Let's Do Launch – Face The Music's Awesome New Album
This week, Face the Music is launching its second CD, "Your Work Is Your Song", and it's definitely worth a listen (and not just because I wrote the lyrics to Vasectomy Blues.)
The album rocks. The album rolls. I was struck by the quality of the production, the lyrics, and the musicians on this collection. It holds it's own with any big act production out there. It gives voice to a wide range of themes and styles that the Face The Music experience evokes in their client work—not just their home base, the blues, but a wide range of musical styles, as well as humor, sincerity, craziness, and just plain "mellowing down easy" (track 1). The album gives voice to a subject matter that anyone in corporations worldwide can relate to, and they'll come out of the listening with a smile on their face.
Call Me, Beep Me, Page Me takes on the madness of our multi-tracking, information-overloaded culture. Got My Mojo Working (featuring best-selling author, Marshall Goldsmith) addresses the need for more feeling, meaning, and charisma in the workplace. Culture Song is a soulful plea for organizations to live their mission to the max. And the other 11 tracks will put enough cut in your strut to get you to Friday.
Face The Music is donating proceeds of album sales to benefit Little Kids Rock, a not-for-profit that provides instruments and lessons to schools that have had their budgets cut, so far they have supported over 1200 schools in 23 cities.
From Our Inbox
"I have been grooving to the Face The Music CD all day long...thank you!!
What a cool thing you guys do! -a big part of what we do is teach kids how to compose their own music.
I really appreciate your generosity and the exposure that your CD will give our kids and our program."
–
David Wish Executive Director Little Kids Rock
From a client that brought in Face The Music, but was not able to be at the event:
"This is just great Paul!! Thank you so much for going the extra mile and share with us the videos and the songs! I just had a wonderful time seeing (and hearing) them here at home. It allowed me to have a window to the experience you offered and that all of you created.
We shared the video and recordings with the participants as soon as we got them from you. That's a great memory for them to have and perfect to show your kids when they ask... "Daddy, what do you do at work?"
On the program evaluations, many participants cited The FTM experience as one of the highlights of the week."
–
Elvira Rodrigo
Cytec
It's your choice. You can have people grumbling in hallways, cranking up the negative grapevine - or you can get them together for a joyful evening with Face the Music to air it out and tame the beast. I invite you to give a Listen, or to go right ahead and Order It Now.
NEW YORK, September 2010 – Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Face The Music, Paul Kwiecinski announces the release of a “single” from their newly released 2nd music CD, Your Work is Your Song. The first single is a remake of the old Muddy Waters hit Got My Mojo Working which features Marshall Goldsmith, top leadership keynote speaker and best selling author of Mojo—How to Get It, How To Keep It, How To Get It Back If You Lose It.
Mojo—A Strange Sequence of Events
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Mojo is the name given to hoodoo magic charm—c. 1912
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Preston Foster writes Got My Mojo Working—1956
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Muddy Waters hears Ann Cole singing it, rewrites a couple of lines, has a hit and claims the copyright—1957 (Song is forever associated with him)
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Mojo becomes a word that a lot of people have heard, but don't know what it means—'60's - present
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Marshall Goldsmith writes his book, "Mojo, How to get it, how to keep it, and how to get it back if you've lost it"—2010
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Face The Music emails Marshall and says, "We should redo the Muddy Waters song." 'Round about May—2010
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Song gets re-recorded in Sawdust Studios and released as music video on YouTube and makes the FTM CD 2—Your Work is Your Song—September 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvqNmqLmEhY
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FTM/Goldsmith Mojo video hits 20,000 views—not yet...
Here at Face The Music we're very happy with how the "Got My Mojo Working" song and video turned out, and have been getting a lot of feedback from folks online that are enjoying it, too. Here's how it came about...
As touched on in the questionable history of mojo bullets above, when I heard about Marshall Goldsmith's latest book "Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It" * (a bit long on the title there, Marshall...), I thought, "We should do a cover of the old Muddy Waters song in conjunction with this theme of getting your mojo into your work."
This resonated immediately. Face The Music is all about bringing energy, vibe, enthusiasm, etc. into what people are doing in the work place, and applying that energy into their work to get satisfying and exceptional results. I emailed Marshall suggesting that we re-do the song connecting it with that theme of juice and gusto at work, and in true to form fashion he responded, "This is a wonderful idea! Let's talk."
I brought it to Ken McGloin, FTM musical director, producer, and musical magician, and we decided to keep the original lyrics (sort of), play with the structure and feel of the song, and add clips of Marshall talking about principles from the mojo book. The song has a classic call and response part where Muddy would sing "got my mojo working" and the audience would send it right back at him. We decided that was pretty cool, and also in the spirit of getting our people into what we do.
We had an event coming up at Corning—we're part of their Program Managers' training—and asked our client , Rick O'Leary, if the group would like to be part of our recording. Rick is a long-time fan and supporter of FTM and liked this idea immediately. So we brought our recording gear down to Corning, NY, and the group did a great job of singing their response part with enthusiasm and vigor. Listen to them on the recording. Doing this actually brought some "mojo" to the training session!
The lead singer on the cut is Akie Bermiss, who is featured on many of the songs on FTM's new CD—Your Work is Your Song. He has an excellent voice and style of interpretation.
It all came together in the studio, and in the YouTube video we feature many mojo moments from FTM events, Marshall speaking, random images from work, and Akie lip syncing on his iPhone in his apartment in Brooklyn (great lighting on the hoodoo verse...). Take some time to check it out if you haven't yet, and bring that mojo to your gig.
*Marshall defines mojo as "the moment when we do something purposeful, powerful and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it." In other words, you're in your groove, you hit a home run doing something you believe in, and people around you realize it and are probably inspired by it.
What event, initiative or challenge do you have coming up that Face The Music can add value to?
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This week, Face the Music is launching its second CD, "Your Work Is Your Song", and it's definitely worth a 
It's your choice. You can have people grumbling in hallways, cranking up the negative grapevine - or you can get them together for a joyful evening with Face the Music to air it out and tame the beast. I invite you to give a 
As touched on in the questionable history of mojo bullets above, when I heard about Marshall Goldsmith's latest book "Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It" * (a bit long on the title there, Marshall...), I thought, "We should do a cover of the old Muddy Waters song in conjunction with this theme of getting your mojo into your work." 
The lead singer on the cut is Akie Bermiss, who is featured on many of the songs on FTM's new CD—Your Work is Your Song. He has an excellent voice and style of interpretation.