Gregory J. Chamberlain

Gregory J. Chamberlain is a lifelong multi-sector serial entrepreneur, mostly in the music business where it intersects with TMT (technology, media & telecom), and IP (intellectual property) & related Brand Management.

In school, so he could play a role in booking bands for school concerts, dances and formals, he ran for student government multiple times and served as Student Body President twice, served as special events chairman in his Sophomore year and served as Jr. Class President. It was no surprise to many when he began a newsletter titled The President, where his love for political debate led him to spend many years writing about U.S. foreign policy & U.S. monetary policy, challenging the many covert and overt U.S. led wars based on lies, along with challenging the Federal Reserve system that could fund such wars without a formal declaration of war by Congress. Those efforts led to a stint as the official social media administrator for the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign through to the 2010 midterms, where he played a prominent behind the scenes role in the rise of the Ron Paul inspired Tea Party movement, and in breaking new world records in online political fundraising. He eventual sold The President at ThePresident.Com and related IP portfolio to Mark Cuban in 2016/2017. Greg is still involved, behind the scenes, in gaining support for well vetted anti-war and fiscally sane candidates of substance.

Starting in the late 1980's Greg operated a independent record label called Groove Music that released compilations, and a small song publishing unit known as Groove Songs. In 2015 he sold the branding rights including GrooveMusic.Com and GrooveSongs.Com (and a large portfolio of related IP) to Microsoft when they launched Microsoft's "Groove Music", which was Microsoft's answer to Apple's  iTunes.

Before MTV was in business, Greg was busy shooting videos of emerging bands on primitive equipment by today's standards. During the period when began living in Hancock Park in Los Angeles, he was promoting a local rock band known as The Apostles (which later morphed into the Grammy Award winning band known as Train). He booked The Apostles as first ever act to play at the grand opening of the Los Angeles location for the legendary China Club that was originally started in New York. On that fateful night, Greg organized the filming of the show and the owners of the club were impressed with the set up and asked if he would be willing to be the official videograher of the China Club Pro Jams going into future. Greg subsequently became the official video of those jams from 1988 until 1999/2000. Greg owns the archives of those jams which consisted of the world's most legendary session musicians and major stars who would drop in for impromptu jams once a week, in front of audiences consisting of Hollywood icons and studio heads.

Filming the China Club Pro Jam led to many more opportunities including shooting many great acts, such as when Greg met the legendary drummer Tris Imboden (Chicago, Kenny Loggins Honk, etc). Tris invited Greg to film a live concert album alongside audio engineer Guy Charbonneau of Le Mobile, for Tris' then wife, Cecilia Noel and her band, Cecilia Noel & The Wild Clams. She was signed by Kenny Komisar to Sony Music. That work led to Greg filming promotional electronic press kits and music videos for acts signed to Sony, including Michael Jackson's record label at the time, MJJ Music and Jerry Greenberg. That work led to a very long list of work throughout the industry.

As Greg and the A&R and marketing/promotion people at the labels were seeing MTV slip into oblivion with reality programming, while slipping away from music video programming, he became disillusioned. So, in 1998, Greg founded Music Television at MusicTelevision.Com, and subsequently has built up a music video network alongside his other proprietary brands including The Indies at TheIndies.Com, The Quiet Storm at TheQuietStorm.Com and a technology & free video website known as FreeV at FreeV.Com.

Greg is also a lifelong musician whose main instruments are upright and electric bass. Other instruments include piano related to his jazz composition & arranging studies at Dick Grove School of Music, in addition to his attending two summers at the Stan Kenton Jazz Clinics in his youth, where he studied under Leon Breeden & Hank Levy. He studied bass privately under legendary bassists, Max Bennett and Ray Brown. Greg worked as a session musician under luminaries such as Shorty Rogers while he was alive.

As a multi-dimensional and very out of the box thinker, he has been a long time confidant, advisor, trends forecaster and strategist, serving multiple prominent family offices and business leaders across several industries including hospitality, real estate development and banking.

He has also managed and overseen management of a wide variety of business for some of the world's leading recording & theatrical artists, their companies, subsequent estates and related philanthropic efforts. His company, FreeV's Sub Registry - Intellectual Property Management, is a leading branding & intellectual property advisor/manager for several leading entertainment artists & media companies in the world. His first client was Michael Jackson's company MJJ Productions and his subsequent estate. Prior to getting MJJ as a client, all of the prospects turned Greg down, including Eric Clapton, Whitney Houston and several others. But once MJJ became his client, Greg was able to secure Clapton, Whitney (and her subsequent estate), Clint Eastwood, Samuel L. Jackson, supermodel Carol Alt and dozens of others as long times clients, where he is the sole administrator of key IP assets.

Greg enjoys spending as much time as possible each year in mastermind sessions with exemplary entrepreneurs, executives, creative artists and inspired individuals across several industries.

Charlie Colin - RIP - November 22, 1966 - May 20, 2024

Charlie Colin at La Cabaña in Venice, CA January 18, 2004 (photo by Gregory J. Chamberlain)

Just got the very sad news that one of my long time friends and fellow musicians, Charlie Colin, passed away at age 57. He had been living in Belgium for a while. I do not yet know the circumstances of how he died, but all I can say is I am devastated.

I first met Charlie when I was a senior in high school and he was a freshman. His sister was the one who introduced us, and she had hoped I could hang out with him and bring him up to speed on a musical level.

I was invited to their house to meet. We jammed and hit it off, immediately. At the time, his primary instrument was guitar and mine was the electric and upright bass, which Charlie also became interested in, so I taught him everything I could.

It was not long after that first meeting, that I had convinced Charlie's mom the virtues of soundproofing their garage and turning it into a rehearsal studio. It became a reality almost overnight.

Charlie grew into a world class songwriter, guitarist and bassist, widely known for being a founding member of the rock band, Train. He had a great many other talents, including being a world class painter and sculptor.

I could easily write a few chapters on knowing Charlie and his family and wide circle of friends. But for now, I am a little too sad for words.

Rest in Peace ol' buddy! See you on the other side!

Charlie Colin in my Venice Beach music studio on March 14, 2004

Remebering Shorty Rogers - Born 100 years ago today, on April 14, 1924

(L-R) Michael Rogers, Gregory J. Chamberlain and Shorty Rogers

100 years ago today, April 24, 2024, Milton Rajonsky was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He later became known as Shorty Rogers, considered by many of his peers in the music industry to be the Godfather of West Coast Jazz.

I became friends with Shorty when I was in about the 3rd or 4th grade. My family had upgraded our boat from a Grand Banks 36 to a brand new Grand Banks Alaskan 49. We initially kept the boat in Marina Del Rey. We would drive from our home in Irvine, and later Balboa Island & Newport Beach to Marina Del Rey nearly every weekend to spend time on the boat. It was like a second home, only better. It was more fun than living at home, mostly because we had an interesting array of neighbors on the dock. Shorty Rogers and his family was on our port side. Their boat was named the Jolly Rogers, and it was nearly identical to my family's boat.

Our other neighbor on the dock was a pioneering comedic TV variety/talk show host of his era, Joey Bishop, along his wife Syliva and their skipper known as Captain Pat. Joey was part of the legendary "Rat Pack" with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and others. At what was perhaps the peak of his career, pre Johnny Carson, Joey helped get Regis Philbin started as Joey's sidekick on his variety show called The Joey Bishop Show. Joey and Sylvia's boat, Son Of A Gun II, was two slips to over from our starboard side and was a Grand Banks 42, which is one of my personal dream boats to this day.

The legendary music manager, talent agent, actor and film maker, Jerry Weintraub used to come down to the dock to hang out with Joey and he would always quiz me about what music the kids were listening to, which is a whole other story I could easily write few chapters about. He became a big influence in my life. But by far, the best thing about coming to Marina Del Rey every weekend was hanging out with Shorty and his family. We took a lot of trips to Catalina and up & down the California coast and into Mexico.

Shorty was the definition of cool and humble, to a fault.

His main instruments for which he became famous, was the trumpet and the flugelhorn, but he really rose to prominence as a band leader and as a leading composer and arranger for a long list of film scores such as Frank Sinatra's Man With The Golden Arm and Marlon Brando's The Wild One, as well as for his compositions and arrangements a long list of other band leaders including Stan Kenton and Woody Herman and later Herb Alpert, just to name a few. He was well known on the West Coast for his appearances as a member of the Lighthouse All-Stars, the house band for the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach, a leading West Coast jazz venue of it's time.

The best thing about hanging out with Shorty was he taught about what it meant to groove. His music was in the jazz/swing genre, but when I got to know him, he was all about teaching me what it meant to find "the groove". We would go fishing for sanddabs off the East End of Catalina or just outside of Cat Harbor on the other side of the island, and he would play tapes and tell stories about artists like Miles Davis and Chet Baker. By the time I was in about the 5th grade, I was pretty well versed in a wide multitude of jazz and it really inspired me, early on.

Between Shorty and Jerry Weintraub, I was on an early trajectory of thinking about a career in the music industry. I decided to pick up the bass beginning in the 7th grade, I joined the school band and by the 8th grade, was in the advanced band and school jazz ensemble, which I attribute mostly to Shorty's influence and from seeing young kids ahead of me who were on the jazz fast track: Drummer Steve DiStanislao and saxophonist Brian Dennigan.

By the summer at the end of the 8th grade, Shorty hooked me up with an audition to study under legendary band leader Stan Kenton, composer & arranger Hank Levy and North Texas State jazz educator, Leon Breeden at the Stan Kenton Jazz Clinics, which toured around the country. I did both summer sessions at Orange Coast College that year and ended up in the second heaviest band after my first audition, not because I had amazing skills (I did not), but because I had honed my sight reading skills better than the other kids who were auditioning.

It was quite a learning experience to be amongst emerging talent who later became major cats in the music industry, such as Chad Wackerman and his brother Bob. Shorty arranged for me to take a few upright bass lessons from Ray Brown while I was in high school.

During my senior year in high school, Shorty was working on an album on the (Charlie) Chaplin stage at A&M records, for one of Herb Alpert's albums. He invited me to come up to A&M to watch the session. I drove up from Newport Beach in my 66 Volkswagen Bug known as the Stonemobile, with one of the most beautiful girls in my school. She was hotter than Pamela Anderson in her prime. We were barely there for 10 minutes and a sharp dressed guy in a suit and tie walks into the studio, looks around and beelines it straight over to me and my wing girl. Shorty walked over and introduced us to Charlie Minor, who was considered to be the greatest record industry promo guy, ever. Little did I know, this would be a life changing event.

Charlie took us for a tour of the A&M Records lot, and took us back to his office to listen to some music and asked us to join him at Le Dome, a fancy restaurant on the Sunset Strip. We partied all night with Charlie. My wing girl and I didn't make it home that night and I had to write a fake note from my mom to get me back into school the following day, since my parents were out of town in Catalina. I got caught, and the school practically made a federal case out of the incident! lol

By 1984/85, Shorty convinced me to enroll at Dick Grove School of Music, personally introducing me to Dick Grove himself. I began driving back & forth from Emerald Bay where I lived in Laguna Beach to Sherman Oaks for school. I remember my audition with Dick in this little room at a school which later became a Flair Cleaners, across the street from the Sportsman Lodge and walking distance to Shorty's house in Sherman Oaks. The school was filled with Frank Zappaesque prodigies, who all had a certain virtuosity and high level of "chops" as they were called, for their ability to impress.

Dick Grove School of Music was a difficult place to go, at first, because I felt so inadequate compared to the other students. Shorty gave me the nickname of Groove Cat. He taught me that all the kids at Dick Grove with amazing chops and virtuosity didn't have what I had. They were not working, gigging, doing sessions and getting around like I was, and while they could musically masturbate in a chair all by themselves, they did not groove like Shorty taught me to groove, with a band. For all that, I am forever grateful. I can still hear his voice. He'd call me on the phone, before caller ID was a thing and he'd say "Heyyyyy, Groove Cat".

By the mid 80's, I moved to LA full time and was living on Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood with Charlie Colin, just a few blocks from A&M, where Charlie Minor began giving me little jobs as a "indie promoter" contractor, while I was simultaneously going to Dick Grove and doing some session work as a bassist, that Shorty and his son Michael Rogers (a music contractor for Universal Pictures and others) were lining me up with.

Shorty introduced me to a great bassist named Max Bennett, to take lessons while simultaneously attending Dick Grove. I became really good friends with Max and maintained his sail boat in exchange for lessons. Later, I filmed several several live shows for Max and his various jazz fusion bands, which were always on fire.

I was also busy doing booking/promotion/marketing & management work for an emerging band known as The Apostles that my roommate and former band mate Charlie Colin was playing in, which later morphed into the band Train. I booked The Apostles to be the headlining band when the legendary New York China Club opened it's doors for the first time to the general public at it's Hollywood location at Selma & Argyle. The event was so successful, thanks to Charlie Minor and a lot of stars that lined up to get in the club that night, that it turned out to be a most fateful event, which led to me being the official documentarian/videographer for the legendary China Club Pro Jams from 1988 through 1999/2000. That led to me shooting a lot of music videos and electronic press kits for emerging indie bands, helping director Steve Silver organize the story boards for a Van Halen video for their song dreams Dreams, which we filmed at The Whisky a GoGo, to shooting one of my first major label music videos for an act on Michael Jackson's MJJ Music label known as QUO, which I shot during a live performance at China Club that my editor Ronn Seidenglanz cleverly cut and synced up to the studio recording in post.

Not long after that, I met legendary drummer, Tris Imboden known for his work with Honk, Chicago and Kenny Loggins. He approached me during a China Club shoot night. After he saw my video wall set up and the work I was doing he asked me to shoot a live concert video for his wife, whose band, Cecilia Noel & The Wild Clams, had just been signed to Sony by Kenny Komisar, a super cool A&R guy who had signed Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. Kenny's uncle was the legendary label head and artist/band manager Jerry Greenberg, who I had the privilege of meeting during that period to screen my music video for MJJ Music, the label he ran for Michael Jackson and Sony.

None of these fateful events in my life would have worked out the way they did with out the magic hand of Shorty and people he introduced me to like Charlie Minor.

There is hardly a day that goes by when I don't think of Shorty and the many great fishing hangs, memories and important things he taught me. Thank you Shorty!

Remembering Malcolm Forbes

34 years ago today, the late great magazine publisher and adventurer, Malcolm S. Forbes, passed away at age 70. "WHILE ALIVE, HE LIVED", reads his tombstone.

Had the distinct privilege of getting to know Malcolm starting in 1987. First met him in Los Angeles after writing several letters asking for his advice on how to start a magazine.

After meeting him in LA, he called with an invitation to come out to New York, where he introduced to me members of the Forbes Magazine staff to learn as much as I could about their particular departments. At night, he took me to events his company organized at one of his townhouses, as well as on his yacht, The Highlander, where he wined and dined major advertising executives and guests that included foreign dignitaries, rock stars, supermodels and other news makers. He schooled me on the fine art of wooing more money out of advertisers without actually asking for it.

Several interesting things happened through knowing Malcolm Forbes, such as him introducing Henry Kissinger and I. At the time, my greatest asset was a highly curated and comprehensive relational database of student leaders across the U.S. and abroad, which Kissinger was interested in tapping into for the World Economic Forum. The introduction and subsequent follow ups and education about the New World Order were monumental at the time. But in hindsight, I am glad I never shared my mailing list with Kissinger and his cohorts, for I am opposed to the globalist agenda of the Bilderberg Group and World Economic Forum of which Kissinger played a pivotal role while alive.

However, Malcolm was an amazing cat. He was the first to teach me the real virtues of the Libertarian Philosophy. And, for that, I am most forever grateful.

Remembering Gerry Rubin

 

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Gerry Rubin in late October 2023. Gerry was the co-founder of the legendary advertising agency Rubin Postaer and Associates, well known throughout the advertising world as RPA.

Had the great privilege of meeting his lovely daughter, Anne, during a period in my early twenties, when I was attempting to launch a print magazine for student leaders. 

Anne and I both attended a student leadership camp & conference in Northern California and when the event was over, Anne hitched a ride in my 1972 Volkswagen bus back to her family home in the Pacific Palisades where her father was waiting for her.

When Anne told her father I was starting a magazine for student leaders, he did not miss a beat in quizzing me about my concept and immediately offered to introduce me to potential advertisers, advertising executives and magazine publishers he personally knew, well, that included Robert (Bob) Peterson who owned Teen Magazine and Motor Trend and a large array of other magazines, along with introducing me to the publisher-in-chief of Architectural Digest and the founding publisher of USA Today, Al Neuharth.

Gerry was the ultimate connector and taught me the value of the importance of the human touch, which he was the master of.