Just me. I write the songs, riffs, and lyrics in my head ... or they write ME! (whichever comes first). And I've got over 300 and going so you'd think someone would've $IGNED ME by now to put some major money in their pocket and give the world back some good ballads and interesting piano-pop sounds. Oh well, the best things come to those who wait. But 11 years and 2000 rejections later, I'm still waiting. Though I've been told I'm a patient man. (Wonder why THAT could be?!)
Influences
Wow. Where do I begin? Probably with all the great Piano Men: Scott Joplin, Barry Manilow, Paul McCatney, Nat King Cole, Brian McKnight, Neil Diamond, Elton John, Richard Marx, Lionel Richie, David Foster, Phil Collins, Hall & Oates, Kenny Rogers, Steve Perry, and all the great film composers who taught that "melody was much more imporant than lyric itself": Alan Silvestri, John Barry, John Williams, Christopher Young, Lee Holdridge, Jerry Goldsmith, and more recently ... Clint Eastwood. Then there are those that always were somehow able to take both melody AND lyric, and make them both equally need each other (which is always my wish with MY music): James Taylor, Carole King, Carly Simon, Lindsey Buckingham & Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, The Bee Gees, The Human League, The Eurythmics, The Ink Spots, The Fleetwoods, Mariah Carey, Steve Miller, John Mellencamp, Billy Idol, Nirvana, Def Leppard, Michael McDonald, America, Bread, Sinatra, The Smashing Pumpkins, Air Supply, and again, Hall & Oates and McCartney. And where would I be without Sheena Easton, Olivia Newton-John, Dolly Parton, Kim Carnes, Juice Newton, Madonna & Tina Turner (my 2 female favorites), and both of the Elvises: Presley & Costello?! And more importantly, KI55! (Their riffs are so simple -- yet complexly lyrical -- that they're brilliant! I think this alone is why they have lasted. They place MELODY above everything and they're never overly-produced!) And on a DIFFERENT 'NOTE', since as a 'writer about my generation' I get asked so many times what I personally think the most influential films on my generation WERE ... I thought I'd simply post that answer HERE: "And the TOP 12 bibles for the THRILLERBABY generation ARE!": (1)"E.T", (2)"The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane" (visit www.JodieFosterHome.com), (3)"The Outsiders", (4)"Fast Times At Ridgemont High", (5)"Stand By Me", (6)"The Goonies", (7)"The Breakfast Club", (8)"The Last American Virgin", (9)"St. Elmo's Fire", (10)"Can't Buy Me Love", (11)"Pretty In Pink" tied with "Some Kind Of Wonderful", & (12)"Over The Edge". (I also personally like any Coppola piece ... especially "Rumblefish"! ... and aside from E.T. and Star Wars, "Blade Runner" is one of the best ahead-of-its-time SciFi films ever made! -- some people still don't know Harrison Ford's character is a Replicant! It's brilliant! Also "Somewhere In Time" is a pioneering classic ... my review for this film is on www.FastRewind.com ... and anything by M. Night Shyamalan is always worth a jillion viewings.) And it's still in debate whether I love "DONNIE DARKO" ? or completely loathe it. But I had my Flintstones vitamins this morning at midnight so for today I'll say I just LIKE it. Did I also mention that I think Marshall Crenshaw is a genius?
Sounds Like
Coldplay, Elvis Costello, Five For Fighting, Jewel, Norah Jones, James Taylor, John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band, Billy Joel, Daryl Hall & John Oates, David Foster, Paul McCartney, Timothy B. Schmit, Michael McDonald, John Denver, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Bread, Maroon 5, Neil Diamond, Madonna, Barry Manilow, Lionel Richie, Richard Marx, The Motels, Spandau Ballet, George Strait, George Benson, Sting, Bob Seger, Steve Perry, Elton John, Ben Folds Five, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, Kenny Rogers, Earth Wind and Fire, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Harry Connick Jr., Nielson, Frank Stallone, Usher, Eric Carmen, Supertramp, Mariah Carey, Brian McKnight, James Ingram, Michael W. Smith, The Zombies, The Carpenters, The Alan Parsons Project, The Human League, Cliff Richard, The Eurythmics, Nat King Cole, Crowded House, U2, Little River Band, America, Stevie Wonder, Creed, Phil Collins, Chicago, Jim Brickman, Natalie Merchant, Hoobastank, CSN, Josh Grobin, Sheryl Crow, The Style Council, Peybo Bryson, Jefferey Osborne, Burt Bacharach, Rita Coolidge, Van Morrison, Dennis De Young, The Cure, Bryan Adams, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bread, Frankie Valli & The 4 Seasons, Steely Dan, Jackson Browne, Poco, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Frank Sinatra, John Williams, Mark Shultz, MercyMe, Willie Nelson, The Beatles, Babyface, The Cars, Brian Wilson, Sheena Easton, Cutting Crew, Rod Stewart, Huey Lewis & The News, Starship, John Travolta, The Smashing Pumpkins, Brian Seltzer, Kim Carnes, Ray Charles, The Killers, Alicia Keys, James Blunt.
Record Label
I'll take anything Major, and keep 70% Publishing!
CDBABY LINK for JOSHUA CRAWFORD: Play Me
It ain't easy being me, but someone's gotta do it, and that SOMEONE knew it before I was ever born and they merely chose ME to do it in. So I now feel it's an honor to have survived all the turbulant things that I've survived in my 33 years of life. I was raised in middle-America in the now-famous UFO-Capitol of the World; Roswell, New Mexico. But had a childhood far from NORMAL-America. Middle-kids aren't always important enough to listen to, so I guess I came up with other ways of being heard, never realizing that I would still be trying to accomplish that goal after age 30 as a singer-songwriter, author, and actor. I starting playing the piano by-ear at age 3, was caught trying to break open the family TV-set at age 4 with my playschool screwdriver because even though I knew Jody and Buffy on FAMILY AFFAIR were fake, I thought Cookie-Monster and Burt and Ernie were real and I wanted to take them out of the TV so that I could play with them. I was a bit mature for my age and I was very lonely ... with only the comfort of my baby brother, the local cinema, and my Winnie The Pooh record-player to serve as my friends. At age 7, the fantasy all came together upon seeing a little movie with my parents (who would divorce a month later) called "E.T." and realizing my life's goal from there on out was to go to work for some guy named Steven Spielberg and train under him to direct movies. Age 14 almost side-tracked me a bit from that goal when 12 of the top cardioloigists in the world told me that if I didn't have a heart-transplant, I would die. (Some mysterious virus had attacked my heart, causing it to swell up to 5 times its normal size, all within a 3-week range, causing what they call CARDIOMYOPATHY, aka 'Enlarged Heart'.) So since life was so miserable for me at that age anyway ... having survived the brutal divorce of my parents at age 8, and all the alcoholism and pizza-money and mean and abusive step-parents one could ever hope for while growing up in the ever corporate-but-lonely 1980s (including a hard-to-reach single-parent-dad), I took the NON-transplant route and ended up living anyway ... due to my belief that Steven Spielberg was reason enough for me to live on a little while longer. So at age 18, I flew up to meet the guy, but he was nowhere to be found. So I met his secretary (whom I'd already developed a realationship over the phone with from writing Steven letter after letter following my near-death experience at age 14 with the enlarged heart) and I toured the man's private office to look around a little, then headed back to Texas ... where I sat down at my father's BabyGrand Yamaha piano (where I always sat to fiddle around for some old movie score that my childhood might remember well enough to play a little) ... when out popped my first song; SING ALONG. Followed by another one, CRYIN' PARTY, and then a 3rd one, "PLAY ME" and so forth. I didn't think it was any big deal since I couldn't read music, so I merely thought, "Hmmm? Maybe I'll pe a pianist and novelist in my spare time," (for I started writing a novel that dealt with kids and alcoholism at age 15), "...and be a full-time movie director as my main source of income in life with plans to graduate from the American Film Institute." Then I learned Paul McCartney couldn't read a single note either on Good Morning America one day, so I just kept writing songs and working on screenplays. I've now got 1,000 radio-friendly songs give or take ... yet no money. I live off disability for my heart and merely give many of my 3-track CDs entitled "PLAY ME" away to fans in hope that one will end up in the right place with the right person who knows how to get someone like me signed. (CD is available at www.cdBaby.com and itune.com) I recorded the CD over 15 years ago in the land of Buddy Holly (Lubbock Texas), but to my astonishment, it just now seems to be making a name for itself in certain industry circles (my last concert was a complete sell-out with on one single song played), as does my novel; SIGNATURE PLACE: a real life condominium complex that I once lived at here in Midland Texas when I moved here with my father after the divorce of my parents in the early 80s. The novel is about what life was like for my entire generation who grew up with all the ever-divorcing BabyBoomers as their parents who worked all the time ... leaving their kids home alone to not only play, but cook, clean, and raise all the OTHER neighborhood kids to the best that they could ... even when their parents stayed out all night at the nearby bull-riding bars to PLAY a little themsevles and celebrate how great they were for doubling their income that day in the ever decadent and competitive 1980s! (I'm not so sure my generation even knows what the word PLAY even MEANS? I think we mistake it for the word SURVIVE.) And I refuse to give up my destiny and the belief that my novel could help and inspire other generations, as well as educate parents on thinking twice before expecting kids to raise themselves before they've even reached puberty. My life was spared to not only be an entertainer, but to influence the world. "This much is TRUE!": (a lyric from the 1983 Spandau Ballet song I named my 1st book after; my favorite song of all time.) I'll always be a little sad Spielberg's office coudn't see merit in my efforts, as they once led me down a path of belief that I would ink a record-deal with them and their newly-fromed DreamWorks label in the late 90s ... in which didn't pan out. (They later sold the struggling label to Universal.) But oh well. Look what Ray Charles went through ... and HE couldn't even SEE! Yet he finally found someone who believed his music should be HEARD, no matter WHAT his limitations were! I've been at this game of trying to GET SIGNED for over 15 years now, so I guess ... why stop now? Columbia, Arista, J-Records, they've all passed on me after "careful consideration" several times. Go figure. I'm not sure I'd even know how to live if I wasn't reading Music Connection Magazine every chance I could get, touring anywhere and anytime with my songs and books (my concerts have never NOT been a sell-out), and contacting every A&R and soundtrack-man and woman in the biz ... as well as the entire publishing world from America to London ... and BACK! ... in an attempt to finally get SIGNATURE PLACE published and few of my 1,000 songs recorded. All just to get someone to think that maybe I have just a little more talent than all these one-hit wonders on American Idol and Lenno and Letterman. Maybe I have longevity and an entire career worth of 15 albums, 17 films, and 5 novels. Judd Nelson in 1985's "THE BREAKFAST CLUB" said it the best: "Screws fall out all the time. The world's an imperfect place." Well ... if they're falling out all the time, then SOMEBODY's gotta take their place ... right?!? If we didn't, the walls that hold up our evolution would collapse, and we'd be left without a roof over our heads ... as WELL as protection for our young; the NEXT generation. I never new my old "Play Me" 3-track demo would become notoriously known as "THE MOST PASSED AROUND DEMO IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE INDUSTRY"! I really didn't. Nor did I ever expect the word that I invented for my novel "Signature Place' would seem into pop culture; you know the one ... the name that represents all those that were born 1965-1980; "THRILLER-BABY" ... which now of course has that much talked about website of its own; www.ThrillerBaby.com
You can read more about ThrillerBabies, Signature Place, the Play Me recordings, and even my whole life if you want, on www.JoshuaCrawford.com. I pray for the music industry. I really do. Music is our Universal lanuguage by which we communicat with other universses with. It would be a shame if I never got signed in my lifetime, but I imagine I would in the NEXT one. Though I find it hard to believe God would've given me 1,000 songs ... only to have not SHARED them with anyone while I was down here, on planet earth.
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WHO I'D LIKE TO MEET:
Couples who thought about getting a divorce and kids who thought about doing drugs or killing themselves and any disabled person that had given up on a career ... until they all read my book "SIGNATURE PLACE" and/or listened to a few of my songs. THAT would be somebody I would weep over if I met them. For THOSE are the world's true rolemodels and icons, not me. I'm just a guy who's trying to make the most out of his life ... and everyone else's. Meeting Spielberg would be a nice touch too, but I don't think I'm interesting enough to be in his presence. We're all only here for 80 years or so, and time moves faster as you get older. Make the years count. As the way you spend them plays a heavy role in the afterlife; trust me. Like NIKEY says, JUST DO IT! And before you know it, you will have climbed not just one or two mountains, but an entire universe. It's not about climbing to the top; as even the sky lies below the stars. And the stars lie below another universe. It's about what you learned and who you touched and which destiny did you alter for the better while you TRIED to climb. And for anybody who tells you, "It's all in timing kid" ... ask them which timezone their in? Earth's? Or Heaven's. 9 times out of 10, they won't even be wearing a watch. But they'll sure know how much money is in their wallet without even looking. It's not all in timing, it's about offering the planet something that no one else can offer except YOU. Earth has enough rappers. So be a Christian or Jewish rapper! The world is blessed with portraits of cactussus. So give the cactus a red ballcap and have him play catch with the stars! There's plenty of T&A music videos, so try wearing your clothes for one and you might just win an award for it! There's a billion and 1 books about divorce, so try writing one about kids who do everything they can while they're still young in order to shape themselves into NOT getting a divorce before they've even married! -- whoops, I already wrote that so write something else. The world is astronomically graced with concertos and speed-metal. Try writing a simple 3-chord love song and it might just be the song that pays the most. Just look at all the great rock bands; it's usually their love songs that get the most airplay -- which means more royalties, and more lovers falling in love and babies being born INTO love. Indeed, a world without lovers is a small world. But a world without loners is an even smaller one. BE that weird loner. And you might just find yourself not only IN line, but in line with a line forming behind YOU as well! Leaders can't be followers, yet who it is that leads the leader, is the loner/dreamer who believes in destiny.
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YES IT'S TRUE!
I tend to write parts in my books for real-life celebrities to play when the books get turned into movies, not realizing that those celebrities are near death and will contact me shortly before they die to thank me for writing the part for them that they unfortunately won't have a chance to portray in the film-version becaue they're ... well ... dying. Call it a weird gift, or an accidental phonecall to the Death Angel. Beats me? (R.I.P. Chris Reeve and Jimmy Stewart. I miss you both dearly!) Needless to say, I've taken a break from writing any more novels for a little while!
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YES, IT'S ALSO TRUE THAT...: It's on record that The Ejection Fraction of my heart at age 14 really was just 8% ... which has always been my lucky number.
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THE QUESTION I GET ASKED THE MOST:
"Are those contacts?"
The answer is a kind, "No." Only 2% of the world's population have green eyes, making it the most uncommon color, and the rarest. (Brown is most common, blue is second in command.) Why my eyes are the mint color they are is beyond me. ("Hazel" is a term used only to represent eyes that change from blue to green and back again and have traces of brown. Mine never change. Go figure! lol) ______________________________________________________________
THE "OTHER" QUESTION I GET ASKED THE MOST:
Yes, iTunes has my tracks. Just enter my name and I'm in your iPod in mintutes.
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RECENTLY, he gave the 5-year old website for his generation "ThrillerBaby.com" an entire revamped make-over to much acclaim, as well as a separate myspace page for it; www.myspace.com/thrillerbabygeneration ! Feel free, if you're a thrillerbaby (those born 1965-1980) to stop by and say hi.
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FAVORITE SONG AT THE MOMENT: "HONEYMOON IN BEIRUT" by Rick Springfield
THANKS FOR THE LOVE SUPPORT & FRIENDSHIP! ~Kathy.. with Tammy & Staff of The Main MROL Website Robin, George, Darren, Penney, Evan, Dealzy, Leo & Friends Please visit main MROL website.. MickeyRourkeOnLine. com ....
Pic for today.... _______________________________________________ Saturday - January 24th - 9pm LONDON DANCE HALL London, TX - more info: www. londondancehall. com
Joshua, Shalom. I am thankful to God to have you as a friend & kindred spirit who inspires and encourages me always. I think of your creativity and imagination similar to the "Bridge of Terabitha" movie where we do not think, dream, believe or act like most of our generation. We seek the Hidden Treasures of Truth that include Inward, Outward and Heavenly. How was your Thanksgiving? Anything exciting happening in your area lately? My Thanksgiving was good spent it with a friend in Del Rey, FLORIDA and we had another friend of his over. 3 Single guys and we watched Will Smith's "Hancock". A very different type of SuperHero movie. Also saw "Quantum of Solace" last weekend. So how about you seen any new movies on the big screen or small screen? What are your plans for moving out to California? Will you be there possibly sometime in 2009? By the way today I got up at 3:30 am to do a fun project with my church called "Operation Black Friday". We basically had 12 of us including our Pastor Chris who handed out free waters, donuts and breakfast bars to all the people waiting in line at places like Best Buy(the longest & largest group)and Target. It was about two hours give or take and the reason for this sudden, radical and complete gift is due to www. thegiftrevolution. com In otherwords a new spin on "Pay It Forward" with Biblical Proportions & Praises. Also I wrote a MySpace Blog about it. Forgive me I am still a little tired from this morning even though it is 1:36pm. Also spoke to Ruwanga, Michael Darby and some of my other CA friends yesterday as well as my Grandma and aunt. Pray for Grandma just had heart surgery and had a pacemaker/defibrillator put into her heart. Well I fading off will talk again soon. Drop me a line and know I pray that you will not have to wait another decade for your gifts to be recognized and rewarded by Heavenly Measures!
I know, I know. I suck at keeping in touch sometimes. Ive missed your emails the past few months. But Im still here, so feel free to pick on me all you like!
Thanks Joshua for the Roswell Postcard! Will do my utmost best to get you that "Incredible Hulk" poster before the end of June. I know you will like once you receive it.
So feel free to call me soon and keep me posted on your upcoming Big Leap to California!
Hope to meet you someday and know we are forever kindred spirits and eternal friends because we were meant to meet and encourage each other to change the world into a better tomorrow with our unlimited creativity and imagination and positive attributes and attitudes!!!!!
Been missing you...looks like you're still active here and I hope everything's going well. And regardless of what or how you celebrate, have a Happy Holiday.
This specially compiled 4 CD Box Set from Time Life features the best Folk Rock songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s! Includes 71 Songs That Defined An Era and Influenced Generations... In Stores September 11
Not just another genre, folk rock was born as a statement of purpose, of taste, of superiority the baby boom¹s first imprimatur, a musical mission and a personal battle cry in a divisive time of racial tension and escalating war. For a generation of philosopher dropouts and drug-inspired visionaries, it was also the best way to partake in the era¹s hippest form of artistic expression, in numbers previously unknown to man.
