Well, here I am at the end of another year of life on this great big blue bubble called Planet Earth that is floating around in space :) it’s a nice place to be!!

As Gene Simmons would say, “Any day above ground is a good day” ( Hope he won’t sue me for quoting him)…But sadly, over the past year we have had to say good bye to a few friends and family members and in the world of Entertainment some really power house people too…May they all rest in peace…I know we all got a “carousel” date but I am in no hurry to go out on mine. How about you? …

So looking back I can say I had a pretty good year. I am 45 and do not take any medicines what so ever so far still. I am healthy and we don’t have much control over that… Of course we can exercise and eat right but if your gall bladder or appendix decides it has had enough; well you can’t do anything about that…lol. I recently got my hair cut, not really wanted it that short or short at all but it didn’t kill me. So we will see how it goes. It’s in between long and short so who knows what my next move is with it. I surely don’t know. I now have to wear reading classes too as well, and that’s embarrassing to me. Of course I am vain and I am an asshole so I have been told over and over. I used to have what I called “cats eyes” and basically had perfect vision. Not anymore. I had my eyes checked two years ago and the eye doctor said I would need glasses in about two years… I wonder. Did he jinx me?  So if you walk into my office I will have the readers on. I can see a fly on a fence post at two hundred yards and tell you which way he is facing but I no longer can read a restaurant menu. My arms aren’t long enough…Go figure…Go fish…

I also got my first tattoo. First meaning, there maybe more, but I am undecided on that.  Since I have “perfection” issues the tattoo will have to be perfect or I will hate it and either get the wrecking balm cream to remove it or try to scrap it off…(just joking about the scraping part) But the one I have needs tweaking and I haven’t been back yet to get it done…

KICKACTS officially went to print this year with the first Edition coming out in January 2010 and, officially went out of print six months later. It was a great experience and I have to thank Steve Champion from the Green Gazette for the valuable wisdom about print magazines. I could not have even gotten it off the ground for just one issue without his help. In the end I couldn’t find enough advertisers to justify printing it and all the money I poured into to it I hope to recoup at tax time… Who knows, maybe I will try to do it again in the following new year… I really enjoyed the challenge of putting it together. It was a lot of work and running but satisfying too.

KICKACTS had some changes over the past year too. As you know, we tend to change the “look” of it from year to year and though I liked the look of this past years format when we chose it. I now can’t wait to get as far away from it as possible.  It had too many damn check marks on the front page. We also lost a couple of contributing writers and gained a couple too. It’s the ebb and flow of things and that is how it goes…

KICKACTS is now rolling into its third year of life too. A lot of changes have taken place since we first started. It’s still just a hobby but we consistently draw a lot of traffic month after month and I have included a snapshot of out traffic history for the past year.

Now on to the next topic at hand…

A Riddle, a Parable”

“It’s the bottom of the ninth, bases are loaded… 2 outs on the board… You’re at bat…But you are also pitching….It is all up to you now. So now what?”

This is the time of year most people make New Year’s resolutions.  It’s a somewhat harmless goal or goals that we put on ourselves to change something about our self in the New Year. I don’t make resolutions. I make decisions and try to stick by them. I am goofy and OCD in an anal way about that. Resolutions are meant to be broken usually by the third day into the New Year but decisions are meant for a life time or at least for a season. I say if you want to quit smoking, just stop…that’s all. If you really want to quit, just stop. Who is bigger, you or the little 4 inch long death sticks? But most people say they want to quit and really don’t want to quit,. So there is never a change..I am not like that… Now hang on, I am not picking on the smokers…Smoke ‘em if you got them… just use your lungs and not mine  :) I could have used cussing, driving on the shoulder of the road or whatever as an example …So …

What are my decisions for the New Year?…

In no particular order…

1. I weighed 170 in 2001. My decision is to weigh that amount again before the next New Year is here, hopefully by this coming summer…  So I need to drop 20 pounds or so…. I started walking before it got too cold and I was up to 5 to 7 miles a day when I went, which were several times a week…

2. Pay off my loans and bank my money. I make good money but it doesn’t stay around. Too many bills, too many eggs and I play catch up all the time. I will have one loan paid off by the end of January and then knock the other one out a.s.a.p. I am not really buried per se in debt. Just tired, really tired of sending it out all week after week for not….

3. I am going to get a serious tattoo(s)……………………………………………………………………….maybe :)

4. The Yellow Short bus will continue to play as many shows as my sidekick wants too. We are like Simon and Garfunkel, Hall and Oates, or maybe Lennon and McCartney… I think a perfect team… First time ever in my career that Derek is someone I can work really well with. However I want to play out more and more so the YSB will keep on trucking but I will find a band on the side to help fulfill my need to gig more… No Offense to Derek, I totally understand…

5. I have a very dry deadpan sense of humor but I been called an asshole because no one gets it. I am going to work on that. Become a better asshole… The deadpan part I got down to a science.

6. I am going to find out why I can’t concentrate on anything very long…I have so many ideas and stories/songs that if I just sat down long enough I could get them out of my system. I have zero attention span…I get bored easily.

7. I am somehow going to purchase some real estate too.  I don’t want to be a slum lord but I want to own houses and rent them out.

8. I will take a few vacation days this year. I think I have some left over….

9. I am going to stop and smell the roses and try to avoid the pricks….

10. There are plenty more but this is enough for now :) but I may buy a motorcycle too…

So enclosing… .

Peace out and have a…

 HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Chuck

Merry Christmas from Chuck & Al

Ok, so I got this idea off of Metal Sludge. It’s a call out or is it a wakeup call for anyone and everyone playing that has reached a point like I have that I guess it wasn’t in the cards for me to be successful on a level that I would consider “successful” for the lack of better terms. I have played out since I was 12 years old with my first gig being to my old boy scout troop 99 way back in the day. Four simple songs back then and now I can play probably an easy thousand or more songs from the 50’s style to Modern songs and if I don’t know the song I will know it by the time I play through it once or twice or if it’s on “the fly” live I can read someone else’s guitar neck fast enough to stay in there with them and play a song like I have known it all my life….

So where are you at in your musical career? Did you “make it”? Are you still trying to “make it”? What is “making it” by the way? Do you play all the time and it supports you or, are you a weekend rock star with a real job during the week? Do you still dream of tour buses, big stages and playing before thousands of people or just a few bar flies and drunks? Is playing music for a living a young man’s game?

I know there are many professional bands out there making a good living and the musicians’ are over 40, over 50, over 60 and some even over 70. But they found success when they were younger so their career was already “in play” when they were younger and it continues to carry on. We have a couple of bands here locally that have members that are in their late 30’s and early 40’s and even though they have been trying to “make it” forever like me they are just now releasing their “sophomore” albums. How does that set with them? Are the odds stacked against them because of their age? And does it really matter?

I don’t think there are any set rules in today’s music but with American Idol having the age cut off at 29 and pop music being filled with Disney kids that aren’t even old enough to drive yet saturating the markets it has to make an older guy, that even though still has his chops wonder if it’s time to hang “the guns” up.

So what’s up guys and girls? When I was an arrogant young punk ass kid that had a guitar slung over my shoulder, I too thought if you didn’t make it by 30 you were washed up. Little did I know that the Producer that told me I would be famous in five years when I was 17 was dead wrong and I too would one day hit 30 without the fame and fortune and then hit 40 too…Hell I am five years from 50 and 15 years from 60. Did I waste my time? Is it over or has it just begun?

A fellow musician and good friend of mine recently turned 50. That’s not old by any means but he said when he turned 50 he was hanging it up. And well he did… According to him he has played his last show and he always put on a great show and was very entertaining and brought his “A” game to the table.

Another lifelong friend of mine that is a year older than me and he too like me and my friend in the above mentioned paragraph has played music all his life recently said he is through with it too and not playing anymore… He has reached his limit and I guess in his mind realized success on a large scale has eluded him too. I just can’t come to bear that yet for myself….

Now I am not talking about sitting around a campfire playing songs for friends. I am talking about playing out live in bars, lounges and stages…

What are your thoughts and opinions?

And enclosing, if you are a young kid musician like I was once too….try not to put your foot in your mouth like i did…And if you have a band and need a guitar player that can travel. Hit me up!

Chuck

from: http://www.musicradar.com/totalguitar/tony-iommi-interview-part-two-paranoid-jazz-and-bassists-335846

Der! Der! Der! Da-na-na-na, da-na-na-na!

‘Paranoid’ is arguably your most famous guitar riff. Legend tells it that the song was a very late addition to the album?

“In those days, you didn’t have tape recorders. You had to play riffs, keep playing them and remember them. We were recording the album ['Paranoid', 1970] and the label suddenly said, ‘You don’t have enough songs!’ We didn’t know what to do and they asked us to come up with another song. Within a few minutes I came up with the riff to ‘Paranoid’, played it to the other guys and they liked it, so off we went. That’s how simple ‘Paranoid’ was – we wrote and recorded it in a day.”

Yet that simple song went on to become one of your biggest hits…

“Yes it did. We really didn’t want a hit single with ‘Paranoid’ because in them days, to have a hit single was selling out. We didn’t want a hit single and we didn’t expect it to be a single. We just did it as a filler track. Most of the tracks on the album were quite long and a lot of people probably wouldn’t have played them because they were too long, so ‘Paranoid’ was an ideal track to release, being short and up-tempo. It just took off. We were as shocked as anybody when that got in the charts. We thought, ‘Bloody hell, there’s all this stuff here we’re trying to do musically and then something as simple as ‘Paranoid’ gets in the charts and everybody remembers it!’”

Everyone sing now!! OH NOOO<<<TEARS ARE FALLING!!!!!

Dream Theater doesn’t want him back either…….chuck

Ex-DREAM THEATER drummer Mike Portnoy has revealed that he made a recent attempt to rejoin his former bandmates but was rebuffed by the group he formed and led for 25 years. Writing on his official forum, Portnoy states, “Just for the record, this is indeed true..

“Fairly recently, I reached out to the guys to try and make amends and offered to reconcile for the sake of having peace back in our lives… (plus I know how much it meant to a lot of the fans…)

“I figured it was still possible to try and save us, because they hadn’t made any announcements yet or begun any public activity with another drummer… but sadly, they declined my offer (well, actually their lawyer did… they didn’t even tell me themselves….)

“Sorry, gang, I honestly gave it my all…

“So now the fans on my Twitter and Facebook can please stop asking me to go back to DREAM THEATER… I tried, and the door is now shut… The ball is now in their court, not mine…

“I’m not crying or looking for mercy by posting this… I am merely trying to set the record straight as that is always the most important thing about my relationship with you guys… No BS, no spins, nothing to hide… and for better or for worse, I tell it like it is… I’ve also recently seen some people accuse my online activity of ‘looking for attention or media coverage,’ or ‘looking for sympathy,’ but it’s honestly none of the above… I merely value having an open and active communication with my fans… Always have, always will… It is the cornerstone of everything I’ve done since day #1 with DREAM THEATER…

“This was posted here FOR YOU GUYS to know about… here on MY message board on MY website… If it ends up on Blabbermouth or wherever else, that is THEIR choice to spread, I did not request it or send out a ‘press release’…

“Anyways, onward and upward…

“I’ve got a lot of great music and ideas waiting to come out of me and alot of exciting collaborations in the works….so goodbye 2010…bring on 2011!”

AVENGED SEVENFOLD issued a statement late on Friday (December 17) regarding the dismissal of Portnoy, who played on the band’s latest album, “Nightmare”, and toured with them during the past year following the death last December of original drummer Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan. The band’s statement read in part, “For the past few months, we’ve been blessed with Mike Portnoy’s talent and humanity. When Mike agreed to tour with us, it was only through the end of 2010. We always knew we’d need to find another solution for 2011 and beyond. And it’s time for us to take that next step.”

As for why Portnoy himself was not their man, the statement said, “[Portnoy] is a brilliant writer, producer and, of course, drummer. Because of that, the world and we would always see it as AVENGED SEVENFOLD with Mike Portnoy. We take a lot of pride in AVENGED SEVENFOLD being about something greater then any individuals.”

Portnoy himself broke the news via his Facebook page on Thursday, following several days of rumors about his status.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD frontman M. Shadows told The Pulse Of Radio that the band was not happy about the public way in which Portnoy’s split with DREAM THEATER was played out, which may have soured Portnoy’s relationship with AVENGED. “We were actually a little more shocked,” M. Shadows said. “We felt that maybe both parties could have handled it a little more internally without being so press release-happy about what had happened between them. Because we’re a band that, really, when it comes to news all over web sites or this or that about bands, you know, we don’t tweet much, we don’t try to put ourselves out that much, and all the drama and controversy wasn’t something that we wanted at all.”

In an interview over the weekend with LA Weekly, AVENGED manager Larry Jacobson said, “The plan had always been for Mike Portnoy to play with the band through 2010. Nothing changed there but it was confusing (because) Mike gave interviews suggesting he may be touring with the band beyond 2010.”

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=151189