War-Torn Ukraine Urgency! My Fiancee` Family Need Our Help! “Adopt A Ukraine Family In-Need…”

I was trying to raise, via crowdfunding on Crowdrise.com, or whatever means available, $20,000 to help Ukraine while exporting my fiancee, Nina and her ailing, elderly mama to the USA for better elder health care. Her Mama has passed away (June, 2015).
Things were on a fast track after our “Mind Your Heads” rendezvous (see other posts on this blog about that) recently in London, UK, and just when it looked like we could solidify our wedding plans and get Nina her USA visa, two new hurdles appeared: the Maiden revolution in Kiev, Ukraine and her elderly mama’s health taking a turn for the worse! If you have followed this blog for any time, then undoubtedly you know of our “Cafe` Skype” story…
Naphtali and Nina. If you are a newbie, welcome to our world!

her (Nina, my fiancee`) elderly mama was diagnosed with cancer, hemoglobin issues and a tumor. Nina is the only offspring. Her daddy passed away last year (2012) and I would like to be able to get her to the USA for better health care while assisting Ukraine freedom fighters and government in their struggle to fend-off Russia’s President Putin and his Hitleresque designs to deny Ukraine’s sovereignty. We need as much money as we can raise!

NOW…Due to recent events in Kiev and then Russia’s disrespect of the sovereignty of Crimea, things have changed… the crisis in her country deepened and I knew that I had to try to take some kind of action! First of all, their military defense needs financial help and we will donate part of what we raise here to them! Then on to those hospitalized and gunned-down during the Maidan protests in Kiev. Next, we will do a short documentary video (I am good at that, lol) to show the world why Ukraine matters (they used to have all the nuke missiles aimed at the USA, for-example).

Will the “west” stand-up to the latest “Hitler”-type, Putin, for Ukraine’s integrity or let Russian break it up like this?

So, What are you waiting for? You can donate online right now by going to our link and clicking the orange “DONATE to this fundraiser” button! It is easy and when you do, if you are not “anonymous”, you and your business will appear in the donor roll as a do-gooder, which is great publicity for you! Here is the NEW link https://www.crowdrise.com/adoptawar-affectedukrainianfamily/fundraiser/imijproduckshunz/setup_success/personal
You can also join our team to help me promote this fundraiser right on the Crowdrise page! It doesn’t get better than this to assist!

If you have questions, doubts or suggestions, then please use “comments” here to voice them or ask privately using the email address in the sidebar to the upper right. You can also contact us via our Crowdrise.com platform page (link above).
Peace.

~ Naphtali
Pickhitt: How can we get this project in-front of those who actually have the money and desire to donate to it?

Country Music Review: Jeremy Phifer, “Take The L out of Lover…”

The latest volley to flash across my musical bow comes from Blossom, Texas-born Jeremy Pheifer, who, with that non-Country music-sounding name, brings us “Take the L Out Of Lover”. Not only is his name non-traditional Country, but so is his look. To me, he appears to be enforcing the guitar into the song, rather than playing it. Hunched-over his axe on the dropbox video (which I can only link here as wordpress does not support a viewable upload apparently), I can see why he used to be a bouncer and American football defensive/wide receiver! Sports and music are this hunk’s two major personal passions and his touch on guitar is surprisingly tender at times. https://www.dropbox.com/s/am9toib48bsqcd8/TakeTheLOuttaLoverc.mov

Physical presence notwithstanding, the hook lyric, “If you take the ‘L’ out of lover and its over…” is clever and true. I can think of a couple similes like, “take the ‘M’ out of mother and its “other”, or “take the “N” out of never and its ever…” But I guess I digress as only a wordsmith would. None in love want to remove the “L”! Indeed, it might be over. Can you relate? Tell your story in our comments section, ok?

This latest single is the culmination of Jeremy’s life hurdles and struggles which include losing his baby sister as a child and special educational challenges with reading. Music runs in his blood as his dad, Jerry is a legend in the state of Texas, who has is own studio and is the backbone of his band on pedal steel.
Jeremy Phifer and the Texas Bad Water Band, with a sound he describes as “Lynyrd Skynyrd on cornbread meets Alabama”, has toured all over the Texas/Oklahoma casino circuit and from Paris to Dallas in The Lone Star State itself. Apparently however, it was not until they “put together a team of pros from the New York/Los Angeles music city of the south, Nashville, that the lyrical aspirations began to move forward for this young entertainer.

I give “Take the L out Of Lover” three (3) bold Pajama Bar stars *** out of a possible five, mainly for the creativity of the title and conceptual play on words. What do I know, it’ll probably be a smash!

If I were him, I would just use “Jeremy” as my stage name and polish-up my act not to look so ordinarily “just off of the truck”. Yet again, having spent many-a-day in Nashville, I understand that J.P. surely sounds different when said by a southerner, and his father and nine-year-old son who is pickin’-up in his footsteps would give him grief if he did that, lol. As Jeremy put it after a recent gig where all three shared the Elks Loge stage in Paris, Texas, “To have three generations of Phifers playing together is a memory I’ll cherish forever”. Just remember, if you take the ‘for’ out of forever it is “ever”.

Tune Wedgie: “Oh I Finally Found My Future WIFE (lol), Beyond The Yellow Brick Road…”

For years when this song hits my jukebox brain, it translate as,

“Oh, I finally found my future wife, beyond the yellow brick roooad…”

Have you ever experienced a song that you have heard over, and over again throughout your personal history, that you always sing along to?

Of course you think you know all of the words! Lol
In-reality, you hum or make-up what you think they are singing, through the years;
Then one day or night, a single lyric that you always did not “get”,You, that moment, suddenly really hear it for the first time clearly in your audio-music ear and mind! Ya heard??
Well, this is what happened with my latest “tune wedgie”, Yellow Brick Road” by Sir Elton John.
Maybe subconsciously I wanted him to be singing, “my future wife due to my personal love and fiancée situation.
Yet, even before Nina, my fiancee`, I thought he might have been singing the word, “wife”!
So “Goodbye”! Our musical minds are a “terrible thing to waste”…Yet intriguingly unpredictable and maybe clairvoyant.
If you have experienced similar musical wedgies, please share them with my wedgie musical blog community.

The only way to get a tune stuck out of your “wedge” head is to hear or play it, ya know! Of Course, my naivete` of British accent did,t help my understanding either! lol

“When are you gonna come down?
When are you going to land?
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man

You know you can’t hold me forever
I didn’t sign up with you
I’m not a present for your friends to open
This boy’s too young to be singing the blues

So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can’t plant me in your penthouse
I’m going back to my plough

Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh, I’ve finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road

What do you think you’ll do then
I bet that’ll shoot down your plane
It’ll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again

Maybe you’ll get a replacement
There’s plenty like me to be found
Mongrels who ain’t got a penny
Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground

So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can’t plant me in your penthouse
I’m going back to my plough

Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh, I’ve finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road”

Songwriters
JOHN, ELTON / TAUPIN, BERNIE

Comments?

Tonight’s Tune Wedgie: “Where Are All My Friends?”

Introducing a new category and maybe new “page” to my blog, “Tune Wedgies”. A “Tune Wedgie” is like the cloth “wedgie” that gets stuck in the crack of your ass, except it is a song that you cannot get out of your mind for a period of time.

For this one, the group is: Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes

I did not plan to post this in-advance, but this song is in my mind as I cook a gourmet dish this Friday evening at my mama’s house. It is a classic from my college days of the early 1970s on Philadelphia International records which was a subsidiary of CBS records.  The late Teddy Pendergrass is singing lead and it is one of the first songs I ever announced as a hip DJ on college radio during “the disco days”. Yet I do not think of this cut as “disco” but a heartfelt “soul” record. Do your homework and understand the solar plexus singing pain of the man, “Now I don’t have nothing/I’m so all alone/All the friends I once had/And I need a loan!” .

 

Where it came from within my musical mind, is a question that only a musical psychologist can answer. What happened to all of the Black American, descendant of American slavery people? Now I only see Caribbean blacks when I visit New York City, thus, “where have all my friends [gone]?” My own theory is that because of my temporary living situation that does not allow me to PLAY my thousands of musics that I amassed over a DJ career of over forty years, my brain takes over randomly to sustain the history which will be my legacy.

“(Where are all my friends)
Oh Lord, oh Lord
Use to have lots of fancy clothes
And drive a big white cadillac
Not knowing all the time I had these things
My friends were stabbing me straight in my back, no, no, no.

Even had a house then
Out there in Beverly Hills
I was moving so fast y’all
I didn’t even have time to worry about paying my bills.
(Something started changing)
My life started rearranging
(Now I’m all alone. All the friends I wanted)
I don’t have anymore
So somebody tell, tell me
(Where are all my friends)
I can’t find nobody
(Where are all my friends)
Oh Lord, Oh Lord

Use to take my friends out
Everywhere I went
But I use to tell them that y’all
Y’all ain’t gotta spend a red cent
Cause I use to have lots of money
I had ’em in big old stacks
I use to lend ’em my clothes
But they never, never ever, never, never brought ’em back
(Now I don’t have nothing)
I’m so all alone
(Don’t even have a home)
I ain’t got no place to lay my head
(Wish someone would help me)
Cause I, I, I, I, I, I need a loan

Yeah baby
(Where are all my friends)
I’m looking y’all, I’m lookin’ all over
(Where are all my friends)
I’m looking for the friends I use to call my very own
(Where are all my friends)
I need somebody right now, hey
(Where are all my friends)
I can’t find a father or a mother
(Where are all my friends)
I remember the time I use to be walking
Up and down the streets
And I remember you, and you and you and you and you
I remember when you use to say that
Yeah trying to get me to spare a dime
And I use to come out the bottom of my heart
Cause I thought you were a friend of mine
But it seems yeah, it seems that you didn’t even give a damn about me, no
But now I’m down and out and I need a friend….”

Do you remember this song as fondly as I do? Please leave your comment or memory about it. Cheers.