WOAS news and history
Quick: Who was the first guitar player in The James Gang? If you said Joe Walsh, join me at the back of the class because we were both wrong. In fact, The James Gang wasn’t even Joe Walsh’s band – it was formed in 1966 by drummer Jim Fox. The band predated Walsh by a […]
Spoiler alert: I am a Mark Farner fan and like Homer Simpson professes in the Homerpalooza episode, I have a special spot in my heart for the, “Wild, shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner” and his body of work with Grand Funk Railroad. I watched some interview clips with Farner recently where he mentioned the […]
John Lennon loved ELO. In 1974, he proclaimed that they were the “natural heirs to the Fab Four” which more or less fulfilled Jeff Lynne’s teenage fantasies generated as a Beatles fan during his formative years in Birmingham. America also loved ELO. England? Not so much. Sharon Osbourne? More on her later. Even Phil Lynne, […]
Marquette’s new UFO landing strip is a good idea (A Marquette Mining Journal editorial) Just checking. There is, of course, no UFO landing strip , and possibly no UFOs – but that is fodder for another editorial. What we really wanted to see is if anyone intended on reading past the headline. In 2014, a […]
We were playing Euchre after dinner one evening when I told everyone my tale of the ‘giant sandhill crane’ that I briefly thought might carry me off like a pterodactyl swooping down on a hapless animal. It turned out to be an illusion caused by two birds flying side by side behind a spruce tree. […]
Near the end of our unusually mild February of 2016, our old NASA buddy Ralph emailed from southern Wisconsin that he and his daughter had seen some sandhill cranes. We went back and forth a bit on the topic of sandhill cranes and the conversation transported me back to my introduction to them back in […]
Although he was born in Iowa, Dick Wagner grew up in Saginaw, MI and became a Detroit music icon with his early bands The Bossmen and The Frost. These bands may not have enjoyed the national exposure of other Michigan bands (Grand Funk Railroad and Bob Seger for example), but Wagner himself is […]
In our FTV sometime ago concerning Rammstein, they were speculating if they would be touring again – fear not, as the clip included from the 2016 Pinkpop festival, they are still at it – spectacular stage show and outfits conceived as . . . well, the usual gritty, industrial Rammstein look! So there you go […]
R.I.P. Ian Fraser “Lemmy” Kilmister. I can only listen to Motorhead for so long and then I have to hear something else, but that does not mean I don’t appreciate the house that Lemmy built. Lemmy had just celebrated his 70th birthday in December of 2015 and it was well known that he was having […]
Call it “band musical chairs” if you wish or “out with the old, in with the new”, but however you label it, it is something that happens from the grassroots local scene to the upper echelons of music. All bands will find themselves changing players from time to time and the guitar chair is usually […]