Norman Greenbaum was watching TV one night and saw country music legend Porter Wagoner perform an old Gospel song. Norman thought to himself, “Hey, I could do that,” and thus inspired, he proceeded to write his one and only No. 1 hit song Spirit in the Sky. An urban legend went around that Greenbaum […]
Our good friend Gary Tanin at Daystorm Music in Milwaukee recently sent along Jim Eannelli’s first solo album Just Deserts which is set to be released in both digital and physical formats on September 27, 2024. Yours truly was visiting Eugene, Oregon to catch John Forgety’s 56th Anniversary Celebration concert. When the Just Deserts […]
On Saturday, August 17th, 2024, I got to attend my second show at the Cuthbert Outdoor Amphitheater. Unlike the first show (Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band in June of 2023), this 2024 show involved dodging a few raindrops. The day of the show, a rare thunderstorm rolled through Eugene, Oregon in the afternoon but watching […]
By the end of the 1970s, Triumph (aka – The Rock and Roll Machine) were one of the biggest exports from the Great White North. There were better known bands at the time (see: The Guess Who and Rush) but for the record, Triumph were similar to, yet vastly different, than their Canadian compatriots. […]
Let us first clarify who Craig Frost isn’t. He is not related to Jack Frost. He also wasn’t a member of the Michigan band The Frost or the Swiss metal band from Zurich called Celtic Frost. At one juncture of his career, Craig Frost was a journeyman keyboard player on the Flint, Michigan bar […]
The employee recreation building at the Huron Mountain Club wasn’t extravagant by any imagination. A couch, a chair or two, a TV with no reception, a small stereo system of unknown age, a fireplace no one ever built a fire in, and a ping pong table. The turntable on the stereo was not going to […]
Okay, I now have further proof that 1967 was a long time ago. When Doug Ingle passed away on May 25, 2024, I told one of the kids at school I was going to do an Iron Butterfly tribute. It should not have surprised me when they asked, “Who?” I went through all the […]
There has been a suggestion that I spend too much of my time ‘living in the past’. If one considers last week’s article about the Marquette band Walrus, then the verdict would have to be ‘guilty as charged’. My wife lets me know when I stray too deep into my musical history growing up […]
In several past From the Vaults I have talked about what a cool music town Marquette was to grow up in. Featured prominently in those memories was the band Walrus. I will come back to the mechanics of how guitarist Mike McKelvy and I reconnected in the next FTV. Mike sent me an extensive version […]
In the last few months I was still playing in a band with three airmen from KI Sawyer Air Force Base, our bass player loaned me an album by a band called Trapeze. Lee said, “There is a song called Black Cloud on it I really want us to learn. As was my custom, […]