This is for Pat, who took the fly (He'll get the reference)....

3. Keith Moon - Townshend once said that The Who consisted of "Roger on lead vocal, me on lead guitar, John on lead bass, and and Keith on lead drums." One of the marks of a great drummer is that his band can't continue without him (or her).  The Who without Keith became what Pete ( Read more... )

Today it’ll be forty years since the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair ended.
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The title of this piece is a reference to a great song on the first Crosby, Stills, and Nash album.  It also refers to my piss poor performance as a blogger. This will be my first entry since October 14 of last year.

I can offer lots of excuses, of course. I have been busy with my musical pursuits. And as Elvis Costello supposedly ( Read more... )

By now I'm sure most of you have heard that Levi Stubbs, lead singer of The Four Tops, died last week. Bob Lefsetz has a nice remembrance of him.

And I have one, too.

Like Lefsetz, I was not into the Motown thing at first. I tolerated The Supremes, but I wasn't into The Temptations. I wanted boys with guitars and dreams I felt connected to, not guys ( Read more... )

This just in - Ringo Starr, otherwise known as Richard Starkey, would be hairdresser and luckiest man in rock history, has decided that he will accept no more fan mail and give no more autographsI'm not sure how  feel about this. Ringo is 68 now, and we're a long way from Beatlemania - or from Ringo's solo career. Sure, he does the All-Starr band ( Read more... )

Been thinking a little more about covers and the idea crossed my mind" "What about bad covers?"

My great and good friend acrosticunivers got me to thinking about this with his comment mention of Vanilla Fudge's epic psychedelic treatment of The Supremes' hit "You Keep Me Hangin' On." I remembered The Fudge's version of Junior Walker's "Shotgun," a much less ( Read more... )

Bob Lefsetz, that erstwhile critic of the music scene (whose musical talent is, by his own admission, mastery of playing - the radio, cd player, iPod, etc.) has recently savaged James Taylor for releasing a new album of cover songs. While Lefsetz makes a salient point (as usual) in accusing Taylor of doing the "covers" album for the money (which ( Read more... )

A British tabloid recently conducted a survey to find out which dead rock star the public would most like to see brought back for "one show, one show only."  Here are the results: ( Read more... )

I heard Smith's version of "Baby, It's You" today while driving back from taking the dogs for a long walk at a local park.
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