Post by darkstar on Jan 24, 2005 13:30:15 GMT
RAY MANZAREK
MEDIA WHORE
By Erica Zabowski
For a couple of years, I had been trying to track down my sweet sweet love John Entwistle, bassist for the greatest rock n' roll band in the world: the Who. Gosh, how I loved him for all his deviousness. I just wanted to meet him to hold his large manhands and feel his bass-
playing genius.
After many close calls, I found out last June that the American Cinematheque's annual "Mods and Rockers" film festival was going to feature an entire day of Who films. I just had a gut feeling that Entwistle would be there, so I got my tickets super early - and what
do you know, he died a few days before the event.
The mood that day was somber and celebratory and cathartic at the same time. Before one of the films, the program coordinator announced in a hushed voice that Entwistle had been slated to appear as a special surprise guest. I knew it! But now our sweet demented devil had left us. So, after reading letters from Roger and Pete and a member of the John Entwistle Band, the coordinator introduced a special surprise guest to talk about John's life and work. Who
could it be? Who would be apropos? Robert Plant, perhaps? He lives in L.A., doesn't he?
Suddenly, my rude awakening: "Mr. Ray Manzarek."
My eyes rolled without me telling them to. I wanted to shout out, "Not again!" Were the other people in the audience feeling the same knee-jerk reaction? Or was their complacent clapping due to the
solemn mood?
In case you are unaware, any time an article is written or a documentary is filmed, and the topic has anything to do with popular music, or the City of Los Angeles, or breathing, Ray Manzarek of the Doors featuring Ray Manzarek is suddenly there to give his expert
opinion. "Hey, we're changing a bus route. What does Ray Manzarek have to say about this?" "A documentary on the migration patterns of eagles? Get me Ray Manzarek's phone number NOW!"
Still, how did he push his way into this event? I mean, I had to doubt that Entwistle and Ray Manzarek had ever met - and if they had, it would have been at the kind of Let's-Get-To gether-And-Celebrate- The Past event that clumsily lumps together unrelated musicians under
the blanket term Rock n' Roll Legends. I was perturbed. "Go away, intruder!" I thought. I mean, it was short notice, and I suppose the
people that were closest to Entwistle were probably still in England, but why couldn't they have just gone without a guest all together? I chalked it up to Ray Manzarek's evil powers of persuasion.
As I pondered all this, Ray Manzarek started talking. Have you ever been to a funeral where the priest has never met the deceased, so he has to give really general comments? And sometimes he says something
that doesn't apply at all to the person in question and it takes you totally out of the moment? Yeah, that was this. Ray Manzarek was reduced to commenting on the ceiling of the movie theater, which segued into some sorry floundering what happens to rock musicians
when they pass on - something about ancient Egyptian sun gods blah blah. "Entwistle's in Rock n' Roll Valhalla" smah smah "hanging out with Jimi" smur smur smur.
I got the feeling that if Entwistle were actually present, he would say, "What the hell are you talking about, you washed-up hippie?" In fact, for his 1971 album Smash Your Head Against the Wall, my sweet sweet bassist recorded the song "I Believe in Everything," poking fun
at the trend of rock musicians embracing ancient spiritualities. Ha! Bet you didn't know about that, Ray Manzarek! Bet you didn't!
As I walked past him in the lobby after the film, I suppose I should've been excited to pass by a rock n' roll legend, but his suffocating omnipresence in Los Angeles has killed any celebrity mystique he might have once had. I knew I had just heard too damn much from him.
After this unfortunate realization, I decided to monitor all the times Ray Manzarek popped up in the media. What was one of the first things I saw on TV? A VH1 special on the history of punk - of course, just the place for Ray Manzarek. Playing an organ in an LA band in
the late 60's has everything to do with the late 70's punk revolution. The next day, I watched the History Channel's History of the Sunset Strip with my mom. I waited. "Where are you, Ray Manzarek? I know you're there." Needless to say, I was not disappointed.
I mean, what have you really done for us, Ray Manzarek? You played organ in a band for a couple of years. Organ. You didn't play a mean electric guitar or go crazy on drums. I can think of almost every
other instrument rocking except organ. Wait, strike that. Alan Price plays a groovy organ in the movie O Lucky Man! Almost every soul or blues or funk group has a really badass player killing on organ.
It's just your organ playing that doesn't rock at all. It's just you, Ray Manzarek, doodling along like grandma at church. Now you've muscled into our lives once again in the newfound career of professional media whore. In fact, when I type Ray Manzarek into the LA Times archive, it tells me I must modify my search because
there are too many hits! And what do you say in these articles? I found this illuminating quote:
...You put an accent on the second and the fourth beat and it becomes what white people called at the time "the devil's beat." the beat of the devil, the devil's beat, because it's not the devil's beat, it's the beat, it's the beat of the earth, the beat, the rhythm of the
earth, it's the beat of Dionysus, it's Pan, it's the Gods' and the Goddesses' in the forest, it's what it is. It's Pooti, the bird....
Wow! That's really coherent, guy! A bold statement like that just screams, "Quick! Somebody quote this man in a news publication!" Please enlighten me further, I thought, because I have this void in my life - a void that can only be filled by opinions from doddering,
pseudo-intellectual hippies! And there you were, Ray Manzarek. There you were to use pompous little phrases like "in a fit of pique" while
talking about your bandmate rightly suing your sorry hide for copyright infringement.
Repulsed by you, and at the same time, strangely drawn to you like a moth to a flame, I decided to research. I challenged myself to find some of the most arrogant Ray Manzarek statements put to print. This
is what I found (trust me - in or out of context, it makes no difference):
In the new age, all of us are the Messiah and it's the first time around. There will be no second coming.
I'm basically a cocktail jazz kind of pianist.
Oh, the tropic belt around the planet, the equatorial belt, the rhytms and the music from the area between the tropic of Cancer and
the tropic of Capricorn!
There's a home video out called The Best of the Doors on Universal Home Video. It's about an hour and 20 minutes long and it's in the
stores NOW! And it's $14.95.
He comes back to an infinity place in time, where the only thing that ultimately matters is to eat an ice-cream cone, play a slide trombone, plant a small tree, good God, you're free.
Whoa, Ray Manzarek, thanks for the info. I daydreamed my way through CCD, so it's good you're bringing me up to speed on this whole God thing. So, as you can see I'm pretty frazzled by this topic, so much so
that I've been yelling at a man I've never met for the past five paragraphs. But sometimes one just has to get these things off their chest. He's everywhere, even in my nightmares. This madness must
end! So I'm here to say, give someone else a turn, Ray Manzarek, or I'm gonna buy you a muzzle. Oh, and by the way, I spared you Ray Manzarek's quotes on "doing it." No one likes to hear about an old
hippie's sex life, Ray.
Source: www.ostrichink.com/march2003/manzarek.html
MEDIA WHORE
By Erica Zabowski
For a couple of years, I had been trying to track down my sweet sweet love John Entwistle, bassist for the greatest rock n' roll band in the world: the Who. Gosh, how I loved him for all his deviousness. I just wanted to meet him to hold his large manhands and feel his bass-
playing genius.
After many close calls, I found out last June that the American Cinematheque's annual "Mods and Rockers" film festival was going to feature an entire day of Who films. I just had a gut feeling that Entwistle would be there, so I got my tickets super early - and what
do you know, he died a few days before the event.
The mood that day was somber and celebratory and cathartic at the same time. Before one of the films, the program coordinator announced in a hushed voice that Entwistle had been slated to appear as a special surprise guest. I knew it! But now our sweet demented devil had left us. So, after reading letters from Roger and Pete and a member of the John Entwistle Band, the coordinator introduced a special surprise guest to talk about John's life and work. Who
could it be? Who would be apropos? Robert Plant, perhaps? He lives in L.A., doesn't he?
Suddenly, my rude awakening: "Mr. Ray Manzarek."
My eyes rolled without me telling them to. I wanted to shout out, "Not again!" Were the other people in the audience feeling the same knee-jerk reaction? Or was their complacent clapping due to the
solemn mood?
In case you are unaware, any time an article is written or a documentary is filmed, and the topic has anything to do with popular music, or the City of Los Angeles, or breathing, Ray Manzarek of the Doors featuring Ray Manzarek is suddenly there to give his expert
opinion. "Hey, we're changing a bus route. What does Ray Manzarek have to say about this?" "A documentary on the migration patterns of eagles? Get me Ray Manzarek's phone number NOW!"
Still, how did he push his way into this event? I mean, I had to doubt that Entwistle and Ray Manzarek had ever met - and if they had, it would have been at the kind of Let's-Get-To gether-And-Celebrate- The Past event that clumsily lumps together unrelated musicians under
the blanket term Rock n' Roll Legends. I was perturbed. "Go away, intruder!" I thought. I mean, it was short notice, and I suppose the
people that were closest to Entwistle were probably still in England, but why couldn't they have just gone without a guest all together? I chalked it up to Ray Manzarek's evil powers of persuasion.
As I pondered all this, Ray Manzarek started talking. Have you ever been to a funeral where the priest has never met the deceased, so he has to give really general comments? And sometimes he says something
that doesn't apply at all to the person in question and it takes you totally out of the moment? Yeah, that was this. Ray Manzarek was reduced to commenting on the ceiling of the movie theater, which segued into some sorry floundering what happens to rock musicians
when they pass on - something about ancient Egyptian sun gods blah blah. "Entwistle's in Rock n' Roll Valhalla" smah smah "hanging out with Jimi" smur smur smur.
I got the feeling that if Entwistle were actually present, he would say, "What the hell are you talking about, you washed-up hippie?" In fact, for his 1971 album Smash Your Head Against the Wall, my sweet sweet bassist recorded the song "I Believe in Everything," poking fun
at the trend of rock musicians embracing ancient spiritualities. Ha! Bet you didn't know about that, Ray Manzarek! Bet you didn't!
As I walked past him in the lobby after the film, I suppose I should've been excited to pass by a rock n' roll legend, but his suffocating omnipresence in Los Angeles has killed any celebrity mystique he might have once had. I knew I had just heard too damn much from him.
After this unfortunate realization, I decided to monitor all the times Ray Manzarek popped up in the media. What was one of the first things I saw on TV? A VH1 special on the history of punk - of course, just the place for Ray Manzarek. Playing an organ in an LA band in
the late 60's has everything to do with the late 70's punk revolution. The next day, I watched the History Channel's History of the Sunset Strip with my mom. I waited. "Where are you, Ray Manzarek? I know you're there." Needless to say, I was not disappointed.
I mean, what have you really done for us, Ray Manzarek? You played organ in a band for a couple of years. Organ. You didn't play a mean electric guitar or go crazy on drums. I can think of almost every
other instrument rocking except organ. Wait, strike that. Alan Price plays a groovy organ in the movie O Lucky Man! Almost every soul or blues or funk group has a really badass player killing on organ.
It's just your organ playing that doesn't rock at all. It's just you, Ray Manzarek, doodling along like grandma at church. Now you've muscled into our lives once again in the newfound career of professional media whore. In fact, when I type Ray Manzarek into the LA Times archive, it tells me I must modify my search because
there are too many hits! And what do you say in these articles? I found this illuminating quote:
...You put an accent on the second and the fourth beat and it becomes what white people called at the time "the devil's beat." the beat of the devil, the devil's beat, because it's not the devil's beat, it's the beat, it's the beat of the earth, the beat, the rhythm of the
earth, it's the beat of Dionysus, it's Pan, it's the Gods' and the Goddesses' in the forest, it's what it is. It's Pooti, the bird....
Wow! That's really coherent, guy! A bold statement like that just screams, "Quick! Somebody quote this man in a news publication!" Please enlighten me further, I thought, because I have this void in my life - a void that can only be filled by opinions from doddering,
pseudo-intellectual hippies! And there you were, Ray Manzarek. There you were to use pompous little phrases like "in a fit of pique" while
talking about your bandmate rightly suing your sorry hide for copyright infringement.
Repulsed by you, and at the same time, strangely drawn to you like a moth to a flame, I decided to research. I challenged myself to find some of the most arrogant Ray Manzarek statements put to print. This
is what I found (trust me - in or out of context, it makes no difference):
In the new age, all of us are the Messiah and it's the first time around. There will be no second coming.
I'm basically a cocktail jazz kind of pianist.
Oh, the tropic belt around the planet, the equatorial belt, the rhytms and the music from the area between the tropic of Cancer and
the tropic of Capricorn!
There's a home video out called The Best of the Doors on Universal Home Video. It's about an hour and 20 minutes long and it's in the
stores NOW! And it's $14.95.
He comes back to an infinity place in time, where the only thing that ultimately matters is to eat an ice-cream cone, play a slide trombone, plant a small tree, good God, you're free.
Whoa, Ray Manzarek, thanks for the info. I daydreamed my way through CCD, so it's good you're bringing me up to speed on this whole God thing. So, as you can see I'm pretty frazzled by this topic, so much so
that I've been yelling at a man I've never met for the past five paragraphs. But sometimes one just has to get these things off their chest. He's everywhere, even in my nightmares. This madness must
end! So I'm here to say, give someone else a turn, Ray Manzarek, or I'm gonna buy you a muzzle. Oh, and by the way, I spared you Ray Manzarek's quotes on "doing it." No one likes to hear about an old
hippie's sex life, Ray.
Source: www.ostrichink.com/march2003/manzarek.html