This just in: Ed will be singing the National Anthem
before Hofstra University's Homecoming Football game
1pm September 20, 2008
NEW GIG
Friday July 18, 2008, 8:30pm
with Joe Kaufman on guitar
and singer Nick Giordano
@ GOOGIE'S above the Living Room
154 Ludlow St. (between Stanton and Rivington)
NY, NY 10012
NO COVER CHARGE
Googie's Web site
Click here to see Ed profiled
for the Travel Channel
Click here to hear new acoustic demos
Super Bowl Sunday 2008
L-R: niece Emily, my pops, nephew James, my sis, me, niece Elizabeth
LET'S GO NEW YORK GIANTS
SUPER BOWL XXLI
Fingerlings bleed Giants blue
and we're comin' for you Smith, Duprez, cousin Keith,
Saint Martin, big Jimmy, and Larry the Wooden Indian
Ed's band The Wild Deer in
The New York Post's
"BEST SONGS OF 2007"
The New York Post chose River of Soul, from the Wild Deer debut cd Live Free as one of the
"207 Best Songs to Download From 2007"
They wrote:
"These NYC rockers turn one-part Stax Records, one-part Paul Weller/The Jam, into one hard-grooving strut."
See the complete list:
Click here to join the mailing list
The Wild Deer cd Live Free:
"An Awesome Expression of Pure Rock"
"The Wild Deer capture the essence of what pure Rock and Roll is about. Great depth and lyrics to this awesome first album. Its amazing this band hasn't been discovered yet. EVERY song on this CD is awesome. Each song grows on you the more you listen to it. Not to be missed are the backing vocals and some great guitar riffs and solos. A MUST!!!!
—itunes review
THE WILD DEER: Live Free
The Wild Deer are a new band of old souls with an in-your-face honest, hardworking rock & roll sound, reverberating with the emotion and passion of the Beatles, the Clash, Paul Weller, and the Rolling Stones.
Tuesday May 30 2007- Check out Ed in today's New York Daily News "Rush and Molloy" gossip pages (it's on page 23 of the paper).
"Singer-songwriter Ed Fingerling got an instant payback from the karma credit bureau when his band, the Wild Deer, played for the Marines for Fleet Week in Times Square. Director Charles Evered, who was shooting scenes with actor Ethan Peck (grandson of Gregory) nearby, was entranced by the music and decided to include it in his movie, Adopt a Sailor."
Read it online here.
Click here to see Ed performing the song "Danny Felter" on You Tube
New songs from Live Free
posted on our myspace
for your myspace downloading pleasure :
The Wild Deer Web site is up: www.thewilddeer.com
"God's Eyes" played on Q 104.3 FM in NYC
on Jonathan Clarke's influential "Out of the Box" program on Sunday January 28, 2007, along with the Clash's "Train in Vain"...while Clash bassist
Paul Simonon and Blur/Gorillaz singer/songwriter Damon Albarn were in the studio to promote their new group The Good, The Bad, and The Queen. YEAH!
Q 104.3 FM Web site
"God's Eyes" in local rotation
on Brookdale NJ public radio station
WBJB 90.5 "The NIGHT"
Situated on the campus of Brookdale Community College, 90.5 The NIGHT serves central New Jersey and is considered one of the most influential public radio stations
in the country. You can listen to 90.5 The NIGHT live at
90.5 The NIGHT Web site
November 24, 2007 update::
The New York Post will be giving away a free mp3
of the Wild Deer song Grass, from their debut cd Live Free
Download it for free at The New York Post Web site
September 24 update:
Lyrics to a new song Flesh and Blood added to lyrics section.
New photos added to the Photos section. Acoustic demo of My Note to Rose
added to mp3s section.
May 3 update:
Lyrics to a new song My Note to Rose added to lyrics section.
Might be my best song ever.
Also posted revised lyrics to Saturday in New York,
added the "Maker's at Millady's, Chimay at the Room" stanza
in honor of my great friends Jason Piggot and Craig Weiss
April 12 update:
So many deaths lately. One of my major thinking and writing influences,
novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., passed away yesterday. I found his book Welcome to the Monkey House on top of a pile of trash my freshman year at Hofstra University (still have that very copy, too). I read it and never saw the world the same again. Before him I thought novels were only dour and serious, I had no idea they could be fun and crazy and outrageous
but still make sense somehow.
Here's a little tidbit for you: the painting on the cover of my first group Oral Groove's debut CD "June," released in 1993 or so, was attributed to Rabo Karabekian, who was actually the central character in Vonnegut's later years masterpiece Bluebeard (the painting was in fact done by
Joe Mannix in a drunken fit of Pollack expressionism; the cover photo of said painting was taken by none other than my old friend James Patrick Cooper).
Norman Mailer hailed Vonnegut as "a marvelous writer with a style that remained undeniably and imperturbably his own. He was our own Mark Twain." Gore Vidal said "He's the closest thing we had to Voltaire." Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times literary magazine, said "He was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important."
The New York Post, in an editorial, hailed Vonnegut as "a counterculture icon, a rebel social critic, a cheerful observer of the absurd—but, perhaps foremost, an iconoclast." The New York Times editorial called Vonnegut "the indispensable footnote to everything everyone is trying to teach you, the footnote that pulls the rug out from under the established truths being so firmly avowed in the body of the text. He says not only what no one is saying, but also what you know is forbidden to say. In his world, decency is likelier to be rooted in skepticism than it is in the ardor of faith.
"Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?"
I hold Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in the same regard as Joe Strummer, Mick Jones,
and Dee Dee Ramone: a simple genius, and a man of the people. Vonnegut blew my mind open as a young man, the simple genius of it all. Anyone might have come up with it,
but only he did it. I still enjoy reading him today.
If you haven't read Vonnegut, I would recommend
the essential modern classic Slaughterhouse Five,
my Vonnegut favorite, the highly underrated Bluebeard,
his collection of short stories Welcome to the Monkey House,
the brilliant Cat's Cradle, Fates Worse Than Death, Hocus Pocus,
and his last book, A Man Without a Country.
To close, here is a appropos quote, pointed out to me by my great friend Janine Hansen,
found on page 66 of A Man Without a Country:
"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
April 5 update:
My high school and the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn community took another blow on March 24, 2007 when my junior varsity football coachBrother Neri Fulton, O.S.F. passed away. Brother Neri was a great guy, strict but loving, and he taught us a lot of life skills at an early and impressionable age: hard work, discipline, forgiveness, sacrifice, in a word: teamwork.
They don't make people like Brother Neri anymore, a real unsung hero. King of the worker bees. You can read a great article about him in Newsday, "Franciscan Brother Dies in Crash".
Thank you for taking a moment to reflect on his remarkable life of serving God and man.
March 24 update:
Lyrics to a new song, Don't Wanna Be Lonely Anymore,
added to the lyrics section.
January 8 update:
I wanted to write a short note about Brother Donan Conrad, O.S.F, who was my high school French teacher. Brother Donan passed away on December 26, 2006. He was a huge, huge infuence on me at a formative and impressionable time in life. He loved life and passed it on to whomever he met. The words to the song "God's Eyes" could not have been possible without Brother Donan's influence; I'm pharaphrasing lots of coversations I had with him when I was a teenager, but whenever I asked him a question about life (and he was the kind of guy that you could feel comfortable asking questions about life), he would say "it's all about love, so how are you going to express love in this situation?" He would put the question back to me in terms of the concept of Love, and then just as quickly he would move on and change the subject, so as not to be preaching. Subversive ideas like that can get into your subconsious if you're not careful.
You can see a picture of him on the school's Web site: Brother Donan photo
and read his obituary in Newsday here
Aso, here's a great article about Brother Donan and Brother Shane,
who joined the school staff and became principal after I graduated:
"Two Hearts of St. Anthony's Die"
If ever there was a servant of God, it was Brother Donan. He was a beautiful and brilliant human being, a lion amongst men. I am just one of a million people whose lives he touched, and through whom his philosophy of life and love will live on and grow.
Thanks for taking a moment to reflect on his amazing life.
More great movie news:
Please check out the new movie Snow Blind, a snowboarding documentary by
Red Sky Pictures. My new group The Wild Deer have a song from our forthcoming cd "Live Free" in the movie (along with The Donnas, The Prodigy, Orbital, and GZA from Wu Tang Clan).
The song is called "Danny Felter" and you can hear it at www.myspace.com/wilddeernyc
Check out the Snow Blind web sites
www.snowblindthemovie.com
and www.myspace.com/snowblindmovie
December 10 update:
• Lyrics to a new song, Poor Me, posted to the Lyrics section
September 14 update:
Some great news: Brookdale NJ public radio station WBJB 90.5 The NIGHT is playing the song "God's Eyes" from the forthcoming cd starting
the week of September 16 2006. 90.5 The NIGHT, located on the campus of
Brookdale Community College, serves central New Jersey and is considered
one of the most influential public radio stations in the country.
You can listen live to 90.5 The NIGHT online at www.wbjb.org/listen/
Also, 90.5 The NIGHT has added us to their local music links page, along with friends The Contes, Goodbye Girl Friday, The Grip Weeds, The Milwaukees, and the Wrens:
www.wbjb.org/local-listings
August 1 update:
• My first group, Oral Groove, has a song placed in the movie "How to Eat Fried Worms" by New Line Cinema. The song is Human Hands from our 3rd CD Collisionville. The movie hits theaters on Friday August 25 2006. See the movie trailer here: www.friedwormsmovie.com
check out Ed on myspace:
Good songwriting news!
4 songs entered in the 2005 International Songwriting Competition have been chosen out of almost 15, 000 to advance to the 2nd round of the judging. The songs are:
“Your Way” in the Rock Category
“Danny Felter” in the Rock Category
“Grass” in the Pop Category
“Like Dragonflies” in the Lyrics Only Category
This just in: Ed will be singing the National Anthem
before Hofstra University's Homecoming Football game
1pm September 20, 2008
NEW GIG
Friday July 18, 2008, 8:30pm
with Joe Kaufman on guitar
and singer Nick Giordano
@ GOOGIE'S above the Living Room
154 Ludlow St. (between Stanton and Rivington)
NY, NY 10012
NO COVER CHARGE
Googie's Web site
Click here to see Ed profiled
for the Travel Channel
Click here to hear new acoustic demos
This just in: Ed will be singing the National Anthem
before Hofstra University's Homecoming Football game
1pm September 20, 2008
NEW GIG
Friday July 18, 2008, 8:30pm
with Joe Kaufman on guitar
and singer Nick Giordano
@ GOOGIE'S above the Living Room
154 Ludlow St. (between Stanton and Rivington)
NY, NY 10012
NO COVER CHARGE
Googie's Web site
Click here to see Ed profiled
for the Travel Channel
Click here to hear new acoustic demos
This just in: Ed will be singing the National Anthem
before Hofstra University's Homecoming Football game
1pm September 20, 2008
NEW GIG
Friday July 18, 2008, 8:30pm
with Joe Kaufman on guitar
and singer Nick Giordano
@ GOOGIE'S above the Living Room
154 Ludlow St. (between Stanton and Rivington)
NY, NY 10012
NO COVER CHARGE
Googie's Web site
Click here to see Ed profiled
for the Travel Channel
Click here to hear new acoustic demos
This just in: Ed will be singing the National Anthem
before Hofstra University's Homecoming Football game
1pm September 20, 2008
NEW GIG
Friday July 18, 2008, 8:30pm
with Joe Kaufman on guitar
and singer Nick Giordano
@ GOOGIE'S above the Living Room
154 Ludlow St. (between Stanton and Rivington)
NY, NY 10012
NO COVER CHARGE
Googie's Web site
Click here to see Ed profiled
for the Travel Channel
Click here to hear new acoustic demos
This just in: Ed will be singing the National Anthem
before Hofstra University's Homecoming Football game
1pm September 20, 2008
NEW GIG
Friday July 18, 2008, 8:30pm
with Joe Kaufman on guitar
and singer Nick Giordano
@ GOOGIE'S above the Living Room
154 Ludlow St. (between Stanton and Rivington)
NY, NY 10012
NO COVER CHARGE
Googie's Web site
Click here to see Ed profiled
for the Travel Channel
Click here to hear new acoustic demos
Super Bowl Sunday 2008
L-R: niece Emily, my pops, nephew James, my sis, me, niece Elizabeth
LET'S GO NEW YORK GIANTS
SUPER BOWL XXLI
Fingerlings bleed Giants blue
and we're comin' for you Smith, Duprez, cousin Keith,
Saint Martin, big Jimmy, and Larry the Wooden Indian
Ed's band The Wild Deer in
The New York Post's
"BEST SONGS OF 2007"
The New York Post chose River of Soul, from the Wild Deer debut cd Live Free as one of the
"207 Best Songs to Download From 2007"
They wrote:
"These NYC rockers turn one-part Stax Records, one-part Paul Weller/The Jam, into one hard-grooving strut."
See the complete list:
Super Bowl Sunday 2008
L-R: niece Emily, my pops, nephew James, my sis, me, niece Elizabeth
LET'S GO NEW YORK GIANTS
SUPER BOWL XXLI
Fingerlings bleed Giants blue
and we're comin' for you Smith, Duprez, cousin Keith,
Saint Martin, big Jimmy, and Larry the Wooden Indian
Ed's band The Wild Deer in
The New York Post's
"BEST SONGS OF 2007"
The New York Post chose River of Soul, from the Wild Deer debut cd Live Free as one of the"207 Best Songs to Download From 2007"
They wrote:
"These NYC rockers turn one-part Stax Records, one-part Paul Weller/The Jam, into one hard-grooving strut."
See the complete list:
Click here to join the mailing list
The Wild Deer cd Live Free:
"An Awesome Expression of Pure Rock"
"The Wild Deer capture the essence of what pure Rock and Roll is about. Great depth and lyrics to this awesome first album. Its amazing this band hasn't been discovered yet. EVERY song on this CD is awesome. Each song grows on you the more you listen to it. Not to be missed are the backing vocals and some great guitar riffs and solos. A MUST!!!!
—itunes review
THE WILD DEER: Live Free
The Wild Deer are a new band of old souls with an in-your-face honest, hardworking rock & roll sound, reverberating with the emotion and passion of the Beatles, the Clash, Paul Weller, and the Rolling Stones.
Tuesday May 30 2007- Check out Ed in today's New York Daily News "Rush and Molloy" gossip pages (it's on page 23 of the paper).
"Singer-songwriter Ed Fingerling got an instant payback from the karma credit bureau when his band, the Wild Deer, played for the Marines for Fleet Week in Times Square. Director Charles Evered, who was shooting scenes with actor Ethan Peck (grandson of Gregory) nearby, was entranced by the music and decided to include it in his movie, Adopt a Sailor."
Read it online here.
THE WILD DEER: Live Free
The Wild Deer are a new band of old souls with an in-your-face honest, hardworking rock & roll sound, reverberating with the emotion and passion of the Beatles, the Clash, Paul Weller, and the Rolling Stones.
|
Tuesday May 30 2007- Check out Ed in today's New York Daily News "Rush and Molloy" gossip pages (it's on page 23 of the paper).
"Singer-songwriter Ed Fingerling got an instant payback from the karma credit bureau when his band, the Wild Deer, played for the Marines for Fleet Week in Times Square. Director Charles Evered, who was shooting scenes with actor Ethan Peck (grandson of Gregory) nearby, was entranced by the music and decided to include it in his movie, Adopt a Sailor."
Read it online here.
Click here to see Ed performing the song "Danny Felter" on You Tube
New songs from Live Free
posted on our myspace
for your myspace downloading pleasure :
The Wild Deer Web site is up: www.thewilddeer.com
"God's Eyes" played on Q 104.3 FM in NYC
on Jonathan Clarke's influential "Out of the Box" program on Sunday January 28, 2007, along with the Clash's "Train in Vain"...while Clash bassist
Paul Simonon and Blur/Gorillaz singer/songwriter Damon Albarn were in the studio to promote their new group The Good, The Bad, and The Queen. YEAH!
Q 104.3 FM Web site
"God's Eyes" in local rotation
on Brookdale NJ public radio station
WBJB 90.5 "The NIGHT"
Situated on the campus of Brookdale Community College, 90.5 The NIGHT serves central New Jersey and is considered one of the most influential public radio stations
in the country. You can listen to 90.5 The NIGHT live at
90.5 The NIGHT Web site
Click here to see Ed performing the song "Danny Felter" on You Tube
Click here to see Ed performing the song "Danny Felter" on You Tube
New songs from Live Free
posted on our myspace
for your myspace downloading pleasure :
The Wild Deer Web site is up: www.thewilddeer.com
on Jonathan Clarke's influential "Out of the Box" program on Sunday January 28, 2007, along with the Clash's "Train in Vain"...while Clash bassist
Paul Simonon and Blur/Gorillaz singer/songwriter Damon Albarn were in the studio to promote their new group The Good, The Bad, and The Queen. YEAH!
Q 104.3 FM Web site
on Brookdale NJ public radio station
WBJB 90.5 "The NIGHT"
Situated on the campus of Brookdale Community College, 90.5 The NIGHT serves central New Jersey and is considered one of the most influential public radio stations
in the country. You can listen to 90.5 The NIGHT live at
90.5 The NIGHT Web site
November 24, 2007 update::
The New York Post will be giving away a free mp3
of the Wild Deer song Grass, from their debut cd Live Free
Download it for free at The New York Post Web site
November 24, 2007 update::
The New York Post will be giving away a free mp3
of the Wild Deer song Grass, from their debut cd Live Free
Download it for free at The New York Post Web site
November 24, 2007 update::
The New York Post will be giving away a free mp3
of the Wild Deer song Grass, from their debut cd Live Free
Download it for free at The New York Post Web site
November 24, 2007 update::
The New York Post will be giving away a free mp3
of the Wild Deer song Grass, from their debut cd Live Free
Download it for free at The New York Post Web site
September 24 update:
Lyrics to a new song Flesh and Blood added to lyrics section.
New photos added to the Photos section. Acoustic demo of My Note to Rose
added to mp3s section.
May 3 update:
Lyrics to a new song My Note to Rose added to lyrics section.
Might be my best song ever.
Also posted revised lyrics to Saturday in New York,
added the "Maker's at Millady's, Chimay at the Room" stanza
in honor of my great friends Jason Piggot and Craig Weiss
April 12 update:
So many deaths lately. One of my major thinking and writing influences,
novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., passed away yesterday. I found his book Welcome to the Monkey House on top of a pile of trash my freshman year at Hofstra University (still have that very copy, too). I read it and never saw the world the same again. Before him I thought novels were only dour and serious, I had no idea they could be fun and crazy and outrageous
but still make sense somehow.
Here's a little tidbit for you: the painting on the cover of my first group Oral Groove's debut CD "June," released in 1993 or so, was attributed to Rabo Karabekian, who was actually the central character in Vonnegut's later years masterpiece Bluebeard (the painting was in fact done by
Joe Mannix in a drunken fit of Pollack expressionism; the cover photo of said painting was taken by none other than my old friend James Patrick Cooper).
Norman Mailer hailed Vonnegut as "a marvelous writer with a style that remained undeniably and imperturbably his own. He was our own Mark Twain." Gore Vidal said "He's the closest thing we had to Voltaire." Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times literary magazine, said "He was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important."
The New York Post, in an editorial, hailed Vonnegut as "a counterculture icon, a rebel social critic, a cheerful observer of the absurd—but, perhaps foremost, an iconoclast." The New York Times editorial called Vonnegut "the indispensable footnote to everything everyone is trying to teach you, the footnote that pulls the rug out from under the established truths being so firmly avowed in the body of the text. He says not only what no one is saying, but also what you know is forbidden to say. In his world, decency is likelier to be rooted in skepticism than it is in the ardor of faith.
"Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?"
I hold Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in the same regard as Joe Strummer, Mick Jones,
and Dee Dee Ramone: a simple genius, and a man of the people. Vonnegut blew my mind open as a young man, the simple genius of it all. Anyone might have come up with it,
but only he did it. I still enjoy reading him today.
If you haven't read Vonnegut, I would recommend
the essential modern classic Slaughterhouse Five,
my Vonnegut favorite, the highly underrated Bluebeard,
his collection of short stories Welcome to the Monkey House,
the brilliant Cat's Cradle, Fates Worse Than Death, Hocus Pocus,
and his last book, A Man Without a Country.
To close, here is a appropos quote, pointed out to me by my great friend Janine Hansen,
found on page 66 of A Man Without a Country:
"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
April 5 update:
My high school and the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn community took another blow on March 24, 2007 when my junior varsity football coachBrother Neri Fulton, O.S.F. passed away. Brother Neri was a great guy, strict but loving, and he taught us a lot of life skills at an early and impressionable age: hard work, discipline, forgiveness, sacrifice, in a word: teamwork.
They don't make people like Brother Neri anymore, a real unsung hero. King of the worker bees. You can read a great article about him in Newsday, "Franciscan Brother Dies in Crash".
Thank you for taking a moment to reflect on his remarkable life of serving God and man.
March 24 update:
Lyrics to a new song, Don't Wanna Be Lonely Anymore,
added to the lyrics section.
January 8 update:
I wanted to write a short note about Brother Donan Conrad, O.S.F, who was my high school French teacher. Brother Donan passed away on December 26, 2006. He was a huge, huge infuence on me at a formative and impressionable time in life. He loved life and passed it on to whomever he met. The words to the song "God's Eyes" could not have been possible without Brother Donan's influence; I'm pharaphrasing lots of coversations I had with him when I was a teenager, but whenever I asked him a question about life (and he was the kind of guy that you could feel comfortable asking questions about life), he would say "it's all about love, so how are you going to express love in this situation?" He would put the question back to me in terms of the concept of Love, and then just as quickly he would move on and change the subject, so as not to be preaching. Subversive ideas like that can get into your subconsious if you're not careful.
You can see a picture of him on the school's Web site: Brother Donan photo
and read his obituary in Newsday here
Aso, here's a great article about Brother Donan and Brother Shane,
who joined the school staff and became principal after I graduated:
"Two Hearts of St. Anthony's Die"
If ever there was a servant of God, it was Brother Donan. He was a beautiful and brilliant human being, a lion amongst men. I am just one of a million people whose lives he touched, and through whom his philosophy of life and love will live on and grow.
Thanks for taking a moment to reflect on his amazing life.
More great movie news:
Please check out the new movie Snow Blind, a snowboarding documentary by
Red Sky Pictures. My new group The Wild Deer have a song from our forthcoming cd "Live Free" in the movie (along with The Donnas, The Prodigy, Orbital, and GZA from Wu Tang Clan).
The song is called "Danny Felter" and you can hear it at www.myspace.com/wilddeernyc
Check out the Snow Blind web sites
www.snowblindthemovie.com
and www.myspace.com/snowblindmovie
December 10 update:
• Lyrics to a new song, Poor Me, posted to the Lyrics section
September 14 update:
Some great news: Brookdale NJ public radio station WBJB 90.5 The NIGHT is playing the song "God's Eyes" from the forthcoming cd starting
the week of September 16 2006. 90.5 The NIGHT, located on the campus of
Brookdale Community College, serves central New Jersey and is considered
one of the most influential public radio stations in the country.
You can listen live to 90.5 The NIGHT online at www.wbjb.org/listen/
Also, 90.5 The NIGHT has added us to their local music links page, along with friends The Contes, Goodbye Girl Friday, The Grip Weeds, The Milwaukees, and the Wrens:
www.wbjb.org/local-listings
August 1 update:
• My first group, Oral Groove, has a song placed in the movie "How to Eat Fried Worms" by New Line Cinema. The song is Human Hands from our 3rd CD Collisionville. The movie hits theaters on Friday August 25 2006. See the movie trailer here: www.friedwormsmovie.com
check out Ed on myspace:
Good songwriting news!
4 songs entered in the 2005 International Songwriting Competition have been chosen out of almost 15, 000 to advance to the 2nd round of the judging. The songs are:
“Your Way” in the Rock Category
“Danny Felter” in the Rock Category
“Grass” in the Pop Category
“Like Dragonflies” in the Lyrics Only Category
September 24 update:
Lyrics to a new song Flesh and Blood added to lyrics section.
New photos added to the Photos section. Acoustic demo of My Note to Rose
added to mp3s section.
September 24 update:
Lyrics to a new song Flesh and Blood added to lyrics section.
New photos added to the Photos section. Acoustic demo of My Note to Rose
added to mp3s section.
May 3 update:
Lyrics to a new song My Note to Rose added to lyrics section.
Might be my best song ever.
Also posted revised lyrics to Saturday in New York,
added the "Maker's at Millady's, Chimay at the Room" stanza
in honor of my great friends Jason Piggot and Craig Weiss
Lyrics to a new song My Note to Rose added to lyrics section.
Might be my best song ever.
Also posted revised lyrics to Saturday in New York,
added the "Maker's at Millady's, Chimay at the Room" stanza
in honor of my great friends Jason Piggot and Craig Weiss
April 12 update:
So many deaths lately. One of my major thinking and writing influences,
novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., passed away yesterday. I found his book Welcome to the Monkey House on top of a pile of trash my freshman year at Hofstra University (still have that very copy, too). I read it and never saw the world the same again. Before him I thought novels were only dour and serious, I had no idea they could be fun and crazy and outrageous
but still make sense somehow.
Here's a little tidbit for you: the painting on the cover of my first group Oral Groove's debut CD "June," released in 1993 or so, was attributed to Rabo Karabekian, who was actually the central character in Vonnegut's later years masterpiece Bluebeard (the painting was in fact done by
Joe Mannix in a drunken fit of Pollack expressionism; the cover photo of said painting was taken by none other than my old friend James Patrick Cooper).
Norman Mailer hailed Vonnegut as "a marvelous writer with a style that remained undeniably and imperturbably his own. He was our own Mark Twain." Gore Vidal said "He's the closest thing we had to Voltaire." Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times literary magazine, said "He was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important."
The New York Post, in an editorial, hailed Vonnegut as "a counterculture icon, a rebel social critic, a cheerful observer of the absurd—but, perhaps foremost, an iconoclast." The New York Times editorial called Vonnegut "the indispensable footnote to everything everyone is trying to teach you, the footnote that pulls the rug out from under the established truths being so firmly avowed in the body of the text. He says not only what no one is saying, but also what you know is forbidden to say. In his world, decency is likelier to be rooted in skepticism than it is in the ardor of faith.
"Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?"
I hold Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in the same regard as Joe Strummer, Mick Jones,
and Dee Dee Ramone: a simple genius, and a man of the people. Vonnegut blew my mind open as a young man, the simple genius of it all. Anyone might have come up with it,
but only he did it. I still enjoy reading him today.
If you haven't read Vonnegut, I would recommend
the essential modern classic Slaughterhouse Five,
my Vonnegut favorite, the highly underrated Bluebeard,
his collection of short stories Welcome to the Monkey House,
the brilliant Cat's Cradle, Fates Worse Than Death, Hocus Pocus,
and his last book, A Man Without a Country.
To close, here is a appropos quote, pointed out to me by my great friend Janine Hansen,
found on page 66 of A Man Without a Country:
"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
April 12 update:
So many deaths lately. One of my major thinking and writing influences,
novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., passed away yesterday. I found his book Welcome to the Monkey House on top of a pile of trash my freshman year at Hofstra University (still have that very copy, too). I read it and never saw the world the same again. Before him I thought novels were only dour and serious, I had no idea they could be fun and crazy and outrageous
but still make sense somehow.
Here's a little tidbit for you: the painting on the cover of my first group Oral Groove's debut CD "June," released in 1993 or so, was attributed to Rabo Karabekian, who was actually the central character in Vonnegut's later years masterpiece Bluebeard (the painting was in fact done by
Joe Mannix in a drunken fit of Pollack expressionism; the cover photo of said painting was taken by none other than my old friend James Patrick Cooper).
Norman Mailer hailed Vonnegut as "a marvelous writer with a style that remained undeniably and imperturbably his own. He was our own Mark Twain." Gore Vidal said "He's the closest thing we had to Voltaire." Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times literary magazine, said "He was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important."
The New York Post, in an editorial, hailed Vonnegut as "a counterculture icon, a rebel social critic, a cheerful observer of the absurd—but, perhaps foremost, an iconoclast." The New York Times editorial called Vonnegut "the indispensable footnote to everything everyone is trying to teach you, the footnote that pulls the rug out from under the established truths being so firmly avowed in the body of the text. He says not only what no one is saying, but also what you know is forbidden to say. In his world, decency is likelier to be rooted in skepticism than it is in the ardor of faith.
"Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?"
I hold Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in the same regard as Joe Strummer, Mick Jones,
and Dee Dee Ramone: a simple genius, and a man of the people. Vonnegut blew my mind open as a young man, the simple genius of it all. Anyone might have come up with it,
but only he did it. I still enjoy reading him today.
If you haven't read Vonnegut, I would recommend
the essential modern classic Slaughterhouse Five,
my Vonnegut favorite, the highly underrated Bluebeard,
his collection of short stories Welcome to the Monkey House,
the brilliant Cat's Cradle, Fates Worse Than Death, Hocus Pocus,
and his last book, A Man Without a Country.
To close, here is a appropos quote, pointed out to me by my great friend Janine Hansen,
found on page 66 of A Man Without a Country:
"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
April 5 update:
My high school and the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn community took another blow on March 24, 2007 when my junior varsity football coachBrother Neri Fulton, O.S.F. passed away. Brother Neri was a great guy, strict but loving, and he taught us a lot of life skills at an early and impressionable age: hard work, discipline, forgiveness, sacrifice, in a word: teamwork.
They don't make people like Brother Neri anymore, a real unsung hero. King of the worker bees. You can read a great article about him in Newsday, "Franciscan Brother Dies in Crash".
Thank you for taking a moment to reflect on his remarkable life of serving God and man.
March 24 update:
Lyrics to a new song, Don't Wanna Be Lonely Anymore,
added to the lyrics section.
January 8 update:
I wanted to write a short note about Brother Donan Conrad, O.S.F, who was my high school French teacher. Brother Donan passed away on December 26, 2006. He was a huge, huge infuence on me at a formative and impressionable time in life. He loved life and passed it on to whomever he met. The words to the song "God's Eyes" could not have been possible without Brother Donan's influence; I'm pharaphrasing lots of coversations I had with him when I was a teenager, but whenever I asked him a question about life (and he was the kind of guy that you could feel comfortable asking questions about life), he would say "it's all about love, so how are you going to express love in this situation?" He would put the question back to me in terms of the concept of Love, and then just as quickly he would move on and change the subject, so as not to be preaching. Subversive ideas like that can get into your subconsious if you're not careful.
You can see a picture of him on the school's Web site: Brother Donan photo
and read his obituary in Newsday here
Aso, here's a great article about Brother Donan and Brother Shane,
who joined the school staff and became principal after I graduated:
"Two Hearts of St. Anthony's Die"
If ever there was a servant of God, it was Brother Donan. He was a beautiful and brilliant human being, a lion amongst men. I am just one of a million people whose lives he touched, and through whom his philosophy of life and love will live on and grow.
Thanks for taking a moment to reflect on his amazing life.
More great movie news:
Please check out the new movie Snow Blind, a snowboarding documentary by
Red Sky Pictures. My new group The Wild Deer have a song from our forthcoming cd "Live Free" in the movie (along with The Donnas, The Prodigy, Orbital, and GZA from Wu Tang Clan).
The song is called "Danny Felter" and you can hear it at www.myspace.com/wilddeernyc
Check out the Snow Blind web sites
www.snowblindthemovie.com
and www.myspace.com/snowblindmovie
December 10 update:
• Lyrics to a new song, Poor Me, posted to the Lyrics section
September 14 update:
Some great news: Brookdale NJ public radio station WBJB 90.5 The NIGHT is playing the song "God's Eyes" from the forthcoming cd starting
the week of September 16 2006. 90.5 The NIGHT, located on the campus of
Brookdale Community College, serves central New Jersey and is considered
one of the most influential public radio stations in the country.
You can listen live to 90.5 The NIGHT online at www.wbjb.org/listen/
Also, 90.5 The NIGHT has added us to their local music links page, along with friends The Contes, Goodbye Girl Friday, The Grip Weeds, The Milwaukees, and the Wrens:
www.wbjb.org/local-listings
August 1 update:
• My first group, Oral Groove, has a song placed in the movie "How to Eat Fried Worms" by New Line Cinema. The song is Human Hands from our 3rd CD Collisionville. The movie hits theaters on Friday August 25 2006. See the movie trailer here: www.friedwormsmovie.com
check out Ed on myspace:
Good songwriting news!
4 songs entered in the 2005 International Songwriting Competition have been chosen out of almost 15, 000 to advance to the 2nd round of the judging. The songs are:
“Your Way” in the Rock Category
“Danny Felter” in the Rock Category
“Grass” in the Pop Category
“Like Dragonflies” in the Lyrics Only Category
"British rock, with an American tang, naturally. We loved it."
__________________________-MOJO Magazine (U.K.)
"Straight-up rock, done quite well, in fact."
_______________-Time Out New York
______________________________
All images and songs copyright© 2006 EdFingerling, except where noted