How do you get to play a gig in Big Bay, MI? Easy: just volunteer. I often repeat one of my dad’s favorite sayings: “the best jobs you get to do in life are not always the ones you get paid for.” This was probably in the back of my mind when I asked my […]
Searching for an article to reference, I realized that the list has gotten a bit out of hand. Here is the CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING of FTV articles through 2016 (with 2017 being added to as time goes on) to make it easier to find past articles I may reference from time to time (who was it that […]
From the Vaults: Hendrix lives on Newsflash: I am no longer mad at Jimi Hendrix for dying the week before my 17th birthday. I am also no longer concerned that so many young rock stars flamed out at age 27, which by sheer coincidence happens to be the number of the day I was born. […]
Okay. His name was really Dwight Kater, but every time I listen to the band Chicago, I think back to Dwight, therefore, Dwight Chicago is how I remember him. When Dwight and his family first came to Marquette, they lived in the faculty housing units on Center St. two blocks from my house and halfway […]
Having heard the Ontonagon High School school song enough times, I absolutely can not remember the school song from my days at Marquette Senior High. I do remember that it wasn’t just a converted college anthem reworked for our school but it had actually been written by my first high school band […]
If there is a lead singer in rock whose career arc is eerily similar to the pro football career of Brett Favre, it would have to be David Coverdale. English by birth he now holds dual US/English citizenship and resides in Reno, Nevada. Coverdale is remarkably well preserved for a 64 year old rock […]
The fateful day that Ray (the Human Jukebox, guitar player, vocalist) called to tell me that he was mustering out of the Air Force hit me like a ton of bricks. He said that he would be heading back to his old stomping grounds in southern Illinois in early May so his last band jobs […]
Not the end of the world. This FTV will be about a band coming to the end of its run. I am sorry, if the title sounds a little too ‘apocalyptic’ sounding, but in some ways, the end of a band is a bit jarring. I was dumped twice by the same girlfriend in […]
“No one wants to see a drunken bluesman anymore”. Pretty profound words from Deak Harp who was just that and as a result, he was considered a five time loser (as in ‘failed rehab five times’), messed up, unreliable, and black balled by just about all the blues clubs in New York and Chicago. “They […]
Kids, don’t try this at home. I am pretty sure that the tale I am about to relate would be considered an act of terrorism today but in the early 1970s, it could still be dismissed as ‘youthful hijinks’. It was still dumb, but by today’s standards, ‘dumb’ would not be a good enough excuse […]