1st memorabilia item up for auction

As announced earlier, until November 2008 the Jason Becker Charity will be throwing in some rock memorabilia into an auction regularly. These items have been sponsored by some of the best rockstars this planet has to offer. Right now we put the first item up for auction. The principle is simple: the person with the highest donation for Jason Becker, will receive the item. The bid period will be from May 25 - June 14 (midnight).

This period’s item is a pair of signed Marco Minnemann drumsticks + a signed copy of the Marco Minnemann CD: 'House wife dog & two kids'.


Marco is one of the world’s most advanced drummers, who many of you probably know best from his collaboration with Paul Gilbert on the Space Ship One CD and Space Ship Live DVD (at least I did).Please visit Marco’s MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/marcominnemann and check out his impressive CV ! Many thanks to Marco for providing the stuff !
So don’t wait and DON8 !

Press in Aardschok Magazine

The Jason Becker Charity got some press in the leading Dutch Rockmagazine Aardschok. The article is in Dutch, so here's the English translation:

"Aardschok.com reporter Ron Coolen has set up a Charity to raise money for Jason Becker, who suffers from a very serious disease for a long time. Coolen will run the New York Marathon in November in order to raise awareness for his Charity and to collect money for Becker.
In the meantime Coolen has found a range of famous musicians supporting his Charity with the likes of Billy Sheehan, Steve Stevens, Kip Winger, Tommy Denander and the guys from Raven. For more information on this Charity and on how to donate you can visit http://runforjason.blogspot.com and www.myspace.com/roncoolen".

The word gets out and that makes me proud !

Promotion on Aardschok.com !

The famous Dutch Rockmagazine "Aardschok" has given us a special 'blogspot' on their website http://www.aardschok.com/. Here a special section called 'Run for Jason' is made, where we can post any message at any time on the Jason Becker Charity.

The Aardschok magazine has always supported Jason's career from the early Cacophony days and they feel very involved with him. For that reason they were very willing to contribute to the promotion of the Jason Becker Charity. Many thanks to Oscar, Dre and Metal Mike for making this happen !

Please take a look at http://aardschok.com/content/blogcategory/44/83/ and make sure to check regularly for updates.

Jason Becker Charity banners available !

There are 2 banners available for the Jason Becker Charity; the message being “Time to payback Jason Becker”. These banners are made to promote the Jason Becker Charity, this Charity has the aim to collect as many donations as possible from Jason Becker fans all over the world. All donations are used to help Jason to improve his life !

You can help promoting the Jason Becker Charity by putting one of these banners on your website and/or your blog. There is a horizontal and a vertical version of the banner available.
When you put these on your site please link them to: www.myspace.com/roncoolen or to http://runforjason.blogspot.com/ .

It would be great if you would help us promoting our initiative; every bit of help is needed and appreciated !

You can pick the banners from the 'pics' section on my MySpace site (www.myspace.com/roncoolen) or use the following URL's

URL Horizontal banner
http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn145/Lukather99/MI_00108_JB_bannerh2BA99B.gif
URL Vertical banner:
http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn145/Lukather99/MI_00108_JB_bannervert_002.gif

Message from Jason !

Jason posted following message on his MySpace blog, which is very interesting:

"Hey Guys and Girls,Ok, ok, I know I am a bunion licker. My "Jason Becker Collection" CD won't be out in May. D'oh! Dan my man, keeps getting great movie score gigs. We have finished two of three new songs, though, so I am betting on an August release. Hopefully, I am not full of crap this time (heh heh). Dan will probably hate me for giving another guess (sorry, Tweedle Dum). One new song has Steve Vai and Marty Friedman. I can't stop listening to it. They killed it. It is so great working with Marty again, and Steve, for the first time. The other version features Steve Hunter and Greg Howe, not to mention, me. They also kicked some furious ass. It ends with a beautiful choir.

The other new song has some brilliant playing by Joe Satriani and Michael Lee Firkins.

Are you tired of hearing the same stuff over and over yet? (ha ha)Marty Friedman just sent me his new CD called "Future Addict." Oh shit, I love it. The songs, production, musicians, singers, playing and tone are just awesome! He did new versions of the Cacophony songs, "Where My Fortune Lies" and "Burn the Ground." I think they are cooler than the originals. I suggest looking for it."

Take off like a rocket !

This week the Jason becker Charity really took off like a rocket ! It was unbelievable to see that the name of Jason Becker still means so much to so many people in the music industry.

I opened a Jason Becker Charity page on MySpace, a global network for musicians, and the response was really overwhelming ! Big rockstars like Vinnie Moore, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan connected as friends, and also friends of Jason like Marty Friedman and Steve Hunter connected to my initiative, so I feel very honored as you can imagine.

Besides that people from all over the world, from Australia to Argentina and from Japan to the United States stopped by and paid their respect and offered their support ! So after months of thinking, the Charity is now really out there !

By the way, the training for the NYC marathon was pretty awful this week, because I got injured playing indoor soccer.... so let's keep fingers crossed that I can re-start training very soon, becauase it's still a long hard road to New York !