Latest / Vox Novus with Victor Fuhrman / Greg Amici – Tragicomic

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Greg Amici – Tragicomic · Vox Novus with Victor Fuhrman

0:05
Speaker 1: Vox Novus, the new voice. Vox Novus, the new dimension.
0:14
Speaker 1: Vox Novus, thought and movement leaders who will share from
0:19
Speaker 1: their experience and offer tools to help us navigate our
0:23
Speaker 1: rapidly changing world. My name is Victor Furman. Welcome to
0:28
Speaker 1: Vox Novus, the new voice. Greg Amici is a rock
0:41
Speaker 1: and alternative singer-songwriter known for his sharp literary lyricism and
0:47
Speaker 1: darkly comic storytelling. A Columbia-educated writer and third-degree black belt
0:53
Speaker 1: in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Greg returned to music after a 16-year
0:58
Speaker 1: hiatus following a vocal injury to create the most powerful
1:03
Speaker 1: work of his life. His newest album, Tragicomic, blends absurdist
1:08
Speaker 1: rock and Americana, Ska, Folk Punk, and Classic Rock into
1:14
Speaker 1: a darkly humorous, literary-driven sound. His website is gregamichi.com, and
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Speaker 1: he joins me this week on Vox Novus to share
1:23
Speaker 1: his amazing comeback story. Please join me in welcoming to
1:27
Speaker 1: Vox Novus, Greg Amici. Welcome, Greg.
1:29
Speaker 2: Hello, Victor. Pleasure to be here.
1:31
Speaker 1: Please share with our listeners your early path, your call
1:35
Speaker 1: to writing at Columbia University, and how you thought your
1:38
Speaker 1: career would unfold.
1:40
Speaker 3: As a youngster, I was an athlete. That was my
1:44
Speaker 3: whole raison d'etre.
1:45
Speaker 2: It was sports.
1:47
Speaker 3: And so from the earliest age on, from five to, say,
1:55
Speaker 3: high school, senior year of high school, that was my
1:57
Speaker 3: main focus was athletics and academia.
2:00
Speaker 2: I did quite well with academia.
2:03
Speaker 3: And the music thing didn't really come into play I'd
2:07
Speaker 3: sung in chorus as a younger person, but back in
2:10
Speaker 3: the 70s, in the mid-70s, if you were a football player,
2:14
Speaker 3: you weren't really singing chorus. It wasn't really. It didn't
2:17
Speaker 3: go over too well. So I kind of gave up
2:20
Speaker 3: all the music stuff until I was around 17 and
2:24
Speaker 3: getting ready to go to Columbia. And I took some
2:27
Speaker 3: guitar lessons. I wasn't a particularly good guitar player, but
2:30
Speaker 3: it inspired me to write songs, which while I was
2:33
Speaker 3: at Columbia, I started dabbling with. And my career at Columbia,
2:37
Speaker 3: I was planning on being pre-law. And then I decided
2:42
Speaker 3: to switch to economics right before I started. And I
2:47
Speaker 3: saw word problems. And I realized that that had never
2:50
Speaker 3: been my strong suit. So I went back to what
2:54
Speaker 3: was more up my alley, which was English Lit. And
2:57
Speaker 3: I wound up majoring in that. I left Columbia after
3:01
Speaker 3: two years because I was very, at that point, I'd
3:04
Speaker 3: really been pursuing a lot of music stuff with my hometown,
3:09
Speaker 3: New Jersey people. And I really wanted to take a
3:13
Speaker 3: go at it, and I wasn't especially interested in pursuing
3:18
Speaker 3: a typical lifestyle. So I went to Berklee College of Music.
3:23
Speaker 3: I went in as a guitar player, which was a
3:25
Speaker 3: mistake because, again, I was more a singer-songwriter, and everyone
3:29
Speaker 3: in the class was better than me for the summer session,
3:31
Speaker 3: which is what I went up for. But I also
3:33
Speaker 3: had two friends up there from my hometown and we
3:36
Speaker 3: formed a band. We had formed a band previously and
3:39
Speaker 3: we brought it up there and we tried to make
3:41
Speaker 3: things happen there.
3:43
Speaker 2: Wasn't happening.
3:44
Speaker 3: It was the kind of thing where we'd be with,
3:46
Speaker 3: you know, some guys from Southie guys and their kids
3:50
Speaker 3: would be, you know, walking around near our Marshall speakers.
3:54
Speaker 3: And I just saw that image and heard, thought about
3:57
Speaker 3: what those kids were hearing. I said, this isn't going
4:00
Speaker 3: to work out. So I went back to New Jersey. Fortunately,
4:03
Speaker 3: When I left Columbia, I left on good terms. So
4:06
Speaker 3: they just needed me to do a couple of courses
4:09
Speaker 3: at another school. And we live near Rutgers. So I
4:12
Speaker 3: did that. Got back into Columbia with a whole different mindset.
4:16
Speaker 3: I was totally into the academics at that point.
4:18
Speaker 2: I loved learning.
4:20
Speaker 3: And so I got my bachelor there and bachelor's there.
4:27
Speaker 3: And then I, you know, I led basically a Bohemian
4:32
Speaker 3: life from then on because Even though knowledge was a
4:35
Speaker 3: love of mine, working in the corporate world was not.
4:39
Speaker 3: I tried a few different times to do that. And
4:41
Speaker 3: then I realized I was more, because I had a
4:43
Speaker 3: background in martial arts, I was more suited to bouncing
4:46
Speaker 3: and security work. So I did quite a bit of
4:49
Speaker 3: that over the years. And other activities of the type, proofreading,
4:56
Speaker 3: all the things that actor, musician, writers do to get by.
5:02
Speaker 3: And then I kind of found my niche as a
5:04
Speaker 3: bouncer and was better paid than a lot because I
5:06
Speaker 3: was pretty good at it.
5:10
Speaker 1: And then your career as a singer-songwriter unfolded, and then
5:15
Speaker 1: a polyp brought it to a halt. What happened?
5:18
Speaker 3: Well, finally, I've taken you up through the 70s and 80s.
5:23
Speaker 3: Then in the 90s— I'd always written with other people.
5:28
Speaker 3: I was a lyricist primarily and I could write melodies,
5:31
Speaker 3: but I was never comfortable with my musicianship. And so
5:36
Speaker 3: after working with a partner for 10 years and we
5:38
Speaker 3: had a little success, I finally at that point branched
5:43
Speaker 3: off on my own and said, I've got to learn
5:44
Speaker 3: how to play by myself in every capacity. I have
5:47
Speaker 3: to be able to write by myself. Started writing in
5:50
Speaker 3: the early 90s, really got it going in the mid 90s.
5:55
Speaker 3: I had a band called Big Honey that was building
5:59
Speaker 3: a bit of a buzz in New York. It had
6:01
Speaker 3: become a very different music scene. You no longer had
6:05
Speaker 3: your rabbi taking care of you who thought you were
6:07
Speaker 3: a great talent and wanted to develop you. Now you
6:09
Speaker 3: had to be selling records on your own. And we
6:12
Speaker 3: were going in that direction. We were playing a big
6:15
Speaker 3: music festival at the time called the CMJ, the College
6:19
Speaker 3: Music Journal Festival.
6:21
Speaker 2: And that was in Manhattan, Florida.
6:23
Speaker 3: And we were opening for a really big act or
6:26
Speaker 3: a big independent act, Ted Leo. And I was very
6:31
Speaker 3: excited about it. And then maybe six songs into it,
6:35
Speaker 3: one of my songs, which reaches into a lower range,
6:38
Speaker 3: all of a sudden I was croaking on it. And
6:41
Speaker 3: I was able to muffle it over and then change
6:43
Speaker 3: the register of my voice. So it wasn't that noticeable,
6:46
Speaker 3: but something was definitely wrong. I figured it could have
6:50
Speaker 3: been just, you know, sore throat or whatever, but it
6:53
Speaker 3: kept bothering me and I kept having trouble.
6:54
Speaker 2: My voice was very raspy for weeks.
6:58
Speaker 3: Finally went to see an ENT who was, I had
7:03
Speaker 3: been friends with Bernadette Peter's husband and Bernadette, and Bernadette
7:08
Speaker 3: sent me to him. And that's where I got the
7:11
Speaker 3: great news that I had a polyp on my vocal cord,
7:14
Speaker 3: which is compared to a, nodule is something you almost
7:18
Speaker 3: surely have to have removed unless you can just go
7:21
Speaker 3: through a great period of silence and see if that
7:25
Speaker 3: holds up.
7:27
Speaker 2: It didn't.
7:28
Speaker 3: I didn't literally, I didn't speak for three months. I
7:30
Speaker 3: used a palimpsest to speak with my living girlfriend at
7:36
Speaker 3: the time. And then finally, because at the time, Julie
7:40
Speaker 3: Andrews had had that done by a very famous ENT
7:46
Speaker 3: And her voice was kind of wrecked. She never sang again.
7:50
Speaker 3: So I was very afraid of the surgery. Finally, I
7:53
Speaker 3: gave up. I just had it. And I had it
7:55
Speaker 3: by a guy named Peak Wu, who's one of the
7:57
Speaker 3: best around. And the next day, I could have sung
8:00
Speaker 3: if I wanted to. So I made a mistake with that.
8:03
Speaker 3: But live and learn. Meanwhile, however, the band had disintegrated
8:07
Speaker 3: because they couldn't wait for me to, you know, six months,
8:11
Speaker 3: what it was, six to eight months later to start
8:13
Speaker 3: it up again.
8:15
Speaker 2: So that's what that period ended.
8:16
Speaker 1: So for 16 years, you believed your music career was over.
8:21
Speaker 1: What happened and what was it like to let go
8:24
Speaker 1: of a dream that had defined you?
8:27
Speaker 2: Well, I kind of transitioned. I did do other things.
8:30
Speaker 2: I wrote screenplays. I acted. I wrote plays.
8:35
Speaker 3: And I did have a rabbi for that. Actually, it
8:37
Speaker 3: was Bernadette's husband. He became sort of my manager. He
8:42
Speaker 3: was a friend.
8:44
Speaker 2: Who had a lot of money.
8:45
Speaker 3: And he put me up in Los Angeles because I'd
8:48
Speaker 3: been working on a screenplay that he really liked and
8:50
Speaker 3: he wanted to see me if he could get me
8:51
Speaker 3: in that world. I did wind up doing pretty well
8:55
Speaker 3: as far as you can do well and not succeed
8:57
Speaker 3: because I had won a lot of awards between UCLA
9:02
Speaker 3: and other places. And then I got a manager, got
9:06
Speaker 3: an agent, got a couple of things optioned.
9:10
Speaker 2: And then.
9:11
Speaker 3: I got to the point where I really wasn't getting
9:14
Speaker 3: paid for all the work I was putting into it.
9:17
Speaker 3: And there were too many cooks in the kitchen, even
9:19
Speaker 3: though these were kind of big time people. This is
9:21
Speaker 3: too much for me at one point. And I said,
9:23
Speaker 3: you know, my parents are getting old. It was 2008,
9:28
Speaker 3: not a good time to, because I was working for Dr.
9:30
Speaker 3: Phil's show at that time to make a living. And
9:32
Speaker 3: that was, I lost that job because of the crisis.
9:37
Speaker 3: So I figured, you know what, this is a time
9:39
Speaker 3: to go home. Went back to New York, New Jersey,
9:42
Speaker 3: But I continued acting and I continued writing while I
9:46
Speaker 3: was studying for I got my master's at Brooklyn College
9:49
Speaker 3: at English Lit.
9:51
Speaker 2: And so music, I had backburnered.
9:53
Speaker 3: And, you know, I didn't I didn't feel as much
9:57
Speaker 3: a loss of music as I would have if I
9:59
Speaker 3: hadn't done something.
10:00
Speaker 2: Creative.
10:00
Speaker 3: I just had to keep doing something creative. But I
10:04
Speaker 3: realized that the seminal moment for me was when I
10:07
Speaker 3: was acting in a movie called Blackjack, the Jackie Ryan story,
10:11
Speaker 3: a little role in that. And the producer knew me
10:14
Speaker 3: as a writer. And I said, actually, I said, you know,
10:17
Speaker 3: I act too. And then I got the audition past that.
10:20
Speaker 3: I said, you know, I write music too. Do you
10:22
Speaker 3: have music for this? And he said, nah, take a shot.
10:26
Speaker 3: So I wrote two songs for it. And one of them, actually,
10:30
Speaker 3: I wrote one song and then I covered a song
10:32
Speaker 3: I always wanted to do because one of the characters
10:35
Speaker 3: names was Jennifer and the song was named Jennifer. So
10:38
Speaker 3: I did that, and while it went over well as
10:41
Speaker 3: far as him liking it, they wound up using hip-hop. However,
10:46
Speaker 3: in doing this, I finally had enough money to work
10:49
Speaker 3: with a guy I always wanted to work with, James Mastro,
10:52
Speaker 3: as a producer. We had talked about it years ago,
10:55
Speaker 3: but I couldn't afford to do it back then. Now
10:57
Speaker 3: I could. We did the two songs. I just sort
11:01
Speaker 3: of got that Rip Van Winkle feel that I had
11:03
Speaker 3: just awakened and realized, boy, this is what I should
11:05
Speaker 3: have been doing the whole time. This is my destiny
11:09
Speaker 3: because I can write a song. I can get it recorded.
11:13
Speaker 3: I can get it mixed and mastered and I can
11:17
Speaker 3: get it out to the public. And the problem with
11:20
Speaker 3: working in film, you know, you work on all those
11:21
Speaker 3: screenplays and then people whine and dine you. And then
11:25
Speaker 3: for some reason it doesn't happen. I had so many
11:27
Speaker 3: close calls, supposedly. And this time is like, all right,
11:31
Speaker 3: you know, I'm older now. I don't care really what
11:35
Speaker 3: develops from it, but I'm going to have my songs,
11:37
Speaker 3: my catalog of songs finally done the way I want
11:40
Speaker 3: them to do it because Jim, Jim Astro and I
11:43
Speaker 3: really knew we're, we're.
11:44
Speaker 2: Really worked well together.
11:46
Speaker 3: It was a symbiotic relationship that was unreal for me.
11:50
Speaker 3: I'd never had that before creatively. And so after that,
11:53
Speaker 3: I just decided this is it. This is all I'm
11:55
Speaker 3: going to do because, uh, COVID struck, um, Because of that,
12:00
Speaker 3: unfortunately for everyone, including me in some ways, the good
12:04
Speaker 3: fortune that came from that is that all of a
12:06
Speaker 3: sudden I was able to work with guys like James
12:09
Speaker 3: Mastro and people from Patti Smith's band because they weren't touring.
12:13
Speaker 3: They weren't able to do anything. So we got 24
12:16
Speaker 3: songs done over a course of a few years. And
12:20
Speaker 3: then I finally released the album in 2025. And we
12:25
Speaker 3: also have enough for a second album that'll be coming
12:27
Speaker 3: out between winter and spring. And I think music, I
12:32
Speaker 3: play music. Now I'm able to do solo shows by myself.
12:35
Speaker 3: I was always afraid of going out with my guitar
12:38
Speaker 3: and doing it. And I just finished two shows in Arizona,
12:41
Speaker 3: which was unique for me because usually people come to
12:44
Speaker 3: see me play solo.
12:45
Speaker 2: They know me.
12:46
Speaker 3: These people didn't know anything about me and yet they
12:48
Speaker 3: were triumphs. So that's kind of where I left off.
12:51
Speaker 3: That was only a month ago or actually less than
12:55
Speaker 3: a month ago. And now we're here back in our
12:58
Speaker 3: other place in Fort Lauderdale and I'm just getting ready
13:01
Speaker 3: to write more, play more, get to be a better player,
13:04
Speaker 3: better singer. I continue to work on my voice. So
13:07
Speaker 3: that's what it's about now.
13:08
Speaker 1: That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing. That's truly wonderful. And
13:12
Speaker 1: if you had to summarize what that time taught you,
13:15
Speaker 1: what would you say?
13:16
Speaker 2: I dare to fail.
13:17
Speaker 3: Um, you know, it's, you can kind of simultaneously put
13:21
Speaker 3: along in the nineties, even with my, when I do
13:24
Speaker 3: things athletically, I had, uh, this is where martial arts
13:29
Speaker 3: comes into some, plays some role in it. I never
13:33
Speaker 3: was one to really stick with anything like the kind of,
13:37
Speaker 3: you have to have that, what I have now at
13:40
Speaker 3: this age, that kind of thing where I can't stop
13:43
Speaker 3: doing it and.
13:44
Speaker 2: Nothing's going to stop me.
13:45
Speaker 3: People say something that they don't like about my song,
13:48
Speaker 3: which used to, I was very, I had very thin skin.
13:54
Speaker 3: And so after 20 people told me a song was good,
13:57
Speaker 3: one would say it's not. And okay, I'd shelve that
13:59
Speaker 3: song for a while. Wasn't quite, I'm exaggerating a bit,
14:02
Speaker 3: but that's sort of the way I always was. Now
14:05
Speaker 3: it's like, I'm older, I don't care. And that came from,
14:09
Speaker 3: I think, partially from the martial arts, because I never
14:13
Speaker 3: really stuck out anything before. I had gotten ready for
14:17
Speaker 3: the golden gloves at the last age I was eligible
14:20
Speaker 3: to do that. And I really took a savage beating
14:23
Speaker 3: from a guy as I was getting ready to do it.
14:27
Speaker 3: And it turned out that the guy had been fighting
14:29
Speaker 3: in jail for seven years and he wound up, he
14:32
Speaker 3: was supposed to be in the advanced division and I
14:34
Speaker 3: was in the novice division. And it was a mistake
14:38
Speaker 3: to take that loss and say, hey, I couldn't, you know,
14:42
Speaker 3: I don't want to be humiliated. So after that, because
14:46
Speaker 3: I found out people were winning who I was able
14:48
Speaker 3: to take care of in the gym. So I was
14:51
Speaker 3: so humiliated by that, that when I started jujitsu, Brazilian jujitsu,
14:56
Speaker 3: I said, you know what? And I've always had different
15:00
Speaker 3: experiences in martial arts where I got belts or I
15:03
Speaker 3: was doing real well in kickboxing, but This was the
15:06
Speaker 3: first time I said, you know, I'm going with something
15:09
Speaker 3: with structure, some level of structure, because it was a
15:11
Speaker 3: lot looser back then than it is now. And I'm
15:14
Speaker 3: going to go as far as I can go with this,
15:16
Speaker 3: and I won't quit no matter what. And then at
15:18
Speaker 3: the age I had, at age 40, I had two
15:21
Speaker 3: mixed martial arts fights.
15:23
Speaker 2: I went pretty well. I won in one, and I
15:26
Speaker 2: didn't get hurt or embarrassed.
15:28
Speaker 3: And so that kind of confidence.
15:32
Speaker 2: spurred me on.
15:33
Speaker 3: To sort of be like this, like, well, I'm doing
15:35
Speaker 3: music no matter what. I have nothing to fear at
15:39
Speaker 3: this point. Age had a lot to do with it,
15:41
Speaker 3: but also that experience of just not quitting. Now, yeah,
15:44
Speaker 3: now I became a third degree black belt. I haven't
15:47
Speaker 3: been able to train in recent years so much because
15:49
Speaker 3: of injuries. But, you know, I accomplished something that I
15:54
Speaker 3: never thought I'd accomplish. Not that I put all that
15:56
Speaker 3: much value on belts, but it showed it was, you know,
15:59
Speaker 3: on and off 20 years of hard work that I've
16:02
Speaker 3: accomplished with that.
16:03
Speaker 2: So I'd add that.
16:05
Speaker 1: Wonderful. Now your latest album is entitled Tragicomic. What does
16:10
Speaker 1: Tragicomic mean in your artistic philosophy?
16:14
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I see, um, while most of my
16:18
Speaker 3: stuff winds up being dramedy, um, I would still say
16:22
Speaker 3: I can kind of separate it, especially if this album is,
16:25
Speaker 3: Songs that have a comedic base and those that have,
16:30
Speaker 3: to me, I go by the Shakespearean rule that if
16:33
Speaker 3: somebody dies in a song, it's tragic. And if someone
16:37
Speaker 3: doesn't die, it's comic or historical. One of those three categories. Now, obviously,
16:44
Speaker 3: in today's world, dramedies kind of don't fit any of
16:46
Speaker 3: those three. But I just saw in this case were
16:49
Speaker 3: a couple of songs that were comical and there were
16:52
Speaker 3: a couple of songs that were very tragic. And the
16:55
Speaker 3: other is all, you know, veered in between. So I
16:57
Speaker 3: just thought, you know what? This is tragicomic, these stories overall.
17:02
Speaker 3: And so that's what gave me the inspiration to call
17:04
Speaker 3: it tragicomic.
17:06
Speaker 1: And why did you dress as Pagliacci on the cover photo?
17:10
Speaker 3: Well, the idea was that, again, he was sort of
17:15
Speaker 3: the tragic clown bit.
17:17
Speaker 2: And so.
17:20
Speaker 3: You know, I hesitated at first because I'm not doing
17:25
Speaker 3: that as a, that's not going to be my bit.
17:27
Speaker 3: You're not going to see me on stage dressed as
17:28
Speaker 3: a clown. But I thought for the purpose of the
17:32
Speaker 3: tragic comic, a tragic clown, it kind of really worked.
17:36
Speaker 2: So that's why I did that on the album cover.
17:39
Speaker 3: And we did one video, which I wasn't originally going
17:41
Speaker 3: to do as the clown, but we did it in
17:44
Speaker 3: two videos actually is that, and it went over well.
17:47
Speaker 2: So that's it.
17:49
Speaker 3: I'm, I'm out of the clown business now, but I
17:51
Speaker 3: did think that really was appropriate for the work.
17:54
Speaker 1: And where can our listeners find your album and also
17:58
Speaker 1: see that video?
17:59
Speaker 3: Well, the, the ideally go to gregamichi.com, gregamichi.com, G-R-E-G-A-M-I-C-I.com. And
18:08
Speaker 3: that is the links to all the social media, or
18:10
Speaker 3: you can go directly to Greg Amici on YouTube and
18:13
Speaker 3: see the videos. And, And my links to all my music,
18:19
Speaker 3: whether it be the LPs, which were really wonderfully designed
18:23
Speaker 3: by a guy who's a fantastic artist, or you can
18:29
Speaker 3: get CDs, or you can get me on the Internet.
18:31
Speaker 3: And it has directions to there, and I'm on Spotify
18:35
Speaker 3: and all the media that you would think to find
18:38
Speaker 3: music on.
18:39
Speaker 1: Let's talk about a couple of the songs. Tell us
18:41
Speaker 1: about the carnivalesque tone on songs like Cynthia Come to Me.
18:47
Speaker 3: Well, again, I would say that that's what makes them
18:51
Speaker 3: comical or satirical. I wanted to keep a thread with that.
18:55
Speaker 3: So there's also a song called Tom Seaver, which is
18:58
Speaker 3: about being growing up, someone who's growing up and removes
19:05
Speaker 3: himself from the physical world of sport because they're so
19:09
Speaker 3: caught up in watching and they live through Other characters,
19:14
Speaker 3: in this case, Tom Seaver, because that's the era when
19:17
Speaker 3: I grew up. So that and Cynthia Come to Me
19:20
Speaker 3: was one of the more comic songs based on a
19:23
Speaker 3: Nicolas Cage movie I'd seen where he fancies himself a vampire.
19:27
Speaker 3: And in this case, in the song, the lead character
19:33
Speaker 3: fancies himself a real Lothario in his dreams.
19:38
Speaker 2: In real life, he doesn't have much of a life.
19:40
Speaker 3: So he can't wait to go to sleep at night,
19:42
Speaker 3: and he dreams about this girl, Cynthia, and the dream comes.
19:45
Speaker 2: Back as much as possible.
19:46
Speaker 3: He goes home to dream about her, and they wind
19:49
Speaker 3: up you know, on the beaches of Italy and it's
19:51
Speaker 3: all his fantasy world. So both those songs are, are
19:55
Speaker 3: comical in nature. And so again, if you're going to
20:00
Speaker 3: do that, you want to have the instrumentation reflect that.
20:03
Speaker 3: So the music reflects it as well. So I went for,
20:06
Speaker 3: I talked to, Jim about it. And I wanted to
20:09
Speaker 3: get that kind of Farfisa organ, carnival type of organ,
20:14
Speaker 3: you know, going on in both of those songs. And
20:18
Speaker 3: you'll hear it register a little bit in some of
20:20
Speaker 3: the other songs to keep that motif going. But that
20:23
Speaker 3: was what I meant by that.
20:27
Speaker 1: And is there any song in particular that you really
20:29
Speaker 1: love that's something that really touched your heart as you
20:32
Speaker 1: composed it and performed it?
20:34
Speaker 3: It's interesting because you kind of have to think of
20:37
Speaker 3: something that is the closest to being something about yourself.
20:41
Speaker 3: And I really go out of my way to not
20:44
Speaker 3: be considered the speaker in the songs because I do
20:50
Speaker 3: like to do them. I do like to take any story,
20:52
Speaker 3: even if it has some relation to me, and fictionalize it.
20:56
Speaker 3: So I would say the one song, ironically, that was
20:59
Speaker 3: the most emotionally rewarding for me was the song Jennifer,
21:03
Speaker 3: which I didn't write. but perhaps because I was more
21:08
Speaker 3: remote from it, in a sense, I got more intimate
21:11
Speaker 3: with it as I, as I worked on it. And
21:13
Speaker 3: I thought it was one of the best vocal on
21:15
Speaker 3: I've done on the album because it allows himself, it
21:18
Speaker 3: allows itself to be sung that way. And it's a
21:20
Speaker 3: romantic song, not generally, it's a little bit, um, sweeter
21:25
Speaker 3: than I would generally make a song, but there was
21:28
Speaker 3: something about that I found so attractive. And the story,
21:32
Speaker 3: the guy who wrote it, Bert Summer, he, um, He
21:36
Speaker 3: had been the second performer at Woodstock playing solo, and
21:40
Speaker 3: he had a great voice. He did also a version
21:45
Speaker 3: of Simon & Garfunkel's America. I only heard this five
21:50
Speaker 3: years ago, six years ago, because the final full Woodstock
21:54
Speaker 3: album came out. And then I did more research on
21:57
Speaker 3: the guy, and he was the poster boy for Woodstock.
21:59
Speaker 3: He was about to turn him into a superstar. He
22:02
Speaker 3: was also very handsome.
22:04
Speaker 2: And then.
22:05
Speaker 3: Things didn't work out. And his career sank very quickly.
22:10
Speaker 3: And he wound up dying at a relatively young age.
22:12
Speaker 3: And there was something about that that I found so
22:14
Speaker 3: poignant that I think that registered most emotionally in me
22:19
Speaker 3: of all the songs.
22:20
Speaker 1: Wonderful. My guest is Greg Amici. His newest album is
22:24
Speaker 1: called Tragicomic. Greg, where can listeners find your albums and
22:28
Speaker 1: all this work about you?
22:30
Speaker 3: Again, I would go to gregamichi.com and that will link
22:34
Speaker 3: you to anything you want to hear with me, Spotify.
22:37
Speaker 2: I promote the albums.
22:42
Speaker 3: Even if one doesn't like the music, if you want
22:44
Speaker 3: to see a traditional great album, it's just beautiful creative
22:48
Speaker 3: work done on it. Mark Jaworski is a fantastic artist
22:52
Speaker 3: and has the liner notes. It's very traditional and I
22:55
Speaker 3: think people miss the idea of owning a piece of
22:59
Speaker 3: something tangible when it comes to music. So I recommend
23:04
Speaker 3: people consider checking out the albums. And of course, there's
23:07
Speaker 3: all sorts of other paraphernalia on there, shirts and all that.
23:11
Speaker 3: But the album itself, the beautiful LP, I'd say is
23:14
Speaker 3: something to consider. But we are also available on Spotify.
23:18
Speaker 3: You can get all the songs on there. You can
23:21
Speaker 3: get them on, you can purchase them on Bandcamp if
23:23
Speaker 3: you choose to do that. YouTube, again, I suggest checking
23:27
Speaker 3: out the station if you want to see some really
23:28
Speaker 3: cool videos, one of which Mark also did. So that's
23:33
Speaker 3: the way to get in touch with it. Again, it's
23:35
Speaker 3: all back to gregimici.com. You can get access to everything there.
23:39
Speaker 3: The link tree is right there.
23:40
Speaker 1: And we'll be back with more of Greg after these
23:43
Speaker 1: words on the OM Times Radio Network.
23:46
Speaker 5: The cutting edge of conscious radio. OM Times Radio. IOM FM.
23:51
Speaker 5: Om Times Magazine is one of the leading online content
23:54
Speaker 5: providers of positivity, wellness, and personal empowerment. A philanthropic organization,
24:00
Speaker 5: their net proceeds are funneled to support worldwide charity initiatives
24:04
Speaker 5: via Humanity Healing International. Through their commitment to creating community
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Speaker 5: and providing conscious content, they aspire to uplift humanity on
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Speaker 5: a global scale. Om Times, co-creating a more conscious lifestyle.
24:17
Speaker 1: Back on Vox Novus, my guest this week is Greg Amici.
24:21
Speaker 1: We were talking about his newest album, Tragic Comic. Greg,
24:25
Speaker 1: how do you balance absurdist humor with darker themes like
24:30
Speaker 1: serial killer romance?
24:36
Speaker 2: You know, I.
24:39
Speaker 3: Think what it is is that, you know, they're both
24:41
Speaker 3: darkness and comedy, which is, you know, an offshoot of
24:48
Speaker 3: darkness are in me as a, as a creative.
24:52
Speaker 2: Um, and so if I have an idea, I follow it.
24:57
Speaker 3: And in this case, some of the things, you know,
25:00
Speaker 3: made me laugh as I was going along, like a
25:02
Speaker 3: song called no fool, which is about a.
25:04
Speaker 2: Guy who's, uh, you know, who's over the hill.
25:08
Speaker 3: Who's like, it takes a college, um, He audits a
25:12
Speaker 3: college class and he falls in love with one of
25:15
Speaker 3: the girls there who humors him for a bit. And then,
25:19
Speaker 3: of course, he's dumped and he realizes he has to
25:22
Speaker 3: return to doing the hustle at seniors dances. So that's
25:29
Speaker 3: the sense that that those those are more of the
25:31
Speaker 3: absurd ones or Cynthia come to me where the guy
25:33
Speaker 3: is living through a dream world. And then the other
25:38
Speaker 3: ones in dark, like I'll be back is I wish
25:41
Speaker 3: I got that into the end of the the the Odyssey.
25:45
Speaker 2: Because it's really the story of Odysseus.
25:47
Speaker 3: But it was also kind of personal because it happened
25:50
Speaker 3: during a breakup time for me. And the guy who
25:53
Speaker 3: wound up with my girl was someone I thought was
25:57
Speaker 3: a friend. So I guess that one was pretty personal
26:01
Speaker 3: now that I think about it. But it's been so
26:04
Speaker 3: long because I wrote many of these songs many years ago. So,
26:08
Speaker 3: you know, all these, except for Spin That Ball, which
26:11
Speaker 3: I wrote for the movie, and Jennifer that we've been
26:13
Speaker 3: talking about, all the songs have been written years ago. Also,
26:16
Speaker 3: I hadn't written the lyrics for In Like a Lion.
26:19
Speaker 2: So.
26:20
Speaker 3: You know, I think my bent is, you know, I
26:22
Speaker 3: have a dark side as a creative. But in the end,
26:26
Speaker 3: it is all absurd. I don't take life that seriously.
26:30
Speaker 3: So I think there's a combination of that there. And also,
26:33
Speaker 3: I mean, those are things that other people have said
26:36
Speaker 3: about me. I don't go around thinking I'm writing absurd things,
26:40
Speaker 3: but I understand.
26:41
Speaker 2: It is absurdity because I have that.
26:48
Speaker 3: I have that point of, you know, I have that
26:49
Speaker 3: sort of sardonic point of view. So I guess that
26:54
Speaker 3: goes in through my humor and through my drama or
26:58
Speaker 3: thoughts of tragedy.
27:00
Speaker 1: It's also said that you're obsessive about lyrics. What makes
27:05
Speaker 1: a lyric good enough for you?
27:08
Speaker 3: You know, it's tough because I've got a little writer's
27:10
Speaker 3: block right now with that. You want to be at
27:13
Speaker 3: least as good, you want to be better writing each
27:17
Speaker 3: time out. And a lot of times, you know, and
27:21
Speaker 3: it's hard, it's weird for me, because I look back
27:23
Speaker 3: on some of the lyrics from the album. And as
27:25
Speaker 3: I said, I wrote some of them, one of the
27:27
Speaker 3: songs I wrote in the 80s. And, and I'm like, well,
27:31
Speaker 3: you know, what was I thinking at that time? And
27:33
Speaker 3: yet it worked. To me, it worked. I don't think
27:36
Speaker 3: I've ever put anything out where I thought anything about
27:40
Speaker 3: it wasn't something I really had worked to make sure
27:42
Speaker 3: it fit. And I think that that's the thing. I mean,
27:46
Speaker 3: I come out of an English literature background. I just
27:51
Speaker 3: don't understand it when people do throw away lyrics.
27:54
Speaker 2: It makes no sense to me.
27:56
Speaker 3: I was even surprised when I was watching the Beatles'
27:59
Speaker 3: story of their last album. how they come in with
28:02
Speaker 3: ideas that, you know, it's the old Paul McCartney writing,
28:07
Speaker 3: instead of yesterday, something about eggs today.
28:09
Speaker 2: I had eggs today.
28:11
Speaker 3: It's like I go in when I write a song,
28:13
Speaker 3: I already, God bless me, because everything they did worked out.
28:16
Speaker 2: They're my favorite band of all time. It worked out great.
28:19
Speaker 3: But for me, I kind of come in with a
28:21
Speaker 3: theme I'm working on, or if it's a story, I've
28:25
Speaker 3: got to adapt a theme to it. I've got to
28:27
Speaker 3: make it work on all the cylinders of, say, a
28:30
Speaker 3: short story where you have the plot, you have the theme,
28:34
Speaker 3: you have the characters that are well-drawn. And then when
28:39
Speaker 3: you go on, you've got to watch out that you
28:41
Speaker 3: don't repeat yourself. So now I used to just write
28:47
Speaker 3: and something would come to me and maybe I'd put
28:49
Speaker 3: a couple of verses together.
28:50
Speaker 2: But now I go into it writing many verses together.
28:53
Speaker 3: Knowing that I'm going to call from that, um, you know,
28:56
Speaker 3: a short amount, I have a lot more patience writing
29:00
Speaker 3: now than I used to. Um, so, and the one
29:03
Speaker 3: hand that's good, but on the other hand, when you're writing,
29:05
Speaker 3: you know, 16 verses to the same song and you've
29:07
Speaker 3: got to make it right and fit your theme and
29:09
Speaker 3: fit everything else you want to do about it, it's
29:12
Speaker 3: not so easy. So it takes a little longer. Plus
29:15
Speaker 3: I've been so busy, uh, playing, performing and, uh, and
29:20
Speaker 3: also other aspects of music I've been working on, that
29:23
Speaker 3: just sitting down, and since I have another album ready
29:25
Speaker 3: to go, it's hard for me to sit down and say, oh, okay, well,
29:27
Speaker 3: I'm going to write new songs, and who knows if
29:29
Speaker 3: I'll even be around to have them recorded. You know,
29:31
Speaker 3: I've got so many already in the tank. So that's
29:38
Speaker 3: how I would best answer that.
29:39
Speaker 2: I guess.
29:40
Speaker 1: I've been writing poetry since I was a kid, and
29:43
Speaker 1: the rhyming seems to have come naturally to me. How
29:46
Speaker 1: does rhyming come to you?
29:48
Speaker 2: Pretty easy. I have to say that's one of the things.
29:51
Speaker 3: I think sometimes I read songs and I'll see they'll
29:55
Speaker 3: have a structure where it's a B, A, A.
30:01
Speaker 2: Something like that.
30:02
Speaker 3: And to me, sometimes a lot of my stuff is A, A, A, A,
30:06
Speaker 3: you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it comes so
30:09
Speaker 3: naturally that sometimes I'm almost like, all right, in the future, I,
30:11
Speaker 3: you know, but it worked. I think it always worked,
30:15
Speaker 3: but in the future I'm like, well, I'll challenge myself
30:17
Speaker 3: a little bit more and use different rhyme patterns and
30:20
Speaker 3: see if the song, if the melody can, cause it
30:22
Speaker 3: gives you an option. If you do change, um, the
30:26
Speaker 3: structure a bit, it also gives you a chance to
30:28
Speaker 3: change your melody a bit and maybe your chord progression.
30:32
Speaker 3: So there's some value to that on a technical level. However,
30:36
Speaker 3: you have to balance that with what is the inspirational level,
30:39
Speaker 3: you know, and my natural inclination is towards rhyme. I
30:42
Speaker 3: don't know why, but that is my natural inclination. And
30:45
Speaker 3: that's a good thing if you write songs, but, you know,
30:47
Speaker 3: you want to be aware of being able to expand
30:50
Speaker 3: and do other things with it.
30:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You had mentioned your English literature background.
30:56
Speaker 1: How does that help to shape your songwriting?
30:59
Speaker 3: Well, I think, you know, I'm a big fan of
31:02
Speaker 3: Harold Bloom. And I think that, you know, any creativeness
31:08
Speaker 3: you have, you know, it's great if you're just so
31:11
Speaker 3: natural that you never listened to anybody before. But if
31:14
Speaker 3: you study and you study enough and from a variety
31:19
Speaker 3: of sources, it's going to impact you. And hopefully you'll
31:24
Speaker 3: come up with something original from it. And, you know,
31:27
Speaker 3: that's always the goal. So study, really, I hadn't intended
31:32
Speaker 3: to go back for my master's. I went back to
31:35
Speaker 3: Columbia for alumni classes. And I was doing so much
31:39
Speaker 3: reading with that. And one day I got the opportunity.
31:42
Speaker 3: Somebody asked if I wanted to pursue an English master's
31:47
Speaker 3: degree at Brooklyn College. And I thought, well, you know what?
31:49
Speaker 3: I'd like to get a master's for the heck of
31:51
Speaker 3: it because I'm doing all the reading and studying anyway.
31:54
Speaker 3: So that's what kind of inspired me to do that.
31:57
Speaker 3: And again, it just turned me on to more things
31:59
Speaker 3: than I might have been turned on if I was
32:01
Speaker 3: just doing this by myself. And when you have a
32:04
Speaker 3: goal where you have to read, you have to finish
32:06
Speaker 3: the book in order to pass the exam or whatever,
32:08
Speaker 3: that's something that I'm always a very slow reader who
32:11
Speaker 3: reads tons of books at the same time. And that
32:15
Speaker 3: helps me focus a bit. So that was the value
32:18
Speaker 3: of that in that sense, but also just exposure to
32:22
Speaker 3: more work. I don't believe for a second that listening
32:28
Speaker 3: or watching or viewing things from the past is going
32:31
Speaker 3: to cause you to steal from it.
32:34
Speaker 2: I don't buy that, especially if your tastes are eclectic enough.
32:38
Speaker 1: I'm going to get you just off the top of
32:40
Speaker 1: my head. Is there a lyric you can share with
32:42
Speaker 1: us that you can just recite to us right now?
32:46
Speaker 3: That's very interesting because I would say, going back to
32:56
Speaker 3: no fool, there's no fool like an old fool.
32:59
Speaker 2: I'm here for trouble. Can you tell me the rules?
33:02
Speaker 3: I like old stuff and I'm old school, but I'm
33:05
Speaker 3: still stuck on what the babies can do. That sounds
33:08
Speaker 3: very perverted, but the guy, he's referring to the college
33:13
Speaker 3: girls as they did in that Vince Vaughn movie. And
33:17
Speaker 3: I just find that, that I find fascinating that, you know, the, that.
33:23
Speaker 2: That hit me.
33:24
Speaker 3: Well, I don't even know why that one hit me,
33:25
Speaker 3: but we were talking about no fool and it's often
33:28
Speaker 3: difficult for me. I have some, some memory issues and
33:31
Speaker 3: it's difficult for me often to, um, to really remember
33:35
Speaker 3: my lyrics. I have to really study them all the time,
33:37
Speaker 3: but for some reason, I guess, cause we were talking
33:39
Speaker 3: about no fool that came off the top of my
33:40
Speaker 3: head because I wanted to portray, uh, That's another thing.
33:45
Speaker 3: I like to portray characters who are not necessarily that likable.
33:49
Speaker 3: And this guy is basically an old lech who I
33:54
Speaker 3: made it so he was a Vietnam. He was during
33:57
Speaker 3: the Vietnam era and he was reading books to her
34:00
Speaker 3: to help her study for a course on Vietnam. But
34:03
Speaker 3: he had been in Canada at the time. So I
34:05
Speaker 3: had a lot of, I thought, pretty good lines from that.
34:08
Speaker 3: And for some reason that just popped in my head.
34:11
Speaker 1: And thank you for sharing that. And that leads to
34:13
Speaker 1: the question, why do you write so much about people
34:15
Speaker 1: who are villains who are morally complex?
34:19
Speaker 2: Because I like the morally complex characters. You know, it's interesting.
34:26
Speaker 3: I like to be very story specific. And I think
34:29
Speaker 3: the serial killer came in because of the music. I
34:34
Speaker 3: just thought it fit that. And the original line is
34:37
Speaker 3: called In Like a Lion. And the verse, the chorus
34:42
Speaker 3: I had in my head all the time was, it's March, baby,
34:44
Speaker 3: I'm in like a lion. So what would that be?
34:48
Speaker 3: Could that be a romantic song or whatever? And then
34:51
Speaker 3: I said, there was a certain, along with the chords
34:54
Speaker 3: that were playing along with it, there was a certain
34:57
Speaker 3: darkness to it. And so I said, well, maybe this
34:59
Speaker 3: is about serial killer. And then I wanted to form
35:03
Speaker 3: it in such a way that, you know, I did
35:06
Speaker 3: some research on it.
35:08
Speaker 2: I read about different serial killers.
35:11
Speaker 3: And you get that, to me, the thing that's most
35:13
Speaker 3: interesting about it is the map that he takes. You
35:17
Speaker 3: get that feel, I hope you get that, but I
35:19
Speaker 3: get that feel of what it's like for someone to,
35:23
Speaker 3: you know, to be in remote rural places and places
35:27
Speaker 3: that are just known for range activities. I guess Nebraska,
35:32
Speaker 3: we don't really hit, but you know, you always think
35:33
Speaker 3: of the Charles Stark weather thing, but it all ends
35:36
Speaker 3: in Seattle, as I say in some, because that's where
35:40
Speaker 3: it seems a lot of these things wind up in
35:41
Speaker 3: the state of Washington. So the research kind of prompted that.
35:47
Speaker 3: As far as some of the other ones, you know,
35:50
Speaker 3: I guess, you know, I can't help myself. I do
35:53
Speaker 3: watch a lot of the ID channel, or I did
35:56
Speaker 3: when I had time to watch TV. And I'm fascinated
36:00
Speaker 3: by people who can do things like that and feel
36:04
Speaker 3: comfortable about it. It's just amazed me. There are things
36:08
Speaker 3: like gamblers. I always found that tough to play a
36:11
Speaker 3: role of a gambler because I just can't relate to
36:14
Speaker 3: it at all, especially with killers because just having that–
36:20
Speaker 3: or villains, just having that on your, I couldn't, the guilt,
36:26
Speaker 3: not so much even, the guilt plus the fear of
36:29
Speaker 3: being found out, like Raskolnikov, you know, it's just, that's
36:33
Speaker 3: the whole thing. That sort of psychology is so far
36:36
Speaker 3: beyond me that it fascinates me, I guess. And that's
36:40
Speaker 3: why gambling, even though I haven't written a gambling song,
36:42
Speaker 3: I probably will because it fascinates me that I just
36:45
Speaker 3: don't even understand the appeal when the long run situation occurs.
36:50
Speaker 3: To me, if the long run is bad, then it's
36:53
Speaker 3: not a way I want to go.
36:53
Speaker 1: And it reminds me of the lyric, you got to
36:56
Speaker 1: know when to hold them. You got to know when
36:58
Speaker 1: to fold them. You got to know when to walk away,
37:01
Speaker 1: when to run.
37:02
Speaker 2: Exactly. And these characters don't run.
37:04
Speaker 3: And they keep plowing forward with whatever agenda they have.
37:10
Speaker 3: And that's always fascinated me. And another aspect that's fascinating
37:13
Speaker 3: to me is that A lot of people, when you
37:15
Speaker 3: write dramatically, things have to begin one place and end
37:19
Speaker 3: in a completely different place. And I like to write
37:22
Speaker 3: a little bit more in a more circular fashion because
37:26
Speaker 3: when it comes down to it, we are what we are.
37:29
Speaker 3: We can change ourselves to a certain extent, but do
37:33
Speaker 3: we really, are we able to overcome? Now in real life,
37:37
Speaker 3: that's the goal. You're trying to always overcome your weaknesses
37:39
Speaker 3: and your flaws and Do these characters try? Does that
37:44
Speaker 3: make them more, you know, in addition to being sociopaths,
37:48
Speaker 3: are they also on a different level? Are they Nietzschean
37:52
Speaker 3: in some way? You know, so they fascinate me, I guess,
37:54
Speaker 3: because I'm not like.
37:57
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And not directly reflecting the characters you're talking about.
38:01
Speaker 1: Tell us about your Italian heritage and what it means
38:03
Speaker 1: to you for your music.
38:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's interesting because my father was... veterinarian. And, uh,
38:14
Speaker 3: he was very, um, my parents were both from a
38:18
Speaker 3: generation where, and my mother wasn't Italian, but they were
38:20
Speaker 3: both from a generation where doing what you had to
38:24
Speaker 3: do to take care of your family was everything. Um,
38:28
Speaker 3: and yet I found members of my father's family that
38:31
Speaker 3: were more like me. They're a little bit more Bohemian and, uh,
38:36
Speaker 3: add that in with the opera, uh, aspect because we,
38:39
Speaker 3: you know, we're met subscribers for their whole lives pretty much. Uh,
38:44
Speaker 3: you have that, you know, I have that Italian identification.
38:47
Speaker 2: Um, I'm very emotional. Uh, I, I have a temper issues.
38:52
Speaker 3: Uh, so I think that that kind of pours you
38:55
Speaker 3: into makes it easier to get into characters that are explosive, uh,
39:01
Speaker 3: and easier and to characters who, um, have some sense of, uh,
39:06
Speaker 3: Some intellectual things going on as well, because I've been
39:09
Speaker 3: always fascinated by the history of my homeland, because technically
39:13
Speaker 3: I am a citizen there just because I'm the son
39:15
Speaker 3: of an Italian.
39:17
Speaker 2: So I think that.
39:19
Speaker 3: That's had an impact on it in terms of my personality,
39:22
Speaker 3: which obviously has some effect on my writing.
39:25
Speaker 1: And what about the romance aspect of it?
39:29
Speaker 2: The romance aspect? Yeah.
39:30
Speaker 3: Again, I guess that would go with the emotional ties.
39:33
Speaker 3: I mean, the emotional sense that I did at both
39:38
Speaker 3: stages of my life, I really put my heart out there.
39:41
Speaker 3: I put my heart on the line. And I think
39:43
Speaker 3: that's more my mother's German-American. And I don't think that
39:46
Speaker 3: that's quite the same identity you usually get with German-Americans. Because,
39:53
Speaker 3: you know, I do see there are certain characteristics of
39:57
Speaker 3: Of these national characteristics that do come through, my mother
40:00
Speaker 3: was always very.
40:04
Speaker 2: Organized.
40:05
Speaker 3: My father, I take after him in the sense that
40:08
Speaker 3: a little bit all over the place, but his focus
40:11
Speaker 3: was still.
40:11
Speaker 2: On what he had to do to get things done.
40:14
Speaker 3: Sometimes I get a little bit more lost, but I
40:16
Speaker 3: also have the ability, I guess, from the German side
40:18
Speaker 3: a little bit, to then when I really have a goal,
40:21
Speaker 3: when there's something that's got to be done, I can
40:22
Speaker 3: do it. And so that part of it comes from
40:25
Speaker 3: both sides. But I think the more romantic part that
40:28
Speaker 3: I've had in the past, the more, as I said,
40:31
Speaker 3: emotional part of me, that comes from my father, not
40:34
Speaker 3: from my mother.
40:36
Speaker 1: My guest is Greg Amici. We're talking about his newest album, Tragicomic.
40:40
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more after these words on the
40:43
Speaker 1: OM Times Radio Network.
40:46
Speaker 6: Humanity Healing International is a small non-profit with a big dream.
40:51
Speaker 6: Since 2007, HHI has been working tirelessly to bring help
40:56
Speaker 6: to communities with little or no hope. Our projects are
41:00
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41:04
Speaker 6: bring the reassurance that no one is alone and that
41:07
Speaker 6: someone cares. To learn more, please visit humanityhealing.org. Humanity Healing
41:14
Speaker 6: is where your heart is.
41:17
Speaker 4: This is Kathy Beal, host of Celestial Compass, featuring astrology
41:21
Speaker 4: you can use. Celestial Compass points you to what's going
41:26
Speaker 4: on in the sky and what you can do with
41:28
Speaker 4: it down here on Earth. We also explore fun, effective,
41:32
Speaker 4: and cosmic tools for navigating this adventure we call life.
41:37
Speaker 4: Join me the first and third Monday of the month
41:40
Speaker 4: at 5 p.m. Eastern Time for Celestial Compass. It's enlightening, entertaining,
41:45
Speaker 4: and empowering.
41:48
Speaker 7: So I'm a cat, and I just moved in with
41:50
Speaker 7: this new human. And she's got this little toy she's
41:53
Speaker 7: always playing with. All day long. Tap, tap, tap, tap.
41:56
Speaker 3: Bloop, bloop.
41:57
Speaker 7: She can't put it down. There it is. Oh, and
42:00
Speaker 7: get this. She even talks to it. Last week, she
42:03
Speaker 7: asked it for Chinese. And guess what? Eggroll showed up.
42:07
Speaker 4: Like magic.
42:08
Speaker 7: Humans have cool toys.
42:09
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42:11
Speaker 4: shelter pet. Be that person.
42:13
Speaker 2: Adopt.
42:13
Speaker 7: Brought to you by the Ad Council and the ShelterPetProject.org.
42:18
Speaker 2: Hi, this is Bill Maher.
42:19
Speaker 8: I can find humor in almost anything, but one thing
42:22
Speaker 8: I never laugh about is cruelty to animals. If you
42:25
Speaker 8: don't get the joke either, write People for the Ethical
42:28
Speaker 8: Treatment of Animals, 501 Front Street, Norfolk, Virginia, 23510.
42:33
Speaker 1: Back on Vox Novus, my guest this week is Greg Amici.
42:36
Speaker 1: We're talking about his album, Tragicomic. Greg, tell us about
42:41
Speaker 1: how music is different these days, making music is different
42:45
Speaker 1: than it was in your 20s.
42:49
Speaker 3: It's a lot easier technologically. First of all, I recorded
42:58
Speaker 3: everything from that album before AI came to 4. And
43:02
Speaker 3: I think that's kind of, there's so many great things
43:06
Speaker 3: about AI. I think in terms of like, hopefully I'll
43:09
Speaker 3: be able to get a new brain in 10 years.
43:11
Speaker 3: But then the flip side, It's really not good for
43:15
Speaker 3: the creatives because you're competing. The difference between any of
43:20
Speaker 3: the arts, you know, going back into the 80s and
43:23
Speaker 3: 90s is that the level of competition was, you know,
43:27
Speaker 3: you still had to prove yourself to a certain extent
43:30
Speaker 3: before you got a chance to do anything. Now, if
43:34
Speaker 3: you have the technology, you can, you know, especially I'm
43:37
Speaker 3: even discounting A.I., You can do all the stuff from
43:41
Speaker 3: your bedroom, never play in front of anybody, and all
43:46
Speaker 3: of a sudden you have a hit song or something.
43:49
Speaker 3: Although what a hit song constitutes at these points is
43:52
Speaker 3: hard for me to figure out. I will say that
43:54
Speaker 3: I've taken advantage of some of the things. I'm very
43:58
Speaker 3: slow with recording. I don't rush anybody. I rather spend
44:01
Speaker 3: more money and get it done right. But it is
44:04
Speaker 3: nice that if I run a little short on time
44:07
Speaker 3: and there's a place in the song where my voice
44:11
Speaker 3: wasn't quite on pitch, that in a second they can
44:14
Speaker 3: correct that. I try to keep it to a minimum,
44:17
Speaker 3: but there is some advantage to that, especially when you're
44:20
Speaker 3: doing multiple layers of vocals.
44:23
Speaker 2: So there are.
44:25
Speaker 3: Aspects of technology that make things easier. However, I've also
44:28
Speaker 3: noticed that I mean, for example, if I wanted to
44:31
Speaker 3: go out acoustically and I could do what they call
44:34
Speaker 3: looping and have all my instruments there with me while
44:39
Speaker 3: I'm playing one instrument and singing once, and then I
44:41
Speaker 3: have all the backing vocals, and I can't go for
44:44
Speaker 3: that because... I think when you see something live, that
44:48
Speaker 3: still has to be a very pure experience. And if
44:50
Speaker 3: you can't hold up with your natural talents, and even
44:53
Speaker 3: then you're getting some assistance. You know, your vocals will be,
44:57
Speaker 3: back if you hear a band singing in the 60s,
45:00
Speaker 3: the sound systems were awful. And so a lot of
45:03
Speaker 3: times guys were going off key, left and right. It's
45:07
Speaker 3: a little more difficult now because the sounds that you
45:11
Speaker 3: hear in your monitors are usually so pure. And because
45:16
Speaker 3: you can have them tweak your vocals so you have
45:18
Speaker 3: a little bit more reverb or something like that that
45:22
Speaker 3: makes your voice a little cushier sound to begin with.
45:26
Speaker 3: So there are advantages to that. It can make it
45:29
Speaker 3: easier on you. But I like it if you're playing
45:31
Speaker 3: at a party and you just pull out a guitar.
45:34
Speaker 3: If you can sing and stay on key and just
45:36
Speaker 3: put emotion into it and play the guitar adequately. That's
45:40
Speaker 3: the goal. So I go into it with that. And
45:42
Speaker 3: if any little things can sweeten things up along the way,
45:44
Speaker 3: that's great. But I think right now is a big
45:50
Speaker 3: turning point because of AI. I don't like it when
45:55
Speaker 3: I hear a friend of mine say like, yeah, I
45:57
Speaker 3: just wrote a song and it's got 175,000 listeners. And
46:05
Speaker 3: I told AI what I wanted to write and they
46:07
Speaker 3: wrote it.
46:07
Speaker 2: That's huge. That's a little bit– I mean, God bless him.
46:11
Speaker 2: He's a friend.
46:12
Speaker 3: But it's like that's sort of my territory that's being invaded,
46:17
Speaker 3: and it's not thrilling to.
46:19
Speaker 2: Hear stuff like that.
46:20
Speaker 3: So that plus you're basically– what I also was talking
46:25
Speaker 3: about before, the rabbi, the traditional rabbi that helps you
46:29
Speaker 3: out with your career because they believe in you, that's
46:31
Speaker 3: no longer a factor. It's now– you don't– unless you're 17,
46:34
Speaker 3: 18 years old– Under 22 years old, you're really not
46:39
Speaker 3: going to be signed by a major record label. And
46:44
Speaker 3: there's no reason to be because you're probably, if you're
46:47
Speaker 3: a 30-year-old guy with a band that gets signed by
46:51
Speaker 3: a major label, you're not going to get much out
46:54
Speaker 3: of that. You'll get exposure, but that'll be about it.
46:57
Speaker 3: And then you'll have to do everything on your own
46:58
Speaker 3: in terms of touring. So the fact that you can't
47:00
Speaker 3: really make money off of your music anymore, that's kind
47:04
Speaker 3: of discouraging. that you have to tour to make any money.
47:09
Speaker 3: And again, it's because the record labels, the major labels
47:13
Speaker 3: are no longer, unless, like I said, you fit that
47:16
Speaker 3: particular paradigm, you're not going to get signed by a
47:22
Speaker 3: major record label. And if you do, you're just probably
47:24
Speaker 3: still going to get a rough deal with it because
47:26
Speaker 3: they'll get all your Spotify money. And so basically you're
47:31
Speaker 3: going to go with an independent label or you're going
47:33
Speaker 3: to just market it yourself. And unfortunately, I have to
47:37
Speaker 3: market it myself. And I'd like to spend all my
47:39
Speaker 3: time practicing, recording, rehearsing, but I have to spend a
47:44
Speaker 3: heck of a lot of time promoting. And fortunately, because
47:47
Speaker 3: I can't do that very well. So I've hired people
47:49
Speaker 3: to do it. Fortunately, like I said, all my life,
47:52
Speaker 3: I didn't have many options financially, but that does come
47:57
Speaker 3: into play. Now I can afford to pay a social
47:59
Speaker 3: media company to take care of that because I couldn't
48:02
Speaker 3: in the past. And I don't want to do it.
48:04
Speaker 3: I want it in the third person. I don't want
48:06
Speaker 3: to write about myself in the third person. I find
48:08
Speaker 3: that humiliating in some way. But this is what all
48:12
Speaker 3: the kids have to go through today and all the
48:14
Speaker 3: adults who are still trying to do these things. Like
48:17
Speaker 3: I said, if nothing comes of it, fine. But I
48:22
Speaker 3: still want to put it out there because I believe
48:25
Speaker 3: in it. And I would love to have as many
48:28
Speaker 3: people as possible listen to my stuff. So it's a
48:32
Speaker 3: little bit of a dichotomy there, but, you know, you
48:35
Speaker 3: deal with it.
48:37
Speaker 1: You said that the studio is paradise. What happens when
48:41
Speaker 1: you're in that paradise?
48:43
Speaker 3: Well, I want to also augment that with the idea
48:47
Speaker 3: that you have to have great people you want to
48:51
Speaker 3: be in the studio with. There's something, especially, as I said,
48:56
Speaker 3: I work with a great producer, so I go in
48:59
Speaker 3: with a song. I have my ideas. He respects my ideas.
49:07
Speaker 3: But then there are things where, you know, also the
49:10
Speaker 3: engineer who plays drums, Ray Ketchum. So the three of
49:14
Speaker 3: us will discuss if there's any question about, well, do
49:17
Speaker 3: we really want a mandolin there? where they play the
49:22
Speaker 3: mandolin track? And it's like, oh, I don't know. Do
49:25
Speaker 3: we need that in that song? It's a three person decision.
49:28
Speaker 3: I want it that way because I have great trust
49:31
Speaker 3: in them. And if two out of three people say,
49:34
Speaker 3: you know, skip that there. I'll go with it, even
49:37
Speaker 3: though my thought might be that, oh, you know, So
49:41
Speaker 3: Paradise is working in the studio with people who are
49:45
Speaker 3: on the same wavelength as you, who will help your
49:47
Speaker 3: music be what you want it to be and take
49:49
Speaker 3: it to another level. So working in this studio, for example,
49:53
Speaker 3: is Paradise for me. I love playing live, but to
50:00
Speaker 3: hear something that you've had in your head executed or
50:04
Speaker 3: to hear something you've had in your head executed with
50:06
Speaker 3: a different sort of vibe, but it's still works perfectly
50:10
Speaker 3: with what you would like to hear, that's paradise to me.
50:14
Speaker 1: It is beautiful. What would you say to someone who
50:18
Speaker 1: feels their best years are behind them or that it's
50:21
Speaker 1: too late to go on after an unfinished dream?
50:23
Speaker 3: Uh, I can't, you know, how can you go on
50:29
Speaker 3: then really? I mean, if you don't, uh, you have
50:32
Speaker 3: to have something, you know, whatever your bag is, if, if,
50:36
Speaker 3: If you just stop, you're going to fall to pieces.
50:41
Speaker 2: There's no way that you can.
50:42
Speaker 3: I always am amazed by people who, for example, will
50:46
Speaker 3: retire and then, oh, I don't.
50:48
Speaker 2: Know what to do. I don't know what to do.
50:50
Speaker 2: I mean, there are a million things to do with yourself.
50:52
Speaker 3: What's great is if you can find something to focus
50:56
Speaker 3: on that is going to take up all your time,
50:58
Speaker 3: not all your time because you have your family, but
51:01
Speaker 3: all your creative juices flowing into that. Or if you
51:07
Speaker 3: haven't gone to a variety of places, it could be
51:09
Speaker 3: something that you start making wooden ducks because you've always
51:14
Speaker 3: had a passion for that. It's just these are the
51:17
Speaker 3: things that keep you going. So if you don't have
51:21
Speaker 3: some desire to execute something, I just don't understand how
51:26
Speaker 3: you can continue to survive or not be a miserable person.
51:30
Speaker 3: So I have great joy knowing that in addition to
51:34
Speaker 3: having a wonderful life fiance and wonderful stepkids to be,
51:39
Speaker 3: that I also have something that I can go to
51:43
Speaker 3: every day that's going to make me happy about being alive.
51:46
Speaker 3: I'm happier now than I've ever been in my life.
51:49
Speaker 3: So I think that's the thing. You do have to
51:53
Speaker 3: hopefully have financial security. That's probably the first thing. You
52:01
Speaker 3: do want to make sure you still have financial security
52:03
Speaker 3: in order to enjoy all these things, but Um, if you,
52:07
Speaker 3: if you do have in most people that retire, retire
52:10
Speaker 3: because they've, they're financially taken care of as they need
52:14
Speaker 3: to be, or they would keep working. So if you're retired, uh, yeah,
52:18
Speaker 3: you better be able to keep, have something to keep
52:20
Speaker 3: yourself going. And, uh, I can't imagine a more fun
52:23
Speaker 3: thing than writing songs and performing and recording.
52:27
Speaker 1: I had a wonderful spiritual teacher back in the nineties
52:30
Speaker 1: who was well into his eighties at the time that
52:32
Speaker 1: I had him as a teacher. And he used to
52:35
Speaker 1: say there should be an 11th commandment or the 11th
52:38
Speaker 1: commandment should say thou shalt have purpose. Why does continuing
52:43
Speaker 1: to pursue your passions matter as we age? And what's
52:47
Speaker 1: next for you?
52:49
Speaker 3: It matters because it's kind of good that you you.
52:54
Speaker 3: you have to want to keep living. You want to
52:56
Speaker 3: have to have some vibrant, some vibrancy in your life,
52:59
Speaker 3: something to make you want to keep living. And, you know,
53:02
Speaker 3: I have so many songs I've written that I pray
53:06
Speaker 3: I can get them recorded at some point. And so
53:08
Speaker 3: many new things I got to get recorded and things
53:12
Speaker 3: and things I want to do with a live band.
53:14
Speaker 2: There's so many things, so many plans. And I, I'm
53:17
Speaker 2: a 65.
53:18
Speaker 3: I'm not going to get to them all, but I'm
53:21
Speaker 3: going to act like I'm living to 120 and, and
53:23
Speaker 3: keep trying to do everything I can focus as much
53:26
Speaker 3: as I can work as hard as I can with
53:29
Speaker 3: what your limitations are. As you get older, as I said, I,
53:32
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'll be able to go back
53:33
Speaker 3: to jujitsu after I just had this year, uh, two, um,
53:37
Speaker 3: torn quadricep tendons.
53:40
Speaker 2: I was laid up for a good part of the year.
53:41
Speaker 2: And you know, the.
53:43
Speaker 3: Thing is I was able to do things that I
53:46
Speaker 3: thought would make me a better musician, make me a
53:49
Speaker 3: better artist while I was incapacitated. You have to have
53:52
Speaker 3: that kind of, you can't, Dwell on that, you know,
53:55
Speaker 3: I guess it would be, you know, you could have
53:56
Speaker 3: been kind of miserable during that because I was laid
53:58
Speaker 3: up so much of the year when I was ready
54:00
Speaker 3: to do touring to support the album. But I just
54:03
Speaker 3: kept thinking of ways that I can, you know, improve
54:05
Speaker 3: other aspects of my game, get my guitar playing better
54:07
Speaker 3: as long as I could sit up in the... So
54:10
Speaker 3: I guess the thing is, you have to have a commitment,
54:14
Speaker 3: whether it be travel to see... 200 places. And then
54:17
Speaker 3: if you see three of them die, you at least
54:21
Speaker 3: saw it. You didn't have time to think about other things.
54:24
Speaker 3: Have a plan.
54:25
Speaker 2: Have a dream.
54:25
Speaker 3: Just keep pursuing it. Whatever it's something, if it's within
54:29
Speaker 3: your capacity to do, you got to do it. Because otherwise,
54:33
Speaker 3: I don't know how people can stay alive.
54:36
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, it's 73. I can't even think
54:39
Speaker 1: about a golf course. I would never be on a
54:40
Speaker 1: golf course. But behind this microphone and teaching and doing
54:44
Speaker 1: the other things that I'm called to do is a
54:45
Speaker 1: purpose for me to wake up every morning and be
54:48
Speaker 1: grateful that I'm alive so that I can continue to
54:50
Speaker 1: do these activities.
54:52
Speaker 2: I'm with you 100% on that, Victor.
54:54
Speaker 1: My guest, Greg Amici, his newest album is called Tragicomic. Greg,
54:58
Speaker 1: one more time, please share with our listeners where they
55:00
Speaker 1: can get your album and find out more about you
55:02
Speaker 1: and your amazing work.
55:03
Speaker 3: Oh, I'd be happy to. So, It's the best thing
55:06
Speaker 3: to do is to go to gregamichi.com. That's g-r-e-g-a-m-i-c-i.com. And
55:14
Speaker 3: that will lead you with the link tree to anything
55:16
Speaker 3: you want to hear, whether it be videos, if you
55:19
Speaker 3: want to see on YouTube, or you can go right
55:21
Speaker 3: to YouTube to my channel there. Or put in the
55:24
Speaker 3: names of the songs that are always, you can find
55:27
Speaker 3: the songs, little clips of them on the website itself.
55:31
Speaker 3: But you can also find me on Instagram, on Facebook.
55:34
Speaker 3: I have a Facebook music page. Greg Amici is my name,
55:38
Speaker 3: so that's easiest to remember. That'll lead you to almost
55:41
Speaker 3: anything that I do. So I would say that that's
55:46
Speaker 3: where you're going to be able to start and anything
55:48
Speaker 3: you want to go to from there, whether it be
55:49
Speaker 3: videos or you can always catch me on Spotify. Look
55:53
Speaker 3: up Greg Amici Tragicomic if you want to go directly there.
55:56
Speaker 3: So a lot of sources. That's the one thing about
55:58
Speaker 3: today's world is a lot of resources to get information
56:02
Speaker 3: or to hear what you do.
56:06
Speaker 1: Greg, thank you so much for joining us and sharing
56:08
Speaker 1: your amazing story and your wonderful gifts.
56:11
Speaker 2: Thank you, Victor. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
56:13
Speaker 2: I love you. I love doing it.
56:15
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. And thank you for joining us on
56:18
Speaker 1: Vox Novus. I'm Victor, the voice Furman. Have a wonderful week.