Podcasts about Larry Taylor

Christianity isn't based on blind faith, but on the reality that Jesus lived, died, and rose again. Today I'm joined by apologist Sean McDowell to talk about all the evidence we have for the resurrection of Jesus, and how we can wisely engage with seekers and skeptics about the hope we have in Christ.    Show Notes:  Chasing Love: Sex, Love, and Relationships in a Confused Culture by Sean McDowell  Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God's Design for Marriage by Sean McDowell   Evidence for the Resurrection: What it Means for your Relationship with God by Sean McDowell and Josh McDowell  The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas  More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell Foxe's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe On the Resurrection series by Gary Habermas   The Church Affiliate program brings the Colson Fellows Program to your local church. Pastors and church leaders can go through the Colson Fellows Program for free, so they are able to launch a Church Affiliate cohort and bring worldview training to their church members. For more details, visit colsoncenter.org/church.    Summit Ministries' 12-day Student Conferences are for young adults who refuse to settle. It's for those ready to take risks, ask big questions, and push past what's comfortable. There, you'll find friends who understand and mentors who will help you discover what it truly means to live with purpose. Register for Student Conferences using code STRONG25 for $200 off. Go to summit.org/promotions/strong women.   Educators—your worldview matters. It shapes your school. It shapes your classroom. It shapes your students. Are you cultivating a thoroughly Christian worldview? The Rooted Educator Worldview Summit is designed to help you do that. Join ACSI and the Colson Center June 16-18 in Grand Prairie, TX for this year's Worldview Summit. The lineup of speakers is one you don't want to miss: Dr. Larry Taylor of ACSI, author and speaker Brett Kunkle of Maven, author and speaker Alisa Childers, and more! This event is designed to help you cultivate your worldview so you can shape your students' faith for a lifetime. Time is running out to register! Secure your spot today at acsi.org/rooted.   The Strong Women Podcast is a product of the Colson Center which equips Christians to live out their faith with clarity, confidence, and courage in this cultural moment. Through commentaries, podcasts, videos, and more, we help Christians better understand what's happening in the world, and champion what is true and good wherever God has called them.  Learn more about the Colson Center here: https://www.colsoncenter.org/   Visit our website and sign up for our email list so that you can stay up to date on what we are doing here and also receive our monthly journal: https://www.colsoncenter.org/strong-women    Join Strong Women on Social Media:   https://www.facebook.com/StrongWomenCC  https://www.facebook.com/groups/strongwomencommunitycc/  https://www.instagram.com/strongwomencc/  https://linktr.ee/strongwomencc 

The Bulletin talks peace in Ukraine, tariffs abroad, and COVID-19 learning losses here at home. Find us on Youtube. Clarissa, Russell, and CT's chief operating officer Nicole Martin review emerging peace talks about the Russia-Ukraine war with Dalibor Rohac (American Enterprise Institute). Then, we talk tariffs with Reginald Smith (Eventide Asset Management). Finally, we welcome Larry Taylor (Association of Christian Schools International) for an honest discussion about COVID-19 learning losses and the future of the Department of Education. GO DEEPER WITH THE BULLETIN: Join the conversation at our Substack. Find us on YouTube. Rate and review the show in your podcast app of choice. ABOUT THE BULLETIN: The Bulletin is a weekly (and sometimes more!) current events show from Christianity Today hosted and moderated by Clarissa Moll, with senior commentary from Russell Moore (Christianity Today's editor in chief) and Mike Cosper (director, CT Media). Each week, the show explores current events and breaking news and shares a Christian perspective on issues that are shaping our world. We also offer special one-on-one conversations with writers, artists, and thought leaders whose impact on the world brings important significance to a Christian worldview, like Bono, Sharon McMahon, Harrison Scott Key, Frank Bruni, and more. ABOUT THE GUESTS: Dalibor Rohac is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies the political economy of the European Union and transatlantic relations. He is concurrently a research associate at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels. Reginald Smith serves as a research analyst for Eventide Asset Management. Smith explores the impact of the changing US economy on urban and rural working-class communities and studies how to create jobs in these communities. He holds an MBA with High Distinction from Harvard Business School and bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from Drexel University. Larry Taylor, PhD, is the president of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI). He has been serving in education for over 30 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Carson sat down with Association of Christian Schools International's President and CEO, Dr. Larry Taylor, to discuss education, family, and courage. You won't want to miss this great conversation and hear more about Dr. Carson's efforts at the American Cornerstone Institute. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We begin with an excerpt from Louis L'Amour's "the Ferguson Rifle". Larry Taylor is the Public Relations Manager and Social Media Director for Daisy. We discuss the history and importance of BB Guns and what they mean for our conservative, Christian, and patriotic values. Go to Daisy.com and get another gun.

Passing the baton of discourse on the rock and roll racetrack, our Olympian hosts sprint in the following direction … … watching Toumani Diabaté play in the pitch-black Malian night. … Laurel Canyon, the Brain Damage Club and the great fire of ‘79. … the Kinks in Fortis Green Road, the Beatles in Chiswick House and other alternative London rock landmarks. … is Cerrone's Supernature nicked from the Days Of Pearly Spencer? … lower-level graduates from the John Mayall Academy – Jon Hiseman, Keef Hartley, Larry Taylor, Aynsley Dunbar – and how being sacked from the Bluesbreakers was a badge of honour. … why do songwriters value suffering over joy? … “the more seriously someone takes musical taste, the more you should disregard them”. … what connects Bob Dylan and the Life of Brian? … a blueser from Preston in a Sioux headdress and one from Macclesfield pretending to hop a freight train.   … and why “song and dance man” Leadbelly had to play “complaining songs”. Plus Birthday guest Gianluca Tramontana. The Beatles at Chiswick House:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvvVNaU_qa8Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Passing the baton of discourse on the rock and roll racetrack, our Olympian hosts sprint in the following direction … … watching Toumani Diabaté play in the pitch-black Malian night. … Laurel Canyon, the Brain Damage Club and the great fire of ‘79. … the Kinks in Fortis Green Road, the Beatles in Chiswick House and other alternative London rock landmarks. … is Cerrone's Supernature nicked from the Days Of Pearly Spencer? … lower-level graduates from the John Mayall Academy – Jon Hiseman, Keef Hartley, Larry Taylor, Aynsley Dunbar – and how being sacked from the Bluesbreakers was a badge of honour. … why do songwriters value suffering over joy? … “the more seriously someone takes musical taste, the more you should disregard them”. … what connects Bob Dylan and the Life of Brian? … a blueser from Preston in a Sioux headdress and one from Macclesfield pretending to hop a freight train.   … and why “song and dance man” Leadbelly had to play “complaining songs”. Plus Birthday guest Gianluca Tramontana. The Beatles at Chiswick House:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvvVNaU_qa8Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Passing the baton of discourse on the rock and roll racetrack, our Olympian hosts sprint in the following direction … … watching Toumani Diabaté play in the pitch-black Malian night. … Laurel Canyon, the Brain Damage Club and the great fire of ‘79. … the Kinks in Fortis Green Road, the Beatles in Chiswick House and other alternative London rock landmarks. … is Cerrone's Supernature nicked from the Days Of Pearly Spencer? … lower-level graduates from the John Mayall Academy – Jon Hiseman, Keef Hartley, Larry Taylor, Aynsley Dunbar – and how being sacked from the Bluesbreakers was a badge of honour. … why do songwriters value suffering over joy? … “the more seriously someone takes musical taste, the more you should disregard them”. … what connects Bob Dylan and the Life of Brian? … a blueser from Preston in a Sioux headdress and one from Macclesfield pretending to hop a freight train.   … and why “song and dance man” Leadbelly had to play “complaining songs”. Plus Birthday guest Gianluca Tramontana. The Beatles at Chiswick House:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvvVNaU_qa8Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Daniel Holdings - CBV 28 Daniel Holdings is an Air Force vet and former businessman turned author, radio show commentator, podcaster, public speaker, and documentary film maker with GenSix productions. His highly acclaimed novels garnered him a reputation as a hard-hitting writer who bases his work on insightful and seldom heard facts and bringing these heart-stopping truths together as he educates all who will listen. For years he's worked in the shadows, behind the scenes on various projects for several clients, bringing their stories and visions to life. A few years ago, he received a call from his good friend Steve Quayle, also a character in one of his books, who asked for his help with a research project. Since those early days, Daniel and Steve have been working together very closely at GenSix Productions where Daniel has become the lead writer, coproducer and assistant director to Steve on GenSix' MegaDrought and The Lies of Men and Gods, as well as co-laboring on a myriad of other important projects for the production company and Steve's ministry.. Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Website... http://theappearance.com Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBzMEBbLEO-poZaNo4wLTA/playlists Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Daniel Holdings danielholdings.com

On this special podcast episode, see the secret video shown at the TCCE awards dinner featuring friends of the Chamber congratulating Cindy DeWease on winning the Marvin Hurley Award, which is the highest honor given to a Chamber professional in the state of Texas. Thank you, Senator Larry Taylor, Dr. Greg Smith, Dr. Richard Walker, Arturo Sanchez, Dick Gregg Jr., Brian Freedman, Beth Journeay and Shari Sweeney for sending best wishes and favorite memories shared with Cindy over the last 41 years. Congratulations Cindy, you are a SUPERSTAR!

The best Real Estate in the world has historically appreciated through good times and bad. With the right properties, demand has always exceeded supply and values have increased over time. These properties rarely come on the market, however, because sellers know the value of what they own, and don't need or want to sell them. Larry Taylor, Founder and President of Christina Development Corporation, operates in the five cities that make up West L.A, which comprises some of the most expensive Real Estate in the world. Larry pursues unique buying opportunities that result from partnership dissolutions, family disputes, or other event-driven scenarios.

My guest is quite fascinating and inspiring. If you combine a biology and paleontology professor with the innate love of photographing the wild in its Yellowstone habitat, you have Dr. Larry Taylor.  He knew this was his path from the innocent age of five. That's incredible. He shares his intriguing story of how he followed his joy and gut instincts that led him to live a dream life at his current young age of 38. He proudly has an undergraduate degree in physiology, a master's degree in genetics, and a doctorate degree in paleontology. After securing a job as a biology professor in Montana, he soon started pursuing his dream of wildlife photography in earnest. He explains how he monetized his love of photographing wildlife by selling his art and offering Yellowstone photo tours teaching clients how to capture the mystery of the wild through their camera lens. Larry's story is deeply moving, hopefully, igniting the dreamer in you to listen to your own intuition and follow your joy rather than be distracted by the outside world's opinions and expectations. He says, “The past three years or so I have found a happiness, fulfillment, and joy that I never would have if I hadn't followed my intuition and chased what was meaningful to me, rather than what made the most logical sense.”  Links from the show: Connect with Larry Taylor, PhD. www.montanawildphoto.com and Instagram @taylor.nature.photography   Want to deepen your intuition at work? Let's discuss how you can listen more often to your intuition leading you to what's meant for you.  Calendly link. https://calendly.com/successcoach-marladiann/connection   If you enjoyed the episode and podcast, I'd appreciate a review on Apple & Spotify. Let's connect on IG @marla_diann.  Enrolling for Tuscany, Italy Culinary Adventure for men, women and couples Sept 21-29, 2024. Details and registration coming by March. 8 days/7 nights in gorgeous Tuscany!  

Have you ever wondered what it takes to be a leader in the surety industry? NASBP is excited to announce a new series of episodes exploring that question, titled "The Corner Office: Conversations with Surety Leaders." In this first episode, we are joined by surety industry leader Larry Taylor, President of Merchants Bonding Company, to talk about what it takes to lead an insurance company solely focused on surety bonding. Larry shares his background, including that he is a fourth-generation executive at Merchants Bonding Company, and relates the strategies and reasons behind the company's growth and how Merchants fosters its appealing company culture. Larry also speaks to opportunities and to challenges on the horizon for the surety industry as a whole and emphasizes the importance of sharing the value of the surety product more broadly. Check out the EY report prepared for SFAA, mentioned during this episode, titled The Economic Value of Surety Bonds. With special guest: Larry Taylor, President, Merchants Bonding Company Hosted by: Kat Shamapande, Director, Professional Development, NASBP and Mark McCallum, CEO, NASBP Sponsored by Merchants Bonding Company!

In this highlight episode, we feature Larry Taylor, a seasoned real estate investor with over 50 years of experience. Larry shared his journey in the real estate industry, starting from a young age when he developed a passion for it. He emphasized the importance of following your passion and being in the right place at the right time.Larry's niche is the West side of Los Angeles, which he believes is the best location for real estate investment due to its high concentration of wealth, desirable weather, and limited supply of available land. He explained that properties in this area rarely come to market unless there is an event such as a death, divorce, or bankruptcy. Larry also highlighted the benefits of owning real estate in terms of tax advantages and the pride of ownership.When it comes to his business model, Larry focuses on long-term investments and forming private equity real estate companies that own portfolios of properties. He discussed the advantages of leveraging properties and building relationships with lenders. He also shared his surprising experience with his non-levered private equity company, which received less interest from investors compared to the traditional levered company.In terms of the current market conditions, Larry acknowledged the impact of rising interest rates and limited availability of debt. However, he mentioned that there are still opportunities to buy properties at a slight discount. He advised investors to never borrow more than they can afford to pay back and to develop strong relationships with banks.Overall, Larry provided valuable insights into surviving market downturns and making successful real estate investments. He encouraged listeners to reach out to him and his team to learn more about their investment opportunities and long-term approach to real estate.Click the links below to listen to the full episode and gain more insights from Larry Taylor !https://lifebridgecapital.com/2023/10/23/focusing-on-las-west-side-for-real-estate-larry-taylor/https://lifebridgecapital.com/2023/10/24/debt-market-impact-on-real-estate-larry-taylor/VISIT OUR WEBSITEhttps://lifebridgecapital.com/Here are ways you can work with us here at Life Bridge Capital:⚡️START INVESTING TODAY: If you think that real estate syndication may be right for you, contact us today to learn more about our current investment opportunities: https://lifebridgecapital.com/investwithlbc⚡️Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRealEstateSyndicationShow

Today's guest is Larry Taylor.   Larry Taylor is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Christina. Mr. Taylor is responsible for vision, strategy and leadership. Mr. Taylor is a seasoned investor with over 40 years of real estate experience in the Westside region of Los Angeles.   Show summary:  In this podcast episode, Larry explains how his company identifies valuable properties and adjusts their portfolio in response to market shifts. He also discusses the expansion of Christina's investor base, now open to all 50 states, and the opportunities this presents. The episode concludes with Larry sharing his insights on the desirability of owning real estate in Manhattan and the host directing listeners to Christina's website for more information.   -------------------------------------------------------------- The perception of buying rent controlled properties (00:00:00) Larry Taylor's background and starting in real estate (00:01:11) The impact of regulatory environment on real estate business (00:04:53) The importance of performance certainty in property sales (00:12:14) Adapting portfolio strategy in response to changes in tax and securities laws (00:13:55) The benefits of real estate ownership and the government's support (00:16:17) The growth of investor base and potential for discounted properties (00:22:29) The vision of owning the best real estate (00:23:49) Contacting Christina (00:24:28) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Larry:  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/christinala/   https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrence-taylor-7679479/   Web: https://christinala.com/     Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Larry Taylor (00:00:00) - There's a perception amongst investors that buying rent controlled properties which have depressed rent rolls because those rents have not been allowed to go to market is a bad investment. And I say, oh no, no, no, that's a good investment. You're never going to have a vacancy. And the value can only go up because ultimately, no matter what, rents will rise because they have to rise.   Sam Wilson (00:00:25) - Welcome to the how to scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big. Larry Taylor is the founder and chief executive officer of Christina. He is a seasoned investor with over 48 years of real estate experience in the West Side region of Los Angeles. Larry, welcome to the show.   Larry Taylor (00:00:51) - Hello there. And how are you?   Sam Wilson (00:00:53) - I'm great sir. How are you today?   Larry Taylor (00:00:55) - I'm doing really great and I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show.   Sam Wilson (00:00:59) - The pleasure is all mine. Larry, there are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less.   Sam Wilson (00:01:06) - Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   Larry Taylor (00:01:11) - Uh, I am a self-made self-starter. Uh, started as a USC junior. I was a scholarship student. I formed the my first real estate company while I was a student. Uh, the premise of that was to buy real estate in the west side of Los Angeles during the, uh, Nixon wage and price level freeze. And, uh, today we're doing the same thing in the same location.   Sam Wilson (00:01:40) - Wow. Most people. I would assume. Maybe I'm wrong, but. You know, the strategy shift over the years or the asset classes or the type shift. I mean, doing the same thing and the same location for 48 years. It sounds like you guys have either, um, just gone really, really niche or I just found a gold mine and just don't want to leave it. What? What's the story there?   Larry Taylor (00:02:09) - Well, the West Side region of Los Angeles is like the Permian Basin.   Larry Taylor (00:02:14) - Basin? Basin is to oil. It's drilling oil on a proven field.   Sam Wilson (00:02:21) - Okay.   Larry Taylor (00:02:22) - It's fully it's fully developed. It's highly desirable. It is the best year round climate of the United States. Has the highest concentration of millionaires and billionaires in the world. It's the center of tourism center of an entertainment center of technology, two largest ports, and the two busiest ports in the United States. I could go on and on, but, um, uh, if you're drilling oil in a proven field, you're always going to hit oil, right?   Sam Wilson (00:02:50) - Right. I mean, you a lot of things have changed. I think maybe we maybe you said this off air. Maybe we said this, uh, at the beginning of this recording. I'm not not quite sure which one it was, but I think you said you guys formed your company in September of 1977.   Larry Taylor (00:03:06) - That's correct.   Sam Wilson (00:03:06) - A lot of things have changed in in your region, I would think in particular both socially regulatory wise. I mean, a lot of things have kind of come down the pipe that have have made, uh, a lot of people kind of steer away from California.   Sam Wilson (00:03:20) - I know you just mentioned at least ten reasons. I think right off the top of your head as to why what you're doing is, is, is the right time and the right place to be there. But kind of give us, if you can, some of the history of how some of the changes of have have, uh, come about and then how they've affected the way you guys have done business.   Larry Taylor (00:03:38) - Well, first of all, California is a huge state. Yeah, California, the the economy of California, if it was a separate country, would be the sixth largest economy in the world. Uh, there's a world of difference in California, where the northern part of California doesn't resemble the southern part. Um, it's a very, very huge area. And Los Angeles is a very, very huge geographical community. And so when people talk about California, you might as well be talking about southern South America, or you might as well just talk about Western Europe. I mean, California is a huge and diverse, uh, state, which is, you know, larger than most countries.   Larry Taylor (00:04:28) - And so when people talk about California, I don't know what they're talking about, because I can only talk to you about the hundred square miles of the west side of Los Angeles. I don't know anything about the rest of California.   Sam Wilson (00:04:41) - Got it. Very good. But can you. Can you give us a little insight maybe as to kind of the, the way the regulatory environment has shaped the way you guys do business, if it has it all.   Larry Taylor (00:04:53) - Well, of course it has. And its constantly regulations are constantly are constantly being enacted, reenacted, revised. Um, and and that's just not just Los Angeles or just California. It's the entire United States. So the regulatory environment is, you know, again, it creates opportunities. If you look at it strategically, it's the regulatory environment that creates opportunities rather than, uh, acts to, you know, uh, restrict opportunities.   Sam Wilson (00:05:34) - Can you give some insight?   Larry Taylor (00:05:36) - Sure. For example, a couple of years ago, California passed Assembly Bill 330, which ultimately became Assembly Bill uh, SB eight, which basically was designed to stimulate the creation of housing because the state of California is generally considered to be lacking of housing.   Larry Taylor (00:06:00) - So this was an idea that was passed by the state legislature to encourage housing and all the communities. And in California, however. There was an exception that was added very, very last minute to that bill which said, yes, we want to accelerate the ability to build housing by eliminating local restrictions or being able to expedite local over local restrictions. Unless what you're going to do is remove existing affordable, rent controlled housing, in which case, if you remove something that's already rent controlled or restricted in some fashion and you decide to build something on that site, you have to bring back that which you removed. At the same rent or less than what they were when you removed them. What that does is it takes away all of the incentive to remove existing rent control. So you can't really remove it. What happens is if it can't be removed, it can only become more valuable. So in a sense, what everybody's saying. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. This new regulation which was designed to stimulate housing, I'm saying, is all that did was it may stimulate the growth of housing in areas where there isn't already housing, but where there is protected housing, it is now protected from demolition into perpetuity, which means no more competition.   Larry Taylor (00:07:43) - So if you have a fully developed area and all of these properties are protected and nobody will ever come in and tear them down and build new, that which exists can only become more valuable because the demand exceeds the supply. So in that situation, regulation actually made a rent control property more valuable, which.   Sam Wilson (00:08:05) - I think entirely. I mean, that's that's all together. I mean, it's unique, you know, in the, in the just in the, in the concept itself. But let's assume maybe that you aren't the one holding those properties. How does that how how can that situation be made advantageous for an investor looking to get into that market?   Larry Taylor (00:08:27) - Well, it's advantageous because there's a perception amongst investors that buying rent controlled properties which have depressed rent rolls because those rents have not been allowed to go to market is a bad investment. And I say, oh no, no, no, that's a good investment. You're never going to have a vacancy. And the value can only go up because ultimately, no matter what, rents will rise because they have to rise.   Larry Taylor (00:08:56) - Period.   Sam Wilson (00:08:58) - Right. They have to. And is that is that what you guys are? Let me ask this a different way. What are you guys specifically focusing on then? Are you guys building new or are you buying existing assets like what's your what's your core focus?   Larry Taylor (00:09:11) - Our core focus is to buy existing. Properties from people that need to sell, not from people that want to sell. And we are not property specific. We are property agnostic, location specific. We like street retail, for example. That's been one of our primary property types that we focus on. We like pedestrian oriented street retail property. Uh, that's one of our hallmarks. We're not really specialists in any one particular property type, because rent is rent. Uh, space is space. Uh, doesn't really matter as long as you're buying in the right location. Location, location, location is going around is as a we've all grown up with location, location, location. They never said apartments, apartments, apartments only or they never said only the southern five states.   Larry Taylor (00:10:08) - Miami, uh, you know, Florida, Arizona. Texas, right? No, it's always been location, location, location. And there aren't that many locations in any one particular state or country, uh, that are investable. And what I mean by investible is where development is restricted. Demand exceeds supply and the entry barrier is very, very high. Those are the components that add to success in investing in real estate. There's very few places in the United States or any country that are investable, right? Period.   Sam Wilson (00:10:54) - That's wild, I love that. So you guys are. You guys are, um, you mentioned there you said asset kind of agnostic, and you want to find people that need to sell, not want to sell. Why are people needing to sell in today's environment?   Larry Taylor (00:11:10) - In any environment, there's always death. Okay. And, you know, for anybody that has a net worth of over 12 or 13 million, uh, they have to pay a state taxes. So if they have a portfolio of real estate, they have to sell the real estate to pay the estate tax.   Larry Taylor (00:11:31) - So death, divorce, bankruptcy, foreclosure, partnership disputes, there's always something like that happening, particularly in a vast environment like the hundred square miles of the West Side region in Los Angeles. There's always, I like to say, there's always someone dying.   Sam Wilson (00:11:49) - There is. There is.   Larry Taylor (00:11:52) - As long as it's not me.   Sam Wilson (00:11:54) - That's, uh. That's that's a good idea. I like that, yeah. So you I mean, in being market or, I guess, asset agnostic, how do you how do you effectively weed through the. I mean, there's got to be just a ton of property coming across your guys's desk. How do you weed through that and actually find the assets that are worth pursuing?   Larry Taylor (00:12:14) - Well, when you've been on the ground in the same location for nearly 50 years, they find you. Number one. If it's listed for sale, it's retail. We're not interested. Okay, so. But they find us. We have a long track record of performance. Certainty of performance to people.   Larry Taylor (00:12:36) - Who need to sell is more important than price.   Sam Wilson (00:12:42) - Can you clarify that?   Larry Taylor (00:12:44) - Yeah. If you need to pay your estate taxes nine months from the date of death, okay, you're going to be more focused on selling a property to somebody who definitely is going to be able to close and provide you with the money that you need to pay your taxes. Yeah. So, I mean, certainty of performance is what comes from companies that have track records within a given geographical location of performance.   Sam Wilson (00:13:14) - How have you how have you guys adjusted your portfolio over the years? I mean, I know, I know, you said, you know, the finding the assets that are it sounds like off market assets finding people that need to sell. You're not necessarily asset specific, but I would imagine I mean, you guys have gone through the savings and loan crisis. You've gone through the.com bust, you went through the GFC. I mean, you went through Covid. You guys have seen all sorts of of incredible market shifts.   Sam Wilson (00:13:43) - I mean, that's that's a wild ride to have gone through the last 50 years. How have you changed or repositioned your portfolio accordingly along the way, if at all?   Larry Taylor (00:13:55) - Well, we did change about ten years ago in response to changes in the tax law and changes in the securities law brought about by the, uh, Jobs Act. Um, it became very clear for real estate investors to be able to benefit from the tax treatment. They had to be able to own multiple properties because the depreciation and amortization, uh, deductions, which are non-cash deductions, which allows an owner of real property to actually earn a positive income. But after tax report a loss, those losses are suspended for most, uh, property owners, unless they own other properties that are producing income, which they can use to offset, they can use the losses to offset the income. So what we did was we formed private equity companies, and we said, we'll have one company that will buy ten properties, and we will allow our investors to invest in the company.   Larry Taylor (00:15:06) - By owning an interest in the company, they'll own an interest in ten properties. And then as properties are throwing off income, other properties are throwing off losses and therefore they'll be able to use the losses within the portfolio and not have to pay tax. So and then we set it up as a private equity company, because a private equity company basically says don't expect great results in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth year. Real estate is a long term. Most of our real estate partnerships when we were syndicators had a 30 year to 35 year term. Wow. So our private equity companies on average have a 30 year term. Now, if you're lucky enough to own great real estate, the smartest thing that you can do is having purchased it. The dumbest thing you can do as ever selling it. My only regret in the last 50 years is having ever sold anything. Wow. So the government rewards you to keep it, and the government penalizes you by taxation to sell it.   Larry Taylor (00:16:17) - So, you know, in the typical investor mind, which is different than the real estate mind, which is how much am I investing? How much am I going to get back? What's my cash flow? What am I going to get my money back? That works for stocks. That works for bonds. Maybe that works for businesses. Uh, works for a lot of things. It does not work for real estate. Hmhm real estate is buying the best property and the best location at the lowest possible price, and mining it for all of the tax benefits and the appreciation and value creation. Because the government rewards you by allowing you to continue to make money, build value and never pay tax. That's what makes real estate work.   Sam Wilson (00:17:06) - I love it that that's that that's extremely clear. I want to kind of circle back to your greatest regret. Is selling it comet and maybe tie that back into the 30 to plus year hold that you guys project on this. What type of investor gets in and how do you attract that investor? I mean, you know we've got a fund right now.   Sam Wilson (00:17:27) - It's an eight year fund. And people are like, oh, eight years. That's a long time. And I'm like, I don't I don't think it's that long. So obviously it sounds really short compared to what you just, uh, you just said it 30 plus years. How do you attract, attract capital that is looking at a 30 plus year hold?   Larry Taylor (00:17:46) - Well, there's all forms of capital throughout the world, and there's all forms of investors who have different strategies and different requirements. But ownership of real estate is something that's been around longer than human beings. And and so, I mean, real estate has been around longer. And once you own something and you extract value, for example, if you own a property that you purchased for X amount of dollars, call it a $10 million, right. And over a 20 year period, it becomes worth $35 million. And you originally invested 5 million and borrowed 5 million. And then over the first ten years, you earned $3 million in operating income.   Larry Taylor (00:18:33) - But in the 10th year, you had an opportunity to put a $15 million loan on the property, but you only paid ten and you only had five in, but you got three out. Now you have a loan for 15 million. You get three times or four times your money out tax free. And the interest that you pay is deductible at the property level as an operating expense. Now. Five more years go by, go down, and now the property is worth $30 million. And you have a financing opportunity to borrow $20 million. So you pay off your $15 million, put another $5 million in your pocket, and you still own the property. You still pay no tax. Then when you finally die and you have already set up your estate plan, that asset goes to your beneficiaries at a stepped up basis so that they pay little or no tax when they sell the property. You may have an estate tax issue, but in our structure, where you only own a portion with other investors in that in that private equity company, if you're transferring to your beneficiaries a percentage interest in, let's say, ten properties that are owned in this private equity company, the government allows you to apply a discounted value up to 35%.   Larry Taylor (00:19:57) - So let's say 15 years after you made an investment in one of our private equity companies and you invested 10 million, and now that 10 million is worth 20, right? You can leave it to your your beneficiaries that like 16. Okay, so real estate has been the greatest form of wealth creation. Ever. Okay. And I don't discount the stock market and I don't discount the S&P 500 and so on and so forth. But those investments do not offer the tax benefits that the government gives to real estate. And there's a reason for that because stimulating real estate stimulates the economy. So when government is always looking for ways to get people to invest in real estate because it is illiquid. You can wake up in the morning and sell a stock. You can wake up in the morning and sell a bond. You can wake up in the morning and sell out a mutual fund. You can't wake up in the morning and say, oh, I'm going to sell my building in 30 minutes. Okay. So again, but when the government stimulates real estate, it employs a lot of people.   Larry Taylor (00:21:08) - When there's construction, it puts together a lot of a lot of people are working architects, engineers, plumbers, electricians, carpet manufacturers, furniture makers. I'm saying is the way to stimulate an economy is always to stimulate real estate. And that's been going on in this country for the last 100 years. So real estate still is the most significant beneficiary of the government's largesse.   Sam Wilson (00:21:37) - Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly. Larry, I've got one. Uh, maybe two final questions here for you. I've certainly enjoyed your insights. Uh, I love your enthusiasm. What you bring to the table. I mean, you guys have done some really, really cool things, and I love just how you've hyper focused in one very, very specific part of the country there in the West side of Los Angeles. But maybe give me this insight if you can. What what's the favorite part of your business now and then? Where are you guys going?   Larry Taylor (00:22:07) - My favorite part of the business right now, of course, is growing. Christina real estate investors and opening up Christina Real Estate Investors to more and more participants across the United States because the Jobs act allows us now to market the opportunity to invest to in to people in 50 states.   Larry Taylor (00:22:29) - Right. Whereas before we were limited, very, very limited to just California. So that is very exciting. And the other thing that's exciting is, uh, as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates 11 times consecutively in the last couple of years to rates that we haven't seen in more than 22 years. It's creating a lot of what I call finance stress on very, very good properties. And so we might start to see for the first time, we're starting to see some investors who bought in the last 20 years, or 15 or 10, particularly in the last five, that might be willing to throw in the towel, uh, because if they borrowed at three and they have to re borrow at seven, and the lender is saying, we need you to pay down the loan, they might be more willing to sell the property at a discount. So we're starting to see some pretty good properties become available at some very attractive prices. So between the growth of our investor base coming from 50 states and the potential to have that unlimited and the ability to buy great real estate, but like I said, staying within the hundred square miles of the West Side region of Los Angeles, it's a bigger location to bigger geographical area than Manhattan.   Larry Taylor (00:23:49) - And wouldn't you love to own Manhattan? Some of the biggest titans in real estate will tell you that they've made their greatest fortunes only owning real estate in Manhattan. So I mean, like, this is our our vision, which is, you know, own the best. Forget the rest.   Sam Wilson (00:24:06) - I love it, I love it, Larry, thank you for taking the time to come on the show today. I certainly appreciate it. I've enjoyed, uh, I've enjoyed having you and I've learned an absolute ton from you. I think what you guys have done, and something we'll continue to do is, uh, inspiring. So thank you very much for that. If our listeners want to get in touch with Christina, what is the best way to do that?   Larry Taylor (00:24:28) - Go on our website. It's very, very friendly. Uh, it'll immediately direct you to, uh, our company just by filling out a few things and giving us your information, and you'll get an immediate response.   Sam Wilson (00:24:40) - Fantastic. And for those of you who are just listening, that website is Christina.   Sam Wilson (00:24:44) - Christina la.com. That's Christina la.com. And Larry, thank you again for your time today. I do appreciate it.   Larry Taylor (00:24:54) - You're welcome. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. I hope your audience enjoyed it.   Sam Wilson (00:24:59) - Hey, thanks.   Sam Wilson (00:24:59) - For listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.

Are you maximizing the tax advantages of your real estate investments? Or are you concerned about potential pitfalls like overpaying for a property? Look no further! Join us for an enlightening conversation with real estate investment expert, Larry Taylor. In this engaging discussion, Larry shares his extensive experience and knowledge in the industry, addressing these questions and more.Larry Taylor, a real estate maestro, delves into the intricacies of the debt market, providing valuable insights and advice for passive investors. He also sheds light on the current challenges affecting the real estate sector. Larry's guiding principle, "buy the best and forget the rest," is at the heart of our conversation, offering a clear path for all listeners.But our exploration of the real estate investment world doesn't end there! Larry generously imparts his wealth of wisdom, emphasizing essential investing metrics and strategies. He stresses the importance of understanding a property's true value and warns against the risks of overpaying. Larry also discusses his team's ambitious plans to expand their investor base.With a focus on long-term investment strategies, Larry shares his expertise in tax planning and property evaluation. Prepare to enhance your real estate knowledge, optimize your investment portfolio, and seize unprecedented opportunities. This episode is a treasure trove of insights from a seasoned industry veteran, and you won't want to miss it!Don't miss the opportunity to learn from a real estate legend! Contact Larry Taylor at 3-0-4-5-6-2-6-2-2 or visit https://christinala.com/ for invaluable insights and your real estate journey. Seize the opportunity now!VISIT OUR WEBSITEhttps://lifebridgecapital.com/Here are ways you can work with us here at Life Bridge Capital:⚡️START INVESTING TODAY: If you think that real estate syndication may be right for you, contact us today to learn more about our current investment opportunities: https://lifebridgecapital.com/investwithlbc⚡️Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRealEstateSyndicationShow

Prepare for enlightenment from Larry Taylor, a seasoned real estate investor with over 50 years of experience. As the founder and CEO of Christina Season Investor, Larry began his real estate journey at 18 and has since built a lasting legacy. He shares his early years, first deal, and his strategic move during the high inflation of 1972, all without mentors.Our conversation begins with Larry's passionate talk about the allure of investing in Los Angeles' West side. He explores the wealth concentration, year-round excellent weather, and the impact of entertainment, aerospace, Silicon Valley, and tourism, making this region a lucrative real estate hotspot. Larry's insights will convince you of the West side of LA's potential.To conclude, Larry imparts invaluable wisdom on dealing with lenders in real estate. He stresses building strong lender relationships and maintaining a financial cushion for investments. He also offers a glimpse into real estate syndication and its growth potential. This conversation is a treasure trove for real estate enthusiasts, whether passive or active investors. Brace for a captivating journey through Larry's extensive real estate wisdom!Don't miss the opportunity to learn from a real estate legend! Contact Larry Taylor at 3-0-4-5-6-2-6-2-2 or visit https://christinala.com/ for invaluable insights and your real estate journey. Seize the opportunity now!VISIT OUR WEBSITEhttps://lifebridgecapital.com/Here are ways you can work with us here at Life Bridge Capital:⚡️START INVESTING TODAY: If you think that real estate syndication may be right for you, contact us today to learn more about our current investment opportunities: https://lifebridgecapital.com/investwithlbc⚡️Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRealEstateSyndicationShow

This 2-hour episode originally aired on Sunday, October 15th, on multiple formats world-wide.  It contained great music from Coco Montoya, Skyla Burrell, Coyote Kings, Larry Taylor and the Taylor family and many others.  Remember if you visit Blues Therapy Radio Worldwide on Facebook, and "like' the page, we will shout out your name on future broadcast.

We exist to ignite a passion in every person to glorify and enjoy God everywhere and in everything.

Just a few weeks ago, a new hero joined the ranks of America's Medal of Honor recipients when President Biden presented our nation's highest award for valor in combat to retired U.S. Army Captain Larry Taylor for his actions in Vietnam, where he risked his life to rescue four soldiers with a daring helicopter maneuver. To talk about Captain Taylor's inspiring story, host Mo Barrett is joined by NMOHMF Historians Josh Schick and Kali Martin Schick.

Wondering how we got to a point where the vaccinated are seemingly more likely to contract COVID-19? Our skepticism mirrors that of the majority we've spoken with, as we question the truth behind masks, vaccinations, and ventilators. We're perplexed, saddened, and frustrated with the situation we find ourselves in - join us as we unpack this absurdity.It's hard to ignore the contradictions in President Biden's actions. His inconsistent adherence to mask mandates - encouraging others yet disregarding them himself - fuels our doubts about his leadership. Awarding a medal of honor to an elderly veteran, maskless, is one of the many head-scratchers. The president's delayed responses to national tragedies, such as the Maui fires, and his absence from the 9/11 memorial, only raise more questions. We dissect his actions and the resulting public perception, delving into why some still support him unconditionally.Learn about Capt. Larry Taylor's story here: https://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/taylor/The 2024 Presidential Election is shrouded in uncertainty. The thought of our current Vice President ascending to President generates a lot of apprehension and doubt. We're left to speculate about potential Democratic candidates, with Michelle Obama's name making rounds. This crucial upcoming election and the general uncertainty of what will transpire will be our focus as we continue our conversation. Prepare for a thought-provoking conversation that not only questions the status quo but also speculates on what future lies ahead.*THE VIEWS AND CONVERSATIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN IS ARE OPINIONS & EKS ENCOURAGES VIEWERS TO SEEK PROFESSIONAL ADVICE IN ALL MATTERS OF CONCERN.Support the show#ifounditonamazon https://a.co/ekT4dNOTRY AUDIBLE PLUS: https://amzn.to/3vb6Rw3Elsa's Books: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B01E1VFRFQDesign Like A Pro: https://canva.7eqqol.net/xg6Nv Bible Journaling Finds: https://www.amazon....

Army Capt. Larry Taylor was awarded the Medal of Honor this month for a daring rescue in 1968.

Short week with Labor Day on Monday. We kicked things off on Tuesday with a discussion about pet peeves. During our Tuesday edition of "Bad News with Happy Music", we talked about a former pizza parlor owner in Massachusetts that improperly used a PPP loan to buy an alpaca farm in Vermont, an issue with some Paw Patrol snacks, an Indiana man who had a "spiritual awakening", and a drunk idiot who called 911 on himself. We helped you over the hump on Wednesday with an incredible story about a retired Army Veteran named Larry Taylor who finally received the much-deserved Medal of Honor. We also found out about a new trend called "Hot Bedding". On Wednesday's edition of "Bad News with Happy Music", we had stories about a naked man in Colorado that broke into two homes & fought with the homeowners in broad daylight, a shooting at a #Florida funeral home, and a three-legged bear named "Tripod" that enjoys drinking White Claws. On Thursday, we heard about Kevin Costner's ex-wife who is getting short-changed on her chilld support payments, and discussed a new list of the most annoying NFL fan bases. During Thursday's edition of "Bad News with Happy Music", we had an emu on the loose, an update on the diarrhea plane, a guy trying to cross the ocean in a human hamster wheel, and a dude who ain't afraid of no bear! Plus, a new list of things to do in & around La Crosse this weekend.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Thursday, September 7th, 2023. Olive Tree Biblical Software: Discover why more than a million people use the free Olive Tree Bible App as their go-to for reading, studying, and listening to the God’s Word. Start by downloading one of many free Bibles and start taking notes, highlighting verses, and bookmarking your favorite passages. You can read at your own pace, or choose from a large selection of Reading Plans, including the Bible Reading Challenge. When you are ready to go deeper into your studies, Olive Tree is right there with a large selection of study Bibles, commentaries, and other helpful study resources available for purchase. There’s also an extensive bookstore allows you to build your digital library one book at a time and Olive Tree’s sync technology lets you pick up where you left off on your tablet, pc or phone and get right to studying on another supported device. Now here's the best part – You can start with the Olive Tree Essentials Bundle for FREE. Visit www.olivetree.com/FLF and download it today!  https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-federal-budget-deficit-projected-double-year US federal budget deficit projected to double this year The U.S. federal deficit is projected to nearly double this year as a result of higher interest rates and lower tax revenue. The gap between what the government spends and what it collects is expected to grow from about $1 trillion last year to $2 trillion for the 2023 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, according to the latest projections from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonpartisan group that advocates for reducing the federal deficit. "This would be the highest deficit we’ve ever had outside of a recession or national emergency," Marc Goldwein, a senior policy director at CRFB, told FOX Business. The sizable increase stems from a number of factors, including high inflation, more expensive interest payments and a drop in tax receipts. It comes on the heels of a record drop in the budget shortfall last year, as the deficit dropped from close to $3 trillion to roughly $1 trillion after the government's record spending during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, the government enjoyed a surge in capital gains revenue after Americans capitalized on the booming market the previous year, sold more stock and recorded large gains. The market has not fared as well since then, leading to a sharp drop in capital gains tax revenue compared with last year. The Treasury Department likewise benefited from a spike in general tax collection, because surging inflation essentially pushed up nominal income for millions of households. Although the IRS indexes the tax code to inflation, it does so on a lag. Higher federal income tax brackets and standard deductions took effect at the beginning of 2023, essentially allowing more Americans to shield their income from the IRS. Social Security and Medicare are also indexed to inflation, meaning the government is spending more money on those programs than it did in fiscal year 2022. "But mostly what’s happening is it’s coming to the new normal, from an unusually low 2022 deficit," Goldwein said. "That’s pretty scary, because normal before the pandemic was $1 trillion. And in 2015, it was $500 billion. So we went from $500 billion is the normal, to $1 trillion is the normal, to $2 trillion is the normal in less than a decade." The figures exclude President Biden's $400 billion student loan cancellation plan, which was counted in the official 2022 deficit numbers but never implemented because the Supreme Court struck the policy down. Such massive spending imbalances highlight the toll that high and rising debt can take on everyday Americans. High deficits can fuel inflation, and high debt can push up interest rates. "Mortgage rates are as high as they’ve been since well before the financial crisis," Goldwein said. "Car loan rates, student loan rates, credit card rates, they’re all really high." The deficit surge comes as lawmakers rush to avert a government shutdown. The White House has urged Congress to pass a short-term funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, in order to keep the government solvent while lawmakers continue negotiations over longer-term funding bills. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have both said they want to pass a short-term deal to keep the government running. However, a group of House Republicans — the House Freedom Caucus — is demanding a number of concessions as part of the continuing resolution, raising the risk of more down-to-the-wire drama on Capitol Hill. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/biden-mask-indoors-jill-biden-covid Biden to wear mask indoors after COVID-19 exposure President Joe Biden will don a mask indoors after he was exposed to COVID-19 through his wife, first lady Jill Biden, according to the White House. https://twitter.com/i/status/1699269260260823345 - Play Video Now, Studies have repeatedly shown masks don't prevent Covid transmission and might even have health consequences to wearers. - But I digress. Biden, who awarded the Medal of Honor to Army Capt. Larry Taylor for conspicuous gallantry on Tuesday, is expected to depart Thursday for India and the Group of 20 leaders summit. During the Medal of Honor ceremony, Biden took off his mask for his remarks and did not put it back on to hang the trinket around Taylor's neck or to leave the East Room. National security adviser Jake Sullivan downplayed the prospect that a presidential COVID-19 diagnosis would disrupt his foreign trip based on leaders' past experience social distancing during the pandemic. https://www.theblaze.com/news/75000-sia-illegal-border-crossings 75,000 illegal immigrants flagged as having possible ties to terrorism in the last year, according to CBP data U.S. Customs and Border Protection flagged approximately 75,000 illegal immigrants as being possible national security threats or having terroristic ties in the previous 10 months leading up to August 2023, the Daily Caller reported. CBP data showed that between October 2022 and August 2023, 74,904 illegal aliens were labeled as "SIA Encounters," which stands for "Special Interest Alien." According to a Department of Homeland Security article, an SIA is a "non-U.S. person" who potentially "poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests." "Often such individuals or groups are employing travel patterns known or evaluated to possibly have a nexus to terrorism. DHS analysis includes an examination of travel patterns, points of origin, and/or travel segments that are tied to current assessments of national and international threat environments," the DHS stated. "This does not mean that all SIAs are 'terrorists,'" the government report added. However, the travel and behavior of certain individuals "indicates a possible nexus to nefarious activity (including terrorism) and, at a minimum, provides indicators that necessitate heightened screening and further investigation." The unearthed numbers were a massive increase from the reported 25,627 special interest encounters from fiscal year 2022, and the comparably miniscule 3,675 from fiscal year 2021. Illegal immigrants can automatically be deemed SIAs based on their country of origin, such as Turkey or Uzbekistan, due to such countries' status as a "source and transit country." DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller regarding the SIA figures. CBP and the DHS are under heightened scrutiny as a result of the shocking increase in border crossing encounters under the Biden administration. A former immigration judge claimed in late August 2023 that the DHS was deliberately not disclosing the number of illegal immigrants who have been released into the United States each month. "The only reason why ICE and OFO [Office of Field Operations] would refuse to disclose that information is to hide the fact that it is releasing more than 100,000 aliens per month into the United States and to conceal the effects of those migrant releases on communities across the United States," Andrew Arthur said. Border encounters in fiscal year 2023 are on pace to match the near 2.4 million that were seen in 2022. There were just over 1.7 million encounters in 2021, while in 2020, President Trump's administration saw a little more than 450,000. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/09/05/ev-florida-n2627949#google_vignette Electric Vehicles Are Causing Issues After Hurricane Idalia Electric vehicles are catching on fire after Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida last week. According to local reports, at least two Tesla EVs ignited after saltwater from the storm surge damaged their batteries and other electrical components. One vehicle lit up in Pinellas Park and another car fire occurred in Palm Harbor. “Carfax says owners need to understand the fire risk doesn’t go away after their EV dries out,” ABC Actions News told viewers. “The salt water that is flooding can get into the battery and dry there and once it dries it creates what federal safety officials call bridges between cells and that can lead to fires and those fires can come anywhere from days to weeks later and once an EV catches fire it is incredible difficult to put it out,” said Patrick Olsen of Carfax. After Hurricane Ian, 21 electric vehicles caught fire in the state, prompting officials to warn residents ahead of Idalia's approach. “We saw a number of fires associated with EVs from Hurricane Ian. We know that the saltwater from storm surge can compromise these batteries, causing fires which cannot be easily suppressed,” Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said at the time. “The best fire teams can do is keep water on the battery until the fuel burns out. If you’re evacuating and leaving an EV, or other lithium ion powered devices like scooters or golf carts in your garage, you’re creating a real fire threat for your home, your communities, and first responders," he added. "Take this threat seriously. If there’s even a small risk of your EV being impacted by storm surge, move it to higher ground before it’s too late.” One home that managed to survive Ian ended up burning to the ground because of a saltwater-damaged EV. EV vehicle owners are being advised to park affected cars at least 50 feet away from any structures that could catch fire.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Thursday, September 7th, 2023. Olive Tree Biblical Software: Discover why more than a million people use the free Olive Tree Bible App as their go-to for reading, studying, and listening to the God’s Word. Start by downloading one of many free Bibles and start taking notes, highlighting verses, and bookmarking your favorite passages. You can read at your own pace, or choose from a large selection of Reading Plans, including the Bible Reading Challenge. When you are ready to go deeper into your studies, Olive Tree is right there with a large selection of study Bibles, commentaries, and other helpful study resources available for purchase. There’s also an extensive bookstore allows you to build your digital library one book at a time and Olive Tree’s sync technology lets you pick up where you left off on your tablet, pc or phone and get right to studying on another supported device. Now here's the best part – You can start with the Olive Tree Essentials Bundle for FREE. Visit www.olivetree.com/FLF and download it today!  https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-federal-budget-deficit-projected-double-year US federal budget deficit projected to double this year The U.S. federal deficit is projected to nearly double this year as a result of higher interest rates and lower tax revenue. The gap between what the government spends and what it collects is expected to grow from about $1 trillion last year to $2 trillion for the 2023 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, according to the latest projections from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonpartisan group that advocates for reducing the federal deficit. "This would be the highest deficit we’ve ever had outside of a recession or national emergency," Marc Goldwein, a senior policy director at CRFB, told FOX Business. The sizable increase stems from a number of factors, including high inflation, more expensive interest payments and a drop in tax receipts. It comes on the heels of a record drop in the budget shortfall last year, as the deficit dropped from close to $3 trillion to roughly $1 trillion after the government's record spending during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, the government enjoyed a surge in capital gains revenue after Americans capitalized on the booming market the previous year, sold more stock and recorded large gains. The market has not fared as well since then, leading to a sharp drop in capital gains tax revenue compared with last year. The Treasury Department likewise benefited from a spike in general tax collection, because surging inflation essentially pushed up nominal income for millions of households. Although the IRS indexes the tax code to inflation, it does so on a lag. Higher federal income tax brackets and standard deductions took effect at the beginning of 2023, essentially allowing more Americans to shield their income from the IRS. Social Security and Medicare are also indexed to inflation, meaning the government is spending more money on those programs than it did in fiscal year 2022. "But mostly what’s happening is it’s coming to the new normal, from an unusually low 2022 deficit," Goldwein said. "That’s pretty scary, because normal before the pandemic was $1 trillion. And in 2015, it was $500 billion. So we went from $500 billion is the normal, to $1 trillion is the normal, to $2 trillion is the normal in less than a decade." The figures exclude President Biden's $400 billion student loan cancellation plan, which was counted in the official 2022 deficit numbers but never implemented because the Supreme Court struck the policy down. Such massive spending imbalances highlight the toll that high and rising debt can take on everyday Americans. High deficits can fuel inflation, and high debt can push up interest rates. "Mortgage rates are as high as they’ve been since well before the financial crisis," Goldwein said. "Car loan rates, student loan rates, credit card rates, they’re all really high." The deficit surge comes as lawmakers rush to avert a government shutdown. The White House has urged Congress to pass a short-term funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, in order to keep the government solvent while lawmakers continue negotiations over longer-term funding bills. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have both said they want to pass a short-term deal to keep the government running. However, a group of House Republicans — the House Freedom Caucus — is demanding a number of concessions as part of the continuing resolution, raising the risk of more down-to-the-wire drama on Capitol Hill. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/biden-mask-indoors-jill-biden-covid Biden to wear mask indoors after COVID-19 exposure President Joe Biden will don a mask indoors after he was exposed to COVID-19 through his wife, first lady Jill Biden, according to the White House. https://twitter.com/i/status/1699269260260823345 - Play Video Now, Studies have repeatedly shown masks don't prevent Covid transmission and might even have health consequences to wearers. - But I digress. Biden, who awarded the Medal of Honor to Army Capt. Larry Taylor for conspicuous gallantry on Tuesday, is expected to depart Thursday for India and the Group of 20 leaders summit. During the Medal of Honor ceremony, Biden took off his mask for his remarks and did not put it back on to hang the trinket around Taylor's neck or to leave the East Room. National security adviser Jake Sullivan downplayed the prospect that a presidential COVID-19 diagnosis would disrupt his foreign trip based on leaders' past experience social distancing during the pandemic. https://www.theblaze.com/news/75000-sia-illegal-border-crossings 75,000 illegal immigrants flagged as having possible ties to terrorism in the last year, according to CBP data U.S. Customs and Border Protection flagged approximately 75,000 illegal immigrants as being possible national security threats or having terroristic ties in the previous 10 months leading up to August 2023, the Daily Caller reported. CBP data showed that between October 2022 and August 2023, 74,904 illegal aliens were labeled as "SIA Encounters," which stands for "Special Interest Alien." According to a Department of Homeland Security article, an SIA is a "non-U.S. person" who potentially "poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests." "Often such individuals or groups are employing travel patterns known or evaluated to possibly have a nexus to terrorism. DHS analysis includes an examination of travel patterns, points of origin, and/or travel segments that are tied to current assessments of national and international threat environments," the DHS stated. "This does not mean that all SIAs are 'terrorists,'" the government report added. However, the travel and behavior of certain individuals "indicates a possible nexus to nefarious activity (including terrorism) and, at a minimum, provides indicators that necessitate heightened screening and further investigation." The unearthed numbers were a massive increase from the reported 25,627 special interest encounters from fiscal year 2022, and the comparably miniscule 3,675 from fiscal year 2021. Illegal immigrants can automatically be deemed SIAs based on their country of origin, such as Turkey or Uzbekistan, due to such countries' status as a "source and transit country." DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller regarding the SIA figures. CBP and the DHS are under heightened scrutiny as a result of the shocking increase in border crossing encounters under the Biden administration. A former immigration judge claimed in late August 2023 that the DHS was deliberately not disclosing the number of illegal immigrants who have been released into the United States each month. "The only reason why ICE and OFO [Office of Field Operations] would refuse to disclose that information is to hide the fact that it is releasing more than 100,000 aliens per month into the United States and to conceal the effects of those migrant releases on communities across the United States," Andrew Arthur said. Border encounters in fiscal year 2023 are on pace to match the near 2.4 million that were seen in 2022. There were just over 1.7 million encounters in 2021, while in 2020, President Trump's administration saw a little more than 450,000. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/09/05/ev-florida-n2627949#google_vignette Electric Vehicles Are Causing Issues After Hurricane Idalia Electric vehicles are catching on fire after Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida last week. According to local reports, at least two Tesla EVs ignited after saltwater from the storm surge damaged their batteries and other electrical components. One vehicle lit up in Pinellas Park and another car fire occurred in Palm Harbor. “Carfax says owners need to understand the fire risk doesn’t go away after their EV dries out,” ABC Actions News told viewers. “The salt water that is flooding can get into the battery and dry there and once it dries it creates what federal safety officials call bridges between cells and that can lead to fires and those fires can come anywhere from days to weeks later and once an EV catches fire it is incredible difficult to put it out,” said Patrick Olsen of Carfax. After Hurricane Ian, 21 electric vehicles caught fire in the state, prompting officials to warn residents ahead of Idalia's approach. “We saw a number of fires associated with EVs from Hurricane Ian. We know that the saltwater from storm surge can compromise these batteries, causing fires which cannot be easily suppressed,” Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said at the time. “The best fire teams can do is keep water on the battery until the fuel burns out. If you’re evacuating and leaving an EV, or other lithium ion powered devices like scooters or golf carts in your garage, you’re creating a real fire threat for your home, your communities, and first responders," he added. "Take this threat seriously. If there’s even a small risk of your EV being impacted by storm surge, move it to higher ground before it’s too late.” One home that managed to survive Ian ended up burning to the ground because of a saltwater-damaged EV. EV vehicle owners are being advised to park affected cars at least 50 feet away from any structures that could catch fire.

Wednesday, September 6, 2023 Today our host Kerby Anderson welcomes Dr. Larry Taylor. They will discuss the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI). Kerby's other guest is Lauren McAfee. Lauren brings us her new book, Created in the Image of God. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/pointofviewradio and on Twitter @PointofViewRTS with your opinions or comments. […]

September 2023's edition of BLUES TIME. PLAYLIST: ARTIST - ALBUM - TRACK. 1 The Roadhouse Blues Band - Long Time Coming - Love's not easy to find. 2 The Ready Mades - Tumbling walls - Beyond Borders. 3 Mark Cameron - Nasty Business - Sorry. 4 Stephen Wrench - My finest mistake. 5 Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip - Colors of Jealousy - Highway Highway. 6 Mike Bourne Band - Cruisin' Kansas City - Missouri Boy. 7 Chickenbone Slim - Dam Good and Ready - High Ballin' Train. 8 Larry Taylor & The Taylor Family - Generations Of Blues - Talk To Your Son. 9 The Hurricane Party - You Gave Up On Us. 10 Sonic Blues - Shake the blues - Long Cold Night. 11 Little G Weevil - If I May - Doctor Hay. 12 Travellin' Blue Kings - Brothers and Sisters. 13 Arlen Roth & Jerry Jemmott- Super Soul Session - The ThrillIs Gone. 14 Arlen Roth & Jerry Jemmott - Super Soul Session - Shake. 15 Misty Blues - Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child. 16 Franck Goldwasser - Who Needs This Mess - I Don't Want Your Love. 17 The Roadhouse Blues Band - Long Time Coming - By My Side. 18 Lee Oskar - She said Mahalo - Funky Rhetoric. Size: 170 MB (178,949,587 bytes) Duration: 1:14:32

Los Angeles is one of the most valuable and highest-performing real estate markets in the world, but finding value in such markets isn't easy. Larry Taylor, founder and chairman at Christina, joins Andy Hagans to discuss why he is bullish on premium LA real estate, and how to find investment value in high end markets.

Larry Taylor came by the studio to talk about First Friday.

The Tearaways "No Love Lost" - And For Our Next Trick www.facebook.com/thetearawaysUSA Blue Stragglers 'All Mine (Sometimes)" - s/t www.bluestragglers.co.uk Centershift "The Ride" www.centershift.live Airport Impressions "Waiting For Paradise" www.airportimpressions.com Nitroville "Cuts To The Bone" www.nitroville.com Overthrone "Search For Solace" - https://www.overthrone.co.uk/ *************** Some more great hip-hop examples, largely from its golden age in the 80s. Boogie Down Productions "I'm Still #1" - By Any Means Necessary De La Soul "A Roller Skating Jam Named 'Saturdays' " - De La Soul Is Dead DJ Shadow "The Numbers Song" - Endtroducing... Beastie Boys "Three MCs and One DJ" - Hello Nasty M.I.A. "Amazon" - Arular Digable Planets "Pacifics {From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack 'NY Is Red Hot')" - Reachin': A New Refutation Of Time & Space ********************* ALBUM FOCUS: A reoccurring series focusing on new and outstanding concept, compilation and tribute albums. Putumayo World Music presents Acoustic Folk, a new EP with 5 up-and-coming songwriters, the latest digital release from the world music label. http://www.putumayo.com The Lubben Brothers "Hang Me In The Tulsa County Stars" The Nettes "The Loudest Voice" Kelly Hyde & Bobby Alu "Little Lucky" Forest Sun "Wildflowers" Gypsy Chicken "Hayani" *************************** Two Man Traveling Medicine Show "So Angry I Could Vote" www.facebook.com/thetwomantravelingmedicineshow Mike Guldin and Rollin' & Tumblin' "Sad and Lonely" The Franklin Sessions www.mikeguldin.com Anthony Gomes "Blues In The First Degree" High Voltage Blues www.anthonygomes.com Mark Cameron "Nasty Business" - Nasty Business www.markcameronmusic.net Larry Taylor and the Taylor Family with the Soul Blues Healers "I Feel So Bad" - Generations Of Blues: West Side Legacy www.larrytaylorchicagoblues.com Bonner Rhae 'Behind A Smile" - Forward Address www.bonnerrhae.com ************************* Alabaster DePlume "Greek Honey Slick - Come With Fierce Grace www.alabaster-deplume.com No Fuss and Feathers "Quiet August Day" - Traveling Circus www.nofussandfeathers.com Heather Pierson "Miami" - Lines And Spaces www.heatherpierson.com Tom Collins "Leaders"- Leaders www.facebook.com/tlcollinsmusic Noah Zacharin "Red Red Bird" Points Of Light www.noahzacharin.com Nick Carter "Old Hat" - Fountain Pen www.nickcartersmusic.com Mare Wakefield and Nomad "No Remedy" - No Remedy www.marewakefield.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/radiocblue/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/radiocblue/support

We welcome Kerry-Jo Reilly to the show, joining Martin and Sam for songs of travel, departure and longing by Tom Waits, Larry Taylor, and their various associates. There's discussion of the value of 60s/70s blues-rock, Waits's various relationships over the years, and his attitude towards The King. website: songbysongpodcast.com twitter: @songbysongpod e-mail: songbysongpodcast@gmail.com Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include: Get Lost, Bad As Me, Tom Waits (2011) On The Road Again, Boogie With Canned Heat, Canned Heat (1968) We think your Song by Song experience will be enhanced by hearing, in full, the songs featured in the show, which you can get hold of from your favourite record shop or online platform. Please support artists by buying their music, or using services which guarantee artists a revenue - listen responsibly.

Larry Taylor is the founder & Chief Executive Officer of Christina. He is responsible for vision, strategy & leadership. Larry is a seasoned investor with over 40 years of real estate experience in the Westside region of Los Angeles. His notable projects include the introduction of high-rise residential development in North Century City, the development of the Montana Avenue Shopping District in Santa Monica, revitalization of the South Beverly Hills Retail Shopping District & re-development of Westwood Village. Larry started his career with Ernst & Young. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Southern California in 1975.. Larry Taylor is a real estate investor who has a great story to share and words of wisdom to impart for both beginning and veteran investors alike, so grab your pen and paper, buckle up and enjoy the ride. Want to get in contact with Larry Taylor? Reach out at https://christinala.com/.Want to become financially free through commercial real estate? Check out our eBook to learn how to jump start a cash flowing real estate portfolio here https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com/real-estate-wealth-book  Enjoy the show? Subscribe to the channel for all our upcoming real estate investor interviews and episodes.  ************************************************************************  GET INVOLVED, CONNECTED & GROW YOUR REAL ESTATE BUSINESS  LEARN -- Want to learn the ins and outs of real estate investing? Check out our book at https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com/real-estate-wealth-book  PARTNER -- Want to partner on a deal or connect in person? Email the host Gabe Petersen at gabe@therealestateinvestingclub.com or reach out on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabe-petersen/  WATCH -- Want to watch our YouTube channel? Click here: https://bit.ly/theREIshow  ************************************************************************   ABOUT THE REAL ESTATE INVESTING CLUB SHOW   Hear from successful real estate investors across every asset class on how they got started investing in real estate and then grew from their first deal to a portfolio of cash-flowing properties. We interview real estate pros from every asset class and learn what strategies they used to create generational wealth for themselves and their families. The REI Club is an interview-based real estate show that will teach you the fastest ways to start and grow your real estate investing career in today's market - from multifamily, to self-storage, to mobile home parks, to mix-use industrial, you'll hear it all! Join us as we delve into our guests career peaks and valleys and the best advice, greatest stories, and favorite tips they learned along the way. Want to create wealth for yourself using the vehicle of real estate? Getting mentorship is the fastest way to success. Get an REI mentor and check out our REI course at https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com. #realestateinvesting #passiveincome #realestate  Interested in becoming a passive investor in one of our projects? Kaizen Properties, is looking for passive investors for our upcoming deals. We invest in what are known as “recession resistant assets”: self storage, MH & RV parks, and industrial properties. If you are interested, go to the website and click on the “Invest with Us” button at the bottom of the page.Support the show

Episode 2555 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story more about the Vietnam Cobra pilot, Larry Taylor, who is tapped to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. The featured story comes from the Aviation Geek Club and … Continue reading →

Show #1003 Good & Bad 01. Chris Antonik - Back To The Good (4:13) (Morningstar, Second Half Records, 2022) 02. Vaneese Thomas - Bad Man (4:39) (Fight The Good Fight, Blue Heart Records, 2022) 03. Big Joe Shelton - How Good Love Could Be (3:29) (I'd Never Let Her Down, self-release, 2013) 04. Hanna PK - Bad Habit (3:06) (Blues All Over My Shoes, VizzTone Records, 2021) 05. Anthony Gomes - Make A Good Man (Wanna Be Bad) (3:12) (Containment Blues, Up 2 Zero Productions, 2020) 06. Frankie Miller - Be Good To Yourself (3:03) (Full House, Chrysalis Records, 1977) 07. Larry Taylor & the Taylor Family - Bad Girl (4:36) (Generations Of Blues: West Side Legacy, Nola Blue Records, 2023) 08. The Cinelli Brothers - So Far So Good (3:09) (No Country For Bluesmen, self-release, 2022) 09. Catch 23 - Got It Real Bad (4:09) (Blues Hotel, self-release, 2022) 10. Nic Clark - Good Advice (3:57) (Everbody's Buddy, Little Village Foundation, 2023) 11. Markey Blue Ric Latina Project - Bad For Real (3:47) (Jumpin' The Broom, SoulOSound Records, 2022) 12. Soul Drivers - Good Good Lovin' (5:12) (Tight White Dress, BluesTime Records, 1999) 13. Andy J. Forest Band - Bad (5:49) (Shuffle City, L+R Records, 1989) 14. Peter Veteska & Blues Train - So Far So Good (4:40) (So Far So Good, Blue Heart Records, 2022) 15. Avey Grouws Band - Bad Bad Year (4:45) (Tell Tale Heart, self-release, 2021) 16. Malaya Blue - Good Intentions Bad Results (5:29) (Blue Credentials, Blue Heart Records, 2022) 17. Crystal Shawanda - How Bad Do You Want It (3:50) (Midnight Blues, True North Records, 2022) 18. GA-20 - Gone For Good (2:58) (Crackdown, Colemine/Karma Chief Records, 2022) 19. Steven Troch Band - Bad Times (3:19) (The Call, self-release, 2022) 20. John Nemeth - Feeling Good (3:41) (May Be The Last Time, Nola Blue Records, 2022) 21. Joe Krown - Feel So Bad (4:36) (Tribute, Sledgehammer Records, 2023) 22. Star Spangled Washboard Band - Oh Lady Be Good (3:11) (A Collector's Item, Flying Fish Records, 1977) 23. Dr. Lonnie Smith - He's A Might Good Leader (5:30) (Boogaloo To Beck, Scufflin' Records, 2003) Bandana Blues is and will always be a labor of love. Please help Spinner deal with the costs of hosting & bandwidth. Visit www.bandanablues.com and hit the tipjar. Any amount is much appreciated, no matter how small. Thank you.

Backdoor Blues Band (One More Shot); Nic Clark (Good Advice); Rachelle Plas (Advices); Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong (I'm Just A Lucky So And So); Roosevelt Sykes (Lucky Blues); Tiny Legs Tim (Walk With The Devil); Billy The Kid and The Regulators (Sweet Honey Child (acoustic)); Arlen Roth and Jerry Jemmott (Down Home Girl); Otis Grand (Careless Living); Martha Davis (No Deposit, No Return); Lula Reed (Bump On A Log); Larry Taylor and The Taylor Family (Talk To Your Son); Sherman Robertson (The Tail Is Waggin' The Dog); Elles Bailey (The Game); Big Bill Broonzy (Where The Blues Began); Poppa Dawg (1-2 Gone). 

Show #1001 Bandana Blues Is Going On 01. Nic Andrea & the Verdict - Fist To The Sky (4:25) (A Night At The Wrecking Yard Pt. 1, IronKave Records, 2023) 02. King Bee & the Stingers - Don't Move So Fast (3:04) (Don't Move So Fast, Hive Talking Records, 2023) 03. Kyle Culkin - Whole 'Nuther Thang (2:27) (Shotgun Ridge, Tonebucker Records, 2023) 04. Anthony Rosano & the Conqueroos - Cheat The Devil (3:54) (Cheat The Devil, Whiskey Bayou Records, 2023) 05. Jeff Chaz - Wide Road (5:10) (Single, JCP Records, 2023) 06. Lee Oskar - Funky Rhetoric (5:08) (She Said Mahalo, Dreams We Share, 2023) 07. Larry Taylor & the Taylor Family - I Found Out (4:32) (Generations Of Blues: West Side Legacy, Nola Blue Records, 2023) 08. Liam Merrigan - Ghost Of A Memory (3:53) (The Synthetic Orchid, self-release, 2023) 09. Mike Bourne Band - Loose With The Truth (4:53) (Cruisin' Kansas City, Blue Heart Records, 2023) 10. Arlen Roth & Jerry Jemmott - Down Home Girl (4:42) (Super Soul Session!, Blue Heart Records, 2023) 11. Richard Koechli - Night Is Not The End Of The Road (3:24) (Transcendental Blues, self-release, 2023) 12. Rebecca Downes - Not On My Knees (The Space Between Us, Mad Hat Records, 2022) 13. Mike Guldin & Rollin' & Tumblin' - Smokin' Woman (6:15) (The Franklin Sessions, Blue Heart Records, 2023) 14. Bacon Fat Louis & miXendorp - Gotta Bleed (3:34) (Single, Black and Tan Records, 2023) 15. Selwyn Birchwood - Plenty More To Be Grateful For (7:04) (Exorcist, Alligator Records, 2023) 16. Calvin Duncan Jr - Your Love Struck Me (3:04) (Come Along, self-release, 2023) 17. Mitch Grainger - Shake It Up (acoustic) (4:01) (Single, Gent Records, 2023) 18. Wily Bo Walker & E D Brayshaw - Montgomery (7:00) (Letters From The Blue Moon Motel, Mescal Canyon Records, 2023) 19. Bruce Katz Band - The Blue Lamp (7:39) (Live! at the Firefly, Brown Dog/VizzTone Records, 2008) Bandana Blues is and will always be a labor of love. Please help Spinner deal with the costs of hosting & bandwidth. Visit www.bandanablues.com and hit the tipjar. Any amount is much appreciated, no matter how small. Thank you.

This week on Clear Lake Connections Podcast presented by UTMB Health: Celebrate the 100th episode of Clear Lake Connections. In this week's episode join podcast host Jamieson Mackay with some of the best behind the scenes outtakes over the last 100 episodes. Guests Shari Sweeney, Peter Wuenschel, Senator Larry Taylor, J.P. Morris, and Taylor Hebert join in on the fun for Jamieson's long awaited Blooper Episode. Thanks for being a part of Clear Lake Connections, more to come!

MAILBAG SHOW * 2.14.2023 ------------------------------------------------------ TURKEY/SYRIA EARTHQUAKE... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/world/europe/turkey-syria-earthquake.html HAARP CONSPIRACY THEORIES... https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/07-Feb-2023/haarp-conspiracy-theories-link-controversial-us-weapon-to-earthquake-in-turkiye-syria U.S. TO CITIZENS IN RUSSIA, "Get Outta Dere!"... https://news.yahoo.com/us-tells-citizens-leave-russia-133017683.html OBJECT OVER ALASKA... https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/pilots-shot-object-alaska-say-interfered-sensors-saw-no-identifiable-propulsion/ ALIENS/ETs HELPING CHINA/RUSSIA TAKE OVER WEST... https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/846861/Aliens-ETs-helping-China-Russia-take-over-west ------------------------------------------------------ Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Chuck Wilson Email: chuk.wilson@tutanota.com Listen to Larry Taylor, Chuck Wilson and Augusto Perez discuss the latest headline news through the lens of Bible Prophecy in the first hour.

This week on Clear Lake Connections Podcast presented by UTMB Health: Meet Senator Larry Taylor. In this week's episode we acknowledge Senator Larry Taylor's twenty plus years of service for our community in the Texas House of Representatives and in the Texas Senate. Hear insight from Senator Taylor on what it's like in Austin during a session and the process of how a bill becomes law. Senator Taylor also tells the viewers the differences between being in the House and the Senate. Lastly, Senator Taylor tells the listeners his story of getting into politics and his greatest accomplishments in the last twenty years.

MAILBAG SHOW * 11.29.2022 -------------------------------------------------------------- PROTESTS ERUPT IN CHINA RE: COVID RESTRICTIONS... https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/nov/26/rare-protests-erupt-china-over-covid-restrictions-/ FARMS BEING SEIZED BY THE E.U.... https://dailycaller.com/2022/11/28/dutch-government-seize-3000-farms-eu-environmental-rules/ SMART CITIES BEING CONVERTED INTO OPEN CONCENTRATION CAMPS... https://grandmageri422.me/2022/11/25/smart-cities-worldwide-being-converted-into-open-concentration-camps-says-ex-silicon-valley-engineer-turned-whistleblower/ COVID SHOTS CAUSING EXPLOSION IN CANCER https://www.wnd.com/2022/11/top-oncologist-cancer-patients-exploding-covid-shots/ DIGITAL ID CLEARS LEGISLATIVE HURDLE https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/privacy/weddigital-id-clears-legislative-hurdle-amid-fears-abuse-enforce-political -------------------------------------------------------------- Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Chuck Wilson Email: chuk.wilson@tutanota.com Listen to Larry Taylor, Chuck Wilson and Augusto Perez discuss the latest headline news through the lens of Bible Prophecy in the first hour.  

MAILBAG SHOW * 11.22.2022 * Don't forget to give us a thumbs up if you enjoyed the program Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 IMPORTANT! The Mailbag Show and End Time News Report videos are now being posted on Brighteon. This link will take you to the playlists: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/chucklesinalaska/playlists?page=1 Augusto on MediaFire: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465, Live Oak, FL  32064  

CONVERSATIONS BEYOND THE VEIL 20 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBzMEBbLEO-poZaNo4wLTA/playlists Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317

MAILBAG SHOW * 11.15.2022 -------------------------------------------------------------- TEXAS GOVERNOR DECLARES INVASION AT BORDER https://justthenews.com/government/security/texas-governor-declares-invasion-border-invokes-constitutional-powers-historic COUNTY JUDGE INVASION LETTER https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/County_Judge_Invasion_Letter.pdf WORLD WILL LOOK DIFFERENTLY AFTER WE HAVE GONE https://yournews.com/2022/11/15/2454203/watch-the-world-will-look-differently-after-we-have-gone/ GLOBAL DIGITAL HEALTH CERTIFICATE https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/11/g20-panel-calls-global-digital-health-certificate-acknowledge-track-vaccination-status-video/ TRUMP TO ANNOUNCE PRESIDENTIAL BID TODAY https://www.oann.com/newsroom/trump-to-announce-2024-presidential-bid-today/ -------------------------------------------------------------- Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Listen to Larry Taylor, Chuck Wilson and Augusto Perez discuss the latest headline news through the lens of Bible Prophecy in the first hour.

MAILBAG SHOW * 11.8.2022 Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Chuck Wilson Email: chuk.wilson@tutanota.com Listen to Larry Taylor, Chuck Wilson and Augusto Perez discuss the latest headline news through the lens of Bible Prophecy in the first hour.

MAILBAG SHOW * 11.1.2022 UK SCIENTISTS CREATE MUTANT COVID STRAINS https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11357387/UK-scientists-mutant-Covid-strains.html JUDGE JAILS '2000 MULES' INVESTIGATORS https://www.wnd.com/2022/10/judge-jails-2000-mules-investigators-catherine-engelbrecht-gregg-phillips/ DHS TO POLICE MISINFORMATION https://www.independentsentinel.com/dhsleaks-is-real-dhs-in-overdrive-to-police-misinformation-using-cisa-report-here/ Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBzMEBbLEO-poZaNo4wLTA/playlists Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Chuck Wilson Email: chuk.wilson@tutanota.com Listen to Larry Taylor, Chuck Wilson and Augusto Perez discuss the latest headline news through the lens of Bible Prophecy in the first hour.

CONVERSATIONS BEYOND THE VEIL 19 Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBzMEBbLEO-poZaNo4wLTA/playlists Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317

MAILBAG SHOW * 10.11.2022 CLEAR PROOF U.S. GOVN'T PROMOTES WITCHCRAFT https://www.charismanews.com/opinion/watchman-on-the-wall/55452-clear-proof-u-s-government-promotes-witchcraft BIDEN ADMIN DOING ITS BEST TO START WW3 https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/10/biden-administration-best-start-world-war-iii/ FBI HOLDS PRO-LIFE ADVOCATE FOR SIX HOURS, CONFISCATES WALLET AND PHONE https://www.lifenews.com/2022/10/07/after-fbi-raid-pro-life-advocate-was-held-for-6-hours-charged-and-released-with-no-wallet-or-phone/ Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBzMEBbLEO-poZaNo4wLTA/playlists Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Chuck Wilson Email: chuk.wilson@tutanota.com Listen to Larry Taylor, Chuck Wilson and Augusto Perez discuss the latest headline news through the lens of Bible Prophecy in the first hour.

MAILBAG SHOW * 10.4.2022 Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBzMEBbLEO-poZaNo4wLTA/playlists Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Chuck Wilson Email: chuk.wilson@tutanota.com Listen to Larry Taylor, Chuck Wilson and Augusto Perez discuss the latest headline news through the lens of Bible Prophecy in the first hour.

MAILBAG SHOW * 9.20.2022 A WARNING OF ZOMBIE ATTACKS AND BRAINWASHING https://z3news.com/w/a-warning-of-zombie-attacks-and-brainwashing/ Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBzMEBbLEO-poZaNo4wLTA/playlists Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Chuck Wilson Email: chuk.wilson@tutanota.com Listen to Larry Taylor, Chuck Wilson and Augusto Perez discuss the latest headline news through the lens of Bible Prophecy in the first hour.

MAILBAG SHOW * 9.13.2022 ARTICLES MENTIONED ON THE SHOW... COVID-19 VACCINE BOOSTERS FOR YOUNG ADULTS: A RISK-BENEFIT ASSESSMENT... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070 HARVARD JOHNS-HOPKINS SCIENTISTS FOUND COVID 19 SHOTS 98 TIMES WORSE THAN THE VIRUS... https://www.thedailyretina.com/america/uncategorized/ethically-unjustifiable-scientists-from-harvard-johns-hopkins-found-covid-19-vaccines-98-times-worse-than-the-virus/ LIST OF U.S. FOOD MANUFACTURING PLANTS DESTROYED...  https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/09/updated-list-us-based-food-manufacturing-plants-destroyed-biden-regime-can-now-participate-add-incidents-interactive-map/ * * * * * Augusto on Brighteon… https://www.brighteon.com/channels/theappearance/playlists?page=1 Augusto's Websites... http://theappearance.com http://theappearance.net Augusto on iTunes... https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast//id1123053712?mt=2 Augusto on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBzMEBbLEO-poZaNo4wLTA/playlists Augusto on MediaFire... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/byndkxqfq7ohj/The_Appearance Contact Info: Augusto Perez POB 465 Live Oak, FL  32064 Larry Taylor Blog: http://larrywtaylor.org POB 317 Talihina, OK  74571-0317 Chuck Wilson Email: chuk.wilson@tutanota.com Listen to Larry Taylor, Chuck Wilson and Augusto Perez discuss the latest headline news through the lens of Bible Prophecy in the first hour.

Episode 144 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Last Train to Clarksville" and the beginnings of the career of the Monkees, along with a short primer on the origins of the Vietnam War.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a seventeen-minute bonus episode available, on "These Boots Are Made For Walking" by Nancy Sinatra, which I mispronounce at the end of this episode as "These Boots Were Made For Walking", so no need to correct me here. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. The best versions of the Monkees albums are the triple-CD super-deluxe versions that used to be available from monkees.com , and I've used Andrew Sandoval's liner notes for them extensively in this episode. Sadly, though, the only one of those that is still in print is More of the Monkees. For those just getting into the group, my advice is to start with this five-CD set, which contains their first five albums along with bonus tracks. The single biggest source of information I used in this episode is the first edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees; The Day-By-Day Story. Sadly that is now out of print and goes for hundreds of pounds. Sandoval released a second edition of the book last year, which I was unfortunately unable to obtain, but that too is now out of print. If you can find a copy of either, do get one. Other sources used were Monkee Business by Eric Lefcowitz, and the autobiographies of three of the band members and one of the songwriters -- Infinite Tuesday by Michael Nesmith, They Made a Monkee Out of Me by Davy Jones, I'm a Believer by Micky Dolenz, and Psychedelic Bubble-Gum by Bobby Hart. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We've obviously talked in this podcast about several of the biggest hits of 1966 already, but we haven't mentioned the biggest hit of the year, one of the strangest records ever to make number one in the US -- "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Sgt Barry Sadler: [Excerpt: Barry Sadler, "The Ballad of the Green Berets"] Barry Sadler was an altogether odd man, and just as a brief warning his story, which will last a minute or so, involves gun violence. At the time he wrote and recorded that song, he was on active duty in the military -- he was a combat medic who'd been fighting in the Vietnam War when he'd got a wound that had meant he had to be shipped back to the USA, and while at Fort Bragg he decided to write and record a song about his experiences, with the help of Robin Moore, a right-wing author of military books, both fiction and nonfiction, who wrote the books on which the films The Green Berets and The French Connection were based. Sadler's record became one of those massive fluke hits, selling over nine million copies and getting him appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, but other than one top thirty hit, he never had another hit single. Instead, he tried and failed to have a TV career, then became a writer of pulp fiction himself, writing a series of twenty-one novels about the centurion who thrust his spear into Jesus' side when Jesus was being crucified, and is thus cursed to be a soldier until the second coming. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he lived until he shot Lee Emerson, a country songwriter who had written songs for Marty Robbins, in the head, killing him, in an argument over a woman. He was sentenced to thirty days in jail for this misdemeanour, of which he served twenty-eight. Later he moved to Guatemala City, where he was himself shot in the head. The nearest Army base to Nashville, where Sadler lived after his discharge, is Fort Campbell, in Clarksville: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] The Vietnam War was a long and complicated war, one which affected nearly everything we're going to see in the next year or so of this podcast, and we're going to talk about it a lot, so it's worth giving a little bit of background here. In doing so, I'm going to use quite a flippant tone, but I want to make it clear that I'm not mocking the very real horrors that people suffered in the wars I'm talking about -- it's just that to sum up multiple decades of unimaginable horrors in a few sentences requires glossing over so much that you have to either laugh or cry. The origin of the Vietnam War, as in so many things in twentieth century history, can be found in European colonialism. France had invaded much of Southeast Asia in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and created a territory known as French Indo-China, which became part of the French colonial Empire. But in 1940 France was taken over by Germany, and Japan was at war with China. Germany and Japan were allies, and the Japanese were worried that French Indo-China would be used to import fuel and arms to China -- plus, they quite fancied the idea of having a Japanese empire. So Vichy France let Japan take control of French Indo-China. But of course the *reason* that France had been taken over by Germany was that pretty much the whole world was at war in 1940, and obviously the countries that were fighting Germany and Japan -- the bloc led by Britain, soon to be joined by America and Russia -- weren't very keen on the idea of Japan getting more territory. But they were also busy with the whole "fighting a world war" thing, so they did what governments in this situation always do -- they funded local guerilla insurgent fighters on the basis that "my enemy's enemy is my friend", something that has luckily never had any negative consequences whatsoever, except for occasionally. Those local guerilla fighters were an anti-imperialist popular front, the Việt Minh, led by Hồ Chí Minh, a revolutionary Communist. They were dedicated to overthrowing foreign imperialist occupiers and gaining independence for Vietnam, and Hồ Chí Minh further wanted to establish a Soviet-style Communist government in the newly-independent country. The Allies funded the Việt Minh in their fight against the Japanese occupiers until the end of the Second World War, at which point France was liberated from German occupation, Vietnam was liberated from Japanese occupation, and the French basically said "Hooray! We get our Empire back!", to which Hồ Chí Minh's response was, more or less, "what part of anti-imperialist Marxist dedicated to overthrowing foreign occupation of Vietnam did you not understand, exactly?" Obviously, the French weren't best pleased with this, and so began what was the first of a series of wars in the region. The First Indochina War lasted for years and ended in a negotiated peace of a sort. Of course, this led to the favoured tactic of the time, partition -- splitting a formerly-occupied country into two, at an arbitrary dividing line, a tactic which was notably successful in securing peace everywhere it was tried. Apart from Ireland, India, Korea, and a few other places, but surely it wouldn't be a problem in Vietnam, right? North Vietnam was controlled by the Communists, led by Hồ Chí Minh, and recognised by China and the USSR but not by the Western states. South Vietnam was nominally independent but led by the former puppet emperor who owed his position to France, soon replaced by a right-wing dictatorship. And both the right-wing dictatorship and the left-wing dictatorship were soon busily oppressing their own citizens and funding military opposition groups in the other country. This soon escalated into full-blown war, with the North backed by China and Russia and the South backed by America. This was one of a whole series of wars in small countries which were really proxy wars between the two major powers, the USA and the USSR, both of which were vying for control, but which couldn't confront each other directly because either country had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world multiple times over. But the Vietnam War quickly became more than a small proxy war. The US started sending its own troops over, and more and more of them. The US had never ended the draft after World War II, and by the mid sixties significant numbers of young men were being called up and sent over to fight in a war that had by that point lasted a decade (depending on exactly when you count the war as starting from) between two countries they didn't care about, over things few of them understood, and at an exorbitant cost in lives. As you might imagine, this started to become unpopular among those likely to be drafted, and as the people most affected (other, of course, than the Vietnamese people, whose opinions on being bombed and shot at by foreigners supporting one of other of the dictators vying to rule over them nobody else was much interested in) were also of the generation who were the main audience for popular music, slowly this started to seep into the lyrics of songs -- a seepage which had already been prompted by the appearance in the folk and soul worlds of many songs against other horrors, like segregation. This started to hit the pop charts with songs like "The Universal Soldier" by Buffy Saint-Marie, which made the UK top five in a version by Donovan: [Excerpt: Donovan, "The Universal Soldier"] That charted in the lower regions of the US charts, and a cover version by Glen Campbell did slightly better: [Excerpt: Glen Campbell, "The Universal Soldier"] That was even though Campbell himself was a supporter of the war in Vietnam, and rather pro-military. Meanwhile, as we've seen a couple of times, Jan Berry of Jan and Dean recorded a pro-war answer song to that, "The Universal Coward": [Excerpt: Jan Berry, "The Universal Coward"] This, of course, was even though Berry was himself avoiding the draft. And I've not been able to find the credits for that track, but Glen Campbell regularly played guitar on Berry's sessions, so it's entirely possible that he played guitar on that record made by a coward, attacking his own record, which he disagreed with, for its cowardice. This is, of course, what happens when popular culture tries to engage with social and political issues -- pop culture is motivated by money, not ideological consistency, and so if there's money to be made from anti-war songs or from pro-war songs, someone will take that money. And so on October the ninth 1965, Billboard magazine ran a report: "Colpix Enters Protest Field HOLLYWOOD -Colpix has secured its first protest lyric disk, "The Willing Conscript,"as General Manager Bud Katzel initiates relationships with independent producers. The single features Lauren St. Davis. Katzel says the song was written during the Civil War, rewritten during World War I and most recently updated by Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe. Screen Gems Music, the company's publishing wing, is tracing the song's history, Katzel said. Katzel's second single is "(You Got the Gamma Goochee" by an artist with that unusual stage name. The record is a Screen Gems production and was in the house when Katzel arrived one month ago. The executive said he was expressly looking for material for two contract artists, David Jones and Hoyt Axton. The company is also working on getting Axton a role in a television series, "Camp Runamuck." " To unpack this a little, Colpix was a record label, owned by Columbia Pictures, and we talked about that a little bit in the episode on "The Loco-Motion" -- the film and TV companies were getting into music, and Columbia had recently bought up Don Kirshner's Aldon publishing and Dimension Records as part of their strategy of tying in music with their TV shows. This is a company trying desperately to jump on a bandwagon -- Colpix at this time was not exactly having huge amounts of success with its records. Hoyt Axton, meanwhile, was a successful country singer and songwriter. We met his mother many episodes back -- Mae Axton was the writer of "Heartbreak Hotel". Axton himself is now best known as the dad in the 80s film Gremlins. David Jones will be coming up shortly. Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe were record executives then at Kama Sutra records, but soon to move on -- we'll be hearing about Krasnow more in future episodes. Neither of them were songwriters, and while I have no real reason to disbelieve the claim that "The Willing Conscript" dates back to the Civil War, the earliest version *I* have been able to track down was its publication in issue 28 of Broadside Magazine in June 1963 -- nearly a hundred years after the American Civil War -- with the credit "by Tom Paxton" -- Paxton was a popular singer-songwriter of the time, and it certainly sounds like his writing. The first recording of it I know of was by Pete Seeger: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger, "The Willing Conscript"] But the odd thing is that by the time this was printed, the single had already been released the previous month, and it was not released under the name Lauren St Davis, or under the title "The Willing Conscript" -- there are precisely two differences between the song copyrighted as by Krasnow and Ashe and the one copyrighted two years earlier as by Paxton. One is that verses three and four are swapped round, the other is that it's now titled "The New Recruit". And presumably because they realised that the pseudonym "Lauren St. Davis" was trying just a bit too hard to sound cool and drug culture, they reverted to another stage name the performer had been using, Michael Blessing: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "The New Recruit"] Blessing's name was actually Michael Nesmith, and before we go any further, yes his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, did invent the product that later became marketed in the US as Liquid Paper. At this time, though, that company wasn't anywhere near as successful as it later became, and was still a tiny company. I only mention it to forestall the ten thousand comments and tweets I would otherwise get asking why I didn't mention it. In Nesmith's autobiography, while he talks a lot about his mother, he barely mentions her business and says he was uninterested in it -- he talks far more about the love of art she instilled in him, as well as her interest in the deep questions of philosophy and religion, to which in her case and his they found answers in Christian Science, but both were interested in conversations about ideas, in a way that few other people in Nesmith's early environment were. Nesmith's mother was also responsible for his music career. He had spent two years in the Air Force in his late teens, and the year he got out, his mother and stepfather bought him a guitar for Christmas, after he was inspired by seeing Hoyt Axton performing live and thinking he could do that himself: [Excerpt: Hoyt Axton, "Greenback Dollar"] As he put it in his autobiography, "What did it matter that I couldn't play the guitar, couldn't sing very well, and didn't know any folk songs? I would be going to college and hanging out at the student union with pretty girls and singing folk songs. They would like me. I might even figure out a way to get a cool car." This is, of course, the thought process that pretty much every young man to pick up a guitar goes through, but Nesmith was more dedicated than most. He gave his first performance as a folk singer ten days after he first got a guitar, after practising the few chords in most folk songs for twelve hours a day every day in that time. He soon started performing as a folk singer, performing around Dallas both on his own and with his friend John London, performing the standard folk repertoire of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly songs, things like "Pick a Bale of Cotton": [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith, "Pick a Bale of Cotton"] He also started writing his own songs, and put out a vanity record of one of them in 1963: [Excerpt: Mike Nesmith, "Wanderin'"] London moved to California, and Nesmith soon followed, with his first wife Phyllis and their son Christian. There Nesmith and London had the good fortune to be neighbours with someone who was a business associate of Frankie Laine, and they were signed to Laine's management company as a folk duo. However, Nesmith's real love was rock and roll, especially the heavier R&B end of the genre -- he was particularly inspired by Bo Diddley, and would always credit seeing Diddley live as a teenager as being his biggest musical influence. Soon Nesmith and London had formed a folk-rock trio with their friend Bill Sleeper. As Mike & John & Bill, they put out a single, "How Can You Kiss Me?", written by Nesmith: [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "How Can You Kiss Me?"] They also recorded more of Nesmith's songs, like "All the King's Horses": [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "All the King's Horses"] But that was left unreleased, as Bill was drafted, and Nesmith and London soon found themselves in The Survivors, one of several big folk groups run by Randy Sparks, the founder of the New Christie Minstrels. Nesmith was also writing songs throughout 1964 and 1965, and a few of those songs would be recorded by other people in 1966, like "Different Drum", which was recorded by the bluegrass band The Greenbriar Boys: [Excerpt: The Greenbriar Boys, "Different Drum"] That would more successfully be recorded by the Stone Poneys later of course. And Nesmith's "Mary Mary" was also picked up by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band: [Excerpt: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Mary Mary"] But while Nesmith had written these songs by late 1965, he wasn't able to record them himself. He was signed by Bob Krasnow, who insisted he change his name to Michael Blessing, and recorded two singles for Colpix -- "The New Recruit", which we heard earlier, and a version of Buffy Saint-Marie's "Until It's Time For You To Go", sung in a high tenor range very far from Nesmith's normal singing voice: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Until It's Time For You To Go"] But to my mind by far the best thing Nesmith recorded in this period is the unissued third Michael Blessing single, where Nesmith seems to have been given a chance to make the record he really wanted to make. The B-side, a version of Allen Toussaint's swamp-rocker "Get Out of My Life, Woman", is merely a quite good version of the song, but the A-side, a version of his idol Bo Diddley's classic "Who Do You Love?" is utterly extraordinary, and it's astonishing that it was never released at the time: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Who Do You Love?"] But the Michael Blessing records did no better than anything else Colpix were putting out. Indeed, the only record they got onto the hot one hundred at all in a three and a half year period was a single by one David Jones, which reached the heady heights of number ninety-eight: [Excerpt: David Jones, "What Are We Going to Do?"] Jones had been brought up in extreme poverty in Openshaw in Manchester, but had been encouraged by his mother, who died when he was fourteen, to go into acting. He'd had a few parts on local radio, and had appeared as a child actor on TV shows made in Manchester, like appearing in the long-running soap opera Coronation Street (still on today) as Ena Sharples' grandson Colin: [Excerpt: Coronation St https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FDEvOs1imc , 13:30] He also had small roles in Z-Cars and Bill Naughton's TV play "June Evening", and a larger role in Keith Waterhouse's radio play "There is a Happy Land". But when he left school, he decided he was going to become a jockey rather than an actor -- he was always athletic, he loved horses, and he was short -- I've seen his height variously cited as five foot three and five foot four. But it turned out that the owner of the stables in which he was training had showbusiness connections, and got him the audition that changed his life, for the part of the Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's West End musical Oliver! We've encountered Lionel Bart before a couple of times, but if you don't remember him, he was the songwriter who co-wrote Tommy Steele's hits, and who wrote "Living Doll" for Cliff Richard. He also discovered both Steele and Marty Wilde, and was one of the major figures in early British rock and roll. But after the Tommy Steele records, he'd turned his attention to stage musicals, writing book, music, and lyrics for a string of hits, and more-or-less singlehandedly inventing the modern British stage musical form -- something Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example, always credits him with. Oliver!, based on Oliver Twist, was his biggest success, and they were looking for a new Artful Dodger. This was *the* best role for a teenage boy in the UK at the time -- later performers to take the role on the London stage include Steve Marriott and Phil Collins, both of whom we'll no doubt encounter in future episodes -- and Jones got the job, although they were a bit worried at first about his Manchester vowels. He assured them though that he could learn to do a Cockney accent, and they took him on. Jones not having a natural Cockney accent ended up doing him the biggest favour of his career. While he could put on a relatively convincing one, he articulated quite carefully because it wasn't his natural accent. And so when the North American version found  in previews that their real Cockney Dodger wasn't being understood perfectly, the fake Cockney Jones was brought over to join the show on Broadway, and was there from opening night on. On February the ninth, 1964, Jones found himself, as part of the Broadway cast of Oliver!, on the Ed Sullivan Show: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and Georgia Brown, "I'd Do Anything"] That same night, there were some other British people, who got a little bit more attention than Jones did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on Ed Sullivan)"] Davy Jones wasn't a particular fan of pop music at that point, but he knew he liked what he saw, and he wanted some of the same reaction. Shortly after this, Jones was picked up for management by Ward Sylvester, of Columbia Pictures, who was going to groom Jones for stardom. Jones continued in Oliver! for a while, and also had a brief run in a touring version of Pickwick, another musical based on a Dickens novel, this time starring Harry Secombe, the British comedian and singer who had made his name with the Goon Show. Jones' first single, "Dream Girl", came out in early 1965: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Dream Girl"] It was unsuccessful, as was his one album, David Jones, which seemed to be aiming at the teen idol market, but failing miserably. The second single, "What Are  We Going to Do?" did make the very lowest regions of the Hot One Hundred, but the rest of the album was mostly attempts to sound a bit like Herman's Hermits -- a band whose lead singer, coincidentally, also came from Manchester, had appeared in Coronation Street, and was performing with a fake Cockney accent. Herman's Hermits had had a massive US hit with the old music hall song "I'm Henry VIII I Am": [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry VIII I Am"] So of course Davy had his own old music-hall song, "Any Old Iron": [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Any Old Iron"] Also, the Turtles had recently had a hit with a folk-rock version of Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe", and Davy cut his own version of their arrangement, in the one concession to rock music on the album: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "It Ain't Me Babe"] The album was, unsurprisingly, completely unsuccessful, but Ward Sylvester was not disheartened. He had the perfect job for a young British teen idol who could sing and act. The Monkees was the brainchild of two young TV producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who had come up with the idea of doing a TV show very loosely based on the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night (though Rafelson would later claim that he'd had the idea many years before A Hard Day's Night and was inspired by his youth touring with folk bands -- Schneider always admitted the true inspiration though). This was not a particularly original idea -- there were a whole bunch of people trying to make TV shows based in some way around bands. Jan and Dean were working on a possible TV series, there was talk of a TV series starring The Who, there was a Beatles cartoon series, Hanna-Barbera were working on a cartoon series about a band called The Bats, and there was even another show proposed to Screen Gems, Columbia's TV department, titled Liverpool USA, which was meant to star Davy Jones, another British performer, and two American musicians, and to have songs provided by Don Kirshner's songwriters. That The Monkees, rather than these other series, was the one that made it to the TV (though obviously the Beatles cartoon series did too) is largely because Rafelson and Schneider's independent production company, Raybert, which they had started after leaving Screen Gems, was given two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to develop the series by their former colleague, Screen Gems' vice president in charge of programme development, the former child star Jackie Cooper. Of course, as well as being their former colleague, Cooper may have had some more incentive to give Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider that money in that the head of Columbia Pictures, and thus Cooper's boss' boss, was one Abe Schneider. The original idea for the show was to use the Lovin' Spoonful, but as we heard last week they weren't too keen, and it was quickly decided instead that the production team would put together a group of performers. Davy Jones was immediately attached to the project, although Rafelson was uncomfortable with Jones, thinking he wasn't as rock and roll as Rafelson was hoping for -- he later conceded, though, that Jones was absolutely right for the group. As for everyone else, to start with Rafelson and Schneider placed an ad in a couple of the trade papers which read "Madness!! Auditions Folk and Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys ages 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank's types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview" There were a couple of dogwhistles in there, to appeal to the hip crowd -- Ben Frank's was a twenty-four-hour restaurant on the Sunset Strip, where people including Frank Zappa and Jim Morrison used to hang out, and which was very much associated with the freak scene we've looked at in episodes on Zappa and the Byrds. Meanwhile "Must come down for interview" was meant to emphasise that you couldn't actually be high when you turned up -- but you were expected to be the kind of person who would at least at some points have been high. A lot of people answered that ad -- including Paul Williams, Harry Nilsson, Van Dyke Parks, and many more we'll be seeing along the way. But oddly, the only person actually signed up for the show because of that ad was Michael Nesmith -- who was already signed to Colpix Records anyway. According to Davy Jones, who was sitting in at the auditions, Schneider and Rafelson were deliberately trying to disorient the auditioners with provocative behaviour like just ignoring them, to see how they'd react. Nesmith was completely unfazed by this, and apparently walked in wearing a  green wool hat and carrying a bag of laundry, saying that he needed to get this over with quickly so he could go and do his washing. John London, who came along to the audition as well, talked later about seeing Nesmith fill in a questionnaire that everyone had to fill in -- in a space asking about previous experience Nesmith just wrote "Life" and drew a big diagonal line across the rest of the page. That attitude certainly comes across in Nesmith's screen test: [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith screen test] Meanwhile, Rafelson and Schneider were also scouring the clubs for performers who might be useful, and put together a shortlist of people including Jerry Yester and Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet, Bill Chadwick, who was in the Survivors with Nesmith and London, and one Micky Braddock, whose agent they got in touch with and who was soon signed up. Braddock was the stage name of Micky Dolenz, who soon reverted to his birth surname, and it's the name by which he went in his first bout of fame. Dolenz was the son of two moderately successful Hollywood actors, George Dolenz and Janelle Johnson, and their connections had led to Dolenz, as Braddock, getting the lead role in the 1958 TV series Circus Boy, about a child named Corky who works in a circus looking after an elephant after his parents, the Flying Falcons, were killed in a trapeze accident. [Excerpt: Circus Boy, "I can't play a drum"] Oddly, one of the other people who had been considered for that role was Paul Williams, who was also considered for the Monkees but ultimately turned down, and would later write one of the Monkees' last singles. Dolenz had had a few minor TV appearances after that series had ended, including a recurring role on Peyton Place, but he had also started to get interested in music. He'd performed a bit as a folk duo with his sister Coco, and had also been the lead singer of a band called Micky and the One-Nighters, who later changed their name to the Missing Links, who'd played mostly covers of Little Richard and Chuck Berry songs and later British Invasion hits. He'd also recorded two tracks with Wrecking Crew backing, although neither track got released until after his later fame -- "Don't Do It": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Don't Do It"] and "Huff Puff": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Huff Puff"] Dolenz had a great singing voice, an irrepressible personality, and plenty of TV experience. He was obviously in. Rafelson and Schneider took quite a while whittling down the shortlist to the final four, and they *were* still considering people who'd applied through the ads. One they actually offered the role to was Stephen Stills, but he decided not to take the role. When he turned the role down, they asked if he knew anyone else who had a similar appearance to him, and as it happened he did. Steve Stills and Peter Tork had known of each other before they actually met on the streets of Greenwich Village -- the way they both told the story, on their first meeting they'd each approached the other and said "You must be the guy everyone says looks like me!" The two had become fast friends, and had played around the Greenwich Village folk scene together for a while, before going their separate ways -- Stills moving to California while Tork joined another of those big folk ensembles of the New Christie Minstrels type, this one called the Phoenix Singers. Tork had later moved to California himself, and reconnected with his old friend, and they had performed together for a while in a trio called the Buffalo Fish, with Tork playing various instruments, singing, and doing comedy bits. Oddly, while Tork was the member of the Monkees with the most experience as a musician, he was the only one who hadn't made a record when the TV show was put together. But he was by far the most skilled instrumentalist of the group -- as distinct from best musician, a distinction Tork was always scrupulous about making -- and could play guitar, bass, and keyboards, all to a high standard -- and I've also seen him in more recent years play French horn live. His great love, though, was the banjo, and you can hear how he must have sounded on the Greenwich Village folk scene in his solo spots on Monkees shows, where he would show off his banjo skills: [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Cripple Creek"] Tork wouldn't get to use his instrumental skills much at first though, as most of the backing tracks for the group's records were going to be performed by other people. More impressive for the TV series producers was his gift for comedy, especially physical comedy -- having seen Tork perform live a few times, the only comparison I can make to his physical presence is to Harpo Marx, which is about as high a compliment as one can give. Indeed, Micky Dolenz has often pointed out that while there were intentional parallels to the Beatles in the casting of the group, the Marx Brothers are a far better parallel, and it's certainly easy to see Tork as Harpo, Dolenz as Chico, Nesmith as Groucho, and Jones as Zeppo. (This sounds like an insult to Jones, unless you're aware of how much the Marx Brothers films actually depended on Zeppo as the connective tissue between the more outrageous brothers and the more normal environment they were operating in, and how much the later films suffered for the lack of Zeppo). The new cast worked well together, even though there were obvious disagreements between them right from the start. Dolenz, at least at this point, seems to have been the gel that held the four together -- he had the experience of being a child star in common with Jones, he was a habitue of the Sunset Strip clubs where Nesmith and Tork had been hanging out, and he had personality traits in common with all of them. Notably, in later years, Dolenz would do duo tours with each of his three bandmates without the participation of the others. The others, though, didn't get on so well with each other. Jones and Tork seem to have got on OK, but they were very different people -- Jones was a showbiz entertainer, whose primary concern was that none of the other stars of the show be better looking than him, while Tork was later self-diagnosed as neurodivergent, a folkie proto-hippie who wanted to drift from town to town playing his banjo. Tork and Nesmith had similar backgrounds and attitudes in some respects -- and were united in their desire to have more musical input into the show than was originally intended -- but they were such different personalities in every aspect of their lives from their religious views to their politics to their taste in music they came into conflict. Nesmith would later say of Tork "I never liked Peter, he never liked me. So we had an uneasy truce between the two of us. As clear as I could tell, among his peers he was very well liked. But we rarely had a civil word to say to each other". Nesmith also didn't get on well with Jones, both of them seeming to view themselves as the natural leader of the group, with all the clashes that entails. The four Monkees were assigned instruments for their characters based not on instrumental skill, but on what suited their roles better. Jones was the teen idol character, so he was made the maraca-playing frontman who could dance without having to play an instrument, though Dolenz took far more of the lead vocals. Nesmith was made the guitarist, while Tork was put on bass, though Tork was by far the better guitarist of the two. And Dolenz was put on drums, even though he didn't play the drums -- Tork would always say later that if the roles had been allocated by actual playing ability, Jones would have been the drummer. Dolenz did, though, become a good drummer, if a rather idiosyncratic one. Tork would later say "Micky played the drums but Mike kept time, on that one record we all made, Headquarters. Mike was the timekeeper. I don't know that Micky relied on him but Mike had a much stronger sense of time. And Davy too, Davy has a much stronger sense of time. Micky played the drums like they were a musical instrument, as a colour. He played the drum colour.... as a band, there was a drummer and there was a timekeeper and they were different people." But at first, while the group were practising their instruments so they could mime convincingly on the TV and make personal appearances, they didn't need to play on their records. Indeed, on the initial pilot, they didn't even sing -- the recordings had been made before the cast had been finalised: [Excerpt: Boyce & Hart, "Monkees Theme (pilot version)"] The music was instead performed by two songwriters, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who would become hugely important in the Monkees project. Boyce and Hart were not the first choice for the project. Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems Music, had initially suggested Roger Atkins, a Brill Building songwriter working for his company, as the main songwriter for The Monkees. Atkins is best known for writing "It's My Life", a hit for the Animals: [Excerpt: The Animals, "It's My Life"] But Atkins didn't work out, though he would collaborate later on one song with Nesmith, and reading between the lines, it seems that there was some corporate infighting going on, though I've not seen it stated in so many words. There seems to have been a turf war between Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems' music publishing, who was based in the Brill Building, and Lester Sill, the West Coast executive we've seen so many times before, the mentor to Leiber and Stoller, Duane Eddy, and Phil Spector, who was now the head of Screen Gems music on the West Coast. It also seems to be the case that none of the top Brill Building songwriters were all that keen on being involved at this point -- writing songs for an unsold TV pilot wasn't exactly a plum gig. Sill ended up working closely with the TV people, and it seems to have been him who put forward Boyce and Hart, a songwriting team he was mentoring. Boyce and Hart had been working in the music industry for years, both together and separately, and had had some success, though they weren't one of the top-tier songwriting teams like Goffin and King. They'd both started as performers -- Boyce's first single, "Betty Jean", had come out in 1958: [Excerpt: Tommy Boyce, "Betty Jean"] And Hart's, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me", under his birth name Robert Harshman, a year later: [Excerpt: Robert Harshman, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me"] Boyce had been the first one to have real songwriting success, writing Fats Domino's top ten hit "Be My Guest" in 1959: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Be My Guest"] and cowriting two songs with singer Curtis Lee, both of which became singles produced by Phil Spector -- "Under the Moon of Love" and the top ten hit "Pretty Little Angel Eyes": [Excerpt: Curtis Lee, "Pretty Little Angel Eyes"] Boyce and Hart together, along with Wes Farrell, who had co-written "Twist and Shout" with Bert Berns, wrote "Lazy Elsie Molly" for Chubby Checker, and the number three hit "Come a Little Bit Closer" for Jay and the Americans: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Come a Little Bit Closer"] At this point they were both working in the Brill Building, but then Boyce moved to the West Coast, where he was paired with Steve Venet, the brother of Nik Venet, and they co-wrote and produced "Peaches and Cream" for the Ikettes: [Excerpt: The Ikettes, "Peaches and Cream"] Hart, meanwhile, was playing in the band of Teddy Randazzo, the accordion-playing singer who had appeared in The Girl Can't Help It, and with Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein he wrote "Hurts So Bad", which became a big hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials: [Excerpt: Little Anthony and the Imperials, "Hurts So Bad"] But Hart soon moved over to the West Coast, where he joined his old partner Boyce, who had been busy writing TV themes with Venet for shows like "Where the Action Is". Hart soon replaced Venet in the team, and the two soon wrote what would become undoubtedly their most famous piece of music ever, a theme tune that generations of TV viewers would grow to remember: [Excerpt: "Theme from Days of Our Lives"] Well, what did you *think* I meant? Yes, just as Davy Jones had starred in an early episode of Britain's longest-running soap opera, one that's still running today, so Boyce and Hart wrote the theme music for *America's* longest-running soap opera, which has been running every weekday since 1965, and has so far aired well in excess of fourteen thousand episodes. Meanwhile, Hart had started performing in a band called the Candy Store Prophets, with Larry Taylor  -- who we last saw with the Gamblers, playing on "LSD-25" and "Moon Dawg" -- on bass, Gerry McGee on guitar, and Billy Lewis on drums. It was this band that Boyce and Hart used -- augmented by session guitarists Wayne Erwin and Louie Shelton and Wrecking Crew percussionist Gene Estes on tambourine, plus Boyce and session singer Ron Hicklin on backing vocals, to record first the demos and then the actual tracks that would become the Monkees hits. They had a couple of songs already that would be suitable for the pilot episode, but they needed something that would be usable as a theme song for the TV show. Boyce and Hart's usual working method was to write off another hit -- they'd try to replicate the hook or the feel or the basic sound of something that was already popular. In this case, they took inspiration from the song "Catch Us If You Can", the theme from the film that was the Dave Clark Five's attempt at their own A Hard Day's Night: [Excerpt: The Dave Clark Five, "Catch Us If You Can"] Boyce and Hart turned that idea into what would become the Monkees theme. We heard their performance of it earlier of course, but when the TV show finally came out, it was rerecorded with Dolenz singing: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Monkees Theme"] For a while, Boyce and Hart hoped that they would get to perform all the music for the TV show, and there was even apparently some vague talk of them being cast in it, but it was quickly decided that they would just be songwriters. Originally, the intent was that they wouldn't even produce the records, that instead the production would be done by a name producer. Micky Most, the Animals' producer, was sounded out for the role but wasn't interested. Snuff Garrett was brought in, but quickly discovered he didn't get on with the group at all -- in particular, they were all annoyed at the idea that Davy would be the sole lead vocalist, and the tracks Garrett cut with Davy on lead and the Wrecking Crew backing were scrapped. Instead, it was decided that Boyce and Hart would produce most of the tracks, initially with the help of the more experienced Jack Keller, and that they would only work with one Monkee at a time to minimise disruption -- usually Micky and sometimes Davy. These records would be made the same way as the demos had been, by the same set of musicians, just with one of the Monkees taking the lead. Meanwhile, as Nesmith was seriously interested in writing and production, and Rafelson and Schneider wanted to encourage the cast members, he was also assigned to write and produce songs for the show. Unlike Boyce and Hart, Nesmith wanted to use his bandmates' talents -- partly as a way of winning them over, as it was already becoming clear that the show would involve several competing factions. Nesmith's songs were mostly country-rock tracks that weren't considered suitable as singles, but they would be used on the TV show and as album tracks, and on Nesmith's songs Dolenz and Tork would sing backing vocals, and Tork would join the Wrecking Crew as an extra guitarist -- though he was well aware that his part on records like "Sweet Young Thing" wasn't strictly necessary when Glen Campbell, James Burton, Al Casey and Mike Deasy were also playing guitar: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Sweet Young Thing"] That track was written by Nesmith with Goffin and King, and there seems to have been some effort to pair Nesmith, early on, with more commercial songwriters, though this soon fell by the wayside and Nesmith was allowed to keep making his own idiosyncratic records off to the side while Boyce and Hart got on with making the more commercial records. This was not, incidentally, something that most of the stars of the show objected to or even thought was a problem at the time. Tork was rather upset that he wasn't getting to have much involvement with the direction of the music, as he'd thought he was being employed as a musician, but Dolenz and Jones were actors first and foremost, while Nesmith was happily making his own tracks. They'd all known going in that most of the music for the show would be created by other people -- there were going to be two songs every episode, and there was no way that four people could write and record that much material themselves while also performing in a half-hour comedy show every week. Assuming, of course, that the show even aired. Initial audience response to the pilot was tepid at best, and it looked for a while like the show wasn't going to be green-lit. But Rafelson and Schneider -- and director James Frawley who played a crucial role in developing the show -- recut the pilot, cutting out one character altogether -- a manager who acted as an adult supervisor -- and adding in excerpts of the audition tapes, showing the real characters of some of the actors. As three of the four were playing characters loosely based on themselves -- Peter's "dummy" character wasn't anything like he was in real life, but was like the comedy character he'd developed in his folk-club performances -- this helped draw the audience in. It also, though, contributed to some line-blurring that became a problem. The re-edited pilot was a success, and the series sold. Indeed, the new format for the series was a unique one that had never been done on TV before -- it was a sitcom about four young men living together, without any older adult supervision, getting into improbable adventures, and with one or two semi-improvised "romps", inspired by silent slapstick, over which played original songs. This became strangely influential in British sitcom when the series came out over here  -- two of the most important sitcoms of the next couple of decades, The Goodies and The Young Ones, are very clearly influenced by the Monkees. And before the broadcast of the first episode, they were going to release a single to promote it. The song chosen as the first single was one Boyce and Hart had written, inspired by the Beatles. Specifically inspired by this: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Hart heard that tag on the radio, and thought that the Beatles were singing "take the last train". When he heard the song again the next day and realised that the song had nothing to do with trains, he and Boyce sat down and wrote their own song inspired by his mishearing. "Last Train to Clarksville" is structured very, very, similarly to "Paperback Writer" -- both of them stay on one chord, a G7, for an eight-bar verse before changing to C7 for a chorus line -- the word "writer" for the Beatles, the "no no no" (inspired by the Beatles "yeah yeah yeah") for the Monkees. To show how close the parallels are, I've sped up the vocals from the Beatles track slightly to match the tempo with a karaoke backing track version of "Last Train to Clarksville" I found, and put the two together: [Excerpt: "Paperback Clarksville"] Lyrically, there was one inspiration I will talk about in a minute, but I think I've identified another inspiration that nobody has ever mentioned. The classic country song "Night Train to Memphis", co-written by Owen Bradley, and made famous by Roy Acuff, has some slight melodic similarity to "Last Train to Clarksville", and parallels the lyrics fairly closely -- "take the night train to Memphis" against "take the last train to Clarksville", both towns in Tennessee, and "when you arrive at the station, I'll be right there to meet you I'll be right there to greet you, So don't turn down my invitation" is clearly close to "and I'll meet you at the station, you can be here by 4:30 'cos I've made your reservation": [Excerpt: Roy Acuff, "Night Train to Memphis"] Interestingly, in May 1966, the same month that "Paperback Writer" was released, and so presumably the time that Hart heard the song on the radio for the first time, Rick Nelson, the teen idol formerly known as Ricky Nelson, who had started his own career as a performer in a sitcom, had released an album called Bright Lights and Country Music. He'd had a bit of a career downslump and was changing musical direction, and recording country songs. The last track on that album was a version of "Night Train to Memphis": [Excerpt: Rick Nelson, "Night Train to Memphis"] Now, I've never seen either Boyce or Hart ever mention even hearing that song, it's pure speculation on my part that there's any connection there at all, but I thought the similarity worth mentioning. The idea of the lyric, though, was to make a very mild statement about the Vietnam War. Clarksville was, as mentioned earlier, the site of Fort Campbell, a military training base, and they crafted a story about a young soldier being shipped off to war, calling his girlfriend to come and see him for one last night. This is left more-or-less ambiguous -- this was a song being written for a TV show intended for children, after all -- but it's still very clear on the line "and I don't know if I'm ever coming home". Now, Boyce and Hart were songwriters first and foremost, and as producers they were quite hands-off and would let the musicians shape the arrangements. They knew they wanted a guitar riff in the style of the Beatles' recent singles, and Louie Shelton came up with one based around the G7 chord that forms the basis of the song, starting with an octave leap: Shelton's riff became the hook that drove the record, and engineer Dave Hassinger added the final touch, manually raising the volume on the hi-hat mic for a fraction of a second every bar, creating a drum sound like a hissing steam brake: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] Now all that was needed was to get the lead vocals down. But Micky Dolenz was tired, and hungry, and overworked -- both Dolenz and Jones in their separate autobiographies talk about how it was normal for them to only get three hours' sleep a night between working twelve hour days filming the series, three-hour recording sessions, and publicity commitments. He got the verses down fine, but he just couldn't sing the middle eight. Boyce and Hart had written a complicated, multisyllabic, patter bridge, and he just couldn't get his tongue around that many syllables when he was that tired. He eventually asked if he could just sing "do do do" instead of the words, and the producers agreed. Surprisingly, it worked: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] "Last Train to Clarksville" was released in advance of the TV series, on a new label, Colgems, set up especially for the Monkees to replace Colpix, with a better distribution deal, and it went to number one. The TV show started out with mediocre ratings, but soon that too became a hit. And so did the first album released from the TV series. And that album was where some of the problems really started. The album itself was fine -- ten tracks produced by Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets playing and either Micky or Davy singing, mostly songs Boyce and Hart wrote, with a couple of numbers by Goffin and King and other Kirshner staff songwriters, plus two songs produced by Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, and with token participation from Tork and Dolenz. The problem was the back cover, which gave little potted descriptions of each of them, with their height, eye colour, and so on. And under three of them it said "plays guitar and sings", while under Dolenz it said "plays drums and sings". Now this was technically accurate -- they all did play those instruments. They just didn't play them on the record, which was clearly the impression the cover was intended to give. Nesmith in particular was incandescent. He believed that people watching the TV show understood that the group weren't really performing that music, any more than Adam West was really fighting crime or William Shatner travelling through space. But crediting them on the record was, he felt, crossing a line into something close to con artistry. To make matters worse, success was bringing more people trying to have a say. Where before, the Monkees had been an irrelevance, left to a couple of B-list producer-songwriters on the West Coast, now they were a guaranteed hit factory, and every songwriter working for Kirshner wanted to write and produce for them -- which made sense because of the sheer quantity of material they needed for the TV show, but it made for a bigger, less democratic, organisation -- one in which Kirshner was suddenly in far more control. Suddenly as well as Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets and Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, both of whom had been operating without much oversight from Kirshner, there were a bunch of tracks being cut on the East Coast by songwriting and production teams like Goffin and King, and Neil Sedaka and Carole Bayer. On the second Monkees album, released only a few months after the first, there were nine producers credited -- as well as Boyce, Hart, Jack Keller, and Nesmith, there were now also Goffin, King, Sedaka, Bayer, and Jeff Barry, who as well as cutting tracks on the east coast was also flying over to the West Coast, cutting more tracks with the Wrecking Crew, and producing vocal sessions while there. As well as producing songs he'd written himself, Barry was also supervising songs written by other people. One of those was a new songwriter he'd recently discovered and been co-producing for Bang Records, Neil Diamond, who had just had a big hit of his own with "Cherry Cherry": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] Diamond was signed with Screen Gems, and had written a song which Barry thought would be perfect for the Monkees, an uptempo song called "I'm a Believer", which he'd demoed with the regular Bang musicians -- top East Coast session players like Al Gorgoni, the guitarist who'd played on "The Sound of Silence": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "I'm a Believer"] Barry had cut a backing track for the Monkees using those same musicians, including Diamond on acoustic guitar, and brought it over to LA. And that track would indirectly lead to the first big crisis for the group. Barry, unlike Boyce and Hart, was interested in working with the whole group, and played all of them the backing track. Nesmith's reaction was a blunt "I'm a producer too, and that ain't no hit". He liked the song -- he wanted to have a go at producing a track on it himself, as it happened -- but he didn't think the backing track worked. Barry, trying to lighten the mood, joked that it wasn't finished and you needed to imagine it with strings and horns. Unfortunately, Nesmith didn't get that he was joking, and started talking about how that might indeed make a difference -- at which point everyone laughed and Nesmith took it badly -- his relationship with Barry quickly soured. Nesmith was getting increasingly dissatisfied with the way his songs and his productions were being sidelined, and was generally getting unhappy, and Tork was wanting more musical input too. They'd been talking with Rafelson and Schneider, who'd agreed that the group were now good enough on their instruments that they could start recording some tracks by themselves, an idea which Kirshner loathed. But for now they were recording Neil Diamond's song to Jeff Barry's backing track. Given that Nesmith liked the song, and given that he had some slight vocal resemblance to Diamond, the group suggested that Nesmith be given the lead vocal, and Kirshner and Barry agreed, although Kirshner at least apparently always intended for Dolenz to sing lead, and was just trying to pacify Nesmith. In the studio, Kirshner kept criticising Nesmith's vocal, and telling him he was doing it wrong, until eventually he stormed out, and Kirshner got what he wanted -- another Monkees hit with Micky Dolenz on lead, though this time it did at least have Jones and Tork on backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] That was released on November 23rd, 1966, as their second single, and became their second number one. And in January 1967, the group's second album, More of the Monkees, was released. That too went to number one. There was only one problem. The group weren't even told about the album coming out beforehand -- they had to buy their own copies from a record shop to even see what tracks were on it. Nesmith had his two tracks, but even Boyce and Hart were only given two, with the rest of the album being made up of tracks from the Brill Building songwriters Kirshner preferred. Lots of great Nesmith and Boyce and Hart tracks were left off the album in favour of some astonishingly weak material, including the two worst tracks the group ever recorded, "The Day We Fall in Love" and "Laugh", and a novelty song they found embarrassing, "Your Auntie Grizelda", included to give Tork a vocal spot. Nesmith called it "probably the worst album in the history of the world", though in truth seven of the twelve tracks are really very strong, though some of the other material is pretty poor. The group were also annoyed by the packaging. The liner notes were by Don Kirshner, and read to the group at least like a celebration of Kirshner himself as the one person responsible for everything on the record. Even the photo was an embarrassment -- the group had taken a series of photos in clothes from the department store J. C. Penney as part of an advertising campaign, and the group thought the clothes were ridiculous, but one of those photos was the one chosen for the cover. Nesmith and Tork made a decision, which the other two agreed to with varying degrees of willingness. They'd been fine miming to other people's records when it was clearly just for a TV show. But if they were being promoted as a real band, and having to go on tour promoting albums credited to them, they were going to *be* a real band, and take some responsibility for the music that was being put out in their name.  With the support of Rafelson and Schneider, they started making preparations to do just that. But Don Kirshner had other ideas, and told them so in no uncertain terms. As far as he was concerned, they were a bunch of ungrateful, spoiled, kids who were very happy cashing the ridiculously large cheques they were getting, but now wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. They were going to keep doing what they were told. Things came to a head in a business meeting in January 1967, when Nesmith gave an ultimatum. Either the group got to start playing on their own records, or he was quitting. Herb Moelis, Kirshner's lawyer, told Nesmith that he should read his contract more carefully, at which point Nesmith got up, punched a hole in the wall of the hotel suite they were in, and told Moelis "That could have been your face". So as 1967 began, the group were at a turning point. Would they be able to cut the puppet strings, or would they have to keep living a lie? We'll find out in a few weeks' time...