I know it's a long shot, but...
I've asked him if he'd like to help me re-record a tune I wrote a while ago. It won a songwriting competition. But I used a preset piano-rhythm pattern on my keyboard, so it sounds a bit stilted
Here's the tune: http://soundcloud.com/songwriter101/you-call-to-me
I'll let you know if he writes back 
Good for you! Sometimes people say yes, and you're doing the right thing by contacting him directly. A lot of famous people have written forewords for my books, and I didn't have compromising pictures of them or anything...I just asked and as luck would have it, I asked nice people. But it seems every time I tried to contact someone through their management company, I never got a response, not even a rude "No, f*ck off."
I wanted to do a cover of a Julian Cope song to deconstruct the parts as a sort of educational thing about multitracking, and asked through his management company if they would consider it fair use as I wouldn't make any money from it. Never heard a word back.
OTOH, I'd heard about an up-and-coming songwriter in the UK and asked him directly if I could do a cover version of one of his songs, and he said sure. I'm positive if I'd gone through his management, I would have been blown off and I never would have been able to do a cover of "Black Market Daydreams." 
Here's one more story about the power of just asking. Once I met John Cage after a lecture, and I said "Hey, you want to come over to my apartment and have lunch?" He seemed slightly taken aback, but then said "Sure." So he came over and had lunch. And I realized THAT'S why he was so cool: Some kid he didn't know from Adam could ask if he wanted to come over and have lunch, and he figured hey, why not. That was an important lesson to me about coolness - always say yes, you never know what interesting things might happen as a result.
Let's see if Rick Wakeman is cool or not.
)
Anderton wrote:Good for you! Sometimes people say yes, and you're doing the right thing by contacting him directly. A lot of famous people have written forewords for my books, and I didn't have compromising pictures of them or anything...I just asked and as luck would have it, I asked nice people. But it seems every time I tried to contact someone through their management company, I never got a response, not even a rude "No, f*ck off."
I wanted to do a cover of a Julian Cope song to deconstruct the parts as a sort of educational thing about multitracking, and asked through his management company if they would consider it fair use as I wouldn't make any money from it. Never heard a word back.
OTOH, I'd heard about an up-and-coming songwriter in the UK and asked him directly if I could do a cover version of one of his songs, and he said sure. I'm positive if I'd gone through his management, I would have been blown off and I never would have been able to do a cover of "Black Market Daydreams."
Here's one more story about the power of just asking. Once I met John Cage after a lecture, and I said "Hey, you want to come over to my apartment and have lunch?" He seemed slightly taken aback, but then said "Sure." So he came over and had lunch. And I realized THAT'S why he was so cool: Some kid he didn't know from Adam could ask if he wanted to come over and have lunch, and he figured hey, why not. That was an important lesson to me about coolness - always say yes, you never know what interesting things might happen as a result.
Let's see if Rick Wakeman is cool or not.
Exactly right. Great attitude.
And wow.....you got to hang out with John Cage.
Oh, and this is actually true. My friend was on the game show (the one with the letters, I forget the name) and I was in the audience and came down after filming. I met Vanna White, talked for a while, and...I'm not usually this bold, but for some reason, I blurted out, "May I kiss you?" and she said yes (and interestingly, didn't visually react to it as an odd request!). Go figure. I realize this is on a much smaller scale than having lunch with John Cage, but i thought I'd mention the power of positive thinking nonetheless. 
UstadKhanAli wrote:
[...]Oh, and this is actually true. My friend was on the game show (the one with the letters, I forget the name) and I was in the audience and came down after filming. I met Vanna White, talked for a while, and...I'm not usually this bold, but for some reason, I blurted out, "May I kiss you?" and she said yes (and interestingly, didn't visually react to it as an odd request!). Go figure. I realize this is on a much smaller scale than having lunch with John Cage, but i thought I'd mention the power of positive thinking nonetheless.
I believe there may be people on this planet -- and perhaps not a few -- who would think kissing Vanna White was a bigger deal than hanging with John Cage. Now... Harry Partch, on the other hand, clearly would trump Vanna.
blue2blue wrote:
UstadKhanAli wrote:
[...]Oh, and this is actually true. My friend was on the game show (the one with the letters, I forget the name) and I was in the audience and came down after filming. I met Vanna White, talked for a while, and...I'm not usually this bold, but for some reason, I blurted out, "May I kiss you?" and she said yes (and interestingly, didn't visually react to it as an odd request!). Go figure. I realize this is on a much smaller scale than having lunch with John Cage, but i thought I'd mention the power of positive thinking nonetheless.
I believe there may be people on this planet -- and perhaps not a few -- who would think kissing Vanna White was a bigger deal than hanging with John Cage. Now... Harry Partch, on the other hand, clearly would trump Vanna.
And either way, at least for me, kissing Vanna White would be a bigger deal than kissing Cage. Or Partch.
Help Desk