 |
|
 |
Welcome To Flip Reality Any object, person, place or thing can be described, but describing something does not necessarily define or explain the entity being examined. Take, for example, sub atomic particles. Science can describe them, their behavior and properties, but in the final analysis we still don’t know what they are. Other things are more easily imagined than described. This band, Flip Reality, is in that category. For those of you into adjectives-----cosmic, metaphysical, Christian, indie, alternapop, alternafolk, literary conscious alternarock may bring them into focus for you. At the micro reductionist level Flip Reality claims to be the first band to have written a novel and then put it to rock music.
Embryonic Flip Reality Zero. Zero Flip Reality was conceived in the minds of Stacy Osborne and Slate Kirk during long distance training runs during the late 80’s and early 90’s. Osborne and Kirk were elite age group runners on the greater Cincinnati running scene who both shared two passions – rock ‘n’ roll and running. Kirk was into the Cure, Depeche Mode, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, Grunge Bands and Madonna. Osborne was into classic rock, Simple Minds, U-2, Echo and the Bunnymen, Big Country and Red Rider. Recruiting fellow runner Bob Scheadler they held their first jam session March 16, 1995 in the basement of Osborne’s office. The line up was Stacy – vocals, guitar; Slate – guitar; Bob – guitar. They went through many drummers -Dave Elstun, Lance Robbins, Jim Yeomans, etc. On May 4th Phil Taylor joined on bass and on May 25th, Gretchen Kunkel joined on vocals and keyboards. (Her and Slate were dating at the time.) Finally on August 31, 1995 they auditioned and found Fred Dietz on drums. The line up was set. They had 24 band practices in ’95. Went into the studio and recorded several original songs. However Slate and Gretchen broke up and Gretchen left the band late September ’95. Stacy says “that really made me sad; because Gretchen and I had become great friends. I only heard from her one more time, Christmas ’95 where she told me she was moving to Chicago to chase some guy she met, I haven’t heard from her since.” In 1996 they had 42 band rehearsals and were becoming a fine original band doing Osborne, Kirk and Taylor originals. They played out live at Bogart’s, Hudy 14K after race party, Sycamore Garden’s and Never on Sunday. Stacy remembers “those were great fun and I set up a VHS recorder on my side of the stage and at least have those on tape!” But fate intervenes during the first week of ’97 when Osborne met Jennie Whittaker at Bob Roncker’s Running Spot. Osborne recalls – “Jennie was talking to me about a running injury she was enduring, yet I wasn’t listening to her because I heard a little voice in my head say “ask her if she can sing!” – so I did – and she looked at me and said not only could she sing, she was also a first rate piano player.”
By January 14, 1997 Jennie Whittaker was in, they played a live acoustic show at Slate’s old house on Russell Street and after the 9th band rehearsal of ’97 on February 11th Bob left due to time constraints and Slate left because he didn’t like the new direction Stacy and Jennie were taking the band. Flip Reality One. Zero Osborne recalls, “It was inevitable that Slate would depart; I wanted Jennie to sing more plus I was writing more songs that needed a female to sing and Slate was into a “harder” “louder” sound than we were now going.” “We had over 75 band rehearsals together and many recording sessions together, not to count the hundreds and hundreds of miles we ran together. He was like a brother to me and you know how brothers can fight. We eventually reconciled and have been on good terms since 2003.” Fate intervenes again On March 8, 1997 Stacy saw the movie “The English Patient” and it had a profound effect on him. Osborne – “Doomed male obsession with a woman. One of my all time favorite subject matters. After I saw that movie I knew I wanted to write a similar type of love story so I came up with “Beyond Recognition.” I sold Jennie, Phil and Fred on it and we started writing and recording. March 25, 1997 Mark O’Keefe joined the band on lead guitar and we worked our rear ends off, finishing the epic in October ’98. Released in December of 1998, Osborne spent the next six months talking to record companies and got nowhere. “As good as Jennie and the band were on that record, we got turned down at every turn even with the great reviews from local radio, I couldn’t get anyone to listen to it.” – Osborne. Fate intervenes again Jennie drops the big one on us in June ’99. Osborne recalls – “We warmed up band practice with 5 or 6 of our favorite songs, then after we did “Loaded Gun”, (incidentally, the first song Jennie and I wrote together) she stated she was leaving the band to join an acoustic duo cover band called “Skinny Eddie and the Choir girl,” and that was that. Two and a half years after joining the band she was gone and we haven’t spoken since. I think it’s ironic she left after performing “Loaded Gun,” making it the last song we ever did together. I was devastated and so was the rest of the band. Steve Brodberger our replacement drummer for Fred Dietz whose place of employment put him to work on second shift mid way through recording “Beyond Recognition”, left immediately.
Flip Reality grounded to a halt! Osborne looks back, “Jennie’s departure almost did us in.” You don’t replace someone like Jennie; every member in that band loved her and looked forward just to hang around her. She was our “Grace Slick”, but better. Imagine what would have happened to Jefferson Airplane if Grace would have quit after her first album. But I kept saying to myself – “your departure will not destroy this band!” “At the time the loss of Jennie was calamitous, but looking back, that was our destiny, the way it was meant to go. For if Jennie would have stayed, the “Life 101 Trilogy” may not have been made, her joining the band was the best thing that ever happened to us and her departure from the band was the second best thing that ever happened to us.” – Osborne. Flip Reality Two. Zero The band was now down to Osborne, O’Keefe and Taylor. Osborne ran an ad in “City Beat” for a female vocalist and a drummer. Osborne looks back – “We auditioned and auditioned girl singers and drummers. You would not believe how many girls think that singing along with the radio in a car or a stereo while in the shower makes them a singer. We found no one.” Plus Osborne had always been fascinated with The Jim Morrison story and what if he had faked his death? Fate Intervenes Again “I Was working on the “Adventures in a Fazed Nation” story, but I couldn’t figure out a realistic way for a major rock star to “fake” his death and get away with it. Then the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers, September 11, 2001 gave me my story and the whims of destiny sends me our next great female vocalist, Julie Sheldon, who moved in right across the street from me. Julie and I got introduced in the neighborhood and I asked her what do you do, she replied “I sing on the BB Riverboat Cruises on the Ohio River.” “I asked her if she had Tuesday nights open and she did and bam we had found a terrific new singer October 1999. Plus we found Steve Hedger on drums through all our auditions after a false start with Archie Cobb who quickly moved on after one song. However mid way through recording of “Adventures in a Fazed Nation” our lead guitarist Mark O’Keefe just dwindled into the haze. He stopped coming to practice and wouldn’t go over to the studio to do his tracks. He never officially quit and never was officially fired. Once again fate steps in and sends us Scott Albers on lead guitar whom Osborne met in the same way as Jennie Whittaker, while discussing a running injury. Osborne – “Scott was the perfect guitarist for us. The mood at rehearsals and in the studio picked up and Scott injected new life into the band” not as technically gifted as O’Keefe, he had more energy and charisma while playing his red P.R. Smith. We put out “Adventures in a Fazed Nation” in January 2004 and then the wheels came off for Osborne. Osborne – “I cannot explain what happens to me after completing an album, but it is something like post partum depression, then throw in the fact my mother came down with cancer – died in June of ’04 – I really hit rock bottom all through 2004 and did absolutely no marketing or publicity on volume II. I just withdrew into a little shell and switched to survival gear. Thank God for my wife and children. Scott Albers met a woman on –line, married her and headed to Orlando with his bride. By February 2005 I started feeling human again and sat down and wrote the “Instant Gratitude” story. The completion to the Life 101 trilogy. Volume I and II the love story travelled in hope then arrived in despair. In Volume III it was time to reverse that trend and travel in despair then end in hope and joy with a positive message and a happy conclusion. We went into the studio July of ’05. Fate Intervenes Again Osborne – “I hated to see Julie Sheldon leave, but she took a job promotion like Natalie Wolf our backing vocalist on Volume I did, and she would be traveling all over America and would not be in Cincinnati on Tuesday nights.” So we grounded to a halt again in the summer of ’06. Things got so desperate that Stacy discussed the possibility of bringing Mark O’Keefe back into the band so that they could use Mark’s girlfriend, the terrific vocalist, Jeanie Blessing to finish the CD. However it was not to be – as Osborne recalls – “Mark showed no enthusiasm in his voice over the phone at finishing this CD. In fact he said that he and Jeanie could only give marathon recording sessions to do their parts. That was D.O.A. to me because that means Mark would not have rehearsed any of his lead parts and would have been making them up on the spot. That is expensive and the results are usually not inspired, plus I only wanted Jeanie cause I was playing lead guitar myself and I didn’t have the courage to ask Mark if we can have Jeanie and not you. So Jeanie didn’t go on the record.
Fate Again Steps In Flip Reality Three. Zero September 26, 2006 City Beat runs Brandy Ivey’s ad – “female vocalist looking for a band, “Stacy calls the ad and gets the particulars and sends Brandy copies of Volume I and II. Stacy calls a week later and asks Brandy how she compares and Brandy states, “Confidently (and correctly) that she is just as good.” An audition is arranged. Brandy comes down from the Miami University area in Oxford on a Tuesday night in October of ’06 and delivers a stunning performance singing along to a karaoke CD. She is accepted and Flip Reality is back up and running. Osborne states – “Brandy has an absolute “breathy” quality to her voice that you have to hear. In person she doesn’t just sing the song, she “feels” the song. Listening to her in the studio through head phones you can hear her “soul”. Awesome, I love her. Fate Once More rears its Head Three weeks later at a Norwood Striders Reunion at Indian Mound Café – Osborne runs into Lori Downing Zwick a former student he taught back in the late 70’s. Osborne – “I asked Lori what she was doing now and she stated she ran a D.J. service and had sung in rock bands, so I told her we need a backing vocalist for my band “Flip Reality.” Lori came the next Tuesday night and clicked immediately with Brandy and the two sounded awesome together. Lori sounds like Stevie Nicks and has that “power” and “grit” that blends so well with a smooth singer like Brandy. We were lucky to find her. Conclusion by Osborne Every time Flip Reality needed someone to get a job done, to finish a song, a project, a CD – Fate – or God – or whatever dropped them in my path. I am grateful for that. No songwriter was ever as lucky as me at finding the right combination to get things done. I have not forgotten Greg Cooper on keyboards, who showed up in early ’07 and helped bring a wealth of fantastic sounds to the final product known as “Instant Gratitude.” That could not have been by accident. Flip Reality at the end of 2008 is currently on extended hiatus. What gets done! Is all that remains! Beyond Recognition, 1998 Disc One - CAUSE 1. Wind 1 (:38)
Disc Two - EFFECT 1. Wind 3 (:35)  Adventures in a Fazed Nation, 2004 Disc One – Belle Epoque Ex Nihilo 22. Lesson in the Pain *(3:26) Dry Version (Osborne)
Disc Two  Instant Gratitude, 2008 Disc One – Mercy Kicks In Disc Two - Grace Rolls Down A Flip Slap And A Half, 2008 Relics, Runes, and Rarities track by track song commentary
Wind I - A nice sound effect by Jeff Dunn’s keyboard arsenal, I love that wind sound. Anomie Overture – Nice vocals, nice melody, great 12 string playing and sound by Mark O’Keefe, doomed male obsession with a woman, a reoccurring theme in my songs. It Doesn’t Matter – Phil’s music, my lyrics existential musings about meaning. Ode to the Pain – A cute little ditty by Jennie. Up for Getting Down – Phil wrote the music and I wrote the words, one of my favorites to sing. Nice guitar by O’Keefe. When your bass player comes up with a riff – jump on it man – don’t let it get away. Falling - Jennie’s tune and what a melodic and lyrical monster it is! Totally transports you – excellent! There’s Nothing Out There – Phil’s music again, a fantastic tune. Once again I jumped on it back in ’95 and the first lyrics it was a space travel song. I rewrote the lyrics for this CD, another favorite of mine to sing. Ennui underture – My melody, Jennie’s lyrics. Excellent song about a single woman in love with a married man. Frustration – A great rocker I’m proud of; thanks to O’Keefe for burning on guitar. Risky lyrics at the end. Recorded great by Jeff. Great backing vocals from the band. Stunner – Another rocker from me – a fun song to do and easy to play. O’Keefe shines on lead again. Plus that female voice is the great Natalie Wolf! It’s Time to See – I wrote the music and the lyrics to the first verse and chorus – Jennie finished it for me. She nails it vocally and O’Keefe kills on guitar! A great tune live. Hey Bridgette – I wrote the music, our drummer Fred Dietz helped on lyrics. Not one of my favorites but as time has gone by I can listen to it now. Little Secrets – Another Jennie ditty. Forbidden Fruit – Jennie’s masterpiece! Awe inspiring – takes you to another world – Phil on bass and Fred on cymbals sounds awesome. O’Keefe and myself did not play on it. Oblique Eyeliner – Wrote this for Jennie the evening after I met her at the Running Spot. Impulse songwriting is sometimes the best. Band sounds great! Something In Me – Another crushing classic by Jennie. I heard her do this live so many times and she always left me struck to awe! Fun song to play, very tricky on acoustic. Empty room, empty spoon, empty me, empty you! She means it man. Recorded nice by Jeff. All Men are Dogs – We just played Bogart’s and Jill Epstein was there with Jim Yoemans. I asked her, “How’s your love life”? And she replied, “All men are dogs!” Wrote it that night. Another impulse song. Thanks Jill! Bleeding Over Love – Another bombastic rocker with lyrics about doomed male obsession over a woman. O’Keefe is great on lead, drums sound huge! Wind 2 – Nice ending to disc one by Jeff Dunn our producer. Track by Track Song Commentary
Wind 3 – More keyboard wind by Jeff. Your Lies – Another Jennie killer! Love it! Multiple interpretations’! What ever you want it to be. Precious Little – Another Jennie ditty! Once again I felt she lived it, never asked. Nice song. Say It to My Face – I wrote the words and music, Jennie changed one line, I didn’t feel like fighting. Risky lyrics. This is Jennie’s guide vocal. Jeff, Phil and I liked it so much; we didn’t let her do it over. She wasn’t even trying on this! Love Don’t Matter – Wrote the music and the lyrics to the first verse and chorus, Jennie finished the lyrics and she was awesome performing this song. She got to step out from behind the keyboards and wail while the band hammered it home! Infidelity – Can’t even remember this one? No kidding and I don’t have many memories of recording or playing this one very much. Color of the Sky – A great example of me and Jennie collaborating. I wrote the melody, the riff, and first verse, and chorus. She put in the middle and finished the lyrics. A pro life tune for me – Jennie would say pro choice. Whatever you want it to be – a great, great song. Lost Again – I wrote the music, first verse and chorus, Jennie finished the lyrics. Great vocals and great violin by Hye Sun Park, a fine song. Twilight of Our Love – Another ballad of mine – doomed male obsession with a girl, great chorus. Loaded Gun – First song Jennie and I ever worked on. As usual I wrote the music, first verse and chorus, then Jennie finished it with world class lyrics – “Psychic Hangover” – hers! Slipping Through My Hands – Once again I kicked it off, music, first verse and chorus then handed it to Jennie who scored the touchdown. Fun to play, her vocals are great! All Falls Down – My 2nd favorite song from this record after Forbidden Fruit. Just came to me in a flash, picked up my guitar in my basement one night and it was there. Fun to play and we were deadly on this live. O’Keefe blasted! Four Steps – A nice, nice song from Jennie. I wonder once again was she thinking this? Never asked. Beyond Recognition – I consider this one of my weaker songs – but the band carried me on this one. I Can’t Let Go – True song, down to my soul people, one of my best – doomed male obsession. Flip Reality – A rocker, great lyrics I scream and I mean them! Fantastic guitar by O’Keefe. Control Wind 4 – Nice acoustic work by me and I deliver the message – “You control what you do with your life.”
Track by Track Song Commentary Three Chords and the Truth – A band jam, stole the title from Bono – Julie sounds fantastic! Great lead work by Albers, huge drums by Steve. Turn Your Radio On – Jeff Monde’s masterpiece. He wrote the verses, I wrote the chorus but it was his idea. A favorite of mine. We Will Conquer the World Today – I was at a medical conference, stuck in my room with a travel guitar, looked out at the skyline from my window, and there it was; impulse songwriting from my sub conscious. Sending a message to everyone who left the group! Phil sings it great. Everything is Working Out Great – Another rocker I wrote; plus I played lead, fun to play live. Emily Bronte – read her biography, poetry then, “Wuthering Heights”, fell in love with a woman dead over 150 years and out this came. Julie sounds great! I am proud of this one, Jeff produced this top notch! Sometimes I Feel So Sorry for You – Another one I’m proud of, had this music when Jennie was in the band. She called it “Threat” – after she left – scraped her lyrics and Phil and I rewrote it for Julie who made it her own. O’Keefe plays some great guitar on this, this song is not for Jennie its for Morrison McQueen! Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll – Phil gave me the lyrics, I wrote the music, Phil and Julie sing great on this one. Scott Albers burns on lead. It’s Not You It’s Me – Another doomed male obsession song about a woman. I think everyone in the band sang on it. Hootchie Radar – me being experimental, Julie and the band saved it. Just a Vagrant Thought – O’Keefe had disappeared, so I stuck the cryptic line “Missing the Mark” for him. I don’t know what happened, we moved on. Lesson in the Pain – One of my best songs, lyrics and melody. Doomed male obsession at its finest – I gave it to Julie to sing and she made it her own. What’s Another Day – Another impulse song, picked up my acoustic guitar and it wrote itself using my hands. O’Keefe is awesome on guitar. You are the One – trying to learn the riff to “Twist and Shout” and I got this instead. Nice little ditty, Steve on brushes, Julie’s singing nice! We Can Be Together – A slow dance classic. I am proud of this one, O’Keefe is excellent on guitar, and you can hear Julie’s soul! Fantastic! People You Don’t Even Know – Inspired by the child “Nolan Doerger” who was battling bone cancer, he died. What more can I say except we’ll get the answers in the next world. Can’t Get Over Her Blues – A rocker! Doomed male, fun to play and Scott Albers wails on lead. Belle Époque Ex Nihilo – Me doing my version of “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Jeff and Phil came up with the backward sounds. I’m proud of this one; Julie and Scott really sing and play some great licks! Meltdown – The great Gretchen Kunkel wrote and sang the first half of the song, then Phil and I put in the fast part. She immediately left the band after recording this. She didn’t even give it a name – so I took the liberty. Miss you Gretchen. Jennifer with a Gee – Don’t write songs drinking! Fun song to do, easy, doomed, drunk male obsession. As It Should Be – Experimental little tune. Fits the story. Your Program – Me with an acoustic. Recorded nice by Jeff. Existential musings about fate, purpose and destiny. Lesson in the Pain – One guitar, Julie’s voice, nice! Track by Track Song Commentary Remembrance of Things Past – One of my best melodies, the band is great! Julie’s vocals sublime, drums awesome. I am proud of this one, Hye Sun Park awesome on violin. Don’t Look Back – O’Keefe’s riff, my lyrics. Fun rocker, funny lyrics, quite risky, lyrics are fictional? Right? Sunny Perfect Day – Another rocker that wrote itself, nice tune, like the U-2 guitar sound. More than You’ll Ever Need – I think Phil and Steve came up with the groove. I was honored to write the lyrics. One of my all time favorite Flip Reality tunes. A true group effort! Something So Strange – Phil and Steve’s groove. They let me write the lyrics, another great group effort. Walk the Walk – A great O’Keefe riff. I wrote the lyrics, Julie is great on vocals. Fun song to do, would love to work on more O’Keefe riffs in the future! Probably never happen. I’m Looking for Myself Tonight – Had this one in my head for years. It was time to record it; it wasn’t going to get any better! Sooner or Later – Had this around for years, also time to get it down. Scott plays some nice guitar turn a rounds. See Mascara Run – Fun tune by Phil. I like the lyrics I wrote, Julie sings nice, nice rocker. Ultimate Bachelor Pad - Phil and Steve wrote the groove, I think? I wrote the lyrics, cute and fun song. Julie did flute solo. With You I Stay – I have no idea how I wrote this but it turned out great! Trumpet solo on keyboards is cool! I Love You – Me and a guitar, Jeff made it sound tolerable. Turning Heads – Another rocker of mine, Scott Albers is great on lead, Julie sings incredible. Know That I Love You – Me and a guitar, the reprise. Jeff comes through again! Forgive Me – Wrote this for Julie, a heavy rocker which Scott and I blast on guitar, nice! Diabolic – Three chords and the truth! Phil and I alternate verses, Scott plays a nice guitar lick! I’m Going to Move to Australia – Wanna hear punk? Punk! We can do it. Song is essential to the story. Liar, Lunatic or the Lord – A great metaphysical Christian rock song. Listen to the lyrics, the message is timeless. You got to choose. Say a Prayer for Me – Me and a guitar, questioning the meaning and purpose of existence. Isabelle – Doomed male obsession over a woman. What more can I say? This song says it all! Gone – One of my finest, contemplative reassessment songs concerning why we are here. I am proud of this one, great ambient keyboard sound by Jeff. Oh yes, doomed male obsession is in those lyrics also. I Didn’t Even Get to Say Goodbye – Song is essential to the novel, Julie is great. Photograph – Regret with no redemption, the novel is two thirds over! A great performance by Julie! Track by Track Song Commentary Steve’s drums are awesome on every track! Qa Ce Que Vrairment Compte – French for “What Really Counts”, I played chords in backward order into a boomerang loop station – then hit reverse! Nice sound, Phil does the speaking. Oracle – Nice song given to me after having writers block. I stared at a newspaper ingénue (didn’t know her) till I got this song. Before You Act – Started out as a car commercial listening to it now I wrote the lyrics to myself. Last Day You Were Young – Tried to learn the Door’s “Love Me Two Times” and got this. Dedicated to anybody wasting time, the girls sound awesome! Trip Dreaming – Nice strings by Cooper, doomed male obsession with a woman. Change is Never a Bore – Phil and Lori rock their way through this rocker! How the West was Won – Might be the best or most complete song I ever wrote. Jerry Hedge is awesome on that double tracked pedal steel. Don’t know where it came from – it was a gift! I’ll take it. Story of a Daughter – Phil’s music; he played every instrument. I put it into the story, nice, moody number. Options – Wrote this for Phil to sing years ago, finally got around to doing it. The band carried this one. Staring at Your Face – Three chords strummed. I beat that 12 string, played a nice guitar solo on this. Bless Your Heart – Brandy rules, what a vocal performance. Requiem for Bridgette – Brandy rules volume II, killer vocals! Easy to Love – Another nice track, Brandy and Lori are great on the chorus. Greg Cooper kicks the keyboards in the end – awesome! Are You with Me So Far? – Great melody, nice lyrics, nice singing, cool keyboard sound. I’m happy with it. It’s Been So Long – Nice little ditty I wrote, Brandy does it fantastic. Say Something to Me – Lori breaks this one wide open! Incredible nice melody, fantastic performance by the whole band. Looking at You – Julie’s farewell performance, she saves a so, so tune. A Heart Once Held – A great duet between me and Brandy, she is great again. Mercy Kicks In – Hopeful lyrics, I burn on guitar, and Brandy and Lori march onto victory during the chorus. Open Boat – Autobiographical recap of 2004 for me, Lori hammers! Track by Track Song Commentary Do You Wanna Party? – Nice grove, great vocals from Lori; a fun party song to play and sing.
I Can’t Be Her Now – Legend has it that at one of Brandy’s first rehearsals she asked the band, “How do you want me to sing?” Phil replied, “sing like Julie”, Brandy’s answer “I Can’t Be Her Now!” Stacy showed up the next rehearsal with the song. “My original demo sucked, singing was bad, it was too fast. Phil slowed it down on bass, Steve came up with the drum dynamics, then Brandy just nailed it. By the 3rd run through I was floored. This song is great! “Thanks Brandy!” Liz St. Phair Millay – I’m a fan of both these ladies, they remind me of each other in style and similarities so I wrote them this song. Nice up beat tune, risky lyrics. You Are My Lover – Picked up my guitar at home in the basement and there this song was, Lori duets nicely with me, Jerry Hedge’s pedal steel is nice. Screaming Under Water – Phil wanted to sing Oracle but I couldn’t give it to him, felt bad. Went home and wrote this on impulse for Phil to sing. He’s great and so is Julie’s aria at the end, a fine song! In the Middle of the Night – Brandy sounds nice on this rocker, seems like the melody had always been around in my head. Like Stephen Crane – Nice message tune, speeds up slows down, good guitar solo at the end; I like it. Trip Reality – came to me at Keener Park watching a cross country race my son Alex was in, while talking to Paulette Leeper. I like the lyric “The when is vague, insane inside my mind, I can see the fabric of time.” I don’t do drugs! Nine Eleven Zero One – A great experimental tune, the climax of the novel! Hedger’s drums are the lead instrument, my guitar is keeping time. A great recording by Jeff Dunn. Too Many Trips Down Memory Lane can Kill You Man! – If you can hear my original demo and compare it to the final recording – an amazing transformation, thanks guys! Some Gleaming Triumph – Beatles riffing thru and thru, nice little rocker. Life 101 – Great vocals by Lori, nice sound effects at start. I burn on the guitar all the way thru, nice rocker! New Twists on Old Fun – Lori wails on this! Sings low and great, nice guitar work and a fun, fun song to play. Love Lori on the chorus. Underneath Your Eyes - Brandy delivers a fine vocal, nice melody with fitting lyrics, a good song. Instant Gratitude – Great guitar crunch, Hedger and Phil weave in and out of the riff while Brandy hits it out of the park with her vocals. Grace Rolls Down – A killer epic, vocals are awesome, lead guitar work is nice. Cooper’s keyboards strings just transform the song when they come in. A great song all around. Beautiful Story – Brandy puts the essentials of her soul into her vocals on this song. A great song, perfect for a wedding. It’s a Short Time ‘Til Goodbye – Another song given to me, picked up the guitar and it wrote itself using my hands. Believe the message – it is a short time till goodbye. Au le vent Une bonne Volonte d’oublier – French for “in the wind a willingness to forget” a successful experimental sound scape. I can almost hear number 9, number 9, number 9 in the background.
Track by Track Song Commentary Forbidden Fruit – A solo remix of Jennie Whittaker’s classic song, fantastic!
From: Cincinnati’s City Beat You have to give the “most Ambitious” award to the group Flip Reality for their mammoth two-disc concept album, “Beyond Recognition”. The group, formed in ’95, is based in Norwood and features former members of band like Fazed Nation, Due South and several other area groups. Inspired by the film, “The English Patient”, “Beyond Recognition” is the two-hour “Rock Opera” adaptation of band leader Stacy Osborne’s story of a man hitting a mid-life crises and dealing with the choices he makes. The end result is philosophical and tragic, similar in tone to the Who’s opus “Quadrophenia”. From: Cincinnati’s The Runner’s Spotlight Quarterly Runners Release Rock Opera C.D. The group has a connection with the Running Spot because Jennie and Stacy met there when Jennie came in to talk to him about a running injury. One month later they had written the opera and were in the studio. Call Stacy, 513-351-6300, if you wish to purchase a copy at $15.00. From Cincinnati’s Everybody’s News Local Release From Cynthia Dye – host of “Kindred Sanction” on WAIF 88.3 FM This CD “is one of the best local records ever from Cincinnati”. Her phone number is 1-513-887-6969 or 1-513-961-8900. From Matt Waller – host of “Local Lix” and “Home Brew” shows on WOXY 97.7 FM Said about this CD on his 12/29/98 program “A good one. One of the best local records I have ever heard.” On the 2/7/99 program “Beyond Recognition is one of the best records of ’98 – ’99.” He may be reached at WOXY 1-513-863-5665. From Scott Levy – host of “Local Heroes” on WNKU the voice of Northern Kentucky University Said about our record “an absoulutely incredible effort”. He may be reached at WNKU 89.7 FM 1-606-572-6500. Published in the “Golden Gates” fanzine reprinted with permission from the cloud of Lester Bangs (1951-1982) dead rock critic. A review of “Beyond Recognition” – by “Flip Reality” (double CD) “Beyond Recognition” is a concept album that tells a story. The theme of the CD in a nutshell is this guy in his forties takes on a mistress and finds out he isn’t prepared for what is unleashed. Don’t let this simple story fool you. Believe me, there is enough to this story to fill out the two CD’s. This is an auspicious debut. I don’t know what it is but this band is onto something. What I think they are onto is no less than the meaning of life. If I were still alive and had a body I’d probably be going through the same stuff that the characters in this opera go through. But since I’m dead, I’ve got a lot of time to listen and write reviews. Thematically, “Beyond Recognition” is a cross between “Quadrophenia” by The Who and “Late for the Sky” by Jackson Browne, yet it’s a morality tale of a middle age guy, making it a mid life Quadrophenia/Late for the Sky. ‘Beyond Recognition” comes with a booklet that gives you the story, then the songs follow the states of each character as the story unfolds. This CD is a scorching, mesmerizing slab of adult drama. It asks the tough questions of life, directly from the cutting edge. As a story concept album it works absolutely flawlessly. The songs are about mid life contemplation, reassessment with tales of sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, excess, betrayal, lust, infidelity, guilt, and oh yes, love. It’s a double CD checking in at a little over two hours. Which means there’s a lot to digest and if you’ve got ADD your in trouble. Yet for anyone willing to take the time to get into the story, they are going to find a plethora of music that’s instantly accessible and lyrically will leave them exhausted, but satisfied. Hard adult subject matter addressed head on. This is a dazzling achievement for an unknown band. An awful lot of thought and work was put into this, so where did this band come from? Norwood Ohio says the band’s bio – Jeez, who woulda thunk it. There are two lead singers in “Flip Reality”. One male one female. They sing the character story, which means you get achingly, soaring, beautifully sung songs by the incredible Jennifer Whittaker featuring her amazing operatic voice interspersed with delirious power alternapop sung by Stacy Osborne in his distinctive plaintive, protestant hymnal, generic white boy voice. The contrast works amazingly effective. The lead guitar work, bass, keyboards, and drumming is tasteful and contributes dramatically to the sound without getting in the way, thanks largely to a fine mix. “Flip Reality” is walking a fine line. They have produced one of the finest melodic alternapop records ever recorded. “Beyond Recognition” is capable of pulling listeners in from across all demographics, yet they are an entity all their own without fitting in anywhere. In fact they sound like no one else out there. They have enough alternative in their sound to pull in those suburban lone wolf teenage boys who want the thunder. There’s enough lyrical prowess and “chick” power to pull in the “art” crowd who feel they have to hear something first. Plus there’s plenty of melody to grab the “average” bulk of listeners who just want good tunes. “Flip Reality” covers it all with a one of a kind idiosyncratic achievement that has feeling, power and intelligence. It is a masterpiece. A lot of music drifts up through the ether past my cloud and prophecy is risky business which I leave up to the “Big Daddy” up here – but I doubt if I’ll hear a better rock record this year, right even through Y2K. “Flip Reality” is the best unsigned band in America – I hope my championing their CD helps --- cause this stuff could sell if it gets put in the hands of the right people. Eternally yours, Bangs Published in the “Golden Gates” fanzine. Reprinted with permission from the cloud of Lester Bangs (1951- 1982) – greatest rock critic of all time and still dead. A review of “Adventures in a Fazed Nation” by “Flip Reality” (double CD) Completely unhip, totally obscure, and sounding like they haven’t listened to what’s on the radio for over 20 years, or since I died. Flip Reality has released their second concept album, “Adventures in a Fazed Nation,” the second installment of their "Life 101" trilogy. To fully understand the music and what they are singing about, you have to read the story included with the CD. Basically it is a love story between two members of the imaginary rock band Fazed Nation and how fame and fate impact on the two characters – Morrison McQueen and his lover Isabelle Ravellette. First off let me say there is nothing out there that I can compare this record to. Except to opinion that it sounds like a cross between Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” and the Beatles “White Album”. Nobody could have tried to do that on purpose. This record will cause a listener to feel no ambiguousness upon hearing. Either you will love it or hate it. Especially if you read the story before listening. Then the music will unravel cinematically in your head as you listen. The first time I played it, I hated it. The second time I played it, I had a conversion experience that I was listening to sheer unadulterated genius. Then the third time I played it; it was back to unredeemable rubbish. Then I played it a forth time and it became brilliant again. Like Stanley Kubrick’s movie “Eyes Wide Shut” the effect changes with each experience. Any work of art that can elicit that kind of visceral response can not be considered a failure. Lots of recordings you listen to; you are just on out side observer. This record makes you feel you are a participant in the events on the recording. Accident? Sheer blind stupid luck? Or cleverly calculated manipulation? What ever! Flip Reality should be proud. They have accomplished the damn near impossible. A compelling combination of literature and rock music. Awesome! There are two lead vocalists. Flip Reality has always had a killer lead female vocalist and this CD is no exception. Gone is Jennifer Whitaker from their first CD, “Beyond Recognition”, and her operatic Kate Bush, Evanescence vocal gymnastics. Replacing her is the lower range soulful, earthy tones of Julie Sheldon who sings like a cross between Linda Ronstadt and Jackie DeShannon. How retro can you get? Listen to Julie on the epic “We can Be Together” and you’ll agree. She is stunning! The male lead vocals are Flip Reality’s trademark generic alternative white guy voice. Surprizingly adequate. Flip Reality’s music is melodic. You will find no obligatory rap breaks or power chord machine gun staccato guitar. Just one instantly recognizable and hummable melody after another. The ballads are great, plus the rockers rock and when lead guitar is needed-it is there. Not like current songs on the radio with a lead guitar on vacation. What Flip Reality has done is take a giant step back from the prevailing musical fashions-and gone so far back-that this recording is light years ahead of Now! This CD is Hip! I haven’t heard a work of music this ambitious or this good in a long, long while. If you want to hear music that will stun and satisfy you with its beautiful simplicity yet lyrically work you into a lather by covering the geography of that organ of Fire and Passion-the Heart-this CD is for you. Prozac for the heart and Soul. Eternally yours, Bangs! Published in the “Golden Gates” fanzine. Reprinted with permission from the cloud of Lester Bangs (1951 – 1982) greatest rock critic of all time and still dead. A review of “Instant Gratitude” by “Flip Reality” (double CD)”Great art is about conflict, pain, guilt, longing, and love.” The actor playing me (Lester Bangs) in the movie “Almost Famous” said that. So based on those terms, and I was quoted accurately, I have to palaver that on their own terms, Flip Reality has succeeded totally. They have recorded a Christian, cosmic, indie, alt-pop rock novel, that in future years will be hailed classic. There are two kinds of artists; those that can deliver the goods and everybody else. Flip Reality has always got it done. The band sweats ambition. Their aspirations are the loftiest you will ever hear. To write a novel and set it to music. Emerson said, “If you want to be noticed – do the difficult. Then congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and have broken the monotony of a decorous age! Instant Gratitude is their third and final installment on their novel called “Life 101 Trilogy”. There is nothing like it out there in all of Rockdom, it is as brilliant as it is strange and it will strike you to awe! For this they can congratulate themselves. Instant Gratitude like the previous two volumes is, cutting to the money shot, and unmistakable allegory about human’s darker impulses like lust, desire, fame, fortune, sin and the consequences. This story is about a rock star, Morrison McQueen, who (on the last CD) supposedly died in the World Trade Center attack of September 11, 2001 and what happens 21 years later when his autograph is found, by the daughter he never knew he had, on some cash printed years after his death. This is the Jim Morrison story, however with a happier ending. I can already see the movie, two thumbs up. Read the story, you’ll like it then listen to the CD. The depth of Flip Reality’s artistic vision is singular. They have produced a diversity of recordings that contains something for everyone. Their first CD, Volume 1 “Beyond Recognition”, peers into the abyss of lust and its consequences with the knowledge that the situation is going to end badly. The second CD, Volume II “Adventures in a Fazed Nation”, is a love story between two members of the band Fazed Nation, sounds more upbeat, but the story ends just as badly, even tragic. Now the third CD, Volume III, “Instant Gratitude”, delivers something that the first CD’s didn’t; hope and faith. That our existence is more than ants crawling on an ant hill. Instant Gratitude answers the big questions that the first two volumes asked then repairs and changes the chaos of the first two CD’s into order; with an answer “we are here with a purpose and meaning”. Life 101 Trilogy is a fictional world. Rock music and literature connected. An epic treatment of what on the surface appears to be average and inconsequential lives. Yet by the end of the story makes the statement that no one is inconsequential. That we all are a cog in the great cosmic program being run by God. The architect of all this prestidigitation is their guitarist, Stacy Osborne. As a song writer Osborne is a neoclassicist. His songs are tight and focused with the melodic territory he works falling between the years 1964 and 1974. Yet made fresh for current prevailing styles and sound. Much credit must be given to bass player Phil Taylor and Drummer Steve Hedger for allowing him to roam that territory with as little interference as possible. For Osborne needs them as much as they need him. As usual Flip Reality is graced with outstanding female vocalists, who Osborne has had the sense to let sing all of the melodic songs he has come up with. Key boards have been handled in an understated tasteful manner by their producer Jeff Dunn and late arrival the outstanding Greg Cooper, who together have crafted a majestic sonic tapestry. On this CD they have avoided the major pitfall of trying to put a novel into music and that is they didn’t fall into the trap of too much brains and too little heart. Their sound captures the loneliness of individuals surrounded by a crowd. They play and sound shockingly confident, even cocky, but they have reason for they have created music for the soul as well as the mind, which to an interested listening audience produces a subconscious effect; this CD just makes you feel good. Flip Reality is held together by a common idea; a deliberately sealed off, self sufficient entity, operating on the fringe and they could care less. They pay no mind or heed to other musicians, outside influences, or musical developments, resulting in an artistic intention that is wholly their own and their vision is vast. They give you more real feeling and emotion in one song than you can get from a whole CD by most anyone else. Some of the songs have flaws and excesses. The guitar solos tend to be repetitious, but at least FR has guitar solos. But the overwhelming majority of their songs create a phenomenon that even in just three minutes; they work within level after level; which means with repeated listening you get more and more out of it. Four songs in particular are stunning, “I Can’t Be Her Now”, sung by Brandy Ivey is up there with the best of U-2. Imagine Bono a girl. “Screaming Under Water” sung by Phil Taylor about the pathetic deaths of Morrison and Cobain, is a stern anti-drug message, and has an aria climax at the end by Julie Sheldon that will send shivers up your spine. “Say Something To Me” is a full production number sung by Lori Zwick, who sounds like Stevie Nicks, clean, sober and off the cigarettes. Finally, “How the West Was Won”, sung by Osborne, captures the entire history of America, summed up in three and a half minutes, using steel guitars, an alt-country classic. There are a lot of songs on this album and they didn’t record the same song twice. Flip Reality’s accomplishment and gift to you is a CD that the more you listen to it, the more you will feel that you have lived it! Rise on your feet you poor piece of imitation genius. This is your first day under the sun! Eternally yours, Bangs!
Reprinted from the literary and music critique journal "Guacpard Sur Une Laisse." Translation by Amanda D. Sommer
The novel's story line is a cross between Kerouac, the Jim Morrison story, Raymond Carver's short stories, Fitzgerald's - The Great Gatsby, and Maugham's - The Razors Edge, amalgamated into a massive amount of music, (six CD's) becoming the aural equivalent to Marcel Proust's - Remembrance of Things Past (and) as shockingly good as the story is, the music rises to the challenge of the story and eclipses it with irresistibly melodic songs - sounding like... a cross between the best 60's rock, blended with the New Pornographers, Nada Surf and Arcade Fire.
I do not know what more I can say except to explore them for yourself.
Flip Reality Beyond Recognition CHARACTERS In held thrall twas I — Alex Davis ALEX’S STORY As a young man I did everything right. National Honor Society, track star, school records, college scholarship, one success after another. Most likely to succeed, and the pattern of success continued all the way through college, medical school, and private practice. I made all the right chess moves in the game of life. I did everything my teachers, parents, and mentors told me to and I was having a blast. I’ve ended up with a life that I’m told everyone else envies. I’m told I’ve got everything. I’ve got a beautiful wife, with a body like wonder woman, two great kids, a high paying profession and more material things than I deserve. The world listens to my footsteps. I sailed right up to 41 with four engines burning, but around 42 I lost momentum. I hit turbulence but I thought it was only temporary. I was wrong. BAM! The wings came off and I crashed and burned. Mid-life crisis. That period of restlessness, reassessment, dissatisfaction, whatever, that I thought would never happen to me, happened. All my success in the material world didn’t make me feel good. I was tired of being me. Then more setbacks. My good friend got hit by a motorcycle while jogging. At first it looked like he would make it, but 5 days later he threw an emboli and was brain dead. Devastation. That was hard to take. I had hard questions that I wanted answers to. I felt something was missing, I felt empty and alone. They say all quests eventually lead to God. They say that emptiness, that aloneness, we all feel sometimes is the gap that God deliberately left in our souls so that we search for him and find him and hopefully he/she fills it. Well, I won’t find God ’cause I’m pissed and I want him to come to me on my terms and I’m told he/she doesn’t work that way. So that feeling of wondering about life and existence and that perpetual question of is this all there is?, continues. I’ve driven myself nuts asking why are we here! Why this! Why not nothing? Existence doesn’t make sense. With the loss of my friend and hitting forty, I got that first glimpse of mortality. I experienced a sporadic but profound sense of melancholy. Then the realization that someday I will die and within a few years of my death outside of my immediate family no one will give a shit or even care that I was ever here. And there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m a guy who had to climb the mountain to see the view and I can tell you the view wasn’t worth the climb. Money and material things don’t buy peace of mind. Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. HA! HA! HA! The old maxim that life begins at 40 is crap! Life begins to go to hell at 40, is more like it. Mid-life is when I felt my gear slip one notch down. I used to be a guy who could burn the candle at both ends. Juggle ten things at once and never let a ball hit the floor. I could go home after work, run 7 miles a day and that night kick in the stall for 30 minutes with my wife. Now I feel my youth, my power, my virility slipping away. My hair is thinning and the lines on my face are much clearer. My hair is turning grey and I’m tired, exhausted, dissatisfied, disillusioned, anxious, feeling like I’m in the slow lane with everything passing me by and everybody passing me by is having a whole hell of a lot better ride down the highway than me. I’m in a rut, disappointed, dysthymic, and yes, I am, depressed. The wheels had come off. My wife, Virginia, used to be the center of our lives. Everything revolved around her. She was the stable one, I was the eccentric one. She was the calm one, I was the manic one. She was the yin and I was the yang. I loved her at first sight when we met 20 years ago. She was a tall and slim brunette in her prime. Funny, loud, intelligent, brassy and wild. The bloom was still on and she had magnificent breasts to go with her spectacular face. She was an all American, perfect girl next door, and I didn’t think I had a chance. But I pursued her with charm, humor, and a constant barrage of notes, and letters, and serenades, and my overwhelming stream of consciousness, trip dream rehearsed insanity vocabulary. She thought I was weird, funny, but weird and in 3 months she loved the weirdness. We dated 3 years, I got accepted to medical school, we got married, and she put me through school. She is the only person who could help me but when I imploded she was caught up in her own sadness, grief, and depression. My electron was in orbit around a collapsed center. My wife was going through her own psychic hangover for at least a year before I hit my meltdown. We both were now impersonators of our original selves. We did it for the sake of the kids. She had withdrawn into herself due to grief, (she lost her mother and father) and sorrow and hormones and whatever other shit, that women let get to them. She’s here physically, I keep trying to communicate with her, but she sunk too far into what is left of her former self. I felt like I was loosing my mind, I got drunk a couple times but I couldn’t stand the next morning. Drugs don’t entice me because I could loose my career. And just when I felt at my lowest, and least masculine and least attractive, temptation rears its head. The unthinkable happens. Bridgette, that great looking nurse I’ve worked with for 5 years at the clinic, comes into work on a Monday depressed. Bridgette, whose first name is Mollie but for some reason she won’t use it, who wears that killer cologne, comes to work bitching and whining about the latest guy to give her the Nike imprint on her awe inspiring ass. Bridgette, of the perfect nose and sapphire blue eyes, whom I secretly would write poems about in the cafeteria at lunch as she sat with her friends on the other side. Bridgette, of whom I would die if she read my poems and knew I fantasized about seeing her in nothing but her gold cross, lying on her bed. Bridgette actually is talking to me first! Initiating contact, asking me for my opinion, “why do men always lose interest in me after two or three months?” So I let down my shields and put my real feelings on display and give her the most internal heartfelt essential of my soul reply my 50 billion neurons can conjure, “If I were a single guy, I would do anything to make a woman like you fall for me.” Bridgette of the auburn, red, frizzy hair and Irish freckles, stays real quiet for a few seconds, but her eyes lock onto mine like a tractor beam out of Star Trek. Bridgette, of the killer, radiantly blue appetizing sapphire eyes opens up her perfectly sculpted full red lips and in a voice I’ve never ever fucking heard come out of her throat before, not even remotely resembling that phony ass telephone voice most women can adopt when they speak into the phone—says, “Are you attracted to me as much as I am attracted to you.” Lightning strikes my mind. With all the things dysfunctional at home. All the shit rolling around in my head. My self esteem and self confidence at an all time personal low. Bridgette, of a least 13 years my junior, became my lover that night. I was immediately gone! She was young, alive, vivacious, passionate, and oh so eager to receive me whenever we made love. She was intoxicating, a drug, better than a drug, she made me feel real again. Nothing could compare to sex with her. Bridgette was a runner like me, and I would concoct all kinds of stories and lie to my wife about going down to the bike trail for a long run when in reality I always ended up in bed with Bridgette for an athletic bout of sex. When Virginia would question me about this increased mileage I was running, I would lie and tell her “I’m training for the marathon.” Yeah, right. I hate the marathon. I was only in shape for the mattress marathon. Bridgette and I soon graduated to sex in my office, sex at her apartment, sex in our cars, sex in the parks. I loved conversations with her. Especially those bottomless mind meld conversations where she became me and I became her. We learned things from each other, I became her adept and she became my tour guide. It was a roller coaster ride that I didn’t want to end. I felt like a college man again and wanted to go back. To those days when every experience was fresh and new and I felt them at their most intense. We rode the lightning. Five hours with her went by in five minutes. When we had time we would drink white Zinfindel wine and then make slow, mind, body sensual love. I wanted to melt with her. Meld, fuse, become one. From that intense desire I tracked down an old druggie friend from college and purchased at great risk .250 micro grams of LSD. I cut it in half and we dissolved .125 micro grams each under our tongues. What happened was astounding. She kept repeating, “Forbidden fruit!” While I became lysergically transfixed on her blazing blue eyes and blurted out from my hallucinatory haze, “you don’t need pitch black oblique eyeliner!” It lasted only 4 hours in real time but felt like 4 days. It was unlike anything in my life. I turned her on to music. Rock, Alternative, Classical, things she didn’t even know existed. Her favorite album for sex was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Especially the “Us and Them” section. My favorite thing to do at her apartment was to take a shower together, get out, dry off, put cologne on and listen to Talk, Talk, “Spirit of Eden,” especially that song Desire, and make slow love. I still love my wife. I desperately want my old wife back. But I’m also in love with Bridgette. I don’t know if my wife can ever come back, she’s been on Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, and nothing has worked. I can’t leave my wife because I can’t hurt our kids. Bridgette never says she loves me but I know she must. She says I’m too good for her and that she feels inadequate around me and that she will not let herself get too attached to me because she says you married bastards always go back to your wives. She’s probably right. As for Virginia she has entered therapy. Where this is going to lead is anybody’s guess. As for me I’m happier than I’ve been in years and I’m a train wreck, I’m a mess. There will be consequences. SEVERAL MONTHS LATER Let me give a warning to any married men out there thinking about having an affair with another woman. You had better ask yourself where is this going to lead? I can’t speak for every guy out there but when it comes to women, most men fantasize about beautiful “objects” who have no expectations and place no demands. Men desire women living in the moment, existing in the here and now. Women bent on one thing; to have exciting, passionate, and uninhibited fun. No attachment, no commitment, no ownership. The male fairy tale, fantasy heaven. Good luck pal! Me being the artistically inclined risk taker that I am; I always fantasized about a beautiful younger woman who was willing to drive the car over the cliff with me. I knew eventually I’d have to hit the bottom. But I had to experience the thrill of the ride on the way down. Whoa! With Bridgette I thought I found my girl. We snuck away to a four day weekend medical seminar in Cleveland which is where I went to medical school. That weekend is when my eyesight began to return to 20/20. The mere thought and anticipation of spending four days and three nights away from home and alone with Bridgette in a different city had me on a mildly manic high. There was so much to talk about, so much to do and of course passionate sex in a hotel room. I can’t explain it but every girlfriend before my wife and Virginia included; the mere fact of being in a hotel room turned them into totally different women. They would bang as if their life depended on it. I’m not complaining. But the trip to Cleveland didn’t turn out the way I had scripted it in my mind. Bridgette was very late in being ready that early Thursday morning. Which meant I would be late in signing in for the seminar. I snapped at her to get a move on and rushed her to get going! She complained about everything on the way up to Cleveland. The way I drove, the music I played, the radio station I had on, the people she worked with, her miserable childhood, you name it, she had a negative opinion about it. I was wanting to wax philosophic about the meaning of life and have intellectual mental stimulation and all Bridgette could chatter about was she shouldn’t have drank that coffee ’cause now she had to pee. I signed in at the seminar late, said Hi to some friends of mine and snuck out of the place at the first break between lectures. Ran down to my car and checked into a hotel across the street. Had sex with Bridgette in the shower then headed into downtown Cleveland to the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Saw John Lennon’s Sergeant Peppers outfit, but what really floored me was the handwritten lyric sheets to the timeless music of the Beatles. All Bridgette could say was that it was just scribbling on paper. As we drove around Cleveland that weekend, nothing impressed her, but everywhere Bridgette and I went there were reminders of my years in Cleveland with my wife Virginia. While touring the shops of Coventry I flashbacked nearly twenty years to the time Virginia and I did the same thing. It began to hit me, “What was I doing with this girl?” But the event that caused Bridgette’s stock to plummet was her reaction to the movie The English Patient. That movie ripped my heart out and handed it to me on a tray. If the theatre had not been packed I would have sobbed like a baby. All Bridgette could say was the movie was too long and where’s the bathroom? The drive back from Cleveland that Sunday afternoon was punctuated with more bitching, whining and complaining about life. Especially about old boyfriends and her feelings that, “All Men Are Dogs!” I smiled to myself and barked under my breath. By the time we got back home I now had the answer to Bridgette’s question from four months earlier. “Why do men lose interest in me after two or three months?” But I couldn’t tell her. Bridgette was all alluring beauty, all image and no substance. A mile wide but just in inch deep. She had no depth. She was monumentally boring and dull. She never had an original thought except to complain. She never initiated anything, only reacted to events. She had a quality of predictability, a sameness that added up to the fact she was always trying to be whatever she thought the person she was with wanted. She was a chameleon that telegraphed every thought, every word before she said it. I had figured her out. Twisted the Bridgette Rubic’s Cube, been there, done that and had lost interest in her just like all her previous boyfriends. Plus I was falling back in love with my wife and now was the time to cool it and fade away from Bridgette. Therapy was really helping Virginia. Her original personality was beginning to shine through the wall of despair she had around her. I made myself disaffected to Bridgette whenever I ran into her at work. Whenever she would call me I kept the calls short, businesslike essays in distance, and quickly told her I had to go. The calls soon stopped. Virginia and I were dating again and the lines of communication were opening up. I began to feel as if she cared for me again, especially when she took me by surprise one evening with the question, “Have you been seeing someone else? Say it to my face.” I lied and asked her where she ever came up with that idea? Her reply was something about some nights a while back I came home late and I had a different soap odor on me. I thought to myself, “The showers with Bridgette.” I said to Virginia, “Nah, it’s your imagination.” The weeks turned into a couple months, Virginia and I were relating again. Bridgette transferred out of the department quietly, and I thought out of sight, out of mind, she’ll find somebody and she’ll be happy. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought man I was lucky to get out of this one, I soon found out I was wrong. The next day the wind of the planet’s rotation was in my face and my life as I knew it would soon be only a ghost. The phone rang—Bridgette was in the hospital in critical condition from and attempted suicide via a massive overdose of prescription anti-depressants, narcotics, and alcohol. I rushed to University Hospital, her parents were already there from Pittsburgh and if looks could kill I would be dead. I felt stunned, there was nothing to do, nothing to say so I left. She was in a coma for a couple of days and I fucking knew I was responsible. How responsible I soon found out from Virginia. Bridgette had mailed a suicide note to her best friend at the clinic. In it she told about our affair and our trip to Cleveland, where she had been running late and forgot her birth control pills. She had gotten pregnant by me in Cleveland. She stated in her note what we never said to each other, that she loved me. She knew I had lost interest in her because I wanted to work things out with my wife. When she found out she was pregnant she had it taken care of via an abortion. She couldn’t deal with loosing my attention and affection, then the abortion on top of it drove her over the edge. She felt worthless, soiled, used, wasted, and now a murderer. So she swallowed the pills. However, before she passed out she dialed 911. Someone at the clinic anonymously faxed my wife a note with this information and that was all she wrote. There was no way to lie my way out of this one. Virginia had called too many people and knew it was true. So I faced the music and begged for forgiveness. The pain I caused my wife was horrible, not to mention what I had caused to Bridgette. I was smashed, but Virginia did say she would forgive me. I finally got in to see Bridgette on the third day. I dreaded the meeting but I knew it had to be done. As I walked in and gazed upon her I nearly disassembled with guilt right there. But I stifled and buried the feelings. She spoke first, “Don’t say anything, except to answer this question. I have to know for my peace of mind. Was I just a fling to you or did you ever love me?” My mind chased rabbits in ten different directions but I tripped back to the first glorious weeks of our affair—I inhaled, “Yes, Bridgette, I did love you.” Her eyes locked onto mine like the first afternoon we connected, “Then what happened?” I selected my words very carefully, “I chose to stop wanting you because it was not meant to be.” My eyes and her eyes both became misty, “I was meant to be with Virginia.” Bridgette nodded her head and turned away and spoke, “You know how you were always giving me a musical education and trying to turn me on to different people and their songs. Let me turn you on to one—Paula Cole’s song “Me” is my life story. Play it Alex and remember us. Now please go before—,” her voice trailed off. I haven’t heard from her since. Bridgette’s parents took her back to Pittsburgh to start over. The last information I have is that she was working for an orthopedic group at Pittsburgh Presbyterian hospital. I got around to tracking down Paula Cole’s song “Me.” I played it late one night. It deconstructed me. It was Bridgette. The effect was singularly crushing in its intensity. I fought with a fury the memories that flooded back. This girl who had no passionate interests other than finding diversions to kill time, this girl whose only interest was to find someone who cared for her, with this one song, this girl had proven to me my opinion of her was wrong. This girl was no different than me. I stood corrected, I will never forget. Virginia tried real hard to forgive me but the damage I had done was impossible to repair. I tried real hard for redemption but after several months Virginia quit her job with the accounting firm and took our life savings and headed west to Albuquerque, New Mexico with our daughter, Erin and our son Alec. My pleas not to go fell on deaf ears. I go to work every day and gaze at where Bridgette’s old cubical was. My mind goes into a space, time, matter, quantum, reality leap—there’s the chair she sat on, the computer terminal she typed on—same matter, same space, different time. It doesn’t matter, she’s not here. I go home to a quiet house and call my kids twice a week and their voices make me ache. There’s been no mention of divorce but that’s probably coming. I love Virginia. I want my old life back. But there are some things that you can do which are irreversible. Nobody wins, nobody gets what they want. Everybody loses and suffers including innocents who have done nothing. You and everyone around you will be affected forever with the consequences of one bad chess move in the game of life. Mine—was going through my mid-life crisis and ignoring and taking for granted all the good things in my life. Out of boredom I had to climb the mountain called infidelity to see what the view was like and as I gaze from this lonely summit at the wreckage, relics, and ruins of what I have caused, I can tell you, the view was not worth the climb. I now realize that all quests and journeys in life do lead to God, but right now my past, my present, and my future are beyond recognition. Ancient days, sapphire evenings Wild fantasies and dreams lived out. Alex Davis
Adventures in a Fazed Nation I loved him at first sight, and I loved him more than words can express. My name is Isabelle Ravellette and this is the story of my Adventures in a Fazed Nation
Characters:
I was a strange French girl. I loved anything and everything American. I learned English as a girl and watched, listened, and read anything I could from America. I was so enamored of the USA that when I reached college age, I tracked down a Jesuit school in the American Midwest, flyover heartland, Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH. My reasoning, I thought, was to meet the real Americans and not those pushy East Coast types or those laid-back West Coast phony tourists I had met growing up in Paris.
With student visa and passport in my hand, I said farewell at DeGalle airport to my wealthy obstetrician father and to my mother, a former opera star, who now taught piano and voice, and flew to Cincinnati to start my life in America. I intended to study pre-law, history and political science, become a lawyer, marry an American, and live happily ever after. But as they say, the whims of destiny got in my way.
Everything was so different in America, yet I settled in quickly. At the end of my third day at Xavier, I dressed to go for a run. I needed exercise to burn off nervous energy, and I wanted to see my environment. I jogged up to Montgomery Road and took a left. I jogged nearly two miles north and came to a music store called Midwest Music. Having taken piano and voice from my mother since I was five, I decided to walk up the ramp and into the store to look around. The first thing I saw was a musicians exchange bulletin board. I read over some of the wanted notices and there I saw the ad that would alter the course of my life: “Wanted: Keyboard Player and Singer for Established Alternapop Band FAZED NATION. Tuesday Night Rehearsals. Equipment Not Necessary. Call Scott at 555-7155.”
Scott Monday by day, but when I play guitar by night, I’m Morrison McQueen, named after the Lizard King and Steve McQueen, my two idols.”
They were all four to five years older than I was, well educated, intelligent, polite and refined. They possessed great senses of humor, genuinely liked each other, were fun to be around, and none of them smoked, like all those other insecure, nervous, anxious artistic types I had met in the past. Plus, they were excellent musicians, almost to the point of being intimidating. My keyboard playing was what I would call fundamentally solid, better than adequate, yet not earth shaking. However, that night the chemistry was right, we were in the sweet spot of time, and at 10:30 p.m., Scott stopped the audition and said, “Isabelle, you’re in if you want to be.”
Within six months we were the best cover and original band in Cincinnati, and I was dying to be alone with Morrison.
Every practice I thought, “Tonight he will ask me out.” After every practice, he would say, “You sang and played great, Isabelle, goodnight and see you next week.” I was frustrated beyond belief.
Morrison McQueen had lots of female friends who flocked around him yet I could never sense that any one of them was soulmate material. I was so jealous and did my best to be my best, yet I couldn’t be so brazen as to throw myself at him. Our relationship remained platonic, friendly, yet sadly still businesslike. I wanted more. I wanted a glimpse of his soul. I wanted him to tear down into mine. I wanted him to want me.
I would lie in bed at night and fantasize about Morrison and myself. Yet I always woke up alone. I always ended up staring in the mirror and wondering, “Why am I not good enough? What do I have to do? What is wrong with me? Why doesn’t he find me desirable? Why isn’t he even interested in me? We get along great. I’m 5’6”, 124 pounds, in shape, told I’m cute, told I look a little like Cate Blanchet, have light blonde hair (don’t men go for blondes?), have blue eyes, told I can get anyone, yet I can’t have the one I want. Morrison McQueen apparently isn’t interested in me. I hurt.”
Morrison was a prolific songwriter and every other Sunday we were at our bass player’s friend’s ADAT studio. Jeff Dunlap was a food store manager by day but by weekend nights he ran a recording studio out of his basement. We recorded Morrison’s originals, which Jeff lovingly mixed, and then we sent them to the independent Artist & Repertoire (A&R) firm in California called TAXI. That’s how we got the crucial break that started this insanity called fame and fortune.
Morrison’s song “Turn Your Radio On” was forwarded to John Tobias, an A&R rep at Fixurstride Records, out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He called us up and asked for more DATs. We sent them to him. He liked what he heard. Flew into Cincinnati to catch our act at the Mad Frog, a club we packed every other week. We knocked him dead and were signed to a one-release deal, with a guaranteed second release if the first one didn’t lose money.
Fixurstride took the DATs we had recorded and Morrison arranged the order of the songs the way he wanted them. It was then I found out he had taken Latin in high school and that Marcel Proust, a fellow French countryman, was one of his favorite writers. Proust was the writer most associated with the Belle Epoque (beautiful age) time period of Paris, France. Ex nihilo is Latin, and it means “out of nothing.” Combined, they mean Out of nothing, the beautiful age. It was the title of our CD. Belle Epoque Ex Nihilo!
Fixurstride records really pushed our song “Turn Your Radio On.” They had us do a video of ourselves smashing old radios while Morrison sang the lyrics. Fixurstride got “Turn Your Radio On” onto College Music Journal monthly CD magazine and the song and the video took off on college radio all across the U.S.A. We had a hit on our hands.
There isn’t time to go into the whirlwind that followed. I had to take a leave of absence from Xavier. We recruited a backing vocalist, Clair Nexleff, from Dayton, Ohio to help fill out our live sound. Clair and I became great pals while rooming together out on the road. We soon had a national management firm sign us up and away we went…opening up for so many great bands and seeing so many American cities that it was dizzying. But even though I was on the road so much with Morrison McQueen, I was never really alone with him. He treated me like a kid sister.
Women threw themselves at Morrison in every city we played. However, he didn’t indulge in the industrial womanizing I saw other rock stars partake. His taste ran to the female journalists who showed up to review our concerts. If they wore glasses, their chances were better. He liked them cute, athletic and cerebral. I fit that profile, yet he never made a move. I still hurt.
The critics loved “Belle Epoque Ex Nihilo” but with his newfound fame, fortune, and experience, Morrison’s writing had escalated logarithmically. “Remembrance of Things Past” took off and we were now superstars.
We embarked on what would be a yearlong tour to push that CD and solidify our careers. We sold out every venue. I never felt so alive, yet so alone. I wanted Morrison McQueen so badly it hurt. Yet he was never more than cordial and mildly flirtatious with me. Even though he didn’t have a steady love interest, I felt that my situation was hopeless, and that we would be nothing more than band mates and business associates, until, that is, we played Minneapolis-St. Paul.
I met a young sound engineer named David. I had a few dates with him, but little did I know that Morrison was jealous. The afternoon before our performance in Minneapolis, Morrison said, “Isabelle, one of my favorite writers is F. Scott Fitzgerald. Did you know he used to live and write on Summit Street in St. Paul? I need someone to ride over there with me. You up for it?” I was more than up for it. In the three years I head known him, this was the first time he asked me to hang out with him. We went.
While walking along Summit Street, past those fabulous Victorian homes, Morrison dropped a bomb on me. An irreversible confession of devotion that most women dream about yet will never hear from a man in their entire life. His conversation started so innocently. “Isabelle, what is the role of love in a person’s life?” he asked. I gave him my thoughts: “I would give anything to be loved by that someone who was my cosmic soulmate.”
“Isabelle, I have everything a man could ask for. Money, recognition, the adoration of strangers.” He paused and took a deep breath. “You know what I miss the most?” He paused again. “What I want the most?” A few more seconds of silence, then “I don’t have love in my life.” His eyes were moist and he opened his mouth to take a breath. “I can’t stand to see you with that guy David.” He stopped for a few seconds, composed himself and then started over. “I have sluts and groupies and meaningless, boring sex with women I can’t take down into that part of my heart that once I give away, it’s forever, irreversible. In the past, that has always ended up causing me great pain.” He stopped, then looked straight into my eyes, and I felt the crushing weight of desire and love and then he leveled me. “Isabelle, I need you more than…I love you more than any woman that has ever been in my stupid, pathetic life.”
I was stunned, silent, yet elated. He went on. “There, I’ve said it. I’ve probably scared the shit out of you. Whatever happens, it’s out in the open, win or lose you, I think we can reach sanctuary.” We embraced, and I poured out my confession of love for him in English and French. We kissed passionately on Summit Street and my legs nearly went out from under me. I felt like I was going to faint, but he held me up. A moment that I thought would never come had just arrived. It was overwhelming. It was the most unexpected triumph of my life. We returned to our hotel and made glorious sensuous love. He was better than I had imagined. David the sound engineer, as you Americans would say, was toast.
From that day on we were inseparable. The tabloids and personality magazines jumped on our relationship, and I felt like the new John and Yoko, Paul and Linda, all rolled into one. Morrison and Isabelle became their headlines.
Other than my mother, the happiest person for us was Clair Nexleff, my roommate on all these tours. She now had to take Morrison’s room or find a new roommate. She did. She and our fabulous lead guitarist, H.G. Wells, were now an item. The band was happy.
One thing that can be said about Fazed Nation was that we worked hard and we never complained. We were everywhere: radio stations, talk shows, record stores, magazine offices, college publications and newspapers. We posed for pictures, gave interviews to anybody, any time of the day or night, we played anywhere, we didn’t slack or goof off, do any drugs other than alcohol in moderation, and we were nice to everybody.
Except Morrison, when it came to signing autographs. You see, he would only sign Fazed Nation merchandise or money. Five dollar bills on up. He said, “If they want my signature, they have to pay for it. No merchandise or money to sign, no autograph.” He would laugh later and say, “Now we’ll see how bad they really wanted my signature. If they spend it, they didn’t really want it.” If you ever come across some currency with the name Morrison McQueen on it, don’t dismiss it. It may be real.”
He practiced no organized religion but he believed, like me, a nominal Catholic, in the deity of Christ and that’s why he wrote “Liar, Lunatic, or the Lord.” We recorded it for the second CD, but the record company kept it off saying it was too direct for the secular market. They promised him it would be an extra track on a future CD single. Morrison didn’t feel like fighting over it, but he did put “Sooner or Later” on the CD in its place. frustration and the sheer joy and relief of finally getting a break!
Morrison and I decided to rent an apartment and stay in Paris where I could show him the City of Lights. It was the happiest time of my life.
He smiled and looked me in the eyes and said, “I love you, genuinely, sincerely, and authentically, I do!”
their act with a friend. Little did I know that their current soundman was David Glass, the guy I had been seeing just before Morrison and I got together. If there is one night I could take back and live over it would be that night. It is amazing how a chain reaction can be set off by one little move by a human being. Like a pebble into a calm pond, the ripple would spread across in all directions to hit the shores of many people’s lives, including my own.
I hadn’t seen David in more than two years, and I was glad to see him. We talked cordially and had a pleasant evening after the show. However, when it was time to go, he begged to see the apartment I shared with Morrison. I had had a few drinks and wasn’t thinking clearly, but my friend Herleve was with me, so all three of us piled into the taxi and away we went to Rue Beatreillis. More drinking, more merriment, more laughing, and before I knew it, Herleve was gone and it was just David and me in the apartment.
EPILOGUE
Six Months Later
I thank God for the support network of band members, fans, close friends and family who have gone out of their way to console, comfort and assuage my grief. It is greatly appreciated. However, no matter what they tell me about fate and predestination and Morrison McQueen having a rendezvous with death, I still blame myself. I still can’t believe that he is gone. I feel empty and incomplete, and I even dream of him.
Instant Gratitude My rock star father, Morrison McQueen, died completely unaware my mother was pregnant with his child. My name is Isabelle McQueen and I am holding an Australian five dollar note which bears an authentic autograph—my father’s! A note printed 15 years after his death in the World Trade Center attacks! I am going to find out where that autograph came from! This is my journey to Instant Gratitude.
Characters: Morrison McQueen - her father Edie Anne MacIver - a half sister Ethney MacIver - a half sister Bridgette MacIver - Morrison’s wife Isabelle Ravellette Davis - Isabelle’s mother
INSTANT GRATITUDE
Right now, I am in a state of shock and it is impossible to tell you with words the clash of emotions I am having within myself. I am holding an Australian five-dollar note, which the handwriting experts I have hired are telling me, bears an authentic autograph—my father’s. What is astonishing is the note was printed 15 years after his death.
My father, as everyone knows, was killed September 11, 2001, during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers. He was in the South Tower attempting to visit an old friend, and was being escorted by a young woman—Mollie Bridgett MacIver. Their bodies were never found.
There has been much speculation over the ensuing years concerning my father and the events of that day. As the years have gone by, his stature has grown to legendary proportions. His music and lyrics have been examined, dissected, and pored over with the intensity of a crime scene investigation.
One camp says my father knew he was going to die young and he even prophesied it in his song, Just a Vagrant Thought, the line, ”in a fiery crash you will die today.” They claim he was talking about himself. They also cite the line, ”the debris falls shimmering down,” from his smash hit song, Remembrance of Things Past, which they say is a description of the World Trade Center attack.
Then there is the other camp, which claims my father was not killed when the jets crashed into the World Trade Centers. Somehow, they believe, he escaped being killed—cheated death, and disappeared in order to get away from being a rock celebrity.
It is no secret that the life of a rock star did not appeal to my father. Fans and rock writers quote his lyrics from, Sooner or Later, the line, “you don’t really wanna be like me,” and the other line, “rock ’n roll is a bastard scene.” Going ever farther with their argument is my father’s song, Diabolic, which my father shared co-lead vocals with Luther Arkwright the bass player. With my dad taking the line, “I’m unloved and faking it brother, I hate myself ’cause I’m just an imposter.” However, the song that makes the “he faked his death” conspirators go wild is the last song on Fazed Nation’s second and final CD, “I’m going to move to Australia.” For them this is proof positive that Morrison McQueen is somewhere down under, still breathing, still rocking—and right now holding this Australian five note with my father’s autograph right across Queen Elizabeth’s face. I am now inclined to believe he is alive.
Growing up as a girl, I always believed my father was dead. Gone, incinerated that horrible day into ash, from the impact, heat and the flames. Why shouldn’t I believe that? I found it unfathomable, unimaginable, that my father, had he survived that attack, would not somehow come back to see me, raise me, love me, and take care of me and my mother.
So, since he was not around, it was easy to believe he must be dead, until earlier this year, when that Australian five dollars showed up at the Fazed Nation Tribute Convention. So, here I am, going through happiness and anger, joy and rage, confusion and clarity, ecstasy and disappointment, simultaneously and endlessly. Overjoyed that my father may still be alive. Yet I am mad with a knot in the pit of my stomach. Where and why has be been gone all these years? Why? Why? Why has he not come forward and contacted us? Me, his daughter, and my mother, his lover? I want answers and I want them now! I want to find him and hear his voice tell me why he disappeared and abandoned his career and everyone that loved him. It is time to find our where the Australian five note came from.
The decision, however, has left me faced with a huge dilemma. Do I tell my mother, Isabelle Ravellette, that her cosmic soul mate, the love of her life, Morrison McQueen, may still be out there? He was 29 in 2001. Add the passing years and that would put him in his mid-fifties, if he were still alive.
As a young girl growing up, I listened to my mother’s tales of her days with my father. I watched the DVDs and played his music. He was a legend both to me and to his fans. He had become ageless and immortal. I also absorbed from my mother her guilt and grief, blaming herself for his being in New York City that day after the drunken fling she had with David Glass. The event that caused my father to walk out of their Paris flat and fly back to the U.S.A. to sort things out. Resulting in him being in New York City at the time of the attack. The shock, grief and depression my mother experienced in the ensuing years led to the marriage to my stepfather, Alex Davis, her doctor, 15 years her senior.
Her marriage to Dr. Alex Davis had been a comfortable arrangement. Mother was going through her loss and Dr. Davis was grieving over his divorce from his first marriage. He was a good man, considerate and dependable. I believe that it was his stability which caused my mother to enter into this relationship during her depression and loneliness. I now have two younger half brothers that I care for very much. Yet my mother is under considerable strain this past year because my stepfather had developed an extremely rare and new disease, Prionic Molecular Dementia (PMD), and she has had to place him in an extended care facility in Cincinnati. I have decided not to tell her about the autograph until—if and when—I found my father.
I hired Skip Trax, a private investigation firm out of New York City, specializing in finding people who don’t want to be found. Charging them with the quest to find out where that Australian five note, with my father’s signature on it, came from. What happened next was so easy that I had to laugh about it. Skip Trax does not work cheap, yet I can say they are good.
They immediately questioned the promoter of the Fazed Nation Tribute Convention about the “how, what, where and when” the five not arrived and was brought to their attention for the memorabilia auction. Unbelievable as it sounds, the letter just arrived in the mail at the promoter’s post office box several weeks before the convention. Talking to the secretary who opened the mail brought me my lucky break. She logged it into her items received journal and saved the envelope that the five note had come in. She miraculously had placed the envelop aside in the desk drawer thinking the owner of the autographed five note had forgotten to include their identifying information. She expected an inquiry. Skip Trax went to work on the envelope. It was mailed from Gulf Shores, Alabama. There were no fingerprints on the envelope of anyone known. Then the lead investigator, Mr. Woody Carter, a retired FBI man, came up with what was the single most important question in the search for Morrison McQueen. What were Mollie Bridgette MacIver’s mother’s and father’s name and social security numbers? Mr. Carter spent a few days in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania talking to people in the MacIver neighborhood and was able to obtain the information from his friends in the Pennsylvania Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Their names were Hank and Alice MacIver, and they were deceased, passing away in 1999 and 2000 over twenty years ago. Mr. Carter then ran their names and social security numbers through another contact Skip Trax had in the Alabama Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and sure enough, there was a match. A Hank and Alice MacIver were living in Foley, Alabama just a few miles north of Gulf Shores.
Mr. Carter next drove from Cincinnati to Foley, Alabama. He stayed there a week, following and taking photographs of Mr. Hank MacIver. One week later, I was listening to his report and gazing at several photos of Hank MacIver. He was the right height, trim for a 50 plus years old, sporting a short buzz hair cut and a closely cropped grey beard. He reminded me of that old time famous actor Sean Connery. Yet the thing that convinced me this man was my long lost father was a color photo close up, head-on shot, into his eyes. Those eyes were his and they are mine.
The report read that Mr. Hank MacIver and his wife Alice arrived in Foley, Alabama, in the late spring of 2002. She took a job at Foley General Hospital as a cardiac rehab nurse. He opened a running shoe and fitness store in Foley called Hank’s Running Spot. They joined Foley Baptist Church, and in a couple of years, Mr. MacIver took a teaching and coaching position at Foley High School. Over the last two decades he had been a successful cross country and track coach, winning the Alabama boys’ team title in cross country four times and the Alabama girls’ team title twice. He ran a successful sporting goods store, and was a deacon at his church and had two daughters, Edie Anne, sixteen, and Ethney, fourteen, both honor student-athletes.
I was absolutely blown away from this information. However, there was some bad news. Over a year ago, his wife, Alice, had come down with an aggressive bone marrow cancer, multiple myeloma, and had not responded to treatment. She was in the last stages of her illness.
I left Cincinnati for Foley early the next morning in my car. I arrived late that afternoon and I knew he had summer cross country practice every morning at Foley High. I rented a room in Foley, and then drove by his house. He was home, but I went back to my hotel and lay in my bed playing out every possible conversation scenario that ran wild through my head. Finally, at last, fatigue allowed sleep to come for my weary mind.
I awoke, showered and headed to Foley High School. Practice started at 8:30 and was over by 10:00. I sat in my car, sunglasses on, and could feel the pounding of my heart. My life-long dream, my life-long fantasy was about to become a reality. While the kids ran their laps, my father ran his. He jogged the opposite direction alone on the Foley cross country course. After a couple of laps, he stopped before his team did.
It was now or never. I dug deep into my reserves and mustered the courage I would need for this confrontation. I got out of my car in a disciplined manner. After watching him jog, I knew where I had gotten my legs, rear end and my love for running. We moved alike. I inhaled deeply and purposefully walked up to him. Time was moving in a slow motion crash. My usually calculating mind went totally blank. All my well rehearsed and thought out lines took flight like scared sparrows at the sight of a cat. He looked up and his eyes locked onto mine. They were a darker blue-gray than any of his photos I had ever seen. The pounding in my chest was so loud I thought he was able to hear it. He slowly smiled. I smiled back hesitantly and said, “Morrison McQueen, I presume?”
His smile evaporated immediately and I could see visions of his past were sweeping through his mind. He weakly replied, “Please?”
My mind reconnected to my voice and I was now back on line. I calmly retaliated, “You are Morrison McQueen, from Cincinnati, Ohio, because no one from Alabama would answer a question with the word please!”
Yet tumbling through my mind were thoughts like, “Your pictures do not do you justice,” “You are more handsome in reality,” “You have aged so well.” Still, the years as a high school teacher and coach had taught him to think on he feet, and he was skillful in the art of verbal self-defense.
“Did I have you in class or coach you at one time?”
I could not hold back. I was starting to breakdown before his eyes. I went with the pain, and out it came, “Father, I am your daughter Isabelle, my mother is Isabelle Ravellette.” Then I choked up and there were no further understandable words uttered from my mouth as I gasped for breath, as a torrent of sobs of relief broke loose from the primitive emotional area of my hurting and wounded soul.
I could see he was leveled. Emotionally pierced between the fifth and sixth ribs, through his heart, and out between the fifth and six ribs on the other side. He looked at me, pain in his eyes, and on his face. He was completely feeling his own pain while completely feeling mine—both of us overwhelmed by the exchange. We raised our hands towards each other and while I sobbed, he put his arms around my shoulders, with tears in his eyes he said the words that caused all of my pent up anger to fade to melted blue sky, “Isabelle, I didn’t know.”
At this time his two daughters, my half sisters, Edie Anne and Ethney, had finished their workout and I could see they were extremely curious as to why their father would be holding a young woman who had tears streaming down her face. My father did not beat around the bush, and wiping his eyes with a towel and handing the towel to me, said to them, “Girls, this is your sister, Isabelle.” Then to me, “Isabelle, these are your sisters, Edie Anne and Ethney.” Their shock was instantaneous and their bewilderment visibly rippled across their faces. He instructed all of us to get into his SUV, and as he drove us home, he confessed and told his story and personal history of who he had once been to his two daughters. Needless to say, there are few words that you can say to describe their reaction to this news other than stunned, silent disbelief. Then the younger sister Ethney spoke first, “Wow! Unbelievable! My dad is Morrison McQueen! How cool!”
On the way to his home, he asked me how I found him. I told him that he must have wanted to be found because he had sent an Australian five note with his autograph on the front to the promoter. He said he remembered signing that note for his wife Bridgette on the day she was diagnosed with her cancer. He went on to say he did not send it. She had asked him to humor her and pretend she was fan asking for his autograph. He again insisted he had not sent it and had completely forgotten about it until now. As we pulled up to his home with three women chattering like schoolgirls, I was about to meet the architect of this reunion.
My father’s wife, Bridgette MacIver, was in her bedroom on her back. She had not been able to walk for the last three months. Her hospice nurse had given her one to two days at tops to live. She was dying with a bone marrow stem cell cancer called Multiple Myeloma. It is not a pretty thing to see and it is a painful death. She was on a morphigesic patch and a morphine oral drip. She probably weighed less than 80 pounds. Our entrance into the room was somber. Her two daughters took their places beside her and her husband and I stood at the foot of the bed.
“Bridgette, can you hear me? We’re back from practice,” my father asked
“Uh-huh,” she replied, barely audible.
“I have someone here I want you to meet. Her name is Isabelle McQueen—my daughter.”
Bridgette’s tired eyes opened and she looked out towards me. Her lips were stretched thin against her teeth. The loss of weight had caused her face to tighten and mold across her facial bone structure. She looked already dead. Her mouth parted slowly and what she labored to say next was nearly out of my emotional grasp, “What took you so long?! I almost gave up on you finding him.”
I was floored, and over the next few minutes, I got to know and come to feel a deep, deep love and affection for a woman, who just minutes before had been a perfect stranger. She told me that her life was nearly gone. She wasn’t going to beat this illness and her last wish and prayer was to hand her husband, my father, back over to the other woman, my mother—the other woman whom she knew was my father’s original soul mate.
She confessed to tricking “Morrison” into signing the Australian five note, which she had gotten from her good friend, Lisa Eacott, who had lived and worked a year in Australia as a traveling nurse across borders. She, in an act of supreme unselfishness, wanted to know that when she was gone her man would be taken care of by people she knew she could count on. She had him for 21 years and now knew she didn’t have much time left. The only thing she was concerned with was my father’s future happiness.
The pathos of the moment—the incredible love being emanated at this sorrowful scene left no eye dry by anyone standing around the deathbed as they took turns saying their final good-byes. It was the emotional equivalent of a tsunami, breaking the wall surrounding what usually is a well-guarded fortress, called our hearts.
She stared straight ahead and breathed in great gasps. The death rattle had started. Bridgette MacIver McQueen lasted nine more hours, and passed quietly as the evening sun went down on what was for her the last day. I firmly believe she held on until her mission to reunite Morrison McQueen and Isabelle Ravellette was completed. She died with my father holding her hands in his, as he helplessly sat and silently prayed, head down, telling her he loved her so and she could go be with the angels and did not have to suffer anymore. The only sound was her breathing and just before sunset, she opened her eyes, staring straight ahead and whispered her last words, “All I can do Lord, is press my head against this pillow!” Then just like that her chest stopped moving, her eyes closed, and she was gone.
She had gotten her wish. By sending that five note out into the world, she had signaled, that if my father so chose, he could take the show back on the road.
Within minutes of my stepmother’s passing, my cell phone buzzed me. It was my mother in Cincinnati demanding to know what in the hell was going on. I played innocent. “Nothing’s going on, Mother,” I white-lied back. She said, “I have been hounded for the last 3 hours by the media claiming that your father has been found alive!”
Apparently, Mr. Woody Carter of Skip Trax had leaked the news for some quick cash from the tabloids. I stalled my mother, “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll call you back later. I’m on vacation and I don’t want to be bothered by any reporters.” She shot back, “Vacation? Where?” I replied, “Gulf Shores, Alabama.”
“It’s true,” she screamed. “That’s where the reporters had heard he was living. You are with him now, Isabelle, I feel it! You found him, I know it! Do not lie to me girl, put him on!”
She begged and pleaded until my ear hurt! I knew that the time was not right. “Mother, yes, he is alive, but he cannot talk at the moment. His wife has just died.”
Then I continued, “Don’t tell a soul. I mean it, please don’t tell anyone. Let him bury her in peace.”
My mother didn’t hesitate, “I’m on the way if you tell me where, if it’s okay with Morrison. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
“Only if it’s okay with my father,” I said. “I’ll call you back after I run it by him.”
After I hung up from speaking to my mother, I decided this was not the time or the place for their reunion. I called my mother back and told her he wouldn’t be ready for another week. She understood and said she had waited 21 years, one more week wouldn’t hurt, and she admitted to telling no one.
Morrison McQueen’s Story
The major events of my life arrive like a landslide. No man craves order, stability, and routine as much as me, yet when a major change comes in my life it is calamitous and heart shattering.
In the space of 24 hours, I have met my 21-year-old daughter by Isabelle Ravellette, and lost my wife of over 21 years, Bridgette MacIver. Tossed in on top of that, I communicated this week for the first time since 2001, with my old lover Isabelle Ravellette and then the news media hordes descended on me like a plague of locusts. I hated them then, I hate them now.
The shock to my system was nearly unbearable. I wanted to run—escape the pressure like I had in 2001, but this time the laser beam of attention was focused on me, and there was no way to get lost in the confusion.
The funeral and memorial service for my wife was peaceful, heart-wrenching and fitting. Bridgette and I knew her death was inevitable, and she told me she wanted me to return to the rock world and claim the praise and distinction that I had run away from over 20 years ago. However, before I go on about the future, let me tell you about death, loss, and heartache. No matter how much you think you are ready for the death of a loved one, I can tell you, there is no way to be prepared for it when it arrives. There is no drug, pill, or elixir to take away grief. For me, only God and time will do that. I do miss Bridgette something fierce. Yet I am relieved she is free from her suffering, plus I am so thankful for my daughters, for they are supporting me through this.
The trip to Cincinnati to reunite with Isabelle Ravellette was 12 hours of non-stop conversation with my new daughter, Isabelle the second, as I now call her, and her two half sisters, Edie Anne and Ethney. They had already bonded, as women easily do, and I knew everything in the end would be fine with them.
As for the first face-to-face with Isabelle the first… I was completely terrified at the prospect and was feeling the fight or flight release of catecholamines (adrenaline) which I knew oh so well.
Before I knew it, we were pulling up into the driveway of Isabelle the first’s house and at least a dozen news media types were there, wanting my picture, wanting a word, wanting a piece of me. Thank God they didn’t turn my wife’s funeral into a circus, only because they were looking in Gulf Shores and not Foley. They camped out on Isabelle the first’s street knowing eventually that I would show.
Isabelle, the second opened the front door and led the procession into the family room. I felt my heart pounding and the queasiness in my stomach. Then like a dream, Isabelle the first appeared in the room and spoke in a breaking voice, “Morrison, Morrison, Morrison, my Morrison, I cannot believe you are really alive.”
I took one look at her. My eyes could see what the 21 intervening years had done to her face and frame, age wise, yet my mind immediately erased the change and there she now stood before me looking radiantly supernatural. I was wiped out emotionally. I felt the feelings I had once felt for her stir. Feelings that I thought were gone. Feelings that I had convinced myself, years ago, no longer existed Feelings—overwhelming—reducing me to a shamble. Melting there in front of her was me—and returning the same look like a melting mirror image—was Isabelle.
Anticipating this moment for days, I had rehearsed in my head the first great words I would say to Isabelle the first. The moment was upon me and like every male I know, the great lines I had rehearsed and prepared fled from me like grade school kids on their last day of school. All that I could get out was, “Isabelle, I am so sorry. Forgive me!”
Like my daughter, Isabelle the second and myself ten days earlier, we reached out and collided more than embraced. Tears flowing freely and everyone in the room had their heart smashed into succumbing to the scene playing out in front of them. Two old lovers falling back in love for the second time. The tissue white flag of surrender furled.
The rest of the evening went fabulously. Everyone came by to see the dead rock star that had come back to life. They all wanted to know where I had been those years, and their questions were always the same, “Morrison, what happened to you on September, 11th, 2001?”
So here it is…I don’t really know exactly what happened, but I will give you my best recollection.
As you know, I was heading to the World Trade Center to see an old college friend of mine. I had just met Bridgette at the record company, and I asked her to help me navigate Manhattan and get to the World Trade Center. While in the cab, she was talking my ears off. “I can’t believe I’m with Morison McQueen of Fazed Nation, I want a picture of this.”
She went on that she had a camera at her place and wouldn’t I love to have a picture of me and my buddy to give to him later? I agreed to swing by her place to get the camera. The extra time it took saved our lives. She picked up her camera, and on the way to the World Trade Centers, the first plane hit. We got there minutes later and were standing around looking up at the smoke, wreckage, ruins and body parts on the ground. Then here is where things get all compressed and hazy for me.
What I am about to tell you is going to make you think that I am insane, delusional or on drugs, but I’m not making this up—this is what I really saw—or imagined I saw. The second plane hit with a jarring explosion. Imagine millions of metal garbage cans being jammed together. Then in slow motion, I saw one of the landing gear wheels coming straight for me. I knew I was going to die. The landing gear hit the ground! I was frozen to the pavement. It was coming at me like “black-death” on horseback. Then at the last possible instant, I felt a hand on my right shoulder jerk me out of the way, and the wheel missed my head by millimeters and went on to hit a woman further down the street behind me. She was erased just like that.
My first impulse was to turn around and thank Bridgette for saving my life—but when I did, Bridgette was standing too far away to have grabbed me. That’s when I heard a beating rhythmic sound above me, so I looked up to see a winged being clothed in a brilliant white robe speaking to me in my mind, “All men have a rendezvous to taste death, but today is not your time.”
Then upward the being went and that’s when I could see and hear in the air all around the World Trade Centers, angels and demons screaming and fighting over the souls of those killed and dying in those two horrible plane crashes. I assume that the being that spoke to me was my guardian angel. I know you think that what happened to me was some mental breakdown from the stress, shock and overload of what I was witnessing. Maybe so, but I tell you this, I felt the very fabric of our space, time, material, quantum reality, had been ripped open right there in the skies above Manhattan, I could see the dimensions of heaven and hell. Just a superstring, vibrating, resonating, flip reality away from what we know as ordinary reality. Evil versus good in their eternal cosmic battle, fighting it out in front of me as sure as I am standing here.
Grabbing Bridgette, we ran. We made our way out of Manhattan. Both of us were in shock. I had plenty of cash on me and we were able to hitch-hike to Bridgette’s home town of Pittsburgh. I bought a used Toyota Corolla, paying with cash. We drove to Cincinnati and went to the rental storage unit I had been keeping under my mother’s given name, Scott Parker. There in a nylon gym bag I kept over $350,000 of my songwriter and performance income that I had skimmed and squirreled away over the years. I had always felt like running from fame, so I had been hoarding money for the time, if I ever decided to get out of “Dodge” I could.
Watching the news, I knew that was the event of the decade, maybe the century. No one would be looking for me if I chose to disappear. It was now or never, so I went. Mainly because I could not take in or comprehend what I had seen at the World Trade Centers. I was like the Apostle Paul after his Damascus road conversion. It took me six months of driving around the U.S. staying in hotels and motels before finally coming to terms with what had happened to me. I came to believe God had put me with Bridgette because he wanted us to be together.
Bridgette was an only child. Both her parents had recently passed away. She had no one after they died, so she moved to New York City, leaving her nursing career behind. She landed a job at my record company headquarters, and there she was that fateful September day at work when I walked in, another major turning point in my life.
I just picked Foley, Alablama, to settle in because I knew from a Fazed Nation business meeting that Southern Alabama was one of the areas where we had sold the least amount of recordings. I figured living somewhere that had never heard of me would decrease my chance of being recognized. We took her parents’ names and Social Security numbers. Bridgette and I rented space at the strip mall where I founded my running store. We bought a small house with my cash. She took a job nursing; we joined a church and soon we were assimilated in the community of Foley, Alabama. We were quite happy until last year when Bridgette became ill. She tricked me into signing that Australian paper money. I had no idea she had a plan set in motion, and that the outcome would be me here telling you this story. So there you have it. That’s where I’ve been the past 21 years. I now plan to get on with my life and honor Bridgette’s memory in the way she wanted me to—picking up my guitar.
Epilogue
Isabelle Ravellette and Morrison McQueen had to wait two years until the death of Isabelle’s husband Alex Davis from PMD, before Isabelle finally became Isabelle McQueen. Isabelle’s two sons, Josh and Jed, readily accepted Morrison into their life, and they have a close stepson and stepfather relationship.
Josh and Jed’s biological father, Alex Davis, lay in a nursing home’s bed, comatose and mute for the last 6 months of his life. He died on a beautiful sunny morning. The nurse’s aid who happened to be in his room at the time claims she saw him raise his hand and utter one word—”Bridgette”—then he departed this space time quantum reality.
Everyone was stunned to learn that Bridgette MacIver McQueen had been Alex Davis’s mistress when she lived and worked as a young nurse in Cincinnati. The information was provided by her diaries, which her daughters came into possession of after her death, proving once again that there is something out there moving us, the chess pieces, in a game whose outcome we cannot figure out, no matter how hard we try.
Morrison McQueen was front-page news for several months, no matter how much he detested the attention. He reconvened his old band, Fazed Nation, and recorded two more bestselling studio albums. They toured the world for two years, supremely successful, and this time all the band members invested their pay and are set for life.
Morrison and Isabelle McQueen, after the last Fazed Nation tour, spend their time and money working for Christian humanitarian aid organizations. They put their money and time where their hearts are and live happily in an unpretentious home in a hard to find area in the outskirts of Cincinnati. Morrison has disappeared from view for the second time doing what he feels
Isabelle the second is married to a high school science teacher, cross-country and track coach in the Cincinnati area. She spends her days taking care of her son, Morrison, and daughter, Isabelle the third. She also works for her father as business manager, executive marketing and chief administrative officer for the Fazed Nation Empire. No one gets to Morrison McQueen unless they go through her first. She, along with her half sisters, guards her father’s legacy and maintains the franchise with a zeal, competence, and loyalty that only a daughter can have.
Isabelle the second became a born again Christian after reading Bridgette McQueen’s diaries. Isabelle believes in the principle espoused by Dr. Carl Jung called synchronicity. A term that means there are events in life that happen in such a manner that it is mathematically impossible for them to have occurred by chance or random coincidence. She considers it not an accident that her father met Bridgette at the time and in the manner he did. She says, “Someone had been directing Bridgette’s steps from the moment her love affair with Alex Davis ended badly—all the way until she looked at me while dying and said, “What took you so long.” There was a plan, program, and purpose behind that!
Not a single night goes by that she doesn’t think of the events of the past and Bridgette McQueen. She ends her evenings in prayer and giving thanks to God and the woman who gave her father back to her and her mother. It leaves her feeling an ecstasy she can only describe as “INSTANT GRATITUDE.”
Every Song in the Flip Reality Catalog can Recommended Essential Previews of Adult Alternarock- Up For Getting Down Frustration Its Time to See Bleeding Over Love All Falls Down Flip Reality Literary Prismatics- Anomie Overture Ennui Underture Something in Me Say It to My Face Loaded Gun Lost Again I Can't Let Go Hallucinogenic Poetry- Killer Cute Forbidden Fruit Oblique Eyeliner Your Lies Color of the Sky Recommended Essential Previews of Adult Alternarock- Turn Your Radio On Can't Get Over Her Blues Don't Look Back Sunny Perfect Day Turning Heads Forgive Me I'm Going to Move to Australia Literary Prismatics- Emily Bronte Sometimes I Feel So Sorry For You Lesson in the Pain More Than You'll Ever Need Gone Photograph Hallucinogenic Poetry- Everything is Working Out Great Belle Epoque Ex Nihi lo Your Program Remembrance of Things Past Isabelle Recommended Essential Previews of Adult Alternarock- Before You Act Last Day You Were Young Do You Wanna Party? Screaming Under Water Life 101 New Twists on Old Fun Literary Prismatics- Oracle How the West Was Won Bless Your Heart Are You With Me So Far? Say Something to Me Open Boat Liz St. Phair Millay Like Stephen Crane Grace Rolls Down Hallucinogenic Poetry- Qa Ce Que Vrairment Compte Mercy Kicks In I Can't Be Her Now Trip Reality Nine Eleven Zero One Underneath Your Eyes Au le vent Une bonne Volonté d`oublier
How to Purchase Flip Reality CD’s In the Greater Cincinnati Area CD’s may be found at 3 locations:1. Everybody’s Records – Pleasant Ridge – at the intersection of Montgomery and Ridge Road, 6106 Montgomery Road 513-531-4500 2. Shake-It Records – 4183 Hamilton Avenue, Northside 513-591-0123 3. Dr. Stacy Osborne’s Office – 5521 Montgomery Road, Norwood, Ohio 513-351-6300 Mail Order Form 1. Vol I Beyond Recognition 2CD$10 + $5 shipping and handling ______ Total 2. Vol II Adventures in a Fazed nation 2CD $10 + $5 shipping and handling ______ Total 3. Vol. III Instant Gratitude 2CD $10 + $5 shipping and handling ______ Total 4. Flip Slap and a Half Relics, Runes, and Rarities1CD $5 + $5 shipping and handling ______ Total Please send check or money order F.R.E.P. Do not send cash! Click here for a printable .pdf
Adobe, Reader, and the Reader logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.
Brandy Ivey As long as I can remember all I have ever wanted to do was sing. Born in 1982 in Middletown, Ohio I was an only child and I lived with my mother. At the age of two I was singing on the Juke Box at the Anchor, a local restaurant where my grandma was the cook. Now, I don't mean I was being played on the juke box....I was literally singing on top of it. I was two, it was like a stage to me! The older I got the more I wanted to sing. I started singing in church at a very young age. After that I sang anytime I got the chance. Musicals in school, talent shows, I even took some voice lessons. I joined my first band at the age of seventeen. However, as many bands do, it soon fell apart and I was left to my own devices. Upon Graduation of high school I applied to Berklee Music college in Boston, Mass and was accepted right away. Due to costs I decided to go to Sinclair in Dayton until I could figure out how to pay for it. Sadly the plans to go to music school did not pan out. So then I set out on the band search once again. After auditioning and forming several groups to no avail, I received a call from a Dr. Stacy Osborne who invited me to come audition for Flip Reality because they needed some vocals for the record they were working on. So this has been my first recording experience. I had a great time and met a lot of wonderful people in the process. Once the album was all finished and released I was amazed with the final product. Currently I am back to searching for a band or trying to form my own that won't fall apart. Music is my life!Greg Cooper I was born into a musical family with many musicians running down the line of my Dads side of the family.I watched as very young child while my Dad, the late Howard Cooper, and his gospel singing group, the Revelators, would rehearse and perform. They always had a piano in the mix. So my idea was to play guitar. Tried for years to get guitar lessons. Never got them, still a little salty about that, but since the piano was around, I just started teaching myself piano. It was definitely a second choice. Although I basically had no formal training on piano, beginning in the sixth grade, I became a trumpet student through the Norwood schools and learned music theory through out my school career all the way into my Senior year at Norwood High. While in High School, fellow trumpet player, the late Paul Delph, was also playing piano and keyboards, and would bring Minimoogs and what have you to school and at that point, I was convinced that I was also going to be a keyboard player. I bought a Minimoog in my junior year of High School and from that point, was hooked on playing the keys. Once High School was over, I dropped the trumpet and focused my efforts on piano and electronic keyboards. My first band was a fifty's band that was very popular at the time, and actually, are still together to this day. Ooh La La and the Greasers. I was underage to get into some of the places that we played, but in I got, and that was a great experience for me. I was hooked on being in a performing band situation. I married somewhat early, started a family, and set performing live music aside from 1982 till 1994. During that time, I did keep my chops sharp by playing piano at home as much as I could. Then, in 1994, came the studio work, with a band called Ruff Kutt. We did all originals, which were top notch and I realized that studio work was as awesome as performing live, I became hooked on that as well. It was a basement studio in Golf Manor Ohio, and it had all the most up to date electronics, recording there had rekindled the musical flames. Ruff Kutt continued recording while I shortly joined a wedding band called Showboat. Ruff Kutt was about to switch over to a live performing band, so I had to become a part of that. Showboat was short lived and the band On the Loose (the old Ruff Kutt) began to perform live shows. Members of On the Loose eventually moved on and at that point, the marriage had hit irreconcilable differences, so focus briefly went in that direction. As a newly single individual, I joined an east side band called Amy Devine and Next Exit. That band was a great time, however, there were ups and downs, Amy moved on and we just could not replace her. Next Exit became no more. I moved on with the Next Exit bass player, Glen Mock, to a new band, NexTime, in which I still currently perform. It was Stacy Osborne, a long time friend who had been working on Flip Reality projects with the NexTime drummer, Steve Hedger who recommended me to Steve, who had just finished up with a musical project call Time Peace. Parts of Next Exit merged with parts of Time Peace, becoming a new entity called, NexTime. It was after that, that the third installment of the Flip Reality project called 'Instant Gratitude', went into production, and although I was not involved with that project in the beginning, I came in during production and totally enjoyed being a part of the Flip Reality band. The rehearsals were a really great time and very productive. The recording process was an absolute blast and overall, just a very fulfilling situation. In the present, I work on my own original works, in which I hope to release in the next five years. I continue to play keyboards and sing for the rock band NexTime, and will continue to work with Stacy Osborne on his next musical endeavors. Greg Cooper, born April 25th, 1959, currently resides on the east side of Cincinnati. that won't fall apart. Music is my life! Lori Downing Zwick I went to Norwood Junior High 77,78,79 and it is there where I first encountered Stacy Osborne. He was known as Mr. Osborne a science teacher. He left the Junior High to go to med school in June of 79, the same time I left to go onto the senior high. I may have bumped into him once or twice in the ensuing years. While in high school I sang, and played percussion in the high school bands. After high school I sang in various local cover bands too numerous to mention. I got married 18 years ago to Len Zwick a professional drummer and we have two wonderful children, Seth and Sydney. I ran into Stacy in November of 2006 at the Indian Mound Cafe in Norwood and when he found out I was a vocalist and owned my own music DJ company, he recruited me for what became the Instant Gratitude CD. It was a fun, fun, project to work on and I became great friends with the entire band.Phillip Taylor - Bass/Vocals Born in Corbin Kentucky and raised in Norwood Ohio. I actually learned to play the bass by accident. A friend of mine in High School, who was going to be the guitarist in our HS Jazz band, told the director that I could play bass. When he asked I said "sure" even though I had never even tried playing the bass. I took the bass home for the summer and taught myself to play. During my senior year I started playing in a local rock band, First Offense. We played High School dances and Clifton college bars. First Offense recorded several original songs at the old Fifth Floor Recording Studios in downtown Cincinnati. After First Offense disbanded, it was several years before I had the time to devote to playing again. I played in a local recording project known as “Johnny & the Soul Poets” and during this time I occasionally played bass with local bands needing a substitute player and I still do this today. Flip Reality was formed when I teamed up with Stacy and you’ll have to ask Stacy when this was because I just know it was a long time ago. Besides Stacy, I am the only original Flip Reality member. I'm an avid collector of music (vinyl and CD), amateur photographer and computer engineer for a local University. I have been married for 25 years to my wife Barb and have a 24 year old daughter, Amber and my first grandchild, Addison.Stacy Osborne I got a repossessed Fender Telecaster Custom and Twin Reverb Amp from G.E. credit in 1976 for $300. Still have it. Doodled on it all the way through Podiatry school. Got out of Podiatry school in '83 and played guitar in the Hard Rock Band Fazed Nation--'84 thru '87. Released an independent cassette of original music in 1985, "Changing the Guard". Out of print, but I got a bunch of un-opened copies in a trunk in my basement if you want one. When daughter Erica was born in 88, did not touch a guitar again till she started kindergarten in '93. Started Flip Reality in May of '95 with Slate Kirk, Bob Scheadler, Phil Taylor. Met Jennie Whittaker January '97 at Bob Roncker's Running Spot and knew all the pieces of the puzzle were in place. Had no idea or direction on what to do next until I saw the movie "The English Patient" on March 8th, 1997. That movie inspired me to write the "Beyond Recognition" (vol.1) story. The rest is history.Steve Hedger I receive my first snare drum at age 9 after years of constantly begging my parents for a drum set. They immediately enrolled me in a summer supervised percussion class. The most remembered moment was the lengthy discussion to either play matched or traditional grip. I guess I never actually made a decision, for those that have witnessed my playing you have noticed I play both styles. This summer instruction led to what all great musicians do, join the school band. The next handful of years was spent both in the school band and undertaking a series of private lessons. The private instruction was diverse in styles with a heavy focus on jazz, orchestra percussion, and the 'marches' of Jon Phillip Sousa. After the years of instruction came the marching band, jazz ensembles, DCI Drum Corp, and extensive work with formal percussion ensembles. This background while diverse provided a rich foundation for the next series of endeavors playing in multiple rock and roll bands. Major influences that moved me into rock were Stewart Copeland & Neil Peart. I think after I heard "Message in a Bottle" by the Police and "Tom Sawyer" by Rush I about quit playing the drum kit all together. Happy to say I have learned to play these songs, and have even been playing "Message in a Bottle" today live in a cover band. I have been in multiple rock bands through my early gig days and later on did some work with some blues bands and Christian rock. Most recently I have been in some regional cover bands Time-Peace and NexTime. One of the more recent rewarding experiences has been working with all of the musicians of Flip Reality on the latest 2 concepts albums "Adventures in a Fazed Nation" and "Instant Gratitude". These projects allowed me to conjure up pieces of my diverse percussive background and capture them for posterity. I feel really good about each track I laid down and hope these expressions are well received by anyone who has the opportunity to listen.                                                                           Where these pursuers of the American Dream are now. Scott Albers - Lead guitar vol II. Believed to be married and living in Orlando Florida. No contact since 2004. Steve Brodberger – Drummer vol. I. Owns a security firm in Cincinnati. Married with a teenage daughter. Talks with Stacy occasionally. Plays off and on in local cover bands. Greg Cooper – Keyboards vol. III. Lives on the East side of Cincinnati. Is writing music for next Flip Reality CD. E-mail: musicforceone@hotmail.com Dr. Alex Davis – Bridgette MacIvers ex-lover. Married to Isabelle Ravellette, practicing internal medicine in Cincinnati. Isabelle R. Davis – vocals, keyboards for Fazed Nation. Former lover of Morrison McQueen, married to Dr. Alex Davis and living in Cincinnati. Mother of Isabelle McQueen and Josh Davis. Fred Dietz – Drummer Vol. I. Hasn’t been heard from since 1998. Believed to be living and working in the Northern Kentucky area. Jeff Dunn – Producer Vol. I, II, III, owner operator of Sonic Frontier Studios. Project Manager for Lucke Homes. Lives in Northern Kentucky with his wife and son. E-mail: j.dunn@insightbb.com web site: www.sonicfrontier.com Jill Epstein – Critic and fan. Podiatrist, married to Dr. Matt Sowa, living in Leesport PA. Keeps in touch with Stacy via e-mails. Steve Hedger – Drummer vol. II Vol. III. Banker. Married, 2 little girls. Plays with Cooper in the Killer Cover band Nextime. E-mail: steve.hedger@53.com Brandy Ivey – Vocals Vol. III. Living and working at Miami University Oxford Ohio. Auditioning and singing in local cover bands. E-mail: brirockstar1@yahoo.com Slate Kirk – Guitarist early Flip Reality 95-97. Living in Cincinnati working as a marketing and business consultant. Runs with Stacy every Sunday. Gretchen Kunkel – Keyboards, vocals early Flip Reality 95 – 97. Current whereabouts unknown. Bridgette MacIver – Dr. Alex Davis’ ex lover. Currently living in Foley Alabama with Morrison McQueen. Pregnant with her first child. Isabelle McQueen – 8 year old daughter of Morrison McQueen and Isabelle Ravellette. Living in Cincinnati with her mother and step-father, Dr. Alex Davis. Scott Parker Monday – a.k.a. Morrison McQueen. Living in Foley Alabama with Bridgette MacIver under the name of Hank MacIver. Owner of a running shoe store. Mark O’Keefe – lead guitar Vol. I & II. Social worker living in Cincinnati, playing in local cover bands. Stacy Osborne – Vocals guitar, Vol. I, II, & III. Podiatrist, married, 2 kids, living in Sharonville Ohio and writing next Flip Reality CD – “Panorama Glimmers”. E-mail: dro@runlabdro.com. Julie Sheldon – Vocals Vol. II & III. Married, new last name – Zins, living in Hyde Park and working as a manufacturers rep. Bob Scheadler – Guitarist, early Flip Reality – 95 -97. Married, Photographer and World Class Ultimate Frisbee player, Norwood Ohio. Phil Taylor – Vocals Bass Vol. I, II & III. Original member of band. Systems Analyst for Xavier University. Married, grandfather, writing music for next Flip Reality CD. E-mail: redhound1@gmail.com Jennie Whittaker – Vocals, Keyboards Vol. I. Married, 1 son, Michael. Relocated back to Dayton Ohio. Exercise Physiologist. Currently writing songs for the next Flip Reality CD - "The Panorama Glimmers". Natalie Wolf – Vocals Vol. I. Married to Charlie Ritchie, 1 daughter and living in Cincinnati. Larry Zimmerman – Producer early Flip Reality. Owner operator of Alpha Recording Studio, Cincinnati. Calls Stacy occasionally with a joke. Lori Zwick – Vocals Vol. III. Married 2 kids. Works as a preschool teacher and owns a DJ service. Lives in Finnytown. E-mail: zwickentertainment@hotmail.com |
|
|
|
