Dear friends and fans,

Thanks for dropping by to read the planetmullins December  2000 news.

Happy Holidays!

Kikuya Grand Opening Party

Something that local fans will probably want to know about right away is that the old Huntington Beach hangout that closed down last April, KIKUYA Japanese Restaurant, is open again and there is going to be live music again starting on December16th with the Greg Vail CD release party for his NEW CD "Christmas, The Hymns.:" So many people over the past six months have asked about Kikuya that I know many HB locals will be happy to have their local place back in action. I will be playing there Saturday Nights in December, NOT Friday nights like before. Friday I am still at Spaghettini in Seal Beach which will run through March 2001, and possibly longer. Also, Kikuya got a new piano which makes me very happy. I am putting a sound system in when I get home from the road next week, so that we can be sure that it will sounds great in the room.

Spaghettini Fridays, Kikuya Saturdays Through December

So for the many of you who have written and wondered about what is going on, now you know. Friday nights are at Spaghettini. Start time is 8pm.
Saturday nights are at Kikuya. Start time is 9 pm. Need more info? visit the  GIGS PAGE .

Barfly-Celebrity Rock Band Wednesdays Dec 13th and 20th this month

Speaking of gigs, the China Club All Stars Band is back in action, and pretty regularly now on Wednesday Nights at Barfly in Hollywood. If you haven't been there before, its one of the cooler Hollywood crowd bars around, especially on Wednesdays when Miles Joseph and I play there. We were doing the Barfly gig pretty often earlier in the year until there was some sort of permit probalem with the live band thing there. It took about six months for that to get worked out, and now we are back. The key thing about the Barfly gig to watch for is the DATE and TIME listed on the gigs page...it is pretty often that I don't find out until Monday nite about what is going to happen on that Wednesday, and I always post the gig on the gigs page as soon as I find out.
This gig is often a celebrity jam session with a lot of stars coming through. Some names that come to mind from Barfly gigs this year are Kiefer Sutherland, Dennis Rodman, Bruce Willis, Dwight Yoakum, Slash, Jefferson Starship, Charlie Sheen, Billy Preston, and many others. The Barfly gig doesn't start until 10 and it goes until 2pm. Check it out. Barfly is at 8730 Sunset in the Sunset Towers Building.
So between the Rob Mullins Band with Greg Vail, the Eric Marienthal Band, the Hubert Laws Band, and the China Club All Stars, you can imagine how nutty it has gotten in the past couple of months. There was a week in November where I started out the week with a Monday night gig in New York, Wednesday night gig in Hollywood, Friday night gig in Seal Beach, and Saturday is Seattle with Eric Marienthal. It is always great to see people come out and be supportive at the gigs and that always makes me feel less tired from the traveling when old friends come out to see how I am doing.

There is no New Year's gig this year...I am taking it off. I am very happy about that.<g>.

Teaching Day at Pedrini Music working out well

I have been really enjoying my teaching day (usually Thursdays) out at Pedrini Music in Alhambra since I started working there about a month ago. My students are great, and I am having fun with that gig. I have been hard at work on my first couple of instructional books on improvisation, theory, studio work, etc, for the past couple of months actually. I have ben wanting to do a method book for helping people learn how to play better and learn faster for a long time. Starting teaching again has given me the needed push to get going on the first of the books and I am already about 200 pages into the first book. I am doing it on my laptop in my spare (lol) time now, so don't expect it to be ready until sometime towards the spring of 2001. My students of course are already working out of the texts and doing new exercises that I have come up with and we are seeing some great results. I really have a blast with this. If you need class or lesson information, you can  click here to talk to the store about your particular needs. If you are an advanced musician who just really needs some new life injected into your sound, I can really help you do that. Most of my students at this time are working pros actually. 

Greg's CD, Studio Stuff, busy schedule

While thinking that I would have some time to regroup after the Boys and Girls Club thing in October, What actually happened is that Greg booked my LA studio for the making of his new CD right on the heels of the B&G Concert. I don't think I could possibly communicate to anyone just exactly how much work that was to create that music in that time frame. I can tell you this though...the first song on his CD, my symphonic version of "Deck the Halls" took 21 hours to do on the computer. That's one three minute song folks. There are ten on the CD...hey, that reminds me, Greg has a website now where you can get his CD's...its at http://www.gregvail.com. In addition to that unexpected project, I got called for some TV work lately which I totally didn't expect. With all these things going on, it has just been impossible to deal with all the mail, the email, the phone calls, and keep the responses to you all getting back to you on a timely basis. For this we apologize and ask that you buy more CD's so that we can afford full time office help:)

I Just Love These!

Funny and interesting quotes by musicians/composers:

"Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the
Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years."
    * William F. Buckley, Jr.

"Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of
dying, he sings."
     * Robert Benchley

"The amount of money one needs is terrifying..."
       * Ludwig van Beethoven

"I never use a score when conducting my orchestra... Does a lion
tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion?"
       * Dimitri Mitropolous

"When she started to play, Steinway himself came down personally
and rubbed his name off the piano."
       * Bob Hope, to comedienne Phyllis Diller

"Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them."
        * Richard Strauss

"Flint must be an extremely wealthy town: I see that each of you
bought two or three seats."
       * Victor Borge, playing to a half-filled house in Flint,
Michigan.

"Don't bother to look, I've composed all this already."
      * Gustav Mahler, to Bruno Walter who had stopped to admire
mountain
scenery in rural Austria.

"You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh
and go slow."
      * Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket.

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
      * Mark Twain

"Already too loud!"
      * Bruno Walter at his first rehearsal with an American orchestra,
on seeing the players reaching for their instruments.

"I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my swimming pool than
play Bach and starve."
      * Xavier Cugat

"[Musicians] talk of nothing but money and jobs. Give me
businessmen every time. They really are interested in music and art."
        * Jean Sibelius, explaining why he rarely invited musicians to
his home.

"Only become a musician if there is absolutely no other way you can
make a living."
      * Kirke Mecham, on his life as a composer

"There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major."
       * Sergei Prokofiev

"In opera, there is always too much singing."
         * Claude Debussy

"Oh how wonderful, really wonderful, opera would be if there were no
singers!"
* Gioacchino Rossini

"A ponderous orchestral absurdity."
* Frank Zappa on his rock symphony debuted by the Los Angeles
Philharmonic

quotes sent in by eric walentowicz

Special Thanks for 2000!

Special thanks for the year 2000 go out to the following people who kept me
sane and healthy while trying to keep up with the most rigorous and challenging
year of my life so far. 

Mel Hicke
Elissa Kuykendall
Shirley Werner
Carolyn Axel
Greg Vail
Cathy Goodrich
Tina Evans
Miles Joseph
Lori Rodgers
Eric Marienthal
Melissa Nunn
Meghann Snow
Ira Boucher
Efrem Jasso
Dennis Samperi