My wifes’ top five

My top five

202-224-3121 short version
for PSAs

Self Portrait (above): I practiced the drums six hours a day the summer I turned thirteen. When my sister grew up and had kids, she would not let them take up the drums. I’ve never figured out why.

What Inspired Me to Be a Musician

by Lloyd Ferris

In my generation, everybody and his brother wanted to be a rock star.  Some of us aspired to more doable goals, like saving the world from nuclear destruction, or eliminating poverty from the face of the Earth.

I kinda wanted to do all three. This website is my humble attempt to do all three (why not have it all?) before I go join that great garage band in the sky.

You see, I went to High School in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. In the afterglow of the Summer of Love, at the height of the Vietnam War. All my friends were in the peace movement, and I wanted to be with them with all my heart and soul. And hey, who wants to go to Viet Nam and get killed?

But my father remembered how allowing Hitler to roll all over Czechoslovakia in 1938 encouraged his aggression, leading to World War II as we know it. And he was quick to remind me of that. This set up a philosophical tension that served me well when I quit the music business forever for the first time at age 21 and set out to answer three questions: 1) What causes war? 2) What causes poverty, and 3) What the hell can we do about them? Read more