Three cool/Kool dudes

No one knows how a story will begin before they actually write it. I mean, anyone could go with the straight lede — “THISPERSON will perform at THISPLACE on THISDATE,” but most of us try a bit harder than that.

Even after interviewing these three gentlemen, I wasn’t sure how to start the stories until it was time to wrote. The most challenging one was this piece about the sensational Taylor Mac, in part because I felt I needed more time to talk to him. I did this interview at the media center of the suburban hotel where the jurors in the Bill Cosby trial were staying. My phone and computer were dying and I threw myself on the mercy of the hotel staff as I was out there for the AP waiting to see if the jurors would be willing to talk to the press and I didn’t have enough time to get back home before the interview.

This article about an upcoming Kool and the Gang show was also a challenge as band co-founder R. Bell’s habit of speaking in song lyrics made me laugh and I stopped writing down all of the verses.

But writing about Rob Lowe was easy after I learned he’d done a remake of “The Bad Seed.” I told him I’d watched the movie with my mother, who was prone to denounce me and my sister as “Bad Seeds” whenever we were bad. I knew a lot about the movie’s history and back story — like how they added the spanking scene at the end to calm parents freaked out by the murderous main character — and he was surprised and appreciative.