Norman's Rockwell

Hey Soul Mates, many of you know of my love for Cleveland's sports teams. Actually traveling to see the Browns and the Cavs and wearing all sorts of uniforms, caps and junk. Tonight, we went to Staples Center to watch the Cavs lose to the Clippers. Normally, the Clips are pathetic, but tonight they shot very well from the floor. Not the Cavaliers. Ugh. Too many jump (or rather standing) shots from 12 feet out by DeSagana Diop and Robert Traylor did the team in. LeBron never got going, neither did Drew Gooden, so the game was a wash from the opening tip. Only after the half did the Cavs light up the scoreboard. They tied it at the top of the 4th, then let it slide away. The highlight was a series of steals by LeBron that got them close. Maybe you saw me on TV. I, of course, was in my #7 Cavs jersey and cap. Didn't get harassed, though. The Clipper fans or what passed for fans don't really care. More people were sporting LeBron jerseys than all Clipper apparel combined....

Hey Soul Mates, it's been a busy Sunday for me. How about you? Get some time to relax? I hope so. What have I been up to? Pushing. You know. Today, I signed the group up with IFanz.com and Sonicbids. What are they? Marketing tools at best, a few bucks gone at worst. IFanz will take over our fan club information gathering. Hopefully it will allow us to better communicate with our fans. Too many people have their spam filters set so high that our e-vites and e-flyers wind up in the trash. Even Dennis has this problem with inter-band e-mails. We want you to know what we are up to and when we are playing. Sonicbids is an online service that will allow us to send EPKs (electronic press kits to festivals, showcases and the like). You can check out our EPK by clicking the link on our news page or on our link page. It will let you check out a short bio, pictures and songs. Then today when I was out walking, I bought a new journal for lyric writing. I'm used to tons of scraps of p...

Hey Soul Mates, we want to wish you and your families a very Happy & safe Thanksgiving. We have so many things to be thankful for, and it starts with you. The people who care about our music. It's rewarding and fun to create new songs and polish the older material. But it wouldn't be nearly as exciting without such a receptive and enthusiastic audience. The band is thankful to have each other, too. We are having a blast playing together and we hope that it shows. If you eat too much turkey, come down to the show next week. We'll help you shed that. Shake it! Love, Power, Peace

Hey Soul Mates, just heard that one of my favorite contemporaries passed away last week. (Where was I?) Ol' Dirty Bastard is a singular, stupid talent. His album "N***a Please" still ranks in my 20 favorite albums of all time. He was everything wrong with rock and rap. Everything that was excessive and dumb. But it was glorious to hear that kind of unapologetic stupidity in music. He was most effectively produced by RZA or the Neptunes, whose sparse & exotic beats gave ODB or Big Baby Jesus or Osirus or Dirt McGirt, whoever he was that week, the space to flail about vocally. Lyrically, tho' he spoke about real dis-ease. Mental illness. Drug addiction. Humorously. If you listened casually, he sounded like Richard Pryor doing a shrewd impersonation of the world's most idiotic entertainer and what he might rap about. The fact that Russell Jones lived that character is not unlike Elvis Presley being "Elvis." It is a testament to his commitment to...

Hey Soul Mates, it's been a week or two but the blogger is back. Things here are cooking as we prepare for our official debut as Rush Hour Soul. The show, again, is at the Gig, 7302 Melrose Ave in Hollywood on Weds. Dec 1. Hope to see you there. We are putting together some new material and polishing the act. Gotta get myself ready for rehearsal, ya'll get ready to have a great weekend. Love, Power, Peace.

Hey Soul Mates, Ah, an antidote to the recent madness. Thanks to everyone who appeared in our video and everyone who turned out for our world video premiere for "Excommunication." The party, held at Wizards on Universal Citywalk, and the surprise performance were a complete success. It was thrilling to introduce the participants and the video. Seeing it on a real movie screen was a great experience for everyone. After the video was done, the screen rose up to reveal Rush Hour Soul launching into "The Isolation." We played a short set including: Fall Out, Everyone's Ingenue, Sucka and Excommunication. So cool to see people (including the RHS cheerleaders) dancing and performing the Excomm choreography. Many of the cast attended with three notable absences: Dave Portner, Vero Cardenas and Tristan Cortes. We missed you. Special thanks go to the Citywalk sales crew: Erick Long, Patty Tokahuta, Toby Fulp & JD Brown. They really put in overtime to make the ...

Hey Soul Mates, yesterday the band was very productive. We had our first photo shoot under the lens of Jason Rose. It was a beautiful day for pictures. The sun was bright and the air was pretty clear. The only trouble we had was with the Santa Ana winds. They kicked up pretty well in one location we used. The major locale was the Metro station at Universal City. There's some neat architectural touches over there. We didn't get hassled by the police, but a cruiser pulled up onto the sidewalk behind us as we did some head shots. Since it was Halloween, we didn't stick out too much. We also took some pictures on the 101 overpass. Everybody cleaned up nicely. Dennis however has this thing where he goes from hobo chic to looking like Bono. Kinda unique. Doug looked fresh in his double breasted eggplant jacket. Bryan was sporting black and charcoal. And I did black on deep red. Since Jason shot on digital we were able to briefly check the photos. From what I saw this is a good ...