15/04/2022
First MUSIC NFT Rock Opera Album Released by American Zen of Shaolin Records
LEVEL 1 = Peace Of Mind is 1st Music NFT Rock Opera Ever Created at OpenSea.io
Lancaster, CA (SHAOLIN RECORDS) March 30, 2022--Richard Del Connor “mints” (creates NFTs) of 11 songs and 11 poems comprising the debut album by American Zen: LEVEL 1 = Peace Of Mind at OpenSea.io https://opensea.io/collection/american-zen-level-1 . This rock opera produced by Richard Del Connor for Shaolin Records is the beginning of the 8-LEVEL Buddhist spiritual journey of American Zen: "America's First Buddhist Rock Band™" founded in 1992, when Richard moved to Salt Lake City, Utah to raise his 1-year old daughter. The 8th LEVEL of American Zen’s Buddhist odyssey is proposed to be Nirvana, or the highest possible level of Buddhist enlightenment.
This ROCK OPERA autobiography of Richard Del Connor is performed by The Hippy Coyote and three other pseudonyms Richard uses to create this 4-piece rock band modeled after the "Spiders from Mars" band on David Bowie's album titled Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars. After the Utah Mormons threatened to excommunicate his guitarist and drummer, the Jewish bassist fled back to New York leaving Richard Del Connor alone to produce and record this album of songs that portray his hardships of establishing a home amongst the Mormons of the Church of Latter Day Saints.
The songs and poems depict these religious battles of the Mormons trying to scare him back to California. Other songs are about his wife and young daughter who Richard raises full time as a stay-at-home Mr. Mom. "Sometimes you can hear my 1-year old daughter singing along with me in the background while I'm recording,” says Richard with a beaming smile. Some of the 11 poems also tell of his love and efforts to raise a healthy daughter despite the Mormons limiting their abilities to find employment and preventing his wife from working night shifts. His wife Michelle worked as a night shift printer for Kinko’s in Los Angeles and Hollywood, but the Mormons were still restricting women in the work place as they had since frontier days in the 1800s when women working at night were considered to be of ill repute.
The songs and poems are in the order they were recorded and written with a couple exceptions. The song "Trust Me" was recorded at The Village Recorder when Fleetwood Mac were recording their Tusk album. Stevie Nicks was clapping and providing support from the studio control room during the recording of this song in which Richard Del Connor is playing his 1957 Rickenbacker 4000 bass and singing all the vocals. Richard was known as "Richard O'Connor" from 1979 to 2007 before he permanently dropped the "O" after joining the California Freemasons who require the use of birth certificate names only.
Richard Del Connor was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2021 and received a surgery, chemotherapy and cobalt radiation therapy which resulted in him laying in discomfort on his back most of that year and viewing YouTube videos teaching him about Bitcoin, blockchain technology, and other crypto assets that included NFTs. Richard began experimenting with almost a dozen different crypto wallets, purchasing many different crypto coins including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Sol, Matic and others. With no relatives or friends yet exploring the "crypto world" Richard studied hundreds of hours of videos while experimenting with NFT "minting" on the Solana, Ethereum and Polygon blockchains.
Not knowing whether he was cancer free until his Valentine's Day 2022 CAT scans, Richard Del Connor applied for and received the IRS nonprofit status for his American Zen Peace Foundation in 2021 to administrate and manage his dozen entertainment companies including the Shaolin Music ASCAP publisher, Shaolin Records independent record label, Shaolin Communications book publisher and Shaolin Digital web design and web manager for his 57 websites. "My life is just beginning, not ending," explains Richard Del Connor. "I have many projects to complete and I need to organize my companies to be managed by other people when I'm not around any more."
This fatalistic, but ambitiously hopeful perspective is pursued by creating NFTs he hopes will become the foundation of his financial stability after being homeless for six years. "I've just completed 2,568 unique NFT collectible artworks called "Kung Fu Outlaws,” also minted at OpenSea.io. (https://opensea.io/collection/kung-fu-outlaws)
Richard explains enthusiastically. "I've divided them up into a dozen different MetaMask wallet accounts which are owned by each of my companies. As these "Kung Fu Outlaws" are sold they will provide working capital to hire people to start running my record company and administrate my publishing companies even better than I can as a one-man operation.”
“I’ve transferred 321 of these “Kung Fu Outlaws” NFTs into the American Zen Peace Foundation wallet to hire at least one person to transform it into a DAO.” Richard Del Connor explains that a DAO is the crypto world nickname for a ‘Decentralized Autonomous Organization’ that can be administrated by a Board of Trustees providing governance through smart contracts on blockchains. Richard is seeking persons who know more about this than he does, but hasn’t met anyone who can help or advise him yet.
Shaolin Records was founded by Richard Del Connor in 1984 while living in Hollywood, California as an independent record label to release his first vinyl album titled Temptation under his performance name “Richard O’Connor & The Rich” which included members who joined The Eagles and the famous rock band, Chicago. Shaolin Records became www.ShaolinRecords.com in 1999 as Richard taught himself HTML and he created more than 50 websites for his entertainment companies, and artists he produced.
Now Shaolin Records has moved into the “Crypto World” or “Blockchain Universe” or what some people refer to as, “Web3” with Web2 being the internet of Google, Facebook and all the websites built over the past two decades. Shaolin Records became www.ShaolinRecords.com in 1999 and in 2021 became “ShaolinRecords.crypto,” a “blockchain domain” that can be used in the new Bitcoin world to receive crypto coins directly from customers and investors using the address: ShaolinRecords.crypto instead of the 40 letter address used to actually identify this crypto account.
After his internet web service company Shaolin Digital became www.ShaolinDigital.com and now has become “ShaolinDigital.NFT,” Richard has launched several Web3 galleries called “collections” of NFT artworks and has begun organizing them into a “METAVERSE.”
Richard Del Connor believes this “Metaverse” is the best way to organize ALL his albums, books, photography and artworks into one large ONLINE and WEB3 Multilevel STORE. This 36-level metaverse of Richard’s utilizes all the creativity, projects, and skills of his dozen “Shaolin Enterprises” that he explains are subdivisions of “Shaolin Communications” so he can fulfill orders and receive income from all his companies into one business checking account at Wells Fargo. To launch this 36-level Metaverse Richard Del Connor has also built a Discord Server / Channel as the launch pad for all 36-levels of his “Kung Fu Cowboy Spiritual Rock Opera Metaverse” with corresponding levels in his Discord Server that can only be accessed by starting at LEVEL 1 and after answering at least 5 questions correctly: can gain access to LEVEL 2 of the Kung Fu Cowboy Spiritual Rock Opera Metaverse.
As Richard views his limited mortality and seeks to organize his books and albums into a unified internet store, he has structured this Kung Fu Cowboy Spiritual Rock Opera Metaverse into 36-LEVELS that represent the entire autobiography of his life and provide LEVELS to put his books and albums on shelves in each LEVEL pertaining to when these books and albums were created or the stories they tell are associated. The Kung Fu Cowboy Spiritual Metaverse was designed more for enlightenment than product sales. This album: LEVEL 1 = Peace Of Mind by American Zen is situated on a digital shelf in LEVEL 11 of this metaverse titled appropriately, “Peace Of Mind.”
However, this Opensea COLLECTION at https://opensea.io/collection/american-zen-level-1 is accessible to everyone at anytime without any restrictions. The price of each Music NFT is about $6 each with the price fluctuating as the value of the 0.002 ETH price fluctuates minute my minute.
This brings us to today’s LANDMARK LAUNCH or ALBUM RELEASE or NFT LAUNCH of the first ever newly created Rock Opera comprised of Music NFTs: LEVEL 1 = Peace Of Mind by America’s First Buddhist Rock Band™ American Zen. Besides being the first rock opera of NFTs ever created, this NFT album includes the stories behind the songs that most of his music fans were never aware of. Each Music NFT of the LEVEL 1 = Peace Of Mind collection includes a “Description,” that Richard has used to tell the stories behind the songs and poems and provide links to the websites providing more information, album and book sales, or radio stations playing these songs like iTunes and Spotify.
These NFT “Descriptions” are stored in the blockchain world in IPFS or “Inter Planetary File Storage” where the information is preserved forever, or at least as long as there is electricity on the planet Earth. “Interplanetary?” Perhaps the future will store this information on other planets also. When a person purchases one of these Music NFTs the information is “locked” so that it cannot be changed or altered by future owners and guarantees that every owner of this NFT in the future will have access to the same original authentic information and have links to the websites he created and are hopefully going to be managed by the American Zen Peace Foundation.
Richard Del Connor is a digital pioneer in a new realm of technology but the music and artwork are “old school.” This first of 8 albums comprising the 8-level spiritual journey of American Zen was recorded on a 4-track tape recorder in Salt Lake City, similar to the 4-track recorders used by Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and most bands seeking the highest level of technology during the 1960s. “That’s who I was competing with,” explains record producer Richard Del Connor (listed as “Richard O’Connor in the original album credits of 2003). “Just like they would record the first layer of music instruments on one track, then layer this with three more tracks of recordings, I did the same thing. Track #1 was usually the drums plus my acoustic guitar. Then the bass on Track 2. Then the electric guitar or organ on Track #3, and ending with a vocal on Track #4. I’ll explain this more in the next PRESS RELEASE. I need to feed my cat now.”
Music NFTs of Rock Opera Album: LEVEL 1 = Peace Of Mind
https://opensea.io/collection/american-zen-level-1
American Zen begins their 8-LEVEL spiritual journey rock opera to Nirvana. Led by singer-songwriter The Hippy Coyote on acoustic guitar and flute who tells the story of becoming a Mr. Mom and raising his daughter. Produced by Richard Del Connor for his independent record label SHAOLIN RECORDS on a 4...
