Moodswing 360’s Ricky Greenstein (Part Two)

[cpnews]

Mixing apples and oranges

Yesterday we posted part one of Steve's conversationwith Ricky Greenstein. They discussed what his company, Moodswing360 is allabout, and well as spending some time wrapping their heads around the conceptof the “mash upâ€. If you missed day one, read it now.Otherwise keep on reading for day two.

Yesterday I briefly touched on Ricky Greenstein’s client, Tommy Lee, lending his good name to PETA’s no fur campaign. I wanted to put out a little background on how that was part of club policy at my joints four different times. The idea of banning fur coats from nightclubs came to me one night while watching Warren Beatty’s “Heaven Can Waitâ€. In this movie Warren Beatty’s character suggested that one of his companies’ subsidiaries, a tuna canning conglomerate which was under attack for the accidental killing of dolphins during the fishing/netting process, adopt methods to prevent their harm. A minion suggested the cost of saving the dolphins would be prohibitive. Beatty’s character suggested taking on the cost, saving the dolphins, charging a bit more, and advertising that they were the “good guy tuna companyâ€. I had become friends with Dan Matthews of PETA and was always looking for ways to help them in their most noble cause. The idea of banning furs at Tunnel nightclub, making the statement that fur was not fashionable, and people wearing it would be denied entry as part of the dress code, came to me. I approached Peter Gatien and to my surprise he was all for it. PETA had agreed to supply us with a celebrity to help publicize our statement, and also agreed to throw a star studded event at the club. The publicity generated by ours and PETA’s advertising and marketing, plus money from the event would easily offset any loss of revenues. Kim Basinger became our poster queen. We plastered her on every blank wall in Manhattan and Peter stuck to his word. We were screamed at by the fur trade, we banned celebrities, and even kept out Gianfranco Ferre and a herd of Italian woman in fox and mink. These milf’s were miffed. A few years later at Life we did it again with Pamela Anderson leading the way. It was a huge publicity stunt, and having another beauty aligned with us and selling us again protected the bottom line. Roy Stillman, the owner of Life, was also enthusiastic in this supporting this endeavor. We did it at Spa as well with Dominique Dunne posing for our poster. Owner David Marvisi, a bottom line kind of guy, never complained as he became convinced that this ban indeed helped generate revenues. Axel Rose couldn’t get in one night at Spa wearing his fur, and supposedly threw a fit and quit Guns and Roses saying something like, ‘If I can’t get into a NYC club then why am I in this band?’ The story seems to be true and I chatted with him one night at Aspen. I apologized that he seemed to be treated poorly back then, but not for my policy. He was polite, and that week as promoter pal Vegas escorted him around town we’d do stop and chats.

Yesterday I mentioned Tommy Lee going out of his way and doing the poster/party thing with Home, and I guess I didn’t mention Jon B, Home’s owner, who was again very helpful and cooperative with this noble cause. In the next couple of weeks as the winter approaches, I’ll be knocking on some doors and trying to do it again. Fur is no longer necessary in today’s fashion as fake fur has become so realistic. Fashion week has gotten me riled up again and I’ll be trying to forge another alliance between a club or clubs and PETA. I’m not normally political, but my pets are like my children. Wives have come and gone and I’ve had good and bad days, and years, but through it all my sixteen year old Chihuahua, Arturo has been there for me. The cruelty of man to make intelligent and emotional creatures into clothes for vanity offends me. P.s. - if any of the club owner/management types are interested in getting on board I guarantee you I can help make this a sound business decision. If it worked at Tunnel, Life, Spa and for three years at Home all run by extremely saavy businessmen, then it can work for you.

Steve Lewis: So I’m working on this idea that in the 1940’s you had swing music, in the 1950’s you had folk and jazz, in the 60’s you had rock n’ roll, 70’s you had disco, 80’s you had hip-hop, you had house. Has there been a musical genre since? There doesn’t seem to have been a genre since aids. In the 1980’s when aids happened, it seems that we have not had a musical genre, and that we are basically living on past genres, and the mash up trend comes along The reality is there hasn’t been a musical genre that I can think of. What has happened in this technological age is a mixing, of everything is mashing up or open format. Is it the new genre? We’re talking twenty-five years since the birth of a genre.

Ricky Greenstein: That’s extremely interesting, I never really thought of it like that…

SL: It’s something that I’m really starting to believe is true. I keep talking to the people in the music industry about this.

RG: It definitely started with guys who took hip-hop and rock and mashed them up together, and now it’s become this electro house music now mashed into that. If you go to these clubs today a lot of it is high-tempo stuff with electro house beats, hip-hop over and rock played over it. They mash it all up.

SL: So at this point we have a new genre.

RG: I’d have to say it all started fully happening a couple years ago with what I call the Vegas lottery. There was a lot of competition going on because DJs would go around and play a lot of different spots in Vegas. Then one guy came up and said, ‘I’m going to pay you a lot of money, just play my spot exclusively,’ and quite frankly it was probably the best thing that ever happened. DJ AM took the gig and showed everyone his mix in an open format. He wasn’t the original one to do it, but he certainly got a lot of attention, and therefore became a catalyst of it.

SL: Of course, he’s at the highest grossing club in the country.

RG: It was the birth of casino night clubs; it was the birth of this open format genre. But now it’s developed into AM and Travis playing together, which was Travis on drums. I guess that sort of gave me the idea to have Skribble with Dave Navarro with on the guitar.

SL: I saw him (Dave Navarro) a couple weeks ago with his band over at Webster Hall.

RG: Yeah. Camp Freddy, they were amazing. We actually book them now exclusively.

SL: Camp Freddy is beyond belief; it’s a cover band, the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, normally you go to a concert and you know five of the bands’ songs, you wait there through a set that you don’t know until the hits are played. . But Camp Freddy, they are doing covers of every song we know. Dave Navarro is extremely talented.

RG: He is. And at first when I asked him to be the guitarist that would play with Skribble, Dave had to refer to a couple friends and be like, ‘Is this the cool thing to do?’ I guess they said yes and so they went into they studio for two months. You have to check out the show…

SL: Ok, so the crowd comes in - is the DJ just laying low or is it automatically in full performance mode?

RG: No. Like Skribble would come out and DJ and Navarro would join him basically right away. It’s not really like an entrance kind of thing.

SL: Is it an all night thing?

RG: It’s normally a forty-five minute show; yeah he rips the guitar for about forty-five minutes straight. He’ll be playing a Jane’s Addiction song over like a Jay-Z beat or something.

SL: Does it have the quality of a jazz jam where anything can happen?

RG: It’s actually mostly rehearsed, and thank god because it comes off a lot better that way. I think at first they probably jammed…

SL: So cool.

RG: It is, and you know we’re trying to come up with more things like it. More mixes of DJ’s with drummers and such.

SL: I touched on Tiesto and I know his tour over the summer did twenty-three million dollars or something like that.

Sarah Cunningham (Publicist): Yeah. I’m not going to talk about numbers but he did sell out three nights.

SL: These are rock star numbers; this guy’s getting Billy Idol numbers without needing the entourage. Billy is playing tonight over at Roseland and I’m seeing some of the familiar faces from his band in this hotel lobby where were interviewing. So Tiesto tours with relatively little equipment and virtually no entourage.

RG: It’s literally a laptop and that’s basically it.

SL: This is an extremely lucrative new development. Now Roger Sanchez types and the regulars are getting $50,000 fees.

RG: Yeah they have, some of them do.

SL: So the DJ is the new rock star.

RG: I’d say yes.

SL: And rock stars with DJs is something were going to see a lot more of.

RG: I agree.

Good Night,

Mr. Lewis

Interview conducted and written by Steve Lewis.

Interview has been edited and condensed by Jessica Tocko.

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