Musical ramblings from the manager
So much attention seems to be given to certain names in the music business, it is a wonder that the majority of artists out there even get the chance to get their music heard. All too often, some of the ‘big names’ in music put out sub-standard albums (in comparison to their own work) but […]
The day FTV: Name That Tune came out in the Ontonagon Herald (March 13, 2024), my phone rang. On the other end of the line was one of Ontonagon’s favorite singers, Jim Brogan. He said, “You know that little quiz in the paper? I can’t believe you couldn’t identify Under the Boardwalk!” For those of […]
There is only one student teacher who will be named in this article and that would be me. It has been nearly fifty years since I was a student teacher but it seems like it only happened yesterday. I found myself mentoring a student teacher of my own a mere four years later and […]
Being one of The Beatles was not the be all/end all for George Harrison. Saying the name of the Fab Four usually sends people down Lennon and McCartney Lane, memory-wise. Even Ringo managed to garner more attention than poor George. Paul was always ‘the cute one’, John the ‘serious one’, and Ringo, the ‘fun […]
Mark your calendars for April 8, 2024 around 3:00 p.m. EDT. There will be a Total Solar Eclipse crossing the United States. The path of totality (the area where the entire disk of the Sun is obscured by the Moon) will stretch from central Texas to the Michigan/Ohio border and on to Maine. The rest […]
In From the Vaults: American Eclipse (4-10-23), we chronicled how a group of scientists and astronomers set out to elevate America’s scientific reputation around the world in the wake of the Total Solar Eclipse of 1878. Prior to that event, the European science community did not have a favorable view of what was happening […]
Everybody knows Eddie Van Halen invented a two hand guitar technique widely known as ‘tapping’. All one has to do is call up a video of Eddie shredding the neck of one of his iconic guitars and it is likely he will employ tapping in a solo. What is tapping exactly? According to Gunnar […]
From time to time, I am asked to reveal a secret; where do ideas for these FTV articles come from? There is no simple answer but let me give it a shot: anywhere and everywhere. It isn’t much different than what songwriters say happens when they hear a phrase or musical riff that sticks […]
The title of this FTV started as a mental exercise of me trying to make a ‘Top Ten’ list of bands I liked to listen to back when I was first learning to be a rock and roll drummer. I thought, “Maybe it would be fun to follow up on some of them and […]
In Part 1 of History . . ., we learned about the rise of D.C. Stephenson to the position of Grand Dragon of the Northern KKK in the early 1920s. Following the story in Timothy Egan’s book A Fever in the Heartland (Viking Press – 2023), we discovered that the events he described did […]