This Time It’s The Hudsons
Thursday, November 21st, 2013
Sometimes I just get one of those feelings that if I bypass a celebrity at an autograph show, I’ll come to regret it. In fact, there are numerous celebrities out there that I wish I had had that feeling – long after it was too late. The Hudson Brothers didn’t even make the cut onto my ‘maybe’ list quite simply because I had never, ever heard of them. And it’s little wonder really; even as a consummate music fan and collector, I wasn’t all that familiar with stars of the early and mid-1970’s, especially if they neither cracked the end of the year Top 100, nor ever had a number one hit. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ll admit that at times some of my celebrity encounters are a little obscure. That is most certainly true in this example, but in this case the operative word is not obscure, but little. Like to the tune of two feet, nine inches tall little. At the Hollywood Show in Los Angeles on April 20, 2013, I met a Hungarian man named Michu (real name: Mihaly Meszaros) who has been billed throughout the years as the ‘shortest man in the world.’ That’s not quite true, but damn, this guy was short! So exactly who is he, you ask? Well, he only seems to tout two things about himself: that he was often the guy who was inside the costume of ALF – the alien life form on the series of the same name – and the fact that he was friends with Michael Jackson. 
Little did I know that the Afghan Whigs concert that I saw at Bogarts in Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 25, 1999, would be their final public performance for more than a dozen years. Neither did the band, according to bassist John Curley during a conversation we had. After the tour ended for their album 1965, they went into the studio and in his words, “it just wasn’t happening.” This left a long void for the fans of the band, of which I was quite a big one. My ex-wife Lisa had introduced me to them almost right after we met, and after working my way through their albums Gentlemen and Black Love, I gradually started becoming quite fond of them. 
Sometimes I might complain about cancellations, over-inflated prices, or celebrities whom I’ve never heard of at the Hollywood Show. But I will admit that there are times when these celebrity shows offer unique experiences unlike any other. The case in point here happened at the August 4, 2012, show – at which three members of Paul McCartney’s Wings congregated under one roof to meet some of their fans. Okay, okay, so it’s not like meeting Paul himself, but still… they were there…in a band… with Paul freakin’ McCartney. Each of the three were credited on albums that came out from Wings… featuring Paul McCartney. Paul was a Beatle, you know. 
But I’m not sure what blew my mind more: the fact that the ever-so-simplistic song Mickey lives on in our hearts and continues to conjure up images of valley girls in the early 1980’s, or the fact that thirty years after the fact, I was able to meet the performer of this classic song. It must evoke a rather mind-blowing experience for Toni Basil as well. Afterall, she didn’t write the song, nor does her performance of it stand out as anything that would blow the minds of the American Idol judges – and yet we are still willing to shell out $20 for an autographed photo, based solely on the success of this #1 Billboard song 30 years earlier.