Apparently I sleep walked through 1984 when I was, checks notes, a high schooler in Portland OR. Why didn't some one drag me to see 'Stop Making Sense' the Talking Heads concert film by Jonathan Demme. Pretty sure it would have changed my life.
Maybe it's more obvious now that David Byrne is a musical genius, but I was into music then. I think I would have picked up what he was putting down. Add to that the creative construction of the concert & Demme's cinematographic language. I'm sure I would have found ...
... a foundation for my own inspiration. I do have my own deeper, darker story to tell. It was about this time I met Michael Backman. You may have read about him in 1999 when Newsweek reported on the con-man who went back to his old high school to reboot his life.
Read it here - newsweek.com/he-walked-us-h…
I was in choir with and a friend of Michael's during his trip through the halls of US Grant High School in Portland, Or. We talked in school, i sometimes picked him up or dropped him off at home after a choir concert.
We were ambitious for choir kids, but we were in Portland in the mid 80s. It was the environment that produced Tonya Harding but also Katherine Dunn's 'Geek Love' and "Drugstore Cowboy" a Gus Van Sant movie filmed in town. It felt like something was happening and we wanted in.
That idea was Y.E.S. short for Youth Entertainment Shows. The idea was we would start a production company to hold concerts and recruit talented local kids to be the opening act. They would get a chance at being discovered, we would get rich.
I don't think the original idea was Michael's, but he ran with it. He held meetings in the private dining room at Yaws - a local restaurant (now the site of a McDonald's) where we went over business plans, budgets & ideas over milkshakes. In our youth it all seemed very doable
I think Michael really felt this was his ticket to the next level. But around the sixth meeting the cracks in his reality began to show. We needed seed funding and Michael promised it would come in the form of a check from his aunt... you guessed it Diana Ross.
It took another meeting or so of milkshakes and planning at Yaws, but eventually we figured out Y.E.S. was a mirage. As far as I know, Micheal hadn't swindled anyone this time. No money was asked for or received. His first(?) long con fell apart before it got to that stage.
Unfortunately, he got better at the con and worse at being trustworthy. I do still wonder if the idea of Y.E.S. could have worked with the right creative support. The All-New Mickey Mouse Club debuted a few years later and from that came many stars of the 90s.
@threadreaderapp unroll please
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
