Frank Marino scoffs at the thought of being a ‘guitar god’. “I think it is ridiculous – You can either be a guitar god or you can be a musician.” For someone who influenced a lot of today’s guitar players like Marty Friedman, Joe Bonamassa, Steve Vai, and Zakk Wylde, it is even more amazing […]
Why is it that I do not like child prodigies? Jackie Evancho is a wonderfully talented young woman, but even at the ripe old age of 15, I can’t enjoy her music. Why? Because she was a child phenom. In trying to sort out my feelings about child prodigies, I have finally honed in […]
Greek Week Part 1 ended with my observations of Rick Derringer’s band, The McCoys. They were the headliners in the Greek Week Festival dance/concert held at NMU’s Hedgecock Fieldhouse in the spring of 1969 that also included the local band The French Church as the openers. Two years later, I got to witness a concert […]
In my Junior High / Senior High years, the frats and sororities at Northern Michigan University would have an annual spring bash called Greek Week. I can’t say how long this went on or if it continues to this day, but I remember it mostly for the festival like finale that was held at Hedgecock […]
Jack Spann is a multitalented singer and songwriter. His first solo release comes out on April 19, 2016. It is about time that the world hears his stuff and perhaps that was the genesis of the CD title: Time, Time, Time, Time, Time. Our friend and Milwaukee music scene pipeline Gary Tanin at Daystorm […]
His real name is Brad. Brad Carlson. His father owned a roofing business in Rockford, Illinois and by all accounts, he probably should have ended up working in the family business. Back in 1927, his grandfather had helped put the roof on the building where Brad would eventually attend Junior High so it was certainly […]
I quit band once. Junior High band. It was a misunderstanding and I really didn’t quit, but for some reason everyone thought I did. Everybody expected our mean old band director to get someone to quit; it was always the director “who made them quit.” No one had quit since early in the school year, […]
I stood in front of the class and made eye contact with the English teacher. I had a fully strung compound hunting bow in my left hand. The bow was fully equipped with string silencers and a mounted quiver with four broadhead arrows, each sporting razor blade inserts at the ready . I had my […]
There are some bands that I have avoided over the years, Rammstein being one of them. I only heard a track or two from them in the past and had written them off as a ‘too’ band: too industrial sounding, too repetitious, too German, and just plain too foreign for me to like. More recently, […]
There are eternal questions that beg for answers. Why is the sky blue? Why does gravity always pull down? What is a record producer? Okay, in my line of work, I can answer the first two but it has taken years of listening to records and making acquaintances to get a handle on the […]