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Vision Revision |
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| Vista Eye Institute, Toronto - 06/07/97 | ||
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So let's recap: the bare-handed birth butt-slap, the circumcision snip, my
first unaided potty visit, expulsion from nursery school, singing "You Are
Sixteen Going On Seventeen" solo at age seven, groping Pat Ortner's
budding womanhood, my bar mitzvah, the harrowing Moby Dick Monarch
Note affair, my a cappella Glee Three's high school talent-show victory,
Brown University's acceptance letter, that first taste of Crispy Hunan
Orange Chicken, the fitful loss of my cherry,that bastard Bill Buckner's
World Series error, Rockapella's Tonight Show gig, Bill Clinton's
election, performing hammer-assisted euthanasia on that poor trapped
mouse, the amazing "Evelyn Woods Speed-Marriage 'n' Divorce Combo"
miracle, my first private table dance, the shrink's potted-plant shadow in
the shape of a woman's pump, quitting Rockapella, recording seanDEMOnium, and now... LASIK, the
five-minute laser eye surgery that gave me the gift of sight !
Just 24 hours ago I was legally blind. Without my glasses or pain-in-the-ass contact lenses, I couldn't pick my nose, much less pick up a fashion-model wife half my age in a singles bar. In medieval times I would've been a blind, gutter-bound pencil salesman with no albums, no royalties, no low-level TV stardom, no prepubescent groupies, no band to quit, no washer-dryer, no Heinz Ketchup endorsement, no casual sex with Christy Turlington, no nuthin'! In one painless swoop, modern ophthalmic technology has lasered my myopia away! As I gaze out the panoramic window of the Toronto airport I can clearly see the birds soaring gracefully in the distance; the cotton-candy cloud formations; the strange cracks in the runway; the luggage handlers joyously divvying up jewelry, toiletries and prescription medications; the fine print on the 747 ("Made from 100% recycled aluminum cans. This beverage contains saccharin which may cause cancer in laboratory rats"); and way off, behind that hangar, I see my pilot with his pants at his ankles, swigging Smirnoff. Lord of Lords, I can see!! I've been "visually challenged" (blind as a friggin' blueberry pancake) for 29 years. If this isn't the happiest morning of my adult life, it's certainly the first in which I peed before donning eyewear, and I owe it all to LASIK. Laser Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis is ophthalmology's latest shining innovation, correcting an array of visual impairments with a few painless blasts of laser fury. One mere day later, and I have no side effects except for the lingering odor of burnt eye flesh and a hazy memory of sexual humiliation at the hands of a zaftig nurse named Irma. The strangest post-op sensation was putting on my glasses and not being able to see a damned thing through them, which brings me to my deliciously entrepreneurial point. As I have no use for my two pairs of John Lennon-style gold-filled frames and coke-bottle-thick prescription photo-gray lenses, I've decided to offer them to you, my memorabilia-starved public. I will now entertain email and snail-mail bids of no less than $300 for each pair. Each "Sean Spec-Pac" will contain a signed certificate of authenticity, a signed photo of me wearing the specs, a ten-minute video of my pre-op preparation and actual surgery, and the specs in a nice case. Bidding will conclude on September 30th, 1997, which should give you enough time to realize I'm serious, mull over my shameless opportunism, succumb to temptation, put in a few weeks of overtime, secure a bank loan, hock some jewelry, divorce your trust-fund spouse, take a counterfeiting course or rob a Quick-E-Mart. Group bids are also welcome. Interested? Hell, I almost bid on John Lennon's toilet, so why not? |
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My eyes adore you,
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Speaking CANdidly |
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| New York City - Spring, 1997 | ||
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[Following are excerpts from a phone interview by Jessika Diamond for feature in
the Contemporary A Cappella Newsletter (periodical of CASA, the
Contemporary A Cappella Society of America)
about Sean's decision to quit Rockapella.]
First of all, I want to say that this band is very dear to me and always has been very dear to me. I’m amazingly proud of what the band has accomplished and I’m proud of myself for the role that I played in nurturing it from its roots as a novelty act that appeared on the street and at bar mitzvahs to its present form, which I believe is one of the best —if not the best — vocal band in the world. I’m also proud of the fact that we have played a pioneering role in the contemporary a cappella movement. However, over the last several years I’ve viewed myself more as a songwriter than as a singer/performer. My songwriting has become increasingly important and it overwhelms the other aspects of my career and my sense of who I am, to the point where the songs - and my desire to do the songs my way - has overwhelmed everything else in my career. Rockapella, being a democracy, and everyone having a strong ego and a strong presence... it’s natural that not all of my songs are going to be accepted into the repertoire, nor should they be. Not everything I write is appropriate for Rockapella, for Rockapella’s audience or maybe even the a cappella style in general. I realized that I needed another outlet, but that in order for me to focus on my material the way I really need to, I wouldn’t be able to do both simultaneously. I had to make a choice, to follow my heart and devote all my energy to my songs and my vision. I’m still actively performing with Rockapella while they try to find my replacement - definitely into April [1997] - and if they find someone soon then maybe that’ll be it, or maybe I’ll go on a little longer, depending on how long it takes to work him into the repertoire. I have several plans [laugh]. But the first order of business for me is a lot of material that Rockapella has not performed - in fact Rockapella hasn’t even heard most of it - stuff that I’ve already started demo-ing a cappella. When I write songs, I usually write them on guitar, but my instinct is to hear them done a cappella. So I’m preparing an album of Sean a cappella songs, where I’m doing all the voices except for the vocal percussion. Jeff [Thacher, of Rockapella] is doing almost all the vocal percussion. It’s going to be an album of about, I don’t know, 10 to 15 songs, depending on how much I can get done in time and what sounds good. This will be all new material; "new" meaning that Rockapella’s audience hasn’t heard it, with the exception of maybe one song that wasn’t released in America. A lot of the material I wrote five years ago, three years ago, two years ago. It’s material that Rockapella hasn’t performed or recorded, but it’s very dear to me. I’m going to release it under the title seanDEMOnium, because they are demos and I don’t want to present them as if they are studio product even though my home studio is pretty good and I think they sound pretty darned good. Some of them have an excitement that I think will be very ear-friendly. I’m going to subtitle it "the a cappella demos of Sean Altman," or something like that. A lot of it sounds somewhat "Rockapella-ish," because that’s my style of arranging. I will be also demo-ing these songs with a more traditional rock and roll instrumentation - guitar, bass and drums - and see what translates back into its birth form successfully. I think some of the songs are going to sound great - sort of a contemporary dirty-guitar format. In Rockapella’s announcement about my departure, I said that I was going to be pursuing my dream as an aging-but-thin, guitar-based solo artist... I envision myself doing the singer-songwriter thing... I aspire to sound as good as people like Amy Mann, Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello... Beatles-y kind of stuff... There’s a bunch of songwriters out there whom I admire, and a lot of them are women. An artist I adore is Sam Philips. I love her songwriting, and I love the way her records are produced. This is the kind of alternative songwriter rock that I really connect with, and always have. As an aspiring guitar player, and certainly as someone who writes songs on the guitar, I hear my stuff done that way. Songs that I think will translate really well are the rock anthems, like "Follow Me To Heaven" and "Come my Way." Will fans still get to hear you performing music they are familiar with? I think a lot of these songs probably won’t have a place in whatever’s next for me. For example, "Zombie Jamboree" is not likely to be a song I’ll continue performing, even though I love the song, I love what the song has done for Rockapella, and I still love wearing the Zombie eyes. In terms of the material Rockapella has recorded, there are seven Japanese albums, the Carmen Sandiego album and Primer. That’s nine albums, plus assorted cuts on other records, so there’s this huge amount of material, and I’m proud of all of it. I don’t love it all, of course; some stuff I don’t connect with, but I think that’s the case with everybody. You look back on your earlier work and you wish you’d done it differently. But just in terms of how much material we’ve put out, I’m really grateful... When I look at all the CDs lined up in a row it makes me very happy and makes me think that I’ve accomplished something very important. So in terms of what we’ve done as a recording group, I’m tremendously proud. I think we were innovators too... In 1985 we were recording sequenced and sampled vocal percussion, before I’d ever heard anyone use vocal percussion on an a cappella record. I’m proud of our role as pioneers of a recording style, but Rockapella started out singing live, on the street, and I think that’s always been our strong point - that we were an immensely entertaining live act. That is probably what I’m going to miss the most about being in Rockapella - knowing that when I go out on stage, a great time will be had by all and that we’re going to put on a great show. Rockapella has always given 200 percent, people smile, it makes them happy, and we’ve always had a great time on stage. That’s something I may never be able to achieve again, at that high level; the act was so polished and so energetic. And then Carmen Sandiego - 295 episodes. I’m proud of that legacy. It was great to be a part of a show that we all liked, and that people enjoyed... I know that Rockapella will continue to do more TV work, and I’ll certainly miss that. I hope that there’s TV stuff I can do on my own, but my opportunities will be limited until I have some solo success. How do you feel about the number of covers of your arrangement of "Zombie Jamboree"? I’m really proud of that. When we started performing, we were essentially doing all Persuasions arrangements. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, and I’m grateful that people do "Zombie." I’m glad that something that sprung from my head has been embraced by so many people, so many groups. I first heard that song when I was a little kid, and I knew it was a good song. Choreographer Joan Merwyn did a great job with that song, in particular. I think we’ve been doing that song longer than any other in our repertoire, and a lot of it is because of the way it looks as much as the way it sounds. "Zombie" gave us our start, because it got us onto the TV show Spike and Company: Do It A Cappella, but even before that, we had been performing it on a number of daytime TV shows... What surprises you the most? Rockapella will go on for many years without me, but I’m amazed that it’s been eleven years... Just to make a living in the music business is a huge achievement, and to record nine albums, and all the concerts and TV appearances... those are remarkable accomplishments, none of which I would have predicted. When Rockapella started out, I had written no songs, and the concept of songwriting was completely foreign to me. It wasn’t like I wanted to be a songwriter; I never even thought about it. I was a singer and entertainer. That’s the most surprising thing that Rockapella helped me develop - the ability to write songs. And that is the happiest personal development for me. I get tremendous gratification from writing songs, as well as a personal catharsis every time I write something new. Would you consider writing for others? I would love for other people to consider my material. I’m thrilled when other groups sing Rockapella songs that are mine, and I would love it if other groups did my material, not just a cappella groups. I’ve never written something specifically for another artist but I would like to do that. My main focus will be myself as a performer, doing my material, but I’d be thrilled if other people did my material. What has the reaction been to the news that you're quitting Rockapella? My family and friends have all been supportive because they know the trials and tribulations I’ve been going through for the last couple of years. They’ve been supportive, but not without reservations. My family is concerned that I’ve grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle - I live in a nice apartment and I go out to eat every night, and Rockapella makes a good living. They and I have to come to grips with the fact that my income is going to take a huge hit. And of course they’ve all asked me to explain to them many, many times exactly why I’m doing what I’m doing. But they understand it and they’re supportive. My friends have been universally supportive. Most people have asked the most important question. Everyone who knows me and knows Rockapella has zeroed in immediately on the big question: Why do it now, when the group is so close to having an American record deal? Aren’t your solo ambitions better served by waiting until Rockapella has some success in the American market, and then you’ll have more leeway and power to pursue your solo ambitions? And that hits the nail on the head. The fact is that I simply can’t wait any longer. My heart, it’s literally... I feel like I’m being dragged by a very powerful external force. The sensible business thing would be to wait. But I don’t want to hold the group back by entering into an American record deal when my heart is really somewhere else. My heart is set on doing my own material in a different style and I’ve just got to go ahead and do it. I’ve got to do it now, I can’t wait any longer. Rockapella’s fan are upset. I think they’d be upset if anyone left the group. And I guess because I’m one of the founders, it’s hard to imagine what the group’s going to be like without me. Believe me, I’m having trouble fathoming what the group’s going to be like without me, too. But I think Rockapella’s fans’ biggest fears are that I’m going to drop off the face of the Earth, when in fact I plan to be in an ongoing presence in their lives both as an a cappella recording artist and in other formats. We’ve gotten a lot of truly touching letters and email from people, stuff that’s really tugged at my heartstrings and made me question my decision to leave. But people have ended their letters with, "We will support you in your future endeavors," and I’m really grateful for that. That’s another thing that I’m going to miss - the people who come to our shows. A lot of them are friends at this point, and we get a lot of warm feedback from the audience. I’m going to miss that. I hope that Rockapella’s fans will look for me and continue to support me. Do you have any closing thoughts? I’m doing this because I’m following my heart. If I were following my wallet, I’d be in Rockapella right now, working hard. The way I view it, I’ve got one life, one career, to make myself happy, and to find my place in the music business and in the world. Everyone’s always struggling to find their place. I think my place for eleven years has been perfect: as a member of an important musical group. But now it doesn’t feel right anymore. Something is pulling me to do something else, to follow a different path. I know Rockapella’s fans are wondering what’s going to happen with the group. I have complete confidence that the group will replace me with a great singer, and that the group will go on to do tremendous things. It will be different than it was with me, but hopefully it will be better. Hopefully they’ll get someone who is as focused as the rest of the guys are on making Rockapella a success, both as a recording group and as TV personalities. I’m going to continue to support Rockapella and be a fan of the band. I’m going to miss the camaraderie of those guys because they are great people and great performers and great songwriters. | ||
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Sean's Final State Of The Band Address |
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[Before his departure from Rockapella, Sean wrote a final "State of the Band"
column for the group’s fan club newsletter, Rockapella CenterBeat. That
column was never published. Here it is for your delectation.]
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| New York City — April 27, 1997 | ||
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Happy 1997, Rockapallbearers! Hugs all around! Any self-respecting New
Year worth its weight in mistletoe should usher in dramatic change, even if
that change wears a seemingly unfriendly face or has the apparent
countenance and impossibly fetid breath of a Sunday morning wino. A famous
songwriter once said "All things must pass," or perhaps it was a
toll-taker, or maybe a gastroenterologist.... No matter -- it's one of
life's few palpable truisms, like the inevitable browning of a bitten
apple, the middle-aged softening of a man's once-granite abs, the
accumulation of lint in a dormant navel, or being checked all too
thoroughly for hernia by a cold-handed physician. Things change, dagnamit!
That brick of lumbering prose was the windup; now here's the pitch: I'm leaving Rockapella to pursue my ambitions as a solo rocker. The once-subtle tugs of my creative muse have become undeniable wrenching pulls, like a master fisherman reeling in his trophy catch. As a founding eleven-year member, I'm tremendously proud of Rockapella's achievements on stage, in the recording studio, and on the small screen; and I'm grateful for the love and support of our wonderful fans. I respect and cherish my superb bandmates, and I know that Rockapella will continue its fun-filled frontal assault on the music world with an exciting new face. Expect more great albums, concerts and TV appearances this very year from history's greatest vocal band. My own plans are still being formulated -- bubbling and brewing like some murky who-knows-how-it'll-taste gumbo surprise. I will release a CD of new, mostly a cappella material called seanDEMOnium this spring, with more products to follow, both a cappella and guitar-backed. I hope you'll stay in touch with me, so that when I do my tour of hippie-staffed, bong-resin-stained, incense-reeking, termite-gnawed coffee houses, I won't be playing to just the tripping bartender. My new web site, www.bigsean.com, will monitor my fitful orbit in the Seanosphere and, barring an unforeseen scud attack, I should achieve my goals (total oneness with the Universe, buns of steel, and a fashion-model wife half my age) by President Gore's inauguration. To Elliott, Barry, Scott, and Jeff: thanks for years of music, creative mayhem, and friendship. To our management team: 20% of my happy memories belong to you. To Rockapella Center: can I still get discounts on merchandise? To my inevitably younger, cuter, buffer successor: congratulations, friend -- you just landed the sweetest gig in the cosmos. To you, the best fans ever: thanks for your love. Drop by my web site, and I'll whip up a batch of franks 'n' blankets and martinis. The best is yet to come for all of us! Love,
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"Daisy Simone" -- Truth or Stription? |
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| New Orleans — March 27, 1997 | ||
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"...And the 1997 Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award for Best Original
Song goes to... "Daisy Simone!" All right, so it was actually a tie
between "Daisy" and some other ditty, but the fact remains that I slopped
the sordid details of my former trenchcoated nightlife down on the
community table for all to dissect... and I got an award for it!
Vindication? Hell, yeah! Not only have I been spiritually pardoned for
every drooling $10 private table dance I ever wallowed in, but they're
retroactively tax deductible to boot ("research")! So now, with my
winner's certificate hot off the xerox machine, I will ooze the tale of my
ongoing dalliance with lust, and explain how I morphed my bottom-feeder
hobby into a prize-winning composition.
The roots of my infatuation with the female form are traceable to a magazine subscription I got at age ten. Not Highlights, not Boys' Life, not Reader's Digest, not even Mad Magazine, but the holy grail... yes, friends... Playboy! Let the syllables tumble luxuriously across your lips and tongue: Plllayyyboyyy...! That was an erotic linguistic exercise, but now the fun's over: what in damnation was a pube-challenged ten- year-old doing with Hugh Hefner's smorgasbord of skin? Granted, America was buzzing in the incense afterglow of the free-lovin' '60s, but the tooth fairy and Little Annie Fanny make unlikely playmates. I theorize that my divorced Mom believed, in the wake of my appreciation of the nude scene in the musical "Hair," that the skinned cat was already out of the bag. "My wee Seanalie's seen it in person on the Broadway stage; what's the big deal about a magazine?" Perhaps she also believed that a monthly injection of hormonal vice would nurture my blossoming heterosexuality. (Why not Penthouse, too, Mom? Hell, let's add Hustler, Screw and Jugs to make a real cowboy out of me!) To Hef's credit, he did garnish the vaseline-lensed flesh feast with political cartoons and interviews with world leaders. I recall a seminal conversation in which I asked my mom about Nixon's China policy and NASA's floundering Apollo space program and, oh -- by the way, Mom, what does "cunnilingus" mean? Of course, a ten-year-old armed with a girly mag is the de facto king of the kiddie roost; and I packed other artillery as well. While other sleep-away campers pondered the subtle differences between Drake's Ring Dings and Hostess Ding Dongs, I held court with a clan of saucer-eyed wet dreamers hovering over my beat-up copy of "Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask." Which isn't to say that I was getting any. On the contrary, my first bare-loined experience wasn't until eighth grade when, with "Kung Fu Fighting" playing on her bedroom hi-fi, Pat Ortner tentatively checked me for hernia. By the time I lost my virginity at age eighteen, I was fluent in all forms of sex-speak, from dry, clinical jargon ("mammary gland") to colorful gutter vernacular ("sweater meat"). For a Bronx teenager with his first driver's license, Manhattan was a carnival of sleaze, exploding with triple- X theaters, carnivorous hookers, 25-cent peep shows, and zany gadget emporiums. No beer party truly hit its stride until the obligatory multi-orificed blow-up doll was inflated and batted around like a beach ball at Yankee Stadium. Most tantalizing, however, were the strip joints, where a tall teen could ogle the goods at sniffing distance for a mere G-string-placed dollar. Even a gangly bespectacled dork on an allowance (like me) could be a chick magnet if he flashed the cash. Twenty individually disseminated single bills could garner twenty brief occurrences of intense womanly attention from a stage goddess: targeted bumping, thrusting, bawdy shimmying, lick-lipped air-kisses, and lots of lascivious back arching. For the wealthy, $10 bought 180 moist seconds (one pop song's worth) of personalized beam-me-up-Scotty bliss administered by the undulating lovely of your choice: the elite "private table dance." The strip-joint clientele was strangely upscale and mostly married -- a melange of Wall Street suits, ad agency yuppies and Japanese tourists, with the occasional diamond-district Hasid thrown in for ethnic diversity's sake. One iron-clad rule: no touching above the calves.. I still find this ironic, in that a woman's well-toned calf is one of her most delightful assets. By my junior year at Brown University, the occasional strip joint foray was as commonplace as mall shopping or antiquing -- it was just another mundane form of Rhode Island entertainment. My Blind Dates bandmate Jason and I would typically kill time between soundcheck and the gig at Providence's seedy Foxy Lady Lounge. The experience was about much more than looking at naked chicks; it was an concentrated sociological study of man as lustful animal. Watching the limp-jawed cretin-patrons gape at the nudies was as wacky as watching the nudies themselves. There is nothing funnier than observing a clip-on-tied, cheap-suited Neanderthal sucking in his five-o'clock-shadowed cheeks and trying to look cool as a girl dangles her boobs in his face. I had discovered a timeless, forbidden funhouse, where the balance of power between the sexes could shift in a New York second with Richter-scale ferocity. New York City's recent preponderance of posh strip clubs is incontrovertible evidence of a growing backlash against political correctness. Millions of company-card dollars are spent wooing giddy clients in the Corinthian-leathered darkness of the nation's hoity-toity topless bars. I preferred the downscale sleaze-holes -- no cover charge, nicer bouncers, cheaper drinks, fewer expense-account stockbrokers, and normal, uninflated women. |
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Daisy is a nightly dancer, and at the club she's called Simone, Where in occasional fits of lonely, I got occasion to make my home. |
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New York Dolls is the mirror-ball dive where I stumbled upon the spirited
redhead who inspired "Daisy Simone." An exotic dancer's late shift goes
from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., making her leisure time a bizarre 1 to 6 p.m. No
wonder, then, that Daisy, like many of the dancers, saw my headful of
braids and pegged me as the guy from "Carmen Sandiego," the cute show
which aired during her 5 p.m. lunch break. Even the club's gruff mobster
manager was a fan; his three-year-old loved the Carmen theme song. When
my pal Jason and I occasionally showed up, we were given a celebrity
hero's welcome by the entire staff. The dancers loved us -- we were
funny, attentive, relaxed, and eager to hear their war stories about
Sting's frequent indiscretions. (Next time you hear Sting preaching about
the rain forest or some obscure political cause, just picture him in the
shady recesses of New York Dolls, asking offended dancers to do to him
what Pat Ortner did to me in eighth grade.)
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Daisy does a thing to Zeppelin, will make the pain drain from your soul. Maybe her grandaddy was a fireman, taught her the tricks on the silver pole. |
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I was immediately drawn to Daisy. Her classical-dance training artfully
affected her silver-pole gymnastics, while her peaches-and-cream beauty
belied her brazen sensuality. I was smitten, but she had a boyfriend.
What's a loser to do? I set out to write a "Fliptop Twister"-inflected
tribute song, immortalizing the mercurial stripper/strippee relationship.
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And if you think you're special, blink -- she's gone to the next one,
Extinguishing your drunken dream (it ain't the money but the fun).
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The ancient Jewish proverb still reverberates in my hangover-swollen head:
"Money is honey, my little sonny, and a rich man's joke is always funny."
Nightclub striptease, like bond-trading, politics, and even a cappella
singing, is a mercenary art. Daisy regularly paid just as much attention
to me as was required to separate me from a week's salary before kissing
my forehead and scurrying off to the next victim. Still, she inspired
wicked fantasies.
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Daisy, Daisy, can I call you Simone? Can a caballero suck the marrow, lips to the bone? Would you terribly mind one of my kind, rise up from the tomb? Daisy, Daisy, plenty of room in my garden... |
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The melody came to me during my Hawaiian honeymoon in 1993; I finished the
demo months later in my room at the Luxor Hotel in Vegas. I gave Daisy a
copy, with a post-it note attached saying "I hope you enjoy this. My band
likes it, and it may end up on a record some day." Soon she got a real
dance gig and was gone from the strip scene forever.
Two years and myriad fruitless crushes later, Eugene, the Russian-emigre bouncer, rested his hand on my shoulder and gave me the advice I've henceforth followed: "Sean... what you doing? Why you come here again? This is not place to meet girl." |
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And if you think you're Don Quixote and she's ripe for rescue, Extinguishing your wishful thinking is the best you'll ever do -- She don't want you! |
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Love,
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SeantiQUITies |
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| Atlanta & New York City - February 26, 1997 | ||
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Although rock lore dictates that there are but fifty ways to leave your
lover, I'm living proof that there are an infinite number of ways to leave
your band. On 1/9/97, I employed the daring "9AM-footsie- pajama-
conference-call-bombshell- forsake-income- for-utopian- art/ego-
pipe-dream- w/no-pot2P-in- receding- hairline- gut-hangs-over-belt-
yet-takin'-my-bat'n'ball- I- know-U-R-but-what-am-I?- synapse- misfire,"
otherwise known in chess circles as the famed "Shmucksky Maneuver."
Crazy? Perhaps. But in the words of Angus "Booger-Fingers" Holstein,
histrionic head barbecue chef at NYC's celebrated Eat-At-The-Y Steakhouse,
"What's done is done -- no refunds, no exchanges!" And now it's our
collective mission to sift through the charred carnage and find reason
amidst the rubble. If the notion of my leaving Rockapella to better focus on my own material and to fulfill my Pollyanna-ish solo dreams seems implausible, I offer you several alternate explanations: 1. Seek Birth Parents. I recently uncovered a snapshot of me in diapers with a handsome couple I believe to be my true birth parents: two wild coyotes. I have little resemblance to my human so- called "parents," and I'm prone to excess inner ear hair growth, genital scratching, table-leg abuse, and shoving my nose and tongue in dishonorable places. I'll not rest 'til I find those betraying varmints and smack 'em around with a rolled- up newspaper for my lifetime of tsuris and depilatory bills. 2. Witness Protection Program. I had been chowing L.A.-style at Mezzaluna with Ron and Nicole. She split without her sunglasses, Ron accidentally took mine to return to her, and I followed him in my car with the real Nicole glasses. As I pulled up behind the white Bronco, I heard the screams, heard the dog barking, saw the blood glistening on the sidewalk and saw the killer's gnarled right hand pistoning up and down with military precision. The hunched figure threw the murder weapon onto the street, where I hastily retrieved it. Yes, friends, it's true... I have the bloody #2 pencil used by Bob Dole! I'll soon be enjoying a new identity, courtesy of the well-heeled Republican Party. Radical plastic surgery will render me unrecognizable to all but my most intimate lady friends, and I'm through with that nunnery anyway. I'll be stuffed so full of collagen, halogen, oxygen, estrogen, Auntie Gin and bathtub gin that one pin prick will send me howling into serpentine orbit. I'll likely be relocated to South America, where friends of totalitarianism and fugitives live side by side in peace. I hope to enjoy many lazy afternoons by the pool, sipping Margaritas with the Mengeles. 3. Alien Scout. I am Seanthar, honey-throated messenger of doom from the alternate- evil-universe planet of Taint, where wrong is right, down is up, ketchup is blood, men cuddle after sex, and "bitch" is a loving nickname. I was sent to Earth eleven years ago to scout locations for our forthcoming intergalactic theme park, Dingyland. My work is now done, as I've discovered the perfect vast wasteland called "Yonkers." 4.A Gut Feeling. My years of indiscriminate sex have finally caught up with me. The swelling in my abdomen that I assumed was thirty-something male-pattern beer gut turns out to be a living, growing, human being! That's right, friends...I'm pregnant! I'm not sure who the mother is, or from what girl scout troop, but mark my words...that hussy had best fess up or there'll be one messy maternity suit. No matter, though: I'm enjoying my healthy glow, D-cup figure and hormone buzz; and, as I told my Dad when he started lecturing me: "Papa, don't preach! I made up my mind, I'm keepin' my baby!" I've chosen the names "Chutney" for a boy, and "Tabouli" for a girl. 5.The Seantanic Verses. One of my more blasphemous web postcards was accidentally forwarded to the afterlife spirit of Ayatollah Khomeini (the Internet is amazing), and boy is that ghost pissed! Apparently my "EZ-Backwards Fun with Thai Songs" ditty entitled "Wej Si Halla" got him hot under the turban, and now I'm on the run from a sandy posse of heavily armed terrorists with God on their side to boot! I've been voraciously praying to my own Jew God for protection, but my years of paganism make me a lousy candidate for a miracle. Help me, Cat Stevens! This is my final postcard on Rockapella's web site, sweet friends, as well as the premier "Seanecdote" on my spanking new site: www.bigsean.com! So come visit, enter the Seanosphere and gorge yourselves on heaping loosemeat piles of Sean, more Sean, still more Sean, and nothing but Sean. It's all-Sean all-the-time, and the Sean just keeps on comin'! Imagine, a clean, friendly, family-fun adventure-land where every made-from-scratch, preservative-free, pH-balanced, pepper-crusted, free- range, balsamic-vinaigretted, frozen-fresh, child-safe, acid-free, batter-dipped teardrop of joy is cold- filtered through my own wholesome sensibility into American-made oak barrels, where it ferments lovingly until it reflects my down-home honest-to-goodness good-and-good-FOR- you values and is certified Sean-approved for mass consumption. I'll leave a light on for ya! Oh, and don't forget to bring a silver stake. My Eternal Love,
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Schmuck & Mirrors |
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| Hawaii - February 5, 1997 | ||
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Greetings, investors! I have a unique financial-growth
opportunity for friends of the band Rockapella. For a limited
time only, you -- yes, you, my well-heeled Rockapollyannas --
can purchase your very own supporting girder on the fabled
gateway to Manhattan: the legendary Brooklyn Bridge! What's
more, the entire island is up for grabs...IF you've got the
wampum!
Now let me get this straight...you really fell for the absurd "Sean Quit" charade?!! You honestly believed that I would nurture Rockapella from its nickel-in-the-hat street-corner infancy to its present-day off-shore island tax shelter "Jeeves, fetch another pail of caviar for the bath" glory, and then matter-of-factly ditch my brainchild on graduation day?!! You actually swallowed the notion that a ravenous man would spend eleven years of his strapping youth paying unimaginably cruel dues (to the tune of "Hound Dog": "You ain't only just an ointment, Preparation H! You ain't only a suppository, Preparation H! Got a brand new cream and a tight hold on first place!") and then, just as the waiter is slathering the prime rib with Bernaise sauce, stroll away, naked, disenfranchised, and hungrier than ever?!! You bought the malarkey that someone frugal enough to reuse dental floss, hoard KFC ketchup packets and nurse a roll of one-ply TP for an entire leap year would toss away his winning lottery ticket on payday?!! If so, then I've got some gator-infested property and a baggie-full of braids to sell you, my gullible faithful! Don'tcha see?!! It was all a hoax! A gag! A whopping knee-slapper prank! A mercenary stunt! A devious promotional stratagem concocted by our stable of managers, lawyers, accountants, PR snakes, stylists, dietitians, fitness trainers, shrinks, rabbis, swamis, dry-cleaners and fluffers. My toddler nephew Kevin thought the idea was bogus, but he's not on salary and was shouted down at the strategy meeting. Damn...if we knew you'd fall so heavy for this marketing ploy, we would have opted for the risky but ingenious "fake-the-whole-band's-death" routine. Heck, it worked for Elvis, Holly, Jimi, Lennon, Skynyrd, and Tupac; why not Rockapella? It's a simple P.T. Barnum equation: Intrigue + Angst = Commerce; and dagnamit, we worked it $tunningly! Our four recent Bottom Line concerts sold out in a flash, CD sales quadrupled, every tchochke with my face on it is suddenly a collector's item, and we parlayed our Presidential Inauguration gig into a night of romance and bawdily purrfect splendor with that passion-puss, Socks, in the Lincoln Bedroom. I'm not one to pet 'n' tell, but the First Feline is a fire-blooded dervish of sensuality -- those scratches on my back may be permanent. In sum, we trolled a lure with the words "your lip here" stenciled right on the hook, you gobbled the sum'bitch with a boat-rockin' fury, and paid cash for the privilege, to boot! So now what? Do we withdraw my resignation announcement, sheepishly return the barrelsful of ill-gotten dough, unprint the screaming tabloid headlines, unbook the farewell gigs, unscrew the anguished groupies, and tell Bill & Hillary that Socks' lovelorn sullen malaise is all for naught? No can do, friends. We're in so deep that Jacques Cousteau himself is clamoring for a commemorative set of "Sean" flippers. Our team of $350-an-hour, fancy-shmancy attorneys informs us that if I fess up and unquit, Rockapella will be summarily pokied-up for life on multiple fraud charges. Of the five of us, it's a safe bet that only the mighty Barry -- with his leviathan stature, voice of doom, and knowledge of blues chords -- could survive the Big House; Jeff's too pretty, El and Scott are too short, and I may as well have "Prison Wife" tattooed on my tuchas. By unanimous vote then, we've decided that I, for the sake of the organization and our individual freedom from invasive and unseemly acts of prison violence, must remain, officially and indefinitely, quit. Oh, how we miscalculated! But mourn not, Rockapallbearers; the band and I will continue to lead prosperous, if separate, lives. My own domain, bigsean.com, will be operative shortly and -- to keep the spirit of Seandom alive -- the band has agreed that my replacement will be forever known as "Sean Altman's Younger, Cuter, Lesser Successor." With proper tutoring, cheekbone implants and orthotic lifts, he'll be virtually indistinguishable from the real me, especially when he loses the turban. Ain't the rule of law a funny thang? Ain't Lady Liberty a cold, calculating bitch? Ain't the scales of justice rigged with the invisible thumb of "The Man"? I tried to be a good team player and ended up the fall guy! It's suddenly all very clear: Oliver North was a hero! Rosemary Woods was just doing her job (and she was one sassy old broad, too)! Buttafuoco or bust! Robert Bork was robbed! Clarence Thomas was kidding! George Bush was from 27 states! Dukakis looked dashing in that tank! Tonya Harding just wanted it REAL BAD! The Menendez brothers were served runny eggs by their parents! The Unabomber was one of Santa's estranged elves! People, there ain't no justice, no rest for the wicked, no sunshine when she's gone, no cure for the summertime blues, and I plainly can't get no satisfaction. Happiness is indeed a warm gun, which is why I shot the sheriff (but not the deputy), gave her the gun (I shot her!) and fought the law (and the law won). Rest assured, you won't have Sean Altman to kick around any more! God bless you all, and God bless America! The defense rests; the rest of us do the stairmaster.
Love, |
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Gone But Not Farblondjet |
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Farblondjet: Pronounced far-BLAWN-
jit, to rhyme with "car LAWN kit." Slavic: "wander" or "roam." Lost, mixed up, wandering about without any idea where you are. - from "The Joys of Yiddish" by Leo Rosten |
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| New York City, January 18, 1997 | ||
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My Dearest Friends: Your outpouring of affection is a wet soul kiss planted smack on my achy heart muscle. Let me assure you that the eye of the storm I've whipped up is weeping pell-mell. I'll explain more about my decision shortly, but rest assured that I shan't disappear -- just the opposite, in fact! I know where you live, where you work, where you shop, where you eat, where you sweat, and your net worth. You'll never escape the long arm and beckoning, bony finger of the mighty Big Sean Music promo machine. I'll be in your face so deep that you'll be counting the plugs from my hair transplant. I'll be popping by for free dinners so often that you'll need a separate fridge just for mango chutney and Yoohoo. Your phone, fax, email, snailmail, all five senses, and every brain synapse and nerve ending will be bombarded with insidious Seanagrams hawking absurd products bearing my name and ghastly likeness. Unscrew your deodorant cap and behold my slathered, manic face on the roll-on ball. Pour your Lucky Charms and ponder the hearts, moons, stars, clovers... and Seans. In your grocer's produce section, squeeze the new genetically engineered "Sean's Head" cabbages, "Sean's Face" cauliflower and "Sean's Wish" cucumbers. You'll be happily evacuating, Seanzine in hand, and you'll suddenly detect an eerie presence; look down, friends, it'll be me in your toilet bowl hawking two-ply Seanie-Wipes. A year from now, there'll be chat rooms and support groups entitled "Quit Sean Through Hypnosis," "How to Secure Your Home Against the Invasive Sean," and "Geez, How Do We Ditch This Sycophantic Putz." In the meantime, I'll keep postcarding until the management revokes my web privileges, cancels my security clearance, orders me to turn in my badge, confiscates my pitchpipe, cuffs me, clubs me silly and escorts me kicking and screaming from Rockapella Center. By then you'll be asking yourselves "Damn...is that dude still hanging around?" Love,
PS - Remember, this isn't nearly as big as when they
replaced Darren on "Bewitched."
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Miami's Vise
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| Miami - New Year's Day, 1997 | ||
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Happy New Year, Rockapotamuses! Thanks to my effective use of
pre-bedtime hangover damage-control techniques (aspirin, water,
Alka-Seltzer, nude mantra recitation and a Yoo-Hoo colonic) I
am able to greet you and the New Year with equal vigor.
Here's a recap of our five-day Miami Orange Bowl stint:
The Suits The parade sponsors outfitted us in Miami-style white suits and Tony Manero-style prom shirts for our CBS-televised lip sync of "Falling Over You" on the Port of Miami float. As the video shows, the suits were in need of major alterations if not cremation, and TV commentator Pat O'Brien (a renowned style maven) gibed that we were "probably the only five people in this country wearing white suits." We got to keep them, however, which will prove useful when the Hustle comes back into vogue. Get Me To The Church On Time Our hotel was a mere five blocks from the parade route, but we fell victim to a chaotic conspiracy of street closures, parade-buzzed crowds and Gestapo cops. Our two-minute van ride to the broadcast area thus mutated into a 75-minute surf of Logistical Hell's most towering waves, ending with the five of us ignoring the Miami police, leaping the curb barriers and sprinting several blocks in our "Night Fever" finery. What Floats My Boat The float itself was a technicolor paper-mache extravaganza which could only have been hallucinated via one of Al Pacino's twitchy nasal membranes in "Scarface": laughing dolphins; suggestive, splayed Georgia O'Keeffe blossoms and enough red-lipped jail-bait bathing beauties to give any horny Don Johnson wannabe a reason to visit the can. We mimed a recording of "Falling Over You" while underage, befeathered nubiles frollicked through "West Side Story"-inspired gyrations. Hawk, the nimble cameraman, was diligent in capturing my wanton, wandering gaze as the San Quentin quail crisscrossed in front of us. Of course the number required an incongruous visual payoff "button," so the choreographer arranged for a wet-suited, masked frogman to pirouette into the scene's final moments. Who Are Those Guys, And Will They Sell Me A Creamsicle? When the song ended, we bowed and then leapt to our stations at the four corners of the floating orgasm, with Scott conveniently situated beside the scantily clad and amply endowed Miss Teen Cuban-American. The plan was for us to lip sync the song on the lumbering beast for the remaining half-mile of the parade route. Here's where the technical nightmare began. The audio playback equipment on our float was inoperable; NO SOUND emerged for us to lip sync to! I'd never been on a parade float before, but I quickly surmised that -- in the absence of a ditty to mime -- my primary mission was to grin and wave a la Queen Elizabeth, the Pope or a deplaning Ronald Reagan. This sounds easy, fun and even inspirational, doesn't it? But as the float inched further away from the broadcast zone, fewer and fewer of the curb-scrunched spectators had witnessed Rockapella's performance and -- with us not singing and at separate corners of the float -- I soon perceived a dangerous case of Zero Rockapella Recognition. For forty bizarre minutes I was a waving, sheepishly grinning, disco-suited schmuck on a float. People did cheer, but their attention was surely focused on Miss Teen Cuban-American's explosive physique, not my superb waving technique. It's a strange and somewhat fetal-position-inducing sensation to observe the furrowed brows, vacuous stares and confused, slack-jawed mouths of thousands of parade-goers, all with a single, common thought: "Who are those Good Humor men flanking that Cuban chick in the one-piece?" Seventeen Will Get You Twenty Our parade ordeal finally over, we enjoyed two days off, during which I took advantage of Miami's Latin charms while doing what I do best -- eating 'til dizzy, swilling beer 'til vulgar, shopping 'til insolvent and viewing flicks 'til drool-sopped. Rice and beans form a complete protein, as you know, and I've always been fond of organic compounds laden with amino acids, and not just because "protein" is homophonous with "pro-teen." Speaking of teens, our hotel was bubbling with hundreds of fuchsia-skirted cheerleaders, pert half-time tumblers, sassy baton manipulators and other sparsely-attired, fife-blowing cuties. Hey, Let's Sing Hatikvah Instead! New Year's Eve day landed us in the Orange Bowl parking lot, screaming through nine songs for two thousand well-beered Virginia Tech groupies. We then proceeded to the stadium to sing the Star-Spangled Banner which, sadly, wasn't televised (CBS stands for "Cut Before Song"). As we approached the two mic stands at the forty-yard line, I asked my band mates how much money they'd give me to do a whopper pratfall in front of 60,000 people. Scott offered $20, and I tried unsuccessfully to wheedle him up to $50, which I still assert is a bargain. We sang the song brilliantly, handily negotiating the disconcerting two-second stadium sound lag and the anthem's turbulent roller-coaster melody. In honor of Francis Scott Key's long-denied Hispanic roots, I sang the alternate lyric, "Jose, can you see by the dawn's early light..." We walked proudly from the field amid thunderous applause seemingly directed at us, but wouldn't you know it...there was buxom Miss Teen Cuban-American filching our thunder once again. The Great Escape Although I am an avid pro-sports fan and a retired aspiring high-school jock, the lure of collegiate football has forever eluded me; so I ditched my pricey end-zone seats, scarfed a sixer from the dressing room and made a beeline for the nearest movie theater. At midnight, some of us toasted the gurgling Baby '97 at a Cuban joint where we ate ourselves swollen and pondered the obvious virtues of a Castro-Marxist regime that produces such dazzling specimens of young womanhood. Salud, Rockapellamigos! Love,
"The pageant began a half-century ago as an honest parade, Main Street entertainment for little children and tourists. But with the ascension of television the event grew and changed character. Gradually it became an elaborate instrument of self-promotion, deliberately staged to show the rest of the United States (suffering through winter) a sunny, scenic and sexy sanctuary. The idea was to make everybody drop their snow shovels and hop the next jumbo jet for Florida. To this end, the Orange Bowl Parade was as meticulously orchestrated as a nuclear strike. Those who would appear were carefully selected: high school bands from Bumf**k, Iowa, awe shining from their sunburned faces as they bugled down Biscayne Boulevard; a sprinkling of Caribbean blacks and South American Hispanics, evidence of Miami's exotic but closely supervised cultural mix; and the most innocuous of TV celebrities, delighted to shill for the tourist board in exchange for comped rooms at the Fountainebleau." - from "Tourist Season" by Carl Hiaasen |
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