The Story of How Love Alive Came To Be

For you fans of the great Love Alive, I thought it might interest you to know how the whole thing started those many years ago. So let old Nick tell you a story...

My wedding band, Black Tie Orchestra (which included Mr. Hornibrook), had recently disbanded, and I was looking to do something completely different. So I joined an original band -- playing MANDOLIN, no less! I auditioned for the Quixote Project, which featured Jeff Selby as the songwriter and lead singer. They needed a mandolin guy, and there I was. I was not and am not a great mandolin player, but I guess I was at least competent. So off we went.

Well, the drummer for that band was none other than Mr. Oakley! We rehearsed at the Cherry Hill home of the bass player, a now departed fine gentleman known as "Mr. H". H had a literal room full of guitars in his basement, and rehearsing there was kinda like being in a music store with lots of "toys". I used to love picking up the various instruments and fooling around with them! 

H & Co. were noted for CONSTANTLY bringing in people to audition for the band, which was fine by me. Well, one day this girl came in to sing and play some guitar and I thought she was pretty darned amazing. I remember we did Angel From Montgomery that day, and it sounded SOOOOOO good. Yep, that was Lynn King! I'm not sure if I got Lynn's number right then, but though she did NOT join that band, I kept her in my mind. Ya never know! If memory serves, I believe I got her number from Deb Chamberlain, our Black Tie Orchestra vocalist (and my soul sister and friend).

Anyway, after some rehearsing, it became clear that The Quixote Project could use a lead guitarist.

Enter Bill Hornibrook, who I invited to one of the rehearsals. Billy was also looking for something to do, and this was certainly something. We always enjoy playing together, and this was a quality project. Selby wrote some pretty good, folksy songs that had room for harmony and space to play. So play we did.

The band got a bunch of material together, and we began gigging, primarily at La Campagnola, a fine Italian restaurant out in Shamong. Loved it there. Great food. Go there immediately. 

Our biggest, coolest gig came at the famous Tin Angel in Philly. It was a fun night playing at such a cool place! We had a pretty great time, though the entry point in the rear of joint, up a tiny set of tight metal steps, was just awful!

But the band didn't last for various reasons. In the end, it just wasn't a great fit for us older guys (me, Jim and Billy). Selby, although very talented, was a little younger than us and on a different plain. So things kinda fell apart and Selby went hunting for guys that were a better fit for his particular style. Far as I know, he is still out there playing with The Quixote Project and still writing songs. No hard feelings there, and I wish him only the best.

So what next?

Being in the original music frame of mind, I tracked down Lynn King, and me and Billy joined up with her and a drummer and bassist she had been playing with (can't remember their names; I'm sure Lynn would fill in the blank here). The bassist left very shortly thereafter, and I moved back to my main instrument.

We did series of shows doing Lynn's original songs. I remember playing in Manayunk, Audubon, NJ, Fishtown, and at a few other open mic types of things. And of course, we did some gigs right at Lynn's house in Glendora, which was just awesome. I loved it! We got to play with some big-time talent, believe me! But of course, ain't nobody making any real coin playing originals in clubs or anywhere else locally. That is beyond rare.

A quick aside FYI: the band got our name from the Heart song, which was the very first song we ever played together. It sounded great from the very start!

We decided at that point that the best thing to do would be to form a cover band that also played originals. Bring 'em in the doors with the covers, open their minds to the originals, rock on. Unfortunately, though we liked him, the drummer was just not suited to this particular project for various reasons.

Enter Jim Oakley.

Jim is a guy who can pretty much play any style and pick things up quickly. Not only that, but the dude can SING. It was always tough to decide who was gonna get a particular part in a song because both me and Jim sing in basically the same register. I probably took more stuff than him simply because drumming is hard work and bass playing ain't!

I can't be sure, but I think Billy was the guy who got us our first gig at Carolina Blue. None of us were very enamored of working late hours (11 PM being late for us old folks!), and the Sunday 4-8 or 5-9 slots at The Blue were just PERFECT for us all. The people seemed to like us there, and we began to develop a very small following, which was fun. All that grew into their "Sunday Concert Series," which simply did not exist before us (you're welcome, Carolina Blue). 

But in my never-ending quest for greatness (said very tongue-in-cheek, I assure you!), I thought we needed to be more, and I thought I had a pretty good idea of how to do it.

I had met Joe Lam a lot of years before, in the late 1979s and early 1980s. Joey was writing and recording with his friend, Mike Wilson then, and he was also playing bass in a disco band to make bucks. I used to go see him at a club on Route 73, and that boy could funk it up like nobody's business! They had the Fanelli Twins singing lead, and later I would go see the twins and their brother at Harrah's Atrium in Atlantic City when I was working on the Black Whale with Cousin Paulie. They were SOOO good.

Anyway, Joe and Wilson left disco and covers behind and eventually put together a hard rock band, Ivory Tower, along with my friend Mario Flamini, who also happened to be the drummer in Black Tie Orchestra. And boy were they good!! Mario had been a part of the writing/recording thing with Joe and Wilson back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so I knew of those guys even back then.

Ivory Tower put out an awesome album and was inches from "making it big," but it just never happened for whatever reasons (hint: the music business SUCKS). So Joe, Wilson and Mario moved on with guitarist Dave Aungst and formed the band Buff The Musket (greatest band name ever), and that morphed into Love Revolution when Wilson went off on his own. They made a TERRIFC CD somewhere around 2000, and were once again on the verge of "making it," but the jagoff music business struck again, and it just never happened. What a business we're in!

During the early 2000s, Joey subbed for me (on bass) and Bob Leonetti (on guitar) a few times with Black Tie Orchestra, so I knew he was out and about doing stuff. At this point, which had to be 2007 or 2008 after Love Alive had been playing out for a year or two, I guess, I decided to see if he might be interested in joining us.

As it turns out, Joe had interest -- to my great delight. So we got together to play some stuff, and the rest is history, as it were. Joey is an AMAZING rock singer, a solid guitar player, and a force to be reckoned with. The combination of him and Lynn was just gangbusters from the very start, and the audience responded accordingly. The old hippie following grew, the band got more gigs, and we started to make a little (not much!) money.

The band had some wild and crazy times at The Blue and Riverview Inn (Stan, you are still THE MAN!) mainly, times I will never forget and always cherish. For me, the high point will always be the recording and release of our 2009 CD "Love At 2nd Sight," which I still listen to and enjoy occasionally. It's a really good record, if I do say so myself!

Things went along for many years until in 2017, I just felt like I could no longer keep up the pace. Those three-gig Labor Day weekend things and the pace of the summers was just asking a bit much, and I knew that I was eventually going to make a move out-of-state anyway, which I did in November 2020. 

So I reluctantly said my goodbyes the guys. Luckily, Jim knew George Thompson, a fine bassist, and they were quickly able to replace me and keep on truckin'. COVID put a crimp in everyone's lives, though, and the guys don't get to play out as much as they used to, at least not the full band.

But they are still going strong, still the one of the best bands in South Jersey, and I am happy to still call them friends. I hope I get a chance to sit in with them in the not-too-distant future, if the stars align.

So that's how Love Alive came about. Hope you guys still go out and support them and enjoy the magic they bring to the table at every gig. I am always with them in spirit, believe me.

Nutandyahoo and Other Autocrats

Please do not read my position on Israel as my unlimited and unfettered support for Netanyahu. He is an ignorant, vile, criminal, right-wing autocrat. And like all right-wing autocrats, his FIRST concern is ALWAYS himself. He had clear warning and viable intelligence that something like this was possible. He chose to ignore it for two reasons: 1) Ignorance. 2) Arrogance. 

Like all right-wing autocrats (a certain orange one comes immediately to mind), he believes he is smarter than anyone else, and hence, puts into place a bunch of yes-men and Neanderthals who are like-minded rather than looking for the BEST minds to put into important positions. And guess what the result of that is?

This reminds me of another right-wing dimwit from another era who was given viable intelligence that a possible attack was looming, but who also chose to ignore it for those same two reasons. Does Clinton deserve some blame for 9/11? 

Absolutely! 

But Bush was given all that intelligence PLUS the power to do something about it, and he had nine solid months to do it. He chose to do nothing, and got a hell of a wake-up call while reading children's books in Florida on that morning. The vacant look on his face at the moment spoke volumes. 

Then to make matters way worse, he chose to attack a sovereign nation that he clearly knew had nothing to do with 9/11. He did this (again, as all autocratic, right-wing morons do) because it benefitted HIS wants and needs first. He and the evil one, Dick Cheney, made tremendous profits thanks to that war, and Bush got to live his father's dream of destroying Saddam. 

Did Saddam, another asshole, right-wing autocrat, deserve to get his ass kicked? Hell yes! But our reasons for doing the kicking had nothing whatsoever to do with whatever evils he perpetrated. No. Our reasons were based on one, tiny three-letter word: 

$$$

As in oil and the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about in his retirement speech. Bush and Cheney are war criminals just as Kissinger was before them. The Middle East has still not recovered from the havoc they wrought upon it.

And then, partially as a result of said attack, the economy cascaded downward into the inevitable crash in 2008. Again, Clinton has to take some responsibility for this, but Bush had eight years to foresee and possibly prevent this disaster. Instead, he again did what all autocrats do: he ignored it because to call it out would have been to cause himself problems at the polls. Obama was handed a major shit-sandwich on inauguration day, and it took him a full eight years to dig the country out of it, which he did.

And that a certain orange stain showed up.

Thanks to COVID, which he made WAY worse by his poor leadership and lies, the economy again was brought to a crashing halt as the supply chains dried up. The Orange One had exactly NO clue how to handle any of this, and things festered along until his rotten ass was mercifully removed from office in 2020. 

Since then, the POTUS has focused most of his energies on rebuilding the manufacturing base here and boosting up the middle class, which has been crushed under 40 years of laughable "Reaganomics," which never worked, never WILL work, and which always and solely benefitted the ultra rich, who spent those 40 years consolidating there wealth. This left us with the largest disparity between rich and poor in the history of the United States, and a huge growth of monopolistic enterprises that have helped destroy competition and have continued to fuel inflation, as greedy conglomerates continue to rake in massive profits while keep prices unnaturally high.

Enough is enough.

If Trump is once again elected POTUS by a bunch of clueless, uninformed, brainwashed numbskulls, he WILL end free elections. He WILL put together a team of sycophants who will SOLEY do his bidding with no regard for right, wrong, or the good of the people. He WILL use the legal system to exact revenge on the people who did not support him.

And we WILL be left with a situation that completely resembles the remnants of the Weimer Republic in Gernany in the late 1930s. And guess what?

It WILL end the same way for us. You can bank on it.