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Ricky Blue's Other Life

Ricky Blue is a Montreal-based humorist, singer, and writer. He and partner George Bowser are the famous Bowser and Blue comedy act. Here's his bio from their Bowser and Blue website. Ricky Blue was born in Liverpool, England, but raised in Maine, New Jersey, and Toronto. He has an MA in English from Concordia University. He has been involved in bands and media music in Montreal for over twenty years. In 1981 he won an international 'Clio' award for excellence in advertising. He once appeared on television naked. His life had no real meaning, however, until he began to play with Bowser and Blue. Rick plays guitar, mandolin, and harmonica, and sings in a rather pleasant baritone when George will let him. His columns are archived here

Posted 09.27.05

RICKY BLUE

Isn't it ironic…

I believe with philosopher Soren Kierkegaard that irony is truth. It certainly is in the entertainment business.

Consider this: Local music and poetry legend Leonard Cohen was recently robbed of his life's savings while he studied Buddhist philosophy. One of the pillars of Buddhism is that material possessions are impediments to cosmic consciousness.

I don't mean to belittle his loss, but is it not ironic that at the same time he was learning this, his manager was busy is stealing all his money?

Sometimes irony can be your friend. Like a few years ago when Cohen won the Juno for best male vocalist. Anyone who has heard his tuneless gravely drone will know what I mean.

And consider the Beatles. Their story is soaked in irony.

They were a group of musicians who had never studied music, with a manager who had never managed, and a producer who had never produced popular music, signed to an American record company so dense it had to be forced against its will to release their songs. Yet they went on to become the greatest popular music group of all time.

And, ironically, two forces that played a pivotal role in their career were ignorance and incompetence.

Their manager, Brian Epstein, scoured England to get them a record deal. His last hope was George Martin. Martin was completely ignorant of the fact that they had already been turned down by every other record company in England. He admits that if he had known, he would never have signed them. They would have then gone back to Liverpool, possibly to never be discovered. It was this fortuitous lack of knowledge, caused by the fact that Martin was a complete outsider in the music business that caused him to become one of the most successful record producers in the history of that very business.

The ironic contribution that incompetence made to the success of the Beatles is by now legendary. Dave Dexter, the Artists and Repertoire man at Capitol records USA, the guy who chooses which artists to record and release, was so inept that he turned down the Beatles three times in a row. He heard no hit material in their number one records from England all through 1963.

Instead, he spent Capitol's money stoking up the star maker machinery to promote a singer from Australia named Frank Ifield. Frank who? Exactly.

Epstein had been trying to bring the Beatles to the USA for November of 1963. That would have been the same month as the Kennedy assassination, when the American mood would have been far too dark to accept such a frivolous bit of fluff to sweep them off their feet. But Dexter's blundering kept the Beatles away until long after the Kennedy assassination, and allowed the hit records in Britain and Europe, with the corresponding wave of excitement and curiosity, to build up to a fever pitch.

When they were finally sprung on the American public in February of 1964 the mourning was over and the US press and public needed a diversion.

Beatlemania was just what the doctor ordered. Nothing could stop it. If any other marketing man had foreseen, planned and executed a campaign like this he would be hailed as a genius. The clueless Dave Dexter did it all completely by accident.

Irony: I love it.

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