Please stand clear of the storm... for favor, mantengase alejandro de las tormenta. Hey, kids, happy Labor Day! Welcome to the Phile for a Monday. I know I said last entry the Phile would be back on Tuesday, as I thought I would take Labor Day off, but there's a friggin' hurricane approaching Florida you might have heard about, and I doubt I'll be able to post tomorrow so here we are. How are you? When Dorian hits I know one thing... FEMA better come through like State Farm did for Cheryl's she shed. Everyone was wanting to save Mother Nature by banning plastic straws until Mother Nature sent a hurricane towards you.... then buying 187 billion plastic bottles was totally fine. Okay, let's get on with the news...
If you ever doubted we live in a simulation, you should know that the White House is currently feuding with pop star Taylor Swift. The feud started when Swift called out the Trump administration during her MTV VMAs acceptance speech. In her speech, she called out the White House for not responding to her petition to pass the Equality Act. The petition has gathered over half a million signatures, and supports a bill that would protect LGBTQIA people against discrimination in the workplace, housing, schools, and more. "I want to thank everyone who’s signed that petition because it now has half a million signatures, which is five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House," Swift said during her speech, making a clear clock ticking gesture in anticipation of the Trump administration's response. Unfortunately, the Trump administration's response was neither desirable or productive. The White House released a statement rejecting the Equality Act while claiming Trump cares about LGBTQIA rights. "The Trump administration absolutely opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all; however, the House-passed bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights." In keeping with her brand, Kellyanne Conway made the whole exchange more nightmarish by going on Fox News to ironically sing Swift's rainbow-clad single "You Need To Calm Down" in response to a call for LGBTQ protections. "I actually like the new Taylor Swift song, it’s called ‘You Need to Calm Down,’ I can sing it for you," Conway said, before scorching the earth with her rendition of the song. "You know where she says “‘If you say it on the street that’s a knock out, if you put it in a tweet, that’s a cop out,’ I love that, that basically is Washington in a nutshell.” Conway went on to clarify that it's fine for Swift to "have her opinion," but claimed it's a bad look when "Hollywood and singers and all go political." Truly, few spectacles have summed up the severity of our dark timeline like a White House counselor singing a Pride Month pop song in order to shut down the Equality Act.
Please don't shoot the messenger, but it's time that you knew: Instagram "influencers" often manipulate photos and live in a fabricated, idealized reality. I know it's rough, but once you know, you can have fun laughing at the extremely hot people who get busted. This week's influencer getting a public shaming is Argentinian travel blogger Tupi Saravia, who shared photos of her being beautiful all around the world, taking her sense of wanderlust and a particular cloud formation with her. "No matter where you travel, it is always followed by the same cloud," @SantiLishi posted in Spanish, with screenshots from Saravia's profile.
The photos got picked up in the English-speaking world by Matt Navara, who found even more photos of that pesky cloud. It's been to Bali. And Italy. BuzzFeed caught up with Saravia, and she came clean. "I used an app called Quickshot to help the composition of the photograph when the sky is burned or overexposed," she wrote in an email. The app lets users choose from a selection of cloud patterns, and she just happened to like that one the best. "Actually I'm the first one to tell the joke [that] the clouds are following me around the world," she insisted. That didn't stop people from roasting her in both English and Spanish. Saravia has since set her profile to private, so now her photos can only be viewed by her most loyal followers, both human and cloud.
President Donald Trump had a blast Mr. Bean-ing his way through the G7 summit, ostensibly supposedly representing America while pitching his bedbug-ridden golf course for the next diplomatic meet up. His wife appeared to smile in public for the first time ever at the sight of Justin Trudeau, and Angela Merkel may or may not have snorted in his face, but Donald Trump Jr. is worried that people will not take the United States seriously if it is represented by Bernie Sanders. The perpetual fraternity pledge tried to "own" Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders with a video of him with a punching bag, and instantly became the Internet's punching bag instead. Don Jr. was reminded that yes, his father is what peak male performance looks like, and male performance is performance at its peak. Trump is so strong, so virile, and so stable, he is terrified of birds. Like Batman, he became what he most feared. The United Kingdom bows before Trump. Trump makes his enemies collapse like an umbrella. Fat-shaming is okay if the guy has concentration camps. Trump is doing a great job striking "fear in the minds" of allies. Dictators are having a blast, no pun intended. For real, though: partying with Jeffrey Epstein is legitimately terrifying.
Does anything say "I love you" more than hating the same people as your partner?! Whether it's their frustrating colleague at work, or a feud with a cousin, taking on your partner's enemies is a beautifully petty way to express affection. Plus, trash talking someone you're not directly connected to is a truly satisfying past time, you get all of the catharsis and none of the guilt. On this same note, Serena Williams' husband Alexis Ohanian showed a gorgeously petty expression of solidarity at the U.S. Open match against Maria Sharapova. For context, the two tennis players have been pinned against each other for over a decade. Calling it a feud may be unfair since their rivalry largely consists of Sharapova name calling and body shaming Williams, but it's certainly safe to say the two aren't friends. One glance at their actual tennis records makes it abundantly clear that Sharapova's unprofessional stance towards Williams is coming from insecurity, since she hasn't beat Williams since 2004. To add to the drama, Sharapova got a two year suspension from the game in 2016 after she was caught dosing with performance enhancing drugs. The U.S. Open match last Monday marked the first game between the two tennis players in years, and in honor of it Ohanian wore a D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs shirt. People on Twitter were quick to notice Ohanian's call out of Sharapova's drug use, and they were here for the petty. This husbandly show of support for Williams and shade towards her rival inspired a few people's couple goals. He arrived at the game with his jacket zipped up, and only revealed the troll shirt at a key point in the game (when Williams was thoroughly beating Sharapova). Unsurprisingly, Williams won 6-1, marking her 19th consecutive win against Sharapova since 2004.
Amplifying a Congresswoman discussing climate change's existential threat to American cities to own the libs. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is laughing at a new Republican attack add that seeks to mock her for caring about climate change, as the Amazon burns, and a hurricane barrels towards Florida (a swing state, so they should at least pretend to care). Media Research Center, the self-proclaimed "one-stop-shop for the best conservative videos!", posted a video that appeared to be a parody of "Saturday Night Live"'s Deep Thoughts recurring sketch. "You think overhauling our economy to decarbonize and save the planet is gonna be expensive? Try not decarbonizing our economy and allowing sea levels to rise," she says, in a video from one of her Instagram Live fireside chats. "Every Midwestern city or large swaths of the middle of the country experiencing drought on a level that we have not seen, that's gonna be way more expensive." The video was ratioed, and people thanked the conservative account for spreading the important message. AOC points out that ad meant to attack her only promotes her climate change warning. AOC herself tweeted about the video, thanking the group for "paying for ads that spread & explain our policy positions." That is known in plain English, not DC jargon, as a "self-own."
So, instead of doing this blog thing or preparing for a possible hurricane I should be listening to this record...
Ummm... maybe not. As you might know my normal "costume" I wear is a t-shirt, shorts, flip flips or Converse. I'm thinking of going for a different look though. How about this one?
That would suit me, right? Haha. Keith Richards is a great guitar player but did you know he also plays the slug? No? Check this out...
Alright, I heard about manscaping and don't know what it is, but if it's anything like this I might get it done.
Do you know your neighbors? I hope they never leave a sign like this one...
Hahahaha. That's funny. Do you like Hot Pockets? There's a brand new flavor that just came out...
Yuck!! Double yuck! Okay, so if I had a TARDIS I would probably end up at the Taj Mahal and run into George Harrison but he'd be too bust taking a selfie than to have a chat with me.
This just in... the current track of Dorian...
Oh boy. Moving on... Hey kids, wanna play a game? Let's play...
So, which one is it? Hurricane or hippy? That's so stupid but it cracked me up. Sometimes I just like to amuse myself. So, there's this inventor who likes to come onto the Phile once in a while and tell us some of the inventions he's working on. He said he has three really good ones. We'll see. Please welcome back to the Phile...
Me: Hello, Mak, how are you?
Mak: I'm good, Jason. How are you?
Me: A little stressed about the hurricane but I'll live. So, what have you been working on?
Mak: Some really good stuff. You'll like this... Music TeleVision.
Me: Huh?
Mak: We could market it as M-...TV... And then never actually play music.
Me: Mak, that is not really an invention, Try again.
Mak: I have worked on this before I think but how about a solar powered flashlight? It'll help during a hurricane.
Me: That's so stupid, Mak, but something to help during a hurricane would be greatly appreciated.
Mak: I know! A paper umbrella!
Me: Ummm. Nope.
Mak: A hammer sharpener!
Me: Is that it?
Mak: Yeah, that's it for now, Jason.
Me: Good. Have a good day, be safe. Mak Asterborus, world's greatest inventor, kids.
If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. Now for some sad news...
Valerie Harper
August 22nd, 1939 — August 30th, 2019
End of the Rhoad.
From totally put together to totally passed out.
The 104th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club is...
Tippi will be the guest on the Phile next Tuesday.
Two men walking down the road see a blind dog screwing a cabbage. One says, "Poor bugger, must have thought it was a collie."
Today's guest is is an American hard rock guitarist who has played with artists and groups including Alice Cooper, Slash, Jani Lane, Vince Neil and John Waite and currently Night Ranger and his new group A New Revenge, whose album "Enemies & Lovers" is available on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify and Pandora. Please welcome to the Phile from A New Revenge... Kerri Kelli.
Me: Hey, Kerri, welcome to the Phile. How are you?
Kerri: I'm doing great, my man. Thanks for having me, man.
Me: Kerri, A New Revenge is like a "super group" of sorts. What bought you and the other three guys in this band together?
Kerri: Well, we've all known each other from the X amount of decades of playing. We're all friends obviously, we all play rock and roll music and that's what we like to do. It's fun. How the project kinda started about seven years ago or something like that I was playing with Alice Cooper at the time and James Kottack was playing with the Scorpions... we did a month long tour in Russia and we had a lot of down time and we said let's do something on the side. The promoter said, "If you guys want do something I'll bring you guys over." He was a big promoter over there. He said, "Hell, who do you want me to get?" I said I could call up Rudy Sarzo and I could call up Tim "Ripper" Owens, what do you think?" He said, "Fuck yeah, let's do it for sure." I called them and said, "Hey, wanna come over and do some shows and have some fun?" I told Rudy who the promoter was and he said, "Oh, I know that guy. I've done tours with Dio and he's great. Let's do it." It literally took two phone calls and we put it together and it was all about friends having fun, playing rock and roll. It's that simple.
Me: How hard logistically was it to get you four together as you all have different bands and projects?
Kerri: That's the hardest part, you know what I mean. Playing rock and roll with your buddies and having fun that's awesome but the logistics in the main nightmare. It really is hard to do and I got to carve time out here and there if I can. This project like I said started out like five years go or whatever, six years ago as just a jam band. We were playing tunes that we were associated with... Judas Priest, Scorpions, Ozzy, etc. Then we kinda started working on songs here and there. Everybody has home studios these days so it's pretty simple. So we started working on original songs and it took a few years to get to this point. But we finally had enough songs that we liked to have an album worth of material. It was something that we wrote when we had two months of down time and we said let's write a whole record. It was literally done in pieces here and there whenever anybody had time and that's what we have to do these days.
Me: Okay, so, which one of you is in charge and comes up with the direction? I take it it's you.
Kerri: Again it was pretty simple and pretty organic. Like I touched on seconds ago most people have home studios these days, it's pretty easy to do some demos, get some ideas together. So basically what I did is I'd write two or three type of songs musically but sometimes I'd have some lyrics and melodies and stuff like that. I would take those and send them to Tim. Tim would go, "I like that, the first one is pretty cool, the second one I'm not digging it, the third one maybe. The first one's cool." Then he would take that, he'd kinda work on it, whenever he had the time that day or the next week or whatever. Then he'd send it back to me then we really start to develop it. It was very natural, very easy. I think I wrote riffs for about twenty-five songs then like I said, Tim would get to pick out what he got a vibe for and send his ideas back to me. He's in Ohio, I'm in California, and then we'd develop the songs further. So it was really organic, working together. I would write cool guitar riffs and ideas that I thought sounded cool and he would pick them out.
Me: Did you have a time line at all?
Kerri: No, it was literally just in pieces. Sometimes we would record three or four songs at a time or whatever.
Me: Did you just record the eleven songs on the album or more?
Kerri: We recorded about twelve songs, there's another bonus track for Japan or iTunes. There are more songs that I wrote that Tim didn't really get a vibe for or the guys didn't like.
Me: And the recording took how long?
Kerri: It was done over a couple years period whenever we had time, We'll do a song and a couple of months later wrote another two or three songs. We worked at our own pace and kinda did it. There was never a time line and at that point there wasn't a record label, we were just doing the songs on our own literally. Creating music and making thre songs just as labor of love in a way.
Me: I like how the album has different type of songs, not just the same sound throughout the album. Was that the idea?
Kerri: Yeah, I could see what you're saying. I do think there's different elements and different vibes, dramatic feels on the record. There's heavier songs, faster songs, obviously some slow and mid-tempo songs. Things that have different feels and I think that's interesting probably because it wasn't a two month or six week or whatever, a ten week project. I didn't have to write two or fifteen songs in a month and record them in a month. Sometimes I'm in a weird mindset I almost start to write the same songs just slightly different over and over again and the record sounds kinda the same.
Me: "Never Let You Go" I think is the single from the album. That's a great song. Are you guys gonna be able to tour now?
Kerri: Yeah, obviously we talked about it. I'm pretty locked up with Night Ranger, we have a tour throughout the summer with Sammy Hager then there's a couple of little things that are kinda brewing. The thing is with booking some people don't really understand the time on that, especially what we have done in the past. We'd love to tour in North America but we have done European shows, Scandinavian shows, of course we went over to Russia about four different times, a lot of people who book anything international usually six months about. Literally if we're booking something today we are talking about October or November. Those actually are the times that we are looking at for the end of the year we can carve a tour out after the summer season and Night Ranger slows down and we could do some of these cool dates. End of the year would be the easiest answer, I guess I went around the whole ballpark there. Sorry.
Me: I'm sure getting the name out there is hard. Yeah, people know you guys by name but do they know you guys are in this band?
Kerri: Yeah, absolutely. Building that foundation, trying to stay out there, the music business or entertainment business whatever you want to call it is not an easy game at all, at any time, whether it's the 70s, 80s, or 90s or the current day. It might even be harder today. But yeah, man, it's a rough game but it's obviously what we love doing. I have been very fortunate to have played with a lot of great people as well as the guys in the band. Rudy's credentials are sick, you know what I mean. James in the Scorpions for 21 years, all the stuff Tim's done with Priest and the solo stuff. That's really what it's all about, playing lie is great, of course we want to do it, but creating music with our buddies but creating art is fun and it's cool to write a riff. Then a week or a day or two weeks later have a complete four minute song that just was a riff in the beginning. It's like a little baby growing up.
Me: I looked at your discography and you might have one of the longest discography's of anyone, Kerri. Can you believe it?
Kerri: Yeah, I guess I've been fortunate and it's a rough business man, but I just do what I do. I try my best and I think that's what all these guys do. Rudy is still out there doing it and like I said, it's inherent, music or artistic creating. That's it.
Me: You made an album about ten years ago with Jani Lane as Saints of the Underground. What was it like working with Jani on that album?
Kerri: Yeah, that was kinda the same scenario to be honest. Jani was one of my friends obviously, I've known him since the 90s and we started doing it when Warrant was kinda slowing down a little bit like in the later 90s, we had another jam band so it was kinda the same situation. It just developed naturally.
Me: So, how did the songwriting go on that album?
Kerri: Jani and I were always writing songs up until his death so we had a lot of songs sitting around. We just said hey, let's cut a record. We took some of the songs we had laying around, we wrote a few new songs. Bob Blotzer actually wrote riffs so we incorporated some of those. We just basically cut the record, the same thing, right at my house. Jani came down for a weekend and hang out for about four days and we would just write songs and record it. That's how it was done, it was really that simple, it was done at my house.
Me: You must have been proud of that record, right?
Kerri: Yeah. I loved that record. I think that we all did a great job on that and that wasn't rushed either. We probably did that album over a three or four month period. Some of the ideas were already done. I think the record is very cool. I appreciate you asking about it.
Me: Did you guys get to do shows at all?
Kerri: No, and that's too bad. Around the time when that came out I think Jani was getting back into that original Warrant thing. They did that for a couple of years and locked in on that and I was playing with Alice at the time so that ate up a lot of time. Bob and Robbie Crane were in Ratt so the scheduling and logistics tis the hardest part, man.
Me: Kerri, thanks for the being on the Phile. Tell Kelly Keagy from Night Ranger I said hello. He was here on the Phile a while ago.
Kerri: Absolutely, brother. Thanks for having me, Jason. You rock.
That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to Kerri Kelli for a cool interview. The Phile will be back on Thursday, unless I lose power, or my apartment from the hurricane or some other crazy shit happens. The guest will be actress Samantha Mathis. Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye. Be safe, people.
I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon
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