Take the Fast & Easy Road to Get A New American Dream Now
AMERICA'S VISION THEN AND NOW
AMERICA'S VISION THEN AND NOW
5-15 year recovery?
5-15 year recovery?
5-15 year recovery?
A Rock Opera and Movement for Every Citizen
WE CONQUERED THE WORLD
YOU WANT "ME" TO CONQUER "THE WORLD"? YES. FAST. AND I WANT YOU TO HAVE FUN DOING IT!
After a few, the next is just the next. American’s have conquered the world so many times 9 billion people now have an American dream. It's our turn to rock the world, and now it's easier: add our names 300 million as 1 at RTDNOW.COM
Paul Mazzio's "Golden Horn"
WHERE DO SONGS COME FROM?
Inspiration comes from, where? Big themes flooded me: Redemption, Immediacy, and American history. My struggle to make each song all it had to be was like a monkey on my shoulder. Tim Ellis said I was a fast learner. He was right, but luckily I had a great mentor. For this project to succeed I had to work to conquer my new music world. And I loved every moment being stretched to my limit. Tim and I were alike that way, that’s how we got so much done so fast. That’s partly where this song came from.
BIG THEMES RULE
“This is our time”, this song tries to capture the theme of immediacy. It runs throughout the opera. I had Tim do a moody guitar intro for the song This Is Our Time. Tim would just rip it out and say, “it’s an idea”. And I’m thinking, “Wow”. The last minute of this song was one such moment. Listen and hear ‘this is our time’. 12 months later I found it again and said “Wow”. Two concepts come together in this song to hopefully create immediacy for all of us: Americans conquer the world, and it’s this generation’s time to do it again.
BUILDING THE BICYCLE AS YOU RIDE IT
This song was built backward from Tim’s guitar track. We added organ pads then put in my spoken word. Normally, it’s the other way around, vocals then lead guitar. I’m more Johnny Cash than Paul McCartney. My instructions (they probably didn’t need) to musicians were to stay with the chords I wrote but add all their mojo and I’d rewrite lyrics if needed. Tim would slowly shake his head as I morphed lyrics to the song. “It works. In 40 years I’ve never seen it done that way”. He didn’t know I’m at my best unscripted. I ad-lib a lot.
MORE COWBELLS!
More movement was needed so I added Paul Mazzio’s Golden Horn: my nickname for him. To emphasis the main point I extended the organ pads in front and added background vocalists. I asked them to picture an ancient ritual of a long line of high priests slowly marching, swinging smoking lamps, with long black gowns with the hood covering their heads, chanting the words WEEE CONQUEREEED THE WOOOORLD. I don’t know what they pictured, but Tim did his normal wonderful job arranging their harmonies.
IN THE STUDIO WITH ADRIAN
Making of the Song "We Conquered the World"
SO YOU WANT ME TO CONQUER THE WORLD?
Yes. Every generation does, or loses it. America doesn’t exist without participation, tyranny does. That’s why I wrote this opera, it takes all of us to make America and fight for our freedoms. We all identified with Stallone’s movie character Rocky for good reason because it’s what we quietly do every day as Fathers and Mothers: conquer our world. Rocky faces his demons and conquers his world to avoid living a life of regret, and so do we. It’s a timeless truism: keep fighting for what you love. My main character in this opera is you, the American citizen. You are Rocky, and Rocky is pure American, and its time to decide to fight and keep fighting. So treasure this American journey we’re all on, its one of life’s special gifts.
WHO ARE WE REALLY? LET ME TELL YOU!
We have been greater than Alexander the Great, exceeded Caesar’s wildest dreams; Americans have conquered the world many times. How? TOGETHER. All of us, every single one of us was involved. The last era of 100% citizen involvement that put us over the top was during the Second World War. Everybody contributed in some way. Ordinary people, even poor people, bought $20 war bonds. Factories were converted to build trucks and weapons. Women at home held USO dances so servicemen on leave could enjoy some fun for a brief while. Awareness of limited resources meant that everyone began to save metal, rubber, and other materials (which led to modern day recycling). Everyone, everywhere, volunteered or contributed in some way. We need to do that again. And it’s happening at RTDNOW.COM.
100% ACTIVISM IN OUR TIME MEANS EVERYONE NEEDS TO HELP
In 1942 to encourage 100% participation, Hollywood studios and major actors were recruited. Walt Disney studios and Ronald Reagan made pitches to Americans in theatres around the country and on that new-fangled television. They wanted everyone to pitch in, everyone to volunteer and be proud to serve. After Pearl Harbor, my father, like so many Americans, reacted by immediately enlisting because it was already “his”, already “our” fight. Here, I’m using that new fangled invention called the Internet and Smart Phones to do the same thing for us. AND I’M CALLING OUT ALL AMERICAN MUSIC ICONS AND COLLEGE MUSIC COMPANY’S ACROSS THE COUNTRY TO HELP. The message I want you to keep spreading virally across the Internet is we are all going to RESTORE EVERYONE’S AMERICAN DREAM OVER-NIGHT. And it’s easy now: just add your name at RTDNOW.COM and tell everyone. It’s easy to conquer our world again: REDEEM THE DREAM NOW.
The World's Fair committee in France said we couldn't hold a Worlds Fair in 1964: we did it anyway. And as we did, we boldly stirred the imagination of a generation to envision a better world we would build. But that individual and national ambition Above, that's me pictured with my Mother, Millie. A ham, I snuck into the picture. But look closely at the background. In those days we dreamed REALLY big as a nation and didn't take no for an answer. was lost about 35 years ago, and America has stagnated and declined ever since. I never forgot. And through my Redeem The Dream opera I'm rallying 300 million citizens, every single American, to bring our ambitions for a better today and tomorrow back, and like a hurricane sweep across the country. And as we all awaken our American Spirit, we will build a better country, a country of our dreams, OVER-NIGHT! The only limits are what your mind imposes. This is the greatest country on earth. When it comes to building a better world, we have no limits. Believe it! Add your name at RTDNOW.COM
WELCOME
TO THE 1964 WORLD'S FAIR!
Adrian, age 6, at the Unisphere with his Father.
The site of the fair was Flushing Meadows, New York. A former wetland, that 'flushed' out to the sea. It would become a prescient descriptor of what the fair's corporate exhibitors would do to our economy in the decades to come.
50 years later the 1964 World's Fair was also the star of a movie: Tomorrowland. I jolted in my seat, time-traveling to this exact scene, as it came back to life right before my eyes. I was 6 again, and 56, all in the same instant. One of Hollywoods few family 'must-see' movies these days.
Steven Spielberg the Director and I are about the same age. I wonder if he also got his first Jurassic Park dinosaur for $1.00 from the same plastics machines like I did: made right in front of your eyes. It came out warm like a newborn. That's why I was holding it so proudly, I witnessed it's birth! Wait for it...the storyline for Jurassic Park: baby dinosaurs coming back to life! Maybe I'll ask Spielberg someday, when I meet him, in Tomorrowland.
ABOUT ADRIAN'S SONG
We Conquered the World
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
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We conquer our world in our mind first. How?
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We are all American at heart. How?
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Conquering the world is easy. How?
LYRICS: WE CONQUERED THE WORLD
Words and Music by ADRIAN
We conquered the world. We conquered the world. We conquered the world.
We conquered the world, sent Hitler back to hell, Stalin back to Siberia.
We flourished for 50 years when everyone was involved in a national mission.
We created the highest standard of living; we produced American Dreams easily.
Then we forgot who we were, lost it all, because we forgot how we conquered the world.
We let others make our decisions for us, and they did, inch by inch.
Until we all woke up to the nightmare where non-participation got us.
Trapped in a relationship (with runaway government) we can’t stand,
As we slept, corruption crept, then the people wept. It slowly conquered our world.
The American dream lost for the masses, your cries not heard anymore.
Your dreams have become fantasies; you’re trying to wake up to a shiny future you know is there.
You’ve lost so much; only losing A little more has become a backslapping political victory.
The golden goose stopped laying eggs.
What to do, how do we conquer ‘our’ world?
100% citizen participation, that’s how we conquered the world. And how we’ll conquer ours.
Our economy can collapse only so many times before it implodes; we all need to get involved.
Only so many citizen rights can be taken before we don’t have any.
I hate to tell you, we’re way past the time of whining and complaining; it's time to conquer our world, again.
If you could see the future and go back in time to make it better, would you? You can.
Our story begins five decades in the future we’re headed for. Some say we’re there now.
It's up to all of us to restore the American Dream, together in common cause, or we’ll all end up living together,
Living in the same uncomfortable city; The city of the damned….
Trapped in a relationship with a runaway government we can’t stand.