Local Rock Star
Sitting at the table with long, thick, blonde hair and a hint of Brad Pitt’s facial features sits Brian. He is a 17 year old high school junior, a guitarist in a local band, and he is my interview. He will begin nearly all his sentences with “uhh…” but then proceeds to long, interesting answers.
I started by asking him about when he became interested in music, and who his influences were. “I’ve always listened to music,” he said, “my first album ever was Nirvana’s Nevermind; it was a cassette tape. I also listened to a lot of Michael Jackson—don’t laugh, I mean like Thriller and stuff.”
What inspired you to play an instrument?
“The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ CD Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic was the first time I realized I wanted to play an instrument.”
What instruments do you play?
“I’ve played guitar for the last four years, saxophone for the last two—though only in the school band,” he said. “The keyboard, bass and drums I can ‘musically understand,’ though I don’t usually play them.”
So tell me about the band. What’s the significance of the band’s name, No Name Charlies?
“Uhh… well we had, like, 100 names that we had gone through and we didn’t really like. Then Greg, our former trombone player, said that whenever his teacher in elementary school would get an essay without a name on it, she’d call it a ‘no name Charlie.’ We all kind of liked it; it’s definitely grown on us since then.”
He told me the band came together in November 2001, and their first show was in spring 2002. There has been a lot of movement in terms of the band members: some have come and gone, some have come, gone and come back again, some switch instruments, and others have stepped in. The configuration, as i...
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...ur first one,” he says, referring to their 2003 demo Shut Up and Listen! They met Pat Kays, bassist for the band Catch 22, when they opened for his band last year. Kays told the boys he liked their sound, and was interested in engineering and, to an extent, producing. “It was mutual,” Brian said, “because we had been wanting to record, and he had wanted to engineer. It all kind of fell into place.”
Youthful endurance, continuing optimism and a small—but steadily growing—fan base have all contributed to the No Name Charlies’ local success. When asked whether the band would take the chance to become famous—if the chance was given—Brian said they would take it without question. However, he thinks balance is important, and would not sacrifice a college education for it. When asked if he thinks the band will make it big, Brian replied, “I’d like to think so.”
Ringing in the New Year, we’ve chosen an individual who has created his own music and created interesting remixes of other songs over the course of (now) 16 years. We enjoy the twists he plays on his music and admire his efforts to take his music to live performance stage. Local to Brick Township, NJ, Brian Stewart (DJversion666) started out, born and raised, in Evansville Indiana, playing in a multitude of bands, playing bass and/or singing various genres of music. Upon moving to Nashville, he has done studio work, laying down bass tracks for commercials and advertisements. Continuing down the path of music Stewart attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. He combines various genres and ties them all together with an industrial sound.
David Stark Latta is my mother's step-father, he was born on December 6, 1937 in Pontiac, Michigan and has spent most of his life here. David raised my mother and three other children from his previous marriage. My grandfather and I talked for about an hour or so, the interview became more of a conversation, it was very comfortable for him to talk to me about his life, and no question was really off limits; him and I have a wonderful and close relationship. When the interview began he turned town the television and offered me a beer, and I started with asking him about his childhood. He told me that when he was an adolescence he would spend most of his summer days swimming with the his friends in a gravel pit turned lake. They would play baseball in the fields next to Maceday Lake, which is well a well known local lake, and go camping on the weekends at the Pontiac recreational area. These kids that he grew up with in high school still remain in close contact with my grandfather. He tells me that around 11 or 12 of them get together at the local coney island almost ev...
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“I mean I liked that one song he was on but I would hardly call myself a fan” I thought.
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Another way Hamlet can be approached is from a Freudian psychoanalytic approach. This psychoanalytic viewpoint is specifically derived from Freud’s theories regarding the human mind. Freud was a psychologist who introduced the concept of the oedipus complex, which presents humans as sexual creatures whose entire life revolves around sexual desires. Freud argued that people’s lives revolved around sex from the day they were born, which causes children to resent the parent of the same sex because they are jealous of their relationship with the opposite sex. This can be seen in Hamlet from Hamlet’s spite of Claudius and the desire to kill him even if he has no proof that Claudius killed his father. From a Freudian viewpoint, this anger and hate arises from the oedipus complex. Hamlet repeatedly
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