Examples of the insidious Otis creeping into every aspect of your life
In your favorite teen mags
HAVE A BALL WITH OTIS! Win Cassettes & LPs!
Teen Beat, June 1990
We took one look at this album cover and knew this dude, Otis Ball, had to be cooler than a cherry Slushee. Anyone who dons a TEEN BEAT tee for their album cover photo shoot
has got pizzazz and primo style in our book! After giving this record a spin, we decided the music was good, hearty rock 'n' roll with a new twist! Talent and taste - what more could you ask for?
TEEN BEAT salutes you, Otis!
Otis Ball appears to be a man of mystery. He is charismatic and enigmatic. People really don't know all that much about Otis. He appears to be from the midwest. The folks at Bar/None Records
receive zany mail postmarked from Illinois, Wisconsin or Indiana for Otis. This musician of perplexity got signed soon after John and John of They Might Be Giants sent Bar/None
a tape by Otis Ball and the Chains. In August 1988, Otis packed up his car and moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, taking nothing but his guitar, records, TV, sofa, wrenches, clothes and baby brother.
He hit the recording studio immediately after unpacking and emerged with his debut record, I'm Gonna Love You 'Til I Don't. Tracks such as "Artists In Day Jobs," "Hey Buddha" and "Slow Boat to Hoboken" are witty
and entertaining. If the ordinary is dreary then spice up your life with Otis "The Wildman" Ball! Be advised that Otis' fan club is called OtisKult and all members are asked to change their names to
"Squeaky" before being indoctrinated.
Thanks to Bar/None Records, TEEN BEAT has got 10 albums and 10 cassettes of Otis Ball's debut album, I'm Gonna Love You 'Til I Don't to give away to 20 lucky readers. To enter,
just fill out the coupon here (or a reasonable facsimile) and mail it back to us by June 1, 1990. The winners will be randomly selected from all the entries received, and prizes will be sent in the mail. More power to ya' and good luck!
In other artists' songs
When I saw you at D.C. Space/With a Jagermeister in your hand
You looked so pretty/It made me want to write a song
And record it in New York/Take a bus to Wharton's studio
He's an indie star (Mark Robinson, Mark Robinson)
He knows Terry, Ken & Gerard (Mark Robinson, Mark Robinson)
He's the only one I know/Who gets paid...
Shopping in Pier Platters/Looking through the 7" racks
And if Otis is here, he'll tell/Me what is new and hot
I gotta buy some vinyl/Before the vinyl's all gone
Take these records home/And play them while I'm writing...
The Graverobbers 7", ©1992 Homestead Records
Mark Robinson b/w Yes, She Is My Skinhead Girl
In the comix
Otis Ball and the Chains T-shirt in Clive Barker's Hellraiser Dark Holiday Special, Epic Comics.
Incidentally, the woman wearing the shirt is comic diva and world traveler Marie Javins.
Love Me Till You Don't button in Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book #8, ©1992 Marvel Comics
Do you recognize the man wearing the button?
On the MTV
In the video for "The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)" by They Might Be Giants, there is a dancing parade of guitarists.
At about 3:20 into the video, watch carefully for a totally rocking guitarist sporting the same Otis Ball and the Chains
shirt pictured in the Hellraiser comic above.
In the financial pages!
"Financial advisers target young adults // Younger generation has few assets but a long time
to invest for future." Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 12, 1996.
Alisha Siebers, a Berkeley, Calif., student, dreams of becoming
an English professor, owning a home, raising a few kids and settling
into a secure retirement some day.
She and husband Steve, both 28, have little money or investment
experience right now, and they face thousands of dollars in loans
after she earns her doctorate from the University of California.
Steve, an insurance actuary, wants to change careers.
Otis Ball, 31, of Jersey City, N.J., is also in transition. He's
working part time at a record store after holding various jobs in
the music industry, including performing and working on record sale
tours. His goal: to find a good managerial position and start making
some serious money.
They may not have much money, but the Siebers and Ball are just
the type of clients Wall Street firms want, because time is on their side.
"When you've got someone who's got 40 years 'til retirement,
there's so much you can do," said Nicholas S. Peters, senior vice
president and financial planning manager for Key Investments, a unit
of Key Corp. in Cleveland. "We want to get them started now. That's
a marketplace we want to reach."
Few assets yet
Generation X - young adults under age 35 - may not have
accumulated as many assets as their baby boomer siblings or parents.
But they still have many years left to save and invest for home
buying, college costs for their children and retirement. (The oldest
of the baby boomers, who turn 50 this year, already are on the retirement countdown.)
Brokerage firms, mutual fund companies and other financial
institutions have been actively courting Generation Xers with a
myriad of products, services and educational programs - many using a high-tech
approach - that stress the advantages of investing early, even in small increments.
Several books and publications aimed at the twentysomething
crowd also have sprung up recently. Included among them is the
fledgling quarterly investment newsletter Green, whose front cover
screams: " . . . I'm young. I'm poor. I know jack about investing. What should I do?"
"The financial services . . . basically captured the baby
boomer generation in terms of their ability to manage their assets,"
said James Lowell, author of "How to Survive in the Real World: Financial Independence for the Recent Graduate."
"Generation X clearly makes a nice {new} target," said Lowell, 36, a year older
than the most senior members of his target audience.
By many accounts, today's young adults are genuinely interested
in what the financial industry has to say. They feel an urgent need
to save and invest for their future since they face more economic
uncertainties than their baby boomer counterparts, many of whom came of age in the booming '80s.
"I want to set up my own insurance fund," said Ball, who is
boning up on investment basics. "The future with Social Security and
Medicare is so unclear. There's such a precarious job situation out
there. We all have to watch our own backs."
Lower expectations
Alisha Siebers, who is also putting money aside while teaching
part time and raising her toddler son Jake, agreed, offering a more
skeptical view of the future: "I know I won't be as prosperous as my
parents were. I don't have high expectations for glamorous things.
"We're not into cars, property . . . I just want some security."
Sometimes dismissed as cynical, do-nothing complainers,
Generation Xers in general have been saving and investing at rates
equal to or surpassing their elders, financial advisers report.
One recent study, conducted for Kemper Financial Services of
Chicago, divides the generation into two categories: "the squeezed,"
the twentysomething's working class earning under $35,000 a year and
financially pressed, and "the anti-slackers," the more affluent young professionals.
It found that 77 percent of the 373 people in their 20s surveyed
had a savings plan and placed retirement as a priority, vs. 80
percent of the baby boomers polled. More than 90 percent of the
young adults considered Social Security something to which they are
entitled, yet 81 percent didn't think it would be there for them when they retired.
"These people are much more into self-determination," said Mary
Rudie Barneby, who runs Regis Retirement Plan Services in New York.
She's been surveying young investors herself and has noticed a
change in attitude about the need to save in just the last two years.
"They have no illusions about the future," Barneby said. "The
baby boomers, on the other hand, seem to think they're entitled to
Social Security, to their house appreciating 400 percent and to two
pensions . . . because that's what happened with their parents."
Barneby, a 44-year-old baby boomer who manages $250 million in
pension fund assets for several companies, often holds financial
planning seminars and finds younger employees just as interested in
investment strategies as older ones. However, she said, she relies more
on computerized tools like CD-ROMs to get her message across to the younger crowd.
Other financial firms are also taking a high-tech approach to luring younger clients.
Many companies, including Key Investments, have their own Web
page on the Internet, complete with lively graphics that provide
interactive lessons in financial planning, like how to structure a
diversified investment portfolio.
Merrill Lynch & Co., the nation's largest brokerage firm, also
holds regular online seminars with topics dealing with managing
401(k) retirement plans, obtaining mortgages, and handling credit.
By the fall, clients can turn to an Internet site and access
account information online, said John Michel, a first vice president
at Merrill Lynch, which claims to have captured about 20 percent of the affluent young market.
Michel stresses the advantages of a full-service broker: tailor-made investment portfolios
and unlimited advice from scores of in-house professionals.
But Ken Kurson, the 27-year-old editor of Green, says young
investors initially would be better off setting up less expensive
accounts with discount brokers or no-load mutual funds. Besides, he
notes, there's so much free or low-cost financial information
already available, including material from the business press and via the personal computer.
Through their sales pitches, most financial institutions urge
young investors to stick with stocks or stock funds since they
historically have provided the greatest rates of return over time.
(The rule of thumb: The percentage of investments in fixed-income
products should equal your age; the rest should go into stocks.)
Power of compounding
Investment advisers stress the power of compounding; that is, watching your principal investment
grow over time. The secret, they say, is in starting early, ideally before age 30.
Barneby provides this example:
A 25-year-old who puts asides $100 a month (that's little less
than $25 a week) would have saved $12,000 over 10 years. Even if he
or she never added a dime and realized an annual return of 8
percent, $183,709 would have accumulated by age 65.
If that same person waited until age of 35 to save the $100 a month, and kept on saving
for 30 years at the same annual rate of return, he or she would have netted only $147,755.
This page last updated on September 20, 2004.