How many places have you called ‘home’? This popped in my head when I found my old American Federation of Musicians Local 219 card in one of my high school yearbooks. I was sixteen in 1970 when Mike, Gene, and I applied for membership the summer before we started playing paying band jobs as […]
Is Classic Rock Magazine obsessed with Deep Purple? In an early summer of 2018 issue, they included a bonus CD with the majority of the tracks having some connection to Deep Purple’s own label, Purple Records. This came on the heels of of earlier issues of CRM that focused on the current state of the […]
No, I am not talking about the TV show Better Call Saul. I am talking about Saul Hudson. Don’t ask me why, but I have always been fascinated with the real names of actors and musicians who are better known by their stage names. Take Peter Horlebeeke, the singing drummer for one of Michigan’s […]
When Mother Nature serves up a particularly violent weather event, it will undoubtedly get the tag ‘100 year’ attached to it. In the summer of 2018, the Houghton / Hancock area experienced a 100 year flood that caused extensive damage all across Houghton County. The only reason the city of Hancock escaped worse damage was […]
The Arndt’s are at it again – they sent us a copy of their newest record The Fun in the Fight and we will be spinning it along with all the other great music they have sent us in the past. Jocelyn and Chris send out the greatest SWAG packages (usually food) but that isn’t why […]
Memories are those things that sometimes pop into one’s head in a seemingly random manner, but there is just something about music that tends to trigger very specific memories in my brain. When others refer to ‘the soundtrack of their life’, it makes me think of things that I associate with certain songs. For […]
Looking back, there were a lot of great teachers in my life who got me interested in a variety of things, many of which I am still interested in today. By far, one who added the greatest value to my education was my first band/music teacher, Joe Patterson. When we took our ‘band test’ in […]
One of my favorite pastimes is reading books and articles about drummers. Of particular interest to me are three basics bits of information: 1) How old were they when they became obsessed with drumming, 2) When and how did they acquire their first proper drum kit, and 3) What path did they follow before […]
The band that could be the next Beatles. This was never a good way for the press to introduce a band to the world. It has happened many times over, but it has never quite worked out that way. The pop band The Cyrcle were introduced on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand as “the band that […]
Near the end of my time with the band Knockdown, Lee the bass player loaned me a copy of an album called Medusa by an English band called Trapeze. He mentioned something about wanting to learn some of their songs, but a few months later, we played our last gigs before Ray the guitar […]