WOAS news and history
Perhaps you have seen the cover of the album Goodnight Vienna. It pays homage to the 1951 Sci-fi classic movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. There in the doorway of the prototypical 1950’s flying saucer stands the nine-foot tall robot Gort. Next to him, with helmet tucked under the arm of his silvery […]
Warning: If you are able to identify the person named in the title above, you are about to confront an age old conundrum. (or perhaps it is an old age conundrum). It goes like this: If you make a cultural reference and no one else in the room has any idea what you are talking […]
We always equated the beginning of the next school year with the start up of marching band in August. The summer after my junior year, we had made plans to march in the Marquette Fourth of July parade as a prelude to taking a band trip to march in two parades at the Traverse […]
In the interest of brevity, I decided to not use “To solo or not to solo” as the title of this FTV. Reading Phil Collins’ memoir “Not Dead Yet” got me thinking about all the drummers I have had the pleasure to hear over the years. Listening to various types of music means one […]
Rumor has it that Robert Downey, Jr. used Elon Musk as his template for the billionaire industrialist playboy Tony Stark (see Stan Lee’s Marvel Universe under ‘A’ for Avengers and ‘I’ for Iron Man). Certainly there are differences: Stark has Pepper Potts, amazing holographic computer technology, no children, and, of course, there is that […]
Greetings – Just got the newest PLAYING for CHANGE CD – while we don’t normally push listeners and readers into causes, this is one that we can’t help but wave the flag for. If you caught one of the first versions of this concept (Stand By Me was the first one I recall seeing some […]
David Fitzpatrick’s new album Parachutes in Hurricanes is the latest disk to make its way north from Milwaukee via Gary Tanin’s Daystorm Records. I was only able to give it a quick run through when Gary first sent it our way to preview and that is a poor way to listen to a new […]
According to his friend John Byrne, Gerry Rafferty, “Went through hell and arrived at his final destination with a sense of peace and fulfilment, but what a journey.” Occasional singing partner Barbara Dickson said, “He liked having money and status, and why shouldn’t he have done it? He had a image of himself being […]
Is there a pivotal year in one’s four years of high school? Freshman year is always a swirl of new activities and if one keeps their head down and eyes open, one can learn a lot from those mature upperclassmen. Sophomore year is less of a mystery because at least some of the school […]
For some strange reason, I can’t for the life of me pass up a book or an article about a fellow drummer. The music trade magazines specifically aimed at drummers (Drummers World, Modern Drummer) will occasionally catch my eye, but after beating the skins for more than a half century, a lot of their […]