Good December to you all,
This goes out to all my alumni, colleagues, friends, relatives, and various and sundry gypsies, tramps, and vagabonds I have been fortunate to come across in the past few years. A hearty welcome to the talented and creative songwriters and performers I met at last month’s Taxi Road Rally. Welcome to my blog!
HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASONED GREETINGS I hope everyone had enough turkey and leftovers to get their tryptophan fix or tofufan fix as the case may have been. In this challenging year for so many of us, it was a good for us to stop and count the many things we have to be thankful for (even if some of them were bought at The 99-cent or Dollar store). Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and we can now face the holiday season with a re-evaluation of our values, which may be a bit deeper and less materialistic. At least mine have become so. I spent one of the best Thanksgivings ever with extended family in Northern California and in San Francisco.
THE HIGH DESERT SEES ITS FIRST RAIN OF THE SEASON I came home to the desert to witness fresh snow on the nearby mountains and a surprise rainstorm that left puddles in the dirt roads around my house. My dozen or so fruit trees (cherry, peach, apple, apricot, plum and fig) that I planted last spring are seeing their leaves turn red as they prepare to lose them for the winter. And winter is indeed coming here, dipping to below thirty-five degree nights soon to be sub-freezing once again. I am so happy that I ordered a cord of firewood delivered the previous week for my wood-burning stove. Now I get to look out at the pine tree and snow covered slopes of Mount San Gorgonio from my dining room window once more. I’m now adjusting for another round of rural winter living in the high desert with its long shut-in nights and cozy home fires, hot soups and holiday company.
THE COACHELLA VALLEY FILLS WITH SNOWBIRDS AND VISITORS Just twenty miles from me down below in the low desert near Palm Springs, the warm days still are here and what was once a leisurely ride through town is now filled with snowbird traffic and weekenders from the city enjoying their desert getaways. This is a mixed blessing for us locals, and a boon for the businesses that cater to our visitors. If you have not been to Palm Springs on a Thursday night when the crafts fair and farmer’s market brings everyone from all walks of life together here in a real celebration, you must experience this. Locals from 50 miles around mingle with tourists as several blocks of Palm Canyon Boulevard are blocked from car traffic. People walk, shop, eat, browze, listen to local bands, and socialize to their heart’s content. Many people bring their dogs as well. I always bring Stella, my socialite pit bull whose motto is “so many people, so little time.” This is usually a highlight of both of our weeks. This is also a great time to visit our local spas, such as a favorite of mine with hot mineral waters in Desert Hot Springs.
THE TAXI ROAD RALLY WAS A GREAT MOTIVATOR FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS The Taxi Road Rally as expected was filled with enthusiastic creative songwriters and musicians from all over the U.S. and some from abroad as well. While the focus has been evolving from selling top 40 songs to more practical matters such as getting placements in tv and films, the panels in the big rooms and the “driver’s ed courses” in the smaller rooms were sites of sharing invaluable information and networking. I gave my class in Writing Songs for our Original Act to a room of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed performers who participated in some lively back-and-forth discussion. I also counseled a fair number of people at the Mentor Lunch which was as fun and informative as ever. The Rally is always “old home week” for me as I get to see so many of my colleagues I haven’t schmoozed with in a long time. I also got to attend a few industry workshops, standouts being “Pimp Your Song” with Nashville veteran Ralph Murphy, Robin Fredericks’ Hit Songwriting Presentation and publicity maven Ariel Hyatt’s course in Social Networking, which I liked so much, I attended it twice.
CATCOHEN.COM GROWS BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS WITH 100+ BIOS and 39 HIT SONG ANATOMIES Any day now, my webmaster Jacob Lyles and I will launch the new look of my amazingly expanded catcohen.com website. I have assembled over 100 Bios of people I have taught and/or worked with including many A-listers, B-listers, and the rest of us C through Z-listers. My web guy came up with a featured alumnus profile and a featured colleague profile that is randomly selected each time one visits my site. I invite all of you to see if your bio is on my site and check if your profile is one of the two specially showcased on each visit. Your bio is among quite a colorful and sometimes notable (or at least infamous) list of people whom I have intersected with, going all the way back to my early days as a budding songwriter and keyboard player with many bands and theater groups.
After each bio, where applicable, I have included a contact email link with a captcha filter to block any spammers, so anyone interested can reach you without any of us incurring too much risk.
I’m also including 39 Anatomies of the top 4 or 5 best hit songs of each of the past ten years. I will continue to add to these analyses as new hits are released, and I plan to go back in time and analyze the best songs of each year before 1999 all the way back to the 1950s as I have time to do so. Another feature will be the Songwriter’s Soapbox with Op-Ed Songwriting News and Views of mine as well as yours. Feel free to submit anything you want to get off your chest about where the industry is, or the country is, for all of us to read, and I may include you as a guest columnist or editorialist.
CAT REACHES A NEW “LOW” WITH THE RELEASE OF HIS NEW LOW-PRICED LOW-WHINE CONNOISSEUR'S GUIDE (a great stocking stuffer candidate) Just when I thought my erudite self was starting to be expressed in my recently self-published autobiographical book about how I built my house MY DESERT BLOG CABIN, I succumbed to the lower half of my creative impulses and updated a work of complaints, cries, moans, sobs, wails, and whimpers that I wrote with Avry Budka a few years ago called WHINE CONNOISSEUR’S GUIDE. I am hawking this piece of literary silliness and “punishment with impunity” as a testament to low-humor at a very low price. Listed at $8.95, I will offer this homage to whines directly to all at a bargain basement price of $7.50 each (tax and shipping included) just in time for stuffing stockings. I always get silly books like these as holiday gifts, so it is poetic justice that I offer this for others to give and get as well. An order form is included below.
CAT"S CHICKEN INTERNATIONAL SOUPS COOKBOOK SAVES THE DAY Brrr, it is getting cold! It’s soup weather once again as well as flu and cold season once more. Fortunately, I came up a great remedy to handle both of these concerns as well as a perennial favorite dish with nutritional and pocketbook considerations well in hand, to say nothing about culinary adventure. My book CHICKEN SOUPS FROM AROUND THE WORLD covers all of these concerns and more with recipes from 13 states and 39 countries. I made each and every one of these flavorful soups in my high desert kitchen and there is not a dead ringer in the whole book. From Maine chicken and corn chowder to Louisiana gumbo to Wisconsin beer cheese soup to Armenian, Hungarian, Ethiopian, Thai, Cuban, Greek, Basque, and so many more savory dishes, there is a recipe for every week in the year. For my vegetarian friends, I have alternate variations with vegetable broth sans chicken for about half of the recipes labelled with a “v” rating. While writing and researching this book, I ate nothing but chicken soup for lunch and dinner for 3 months, lost 10 pounds, and never felt better. I still make many of these one-dish meals a staple in my diet. You can too. Order one below if you wish, or find it at amazon.com. Better yet, you’ll soon be able to order it with your VISA and MASTERCARD directly from me at a discount from the soon to be launched CAT COHEN STORE on my website, which I hope to have up in a few days.
CAT’S ALUMNI & COLLEAGUE HAPPENINGS – Alexandra Celano, Shakeh, Geoffrey Forward
Alexandra Celano is promoting her Christmas single “A Child Is Born” which has started to get Christian radio airplay across the globe. You can find a listing of radio stations that are playing this song and others from her CD “I’m Overcome” at her website at www.alexandracelano.com/news.
Shakeh is playing solo at the Westwood Farmer’s Market from noon to 3pm on Thursday Dec 3 and on Friday Dec 4 she will be performing with Jerry Olson at the Namaste Café at the Redondo Beach Church of Religious Science.
Geoffrey Forward, Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Shakespeare Company, is leading an Actor’s Shakespeare Workshop in Topanga on Saturday mornings. For more information call him at 310-455-9400.
Keep me posted your events and I’ll include some of them here when I can. As this year rolls on to a close, I hope everyone’s holiday season is full of creativity and good cheer.
Wishing you all the best,
CAT COHEN
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David Cat Cohen
P.O Box 275
Morongo Valley, CA 92256
I am sending a check or money order for ______ SONGWRITING FOR YOUR ORIGINAL ACT(S) (retail $14.95, now $14 for each copy)
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