By George Rossi

In another life, I created a character called “Little Georgie”. A public persona to function as a suit… one that could be removed when going home to your private life.

I put that suit in mothballs in 1998, and when returning back to Skaneateles / Syracuse, I decided to pull the old suit out of the closet for one more try, just to see if I could still fit in it, and maybe to explore the possibility of wearing it as a career again in 2008.

In all honesty, I could, but after 10 years, it was a little tight around the middle, metaphorically speaking.

Going through the amount of work and financial resources to have that personal experiment was quite illuminating. It helped me to clarify what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, or better put, what I didn’t want to do. Juggling all those balls just isn’t intellectually, artistically, and more importantly, spiritually compelling enough to assume the role of “Ring Master” for me anymore. More than anything, it became painfully apparent that it was time for a third act. The “Little Georgie” Suit went back into mothballs, and probably for good this time.

When trying to sell recordings, along with putting large amounts of happy “fannies in the seats” on a consistent basis whilst attempting to lead them to a collective elevated ecstasy and along with the massive amount of work it takes to create the highest standard quality product (whether on stage or in the recorded medium), an exponentially much larger effort must be expended in the marketing arena to make that business model economically viable.

I am a media whore, freely admitted. I’m not giving away all my trade secrets, but I’ll give away one now. To be successful in the music racket, part of the marketing equation is that your legend must loom large. Gossip, Word of Mouth, and Whisper Campaigns are much more effective conduits then traditional advertising platforms. Whether accurate or not, my life story has been writ large on the walls of bathroom stalls. This, combined with the fact that to truly succeed on all levels, you have to spiritually, evangelically, and philosophically be an authentic and true believer in the product, or people just won’t buy it. And if you don’t believe in the product, it isn’t worth selling.

My track record in these matters, speaks for itself.

So in the act of subtracting the workload of creating the product to be marketed, I found myself left with a highly unique skill set. I thought that maybe employing that skill set for community rather than for self-serving goals just might be the third act that I had been searching for. Maybe it was time to subjugate ego and graft that skill set to a “Pay It Forward” life strategy.

And then the concept of Widespread, High Volume, Horizontal Hydrofracking, and all of its potential profound impact it was going to have on the residents of the towns and city I love (MY HOME) came across my personal radar screen.

The conundrum otherwise known horizontal hydraulic fracture drilling is a many-headed hydra.

Areas of study include Governmental Ethics, State’s Rights Issues, Law, Geology, Chemistry, Biology, Toxicology, Endocrinology, Physics, Engineering, Corporate Governance and Ethics, Economics, Philosophy and Sociology…to name but a few.

To get up to speed on this subject is, frankly, an overwhelming singular human task…. but I’m up to it. I never shirk from a challenge.

The problem? No one is even remotely aware that life as they know it is going to radically change, for better or worse. The objective? Get the word out, and at least give our community a choice for their own future.

At the behest, the passion for the issue, and inspiration of my good friend Laura Brazak, I decided to lend my skill set in the creation the facebook group YOU CAN’T DRINK MONEY to freely share some of those personal strengths with the people of the town of my birth, and with the people of the Greater Syracuse metro area that have been so supportive of my musical career endeavors throughout the years. This is my way of giving back, and paying it forward.

YOU CAN’T DRINK MONEY’s primary function is to do a little of the informational digging for you to provide a repository of reference, if you feel moved to dig for yourself, your family, your friends, your community, and future generations.

I can only lead by example. It’s that important to me… my hope is that it becomes that important to you. Dig your heels in by digging your brains in.

This is a game of four-dimensional holographic chess, and it’s rigged for you to lose. The only way to change that is to learn how to play the game. I want to teach to whoever wants, or needs, what little I know about the game that’s being played.

It’s hard, but it will be worth the effort.

We cannot succeed unless we band as one, in large numbers. Knowledge and Numbers are the weapons at our possible disposal, but we need to build the arsenal of know-how along with an army that knows the value of service to the greater good. A tribe must, and will be built.

Make no mistake, this is going to be a war, and the opposition’s assessment of the ability to mount an effective pushback from potential grass roots campaigns concerned about Fracking is, at this writing, correctly condescending.

This is Big Oil and all their available resources we’re talking about folks, and this war has been waged for close to ten years with the tacit compliance of our Federal and State Governments. Most of the populace in CNY doesn’t even know it’s been declared.

Every time I watched The Winter Olympics, there were repetitive ads for how wonderful natural gas exploration is.

Every time I log on to GMAIL, there are little prompts from Chesapeake Energy to go to various websites explaining how absolutely benign and harmless horizontal hydro-fracking truly is.

Every time I log onto the YOU CAN’T DRINK MONEY group page, there’s the King of Astroturf media manipulation campaigns Dick Armey, his face winking at me in the advertising section, shilling for Freedomworks.

The battle for your heart and your mind (and thus your health and safety) has begun, and currently, I don’t blame The Oil and Gas Industries for being derisively confident. They have a very well funded army, and we are in fact at present, going into battle with a plastic picnic spork.

Still, and very possibly delusionally, I like our chances in this epic. Like I said, I have a highly developed skill set that I am donating to the armory…. And so does everybody else. It’s time to start pooling resources. Just what are your strengths? Every able-bodied human has them.

So whether you love me, or despise me, and regardless of personal philosophical or ideological dogmas that we all hold dear, or the particular points in the vast range of economic strata that we personally occupy, the one thing that we have in common is that we all enjoy the abundant supply of clean, healthy water to be found in our community. We all breathe the same air.

So if the disruptions to environmental, public health, public infrastructure, and over all quality of life issues are of any concern to you, I pose this question:

Wouldn’t it be a smart idea to have the biggest Media Whore this town has ever seen stand on the side of Transparency, Truth, Justice, and The American Way?

As the great American philosopher Dizzy Dean once said: “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it”.

I’ve done it before, and I can do it again.