The NonProfit Times
A guitar auction featuring instruments from some of the biggest names in music raised more than $2 million for Music Rising. Lots featured in the mid-December action included Music Rising co-founder The Edge’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” custom Signature Fender Stratocaster, which sold for $410,000, and Paul McCartney’s tour-and-studio-played left-handed Wings Yamaha BB-1200 bass guitar, which fetched $390,000.
Other lots included Lou Reed’s tour-played “Goldie” Danny Gatton Fender Telecaster ($60,000), Noel Gallagher’s tour-played Nash Telemaster ($42,500), Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson’s tour-used amp ($22,500) and a variety of signed Pearl Jam concert posters.
The nonprofit has raised more than $10 million since 2005, when it was created to benefit New Orleans and other Gulf South states region musicians who, through either natural or manmade disasters, lost their instruments or their livelihoods.
“Music Rising started in reaction to hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” Co-founder Bob Ezrin, a keyboardist and producer whose producing credits include Lou Reed’s Berlin, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies, Kiss’s Destroyer and many other seminal albums, told The NonProfit Times.
“There are places where music is central to the heartbeat of the country all over the country,” Ezrin continued. “When major natural – or even, in the case of Detroit, economic – disasters hit that denied a region their music, we would go in and do our best to shore them up.” Many of the efforts have focused on schools, although after Hurricane Katrina the organization helped reopen Preservation Jazz Hall in New Orleans.
Music Rising’s fundraising activities have included merchandise sales, concerts and donations of royalties. The 2021 auction was the first Music Rising had held since 2008, and was coordinated by Van Eaton Galleries’ Auctions, Sherman Oaks, Calif.
In addition to its intermittent fundraising activities, donations are also accepted through the organization’s administrative partner, Studio City, Calif.-based The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, which underwrites instruments for schools that serve students from low-income families. Ezrin is a member of The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation’s board of directors.
Music: Documentary About Marilyn Manson Allegations Coming To Sundance
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Documentary About Marilyn Manson Allegations Coming To Screen at Sundance
“Phoenix Rising” has been added to this year’s Sundance Film Festival and the doc is about Evan Rachel Wood, chronicling her abuse allegations against Marilyn Manson. Later this year, the film will also be released on HBO in two parts. The film is directed by Amy Berg who is known for “Deliver Us From Evil” and “The Case Against Adnan Syed.”
Wood and Manson dated from 2006 to 2010. We’ve been telling you about the numerous allegations from her about threatening and abuse she says she suffered at the hands of Manson. She first named Manson as her abuser in February of last year. Wood says he “brainwashed” and “manipulated” her “into submission."
Read More HERE
On This Day: 13 January 2008
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The Telegraph
In the early summer of 1976, David Bowie was relaxing in his recently-acquired home in Blonay, Switzerland, following a gruelling world tour. Frazzled, and at a creative and personal crossroads, the 29-year-old had recently moved from America to Europe to help him shake a prodigious cocaine habit and find what he described as a “new musical language”, having become sick of his sound – of being a rock star. It was less than a year since he’d enjoyed his first US number one single with Fame, but B
VIDEO: Neil Peart Drum Tribute Features All 175 Rush Songs
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A Rush fan had the ultimate tribute to Neil Peart in recognition of the second anniversary of the legendary drummer’s passing.
Brandon Toews is featured in the video below from Drumeo, a free drum lesson video brand, where he plays the most epic drum tribute perhaps ever.
Per the video’s YouTube description, “It’s hard to believe that the world lost Neil Peart two years ago. We’re grateful that his legacy will live on through his incredible work with Rush. So today – in the span of just 25 minutes – you’re going to hear the best parts of every single Rush song ever, in chronological order. That’s 175 songs.”
The description adds, “He recorded full takes in their entirety (nope…we didn’t just piece this together song by song) and used transcriptions available in DrumeoSONGS to learn the parts. You can find and learn Rush’s full discography in the Drumeo members area! The setup Brandon used for this performance incorporates different elements from the drum kits Neil used over his 40 years with Rush. This includes the legendary tubular bells, gong drum, and electronic pads.”
Rush: Their 50 Greatest Songs, Ranked
Erica Banas is a rock/classic rock news blogger who’s well versed in etiquette and extraordinarily nice.
How Ayn Rand influence a classic Rush song
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It’s a cliché in the world of music that the drummer is, ahem, the least well-read member of the band, to put it mildly. Fortunately, for the sticksmiths who have been beleaguered by this trope since time immemorial, Rush’s late thunderous groove engine, Neil Peart, wedged his nose in a hefty tome of texts to disavow the prejudice for good.
It is notable in Peart’s case, that he was also the lyricist for Rush which represents a fairly rare double act in music. In order to keep his quill sharp so to speak, the drumming extraordinaire was forever delving into books and prising any wisdom that he could. Some ardent Rush fans might already know, Peart’s personal favourite happened to be the Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand.
One book, in particular, proved heavily influential on Peart and co when they were crafting 2112, their fourth studio album. In fact, Peart even gave a written credit to Rand in the liner notes. Her dystopian novella Anthem was transposed faithfully for the prog-rock epic and the prose particularly rings true on the album’s amorphous 20-minute title track.
The description for the seminal novel reads as follows: “They existed only to serve the state. They were conceived in controlled Palaces of Mating. They died in the Home of the Useless. From cradle to grave, the crowd was one–the great WE.”
Continuing: “In all that was left of humanity there was only one man who dared to think, seek, and love. He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world, he dared to love the woman of his choice. In an age that had lost all trace of science and civilization, he had the courage to seek and find knowledge. But these were not the crimes for which he would be hunted. He was marked for death because he had committed the unpardonable sin: He had stood forth from the mindless human herd. He was a man alone. He had rediscovered the lost and holy word–I.”
Rand’s bold and controversial philosophy of loving thyself before thy neighbour is one that has stirred many opinions over the years and her provocative prose captured Peart’s imagination too. As Rand put her philosophy herself: “I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.”
In the eight-movement piece, the band would lay down a musical philosophy of their own. Alex Lifeson would later reflect on the moment Peart presented the lyrics for ‘2112’ in an interview with Rolling Stone: “I thought they were very serious. He was reading some Ayn Rand at the time. I was not a big Ayn Rand fan; I read Anthem — I think that was the only book of hers I’ve read. Neil and Geddy read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and that was an inspiration,” he recalled.
Adding: “What appealed to us was what she wrote about the individual and the freedom to work the way you want to work, not the cold, libertarian perspective. For us, it was striving to be a stronger individual more than anything, and that’s how the story came together.”
Before concluding: “I don’t recall exactly the conversations we had, but I’m sure Neil pointed out that this is a similar story to her stories of finding something that’s beautiful and developing it, learning to share it, crafting it and then being shut down by ‘The Man.’ It was our protest album.”