Livin’ The American Dream Caesar’s Way
I came across the self titled Little Caesar cassette in a
bargain bin about twenty years ago, attracted by the cover art. I flipped it over and noticed Bob Rock’s name
in the producer category…..to the cash Batman!
At that time my friends and I thought Bob Rock was a God (Canadian as well) and
anything he laid his hands to was gold, much like our opinion of Rick Rubin. As I did every week, I stumbled into the
house with an armload of cassettes fresh off the “new release” shelves of the
local record store and performed my weekly ritual of sitting on the floor
in front of the stereo, reading liner notes and air-drumming with pencils,
sometimes jumping up and wailing on the imaginary air guitar! I fought with the shrink wrap and finally was
able to free the cassette with the little cartoon character on the front from
it’s plastic prison. I was immediately
treated to a helping of up beat, bluesy rock from the opening track
Down-N-Dirty. This was catchy and good,
but not what I had expected by studying the look of the long haired, tattooed
biker images inside the liner notes, this gruff appearance did not match the
sound I was hearing! Track two, Hard
Times, continued with the same powering tempo…....where’s my pencils? By the third song, a cover of Aretha
Franklin’s Chain of Fools, I was fully hooked!
This was a different sound, soulful and rocking. Every track is awesome and the funky, southern flavoured Cajun Panther, drivin’ hard rocker Wrong Side of the Tracks and
another motown cover in I Wish That It Would Rain are certainly worth a
mention. And 55 minutes runtime means a ton
of bluesy growly 70’s rock infused with R&B to assail your ear drums!
By 1992, fed up with the poor selection at the record store
in our small town, my friends and I were making regular trips south to the big city for the
wider variety and better prices. I
always made a beeline to the hard rock/metal new release section and my
excitement was barely containable as I grabbed at near everything on the wall,
much of it being a new album from a band I was into, but had no idea that they had
a new recording! My arms already over
filled with cassettes stacked high, I caught the cover of Little Caesar’s
Influence. I struggled with my already
unmanageable pile of music as I reached to pluck it off the shelf. I curiously noticed right away that the little cartoon character was absent, was this the same band? My queries were laid to rest once I flipped
it over and saw the back cover photo of the gruff looking bikers. The inner sleeve informed me that most of the
“usual suspects” were present and accounted for again, with the only change
being Earl Slick replacing Apache in one of the guitar slots. Influence picks up right where the self
titled issue left off. Opening up with
the stand-out, hard edged track, Stand Up and continuing the same formula through
You’re Mine, Turn My World Around and then into the up-beat tempo of the ode to
Rum & Coke (featuring Cinderella’s Gary Corbett on piano). The Ballad of Johnny slows down the pace a
bit with the touchy subject matter of suicide and depression. Overall a very enjoyable listen, but I prefer
the début, which still often gets play in my household.
And then they were gone.
Influence did not stay on the record shelves long and was all but
forgotten and had disappeared on another trip south a few weeks later. I didn't hear a thing about Little Caesar again. Why had I not heard of these guys before my chance
discovery of the début and where did they go? According to their Facebook page, three weeks into the initial release of the début their label Geffen Records was sold and their label manager left the
company making way for accountants to take over. The records got lost in transit to the
distributors, leading to a lack of sales due to product availability and so the
accountants shut the project down. They
were able to put out the follow-up, but with the grunge scene attacking the
musical landscape, Little Caesar melted away.
A few years later, another hard rock blues based band that I
was rampant about, The Four Horsemen, their full length début getting the same
kind of regular airplay on my stereo as Little Caesar (both usually in the
car….great driving tunes!) was coming to town at Warehouse Bar in Toronto. I had seen The Four Horsemen before and they put on a
great performance then, so I was looking forward to seeing them again having
recently acquired their latest CD. After a
fine opening act in 
Little Caesar has always been about the music, their love of playing and would not stay dead. Avoiding the pressures and influences of record companies,
perhaps understandably soured from past experiences, they released 2009’s
Redemption comeback album, the first of newly recorded material in about
17 years, independently. Same Old Story
starts in same place, with a buesy pumping tempo. Loving You Is Killing Me is classic Little Caesar and Sick & Tired is probably one of the best songs they've ever come out with! A nicely done cover of 
Now teaming with the label Unison Music Group, May 2012 saw the release of
American Dream keeping the same line-up as Redemption. Holy Roller starts it off in fine fashion and
sets the tone for the record. Is Your Crazy, Getting Lazy?, Hard Rock Hell and the title track are all stand-out cuts. Little
Caesar have always been about the music, a statement evidenced by their non
conventional to the style looks and this CD just drives that home once again. For an almost 45 minute serving of toe tapping
bluesy guitar driven rock, pick up American Dream and get lost with Little
Caesar. Here's the American Dream video link from the band's website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CHPZWYCbX9cIn October 2012, Little Caesar, as a thank-you to their fans released a free six song download album entitled Knuckle Sandwich.
Recently I was able to catch up with lead vocalist Ron Young by telephone and asked him about Little Caesar, The Four Horsemen and his current project The Blue Eyed Devils.
Ron: Happy Thanksgiving to you
Meister: Thanks, Ron.
I had mine a few weeks ago, I’m from Canada .
Meister: So, you had mentioned that you’re off to the UK next week?
Ron: Yeah, we have a couple quick shows and a big festival
that we’re playing (Hard Rock Hell Festival) and then we’re jumping down to Sheffield, England to do a
show and then back home. A whirlwind
vacation.
Meister: I’d love to see you guys up here in Canada . Is that something you’d consider?
Ron: Always interested, it’s just with the economy it’s
really tough to generate enough revenue to get up and that and all the guys are
working and stuff, so it’s hard to pull together sometimes.
Meister: Well, let’s go back to how Little Caesar got
together and started, you were originally a night club bouncer?
Ron: Yeah, I was working at some clubs, was working at the
door. It wasn't really a bouncer, just
more of a door guy. You know, my New York attitude, they liked the New York door policy, they thought that was
cool. But the music scene was all just
teased up hair, a lot of guitar players, you know, screaming look at me and
just kinda getting frustrated ‘cause it was just getting away from the rock
and roll that I grew up on. And just found a bunch of other like minded guys
that were just frustrated with having to look like girls to be in a band and
having to play pop kinda stuff, that we’re really into notes and that much
soul. So I just found a bunch of other like-minded guys and we just started
doing a couple of shows and we clicked and got a lot of attention and a lot of
it was because we stood out amongst all those other bands, you know the
emphasis was on strong singing and strong playing and strong harmonies and a
strong hook to our soul based stuff. We kind of put the band together and then never really
thinking about getting attention, it was more of we have to put a band
together, we really enjoy making music.
Meister: So it was always about the music first and not so
much about making money?
Ron: Then the emphasis became , you know, how do we get
attention and we didn't really worry about the music, we worried about the hype
and the look and that kind of thing. It
was kind of frustrating.
Meister: Do you think that your image held you guys back at
first because you weren't that glammy make-up band?
Ron: It did because of the mind set of the industry at the
time. Our attitude was that things had
to change, you know, you can’t just keep putting out the same old bands with
the same old hairdos, with the rock track and then the ballad and then the rock
track and the ballad. We saw change coming,
and it came with grunge. It came with
guys with goatees and fucked up clothes and not really caring about the
glamour. The music of that took a little
bit of a different turn, but it did sort of have that 70’s based low fidelity,
sort of agro-organic kind of sound to it.
The problem was at the time was that they were looking at us going "these
dudes look so scary, but they know how to sing and they do these great R&B
sort of based ballads, that’s gonna confuse people". And we’re like "no it’s not, believe me". And they tried so hard to try to work around
that and a big part of it is, quite honestly, is that when things didn't go well,
that’s what they blamed it on. The real deal was that three weeks into our release the
record label got sold, a lot of people got fired and the label manager got
fired for jerking off on his secretary.
Meister: I was actually going to ask about that, I’d read
that before somewhere.
Ron: Yeah. Our
records weren't in stores, but our video was on MTV and you know, the problem
is that when you have the John Kalodners and the David Geffens and the Jimmy Iovines and the Bob Rocks involved there's a lot of egos and there’s a lot of
expectations. The things that would
normally be done for any other sort of rock band going to radio or MTV, it was
a completely different set of circumstances for us and you know the problem was
that the battles at the time weren't achieved because of things completely
unrelated to the band really affected the band’s business. Back then a band had six to eight weeks to
really hit it out of the park and even though we came out of the box stronger
than bands like The Black Crowes, they were expecting us to go double platinum
in eight minutes. And it wasn't like that and once that didn't happen and
everybody started pointing the fingers and David Geffen didn't want to blame it
on the label being sold and the records not being in the stores cause that
makes his whole business look bad. He’d
start to say things like, “well the band is so scary looking that they can’t….”
and it’s like "nah, really? Is that the best you can do?" And so that was sort of
the excuse-de-jour was that. You know,
we were no scarier looking than Guns ‘N’ Roses or other bands on a certain
level. It’s just that our music was very
acceptable and they fought to break us at top 40. Back then, you know, no
hard rock band was going to top 40, but they really wanted to try very hard to
make us platinum in a week and it doesn't work like that, you have to build it
from the ground up. We’re a real rock
band first and you can’t try to make a band cross over and be commercially huge
just because their music is a little more acceptable than the other bands and
if you can’t get past the fact we look a little scary and can do a nice ballad,
that’s what the whole alternative thing proved.
You know, people wanted an alternative, you could be anything from a Blues Traveller to a Red Hot Chilli Pepper to a Metallica breaking the top 40,
you know but we were a year or two to ahead of that and the label just didn't understand what we were trying to tell them.
Meister: But they were still able to put out the second
album, Influence?
Ron: Yeah. Once all
the shit hit the fan on the first record and Jimmy Iovine and David Geffen were
fighting and the label was sold and half the people we were working with got
fired and they brought all these accountants in just to make the books look
good and get rid of a bunch of acts and then Apache left the band. By the time the second record came out,
nobody wanted the stink of the band on them, they felt that they were too far
behind the eight ball to really turn this thing around. So they just wanted us
gone and out of our contract and to go away.
Things had gotten really tense and really kind of nasty and everything
had changed and a whole bunch of people were gone and at this point they were
looking at Nirvana. Throw all that music
out, you know. Now there’s this
alternative thing happening, you know, we were on the same label as Nirvana and
they told us, “oh those guys will sell maybe 80,000 records, they’re a college
band” and we’re like "I don’t think so dude, this is the kind of band that we’re
talking about, this is the kind of music that’s really gonna change people’s
taste in music". "You’re not gonna just keep throwing the Warrants and the
Wingers and the Whitesnakes and the Poisons anymore. This is a really cool, honest down to earth
really cool kind of band" and they’re like “no, no, no, they’re a college band,
they’re never gonna go more than college radio”.
Meister: Why didn't they just release you so that you could
go on to another record label?
Ron: Uh, well, David Geffen’s exact words to me after we sat
down to discuss, you know, what was gonna happen ‘cause our option was up, was
that he wouldn’t let us….he said he’d let the band go, but he would hold me to
my contract as the key-man, because if we went to another label and became
successful it would make his whole business look bad. Then it would be obvious that it wasn't the
band’s fault, it was his business’s fault and the way that they tried to
promote us and his business is more important than my career. Looked me right in the fuckin’ eye and told
me that.
Meister: Politics just held you guys back from the start?
Ron: Yeah, dude. He
said listen, I collect artists like I collect my artwork. He said do you want to know why Neil Young didn't put out a record for ten years?
You wanna know why Don Henley’s been trying to get off my label for
fifteen years? It’s because, and he says
it in a documentary that just came out, is that he doesn't trust artists. He thinks artists are gonna fuck him every
time, so he’ll fuck them before they fuck him.
Meister: That’s a pretty bad attitude!
Ron: I can’t fight with a guy that just sold his label for
two billion dollars, it was ridiculous
Meister: What do you do, right?
Ron: Yeah well, you start doing drugs, worked for a while.
Meister: Sure it’ll mask things for a while, but at the end
of the day…
Ron: Yeah, yeah, well you don’t figure that out until you’re
too late, you know.
Meister: Sometimes when something like that happens you just
need an escape, right, to help you deal with it all.
Ron: Yeah, that’s kinda what happened.
Meister: So did anyone else stay in the music business or
did they move on to other things when all this went down?
Ron: Well, you know, when it all crashed and burned, we had
such a bad taste in our mouths. Uh, Tom, the drummer started working for like
Hollywood records, Fidel went back to running his shop, I did a couple of
little projects that never did anything, Earl Slick went back off to play with
David Bowie, um, Lauren started working with some music manufacturers. Then I started being a production manager at
a nightclub in town here. We all just
kinda got out of making music, it just put such a bad taste in our mouths, man.
Meister: So, what about this time around? What brought you guys back?
Ron: We've always been really close friends and, you know,
through all the shit, I got into a bad drug habit and it took me a while to get
my shit together with that and everybody was just working and providing for
their families, kinda licking their wounds.
You know, a bunch of years went by and we were itching to make some
music, so we just got together to play and then we started to do a couple of
shows. Eventually it became, I got sick
of playing the same old songs, we should really do a record. We sat down and just started writing songs in
like 2009 and the record came out in 2010. We've just been having a blast ever since. I mean the one nice thing about the whole
music business changing is that now we can just kinda be our own label and our
own managers and our own promotions.
Meister: You don’t have to deal with all the bullshit of
people holding you hostage. But it’s
really different to put out a CD in this day and age because no-one’s buying
hard copy music any more, right?
Ron: No, exactly.
They do more in Europe than they do
here, but here everybody does downloads.
You just have to record something and get it out and onto I-tunes, keep
control and it’s just a completely different thing. There’s some downsides too, but for the most
part you can run your own business.
Meister: For me, I hate the downloading, but it’s often hard
to find where to buy stuff up here in Canada . And with a download you don’t get any liner
notes, I hate it.
Ron: Yeah, all of that, the liner notes, the artwork, the
credits all of that stuff is, you know, an afterthought now and it sucks, but
it’s the nature of the beast. The
technology has completely changed the nature of the music business.
Meister: Do you think that hard copy will disappear
altogether?
Ron: I don’t think so.
I think in the same way that vinyl is making a comeback for a lot of the
real passionate people it’ll always be there because of that. I don’t think it’s gonna go away completely,
but it’s just figuring out how the music business is gonna stay profitable.
Meister: So, what about Knuckle Sandwich that you released
recently, that’s just a download right?
Ron: It’s just a download, something to give away as a
promotion and we just did a compilation.
Meister: Something just to try and get your name out there a
little more and get more people introduced to your music?
Ron: Yeah, just to give something away for free, so you hope
that somebody talks about it. It’s a way
of giving something away that doesn't cost anybody anything, so that anybody
that’s interested in your music, try to reach out to new fans and get some
email addresses and stay in contact with people and give them a little sampling
of a bunch of stuff throughout our career.
Meister: I notice that it covers every album, but it’s not
necessarily the songs that you would expect, like Chain of Fools is not on
there. You chose some deeper album cuts
for it.
Ron: We wanted to expand a little bit and let people know a
little bit more. I looked at I-tunes and
80% of our downloads are Chain of Fools, ‘cause that’s what people know and
have heard. You’re pretty much selling
stuff to people that already know you, they’re just refreshing stuff to their
computer that they used to own on CD.
So, it’s kind of like what we’re trying to do is a two fold
approach. We’re trying to remind people
that knew about us from back in the day that A-we’re still around and you can
still get our old stuff and then you can hear the new stuff we’re doing and on
top of it get to all the people that we tried to get to the first time around
after everything crashed and burned.
Meister: Right, well I saw that it’s doing well. It’s in the number two most downloaded spot
from the Noise Trade site?
Ron: Yeah. No,
listen, we’re so grateful for that. I
mean it’s really great, things are really picking up and we’re really grateful
for that. It’s just way more natural and
exciting and kind of a very organic thing that’s happening and the more that we
do and the more that we put out and the more that we reach out to people, ‘cause
remember when we first came out there was no internet. There was the radio stations, MTV and magazines,
now with social media and downloads and I-tunes it’s a completely different
world.
Meister: It’s easier to reach people in some ways, but it’s
also easier for people to get the music without paying for it.
Ron: Every day is a learning experience on how to reach out
more to people and you know, we’re just grateful that people are reaching out
back, it’s great.
Meister: So, after everything went down the first time, you
ended up in a project called Manic Eden?
Ron: Yeah. I got a
phone call from Tom Fletcher, the producer and he was working with those guys
and James Christian from House of Lords was fronting the band and they just didn't like the direction it was going in and wanted to do something a little
bit darker, a little bit bluesier a little bit more progressive and he was a
little bit more pop kinda oriented, so they parted ways and I came in and it
felt really good, some cool ideas and we jumped right into the studio to do the
record and then change sorta came. That
was during the whole alternative thing and this was really Adrian ’s baby. He put it together and he kinda jumped ship
from his own project to go back to working with David Coverdale. So we did some stuff in Japan and a little
bit in Europe and you know, Adrian
got kinda frustrated because no-one wanted to grab us here in the states, no
major label any ways. They kinda felt
that our music was……they threw the baby out with the bathwater. God forbid a guy sells six million records,
but it’s not Nirvana or Soundgarden, so just throw it away. And it’s like, well what about the six
million people who still like that sort of thing?
Meister: And now there’s people searching for it.
Ron: Exactly, ‘cause it was an import kinda thing.
Meister: So, that was it, just the one album and you guys
broke up after Adrian
left?
Ron: Yeah, I mean we had just started to promote it and were
still in the process of looking for distribution worldwide, we were just doing
territories and then Adrian just basically said, hey listen man, I gotta pay my
mortgage at home, so I'm gonna go back to working with David Coverdale.
Meister: Too bad, that’s a great album, a little different
Ron: Yeah, it’s kinda quirky
Meister: So after that you went on to The Four Horsemen?
Ron: Yeah, you know, I got a call from Dave Lizmi from The
Four Horsemen and he told me the whole situation that Frank was in a really bad
motorcycle wreck and that they had just finished a second record and there was
a lot of interest from up in Canada and it didn't look good that Frank was
gonna come out of the coma, but it would really just be a tragedy if they didn't get to promote the music and support the music and so as a tribute to
Frank would I be interested in kinda coming in and not really replacing him,
but playing tribute. And yeah, it
sounded like a blast, I knew all those guys so……I still talk to Dave…..so we
went up and it was like "what happens if people like this, you wanna keep doing
it?" And I was like "sure, I’m up for
anything, I got nothing going on and I like you guys and always liked your
music and it’s right up my alley". So we
did that little tour up in Canada
and it was great and people really liked it.
Then, you know, came back home to L.A. and you know, Randy (Cooke) and Mike they
were up in Canada, so it was tough to get together and then there started to be
some personal relationship drama with some of those guys and their wives and
soon to be ex-wives. So, same thing, we
just never got it together to write a record.
We started, we did a couple of songs and some demo's of some songs and
they were really cool, but it just….you know, we were all spread out and couldn't keep it going.
Meister: So, in 1999 it was back to Little Caesar with This
Time It’s Different?
Ron: Yeah, Earl Slick was like itchin’, he’s like "I got this
little label and I'm putting my own records out and some other stuff for some
people I like" and you know, Slick, we stayed friends with him. He was like, "do you guys have any demo's or
unreleased stuff?" We’re like, yeah we
had a bunch of stuff sitting around, so we just grabbed whatever we had from
some of the old demo's and a couple of live tracks that we had.
Meister: I noticed that one of the songs on there, Downtown
Mama is pretty much Down ‘n’ Dirty from the first CD?
Ron: Yeah, That was the original lyrics and John Kalodner
made me re-write the lyrics, he didn't like ‘em.
Meister: So you didn't change them on your own, you were
forced to?
Ron: Yeah, that was the label, basically John didn't think
that the words were good enough, so I'm like whatever man I’ll write some more
words then. That was the original demo
that we did with Randy Bachman. Me and
Randy wrote the song, Randy Bachman from BTO, so we just kinda pounded it out
in like two days and that was the demo that we did up at the publishing company’s
studio. And John Kalodner didn't like the words so we had to
do a re-write and we thought it would be kind of interesting to release the
original, so….
Meister: What do you think is your favourite Little Caesar
recording?
Ron: Oh boy, that’s really hard, um, that’s really
hard. I like Midtown a lot, I like Wish
It Would Rain a lot from the older stuff.
I like some stuff off the new….you know, it kinda like changes all the
time. The songs will end up meaning
different things, different memories, there’s different….you know, we start
playing them live and it reminds me of different things, so it’s kinda like
trying to pick your favourite kid.
Meister: What about the new song American Dream. I've seen the video and the lyrics to it,
have you had any flack over the lyrics or video?
Ron: You know, it’s interesting, the way that that came
about, I was just getting frustrated with the whole political bullshit here in
the United States and the crazy partisan shit between the conservatives and the
liberals and it‘s just getting completely out of control. So it was the first time that we tried to
write something that was a bit more socially and politically relevant and then
when we wanted to shoot our video, I just typed in "American Dream" into Google and
went through the images and I just went 30, 40, 50 pages deep into a search
and whatever images and whatever videos came up from you tube, so we let Google determine what American Dream was, it was just a compilation of all that
imagery.
Ron: And it’s really interesting because the feedback that
we got, pointed out to me that music and videos were pretty much a mirror, you
know, you look into it you get......each listener gets out of it what they relate
to it. It says more about you the
listener than it does me the writer, because how you relate to it, what you
think it means is like a big Rorschach test.
And so I had a lot of conservative people that loved it, I had a lot of
liberal people that loved it and I only got one email from some guy that says he couldn't support the band because of our political views. So I wrote back and I said, well what do you
think our political views are? And he
never wrote me back, I'm like this is interesting, you tell me what it is,
‘cause all it is is just images, so what is it that he thinks our message is?
Meister: He never responded, eh, so it couldn't have been
that big a deal to him I guess.
Ron: Yeah, well he also said that I probably wouldn't respond because most bands don’t give a shit about what their fans think, and
hey man, I do. I've got really
conservative fans, I've got really liberal fans and you know, you have no idea
what my political meanings are, I mean all I did was show the reality of what’s
happening in America. Our arrogance, our
pride, our worship of guns, our worship of money, our worship of pussy….
Meister: Things that could be said about many countries,
right?
Ron: Yeah, basically it’s just the human element, people
trying to leverage those historical occurrences for their own political or
sociological agendas, that’s all it was about, you know. Racism did exist, we do have a black
president, what does it mean to you? Do
you think I support racism, do you think I support equality? Because I showed
both images, what does that mean to you?
Meister: Some people only see what they want to see.
Ron: What does the fact that we worship cars and money and
women and food and the fact that 9/11 occurred, the fact that people are saying
we deserved it, there’s people saying the opposite that this is why we've got
to go over there and kill Islamists.
Where do you stand? What do these things mean to you? That’s what it
should be about. You defining your
stance and sticking to it and not just being apathetic. That was the whole point of that, but yeah,
it took people by surprise. They always
thought our next video would be about girls and cars.
Meister: It’s not the first time that you guys have hit on
some touchy subject matter.
Ron: But this is more on a political level, definitely the
most politically minded thing we've ever done.
Meister: Certainly a little bit different from things like
Drive It Home with the double entendre lyrics
Ron: That’s the song I always bring up. The typical double entendre rock song.
Meister: And Slow Ride is the same thing.
Ron: Exactly. You know, which is funny, a lot of people are
always wondering, I'm into bands like AC/DC and as simple as they are, they’re
very clever. And Aerosmith and a lot of
bands that understand the double entendre that was used back in the
sixties. You couldn't sing about sex,
you couldn't sing about drugs, so they came up with euphanisms and double
entendres to elude to those things, you know, suck on my big ten inch record and
jelly roll and you know, custard pie and all these double entendres about sex
and drugs could sing and then the bands later in the 70’s and 80’s that used
the double entendres in old blues songs and so, I was always poking fun at that
kind of stuff to show that we don’t take ourselves to seriously. Some people took all that stuff seriously,
and it’s like, wow dude, like AC/DC she had the body of venus with arms,
brilliant, you know.
Meister: But for sure there’s always gonna be someone who
takes it a different way and you've offended them somehow.
Ron: Yeah, you know, we used to get that a lot from women
writers. They’d be like "are you very
sexist"? We’re like, "nooooo, you've got
to look at the humour in it. You've got
to look at the ridiculousness of it….."
Meister: I wanted to ask you as well about The Blue Eyed
Devils?
Ron: Yeah, we have our premiere show tonight! I'm really excited. Basically it’s just Bruce Witkin, who produced
the last Little Caesar record and who’s a monster bass player and one of the
other guys that works at our label, Joey Malone, he’s a killer guitar player. And they actually grew up…..and they were in
bands with Johnny Depp and they’re good friends with him, cause Johnny was a
musician and they all came from Florida and they all came up to L.A. together
from Florida. And Rob Quinell, who’s a
monster drummer, he’s played in some really big bands and we all just love soul
and R&B music, so it’s basically just cover tunes of Sly & The Family
Stone, Marvin Gaye, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, you know, on and on and on,
The Four Tops, Temptations. Just a
really great band and we got some of the Tower Power horn guys to come in and
lay some tracks down and we play along with the percussion and the horn
parts. It’s a labour of love of just
some killer musicians playing killer songs and I get to be that black guy in
1968 in a shiny suit that I've always wanted to be.
Meister: And you said that your premiere show for that band
is tonight?
Ron: Yeah, tonight down in Venice down by the ocean in this cool little
club.
Meister: Has there been a good reaction to it so far, like a
lot of people are interested?
Ron: A lot of people are interested, yeah, there’s a lot of
people from around L.A. who know my background and just know how much of
a love…you know, with Chain of Fools and Wish It Would Rain, that’s the music
that I grew up on, the music that inspired rock and roll. I mean The Rolling Stones and Bad Company,
they’re all trying to be black guys, that’s what they’re trying to do, trying
to emulate the soul of that with the power of guitars and the aggression of
youthful angst. To me that’s where all
this music originates from, it’s soul based, gospel based, blues based music,
so any chance that I get to go back to some of the best written songs, written
by some of the greatest song writers, sung by the greatest singers, played by
the greatest players of all time. For me
to find other guys who have this similar passion for it and who are good enough
musicians who understand the nuances of it, um, it’s just so great to find a
whole bunch of guys, just smokin’, just so in the pocket.. It’s so dynamic for
me, I get to sing all that stuff that just totally moves me. It’s really exciting, you know, so there’s a
bunch of people coming down, it’s just a small little club, maybe holds 500
people, there’s really been a good response, so we’ll see.
Meister: Do you have more shows planned or is it just a
one-off deal or see how it goes?
Ron: Yeah, we’re really excited about it, I mean we’re having such a good time that I'm hoping that
we’ll lay some stuff down………great little recording studio up at Bruce’s
(Witkin) house, where we did the Caesar record so I'm sure one day we’ll set up
microphones and start recording things.
Meister: Nice, nice, I’d love to hear it, but I don’t think I'm making my way to California any time soon.
Ron: Well, I’m hoping to get a video tonight and I'm hoping
that the audio is good enough and I’ll post a whole bunch of it up on you-tube.
Meister: That would be awesome! I’ll check it out for sure, just let me know
when it’s posted.
Ron: For sure
Meister: I won’t take up too much more of your time. Is there anything else that you would like to
mention to our readers or let them know?
Ron: No, no, just thanks.
Thanks for having enough interest to keep paying attention so that we
get to keep doing this. That’s really
all it is, man, we’re just a bunch of guys who love each other and love music
and we’re just so blessed and grateful that we still get to do it and enough
people care about it that we still get to make some records and go out and do
some shows and nowadays that’s really hard for people to do so I'm glad that
there’s enough people who have paid attention over the years.
Meister: We for one, I'm glad that you’re still doing it.
Ron: My pleasure.
Meister: Good luck with the Blue Eyed Devils tonight and
thanks for talking with me.
Ron: Hey, thank-you.
To get your Knuckle Sandwich, click this link: http://www.noisetrade.com/littlecaesar
For all other Caesar related info visit: http://www.littlecaesar.net/home
Or follow them on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LittleCaesarOfficial?fref=ts
This scene from Terminator 2 features Ron Young getting thrown out of a bar by Arnold Schwarzenegger after he breaks a pool cue over the back of Arnold's head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Rne9P_kvCtg
The Meister
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