"A Family Thing 2"
A Benefit for Billy Cowsill

with The Cowsills & members of The Bangles
hosted by Fritz Coleman
Appearances by Gary Bryan, Dennis Castaņares, Johnny Flanders, Megan Spezeski, Waddy Wachtel, Peter Tork & Shirley Jones

Check our Publicity Archive for links to interviews and articles about "A Family Thing 2".

There will be a cover story published in the LA Weekly probably sometime in December or January. The writer is probably realizing by now that this is one long comprehensive story - Bob's interview alone took 8 1/2 hours resulting in over 135 pages of typed text and he's going to talk with all seven of The Cowsills and even beyond.

We generated enough money to help Bill, based on his standard of living in Canada, for a whole year, which was our goal so thank you for that. 

With regards to the benefit DVD/CD - I (Bob) have only recently been able to direct my attention to listening to the concert. Boz and I recently spent 9 1/2 hours analyzing the recordings. By analyzing I don't mean viewing the concert and listening to the house mix. I mean sitting in front of 36 tracks and pulling each and every instrument and voice up one at a time to make sure everything was okay. The good news is that John and Robby were their solid selves and because of that we can proceed with the project. If you don't have the great bass and drums you can forget it ... you might as well just start from scratch and make a record. However, having said that there are problems with the performance that can be fixed and will be fixed in the studio. There's a big difference between the house mix and a mix that would be needed to produce the CD/DVD and although inside the El Rey everything was positive and fun and even I would have to admit that for a band that rarely performs, we did pretty good .... but not good enough. On the other side of that coin there are great harmonies and moments musically that you couldn't even discern in the house mix due to the overwhelming nature of a live event ... they're just buried in the mix and it will be exciting to bring those moments forward. So there is a lot of work to do with fixing bad guitar mistakes, flat vocals and the normal stuff you come up against when putting together a "live" piece of work. This is not a credibility issue here (the "Eagles" re-recorded ALL of their vocals and MUCH of their guitar work and even the drums for their "Hell Freezes Over" CD - I THINK that's what it was called - Henley needs them to sound a certain way and he's a perfectionist) so I don't think it's necessary to get up in arms about fixing "live" records in the studio - we did a ton of that with our own "In Concert" album. Bottom line, it's going to take a while and we're just analyzing the scope of the project. I'll keep everyone posted. The good news is that all the selections are usable and the overall feel of the show is great and there are some fantastic moments. It may very well be ready by Christmas but projects like this are like wars and football games - you enter with a plan - a solid plan - then as soon as you start you might as well throw the plan away because then the project will take on it's own life and dictate to YOU how it will unfold and how long it will take, and how much it will cost, and what obstacles will have to be overcome to achieve the overall stated and desired result.