From my hometown of Belfast, Gary Moore was one of the greats of guitar, and way too young to die.
Rest in Peace Gary Moore (in the silver jacket):
All the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities
Last year Bob Seger suggested on a Detroit radio show that a fall tour was in the works. The fall shows never happened, apparently because Seger put the kibosh on them at the last minute. This year he surprised his people by telling them, reschedule for the spring.
Seger will be hitting select venues in select cities with the Silver Bullet Band, working 30 – 40 dates around drummer Don Brewer’s schedule. Reportedly he will be playing classic Bob Seger music as well as songs from a new, unreleased, unfinished album.
When Bob Seger hit’s the stage, he should take to heart the warning that Jimmy Buffet provides: Buffet was unconscious for ten minutes and spent a couple of days in hospital after falling off the stage in Sydney Australia this week.
Buffet stepped to the front of the stage at the Hordern Pavilion and misjudged where the stage ended, falling 30 feet to the concrete floor below. No word on whether the little birdies circling Buffets head were flying clockwise or anti-clockwise
Rock star rumble: In an article in Rolling Stone a few weeks ago, Robert Plant, justifying his choice to make mediocre adult contemporary instead of reuniting with his old mates, Led Zeppelin, said:
There’s nothing worse than a bunch of jaded old farts, people who have written their story… I don’t deal in that, and I don’t deal in people who deal in that.
Who could he be calling out here? I’m sure we could all think of a few names, but Alice Cooper wouldn’t have been one.
None the less, step right up, Alice Cooper:
Jimmy Page wants to do it. John Paul Jones wants to do it. And they got Bonham’s son, who is a killer drummer. All they need is Robert Plant. But what is Robert Plant out there doing? Playing folk music! What is he doing?
Careful Robert, he’s got a snake.
Motley Crue singer Vince Neil was sentenced to 15 days house arrest Wednesday after pleading guilty to DUI. He was arrested for driving his Lamborghini 60MPH in a 40 zone in Los Vegas last June, and found to be over the legal alcohol limit. And Wednesday was a good day for Neil this week.
By Friday, reports had surfaced that Neil is being investigated for up to $1Million tax evasion.
Tax evasion is no 60 in a 40 zone, as Wesley Snipes can testify.
Not a rock star, but Charlie Sheen think he is one. This week Sheen went on yet another bender, this one ending with TV’s highest paid actor in the hospital. Very Rock Star.
His hospital stay is being reported as a hernia, which is, alas, very not rock star. Sorry Charlie.
She may not be a rock star, but she plays the daughter of one on TV. And now, for the second year running, Miley Cyrus is listed as AOL’s JSYK.com’s “worst celebrity influence.”
See Charlie, that’s how Rock Stars do it.
It was announced this week that Bob Seger is taking The Silver Bullet Band “on the road again.” Is there a greater song, a greater moment in rock ‘n’ roll than Turn The Page?
I didn’t think so:
Bob Seger, Cool For Cats, Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin'
It’s about the music, the simple, beautiful music. Watching the Wheels, a song about people’s reaction to John dropping out of the music industry to raise his son, Sean, between 1975-1980. It is simple, elegant and beautiful. What more where you looking for in a song?
Rest in Peace John Winston Lennon, 30 years gone.
All the work of blogging occasionally pays off, and in most unexpected coin. Through another blog I keep up, Ramble On, I was advanced a copy of the new “supergroup” Black Country Communion’s debut CD. I’ve been listening for four days now, and absolutely love this CD.
My review is in. Be sure to read it all, but here’s some highlights:
I woke up this morning with a part of a song stuck in my head… It is the latter song I can’t shake today. Specifically, it is the part of the song when the band comes out of the chorus: they have built up to a great crescendo, Glenn Hughes voice straining, Marshalls at 11 and they transition to guitarist Joe Bonamassa coming in with a tasty little guitar lick, bringing the band back down a notch. It is such a sweet, melodic little line: one of those moments when the music seems to sigh…
Joe Bonamassa on guitar, Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals, Jason Bonham on drums and Derek Sherinian on keyboards. Each has an impressive pedigree, each shines in their own way on the debut, self titled, album. The rhythm section carry song after song with pounding regularity. Derek Sherinian offers subtle touches of 70’s era keyboards, adding ambiance and feel, never taking over. And Joe Bonamassa is brilliant, his licks imaginative without overplaying…
At 73 minutes long, it would be my normal MO to complain that Black Country Communion is too long, anything over standard LP length of 45 minutes being an extravagance…
… this would be the first album where I would be tempted to give five stars…
As it is, Black Country Communion is the best post-Zeppelin work of anyone associated with Led Zeppelin.
Black Country Communion will be released Tuesday Sept 21
Black Country Communion
1. Black Country 3:15
2. One Last Soul 3:52
3. The Great Divide 4:45
4. Down Again 5:45
5. Beggarman 4:51
6. Song of Yesterday 8:33
7. No Time 4:18
8. Medusa 6:56
9. The Revolution in Me 4:59
10. Stand (At The Burning Tree) 7:01
11. Sista Jane 6:54
12. Too Late For the Sun 11:21
I have tickets to see Roger Waters next month when he comes through Toronto to do The Wall. Almost didn’t buy them because while I like Pink Floyd, I’m not a huge fan. And frankly, Roger Waters politics turns me off. Today, I’m glad I’m going, and the reason is political:
A pair of Iranian exile brothers have produced a distinctly contemporary remake of the 1979 Pink Floyd anti-authoritarian anthem “Another Brick in the Wall.” With the official blessing of Pink Floyd, the Canadian-based band “Blurred Vision” have released the updated version of the track that is rapidly becoming a social media phenomenon. “Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone” intersperses news footage from the June 2009 “Green Revolution” with the band’s performance in what is depicted as a mosque
Talking to a friend today who was in high hopes David Gilmour would join Waters on stage in Toronto. Nice, but today, I’d rather see Blurred Vision do Another Brick in the Wall (Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone).
h/t KittyOnFire
I could give a hundred reasons to offer happy birthday to Bob Seger: Night Moves; Rock and Roll Never Forgets; Katmandu; Beautiful Loser and so on ad naseum. I could even mention some newer material, Lock and Load perhaps, that holds up against what anyone is doing these days.
How about happy birthday for paying homage to Chuck Berry faithfully for 40 years, expanding the audience of Berry by untold amounts, while maintaining your own originality.
But really, it’s about this: in September 1975 Seger recorded 2 shows at Cobo Hall in Detroit, his hometown. He played a song from his previous album, Turn the Page. The song, about life on the road, meant something more on this night and Seger closed his eyes and nailed it like a carpenter at a barn raising. At the 3:35 mark in the recording the band is just about to drop out for the vocals, and Alto Reed’s saxophone comes in with the songs signature lick. It’s not a magic moment, nothing that average. It’s one of the top 5 three-seconds in all of rock and roll.
It is for that moment, and many others, that Bob Seger gets his At Home and Hespeler 65th birthday wishes.
Happy 65th Birthday Bob Seger, we look forward to seeing you in the fall.
Birthday Wishes, Bob Seger, Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin'
If the President can pull this one off, I’m on board.
Healtcare… Carbon Trading… Stimulus… a man has to have priorities.
********************
Note the sign in the background: “read Atlas Shrugged.” Methinks this picture might be from a tea-party rally.
Politics American Style, Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin'
In an brief phone interview with Detroit DJ Dick Purtan on Friday, Bob Seger announced plans for a fall tour:
Well, we’re thinking about maybe a tour later this year. We’re looking at some dates and trying to get some buildings, maybe October, November. But we just started two days ago, so we’ll see what’s available.
The interview is available here.
Seger’s latest CD, a compilation of his earliest hits, Early Seger Vol. 1, is now available nation wide in Walmart stores. Previously it was only regionally available.
No word on tour dates or availability in Canada, but Detroit’s not that far from Hespeler, and it may be time to see Bob Seger on front of the home town crowd.
Hey Ron, feel like a road-trip?
Bruce Springsteen could get the AHIH Birthday nod because of 35 years of quality rock ‘n’ roll and leave it at that. I could offer best wishes on his 60th for turning the Fender Telecaster into a rock ‘n’ roll instrument, synonymous in rock ‘n’ roll circles with Bruce Springsteen much like Jimmy Page and his Les Paul.
On the other hand, in 1974 Bruce Springsteen set out to record the greatest rock album ever, and almost succeeded (arguably did) with the release of Born to Run. Three years later he released his most artistically complete work, Darkness on the Edge of Town, leaving possibly the two best songs (Fire and Because The Night, the former become a hit for The Pointer Sisters; the latter for Patti Smith) on the cutting room floor. He also wrote one of those songs that may never go away, Blinded By The Light, made what it is by Manfred Mann. Surely that’s enough for birthday wishes on his 60th.
Maybe I’d say happy birthday because he performed two of the three best concerts I have ever seen, first in 1984, just before he was to achieve superstardom. Dancing in the Dark was on the radio, Courtney Cox dancing on MTV, her first flirtation with fame. The second time was almost 30 years later, in 2003. Performing from a new album, the 50-something Springsteen stepped up for 2 1/2 hours. If a reformed Led Zeppelin hadn’t upended the “best concert I’ve ever seen” listing in 2007, I could say with absolute confidence they would have been the two best shows I have ever seen.
Someone else, I might offer wishes because he wrote the following lines:
If dreams came true aww wouldn’t that be nice…
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul…
The street’s on fire in a real death waltz
Between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy
Man, the poets down here don’t write nothin’ at all,
They just stand back and let it all be…I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote.
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat.
We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest…We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school…
But it’s a sad man my friend who’s livin’ in his own skin
And can’t stand the company…
On another day I might suggest the guitar solo in Prove it All Night is worthy o, the bass line in Fire, the passionately strained vocals on Born to Run suggest the recipient was worthy.
Truth is, I can’t narrow down Bruce Springsteen’s contributions to one lick, one line, one song, one album. His career has produced a body of work that can only be called significant, much of it among the best in rock’n’roll.
So Happy 60th Birthday Bruce Springsteen, because of the years of wonder you have given me, and because even after all these years, rock ‘n’ roll still seems important to you.
Birthday Wishes, Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin', Springsteen is still Boss
Ed King is the third guitarist in the legendary three guitar attack of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Joining the band as bassist after Skynyrd opened for King’s own band, Strawberry Alarm Clock, King had moved to guitar by the time Skynyrd’s first album hit the shelves.
His guitar prowess notwithstanding, King was also a significant songwriter with credits including the legendary Sweet Home Alabama and an uncredited assist on Strawberry Alarm Clock’s big hit, Incense and Peppermint.
All that pales, however, to Kings one true contribution to rock and roll: he’s the guy who gives the four beat count-in on Sweet Home Alabama: possibly the most recognizable count-in since I Saw Her Standing There.
Happy 60th Birthday Ed King, hope your enjoying your retirement.
Geezer Butler
I am not now, nor have I ever been a Black Sabbath fan. Normally I would follow that with a but…, but his work on Neon Knights, Fairies Wear Boots, War Pigs,
Iron Man or any of many, many well known and loved songs of my generation. I might mention his innovative use of the wah-wah pedal in N.I.B., perhaps a first for bass guitarists. Or that he’s the guy who wrote much of the lyrics for Black Sabbath, the man who put the words in Ozzy Osbourne’s mouth. All true, all worthy of note, all mean nothing to me.
But, when a guy named Geezer turns 60, something must be said.
So Happy Birthday Geezer Butler, not for all the joy you’ve brought to my life, but for all the joy you’ve brought others, and because you have one of the coolest names in rock and roll
Richie Sambora.
It’s tempting to offer happy birthday to Bon Jovi guitarist Richie “no ‘t'” Sambora simply because he was formerly married to Heather Locklear, one of the most gorgeous women ever. However, that would be doing a disservice.
Love them or hate them, when Bon Jovi broke out in the 80’s, Sambora avoided doing a bad Van Halen imitation as every other guitarist was doing. Sambora put some classic oomph back into rock guitar, and listening now his playing is often fresh and interesting sounding.
But ultimately, happy 50th birthday to Richie Sambora for the talk box lick on Living On A Prayer, a classic bit of rock and roll on a classic rock and roll effect.
… Geoffrey Arnold Beck
Jeff Beck is the middle of the three great Yardbird guitarists, his time with the legendary band squeezed between Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Never a great improviser, songwriter or singer he is often underestimated. His renderings of other people music is, however, often brilliant and his guitar playing is as good as any in the rock genre. It is no exaggeration to call him a great guitarist, far more so than the more highly celebrated Clapton, in my opinion.
Beck’s first post-Yardbirds group would feature a young Rod Stewart on vocals and future Rolling Stone Ron Wood on bass. It was considered the template for friend and Yardbird band-mate Jimmy Page’s future band, Led Zeppelin (the name Led Zeppelin incidentally, emerged from a recording session called Beck’s Bolero, with Beck Who drummer Kieth Moon, Pianist Nicky Hopkins and future Zeppeliners Page and John Paul Jones).
Beck was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, many years too late (he was, of course, previously inducted as a Yardbird).
Jeff Beck, one of the true greats of rock ‘n’ roll guitar, happy 65th birthday: enjoy your seniors discount years.
Beck’s Bolero
Beck Bogart and Appice – Superstition
Playing Run To You at
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