Announcements and reviews about new music
Remember Rodney Dangerfield’s most famous catch phrase? Rodney built entire routines around the phrase, “I don’t get no respect.” Catching up with guitarist Brad Whitford on the eve of Aerosmith’s ‘Peace Out’ world tour, the phrase kept popping into my head. I am not saying Whitford is disrespected by his bandmates. No, the negative […]
Alrighty then. What do Britney Spears, Max Martin, Backstreet Boys, Denniz PoP, Kelly Clarkson, and N’Sync have in common? If you ignored my imaginative spelling in the title (done as an homage to Mr. PoP), then you probably already guessed ‘hits’ as in ‘hit records’. I could have tried to get you off track by […]
Holly Knight’s rise from a wanna-be rock musician to a respected songwriter was addressed in this space in FTV: Holly the Songsmith (11-8-23). Telling her story only took us up to the first major hit she and her publisher, Mike Chapman, wrote for Pat Benatar in 1983, Love is a Battlefield. Digging further into […]
Holly Erlander was a struggling musician trying to catch a break with her band Siren. The New York City music scene, much like its counterpart in Los Angeles, had a lot of bands trying to get noticed so her story isn’t exactly unique for the late 1970s. Holly had a knack for getting to […]
There are bands that simply play music. While some engage with their audiences, others are what are referred to as ‘shoegazers’. ‘SGs’ are bands that don’t make eye contact or go out of their way to make small talk with their fans – they just play. Rick Wakeman is a peg that does not […]
The disclaimer: I like music. I will listen to any type of music but there are some genres I can take or leave. I have listened to enough Punk rock, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, and hard core metal bands like Slipknot to know they aren’t my cup of tea. I understand why legions of […]
On July 14, 2008, a random music fan shot a video of Rick K and the Allnighters performing at an amusement park in Pennsylvania. Two years later, someone else posted it to YouTube under the heading ‘This Drummer is At the Wrong Gig!’ and it promptly went viral. The singer introduces the ZZ Top tune […]
At the conclusion of Part 1, we left Richy Starkey just as he hit the big time in the Liverpool music scene. No, he wasn’t in The Beatles yet. He was a member of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and Richy was known to be the best drummer within 150 miles of his home […]
Can an 82 year-old take on 23 concert dates consisting of two and three night stands with a couple of days off in between? After witnessing Ringo’s All Starr Band hit the stage in Eugene, Oregon on Friday June 2, 2023, I am going to guess the answer is, “Oh yeah!” Ringo doesn’t do […]
When an article about Jim ‘Kimo’ West appeared in Guitar World magazine’s April 2023 issue, parts of his story sounded real familiar. It occurred to me that I just might have talked about him some in a previous From the Vaults, so I started backtracking through my index of titles. I was just beginning […]