A truncated list of contributors to this website...
(The following non-profit, not-for-profit, and profit-is-ok-but-please-don't-hate-us groups, support The Zonks in every way except financially, morally, and telepathically... bastards.)
Moral Relativists of America
Meter Readers of the Yukon Territory.
Flightless Birds for the Ethical Treatment of Ailurophobes
The Foundation for Charity Research
The Institute of Cause and Effect, (don't donate because we asked, donate because we didn't)
The Starbuck's Baristas are mostly not satan-spawn support groups united- (Earth Chapter)
The Communist Party of America (The real one)
The Paid in Crayon Education Front
The I Dreamed It, It's mine Trademark Association ©
The Useless Word Compendium Consortium Group... LLC
Shut Your F'ing Garage Door at Night! Neighbor Nazi's of California, Orange County Chapter
Now for the fun part of this multi-media escapade...
Serendipity: finding something, when you were looking for something else.
I only wanted to write a book, which I did. I discovered soon after it was finished, however, that the hard part had just begun. Tis the truth and nothing but.
Epiphany: A brain fart.
Somewhere over Topeka it occurred to me that The zOnks! were real... No, really, they are. How did I know for sure?
H. G. Wells sent me this message from beyond the grave:
The Martians are coming...
What is a Beatle? It is a fictional character emanating from a man's mind. It is an exclusive club, patented, copyrighted, trademarked, and zealously guarded by a team of lawyers. Beatles are not born they are created....
The same is true for our heros. The Zonks are as real as any band that ever was. Proof? They have lawyers too...
With nasty Fangs...
Soooooo, I created this band to market the book...
Who could have dreamed that they would actually be good, and actually be able to write incredible music, and actually be world-class musicians? Wow, really really really unbelievable...
It's amazing, there are still people who think the band is not real just because they can't get an album. (They are making them as fast as they can! There is only ONE company left in the country that still makes vinyl records. Don't believe? Google it!) They aren't unreal because you can't get an album yet! They are only unreal because they are caught in a time warp!
Still don't believe that The zOnks! are real? Call Fox News, or CNN, or NBC. DEMAND to know the truth and they will tell you. And if they don't know, they will investigate... (We hope!)
My sister made a keen observation after reading an early and awful rough draft... "I know why you can write now. You have met so many people and they all have a story." Tis true, and some of them have indeed made their way into my book. (Pray you are not one of them.)I am always skeptical about invention. True genius is a rare commodity and an authentically inventive artist is rarer. Even the great songwriters more often than not admit to being inspired or influenced in some fashion when describing their new music. The example I think of most often is the day Lennon and McCartney took a taxi together and one asked the driver if he had been working hard. His reply, "Eight days a week!" The master songwriters shared an epiphany that day. They both looked at each other and smiled... Manna from heaven! I doubt that taxi driver even got a penny for his trouble.I have a theory about writers of music and writers of stories. Most are more passive revealers than active creators about 99% percent of the time. They simply watch, listen, and wait. Everyone hears the same thing, sees the same thing, feels the same thing at the epochal moment, but the writer is always fishing. And when he or she catches something in their mind, they simply place it on a pedestal and point at it. Once on the pedestal it acquires an imprimatur that sometimes turns even a meager observation into what we call... art. My story came to me in a seemingly inconsequential photo. I am sure thousands of people have seen the same picture, and many of those had the same thoughts that I did when they looked at it. But for some reason I felt compelled to treat it with a bit more respect than most. I thought, here is a photo of a band from 1967... They could be dead now... One could be in Africa... The other could be an engineer... The other could be in prison... Yet another might have joined another band and made it big... Who knew? I wondered where they were. I wondered if they still longed for the days when they were playing. I wondered what would happen if they had a reunion... and some sort of magic occurred. All I did was look at a photo and imagine- What would these guys look like reimagined in a book? In other words: Up on the "pedestal."I think music creation happens in much the same way. Anyone can hum a made-up song, but the songwriter listens to that modest tune and thinks- 'Okay, that's not very interesting, but what if it went like this...' Everyone else simply thinks- Not very interesting, Goodbye!Rock and Roll is naught but rhythmic surprise. It is a broken wheel, jumping at odd intervals as the irregular rim rolls down the road. Every instrument in a rock band is a percussion instrument, and every member of a band carves an odd divot into the wheel with their instrument that either creates a song, or augments the new creation. Admittedly conundrums arise though when will talk about the outliers. Superstars like The Beatles, The Stones, LZ, and a few others like The Kinks (OK! I like them, alright?) seem to have forged new ground out of whole cloth. I suspect the greatest songwriters somehow channel rhythms from parallel universes, or maybe there really is a Father Zonk? I could be wrong, but where else would a tune like The Immigrant Song come from? A cosmic taxi driver? Music cannot be explained by science. Seven notes plus sharps and flats... That's all that there is. Seven notes creating an infinite variety of sound with an infinite combination of harmonies, rhythms, melodies... and words. Music is magic and mystery, and completely illogical. There is no reason why any certain combination of sounds should make music, and others noise. And yet, they do. This mystery has always intrigued me. I wanted to write a story about this mystery... so I put a picture on a pedestal. That's all. Wonderfully Wacked Theories...
(Notice a trend? Buy it here too!)
