http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUpWP01BEuM

So, what do Busterman and Madonna have in common?

Well, we both deny sleeping with A-Rod. Although one of us may be lying. Besides, that's not what I'm talking about.

What we have in common is mastering engineer Chris Gehringer, who has taken over the task of mastering Busterman's upcoming "All Good" CD. After being unable to resolve artistic differences with engineer Parker Dinkins, we decided to go to another studio.

We thank Parker for his hard work, but the time wasn't right to go with him this time out.

Chris, who works out of Sterling Sound in NYC, has mastered many of the top selling artists today. Besides Madonna, he has mastered CDs by Christina Aguilera, Chris Cornell, Robert Randolph and such luminaries as Ashlee Simpson and the Jonas Brothers. If you want to read the whole list go to www.sterlingsound.com and plan to spend the afternoon reading.

So after almost two years of more drummer changes than Spinal Tap we have decided the CD is done and we are really happy with it. Our last two recordings were done quicker than any of the previous songs since that is when we found Chris Reardon to play drums for us. If he was with us from the beginning it may have taken six months to record! He did a great job on our only cover song, Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" and the popular Busterman song, "Kiss U Now."

For my Original Music School students who read my blog, please learn from my experience. While we have obligations like jobs, school, other duties, the artist inside us can still be fed even if it means providing just enough sustenance to keep that artist alive. Like most indie bands, we spent most of our studio time in the wee hours while the rest of humanity was comfy in bed.

The CD is off to New Orleans' own Parker Dinkins for mastering. He did such a wonderful job mastering the most recent studio work of Porter Batiste and Stoltz that we had to have him. He's been a pleasure to work with and I recommend him for all styles of music.

Stay tuned while we spend the rest of the year planning CD release parties and other promotions for the band and the CD. I'll keep this blog going so you may learn from our mistakes and, hopefully, from our successes too!

Well it's been a year since my Original Music School has been ruining young lives by inflicting children with an addiction to music, and I'm having more fun than ever.  www.originalmusicschool.com

We are rocking music festivals, cafes and even bars and I get calls constantly from club owners wanting to book a show of OMS students. 

We have also had some high profile visitors such as Toad the Wet Sprocket, Marshall Crenshaw and guitar legend for David Bowie and John Lennon, Earl Slick, has decided to join our team by teaching seminars for us.

Our guitarist, Jimmy Somma, has been gaining fortune and fame across the country with his line of guitar amps (www.sommatone.com)  and through all this, Busterman is close to finishing our CD. 

Yes, we're very tired.

Recently, someone was thanking me for providing an environment of rewards based on work and progress at The Original Music School in a time when every kid gets a trophy or promotion for fear of hurt feelings or low self esteem.

We lamented our world of no talent celebrities who are celebrated for simply being famous, without an iota of talent or moral standards. A quick browse of Myspace will find a multitude of Paris Hilton wannabes in various stages of undress, proudly saluting the camera with their middle fingers.

This wasn't always the case. There was a time when soldiers, atheletes and astronauts stood at the forefront of pop culture as teen heros, and the pop idols of the day were there because of talent and hard work.

My friend recounted discovering his teen idols on a black and white tele in 1964 as the Beatles proved to thousands of American teens that blue collar kids could take over the world with the newest, most lethal weapon against the status quo - Rock and Roll music!

Of course, Elvis did the same thing on the very same show a few years earlier. I had a similar epiphany while riding through a snowstorm in my older brother's car in the winter of 1978.

Since my brother has always been a forward thinker and so stingy he probably still has his communion money sealed in their original envelopes, he bought one of those aluminum cans masquerading as cars by a company new to the auto industry called Honda. This car was so tiny that the only place to put a music lover's speakers was directly under the front seat pointing straight up. The unforseen benefit was that riding in his car felt like you were actually sitting on the amplifiers of the best UK punk and new wave bands who were blasting their way into America via WNEW in NYC.

Like any good teen soldier, I nodded sympathetically to the endless drone of sloppy drumming, simple distorted chords and sublimely amatueristic singing while my brother struggled to keep his frugal buggy in a direction towards home. Then, I discovered the music that I could call my own.

With a dissonant piano chord, a devious laugh, and a bass and drum pattern from another planet, the Police's first single, Roxanne, and my new life as a musician began.
If the groove wasn't enough to make me stand on my head, the melody soared, the harmony of singing ninths (which is still never done in pop music), the angular guitar patterns, even the story line was like nothing I ever heard from my brothers Beatle records. I must have looked like a wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon as my every being tried to make sense of the new sounds I was hearing.

In many ways the Police were the Beatles of my generation. Both bands broke the existing mold of popular music, and they both got to where they were from endless touring, self promotion, practice and talent. They practiced the Edisonian mantra of 10% inspiration, 90% persperation. If the Beatles paved the road, the Police drew the map for the rest of us. Just as everyone tried to sound like the Beatles in the 60s and 70s, the airwaves reeked of Police rip off bands throughout the early 80s.

In Beatles mop top fashion, the Police bleached their hair and became three toeheads. Young girls and boys each had their favorite Policeman and Police mania ensued. Like the Beatles, the Police played their last real concert at Shea Stadium. Like the Beatles, they also disbanded while making some of their best music of their careers.

I look forward to the day when we are blessed with another group of young men or women who band together when the moon and stars are aligned in just the right way so they can introduce the world to Rock and Roll and change the world once again.

I've spent the past nine months away from my blog, hard at work, opening our brick and mortar Original Music School. This involved construction, painting, soundproofing, and shopping at garage sales for many things we needed at the school but could never afford to buy new. My wife, Katrina, was there all the way, even at times when I wasn't there myself. Besides the reward of getting me and my mountain of recording gear out of our Lilliputian sized bedrooms, she is now an experienced contractor and can flip houses in just thirty minutes like they do on those reality TV shows.

We had a well attended 'open house' with the local radio station, WDHA, broadcasting from the party, and we had no less than two bedazzled, jumpsuited Elvises (or is it Elvi?) 'taking care of business' and making hysterical spectacles of themselves.

I spent the ensuing months as a modern day Gulliver, writing, arranging and recording at least six songs a month with my tiny cowriters, some as young as eleven years old. For the first, and probably only time in my life I felt tall as I towered over my musical cohorts thrashing about, guitars in hand, in a convulsion of clashing chords and crashing cymbals. It's been more fun and rewarding than anything I've ever done. (You can hear some of them at: www.originalmusicschool.com)

After three months, we booked and performed our first gig at Cafe Arabica, a hooka bar run by a couple of really worried but nice middle eastern men. We packed around 230 people into a cafe that was prepared for 150. It was mayhem and it was wonderful.

Of course, Busterman headlined so my students could see that I can walk the walk. The idea that we would aquire 200 new fans wasn't a bad incentive either.

The day after the gig, we began trolling for another innocent club owner willing to make a nice chunk of change for being pillaged by a mob of pint sized musical marauders and their families and friends.

Thanks for spending some of your precious time with me. Come back for the next episode, and befriend our school at www.myspace.com/originalmusicschool and please spread the word about us. We want more students!

I'm presently reading "The Beatles" by Bob Spitz. This book has to be the be all and end all of Beatles biographies and I highly recommend it. Besides the fact that their rise to fame and fortune reads like it was a product of divine intervention, there is one other glaring fact that jumps out at me.

The band never waited to be ready before booking a gig.

This is a great lesson. Bands can spend an eternity waiting to be ready for a gig unless they just book it - ready or not. I've had parents of students at my Original Music School balk at the idea of promoting and planning shows for kids who can hardly play yet, but I assure them they will be ready. In reality there is a chance that they will never be ready. In that case I instruct them to crank up the volume and have at it. Intensity and energy more than make up for precision in a concert situation and the experience will meld the band members into a unit. That is something all the practice in the world won't accomplish. Besides that, an upcoming gig is just the carrot (or stick depending how you look at it) to bring the band up to speed.

Presently, Busterman is practicing what I preach. We are booking gigs at some of our most hallowed venues as we prepare for our new CD and live show. Ready or not, here we come!

So now that I have a group of musicians that make me proud, it's time to write great songs that live up to their standard. Some writers will just write when the inspiration hits, and in whatever genre pops into their heads. Better writers know the genre beforehand and sit down for writing sessions like any other job. It's a difficult thing to do, but like any discipline, it can be learned and become quite fruitful.

I teach my students how to do this at The Original Music School (shameless plug) www.originalmusicschool.com.

Guitarist, Jimmy Somma, and I sat down and discussed who was attracted to Busterman as we were at the time. For reasons unknown to us, the jamband crowd seems to navigate towards us. In fact - after a recent gig at the Underground in Elmwood Park, the evening's MC, Jim Testa, dubbed us a jamband for the first time. It was news to me, but so be it. A jamband we would be, but we would take a decidedly blues, funk, reggae slant on the idea and emphasize strong, (I hope) consice, singable songwriting. We weren't going to take the cheap route of just finding a groove and calling it a song.

So I sat down with pad and pen to write our first song. I rarely start a songwriting session with an instrument in hand. In fact, my favorite place to write is in my pick up truck where I get great reflections of my voice off of the windsheild and I am sure I will not be bothered by anyone as long as I'm not breaking any laws.

Other times I like to sit near a TV because I hate silence. I just let the TV chatter on and it often becomes just white noise to me. However, this time Bonnie Raitt and Lyle Lovett were on the CMT channel talking about songwriting and playing music. I couldn't just ignore this show!! As I watched, I brainstormed for song titles. My best songs are written from the title first. Once I have a memorable title, I'll write the song around it. Everything in my song will lead the listener to the title. I am always on the lookout for great titles. You never know when one of your offhanded comments will find it's way into one of my songs.

Just as I was ready to quit my session and just enjoy the show, Ms. Raitt commented about how several of her hit songs were about the hard and sad parts of life. Then she gave me my title by saying, "I can't write only happy songs because ain't nothin' all good, all the time." I wrote down the title and put my pad away and enjoyed the show. I knew tomorrow would be a great day to write a song since I already had a great title.

The next day, fiddled around with a piano lick I had written a few years back that had a bit of a funky flavor. It did nothing for me. Then I went to the guitar and played the same lick....eh, not so great.... I went back to writing my chorus melody and lyric for the All Good idea and I nailed down the main idea without the distraction of a piano or guitar in my hand. Mind you, a copyright of a song is melody (the part you sing), and lyrics. The chords under said melody is not part of that copyright and is considered the arrangement - not the song so for me, songwriting is WRITING THE MELODY AND LYRICS. That night I had rehearsal.

I showed up at rehearsal and since I didn't want to let the band down and I was sure I would finish the song quite soon, I fibbed a bit and told them I had written our newest song! Of course, all I had was a remnant of a chorus and I was thinking about using that little piano lick as part of an intro to the song. I showed them those little bits and I said I'd show them the rest at the next rehearsal. As I was showing it to them I had a burst of inspiration and wrote the verse's melody in my head as we were starting to work on another song.

The next reheasal I had the structure (verse, chorus, v, c, solo, v, c) but no lyrics. That weekend, we played a gig and actually did the song as I mumbled fake lyrics to see if the crowd would dig it. They instantly got up and danced to it, so I finished the lyric the very next Saturday about twenty minutes before we were to perform it live onstage in front of a hundred paying club patrons!

The song at this point isn't at it's final arrangement. I like to let songs live a little and find their own place in the world. I do this by jamming on it with the band and/or recording versions of it in my home studio. With 'All Good' we've been jamming on it at our friends' Redemption Studios in Clifton. The studio is the finest in New Jersey and the owners, Tom and Mike, are great engineers and lots of fun be around. We played 'All Good' too fast but we were just having fun, so the vocals aren't great and the groove isn't as fat as it will be on the real CD, but you can get an idea of the song at this point.

The other two songs, 'Kiss U Now' and 'Your Day' are also going to be on the new CD. These songs were already written but they fit into our genre so we'll use them. These demos were done in my bedroom with the help of a drummer here and a horn player there. However, most of the guitars and all the bass, keyboards and male vocals are me.

When we start the real CD I will explain the difference between a demo and a real record. For now, please enjoy these sloppy demos we will use in much the way a painter uses his notepad of doodles before painting the real painting.

Please spread the news about this blog and please comment on it or ask questions! I'd also love to hear what you think of the songs. Talk to you soon.

Hey Friends,
You may or may not hear alot of Buck Owens' music in the next couple of days since he died recently. In respect to a great talent, I just wanted to shed a little light on his life. It seems the world has become a 'what have you done for me lately' kind of place and we sometimes forget the great fire of inspiration that once burned in the hearts of people who have gone before us.

Buck Owens was a pioneer and a rebel. He chose a cutting edge sound of twangin' telecasters and big beats when most other country artists thought they needed to be crooners. He rejected the overproduced sappy sounds of Nashville and developed an earthy, true, sound that has influenced many greats over the years including, Dwight Yoakam, Creedance Clearwater Revival and even the Beatles.

This all took place years before he hosted the national TV show 'Hee Haw' and many music lovers today aren't even aware of the best part of his career.

His songs are strong and consice and one could easily use them as examples of how to write a great country or even pop song. The playing of his longtime guitarist, Don Rich, is as instantly recognizable as Buck's own trademark gulping, hiccuping vocal.

I hope you will search out some Buck Owens music this week and discover a true giant in the music world.

Wishing you peace, love, and God's blessing,

Anthony Vitale
www.originalmusicschool.com
www.bustermanproductions.com

Eros, Philia, Agape.