The Best of The Rock And Roll Guru - 2010

Ahhhh, it’s a New Year! 2011 is upon us and I am hopeful and excited for what this year has in store. While looking ahead to the coming year, it’s always nice to take a step back and reflect on what happened in the past year. It’s nice to pause and reflect on what was accomplished as I shape my goals for 2011. Below is what I feel were the best Rock And Roll Guru posts from 2010. Rock with me as we recap my favorite moments from last year. Enjoy!

What’s A Fair Price?
In this post, I tried to determine what a fair price is for all those insane ticket fees we pay when going to see our favorite band perform live. It was another cry for Ticketmaster to get realistic and stop financially raping the fans. Hopefully someone heard the message, but I doubt it.

Who Sets The Prices For Concert Tickets?
Bands rarely get a say in the price of a concert ticket anymore. As more bands continue to sign multi-million dollar deals with promoters less fans will be able to afford tickets. It’s the sad state of the modern concert.

Milli Vanili - 20 Years Later
This was a look back at one of my guilty pleasures from high school. I loved Milli Vanili when I was a teenager. It was impossible to stop myself from listening to them. It’s tragic what happened to these performers. Corporate greed has been around for a long time, hasn’t it?

Summer Nights And The Rolling Stones
I lost a very dear friend in March of 2010. He was the man who introduced me to The Rolling Stones and taught me how to be a romantic. While we weren’t as close in the last years of his life as we should have been, I still considered him a great friend. I miss him dearly.

Choosing Music Over Baseball
This was a major turning point in my life – I chose Cinderella’s Long Cold Winter over my entire baseball card collection. It was then and there that I knew music was the ruling force in my life – forever.

How To Be A Roadie
Have you ever wanted to be a roadie? The opportunity to go on tour with your favorite band can be very alluring. In this post, I explain the pros and cons to becoming one of the men and women who make the concerts happen.

Yet Another Reason To Hate Ticketmaster
The title says it all. Not that we really need another reason, but Ticketmaster is kind enough to continually provide.

How To Become A Band Manager
Much like being a roadie, becoming a band manager is a long journey filled with hard work. However, if you think you have the talent and skills, you could be the next Doc McGhee. Reading this post is a great place to start your journey.

How The Internet Killed The Bootlegging Industry
Sometimes the internet can be a great tool. No longer do we have to pay a small fortune to own a concert we attended. Now we can download any concert in existence for free.

Comments are open. Feel free to post some.

Friday's Rockin' Roundup - The Best of the Guru Edition

Happy Fourth Of July Holiday Weekend! Barbecues, softball tournaments, Yankees baseball, reading, and of course, music, are all on the docket for my long weekend. July makes it 18 months since I launched this little blog. I still enjoy writing it as much as I did the day it was released and I am still amazed at the response this blog gets. Thank you everyone who reads, comments, emails, and enjoys The Rock and Roll Guru. Without you, this blog would be nothing. It means a lot to me that you keep coming back to read more.

Since July marks the halfway point of the year, I thought it would be a good time to round up the best of The Guru – 2010 (so far). Here’s a list of what I think is my strongest work for 2010. Enjoy the 4th everyone!

The Live Nation Ticketmaster Merger
One of the worst things to happen to the music fan.

Who Sets The Price For Concert Tickets?
This is one of the posts that I am most proud of this year. A lot of work and research went into this article, but the hard work paid off. Many people have stopped to visit this post. That means a lot to me.

STILL the front-runner for best album of 2010
Doug Keith’s The Lucky Ones is one of the greatest albums I’ve ever heard. It could be album of the decade. The more I listen to it, the more I find to enjoy about it.

The time I met Clarence Clemons
It was an amazing experience and he is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I will always remember that night.

Discount Albums Online
As CDs are becoming more and more obsolete and people are ripping off the artists by stealing music online, some stores are countering. Sites like Amazon are offering full albums in MP3 format for $4.00 or less. Not too bad at all.

My trip with Stone to see Pop Evil and Charm City Devils
Stone is awesome. Charm City Devils were ok. Pop Evil was FANTASTIC! Stone left a huge fan.

The Loss of an Old Friend
Earlier in the year, I lost an old friend. Next weekend we will be having a bonfire in his honor. There are bound to be a lot of tears and shared memories and that’s all right. That’s how friends live on forever.

The Summer Tours
Wondering what tours are out there this summer? Look no further! Cousin Ryo did the work so you don’t have to.

Milli Vanilli 20 Years Later
Remembering Milli Vanilli … and a girl.

Milli Vanilli - 20 Years Later

It’s been 20 years since Milli Vanilli won a Grammy for best new artist behind their multiplatinum smash Girl You Know It’s True. Later that same year, the truth came out that Fab and Rob never sang on the album and had been scamming fans by lip synching their stage performances. Where does the time go?

As a teenager in 1989, I couldn’t get away from Milli Vanilli, and though I am a rocker at heart, Milli Vanilli was one of my first guilty pleasures (much like Jessica Simpson and Perry Como are these days). I just couldn’t help myself; I liked Milli Vanilli a lot! I went out and bought all four of their mega-hit singles as they were released on cassette single (anyone remember those?), and I would listen to their songs ad nauseam.

While not my style of Kiss, Motley Crue, Poison, or Warrant that was endlessly consuming back then, Milli Vanilli was bubble gum pop that I just couldn’t help myself from listening to. It was cheesy, overplayed, radio glitz, but I loved it all the same. I knew the words to all the songs (and sadly – still do). Girl You Know It’s True went multi platinum by 1990 and everybody was on the Milli Vanilli bandwagon. MTV constantly played their videos, the radio always had one of their songs on, and in the summer of 1989, when they released their monster power ballad I’m Gonna Miss You, this band just exploded into the upper stratosphere of artistic greatness.

I’m Gonna Miss You holds very special meaning to me, which is why anytime I see anything Milli Vanilli related, I stop and pay attention. In the summer of 1989, I was dating a beautiful girl named April that I was crazy about. We were totally different types, she was super smart and pretty, I was a metal head with a mullet (yes, I had one of those) that smoked too much. Yet, for some reason, she dated me. It wasn’t hard and heavy, but I enjoyed every second that we were together and when we were apart, I craved being with her. I hadn’t felt that way about many girls up to that point in my life, and with April it was a wonderful feeling. She was the most amazing girl – funny, bright, and very positive. I thought that we had a wonderful relationship going. Even though we never called it an “official” relationship (which for some reason was very important back then – to use the word girlfriend or boyfriend was BIG), I never felt that way with anyone else.

At the end of the summer, I decided that it was time to make our relationship “official.” I was going to ask April to go steady with me. I knew that there wouldn’t be any reason for her to say no. And with school about a week away from starting, I wanted to be able to begin my junior year with status. Having a girlfriend was huge for that.

However, when I talked to April about it, she said that she wasn’t ready to be in a committed relationship and ended ours. We went from dating and getting serious, to “I think we should just be friends.” Friends? What the hell was that? Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled and we didn’t talk much after that conversation (if at all). My summer ended on a sour note and I started my junior year very depressed. Around this time, Milli Vanilli’s Girl I’m Gonna Miss You was a number one hit everywhere, and it was so appropriate, that I played the song over and over and over and over again. I think for the entire month of September that song got played at least a dozen times a day. I was sad. I missed April and couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to be in a committed relationship. Did she not want to be in a relationship at all, or did she not want to be in a relationship with me? Millli Vanilli was my closest companion during that dark month of September.

April went on to date a friend of mine later that fall and when they started going “steady,” I was pissed. She told me that she wasn’t ready for a committed relationship and then started dating my friend. I just couldn’t comprehend that. My friend and I had more than one scuffle over the whole situation. Oh the drama of teenage love!



Over a year later, when it was revealed that Milli Vanilli was a fraud and that Rob and Fab had nothing to do with the album other than look good on the cover and at the shows, I had to laugh. I did a senior paper on the news, and it made me smile. The one song that had comforted me during a difficult relationship had turned out to be a fraud. How very fitting.

We all know what happened with Rob and Fab after that. Their time in the limelight was over and they went into hiding for a while. Rob died of an overdose (some claim suicide) in 1998 and Fab continued to try and be recognized as a real musician. Some of his songs can be heard on his website. http://www.fabmorvan.com/. There is a movie in the works.

But what about the singers that really sang the Milli Vanilli songs? Whatever became of them? Charles Shaw, John Davis, Brad Howell, and twin sisters Jodie and Linda Rocco, were the original voices of Milli Vanilli. In 1990, Shaw leaked to the press that Rob and Fab were fakes. By November of that year, mastermind of the Milli Vanilli concept, Frank Farian admitted the truth and the rest is history.

Charles Shaw went on to record music under his own name. In 2006 he released an album called Charles Shaw’s Iris that featured a lot of references to Milli Vanilli. Visit his myspace page here: http://www.myspace.com/originalvoiceofmillivanilli

John Davis is still writing, recording music, and touring. Currently, he is working on recording a new album. Visit his website at http://www.johndavis-millivanilli.com/.

Jodie and Linda Rocco currently host a radio talk show on Vegas Talk Radio. They are reportedly working on a biography about the Real Milli Vanilli. You can visit their website at http://realmillivanilli.com/home.cfm

Brad Howell has all but vanished from the face of the Earth. He has gone into obscurity since 1990.

Milli Vanilli’s debut album, Girl You Know It’s True, is no longer in print. Arista, the record label that released the album, has not stated whether they will issue a 20th anniversary edition, but the chances are highly unlikely. Personally, I think the 20th anniversary should be released and it should come with a bonus karaoke disc.

Comments are open. Feel free to post some.