14 ALL ACCESS MAGAZINE March 24th to April 13th, 2005

PHOTOS AND STORY BYRICCIROCKS.COM

Sun. Feb 20, and Mon. Feb 21, 2005were the days I attended Rock & RollFantasy Camp, a David Fishoff pro-duction - sponsored by JBL. What aconcept! If you are a musician of ANYsort, at any level, and you have$8,000.00- then come to FantasyCamp like 70 other people did fromaround the United States, (includingHomer Simpson & Ellen Degeneres),and jam for 5 full days with the likesof Roger Daltrey, Bruce Kulick, JackBlades, Bret Michaels, to name just afew of the huge names that this camprecruits as "camp counselors".

Carmine Appice has attended pastfantasy camps, and who wouldn'twant the legendary Carmine in theirband??

Thursday, Friday, Saturday &Sunday the camp was held at S.I.R.Studios on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood,and what an event this was. I wish I'dthought of it first!I arrived about 2pm in the pouringrain, and the first thing I did was graban ice cream bar from Archie's icecream truck. I haven't eaten icecream in the pouring rain lately, anddiscovered I wasn't the only onedoing this. Looking around, the firstfamiliar face I saw was Andrea, thebass player from ThundHerstruck,who was kind enough to get me aRock & Roll Fantasy Camp t-shir t,Thanks Andrea!!

I ventured into the studio, and sawJack Blades, the camp director, whowas very busy keeping tabs on all thebands. Jane Weidlin soon arrived,what a cutie she is! She is very petite,and she just glows. She jumped in theice cream truck for a quick interviewto be broadcast on VH-1 in the nearfuture. Then she went in and greetedall the campers, posed for photos,and signed lots of autographs. Themain sound stage at S.I.R. had somefabulous black & white images allaround the entire room, and includedin the display were shots of a veryyoung Bob Marley, some very adoles-cent looking Rolling Stones, Beatles,Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and I had agreat time checking that and all thegold records on the walls out.

I heard whispers that Sir RogerDaltrey had arrived, and went to find

him. There were about 7-8 bands- allpracticing in different rooms. Ipeeked into the first room, & I couldhear the incredibly powerful voice ofRoger Daltrey singing live. I enteredthe room to see him up on a stage,with Jack Blades and a group of 9 orso other musicians. They finishedtheir song, and then Roger congratu-lated and complimented all thecampers individually. Then everyoneslowly begin to crowd around him,began to ask him questions and gettheir stuff signed. So, I approachedhim, and said hi! I'm Ricci- he lookedat me and he said "Ello! I'm Roi-jah!"in a very sexy English accent.Someone then handed him a pen & aphoto of himself at probably 25 yearsof age, (he celebrated his 61st birth-

day earlier this week) in which he hasno shirt on, he's tan, muscular, and histrademark blond thick curls are long.He looked at it, said "Wow, look atme!" as Jack Blades quipped "Butwhose body is that?" Roger burst outlaughing, signed it, and handed it backto the camper. Then he told Jack(while pictures were being taken) "I'mgoing stand next to you so I can betall!" He had this great big smile onhis face the whole entire time he wasthere, and I could tell he really, reallyenjoyed doing the camp thing. It wasnow 6pm and I had to leave. I gaveJack Blades some Night Ranger pic-tures I had taken at their Key Clubshow on Feb 7th- and headed home.

The next day, the campers were allat the House of Blues for a "Battle of

ROCK ROLL FANTASY CAMPPLAY,PLAY,PLAY

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March 24th to April 13th, 2005 ALL ACCESS MAGAZINE 15

the Camper Bands" contest thatbegan at 3pm. The club was jampacked with the campers, theirfriends & families, & everyone wasarmed with video & still cameras. Ithad already started when I got there.Andrea's band, Who Cares?Featuring Vince Melamed, (JimmyBuffet, David Bowie, Eagles) had justleft the stage, so we went upstairs tograb some soup.

The awards were given out, (theywere plaques with gold records onthem and the plate read "I jammedwith" and then listed all the celebrityrock stars names). I went downstairsand positioned myself up front, justoff-center stage for the grand finale.Roger Daltrey came out and sang withJack Blades, Elliot Easton, BruceKulick, Simon Phillips, Kelly Keagy,Michael Lardie, & a few others. Theydid songs like Won't Get Fooled Again,Tommy, a couple Cars songs, includ-ing My Best Friends Girlfriend, someBad Co, and really, really broughtdown the house. Roger's voice, emit-ting the famous scream from Won'tGet Fooled Again, tore thru the club,which has amazing acoustics to beginwith. It sent shivers up my spine. Ihave seen the Who perform live oneprior time, at the Rose Bowl, YEARSago, and my seat was a million milesaway from the stage- This time, I waslike 3 feet in front of him, and I hadmy camera! He threw out to the audi-ence the band list, and the sheet oflyrics he sang from, of an originalsong written by the campers called"I'm So Tired". I got both. It was ashow I'll never ever forget. The bestI've been to in a very, very long time.

Then they had to clear out the clubfor a rap band that was coming in, soeveryone headed over to the KodakTheatre shopping center/restaurantcomplex for the VH-1/JBL Fantasy

Camp wrap party on the corner ofHollywood & Highland. There was din-ner for everyone, and included somedelicious baked salmon, chicken,there were potatoes, veggies, and adessert bar, plus open bar ALL NIGHT!I got to meet Bob Kulick, an amazingguitarist & even more amazing pro-ducer whose brother is of courseBruce. Both are really super down toearth guys, and Bruce has my pic-tures on his website now!! Bob won aGrammy award a month ago for hiswork with Motorhead's Lemmy.

Then I spoke with some of thecampers to get their take on thewhole deal. Dr Philip Geron is an oral

surgeon and also a forensic dentist who helped to identify over 500 victims of the World Trade Centerterrorist attack is from Summit, NewJersey. He said going to the campgets him away from his very busypractice, & it really helps take a lot ofthe tension off. He has played drumssince age 10.

Fred Savage, a controller for a smallconstruction company in Manchester,NY received his ticket to FantasyCamp for his 50th birthday from hiswife Veronica. She says she had noidea what to get him, but wanted tomake it really super special. She hadheard of baseball fantasy camp, soshe got on the internet, typed in rockand roll camp, and knew she hadstruck gold when she foundwww.rockandrollfantasycamp.com.She then wrote him a poem, andstuck it in a card, and presented himwith it. The last two lines of her poemread "Pack your guitar; you are goingto fantasy camp". He has played gui-tar since age 12.

I also met Shari & ChristianMartensen, who owns a hydroponicstore up in Santa Rosa, Ca. Sharisings, and her big band member wasBruce Kulick. Shari said it was a blast.She had taken tons of photosthroughout the week, then printedthem all up and left them on the barfor other people to go thru and take,

which I thought was really sweet. All in all, everyone who had any-

thing to do with the camp, (guests,employees, celebrity rockers) wasextremely pleased with the entireevent, and we all swore we'd seeeach other next year.

Congratulations to David Fishoff for an incredible successful, more-fun-then-you-can-imagine weekend, andI can only hope and pray I get to goagain!!!

More photos of this event can be seen on my website atwww.RicciRocks.com