Todd Jacobucci

I woke up this morning thinking of music as usual.  It's a Sunday, Christmas Eve, not to much to do today so I just laid in my bed for awhile.    I started thinking of the best rock and roll musicians I could think of.  Who is the best lead singer?  Who is the best lead guitarist?, etc., etc.  I decided to put together an all-star rock and roll band.     Being that Led Zeppelin is my all time favorite band,  I easily could have used all 4 of them for my all-star band.   That's too easy though.  To make it more challenging each member of the all-star band has to be from different groups.  So, this is the topic I will discuss this morning.  I'll put out the instrument, the musician, and my rationale.  Here goes: Drummer:   There is no doubt here.  John Bonham is the best rock and roll drummer of all time.  Certainly an argument could be made for Neal Peart, but I'll still take Bonzo.  His beats are so original and the sound is so heavy.  Bonham to me is the perfect roc

As I'm sure many other people have done over the last couple of years - I have taken a good look at Scientology. I never felt the need to be a Scientologist, however, I was always curious about it. All the secrecy. Why is Tom Cruise so committed? Who is this L. Ron Hubbard guy? The furthest I went on a personal level into studying Scientology is I did pick up an L. Ron Hubbard book at a library many years ago. I don't remember the title. What I do remember is I read about 50 pages of it and said, well, that's enough of that. However, a cursory interest remained. In 2015, answers started becoming available. I watched a documentary on HBO called "Going Clear". "Going Clear" inspired me to take a good study of L. Ron Hubbard. I was stunned. The real reason Scientology is a religion is to avoid paying taxes. The creation myth of Xenu the galactic warlord who 75 million years ago had people killed due to overpopulation and then had the bodies taken in space p

For me, this is a relatively easy topic.  I just tried to think in terms of films released in the decade of the 2010s that I found outstanding.  Sad to say but there weren't too many.   An outstanding film for me is one that literally blows me away.  I end up thinking about it for weeks.   I find myself reading everything I can find about the movie.   Some examples  from the 2000s would be "Doubt:", "Million Dollar Baby",  "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days".     But what about the 2010s?  Well, I've come up with 5.  I have found these 5 films to be outstanding.    And they are: 1. "True Grit" For me this is the best movie of this decade.  Everything about it is right.  Perfect casting, great story, terrific acting, beautiful cinematography, really good score. 2. "Whiplash" This one totally blew me away.  I think JK Simmons performance is the best supporting actor performance of the entire decade.  Miles Teller is good, too.

I've been listening to The Beatles a lot lately.   They really were an amazing band.  Incredible innovators.  Great musicians.   Way ahead of everyone else.  But probably what is most relevant about The Beatles is how well their music has held up.  Hard to believe but its been 57 years since they released their first single "Love Me Do", and 50 since their last work together which was the album "Abbey Road".  Even though "Let it Be" was released after "Abbey Road",  it was actually recorded previously.    I'd say a good 75-80% of their music still sounds great today.   So, they were a great band.   Their last recording session together was in August of 1969 and they officially broke up in April of 1970.  They all went onto solo careers with mixed results.  Since John Lennon died in 1980, close to 39 years ago, there has been a lot of time to look back and consider The Beatles and the 4 musicians they consisted of.   A ton of talent there