Fame may look a lot of fun, but that’s how the media paints it out to be. In reality, famous celebrities are nothing but sexual predators and liberal blowhards. I’m so glad that I’m not a famous person. Admittedly, I used to want fame in the past, but over the years as time went along — fame is not what I want anymore. In reality, fame is a dangerous and evil world to live in. Fame has all kinds of problems, not just liberal politics… lets list some of them: sexual abuse, sexual harassment, pedophiles in the industry, drugs, alcohol, celebs can be arrogant people, etc. I can go on and on.

Celebs sitting in their $5 – $10 million dollar mansions… does that look fun to you? I wouldn’t want that lifestyle at all. I would want my life simple and normal. Everybody wants fame, but after everything that’s going on with Harvey Weinstein, do you want it now? I wouldn’t want fame at all as you look at the way it’s going. Many celebrities died ’cause of all the problems in fame (e.g., Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson).

The media tries their best to make celebs look so glamorous, perfect and wonderful but in reality, they aren’t. They have problems like we do. Hollywood and the fame life is messed up. So to all those out there who dream of getting famous, you may want to think twice about that.

Fame is evil. It always has been. Fame destroyed a lot of lives over the years. It doesn’t always make your life positive and wonderful. Are you sure you want it? Not me. I’m happy with the way my life is going right now.

Kev

It’s nice to get positive feedback toward my cover songs each time I upload a new one. Each time I upload a new one, it gets all kinds of positive feedback. I remember the days when people used to make fun of my musical talent. Really, I got really harsh criticism toward my music back then. That’s when I realized that I needed to improve myself musically. Yeah, I know you should ignore the “haters”, but admittedly I guess they can sometimes be helpful. The haters honestly helped me improved musically. Nowadays, I don’t hear much negative criticism each time I put out something new. Most of the feedback I’ve been getting lately are mostly very positive.

If people are bashing your music, it is possible to get them to stop. Like I said above, sometimes you need to listen to the critics in order to improve. I decided to step-up… take music a little more seriously by taking my guitar skills to the next level and teaching myself how to sing better. I’ve also been learning music theory too. In order to get people to like you musically, you got to practice, practice, practice. That’s all there is to it. When you practice and get better, people will see it and respect you for it. I haven’t seen much people saying hateful things about my music nowadays which is awesome really.

I really do my best musically. I’m not trying to become the next music god or anything, I just want to get better is all. All musicians want to do their best at what they do. It’s pretty normal.

A lot of people refuses to acknowledge this, but it’s nice to have people who actually listen to my music whether it’s covers or originals. I’ve been getting feedback from people who aren’t even musicians at all which is even more amazing to me. That’s the type of listeners you want to attract to your music, ya know? You don’t really want to get feedback to your music from other musicians. You want to get feedback from people who are non-musicians. People who know nothing about being a musician… those are the kind of fans you want to have. If your only audience are nothing but musicians then you’re doing something wrong.

I do know I have some fans & supporters out there. It’s just that a lot of people refuses to acknowledge it. Some will call me names like “delusional” and all that crap, but I don’t make things up. I do know that I have a following with my music and people followed me for years. It’s them that inspires me to keep going in music; therefor, I’m itching for a new batch of original songs. I do love performing covers but I love songwriting too, and I want to get back into songwriting again.

I do have “fans” which is awesome… it’s why I’m dying to release my first album sometime ’cause it’s a longtime dream of mine. I want to do a full band rock n’ roll album. I’m tired of the acoustic thing.

It’s nice to have people that actually like my music now. Hard work pays off — it really does. If the Capital Region music scene doesn’t want to acknowledge that I have fans then that’s fine. Let them believe what they want to believe. People like my music and that makes me happy enough.

Thank you to all the fans… you’re the reason why I keep doing what I’m doing. Playing music for you. There will be new originals sometime in the future.

Kev

After testing out my vocal range on an actual piano, on C4 after middle C, I can only sing from C – F which is pretty much in the bass/baritone range. Still though, singing from C – F on C4 keys is pretty damn good and it’s getting there to C5 which is my goal. It means I’m almost there to the tenor range which is my goal. My goal in singing is to get to those higher notes. I’m working all I can to get there too and someday I will the more I practice. I don’t think I’ll ever get to “alto” and “soprano”, but I do want to become a “tenor”. At least I got the head voice down pretty well and can sing cleanly which is key to singing good.

I’m not looking to be the best singer in the world, and I probably never will be. I just wanna sing good enough vocals to my original songs… that is all. Maybe I should hire a professional vocal coach but I don’t know any around the area, so I have no choice but to teach myself.

I do love singing, though. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I sing every day. I’ll never give it up.

Kev

For many years, people always had mixed feelings toward me as a person. I’m one of those who you either love or hate, but I’m completely fine with that. There are some out there who are intimidated by the way I am on the internet. Some see me as very “outspoken” and “controversial”. I’ve dealt with that shit for many years online. It’s like, “Oh no, The Brock  is such a trouble maker!”… I’m sure many still feel that way about me but you know what? I don’t care! It’s actually pretty flattering that some think of me this way, though.

No matter what people think of me, good or bad, life is good.

Admittedly, I can be a bit of a loudmouth and “outspoken” person, but I’ve always been like that. I’m a realist. I’m just a guy who tells the truth no matter the consequences, ya know? I never cared if the truth bothered people. I prefer to a be a real person instead of being fake.

A lot people have also criticized me of the hobbies that I have and the things that I like. Yes, I listen to a lot of metal music. I may not look like a metalhead but I am. People would think of me as a fan of country music or pop but I’m not at all. Usually people look at me with astonishment once they find that I like metal and hard rock music.

People criticize me that I like to watch professional wrestling on TV but I don’t care. I like wrestling…. is that such a crime?  I still like to play video games at 40 years old, and a lot of people think it’s childish for a full-grown adult to play video games. Not really. I’ve never grown out of video games and still LOVE them. I also still like to wear rock band t-shirts, and I like to wear shirts with wrestlers on them too. I don’t feel guilty of that. I wear what I want at 40 years old.

As far as my political views go, people criticized me for that too, of course.  Yes, I’m a proud die-hard conservative and a proud die-hard Trump supporter. I don’t feel ashamed for it either, and I don’t feel ashamed for loving my country so much!

This post ins’t just about me. It’s also about you too. I’m just telling you my experiences that you don’t have to change yourself to appease people at all. The thing is, be who you wanna be. I never told people how they should and shouldn’t be at all, but it’s interesting how people think it’s okay for them to do that to me.

Being yourself is the best attitude to have. People may not like you for it but that’s okay, just let them think what they want about you and keep  being you. Some people may not like you, but that’s not the end of the world.

There will be those that will like you for being yourself and respect you for ignoring everyone’s shit. If you’re being criticized by someone all the time then that’s actually a good thing. It means they’re jealous about you of something. You have something they will not have. Some people just want to bring you down to their level and that’s it. If you’re being criticized by someone and if you’re being called an “asshole”, well, you’re not the “asshole”… they are. Chances are, they aren’t happy in life. Those that are criticizing and want you to change are usually people who have lots of problems.

You just gotta stay above negativity and drama. Keep being you is all that matters. Be who you wanna be even if it pisses someone off. That’s the key to enjoying life and being happy. Not everyone is going to like you and that’s okay. You can’t please every damn person on this planet.

Kev

I’ve talked about working with, Metal Method’s “Vocal Power”, DVD instruction in the past before. That’s pretty much the only vocal instruction course that I work with but I should get into other instructional DVDs. For a long time now, I’ve been looking at an instructional DVD called, The Zen of Screaming. 

Vocal Power is pretty good… I like it a lot, but I could use more.

My goal is to sing like a rock and metal singer. Always has been. Yeah, my goal is to try to get to those high pitch notes. I also want to learn how to scream and do some growling. I also want to sing with some rasp and a little grit. I want to sing in different styles and working all I can to get there.

The thing is, you can sit there and work with all these instructional stuff, doing all these exercises but one vital way in improving your singing is just by singing your favorite songs. Singing a lot of cover songs has helped me a lot over the years in my life.

I sing ’cause I love it. I just love the feeling of the head voice and feeling that buzzing sensation. It just feels real good.

When I first started out years ago, I was shit and never knew what I was doing. Back then, I’ll admit that I never had much of a range. I was singing like I was talking. People kept comparing my voice to Bob Dylan back in those days. To be honest, I didn’t like that comparison so I wanted to step-up and improve my singing voice so people would stop comparing me to Bob Dylan. For a long while now, I haven’t seen much comparisons of my voice to Bob Dylan lately which feels good which lets me know I’m on my way to becoming a pretty good singer. People comparing me to Bob Dylan, that’s when I realized I needed more range so I decided to practice my singing more. Take my singing to the next level.

Still got a long way to go but I’m happy what I have now vocally. I’m honestly starting to love singing more than playing the guitar. Singing is awesome. I teach myself to sing ’cause there aren’t any professional vocal coaches around here. I also learn to sing better by listening to my favorite singers: Robert Plant, David Bowie, Billy Joel, James Hetfield and others. I mainly want to be a rock and metal singer now; I’m tired of acoustic folk music. It’s finally time that I want to rock out and have a blast.

Kev

I’m trying to figure out how to make original rock & metal songs with full band backing tracks. I’m working on teaching myself MIDI & keyboards (trying to anyway) and I’ve been studying drums & timing as well. I’m just taking my slow time and not rushing myself. Other than that, for a long time I’ve been contemplating on putting a real band together. I might say fuck MIDI controllers and all that junk and just get a real band with real musicians, ya know? I can put out an ad on craigslist/Crumbs to start looking for musicians anytime I want to.

I’ve always wanted to make rock music with full band. It would be fucking awesome and I think I would do okay doing something like that. I think I can make pretty good full band rock & metal songs. Yeah, I believe I can make really good original full band songs that would make rock & metal fans happy.

I make riffs just fine and can play along with a metronome just fine. Only issue with that is that I’m not a speed demon of a guitar player yet but I’m working on it, though. I do want to shred and working my way up there. People don’t believe I could make thrash metal and heavy songs that sounds kind of Black Sabbathy but watch me, y’all. I’ll prove you all wrong. In fact, most of my acoustic songs were originally supposed to be metal ’cause that’s how I heard them in my head, I just wrote them on acoustic first. Once I play some of my older songs in a full band setting, you would see. I would like to make a lot of my older songs into full band versions ’cause that’s how I originally heard them. I wrote a song called “Evil Fred” and I’m gonna try to turn it into a metal version.

Writing full band rock n’ roll music is something I’ve always wanted to do but I want to start making songs in a full band as how I heard them in my head. I’m doing all I can to get there. I just want to write tight rock n’ roll and maybe even some metal. I would love to try writing metal songs for sure. If I try writing metal songs and if they turn out good, I’ll keep going with them. I can sing metal just fine ’cause I sung a couple of Black Sabbath songs on video before.

Someday a rock & metal album by me would happen. It’s the type of music I mostly listened to over the years of my life and I want to start making that kind of music myself. It’s always been a dream of mine and I’m gonna make it happen. Trust me.

Kev

I used to be pretty loyal to Guitar World magazine… for many years. I have finally given up on Guitar World magazine ’cause why? Different editor-in-chief. I’m not a big fan of the new editor-in-chief of the way he’s been doing the magazine. Brad Tolinski has been an editor-in-chief of Guitar World magazine for a few decades but he finally had it… retired and moved on. There’s now a guy who replaced him who I’m not a big fan of at all.

The new guy doesn’t do a very good job running the magazine. The articles and interviews has gotten shorter, there are only 3 tabs of songs a month now and on top of all this… the magazine hasn’t been picking good artists to be on the cover nowadays. I liked the magazine a lot better when Tolinski was in charge.

Such a shame, though ’cause I used to be a loyal reader to Guitar World. Have been for many years. I’ve read them when I was just first starting out playing guitar 20 years ago. I subscribed to them a couple of times over the years and when I couldn’t afford them anymore, I just bought their magazine at the store every month but now I’m done. Sad ’cause I loved reading the interviews and they used to have great lessons in the mag. When was the last time they had issues when they taught you how to become a great guitar player? I’m not talking about the lesson columns which there are less of that too.

GW magazine sucks. I haven’t bought a new magazine by them in a long while. The magazine used to focus on metal and hard rock but they shifted away from that too. I’m not alone ’cause GW has been pissing off other long-time readers too.

I don’t know but the magazine industry sucks nowadays. Not just guitar magazines, pretty much all magazines you see on the news stands are crap nowadays. They all want to shove liberal politics in your face too and even GW does that, they’re also a pretty liberal magazine.  I don’t want to read Guitar World just to see Roger Waters or Tom Morello bash Trump in interviews. I don’t read magazines much anymore like I used to ’cause they’re no good. I used to be a fan of Rollingstone magazine but they’ve turned into liberal fake news, it’s sad. Aren’t they supposed to be a rock magazine like they used to? What happened to Rollingstone? Wow.

Kev

The vinyl record industry is still around today. It never went away and probably will never go away. I’m probably gonna start a vinyl record collection myself ’cause like the title says, vinyl sounds much better. I can absolutely see why music lovers still collect vinyls ’cause probably the main reason is ’cause of sound quality. There is definitely a difference in sound quality between CD vs. MP3 vs. Vinyl. The way Vinyl sounds, Vinyl sounds way better than CD and MP3. Vinyl sounds louder and you can hear the bass guitar louder too.

I went to an antique fair in the Washington County in Upstate NY to brows around for books and vinyls or whatever. They didn’t have much for books this year but I walked out with 4 vinyls: BB King “Live at the Regal”, Alice Cooper “Killer”, Van Halen “Diver Down” and Tommy James & the Shondells “Greatest Hits”. I listened to all 4 today and they all sounded good.

I know the record industry are still releasing vinyls today. A lot of bands these days have been re-releasing their discography into vinyls. I really love vinyls; they are really awesome! They not only sound better, you actually get to own the album fully without all the legal bullshit behind it if you know what I mean.

I would like to rebuy Led Zeppelin’s discography but this time on vinyl. I would like to get some Ac/Dc, Kiss, the Doors, Black Sabbath, Dream Theater, Grateful Dead albums on vinyl. Just buy all the albums that I like and buy the ones I want to hear that I haven’t heard yet.

I’m kind of an old-school guy myself. I prefer to listen to an entire album and not be selective of song choices. I know buying vinyls would be pretty pricey but it’s worth it if you want the good sound quality. A lot of old vinyls are gonna be very expensive depending on how valuable they are but you can find cheap vinyls at antique fairs/shops/flea markets and you can find vinyls at buy/used record stores in your town. You’re not gonna find old vinyls in Best Buy/FYE. In Barnes & Noble, they sell vinyls but mostly the new releases.

Listening to music on vinyls is cool. When I was a kid I used to listen to music on vinyls obsessively. That was long before cassettes, CD and MP3 came around. When it comes to vinyls that’s how my love for music all started. It all started on a record player and I want to get back into that.

Kev

I haven’t bought some new albums in a long while ’cause I’ve been buying guitar stuff, books and other things. I decided to pick up some more albums from Itunes yesterday. Some of you may ask, why do I get so many albums from Itunes? I know, Itunes isn’t everyone’s favorite but I buy a lot of albums from Itunes digitally ’cause you can’t find a lot of albums you want in record stores anymore, ya know? In Itunes you can find almost any album you want. I would like to continue to get older albums on physical CD but you can’t find those in record stores anymore. I buy albums on both formats: digitally and on physical CD.

People stopped buying full albums nowadays but I never did. Nowadays, people are pretty selective of what songs to listen on the album. Not me. I like to listen to the album from start to finish as if it was a piece of art. That’s how an album should be listened to.

Anyhow, here are the albums that bought from Itunes yesterday evening:

-Alice Cooper’s new album, “Paranormal”
-Alice Cooper’s 1971 album, “Love It To Death”
-Yngwie Malmsteen, “Rising Force” 
-The Grateful Dead 1967 self-titled debut album
-Mastodon’s new album, “Emperor of Soul”

I’m an Alice Cooper fan; I’ve always has been but I’ve never bought his music over the years… now I feel it’s finally time to. Last night, I bought his new album and his classic album, “Love It To Death”.

As for Yngwie Malmsteen, I’ve always wanted to get into his music too and people always thought “Rising Force” was his best record so I decided to get that one. I love shred guitar music.

About the Grateful Dead’s first studio album, I’ve always been a Grateful Dead fan. Unfortunately, I never got to see the Grateful Dead live in concert when Jerry was alive. I did hear a lot of the Dead’s live albums and seen their live concerts on TV & youtube and stuff over the years, though. I never considered myself a huge Deadhead ’cause I never followed them in concert but I am a huge fan, though if that makes sense.

As far as Mastodon goes, I’ve been interested in getting into them for quite a while. Somebody at the gym recommended me to start listening to that band so I figure why not? At the gym, I always wear rock band t-shirts and some guy started talking to me about metal and he said, “You should start listening to Mastodon, you would like ’em”. So I’m like, okay. I listened to some of Mastodon’s songs in youtube lately and I’m really liking them a lot so I picked up their latest album.

I love music. I can’t live without it. I don’t feel ashamed at all buying a lot of albums ’cause it’s who I am; I am a music lover. I’ve always bought a lot of albums ever since I was a teenager; it could explain why I have such a huge music collection. Whether playing an instrument or listening to others music, it’s the music that makes me a happy person.

Kev

As a beginner in yoga, you’re not gonna get a flexible body right away. Yoga is just like bodybuilding. You know how in bodybuilding, you’re not gonna get a muscular body right away? It’s the same with yoga. If you’re not flexible at all like myself, it’s gonna be a long road to get a flexible body. I have been onto yoga for a long while now and I feel a little bit of flexibility each time I go.

My goal in yoga is to be able to do leg splits. I want to do both kind of leg split… the middle leg split (the side to side leg split like Jean Claude Van Damme does) and the front leg split. I want to do both splits but can’t do them yet. Each time I try them out, I do notice flexibility. I can feel my legs go a little bit wider than before so it’s working and I’m feeling it.

Yoga is a slow process so it can take about a year or a little over ’til I start to really feel something. I’m definitely gonna stay dedicated, though ’cause I’ve been going to yoga class every Wednesday night. So far this summer, I haven’t skipped a week of class. I love yoga class.

I don’t need to do a lot of ab exercises anymore ’cause yoga will give you abs. That’s because yoga does a lot of stuff to your core.

Yoga is really amazing and I’m loving it. Would I ever become a certified yoga instructor? Probably not. I just do it as a hobby and something fun. Yoga is relaxing and it’s another reason I like it.

Kev