Columns

  I just want to walk right out of this world, coz everybody has a poison heart (Dee Dee Ramone, Daniel Rey) Time to go listen to “Wart Hog” again… (musician-actor-fan Robbie Rist) His speech was inarticulate; His songs were not (Carl Cafarelli, “This Is Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio”) Dee Dee was the most important […]

Lead singer of Iron Maiden Bruce Dickinson recently said in an interview ‘Illegal downloading destroyed the concept of music having any value.’ I couldn’t agree with him more. Nobody wants to buy music anymore, especially when they can get it for free. Me myself, I have never illegally downloaded anything. If a new artist or […]

  As hard as it may seem today to fathom, there was a time, in the not too distant analog past, when starting up a record company required more – much more – than just a domain name and the nearest GarageBand™ software. Yes, there was a time when starting up a record company required […]

  With the endless summer again upon us, I hearby take it upon myself to compile a Consumers Guide of sorts to the sort of sounds every discriminating listener, both old and new, should first consider when diving into the vast, sonically daunting Brian Wilson audio catalog. In other words, in strictly chronological order that […]

  It was two score (that’s forty years) (I think) and several tens of thousand dollars ago (of that I’m sure) that I decided to get into the Record Business. For real. (Sort of.) I mean, Frank Zappa, Frank Sinatra, even those Beatles had their own labels. Why not me ??! So armed with nothing […]

  To celebrate James Newell Osterberg Jr.’s 71st (!!) Birthday on April 21st, I popped into the trusty ol’ Pig Player a DVD whose opening credits state, and I quote, “On September 3, 2010, Iggy and the Stooges performed Raw Power live in Monticello, New York. Six fans filmed the concert and interviewed Iggy and […]

  In the summer of 2005, a package arrived at the Hollywood offices of Highway 61 Entertainment from London with no return address. Inside were two mini-cassette audio tapes dated December 30, 1999 and labeled The Last Testament of George Harrison.   A voice eerily similar to Harrison’s tells a shocking story: Paul McCartney was […]

Foreigner is an English-American rock band, originally formed in New York City in 1976 by veteran English musician Mick Jones ex-Spooky Tooth and fellow Briton and ex-King Crimson member Ian McDonald along with American vocalist Lou Gramm. Jones came up with the band’s name as he, McDonald and Dennis Elliott were British, while Gramm, Al […]

For this month’s column I reached out to some Underground labels, bands, and people and Asked this: When you release something these days how do you go about promoting it? Kostas Sustainvanos Promo song on YouTube, ads in magazines, interviews, promo copies to printed magazines, digital pak to webzines. Flávio Oliveira: That’s the way everyone […]

  The first Friday of most every month throughout 1967 and into ’68, I was formally excused from school so that my mother could take me all the way into Toronto for orthodontic appointments. As due reward afterwards, I would be treated to a tasty french-fry-and-chocolate-milk lunch in the sumptuous Eaton’s Department Store cafeteria, then […]

  DATELINE: Lubbock, TX (February 2018) –   Yessir, that last tour, exactly fifty-nine years ago, was sure a sumbitch, wasn’t it? “Winter Dance Party” my lone starred ass! More like a near month hauling all across those snow-crusted heartlands in the back of a school bus, sleeping with our guitars and our Jack Daniel’s […]

  Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie released a new CD, Chuck Berry released his last CD, and Jan & Dean’s REAL Filet of Soul finally arrived …after a quite, well, fishy 52-year delay. Nevertheless, I still found ten more vintage-2017 gems to recommend to all you B-Busters out there. In, as always, strictly alphabetical order […]

  Yes, it’s actually THAT time of Year again, when your snowbound B-Buster loads up on the virtual Yule to ask…   1) Which seasonal / Christmas recording do you never tire of hearing? What’s special about it? 2) Which seasonal / Christmas recording irritates you?     Morley Bartnoff as Cosmo Topper 1) It’s […]

Well the year is coming to an end and 2017 will become and gone soon and another year of music is on the books so to speak. Yes, there was some good music and even a few great releases, but for the most part music releases sucked this year. Now in saying that, I am […]

Interview with Jeff Scott Soto of Sons of Apollo, SOTO, Talisman, W.E.T, Trans-Siberian Orchestra (touring), ex-Yngwie, and many others, which aired on November 26, 2017, on The Signals of Intuition. Topics discussed include his early days as a musician, joining Yngwie, Kuni, Talisman, Takara, W.E.T., and his new records Retribution and Sons of Apollo. http://www.facebook.com/powermetalpoint

Being a rock journalist is a fun job to me. Going to see Tom Keifer of Cinderella was a real treat. As most fans do when going to a concert we tend to play their music. On my way to the concert, I must have played the song Gypsy Road 10 times. It is a […]

  The 1992 Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act required that the millions of pages, many of them contained in CIA and FBI documents, be published in 25 years – by Thursday, October 26, 2017. Over the years, the National Archives has released most of the documents, either in full or partially redacted. But one final […]

Gene Simmons gets a lot of flak for some of the things that he has said, One thing he said that makes sense is the fact that there’s no music business. Consumers feel they are entitled to download music for free. For a musician to make music they have to pay for instruments, studio time […]

This column I am going to touch on the cost of going to live shows and how many so-called “reunion” tours go on these days from a lot of bands from the 80’s. The cost of going to live concerts has skyrocketed recently and I am sure it is due to the fact that album […]

With the passing of Tom Petty, it feels like the Music Died. The first time I ever heard of Tom Petty song was in 1989 when Free Falling came on MTV I thought at first that he was a solo singer putting out his first solo album little did I know who Tom Petty really […]

  In honor of The One And Only Jerry Lee Lewis who, believe it or not, just turned 82 (!!) we take a little trip back. Sixty years back to be exact, to an unassuming little building at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee where something called “Great Balls Of Fire” has just been brought, red […]

I was 8 years old when Appetite for Destruction came out. That time period 1987-1993 there was no other band like guns n roses. In 1987 there wasn’t a record like “Appetite For Destruction”. No one believed they would rule the rock world. It is hard to believe that 30 years have passed since the […]

  Good morning, campers! It’s your old pal Keith Moon here. You know, “Moonie,” “Moon the Loon” …or, as I very much prefer, The Greatest Rock and Roll Drummer that Ever Was, that is. Or was. I think… But I digress. Anyroad, we meet today so that I may bring your undivided attention to this […]

  It’s Elvis Day again this month. While this fact usually only piques the interest of a few graying octogenarians at this terribly late stage in the game, August 16th got me to thinking, probably for the first time ever, Why Elvis? I mean, Why should anybody, ANYWHERE care anymore? Well, in a word or […]

  Your humble columnist is proud to have been one of the esteemed contributors to Harvey Kubernik’s grand new 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of The Summer Of Love book. Whilst doing so however, I made sure to keep the trusty Pig Player fully loaded at all times with this especially time-worthy setlist…   […]

There is something I really miss in today’s music scene and that is fanzines. Fanzines are/were little magazines (if you could even call them magazines, I wouldn’t myself) that a “fan” would put out. In the mid 80’s they really started popping up all over the place and then in 1986, I started mine. Zines […]

  A Summer’s Coming Songfest for putting the Top Down and the Volume UP:   “I GET AROUND” by THE BEACH BOYS (1964) Instrumentally (the arrangement and production effectively trounced all comers that summer of ’64), lyrically (though one can safely interpret “I’m gettin’ bugged drivin’ up and down the same old strip, I gotta […]

  There’s Brian Wilson and his Beach Boys, most obviously. Then there were Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young, the Eagles, and my own personal favorites the Turtles, Byrds, Mothers of Invention and possibly even those Runaways. Not to mention Lindsey Buckingham’s Big Mac. However, whenever the songs and stories of California are sung and […]