‘The Wall Will Fall,’ ‘World on Fire’ and ‘Comic Book Heroes’

Although Rick Springfield fans are no longer getting their RS fixes in the pre-pandemic way (aka lots of concerts and videos posted by fans who attend those concerts), RS is providing plenty of entertainment in other ways.

In addition to the “No Human Touch” parody mentioned in the last post, there’s also the new “Glove Somebody” featuring a mix of old and current band members and two dogs.

There has also been seven versions of the instructional videos on how to play “Jessie’s Girl” in 60 seconds but despite his best efforts, we still don’t know. (So far his efforts have been sidelined by an “earthquake,” a “fire” and “technical difficulties.”)

The songwriting with a partner mini-series with Vance DeGeneres is having a bit more success though, as the song is really coming along nicely. Plus the videos are hilarious. The nice part is about being at home all the time is that I can stop everything to watch them as soon as I notice that they’re posted and they always make me laugh.

The videos have featured several guests and according to a new article on the Rock Cellar magazine website, the plan is to eventually release the song, currently called “The Wall Will Fall,” and donate any funds raised to a COVID-19 charity.

Can we spend a few minutes unpacking that new article? There’s so much good stuff in there!

• The final edit of “World on Fire,” the sequel to “Magnificent Vibration,” is in progress and it’s “about a plague and how the Earth brings it to the people to try and save herself.” (He’s been working on it for three years and it’s going through its final edit when there’s an actual global plague. Pretty weird, especially when there are stories about how Los Angeles now has blue skies because there’s less pollution now that there’s not so much traffic and Venice canals are the cleanest they ever were, etc., which probably makes the Earth happy.)
  
• More details on the HG Wells cutout from the Beatles Sgt. Pepper cover. (Which answers my question from a past blog post.)
  
• He’s been working on acoustic guitar versions of “Comic Book Heroes” songs. He’s played a few on his fan club site, but I didn’t realize he was planning on playing all of them and will eventually do something more with them. Yay! “Comic Book Heroes” is my favorite of his older albums and I can’t wait to hear “Born Out of Time.” (My favorite on the album is “Believe in Me” and “Born Out of Time” is my second favorite and I remember my 12-year-old self feeling that way about RS because of our 20-year age difference. 😁)
  
• The fact that he’s been playing a lot more piano these days. (For some pre-quarantine videos of this, see this post, “Sing us a song, piano man.”) Right after he mentions in the article that he’s been playing the piano a lot more these days, he mentions that his next album “is going to be quite different from the others.” Hmmm… He’s done rock, country-twinged, blues and symphony orchestra albums, will the next one be piano ballads?
  
• On Saturday, April 25, he will perform in #AllTogetherNowLA, an online concert by Rock Cellar Productions, in association with @get2gethernow. The concert will be a relief effort to benefit L.A. residents impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. (Visit alltogethernowla.org for details.)

(He also performed last weekend at the Human to Human event.)

He sure knows how to brighten someone’s day!