Your Sound Choice
Announcements and reviews about new music
This is our old friend Al Jacquez and his wife Judy – Al was put in the Michigan Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Bay City in 2024. We have followed his career since Savage Grace, Measured Chaos, and most recently as a solo artist performing his ONE VOICE – ONE GUITAR set. The […]
The dawn of the 1980s had to be a revelation for Lita Ford. She was 22 years old, an outstanding but newly unemployed guitar player living back home with her parents in Long Beach, California. She had seen all the ‘lead singer drama’ she could tolerate before her old band, The Runaways, imploded. Lita […]
So much attention seems to be given to certain names in the music business, it is a wonder that the majority of artists out there even get the chance to get their music heard. All too often, some of the ‘big names’ in music put out sub-standard albums (in comparison to their own work) but […]
Everybody knows Eddie Van Halen invented a two hand guitar technique widely known as ‘tapping’. All one has to do is call up a video of Eddie shredding the neck of one of his iconic guitars and it is likely he will employ tapping in a solo. What is tapping exactly? According to Gunnar […]
Who is Bill? You know, Bill Szymczyk. Who? Bill Szymczyk (pronounced ‘/simzik/’ if you are wondering). Never heard of him? Maybe not by name, but if you have listened to recorded work by B.B. King, The James Gang, Joe Walsh, Eagles, The J.Geils Band, JoJo Gunne, Jay Ferguson, The Winter brothers (Edgar and Johnny), […]
Here is a rock ‘n’ roll chemistry problem for you. Mix two members of the popular Canadian band Streetheart with a singer from another well known Canuck band, Moxey, stir in an up and coming producer named Bruce Fairbairn and what do you get? One of the most successful AOR (Album Oriented Rock) bands of […]
When I first joined a band called Cloudy and Cool, the other three guys in the band were all in the Air Force and stationed at K.I. Sawyer AFB just outside of Marquette. The lead guitarist / vocalist, Ray, was a Sargent and through his connections at the base, C&C were the house band […]
When was the first time you became aware of KISS? Did you hear them on the radio? Perhaps their (kind of) ghoulish make-up staring off the cover of their first album (released February 18, 1974) caught your attention. Maybe you were one of those in the MTV generation who heard and saw them on […]
Remember Rodney Dangerfield’s most famous catch phrase? Rodney built entire routines around the phrase, “I don’t get no respect.” Catching up with guitarist Brad Whitford on the eve of Aerosmith’s ‘Peace Out’ world tour, the phrase kept popping into my head. I am not saying Whitford is disrespected by his bandmates. No, the negative […]
Alrighty then. What do Britney Spears, Max Martin, Backstreet Boys, Denniz PoP, Kelly Clarkson, and N’Sync have in common? If you ignored my imaginative spelling in the title (done as an homage to Mr. PoP), then you probably already guessed ‘hits’ as in ‘hit records’. I could have tried to get you off track by […]