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Michael Graziano

www.myspace.com/zgrazi
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  • Michael Graziano

  • 100 / Male
  • Raleigh, North Carolina, US
  • Last Login: 8/7/2009

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Interests

  • General


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    I love jamming with musicians, photographing friends, swimming with flippers, philosophical digressions, revealing koans, leaping obstacle illusions, odd percussion instruments, finding and losing myself in books, metaphorical conversation, renewing friendships and doing whatever it takes to make the best of our brief visit together on this blue planet! View Michael Graziano's profile on LinkedIn

  • Music

    Music breathes life into who I am and yet to become! What inspires me most can arrive from musically diverse sources spanning time, genres and cultures. Rock, Punk, Alt-Country, Blues, Jazz, Classical, Opera, Theramin, Avant-garde, Experimental, Garage, Ambient, World Percussion and authentic individual voices are all welcome on my playlist. At any one moment you would hear Tom Waits, John Coltrane, Kathy Fisher, Brad Cobb, Mike Watt, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart, Betty Blowtorch, The Urchinheads, Firemonkeys ringtones, Mind Over Four, Moris Tepper, Incendio, Robby Longley, Ali Farka Toure, Bryan Pezzone, Christo Pellani world drums, Thelonious Monk, The Beatles, Artic Monkeys, Kodo drummers, Astor Piazzolla, Randy Weeks, Tony and Eliza Gilkyson, Ritt Henn, Iggy Pop, Dave Alvin, The Blasters, Minutemen, Damien Rice, Giacomo Puccini, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Lightnin’ Willie and the Poor Boys, Shawn Amos, all the Wainwrights, John Bonham, Carmine Appice, Arcade Fire, Nora Jones, Alfred Schnittke, Pamelia Kurstin, John Zorn, Jesse Malin, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Barbez, Lucinda Williams, Warren Zevon, Chloe Day, Michael Miller, Jake La Botz, Bal’s trumpet with Ray Manzarek, Bucksworth, NC Music Maker Blues Musicians, Cowboy Nation, Los Lobos, I See Hawks in LA, Donna DeLory, Mike and Leni Stern, Preston Smith, Joe Ongie, André Fischer, Aimee Mann and Michael Penn, Peter Lamb and the Countdown Quartet, Steve Tyrell, Incendio, Elliott Caine, and all the music scene alchemists I have had the privilage to personally work and drum with over the years!

  • Movies

    For me, all great films are realized by visionary directors like Charlie Chaplin, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa and documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore, William Gazecki, Michael Apted, Chris Toussaint, Ken Burns, Martin Scorsese, D.A. Pennebaker, Errol Morris, and Ross McElwee. I also believe that our visual future will diversify and expand from the efforts of uniquely original auteurs emerging worldwide. They can now post their creative visions globally on user-generated content sites such as Lulu.TV, YouTube, Channel 101, Icebox and Google.

  • Television

    The Twilight Zone, particularly the episodes written by Richard Matheson. Check out the new DVD box set with all 156 episodes. It includes Rod Serling's audio lectures and his TV talk show appearances. There is expert commentary from author Marc Scott Zicree (I hosted his Borders Pasadena booksigning event with Richard Matheson). The video interviews include the great Richard Matheson, George Clayton Johnson and Earl Hamner, Jr. There are also isolated music scores to pour over! Rod Serling was a master of the medium!

  • Books

    Reading is one of my dedicated lifelong passions. I maintain an extensive personal library of hardcover fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, foreign literature, poetry, autobiography, photography and history. Authors focused on world spirituality (Eastern Buddhism in particular) have my heartfelt gratitude because they preserved their wisdom experience to inspire those of us who were born after they departed. Their profound words and ideas are now part of my emotional and intellectual topography. Even while discovering new authors, I continue to reread writers such as Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Naguib Mahfouz, Salman Rushdie (who I met in Pasadena, CA October 2005), Raymond Carver, Yasunari Kawabata, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the timeless truths of poets like Kalidas, Dante, Rumi, W.S. Merwin, Naruda, Louise Glück, Akhmatova, Sor Juana, Hafiz, Du Fu continue to inform my worldview! “All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

  • Heroes

    The elusive MUSE! “The artist ceases to be the craftsman or the performer, dependent upon the approval of the audience. His reference is to himself only, or to some transcendent power which – or who - has decreed his enterprise and alone is worthy to judge it.” – Lionel Trilling, from his 1972 book, “Sincerity and Authenticity”, Harvard University Press

Details

  • Status: Married
  • Here for: Networking, Friends
  • Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio
  • Orientation: Straight
  • Height: 5' 11"
  • Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius
  • Occupation: MMG MultiMedia Studio

Networking

  • Jam & experimental music studio with Yamaha acoustic piano, Presonus & Yamaha digital rig, AKG mics, MSP10 monitors, MS400/800 PA, Vox tube amp, saxophones, Theramin, Moogerfoogers, Ludwig kit, 36” Zildjian gong, Padouk slit drums & 4-octive Marimba.

  • A memorable photo captures “the decisive moment” that cannot be repeated! I creatively prefer spontaneous “street photography” and natural light shoots, authentic and unstaged.

Companies

  • MMG Communications

    • Raleigh, North Carolina US
    • Producer, Lulu.com Consultant
    2004

  • Blue Moon Imagery

    • Raleigh & Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina US
    • Photographer
    2006

  • Blue Moon Cottage

    • Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina US
    • Owner
    2006

Blurbs

About me:

I arrived in Raleigh, North Carolina, on January 1, 2004, after living in Los Angeles, California for over 25 years. My media career arc began in Ohio at the Cleveland Scene Alternative Newsweekly in 1976. In 1977, I was co-host of the Dean Ruvas talk radio show on WZAK, 93.1 FM. I made the quintessential cross-country roadtrip to Southern California later that year. My introduction to Los Angeles began in 1978 at Wilfred Schwartz’s Federated Group on Highland and Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. An electronics buyer position at Platt Music Corporation followed soon after. I spent the remaining 1980 years working for alternative newspapers The Los Angeles Reader (spun off from the Chicago Reader in 1978) and The Pasadena Weekly (launched by famed entertainment trial attorney Pierce O’Donnell in 1984.) I ended the decade at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner daily paper, which Citizen Hearst unceremoniously folded in November 1989 (leaving only the LA Times to serve our great city!) The 1990's began a book publishing path at Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam and Audio Renaissance/St. Martin’s. I was initiated into film and documentary work in 1996, when I became the Marketing Director for Lightworks Audio & Video. My last chapter in Los Angeles was spent booking author, music, art, photo, comedy and film events as the Field National Events Specialist for Borders Books & Music in Pasadena and Westwood, California. I hosted hundreds of divergent appearances with luminaries from all walks of creative life. It was passionate work in which many ideal relationships were forged, created and explored. All the while, I played drums with the Pasadena/Altadena-based Urchinheads, which spawned the Firemonkeys, two eclectic bands of revolving musicians with a core group of super-human beans! We often switched instruments which allowed me to play saxophone as well. My time with the [sea] Urchins is a remarkable continuous thread of friendship which endures to this day. A new chapter begins as my life in NC begins to take shape as a photographer, musician, a publishing consultant for Lulu.com, director of “The Artist’s Craft” on Raleigh Television Network and news media advisor for Quail Ridge Books. I am in the middle stages of building a 1,000 sq. ft. home recording studio that will be focused on all forms of multimedia; music, audiobooks, webcasting, live event filming/podcasting and creative collaborations with Lulu and RTN. I am an unabashed enthusiast and I’m sure my story will continue to unfold in unpredictable ways so tune in later for more. ..

Amazon Muscles Print-On-Demand Services
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/27/amazon-muscle...

Who I'd like to meet:

Creative individuals who live for their art and not the status-sphere! We’ve reached the tipping point to see our life’s passionate work find a wider audience simply because the studio drones, bureaucrats-in-training, executive bean-counters and corporate empty suits no longer have a monopoly on the distribution filters! User-generated content companies, like Lulu.com, allow us to create our own personal pipeline to deliver music, books and films around the world. “We are leaving the Information Age and entering the Recommendation Age.” says FrogDesign.com, a creative consulting firm. I would add that we are entering the Age of Collaboration, where commerce and cooperation intersect, and like-minds, with authentic pride, can share their life's work with the world-at-large! STEVEN WRIGHT - When The Leaves Blow Away.

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