The LP is out! Just click the album cover to visit "The Parallel Universe" and listen to it.

I felt poleaxed standing in the middle of Tower Records Store on Sunset Boulevard. A thigh high block of stacked LPs, over 1,000 of them, sat fat together in prominent display, all with the same cover staring back at me and the face on the cover was mine. I wondered how many more thousands of copies were crammed into a warehouse somewhere and who outside my immediate family and friends was going to buy all those albums.

In the weeks to come, Elektra Records would  release a single to radio, distribute to record stores and I would tour the country, following the record around from town to town. I’d be opening concerts for Townes Van Zandt, Leo Kottke, the Persuasions and Phil Ochs, scheduling radio and press interviews from New York City back to Los Angeles.  There was basic tour support offered from the label but not enough for a band. I could afford to take one accompanist. I called on creative guitarist and friend Al Billings to join me on my four month tour.

Al didn’t own a worthy instrument at the time so I went to Elektra seeking an advance to buy him a guitar. This meeting led to a bit of a yelling session between the Vice President of the New York office and myself. I could have benefited from having a manager who would take on these sorts of negotiations but I was on my own. After Elektra spent tens of thousands of dollars on production of the record and were so modest in tour support a few hundred dollars for an instrument didn’t seem all that unreasonable for me to expect. Apparently I was mistaken. I paid for the guitar out of my own pocket.
Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…

(If you missed the first installment of this saga, you can find it here.)

(Listen to “Lover Baby Friend,” the first single from Dana Cooper’s 1973 debut LP, while reading the post that follows:

01 Lover, Baby, Friend by Dana Cooper

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I sit listening to my first album from 1973 and I am overwhelmed with emotions. They run all over the place. Always do. Looking back is not what  I want to spend my life doing. Yet, I do it everyday. Aren’t all our lives spent balancing amongst what we’ve done, what we are doing and what we hope to do? I am no different than you. Only our experiences vary.

The Entrance to the Elektra Records Studios in Hollywood, ca. 1973

The seventh decade of my own particular balancing act has already begun.  On the night of my 60th birthday (April 2)  I was fortunate enough to perform at Ebeltoft Kulturhus in Ebeltoft, Denmark with my talented young friends, The Sentimentals.  Fact is, I’ve always been fortunate even if I didn’t realize it at the time. I’ve been on the road since I was 19. That’s 41 years and counting. There I go again; then, now and someday.
Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…