AdonaiTheProducer! You certainly know how to produce a smile out of me, with your generous compliments.
As an older, maybe even as an elder musician, who has been typing with my own typewriter since I was fifteen,
it's more of an age and experience thing here for me, when you're such a young man.
And seeing you, hearing you, singing with your other video, is what inspired this reply from me.
My favorite Earth, Wind and Fire moment.
I was living in Toronto, working with agents, playing at night in pop-rock showbands.
My best friend, a keyboard player from Nova Scotia, who also was a non-smoker, non-drinker,
wanted to go see the new Monty Python movie, playing at a historic downtown theatre, so we went.
That was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a very funny movie.
As we walked in, I stopped to look up at the very ornate ceiling, huge balconey, just looking around,
and then a song started playing over the sound system, sounding great, really new and very smooth.
It was the new Earth, Wind and Fire, with the new leader singer, "After the Love is Gone", if I remember.
That became their biggest hit, and I only know them as a hit band.
Around here, in the Niagara Peninsula, across from Buffalo in the United States,
the Commodores were big, and Lionel Richie only got bigger after he went solo.
When I went with a girlfriend to see him in the arena there, he had a walkway that went side to side.
He came over to our side, and my girlfriend reached out to shake his hand, while I could only stare at him.
He was so tall, and looked different in real life than any picture I ever saw, a different kind of man.
He had Sheila E. as an opening act, and she stayed onstage to play percussion with his band,
and joined him for a song they had out together.
I saw Yes in that arena, for example, a progressive rock band that sounded like a loud arena band.
But Lionel Ritchie, with his almost two hundred, really big, JBL cabinets hanging from the ceiling,
made the arena feel like a small room, like he was singing in your ear, very, very nice.
I just had to mention that to you as a producer concerned with sound.
And let me say something else about you being young and being a stage performer.
Everyone should feel this.
It doesn't matter if I'm onstage playing and singing, or making a political speech behind a microphone.
When you are the center of attention, when an audience is giving you all of their attention,
you can feel it, and it's an amazing feeling.
I can see why people who get in front of huge, huge crowds, can lose themselves after a while.
The actual energy takes over, and you'll do anything to keep that going, even if it's nothing to do with music.
If I was playing in jazzy band, in nightclubs with 150 to 200 people, who paid a cover charge to see you,
where you can socialize between sets, that's perfect for me. And it would be nice to have a dance floor.
Maybe we can take advantage of being here at magle.dk to get into some lyrics for you.
Your typing is very nice, I'm not even seeing one spelling mistake, so English is a good language for you.
When I first saw your video, I thought maybe English would be your second language.
The easiest thing for me to do is sing an old song and make up new words, to update it,
and when I was onstage, I'd change the words to sing about where I was and who was there,
something that always went over better than just singing the words like the recording.
Your name, Adonai, is a good one word name for a musical artist.
It makes me think of Adonis, who was supposed to be a beautiful Greek youth, if I remember.
I think the word adorn, as in making something more beautiful, comes from that.
I'll save some Prince talk for later, because he ended up moving up here to Toronto.
But as a producer, if you are familiar with Prince, going back to "Lady in the Red Corvette",
you should listen to the first Gino Vanelli recordings.
Prince copies his synthesizer sounds and some of his chord arrangements.
Gino, from Montreal, Quebec, started out singing with his brother on synths with a drummer, just a trio.
"It's just another rainy night in Montreal"... yeah!
"TINKICKER", a band in Denmark, shared some comments in the progressive rock forums,
and Soren, one of the guitarists, mailed me one of their CD's.
Their lead singer is a very strong vocalist, and reminded me of Gino Vanelli when I first saw him,
so I sent his first CD, a live recording made by a radio DJ.
Soren said they could see why I sent it to them, saying it influenced them.
That really made me feel good. And I still listen to their CD.
