Allee Willis Blog » Earth Wind & Fire

13Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Jukebox Tip Tray and My First Time Singing On Stage In Mannnnny Years…..

13Jun 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Jukebox Tip Tray and My First Time Singing On Stage In Mannnnny Years…..

Mere days after my first and only album, Childstar, was released on Epic Records in 1974, I walked on stage in front of 10,000 people to open in Boston for folksinger David Bromberg.

The only other time I had been on stage before was when I played a little fur tree in a school play when I was 8. Now here I was singing soul music, the first 10 songs I ever wrote, plus a Mary Wells medley and Brenton Woods’s “Oogum Boogum”. My band, the singers of whom would go on to become Chic, were dressed as sequined vegetables and I was in a satin suit that I’d autographed from head to toe. This is a really crappy photo of part of the costumes on mannequins but it’s all I’ve got;

Me and The Angle Babies aren’t in costume here but you can get a pretty good idea that between us and our costumes we weren’t what the folksinging crowd came to see.

I didn’t have a very good time on stage. I never could remember my lyrics and I always spent more time designing the sets and costumes than I did rehearsing or getting comfortable being on stage. After five performances on the East Coast we were booked into a lunchroom at Ohio State, the only way the college could also get Joni Mitchell to play in the main auditorium because we had the same agent. Our only audience were three people at a bridge table eating hot dogs and a psychology class being conducted in the back of the room, with the professor telling us to lower our volume after every song. I walked offstage after six songs and made the decision to just be a songwriter, where at least if I was being tortured it was in the comfort of my own room.

Through the years I’ve gotten much more comfortable performing – in my own unique way of doing so which doesn’t include singing live – mostly because I’m a big party thrower and walk around on mic the whole time.

Almost every conversation I have comes through the speakers and I’m literally directing and producing the party as I go. Throw in the thrift shop auctions and stupid party games that I lead the guests through and I’ve gotten very relaxed holding that cold metal thing in my hands.

But I still never have gotten it together to sing anywhere other than in the studio.

So the fact that in mere hours I will be up on the stage for the first time in almost four decades and I’m not sitting here throwing up is a MASSIVE ACHIEVEMENT! Me and five other well oiled songwriters will be singing our greatest hits and talking about how they were written. It’s just with a keyboard – Chris Price, who I’ve been writing and recording a song with and shooting a video all on iPhones, is accompanying me – but I’m singing and remembering lyrics and lines nonetheless.

And if I can get through the evening not thinking about soul singers dressed as vegetables, psychology professors and hot dogs I will have made a big breakthrough.

I’ll be performing “September“, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, and “I’ll Be There for You (theme from Friends)“. At least radio has regaled me with these songs thousands of times over the years so I’m hoping that for once I can remember my own lyrics and be happy I’m up on stage.

Wish me luck!

09May 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 14, THE VIDEO

09May 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 14, THE VIDEO

As I’ve been blabbing about for weeks now, I had the extreme pleasure of conducting my high school marching band playing a medley of some of my greatest hits in the lobby of the theater I grew up in in Detroit with the cast of the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple, singing along. I meant to post video of our performance as soon as I got home but to my horror, one of the three cameramen only shot the students from the back and the other both forgot to turn his camera on for parts of songs and babbled over the footage like he was the subject of a documentary. So it took quite a lot of editing to get something where you could even begin to see the warm, wonderful and uplifting-higher-than-the-sky feeling that permeated the theater that day.

The performance was a benfit to buy new marching band uniforms for the Mumford band. The last time they got new uniforms was in 1984 when Jerry Bruckheimer, also a Mumford grad, bought them so they could play at the premiere of Beverly Hills Cop in Detroit. I got a Grammy for Beverly Hills Cop so this entire extravaganza was tied up in one fantastically organic bow!

Also organic was my shoes and socks combo in the Mumford school colors.

I had an excellent time wearing my hat, color coordinated to The Color Purple, the matinee of which started immediately after the closing notes of the marching band. Though my hat ecstacy only lasted a couple of bars. Too wobbly on my head.

If the music was wobbly at all it’s only the charm of a high school band and a songwriter who’s never learned how to read, notate or play music despite her songs selling more than 50 million records.

That’s the innocence of youth. I hope you enjoy our youth as much as me and the kids did. It was a VERY special experience indeed.

03May 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 12, My Speech

03May 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 12, My Speech

On April 7 I was the closing keynote speaker at the Rust Belt To Arts Belt III conference in Detroit. Every year the conference takes place in a different city that’s faced with the task of reinventing itself in the ongoing transition from the Industrial Age into the Digital Age and beyond. Loving Detroit and having been in the heat of designing communities since the dawn of the commercial Internet in 1991, I wax on about all this in my speech.

I didn’t do any kind of visual presentation so showing a video of me moving my mouth for a half an hour isn’t going to cut the cake. It would be far more interesting to watch me moving my mouth cutting another foodstuff:

But seeing as I have no hot dog footage, here’s a link to the speech. I’m very proud of it. And mean every word I say.

27Apr 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 9, The City By Car

27Apr 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 9, The City By Car

Wednesday, April 6, had tremendous potential. (L-R) Mark Blackwell and Laura Grover, both of whom worked on putting the whole Detroit extravaganza together with me, and I were being driven around the city by Michael Poris, one of the architects leading the charge to rebuild Detroit. The Majestic Theater is one of his projects.

Here’s a detail of The Majestic’s majesty:

Unfortunately, the skies weeped steadily throughout the day, making decent photos next to impossible unless one was out to amplify the decay of the city, in which case the incessant downpour added just enough teardrops to slam that sentiment home. Most of my shots look like this:

Which is a shame, as to miss the details of a combo Church and car wash is a waste of excellent kitsch:

Just about the only clear shots I got was when I got out of the car,…

…or some of my car-mates did,…

…or when the rain wasn’t spitting into the car, with the window rolled down. Thankfully it stopped for a few minutes when I snapped these murals at the Eastern Market:

Sometimes the gloominess of the skies enhanced the experience of what we were looking at.

Perfect for a place that’s a Home For Funerals as opposed to merely a Funeral Home. Then again, it’s right next door to the happiest place on earth, Motown.

Growing up, I spent many a Saturday afternoon planted on this front lawn, trying to catch a bass note or background vocal seeping through the walls.

I make a pilgrimage to the front lawn every time I go home. In the early 1980s I even got into the actual recording studio when The Detroit Free Press did a story on me growing up in Detroit and how, as a songwriter, I was influenced by Motown.

But, alas, fate was not as kind this time. Had I stashed the three video cameras and four still cams away I could have marched through the studio again. But I had no interest, especially on this trip, in having any significant moment of my life pass by without being digitally preserved. So the closest I got was the hallway as no filming was allowed.

The woman at the desk was really nice. She knew who I was as soon as I walked in as she had seen me on the news the morning before. But rules are rules. Even though I’ve collaborated with some of Motown’s greatest songwriters, like Lamont Dozier…

… and Ashford & Simpson, seen here with me and Maurice White, founder and lead singer of Earth Wind & Fire, and LaChanze, the Tony-winning actress who played Celie in the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple.

So we piled back in the car and were off to enjoy more of Detroit.

I would have enjoyed it more if the BBQ joint in front of that mural were still open:

Michael had been over to my place in LA about nine months earlier so I wasn’t worried about him showing us the usual tour suspects – The Detroit Institute Of Art, The Detroit Historical Society, The Spirit of Detroit, etc. All completely beautiful and historic but I wanted to see the spirit of the city as evidenced through how people express themselves via their homes, lawns and businesses. I’ve long believed that one’s immediate environment is a canvas for self expression. And places like this would be off the beaten track of any normal tour guide:

Talk about expressing yourself via your home…:

This is The Heidleberg Project, named for the street that artist Tyree Guyton took over 25 years ago and decorated houses, lawns and empty lots on two blocks of. SPECTACULARLY INSPIRING:

One of the great promises of Detroit is that artists can live cheaply and express themselves in novel ways not possible in other cities. Like Ice House Detroit, a 2010 project where two photographers took over an abandoned house, hosed it down til it was an ice cave and then photographed it melting, symbolizing the building up and subsequent melting away of the once great Detroit.

Detroit is full of such self expression:

Artists see the future first – their way is to dream and paint that picture for everyone else. Reinvention and constantly shifting one’s perspective to stay inspired is as vital for places as it is for people. There’s a great effort in Detroit to redesign the city the artists’ way. In fact, one of my reasons for being there this particular week was to be the closing keynote speaker on that very subject at the Rust Belt To Arts Belt conference happening the next day.

But back to the streets… Rain-soaked as this photo is, I hope you can see the use of industrial materials on the facade of this otherwise traditional brick building. Up close it looks like a bunch of sawed-in-half hot water heaters. I love stuff like this.

There are so many beautiful abandoned buildings, waiting for artists to see their beauty and reinvent their once greatness.

And it’s not like artists can’t afford to live in Detroit.

Thankfully, someone bought the old Michigan Central train station. From what I understand, there are plans to renovate.

Forgotten by time, vandalized by squatters and ravers, its internal beauty still shines through.

It was getting late so we headed back as I had to go over my speech about the rejuvenation of Detroit I was giving the next day. I was pretty sure I had it down but wanted to make sure there were no crucial mistakes or misspellings to trip me up. Sometimes even the most straight-ahead missives go awry. Like at this McDonalds, just a couple blocks from Vince’s, where we had dinner and which I’ll blog about tomorrow. I know they mean a 20 piece chicken McNugget dinner for $4.99 but if I’m to believe the sign it’s 20 P’s of cchcken uggets for four hundred ninety nine dollars.

Which makes it just slightly cheaper than some of the houses in Detroit. Calling all artists!!

13Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – If You’re Heading To SXSW….

13Mar 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – If You’re Heading To SXSW….

…come see me and my latest piece of technology, this 1960’s wrist transisitor radio, on the “Indie Success: Caching in on Collaboration” panel, Tuesday March 15, 11:00AM at the Hilton, Salon C, 500 East 4th Street. Here’s what me and my wrist accessory will be talking about:

“Since the web began we’ve been talking about artists having a career without a label and going directly to fans. We finally have examples of this working, so what does it look like?

SXSW Veteran Heather Gold sits down with successful collaborating indie artists including: Allee Willis (September, Boogie Wonderland, The Color Purple, Theme from Friends, over 50 million albums sold), Mary Jo Pehl (Mystery Science Theatre 3000, RIfftrax, NPR) and Kenyatta Cheese (Know Your Meme, Rocketboom). The Net links almost every form of artistic making, so it makes sense that we’re in an era of increasing collaboration and creation in many forms. We’ll find out how limitations and openness serve them in an era of “personal brands” We’ll find out how they deal with rights, friendship and creating the best space in which to collaborate. We’ll also dig into their collaborative process in making social experiences, music, video and comedy and find out how they’ve succeeded creatively and in every other way.”

Arriving in Austin tomorrow night. See you there on Tuesday. My biggest message: As much as it’s about technology, it’s about a charming personality…

.

(Photo with my Royal typewriter, bought with my allowance money when I was 13, by Jennie Warren)

22Feb 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Ghetto Fab Michael Jackson Sphinx Pendant and Storm Lee’s Birthday Soirée

22Feb 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Ghetto Fab Michael Jackson Sphinx Pendant and Storm Lee’s Birthday Soirée

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Sunday night I went to Storm Lee’s birthday party. He’s a great singer and killed it on The X Factor, the British version of Simon Cowell’s follow-up to American Idol, soon to debut here in the states. Storm and I have only rendezvoused a few times, once at his birthday party and then when he came over after we met at a party a few months ago. We got along famously from the second he walked in my place. First of all, he had on excellent kitsch bling, a bulbous brass Mickey Mouse ring.

When I admired bulbous Mickey, he immediately gave me this:

Anyone who walks into your house for the first time bearing gifts is pleasure enough. But when they hit it on the nose as severely as a sunglassed, gold grilled Michael-Jackson-as-the-Sphynx pendant you can only hope that their personality is as good as their taste in gifts as this could be the start of a wonderful friendship not to mention music collaboration. It’s an even better sign when you’re both wearing the same shoes, albeit different colors.

I believe in synchronicity. My life has always gone that way. I won’t be aware of anything and then something so pertinent to the immediate events in your life shows up all of a sudden, perfectly timed. That’s how it was with Storm and the Michael Jackson sphynx pendant.

The sphinx has always held special significance to me as I got my big music break with Earth, Wind & Fire, a group whose graphics and sets prominently feature Egyptian icons. Within hours of Storm gaving me the pendant, I went to a party for a soon-to-be-released documentary about the Fender Rhodes, the preeminent electric keyboard. I was in the documentary singing my first EWF hit, “September”, with Larry Dunn, the group’s original keyboard player who played the Rhodes on “September” and all my other EWF songs. The segment was filmed at my house a few months earlier. I had only seen Larry once since the early 80s and he had absolutely no idea that it was my house he was coming to to film the documentary. So the fact that I was seeing him once again on the very night that the MJ sphinx was bestowed upon me felt highly synchronistic to me. Here I am that night wearing it with Larry:

I remember not being happy with my choice of glasses. But Michael-as-sphnyx drew so much attention I didn’t have to worry about people focusing on my face.

So Sunday night it was only natural that I wear MJ sphynx to the person who gave it to me’s birthday party.

Also at the party celebrating Storm and admiring the sphinx were (L-R) International Chanteuse, Morganne, ASCAP’s Brendan Okent, and songwriters Robin Lerner and Ken Hirsch…

…and Jim Budman, not in the floral arrangement, who I came with and have known since I was a teenager in Detroit.

Did I mention that Michael Jackson-as-sphinx can also be worn as a pin?

I always appreciate when something is multifunctional.

I am multifunctional. And now Storm is multifunctional as both friend and music co-conspirator!

13Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – UW Marching Band Conductor and One Of The Best Days Of My Life-Part 2

13Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – UW Marching Band Conductor and One Of The Best Days Of My Life-Part 2

I LOVVVVED conducting! I hope that’s evident in this clip. I’m grateful I got the footage I did though I’d planned to have at least five times as much of it to edit from. But as the journey below illustrates, the path was a little more crooked than I’d anticipated though well worth every swing of the drumstick!

I’m a fanatic archivist. I’ve been a walking reality show since I got my first video camera in 1978, racking up over 40,000 terabytes on my server, most of which is video. At any given point I have at least three fairly recent models of whatever’s at the high end of the consumer line as well as a bunch of other cheaper backups. I also have three Flip cams and all of my digital still ones take video. So when I was going to conduct the marching band at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, this past Homecoming weekend, an incredible honor especially for someone who has no idea what all those dots on the musical staff mean, I took all my artillery with me. God only knows how much I paid for overweight luggage but I had at least nine cameras capable of taking video as well as three tripods, two extendable poles so the cameras could be elevated, 15 batteries, three lights and three mics. I prepared for every conceivable eventuality as there was no way I wasn’t going to fully capture what I knew was going to be one of the greatest experiences of my life.

I wanted to preserve a birds eye view of what I was seeing up on the platform as I conducted so I constructed a rig to hold one of my flip cameras around my neck so it could capture most of my arm movements as well as whatever musicians were in my line of sight.

But as soon as I finished conducting I realized that although I had turned the camera on I forgot to hit ‘record’. I stayed cool knowing all was not lost because I had four backups – 1) Mark Blackwell, who came with me from LA and was was never more than 20 feet away capturing all the sweaty details and whom I was directing throughout the performance.

2) Eddie Alshuler, who Mark and I were staying with and who was sitting directly across the field from where I was conducting on the 50 yard line, who could capture a front view of me and an excellent overview of the 300+ piece band. But as I blogged about yesterday, Mark’s footage snagged at a crucial point in the first song, “In The Stone”, where arm movements I’d practiced for two weeks to make the slowed down section at the entrance of the fade-I have no idea what that’s called in musical terms-ultra dramatic. Now Eddie’s footage consisted solely of his wife and my sorority sister, Muffin’s, crotch as the camera lay in her lap waiting to be turned on when, in fact, it was actually already in ‘record’, only to be snapped off the second I mounted the platform. Here’s me conducting from Eddie’s camera’s POV:

Once I left the conducting platform Eddie turned the camera off, which was actually on, so we got an excellent few bonus minutes of Muffin’s ass.

Alternative #3 was another one of my sorority sisters who shot the pregame tailgate performance where I also conducted. But she’s incredibly short so all of her footage featured a booming bass drum with me like a little ant flailing their arms above it.

Number 4 was the husband of another one of my sorority sisters who got some great shots of me but you only see the tops of the heads of a small portion of the band.

So as grateful as I am for all these people manning my cameras, I didn’t end up with enough footage I could edit together so you’d feel the impact or scope of what was going on. In previous days, the fact that both primary and backup systems failed would have killed me, but with age I’ve learned to roll with the punches. I really think that’s how my sense of kitsch became so well honed, appreciating when things went awry and figuring out a way to deal with them. How else would I ever be talking about Muffin’s body parts in a post that’s about my debut as a conductor? If all I wrote about was the wonderfulness of conducting this would probably be a very boring read to anyone other than a marching band freak.

As one final backup, I decided to go through footage from my rehearsal with the band the day before on the practice field. But the bulk of that was either shot from the back of my head as I tried to concentrate on memorizing the arrangement…

… or on documenting me as I tried to figure out what I was going to stand on to conduct. I’m not one to stand still so the thought of having to keep my feet in cement on a tiny platform ten feet in the air while I’m enduring several other distracting conditions was of major concern to me. 1) I don’t read music and don’t have particularly great memorization skills so the chances of looking like I am leading the band are questionable to begin with. 2) I’m performing in front of 82,000 people when the bulk of my stage experience has been as a little fur tree in my second grade play. 3) I’m sweating to death in the unexpected 84° weather and don’t really have the right clothes despite bringing everything I had with the school color, red, in it. 4) I will be bouncing around on a knee with a ripped meniscus that I’ve put off having an operation on and, 5) I’m waving around sticks with two bum wrists from decades of pounding on keyboards. So the issue of safety while conducting is real.

First I tried a smaller version of the ladder Mike Leckrone, the incredible bandleader/arranger who’s been at Wisconsin since I was there in the 60’s, usually stands on.

But the little platform you stand on was only a couple inches deeper than my big feet and I wasn’t eager to meet my death or crush one of the kids guarding me. So I passed on that and finally settled on something that would only involve a broken ankle or two if I fell.

In fact, I almost tipped over three times during the real deal in the stadium. You can see the first time at 1:02 in the video…

… and again at 1:29…

… and finally at 3:00 where I really thought I was going to kiss the dirt.

Thankfully I made it off alive, ankles, wrists and knee intact, and stayed in rhythm 98.3% of the time. I’ve been obsessed about being a conductor ever since.

Once I got back to LA and transferred the footage I realized my only option was to stick with what Mark shot on the field with me and abandon the idea of putting in different angles to make it more compelling or cover every time it got to an angle on my face or body that made me grimace.

I’m the one who always carries on about loving yourself just as you are so I’ve mentally committed to not spotting the flaws but, rather, to just seeing the spirit that gripped me at the moment. But then I see the video once it’s been uploaded to YouTube and the sync is unbearably off. Now this really drives me nuts because I know the sound and picture as the clip sits on my computer is completely in sync but now, because of YouTube’s ever-changing compression schemes, I’m going to look like an idiot. This then brings up all my issues about designing a social network in 1992 based on things like people’s home movies and becoming friends and collaborators with people all over the world but never getting it off the ground because I was too concerned about screwing copyright owners when someone used something they created without paying for it. I can’t even believe that this is coming up for me now! YouTube thrives because it doesn’t pay people like me royalties and now they’re messing with my conducting debut! I digress, but it ate up most of yesterday to finally get something uploaded that didn’t make it look like I was conducting a band in the next state.

So here’s what I’m left with: footage from one camera that has a blip in it right at the exact second of my one big rehearsed move that’s shot too close when I can’t move my feet, forcing the lower half of my body to function differently than it should when the top half is moving as it was, wishing I had starched my pants so they didn’t look like I had just pulled them out of a suitcase overstuffed with camera equipment, none of which functioned properly anyway. And the camera’s close enough that I can see a flinch of sadness when we hit the final bars of the final song, the theme from Friends.

When I was first told what songs of mine I’d be conducting I didn’t understand how the Friend’s theme made it there, especially over marching band favorites like “Boogie Wonderland” or “Neutron Dance” that were left out. But another blessing of this trip was the opportunity to conduct Mike Leckrone’s seriously incredible arrangement of it.

I’m standing up there on the podium thinking that in the context of everything that was happening, “I’ll Be there for You” was the grandest sounding song of all. So in addition to everything else I’m thankful for that occurred last weekend, a serious supreme joy was letting me appreciate my song in a way that so many people have told me through the years that they do. Sometimes it takes massive distance from something you do to appreciate why you did it in the first place.

Such is the life of an artist. Such is the joy of conducting a marching band playing your songs. Such is life.

12Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – UW Marching Band Conductor and One Of The Best Days Of My Life-Part 1

12Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – UW Marching Band Conductor and One Of The Best Days Of My Life-Part 1

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I just got back from spending three of the most fantastic days of my life. Seriously. As I’ve been blabbing about for weeks now, I had the great honor of conducting the 300+ musicians in the Marching Band at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, as they played my songs at the Homecoming football game which, btw, we won!

I was completely thrilled to be asked and took it very seriously, if for no other reason that I don’t read music and therefore knew I’d have absolutely no idea how to follow–let alone lead–the band as they played. I rehearsed every night by conducting the actual records as they were originally cut, a bunch of Earth, Wind & Fire and the theme to Friends, and then watched literally hundreds of marching bands playing the songs on YouTube, most versions of which were completely different from each other not to mention the original records. Ultimately I decided I would just have to feel the groove and move my custom-made-by-me Wisconsin red and white glitter drumsticks with bicycle handlebar grips spontaneously and instantaneously catch up with any tempo change or unexpected accents that may occur. Beyond anything, I knew I had to stay cool because I was doing it in front of 82,000 people and my choices were either to be nervous and uptight or hang loose and savor every incredible second knowing that this is something that doesn’t happen to everyone and would be a moment I would remember forever.

One of my biggest dilemmas was trying to figure out how to blog about this incredible adventure in a concise and meaningful way. I take my blog very seriously. I may write about crazy objects that I’ve collected forever but ultimately my feelings about the objects are all a key to myself.

I’ve long been aware that as an artist my primary canvas is myself. My songs, if I have any control of the lyrical content, are completely autobiographical. My art has always explored some kind of situation I was in whether I was conscious of it or not. And as soon as I jumped into digital technology in 1991 I knew instinctively it was all about social connection and that I, as a consummate party host, would learn more about myself through the people I connected with than I ever would on my own. So, I don’t want to just throw bunch of pictures and videos up here that documented my experience so much as use those things to talk about the impact they had on me as a conscious human being and artist.

All weekend I was blessed to have great friends around me who took care of everything so all I had to think about was keeping the glitter on my drumsticks and be mindful of tempo. Anyone who knows me knows I take making friends very seriously because I realize the impact they have on me. Hell, I even wrote the theme song. Here I am with Jon Sorenson, from the UW Foundation, who came up with the idea of me conducting the band in the first place…

… and Mark Blackwell, who I work with in LA and who flew in with me to video everything…

…. and Mike Leckrone, the beyond legendary bandleader/arranger who’s been at UW since I went there in the 60’s.

Even some of my sorority sisters showed up to support me. There were more of my SDT sisters there but we never were all in the same place at the same time for a group photo.

Standing right next to me is Muffin Alschuler. Mark and I stayed at her house and she and her husband, Eddie, were absolutely the best babysitters/ tour guides/handlers one could ever hope for. But in all of the 600 or so photos I got from everyone’s cameras there wasn’t a single photo of me, Muffin and Eddie together. Which is real shame as they’re two of the nicest people in the world and I never would have had this degree of the world’s most incredible weekend had I not stayed with them. But a threesome photo isn’t the only thing that was missing concerning documentation and the Alschulers… All weekend long Eddie had a little Sony digital camera that he was taking incredible photos and movies on. But I asked him to shoot my conducting debut on one of the big HD video cameras I brought with me because he and Muffin were going to be sitting across the 50 yard line from where I’d be conducting and would have a spectacular overview of the band with me facing them. I decided to do this at the last moment right before I marched through the tunnel with the band and out onto the field.

Unfortunately, I didn’t tell Eddie that the camera is in record when the light is red, not green. So I ended up with lots of footage of Muffin’s crotch as the camera lay on her lap patiently waiting to go into record, red light blazing, only to snap off as soon as you hear my name being announced and my music starting. Here’s what was captured of my performance:

I know, I’ve never looked better. Alas, I believe in synchronicity and so consider the fact that Muffin, Eddie and I never actually got it together to take a photo with just the three of us a matching set to the non-video they graciously took at the game. Throughout it all I remained cool because Mark was right there with me on the field shooting away so I knew I had reliable backup.

Ha ha. Despite my proclivity for a massive overabundance of documentation as well as the fact that I had the time of my life and now want to be a conductor, the video gods were not looking down on me as Mark’s footage was filled with blips, as if someone put their finger on the tape head every few minutes to make it gag. That’s it for me and Sony Mini DVs. I’m sick of all the aliasing too, as if the edges of everything had been cut by one of those scissors with the diamond shaped teeth that people go slaphappy with in their crafts projects. Check out the drumsticks. They’re not striped in real life. Neither am I.

Anyway, I would like to think that I was more reliable than Sony tapes when I taught a couple of classes while I was in Madison. Here I am with The Wisconsin Singers, students who are passionate about singing and performing and most of whom aren’t majoring in either, something I can totally relate to.

I also spoke to students at the Hamel Family Digital Media Lab. They were probably expecting a big visual presentation and lots of tips about how to get into the business but I was there to talk about my belief that anyone can do anything they want to do if they just have the vision and balls to do it. I’m definitely not the one to talk about how to get into the business as I’ve functioned outside of it is a self-funded artist for at least half of my career. If I had to live up to the standards of the entertainment and art businesses I may have had more hits but I’d be a shell of a person for having to club my brain to death so I could stay within the lines. So I just talked about being yourself and and making the absolute best of that.

The only school I ever went to to learn about music was the radio. I like it when people study one thing and do another. I like it when I don’t know how to read music yet can conduct an incredible marching band. At its best, life is about learning to do what you love by whatever means necessary. The last place I ever thought I’d be is in the middle of a gigantic stadium conducting music that I have no idea how I ever really got it together to write in the first place. But there I was anyway. And that’s something that no faulty video tape or green and not red light can ever erase.

Video, complete with blemishes, coming tomorrow!

22Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 2

22Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 2

Yesterday marked the first day of my year-long series featuring YouTube videos with people singing, playing, marching to, dancing to, massacring, auditioning with, acting idiotic in the presence of and otherwise performing my very first hit song, “September“. For a more through exploration of my “365 Days Of September” mission as well as details of how the song was written, go here. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy The Davis High Jazz Choir’s performance of the song, especially the choreography, as much as I do. Babeya!

21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 1, September 21, 2010

21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 1, September 21, 2010

People always ask me what my favorite song I’ve written is. I hate to favor any of the babies but pound for pound I’d have to shout “September”! I think it’s an eternally uplifting song. It makes people HAPPY, not just with a capital H but ALL CAPS!! I write a lot of happy songs but even perennial foot tappers like “Neutron Dance” and “Boogie Wonderland” don’t inspire the immediate mood shift that “September” does. I’ve never been in a room where people’s toes didn’t start tapping or heads start bobbing as soon as it comes on. I’ve never been to a Bar Mitzvah or wedding where it wasn’t played, including Beyonce and Jay-Z’s, where I wasn’t but learned from US Weekly that that’s what they danced their first dance to. And they didn’t even get married in September.

Without question, the original Earth Wind & Fire version is and will always be my favorite.

With EWF founder and lead singer, Maurice White, and EWF guitarist, Al McKay, I started writing “September” the first day we met, in the summer of 1978. It was actually written as the third song in a trilogy that Maurice and Al had already created, EWF’s “Sing a Song” and The Emotions’ “Best of My Love”, two of my favorite Pop Soul records of all time.

Although most of the music to “September” was completed that first day, it actually took a couple months to finalize the lyric, during which time I was also working with Maurice on all but two songs that became their (thankfully) legendary crossover album, I Am.

I used to be hung up that the “September” lyric was a little sing-songy, not the most intelligent I’d written. But seeing the effect it has on people I’m happy I took Maurice’s advice: Never let a lyric get in the way of the groove. If a lyric isn’t grammatically correct or even if it’s nonsensical – like the key words in the “September” chorus, “Ba-de-ya” – don’t replace it with something that is. If you marry the lyric to the music just right, the meaning will come across in the feel. I have no doubt that the love expressed in the chorus of “September” comes across even better with this nonsensical phrase than it would have had we merely filled those syllables with “I love you”.

The first time I ever went on YouTube just months after it launched in 2005, there were already tons of versions of the song there. Over the years I’ve watched “September” videos multiple like rabbits, some good but mostly a little on the lame side – Bad bar bands, jazz bands, marching bands, people in their living rooms, bathrooms, underwear, at auditions, dance classes, birthday parties, on lawns, mountaintops, in line dances, in lines at stores, playing solo bass, drum, keyboard and guitar parts, making animations and short films with it, in all varieties of languages, styles and quality.

Most songwriters are tortured when they hear cheesy versions of their work. As the Grand Master of Kitsch however, I LOVE it. I love that something I’ve created inspires someone to perform it despite an apparent lack of talent or rhythm. If it makes them happy it makes me happy.

And, trust me, this is a song that’s still making me happy. In one of my YouTube searches I stumbled onto Pomplamoose, a band that completely deconstructed the song and did it so distinctively I suggested we work together. The resulting “Jungle Animal” song, video and game went live TODAY.

But back to “September”… 1978 wasn’t the first time I placed my bet on a song that glorified September. Four years earlier, my first and only album, Childstar, came out on Epic Records. It contained the first 10 songs I ever wrote. The tune the label thought had the most single potential was called “What Kind of Shoes Does September Wear?”.

Although my career didn’t get off to the running start I had hoped it would then, I’d have to say that, in retrospect, September did, indeed, have some very nice shoes!

A few nights ago I went back on YouTube to see if any new versions of “September” had been done. To my astonishment, it was like the song had In vitro and gave birth to enough versions that if I played one a day for a year I would never run out. So I made it a goal to chronicle the madness. From this day forth, the 21^st of September, the date in the opening line of the song, until the 21^st of September, 2011, I shall feature one (brilliant, alarming, innovative, ridiculous) version of the song a day.

So here now, I offer you the most definitive version of all, the Godhead, “SEPTEMBER” by EARTH, WIND & FIRE on this, the 21st day of September, 2010, the first of 365 days of September. It pretty much goes downhill from here…

Badeya!