The New KaBinks

The New KaBinks

Since I officially began calling myself KaBinks, much has happened. Originally just a Message board name to honor my baby cat, (at the time she was 17), Kabinks has come to mean different things to different people. When I made the decision to actively get involved with helping local bands, Binks became immortal. My baby, Binky lived to be 20, but her name is now linked with mine all over the web and all over the world.
My daily Google Alerts come back in many languages, all speaking the universal language of music. She will be remembered.

My goal is and has always been, to promote LIVE music. To get people off their butt and out to the venue, whether it's a bar or an arena. Recorded music is a different animal and bears little resemblance to the performance experience. One only has to listen to the pre-packaged, over produced swill that passes itself off as "Popular Music" and wonder, what's so great about this.Today's Pop with all those sound effects and over dubs, making pretty people sound halfway decent, using studio musicians, all to sell a product. And dupe you. Where is the great music I grew up with??

It's out there folks, but YOU have to get out of your chair, house, car to experience it.
There are so many talented bands out there, scraping along, trying to make ends meet. YOU are missing it. The electricity that comes off the stage from musicians who are poring their very souls into their performance, that, my friends, is the greatest high you will ever feel. And you can experience it yourself, just inches away, if you only go out and give it a chance. It doesn't have to be some big-name band. Just pick music you like and you will find fresh new songs every bit as good, maybe better, without putting out a fortune to sit in a giant stadium and watch a speck on a stage (while the sound bounces off the walls and becomes incomprehensible).

So, I film and photograph and network and beg bands to let me help promote them (for free) Sometimes, it makes them a bit nervous, what kind of nut does all this for nothing? But, like a line from Inglorious Bastards (new, but my new favorite and sure to be a classic) , 99.9999% there is a catch, but history has shown that fate will extend a hand once in a while (okay, it's something like that) And 99% of the bands I have helped would agree. I'm the same kind of nut who puts their all into religion, or sports, or politics. A nut who is passionate about what they believe. We are all crazy, it's just the degree and intent that matters. My arrow is pointing firmly toward the good side of crazy.

I believe that music is the universal language and live music can bring us all together. Live music makes us alive. I "feel" music. You can too,

Over the next month I will be taking KaBinks Music Promotions to a new level. So much is in the works, it doesn't make sense to start a new "kabinks" pages with established pages already here.
I will be separating all Kabinks pages from my personal life. My Myspace page, KaBinks, will be dedicated to Videos and band promotions. I will still also continue to promote my personal favorite bands on "unofficial"

I will friend each of you(my buds) on my new personal page soon (it's up, just needs some tweaks) don't worry, you'll know it's me.
Happy New Year,
Karen/Binks

Band Mom

No I'm not selling frozen turkeys and peanut butter cups for uniforms.   Not trying to fund raise with magazine subscriptions for trips to Disney World to perform. The fact is none of my kids were in the High School Band.

My daughters both played Violin in the School Orchestra; they wore their own dressy white shirt with a black skirt or pants. My son was in a garage band (Negative Salute or N/S) for a few years, but they never made it out of the garage.  I am a different kind of Band Mom.

I met my adopted sons when they opened for my favorite band during a road trip in North Carolina. Marty and I were already taking a lot of flack for our second C! trip in a month. We didn't care; we were going to see C! 2 more times, AWESOME . In retrospect, it was the second turning point in my life this year.

Reggae/Rock is hard to explain until you've heard it. Anyone who dances loves Reggae, but think of putting in some riff-rock and a hard edge. Mix it up with some honest, hardworking kids (OK, so they're in their 20's, that = kid to me). Add some real catchy lyrics with a twist. Result??  A Band called Lionize.

Serendipity doesn't come close to describing the star crossed events that intersected to give me 4 more sons. Both fortunate and unfortunate events conspired together.  I'll try to sort them out.

·                     Unfortunate; The vocalist for C! was ill (that was a horrible time for all of us); we couldn't find a hotel room near the second show.

·                     Fortunate; the first show was empty, giving us tons of space to dance. We had to hang out at all day at the venue on the second day.

In Jacksonville NC, we danced our......um.....tushies off to this new sound that we both fell in love with. We brought their CD and played it all the way to Fayetteville, singing along the whole time.  Then in Fayetteville, being the only vehicle in the parking lot besides the bands' transportation, we got invited to hang out with members of all 3 bands (AWESOME< AWESOME)

      

Already in love with the music, we fell in love with the boys.

While C! traveled in their mega tour bus and stayed in hotels, our poor boys traveled in a beat-up van and slept in the back with a generator feeding a jury-rigged Air Conditioner (Yes I know C! started that way too, but that's not my story to tell)

It broke our hearts and we decided we would do anything we could to ease their journey to success. We adopted them.

So what does my brand of band mom do????   Whatever we can do to care for them when we go to see them and whatever we can do to promote them  all the time.

Hopefully, the little things we do will help them get where they want to be a little faster, make things a little easier, and make them happy to have met us and invited us into their world.  

That's all a mom can hope for.