating a Big Mac after that first bite. I know I’m going to be sick, but I do it anyway. While there has always been the Grand Canyon separating serious music from Pop, I have never before seen so much money spent on so little. Maybe I’ll write some Rap verse one day, in the interest of expanding my repertoire. “Squirrel-haired politician / spewin' his rendition of perdition / pissin’ on the human condition / listen, we shouldn’t be killers we should be kissin’ / that’s my mission / love is what we been missin.” Yeah, I know, but I don’t even have a day job.

- Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TheOppenheimer Report 2/15/16

For as long as I’ve been married, I’ve spent a boy’s weekend in the fall or winter with my best friend Bob. Sometimes, we got together in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and more recently, the weekends have been in Toronto. I suspect that a lot of visitors to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls go there to gamble, but our visits usually involved alcohol, followed by inebriated visits to several of the local wax museums. For many years, we met in Toronto to attend the Toronto International Boat Show, but a few years ago, we decided that the boat show was losing its appeal. We then switched to the motorcycle show. Last Saturday, we went to our first Toronto auto show, and I have not been to an auto show since I attended a Clutch Artists Autorama in Buffalo, over thirty years ago. I’m pretty sure Bob was with me then as well.

I distinctly remember that Clutch Artists show, because the featured celebrity guests were Adam West and Burt Ward, the original Batman and Robin from the TV series. I remember thinking to myself that this appearance was a step down from their television years. There they stood, in full costume, in front of some chrome-bedazzled hot rod, waving at passers-by, and signing autographs. I believe Adam West was noticeably intoxicated. Robin was doing all the talking, and Batman was just rocking back and forth on his heels, playing with his cape, occasionally stumbling, and then regaining his balance. He did not look particularly happy to be there, and from time to time, he’d flash a strange grin, mumbling something to himself. He was probably cursing his agent under his breath. One day, you’re a big star, the next day, you’re standing in front of a T-Bucket Ford at a hot rod show in Buffalo. Show biz ain’t pretty.

This year, our boy's weekend overlapped Valentine’s Day, and clearly Bob and I both have understanding wives. To make up for my noticeable absence on such an (allegedly) important day, I gave Shauna, as my Valentine's Day gift, several packages of Nathan’s hotdogs. Bob purchased them for me in Buffalo, and those hotdogs are like gold in our family. One cannot buy Nathan's hotdogs in Canada, and I’m told it has something to do with the fact that Nathans Hotdogs do not have the bilingual packaging required for sale in Canada. Nothing says romance like Nathan’s hotdogs. I used to buy her something from the Dollar Store, but this year, I went all out because I'm the last of the big spenders. Over the years, I have written many love songs for Shauna, and one of my favorites was The Valentine Song. While I have never performed the song in public, every year, without fail, I perform it for her. I did so last night when I returned from Toronto. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that song, as I have out of my marriage proposal song. You can keep your box of chocolates or your long-stemmed roses; how many of you men out there wrote a song for your valentine? Last year, I posted a simple recording of the song on Soundcloud.com, and one of the great things about songs is that, once written, recorded, and posted, they can be heard for generations to come. I’m not saying that any of my songs will be, only that they could be.

One of the lines in that Valentine song reads “I know I'm not the most romantic man / I try to keep you guessing, that’s my plan.” While no expert on relationships, what I have come to believe about mine with Shauna is that, sappy as it sounds, from time to time, we need to remind ourselves how lucky we are to have each other. She loves music as much, if not more than I do, and she has been my constant muse now for almost 24 years. She continues to surprise me with her creativity and her drive, I love her dearly, and “a hotdog makes her lose control”. I wonder if Patty Duke ever did a guest appearance at a Clutch Artists Autorama.
 

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 2/8/16

I grew up enjoying Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. To this day, if I am channel surfing and come upon an episode dealing with the adventures of Moose and Squirrel, I will stop and watch it. For most of my life, I assumed that all flying squirrels wore WW1 flying goggles, were intelligent, cool, and kind of cute. l adored all the characters from Frostbite Falls and have, up until recently, lived in my little fantasy world. Eventually, reality kicks us all in the butt.

One reality hit me like a brick: real flying squirrels are anything BUT cute. They are creepy, bat-like little rodents, with bug-eyes, and they can also fit through a hole about the size of a quarter. They are in fact uber-pests, and for much of 2014, we had the little bastards scampering around inside our bedroom roof. At one point, I believe I saw a couple of them moving furniture in. I’m a peaceful man, but the deal breaker for me was Shauna and I saw two of them fornicating on the porch roof outside our bedroom turret window. The screwee was looking at me defiantly, as if to say, “Yeah? What are YOU going to do about it !?!” After reading that flying squirrels have a very short gestation period, I got nervous and decided it was time to take the squirrel by the nuts, so to speak.

First, we called in a squirrel expert to assess our situation, and after several hours of ladder work and poking around, he came back to us with a price to rid ourselves of the problem. He wanted what seemed to me to be an enormous amount of money, and I suspect he did not really want the job. We gave him his assessment fee and sent him on his way. He did give us some helpful suggestions which ended up being of use. I will not bore you with the gory details - I believe that was covered in a report written around the time of the infestation - but let it suffice to say that, for the moment, we are squirrel free. The other night, I saw one scampering around on our second floor window ledge, and that is not good news. I think he was casing the joint. After the last invasion, we sealed up any holes we could find in our roof and eaves, but as I said, it doesn’t take a very big hole. Jasper is a decidedly noisy watchdog, as long as the threat is outside. Once the critter is inside, her courage wanes. Those little buggers are difficult to catch, and in the year during which we had the invasion, several actually got into our house. If you ever see them in motion, flying squirrels move very fast, and can jump from a tree to the ground and back up another tree in a matter of seconds. Jasper earned her keep by catching one under our dining room table (my friend Bob calls her “Redbeard” now), and I got the other two using a butterfly net. I’m not sure if they’ve penetrated the roof again, but clearly they are back, and this time, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy. I am once again amassing my arsenal for Squirrel War Two. I have my ACME squirrel flame thrower, so bring it on you bug-eyed bastards. I have great respect for Mother Nature and do my best to leave what is outside as it is. Once something enters my castle, all bets are off.

I’m glad Trump lost in Iowa. Welcome to politics, you pompous twit. I think Ted Cruz is creepy, I mean flying squirrel creepy. He’s like one of those stars featured on Where Are They Now? Eddy Munster is now running for president. The Denver Broncos defeated The Carolina Jaguars 24-10 in Superbowl 50. Woo hoo. Peyton Manning can retire a happy man.

 

Attention all flying squirrels. You can run but you cannot hide.

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 2/1/16

Photo by Britta Gerwin

More than once in the past few months, I’ve mentioned our friend James Carroll; he is very ill and in the throes of stage 4 cancer. A week ago last Saturday, there was a fundraising event held at Huntsville’s Algonquin Theatre to defray James’ medical expenses. A group of actors known as The Woodshed Improv Collective performed improvisational skit comedy to a receptive audience of close to 300 people. Although James is one of the founding members of this improvisational group, he sat in the audience for this performance. As a tribute to James, Kathryn Greenwood and Neil Crone, two fellow cast members from the long-running Canadian television series Wind At My Back, along with Carolyn J. Scott joined in the performance. As well, local singer / songwriters Gina Horswood and Dani Strong (Dani Taylor), along with singer Tamica Herod participated as musical guests. It was a fitting tribute, everyone put on a great show, and James was deeply moved.  

The show ended with a video slide presentation comprised of many photos from James’ colorful past. In collaboration with producer Andre Wahl, Gina, and Paul Lagendyk wrote a song entitled The Radio Man, and that song was played during the presentation. Gina asked me to participate in the recording of the song, and buried somewhere deep in the chorus, I can be heard singing a very distant background harmony, along with Dani Strong (Dani Taylor), Tamica Herod, James Jones, Juan Barbosa, Michael Phillips, Pam Millar, Grant Nickalls, Tom Juhas, and Robbie Grunwald who all sang and/or performed on behalf of the many singer/songwriters/musicians/performers in the community who are full of gratitude and love for James Carroll. I’d heard a lot about Andre Wahl, but this was my first meeting with the man. A well-known and successful music producer, Andre has worked with many of the greats in the music industry. In fact, I was a little intimidated to be singing for him, but he was very warm and accommodating. Admittedly my role was minor, but it was a wonderful experience nonetheless. I think the song is strong, and it is now being offered for sale on Bandcamp.com, with all proceeds going to James’ medical fund. Please follow this link: https://muskokamusiciansforjamescarroll.bandcamp.com/releases.
 

While I was in Andre’s studio, along with Gina, and my producer Juan Barbosa, I played a song for them that I had recently written for James Carroll. Over the years, I have written many songs to commemorate friends and family who have passed away, but never before had I written a song about and for someone who is gravely ill. The song is entitled You’re Still Here and I wrote the first draft on Christmas Day. I wanted some feedback before I presented the song to James, because I was nervous that the song might not be well received. Andre was very enthusiastic about the song and everyone agreed that James would approve. The other day, I presented James with the lyrics and a rough demo of the song, and he was in fact very moved by it. As a veteran of musical theatre, James is a good singer, and he asked to be included in the recording of the song. I was honored by that, and hope he will be healthy enough to join me in a proper studio recording.

Final thoughts… Fish is dead! Best known for his depiction of the character Det. Sgt. Phil Fish on the long running television series Barney Miller, actor Abe Vigoda passed on last week at the ripe old age of 95. This was about 35 years after he was mistakenly declared dead by People Magazine. Speaking of actors, just as Black Awareness Month kicks off in the U.S. there is a growing controversy over the fact that none of the nominees in this year’s Oscars are black. Many notable black actors are boycotting the Academy Awards and I’ll be very interested to hear what edgy comedian Chris Rock has to say when he hosts the upcoming ceremonies. Our lilly white stone mason, Mark Huggins, who did all the rock work on our log home, was an extra in Oscar-nominated The Revenant. While Mark appears in the movie only for approximately ten seconds, he did get to hang out with the star, Leo DiCaprio for a while, and has taken to wearing an ascot and sunglasses. Attaboy Mark! I anxiously await the results of the Iowa caucuses to see if my worst nightmare comes true. Who knew Donald Trump had a shot at the Republican nomination?! This tells me how completely fragmented the American voters are. The good news, if there is any, is that this may be a shot across the bow for all those nut ball, ultra-right-wing lunatics who have so completely hijacked what was once a legitimate political party. Nobody said democracy was pretty.

  

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED-