Ron Dante Biography

Ron Dante is one star in the entertainment business that doesn't need a press agent to hype his many accomplishments. He has a room full of platinum albums and Grammy, Clio and Tony Awards to do his talking for him.

Ron Dante is probably best known for his work as a producer for Barry Manilow, Cher, Dionne Warwick, Pat Benatar, Irene Cara, Ray Charles, John Denver, and other major recording artists.

He was the driving force behind Barry Manilow's greatest successes. Their collaboration spawned one hit after another. Dante produced songs that have become landmarks on the pop music scene including "Mandy," "I Write the Songs," the Grammy winning "Copacabana," "Could It Be Magic" and others.

During a tumultuous decade in the record industry in which many stars faded and new ones flickered, Dante's firm guidance helped Manilow achieve unparalleled success. The Dante produced LPs sold more than 60 million copies, accounting for more than $350 million in retail sales at record stores nationwide.

Pop music fans know Ron Dante as the man who performed the #1 single "Sugar, Sugar" which topped the Top 40 charts for weeks and was voted “Song Of The Year'” in 1969 ... an era dominated by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and hard rock.

Lots of music lovers hum Ron Dante's tunes without even knowing it. Dante was the distinctive singing voice in dozens of radio and TV commercials. He has also worked alongside such other stars as Melissa Manchester, Ashford and Simpson and Luther Vandross.

It's Dante's voice you hear singing "You Deserve A Break Today" for McDonald’s. His voice was heard in spots for Coca Cola, American Airlines, Budweiser and dozens of other well-known products. The production firm Dante established to produce commercials won a Clio for its work for Volkswagen.

Theatergoers know Dante for his work on Broadway. He produced "Ain't Misbehavin',” which earned him a Tony for best musical and "Children Of A Lesser God," which took the Tony for best drama. Dante's stage credits also include "Whose Life Is It Anyway?," "Crimes Of The Heart" and "Duet For One". Dante also turned his attention to the printed word. He served as publisher of the prestigious Paris Review for more than two years.

His recent work includes a collaboration with Barry Manilow, singing background on various tracks for the Concord release of Manilow's Here at the Mayflower. Ron has also released Saturday Night Blast, a collection of classic pop songs along with some new Dante originals. Some of the highlights include “Rockin' Robin" (with Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits singing background), "Rock Me Gently" (with writer/performer Andy Kim, who wrote the song, doing background vocals) and "Summer in the City" (featuring Toni Wine, the original female voice of The Archies’ "Sugar, Sugar" singing a duet with Ron.)

For his debut on Digital Musicworks International (DMI), the world’s first full-service, all-digital music label, Ron has produced Rockin’ Christmas Party, Volume 1, featuring himself and such other all-star rock ‘n’ roll hit makers as Lou Christie, Tommy Roe, Gary Lewis, Bobby Vee and Chris Montez. Rockin’ Christmas Party, Volume 1 showcases a sleigh-full of both traditional Christmas songs as well as five new original holiday tunes.

"I never stop keeping busy," Ron says. "My day starts very early and that's okay with me. I enjoy what I do and that makes the long hours and every day worth it."

Dave Blume started his ecological training at a young age. He and his father organically grew almost all the food their family ate. This wouldn't be unusual out in a rural setting nowadays, but they did this on a city lot in San Francisco in the mid-sixties!

Dave taught his first ecology class in 1970. He majored in Ecological Biology and Biosystematics at San Francisco State University while doing volunteer fieldwork with a number of non-profits like the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. He put himself through school by teaching backpacking and wildlife biology through open universities during the summers.

In 1978, he was employed by NASA to work on an experimental solar self-sufficient energy, sewage treatment, desalinization plant in the Virgin Islands. After solving many previously persistent problems in this system, he went to work for the Mother Earth News Eco Village in North Carolina where he worked in a team using alternative building techniques. There he constructed a number of unique structures, like a cordwood half dome, that was used as the back half of a greenhouse. He also worked extensively with their alternative energy projects.

When the energy crisis of 1978-9 struck, Dave started the American Homegrown Fuel Co. Inc. It was an educational organization teaching farmers and others how to produce and use low cost alcohol fuel at home or on the farm. Alcohol, a renewable and virtually pollution-free fuel, is used in place of gasoline in automobile engines. AHGF became a small corporation with 15 employees. Dave taught 180 workshops to 7,000 people over a two year period while appearing over 1000 times in print, radio and television.

PBS then asked Dave to put his workshop on television. He spent two years working with PBS to make the 10 part series Alcohol as Fuel, which aired in 1983. To accompany the series he wrote the comprehensive manual on the subject, Alcohol Can Be A Gas! The book and series were so powerful that shortly after the series began to air in San Francisco oil companies threatened to pull out their funding if the series was released to the rest of the PBS network!! PBS caved in and halted the distribution of the series and book.

Alcohol Can Be A Gas, has been completely rewritten after four years of full time research by Dave and his team. Its now available in bookstores and online everywhere and is being hailed as the bible of alcohol fuel production.

Dave went on to consult for a wide array of clients including foreign governments, farmers and food processors in turning waste into fuel, animal feed, carbon dioxide, and valuable industrial products.

Dave founded Planetary Movers Inc in 1984.

1n 1994, he started the community supported agriculture farm, Our Farm.

Our Farm fed approximately 450 people through 150 shares in its CSA at its peak. Annually, it grew as much as 100,000 pounds of food per acre, without a tractor, using only hand tools, on a terraced, 35 degree slope similar to farms in China or Guatemala. Dave used a combination of biointensive and permaculture techniques to produce these impressive yields.

Our Farm was a teaching farm, which hosted over 200 live-in interns and apprentices from all over the world, during its existence.

Brad Friedman is an independent investigative journalist, blogger, broadcaster, creator of BradBlog.com, co-founder of VelvetRevolution.us, expert on issues of election integrity, and a Commonweal Institute Fellow.

Fighting for truth, election reform and media reform, because it's not about right and left, it's about right and wrong.

Brad Friedman is an investigative citizen journalist/blogger, political commentator and broadcaster. He is the Creator and Managing Editor of The BRAD BLOG. Among the many things that will be discussed, Brad will pose what he calls serious questions regarding the anthrax case.

Just some of the many notable national stories he’s broken on his blog include “The White House Website Scrubbing”, the “Tom Feeney/Clint Curtis/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal”, the story of the phony GOP front group, “American Center for Voting Rights”, the E-Voting Machine “Sleepover” controversy in San Diego’s Busby/Bilbray U.S. House Special Election, numerous explosive exclusives on whistleblowers such as FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, along with his well-respected, and widely-touted continuing coverage of various Electronic Voting Machine companies like Diebold who are destroying American democracy. He has filed, literally, thousands of stories on Election Integrity and Electile Dysfunction since at least November 3rd, 2004.

He has appeared in numerous documentary films, as well as on ABC News, CNN, CourtTV and elsewhere to discuss his reporting and expertise on a variety of issues. He’s a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post and has written articles and editorials for Mother Jones, Editor & Publisher, ComputerWorld, Columbus Free Press, Salon, TruthOut, Harvard’s Nieman Foundation of Journalism, Hustler and other non-pornographic publications and websites. In addition to live speaking engagements around the country, Brad has Guest Hosted on a number of radio programs for Peter B. Collins, Mike Malloy, The Young Turks and others. He’s also the host of The BRAD SHOW, a radio program co-produced with Internet news site RAW STORY and a frequent Guest on radio shows across the country.

Brad’s reports and breaking news from his popular website, The BRAD BLOG, are frequently cited by the national media.

Barrie Zwicker is an independent documentary producer, author and social and political activist. Producer of the 75-minute THE GREAT CONSPIRACY: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw, on DVD and VHS.

Zwicker instigated and was Director of the International Citizens' Inquiry Into 9/11, held at The University of Toronto 25-30 May 2004. It featured 40 presenters from three continents. Video from the Inquiry is being incorporated into numerous documentaries including The Great Conspiracy. The inquiry organization, Skeptics' Inquiry For Truth (SIFT) is incorporated and continues as an educational and activist group.

Prior to December 2003, Zwicker was the resident media critic (the only such in Canada) for 15 years with Vision TV, Canada's only independent not-for-profit TV channel and the world's first multi-faith TV channel. (One reviewer whimsically described Zwicker as "the professional furrowed brow for the small-r religious set.") Vision TV is available in more than 8-million Canadian homes via cable and DTH satellite.

In the 2001-2002 TV season Zwicker hosted VisionTV Insight: the MediaFile Edition, "a weekly half-hour commercial-free alternative look at the media," moderated its media panel and provided a commentary each program. Six of his MediaFile commentaries that season -- a series titled "What Really Happened on Sept. 11th?" - made him the first mainstream television journalist in the world to go on air and deeply question the official story of the events of 9/11. The commentaries elicited the greatest response of any programming in the channel's history. The response was literally 99% positive. The series became known as "The Great Deception" and was released on video under that title. The updated version (available on VHS and DVD) contains seven segments.

Zwicker has worked in journalism and communications since he was 16, when he joined the Russell (Man.) Banner as a Printer's Devil. He worked on major newspapers including The Vancouver Province, The Detroit News, the Flint Journal and the Lansing State Journal, for a year at Canada's largest-circulation newspaper, The Toronto Star and for eight years at "Canada's National Newspaper," The Globe and Mail. While the Globe's education writer, he won all three top awards of the Education Writers' Association of North America.

Zwicker taught journalism part time for seven years at Ryerson Polytechnic University. His courses were "Media and Society" and then "Media, Ethics and the Law."

He co-authored and co-edited, with the late Dick MacDonald, THE NEWS: Inside the Canadian Media (Deneau) and authored War, Peace and the Media (Sources). In September 2004 he produced Barrie Zwicker's 9/11 Resource Guide. He currently is working on a book planned for release in late 2005 or Spring of 2006 tentatively titled 9/11, the Media and Our Future.

He produced more than 200 media criticism segments for Vision TV in his last four seasons. Before that he contributed regularly to Vision's public affairs programs "It’s About Time," "Arts Express" and "Inventing Reality," from Vision's launch in September 1988.

Zwicker is also seen and heard as a media critic on CBC-TV, CTV's News1, RoB-TV and other TV and radio outlets and in print. For three and a half years his "Facing the Fourth Estate" commentary was nationally syndicated on 18 stations on CBC Radio.

He earned a Southam Fellowship (1967-68) and studied for three years under Marshall McLuhan. Earlier (1959-61) he was a University of Michigan/Michigan Press Club Co-operative Journalism Fellow, the first Canadian chosen up until then.

He owned and published the journalism review content from 1974 through 1981, when he sold that publication to Humber College.

In 1999, he sold his directory business, Sources®, The Directory of Contacts for Editors, Reporters and Researchers )* which he founded in June 1977. He also founded Parliamentary Names & Numbers. He is Publisher Emeritus of Sources.

In the 1960s and 70s he was active in the Don Vale Association of Homeowners and Residents. Working in concert with then Ward 7 city Councillors John Sewell and Karl Jaffary, the association became a "giant slayer" at City Hall. The Association succeeded in abolishing a so-called "urban renewal" plan for Don Vale which would have razed numerous homes - including that of the Zwickers - and turned the sites over to developers.

As Corresponding Secretary for the Association, Zwicker wrote letters and press releases arising from democratic meetings. He named and helped found the ward's newspaper, 7 News. He also delivered it door to door.

He was awarded an honourary Life Membership in the Media Club of Canada in 1991 and is listed in Canadian Who's Who.

He was born Nov. 5, 1934 in White Head, N.S., a son of the late United Church minister, Rev. W. G. Zwicker and the former Norah Hall. He has been married to the former Jean Adie Muzzell of Owen Sound, Ont. for 41 years. They have two children. Xena-Linda is a musician and therapist. Gren-Erich specializes in audio post-production in Toronto and has worked with Norman Jewison and David Cronenberg. He has just finished working on Cronenberg's latest, History of Violence, to be premiered at Cannes this month.

Following the lead of his parents, Zwicker has long been a committed environmentalist. Jean is an avid gardener. Under Zwicker's guidance Sources was the first directory in Canada to be printed on all recycled stock. He and wife gave up automobile ownership in 1966; Zwicker has ridden a bicycle since.

In the Summer of 2000 he started a solo cross-Canada bicycle journey, off-road as much as possible on the Trans-Canada Trail, travelling 1,900km from Vancouver Island to Calgary. The Summer of 2001 he covered 4,000km from Calgary to Toronto. He plans to resume his cross-Canada tour from Toronto to St. Johns, Newfoundland when time permits.

Zwicker describes himself as "an atheist Christian humanist" and is a member of the Humanist Association of Canada. His hero is Bertrand Russell. He's a board member of both SIFT and of 9/11truth.org.

Barbara Hand Clow, International Mayan Elder, Cherokee Record Keeper, Guardian of Light and Author of The Mayan Code.

The 'Mayan Code' is a perfect companion book to C. J. Calleman: 'The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness' as it shows how the time cycles of the Calendar match important periods in the evolutionary data banks on Earth and the Milky Way Galaxy. These stages of evolution are converging during the final stage of the Calendar, the period between 1999-2011.

Barbara Hand Clow wrote one of the most important books of our time! She will answer many questions you will not learn in school, among others:

The Mayan Code by Barbara Hand ClowWhy is time accelerating faster now than ever before? How is it that in just a few short years the Cycles of Consciousness revealed in the Mayan Calendar will be completed? Darwinian theories, the Big Bang or Creation - where is the TRUTH about life on our planet? What is behind the messages from our Pleiadian neighbors? The Ascencion date: October 28, 2011 or Dec 21 2012? and much more...

Barbara Hand Clow uses her Astrological skills, scientific and archeological research data along with ancient sources, like the Vedic Records to support the validity and accuracy of the combined research on the Mayan Calendar.

Blossom Goodchild is a professional ‘direct voice’ channelling medium working with spirit and cosmic energies. She has been channelling the Native American Indian Spirit Energy ‘White Cloud’ for twelve years now and shares his messages of Unconditional Love by means of personal readings and group meetings.

These meetings have been recorded and ‘White Cloud’s words transcribed and subsequently published in three books. ‘Walking in the Light and the Love’, ‘The Spirit of ‘White Cloud’ and ‘A New Dawn’.

In addition to ‘White Cloud’s guidance on how to live our lives to the fullest he has also given us, through Blossom , a series of guided meditations to help us tune in to our Higher Selves.

Blossom also began communication with The Federation Of Light in 2005. These channellings have now become world renound. The information given can be found in three books from The Federation of Light, 'The Bridge', 'Snaphot', and 'Plan E.T'. Blossom continues these channellings which are freely given . They can be found on the menu bar under The Federation Of Light.

In addition to her spiritual work Blossom is also a wonderful actress, whose experience includes touring the UK in repertoires and musicals. Since immigrating to Australia in 2001 and settling in Noosa with her husband Goody and son Ritchie, she has firmly established herself as one of the finest actresses on the Sunshine Coast. Blossom has performed the one-woman show ‘Shirley Valentine’ as well as major roles in several David Williamson plays for the Noosa Long Weekend. She took on the challenging roles as the lead in ‘The Gingerbread Lady’ in which she won Best Actress and Performer of the Year for the Sunshine Coast Theatre Alliance STAR awards. She returned to the musical stage in Ian Mackellar’s ‘Now That’s Entertainment’ and has just finished performing in a world premiere season in Noosa in a new musical called MOMENTS, which was written for her and her co performer . Blossom is hoping to tour Australia with this production as and when the universe provides!!

Through all of these experiences, Blossom remains firmly grounded and with her easy laughter and warmth is a delight to be around

Magenta Pixie was born in Staffordshire in 1965 at her maternal Grandparents home. Her parents lived in Islington London where Pixie spent her early childhood.

Pixie parents were in the theatre at the time of her birth; her Father was an Opera Singer and her Mother, a Ballet Dancer.

Pixie grew up around the theatre and decided at an early age that she would follow in their footsteps.

She was an early talker and an early reader and at the age of seven was reading several Enid Blyton novels per week, living in a world of fairies, pixies, gnomes and magic.

Pixie had several “imaginary friends” whom she would speak with all the time.

Pixie met her husband at the age of seventeen, married at nineteen and had her first baby at twenty.

Unusual, esoteric and supernatural events occurred throughout the ten years of Pixie’s marriage such as out of body experiences, having visions, hearing voices, seeing people & beings & knowing things before they happened.

After ten years of marriage, Pixie and her husband divorced and she moved into a ixie then began strict daily meditations and followed the instructions in the book on meeting your guide. It was several weeks before Pixie started to communicate with beings in meditation and eventually she met her Spirit Guide who introduced himself as “White Spirit” and presented in the form of a Zulu Warrior.

Pixie remained in contact with White Spirit throughout her life and in the year 2003 White Spirit evolved into a sixth density White Winged Angelic being. Not long after that the White Winged being separated themselves into Nine identical beings…..each one with the ability to come forward separately yet they were a collective consciousness. Hence the White Winged Collective Consciousness of Nine came into Pixie’s reality.

Erik Berglund is a unique recording artist who like the troubadours of yore, combines his musical talents with the Spirit and power of God's healing gifts. Erik sings like an angel with a refined tenor voice accompanied by the crystalline sounds of his Irish harp. He has 20 CDs and 2 DVDs available which bridge the world of angels and healing, and touch people deeply. As a sensitive healer, Erik's life has touched thousands via concerts, workshops, retreats, sacred journeys and private healing sessions. He shares his gifts throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, the South Pacific and the Middle East.