144 MEDIA BLOG

Brace yourself for Hotel Security’s hard hitting new rocker, “Forget It,” released recently on all major streaming services. An adrenaline-charged metal-inspired anthem, the band’s new single explores throwing the past to the wayside and embracing the unknown. Find a link to the song at hotelsecurityband.com

In the tradition of Hotel Security’s debut self-titled 2021 album, “Forget It” delivers a high-energy aural assault that features edgy guitar, dramatic vocal and aggressive rhythm. Lyrics tackle the universal wish for a fresh start but caution about the consequences with a humorous twist. “I wanted to show the appeal of a radical future-forward attitude, but also the dangers,” says lead vocal and keyboardist Matt Geline. “So yeah, I was definitely having fun with the concept.” Adds lead guitar Austin Rowey: “This song continues our effort to give our audience music that they enjoy, but also something that we hope connects with their lives.”

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New York, NY: “Don’t you get bored of normal life?” asks the opening lyric of “Get Mental”, one of 10 songs on HOTEL SECURITY, the newly released debut album by the New York City pop/prog rock group of the same name. For anyone who answers “Yes” to the question, this exuberant new offering provides a welcome diversion from the occasional tedium of the everyday routine.

Available on all streaming services, https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/hotelsecurity/hotel-security

HOTEL SECURITY delivers listeners an exciting sonic smorgasbord of choices. They range from the sci-fi fantasy of the lead track, “Hotel Security”, to the head-banging drive of “Get Mental”, rippling arpeggios and high-flying falsetto of “Icarus”, mood changes of “After Midnight”, and topical message of “Point of No Return”.

 Throughout, the energy and enthusiasm of HOTEL SECURITY punctuate its inventive offerings to deliver an exuberant listening experience that rock fans of all ages will find a welcome addition to their playlists.  Says Matthew Geline, Hotel Security’s lead vocal and keyboardist: “We hope people will have as much fun listening to our new album as we had writing and recording it.”

New York, NY – There are big questions about whether New York City will ever return to its pre-COVID levels of business and cultural vitality. Will the office economy be as robust as before if companies allow employees to continue to work from home? Will tourism return to pre-pandemic levels if shootings in Times Square continue to grab headlines? If tax revenues decline, how much will inevitable cuts in city services impact the quality of life?

These are just a few of the questions facing New York, and it’s easy to predict a bleak future based on outcomes that don’t go the city’s way. But there is at least one bottom line reality about New York City that provides a hopeful augury: It’s a place that young people continue to want to live, work and play. This vital aspect of New York life was on full display on a recent Saturday night in July.

Arlene’s Grocery is a bar in New York’s East Village that features live music. It’s one of many such venues in the city, but we chose to mention it because on this Saturday night, one of the featured bands was a new group for which our son, Matthew, serves as lead singer, plays keyboard, and writes songs. The band is called Hotel Security, and it was making its live debut. To sample the sound

The scene at Arlene’s and the surrounding neighborhood was hopping. Young New York was out in full force this warm July night, filling the streets with enough people to make you think a special event was underway. The full energy and enthusiasm of youth was in the air, and it was impossible not to feel this urban pulse without a sense of optimism about the city’s future.

New York has always been the “Emerald City” for young people from near and far. It draws those with high hopes and big dreams, whether they were born in Bangor, ME, Bakersfield, CA, Bangladesh, or Brooklyn. Despite the ravages of COVID and the uncertainty that faces the city, that fundamental fact remains unchanged.

Will the kids and their drive to “make it in New York” help the city’s post-COVID recovery? Absolutely. Will their youth power be enough to save it? I won’t speculate on that, but I also wouldn’t bet against the idea. (By the way, Hotel Security’s debut was well received. They’ll be back at Arlene’s and elsewhere around town in the weeks and months to come.)

New York, NY – There will be much to celebrate this July 4, the day America celebrates its “independence” from COVID-19. The country will be on track to achieve “herd immunity” to the virus thanks to a vaccination effort that has been successful enough to permit picnics, parades, fireworks and other celebrations to go on with crowds and without the face masks, hand sanitizers and social distancing that have marked our lives for so long.

The festivities will mark an important milestone of our progress on the long road back to pre-pandemic life. The virus has been turned back, but it has not been eradicated. Thousands of new infections continue to be counted every day, and people continue to die from the disease and its complications. As of this writing, CDC statistics show the virus has killed almost 600,000 people in the U. S., and because most of the world outside the U.S. remains unvaccinated, and will for some time, the threat of a viral mutation the vaccines don’t protect against remains a threat.

Nonetheless, the progress here against the virus has been a public achievement of major proportions, and it is important to celebrate it. At the same time, it will be just as important to remember the losses we have suffered due to COVID and pay special attention to  what the pandemic has shown us about our society. Possibly unlike anything else we have experienced as a nation, COVID has shown us our strengths but also laid bare our weaknesses.

On the plus side, the pandemic brought out the resiliency, resourcefulness, kindness and determination in the American spirit that allowed us to endure the disease and make it through. But the virus also laid bare the inequities and enmities in our society, heightened them as possibly nothing before and helped divide us as a nation in ways unseen since the Civil War. It is the bittersweet legacy of our progress against the pandemic and the question it poses for our future:  We are meeting the prodigious public health threat it presented, but will we meet the societal challenges the virus has thrown into such stark relief?

New York, NY – As Joe Biden ascends to the Presidency on January 20, it is time to ask: “How do we help close to 75 million people who voted for Donald Trump shake off his continuing con and join the rest of us here in the imperfect real world of American democracy?

They have, after all, been brainwashed with lies, propaganda and magical thinking for years, from the false claim of record crowds at Trump’s inauguration to the dangerous deception of a killer virus that was just going to “disappear.” Many Trump followers are similar to cult members who need deprogramming. To bring them back from Trump’s Big Lie, here are a few suggestions:

** President-elect Biden: Keep doing what you’re doing. You are sending the right messages. The calm, confident and competent tone and tenor of your transition is absolutely the right stuff. Keep it up in the White House to show Trumpsters how a stable President does things and how important that is.

** Elected Republicans at all levels: It’s time — way past time, actually — to reject Donald Trump and start offering some kind of positive vision of the America you want to see in coming years. Give Trump voters an option to the racism, xenophobia, contempt for the Rule of Law, chaos and corruption he fed them. You’ll be helping them and probably yourselves, too. In fact, your political lives may depend on it. Are you listening, Mitch McConnell?

** The Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump: You might be the folks who come up with that positive vision for Republicans at all levels. I don’t think Tom Cotton, Jim Jordan et al. will be much help on that. Are you listening, Mitch McConnell?

** Democrats on the Left: Take a couple of steps toward the center, please, and show willingness to accept compromise and incremental progress. No push for national unity can work without your shoulders to the wheel, and Trump voters need to see you’re not really all socialists and communists out to take down capitalism as Trump maintained.

** Rupert Murdoch: Stand up and say Donald Trump was dangerous to democracy, and it’s a good thing he lost the election.

** The Media in general: How about giving Trump the minimal coverage he deserves as a soundly defeated one termer? Sure, he could start a war or try to between now and mid-January, and you’ll have to pay attention. But after January 20, there is little reason to listen when Trump burps, is there?

** Donald Trump: Actually, all you have to do is keep doing what you’ve been doing since the voters said: “You’re fired.” The more you refuse to admit defeat and whine, complain, falsely accuse, play the victim, lie and maintain your delusional fantasy of a “stolen election”, the more you confirm for people the mistake they made by giving you their vote.

New York, NY: The Presidential race is heading for the finish line. Between now and election day there will be three Presidential debates, one Vice Presidential debate and who knows how many controversies and surprises to occupy the headlines. At this point, it seems hard to know what might actually count as a “surprise.” In this year of COVID and controversy that has further split an already divided country, we understand almost anything can happen and probably will.

But amidst all the uncertainty, there are a few things that do seem pretty clear. While there is much talk about the undecided voter, and given the context of Trump’s narrowest of wins in 2016 that’s perfectly reasonable, it is also the case that almost everyone who has a vote knows right now for whom they will cast their ballot.

Almost no matter what happens in the next 60 days, those decisions aren’t changing. Do you know anyone who is still on the fence? Have you tried to talk a Trump supporter out of his or her choice, or a Biden voter into switching to Trump?

Despite the hundreds of millions that will be spent on everything from TV ads to T-shirts between now and November to win the hearts and minds of those few who have yet to decide and hold the allegiance of those who have made their choice, what matters most now is only this: Which campaign has the organization to make sure their voters get to the polls?

This is the least visible part of the campaign and, as such, it gets the least media attention. It is easy to put cameras in front of a speech or a rally, but not so easy to dig out the details of an organization’s “ground game.”  But make no mistake, from making sure that vote by mail works the way it is supposed to (a key challenge in 2020) to assigning people to physically get seniors to the polls, turnout is all that matters now.

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