Billy J.Kramer WITHOUT The Dakotas
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
To die-hard buffs, Billy J. Kramer’s name will be inextricably linked to the Beatles forever. For starters, both the Beatles and Kramer were managed by Brian Epstein. The ‘J” in Kramer’s name was suggested by John Lennon to give him an ‘edgier’ sound. Then when they were assigned to Parlophone Records, they begun working for producer George Martin, who produced nearly the entire Beatles catalog. Then the Beatles gave Kramer a barrage of Lennon/McCartney compositions to launch his career. These include: Do You Want To Know a Secret?, I’ll Be On My Way, I Call Your Name, Bad To Me, I’ll Keep You Satisfied, and From a Window. The latter three of these were among a very small group of Lennon/McCartney songs that the Beatles themselves never released. Read the rest of this entry »
I aimlessly roamed through the Spring of 1992. College student, father, partier, opportunist, music buff, Brady Bunch fan, Robert DeNiro idolizer, Kroger bagger, Laserdisc player owner. That was me. It was back to the drawing board of figuring out life after I had come to the conclusion that the job offer from Keith had been a hoax. Miraculously, I hung on to him as a friend, a deal which was sweetened by the fact that he was constantly buying me CDs, Laserdiscs, and taking me to rock concerts. 
William Sadler was charging an additional $10 to get a picture with him after buying an autograph for $20 – and I didn’t care for that proposition. In fact he was on my ‘solid maybe’ list to even pick up his signature at all while he was making an appearance at the Chiller Theatre Show in Parsippany, New Jersey on Saturday, October 30. Perhaps he thought he could merit this exorbitant amount of money because he was one of those Star Trek people, having portrayed Luther Sloan in Star Trek Deep Space Nine. He had a few other notable roles as well, in such fine films as The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Hard To Kill. 
Following my 20 year class reunion, excitement ceased for a great while. I had been doing a lot of traveling and having fun, spending great times with Erin, seeing the world, meeting celebrities, eating my way through the restaurants of America, and spending money like water. But once we hit the dog days of summer, it all came to a crashing halt. Worse yet, it became all-too- clear that a long-distance relationship wasn’t going to work. Erin and I were a great match for the times that we were together, but by August 1, we had decided that the distance and circumstances were going to mean that we would have to call it quits. I still haven’t quite been able to reconcile that one. 