NYS Music 202​1

Author: Sal Cataldi

  • Musicians and Crew Recall the Glorious 3-Year Run of The Fillmore East in New Oral History

    The Fillmore East was called “The Church of Rock and Roll” for good reason; between 1968 and 1971, promoter Bill Graham made music history as he brought the cream of rock royalty to New York audiences in astounding triple-artist bills with ticket prices ranging from $3.50 – $5.50.  Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana and The Allman Brothers were just some of the stars that graced the stage, with several recording classic live albums at the Lower East Side venue.

    fillmore east history
    Fillmore East: Photo © Jeff Rothstein

    Interestingly, Graham also served as a catalyst for expanding the tastes of impressionable young music lovers in New York and abroad.  He accomplished this by using the popular rock headliners to introduce audiences to the more eclectic artists he loved and booked as show openers.  These were the cutting-edge names in jazz, soul, R&B and folk music, from Miles Davis, Buddy Rich and Mongo Santamaria to B.B. and Albert King and The Staple Singers.  It all ended when rock became a big business, when concerts and Graham himself moved onto larger stages.

    New light is now being cast on this institution’s brief run and lasting impact in an in-depth and soulful new book by veteran journalist Frank Mastropolo, Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock History. 

    fillmore east history

    Like Legs McNeil’s punk history classic, Please Kill Me, Mastropolo’s new work is an oral history told by 90 of the musicians and crewmembers who lived through the fast times at this pioneering concert hall. Roger McGuinn, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Robert Lamm, Dave Davies, John Lodge, Nils Lofgren, Dave Mason and Steve Miller are among the 19 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees who contributed to the book, along with Fillmore crew like lightshow pioneer Joshua White and East Village scenesters like media prankster/artist Joey Skaggs. The book also boasts dozens of remarkable performance photos (many taken by the author himself), along with posters, letters, buttons, contracts and memorabilia, many never before published. 

    Mastropolo begins with backstory and history of the theater that would become The Fillmore East, The Commodore, and its place as a centerpiece of Yiddish Theater and vaudeville beginning in the 1920s. Rock enters the picture in 1967, when it becomes The Village Theater and hosts a handful of rock concerts by Cream, Procol Harum, The Yardbirds and The Grateful Dead.  With the success of his San Francisco-based Fillmore West, Graham decides to buy and re-open it as The Fillmore East. The debut show comes on March 8, 1968, with a triple-bill featuring Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, blues great Albert King and folk rocker Tim Buckley. 

    The heart of Mastropolo’s book are the remarkable first-person reminiscences of the artists who played there and their contrasting memories of the mercurial empresario who ran it. 

    fillmore east history
    Janis Joplin: Photo by Frank Mastropolo

    Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer Doug Clifford recalls a night where the audience demanded a remarkable 17 encores. It was an unprecedented occasion, one that Graham commemorated by gifting each member of the band an inscribed gold watch.  Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico recalls Graham’s initial reticence about booking his band, saying of the Fillmore audience: “My people don’t dance!” Then teenaged Television guitarist Richard Lloyd recalls how easy it was to get past the virtually non-existent security to visit Jimi Hendrix, in his dressing room. Chicago’s keyboardist Robert Lamm is one of many artists in the book who think the Fillmore East’s position as the first-choice venue of rockers was a product of its first-rate sound, lighting and staff. 

    Jorma Kaukonen credits the birth of his and bass player Jack Casady’s Jefferson Airplane offshoot, the acoustic Delta blues based Hot Tuna, to the Fillmore East. “I think the Hot Tuna as a band that the public saw was certainly born at the Fillmore East,” relates Kaukonen. “Jack and I had been messing around in hotels for years, with him playing his bass through a tiny amp and me playing acoustic guitar. My recollection about this is that Paul (Kanter) just out of the blue said – ‘Why don’t you guys go out and play an acoustic song?’  That’s how we were given the opportunity to play and display it in front of other people for the first time.”

    John Lennon and Yoko Ono with Frank Zappa and the Mothers: Photo by Dr. Arlene Q. Allen and Ben Haller

    Steve Miller recalls the tumult of one of his performances, when his band followed British novelty act Mungo Jerry of “In the Summertime” fame.  The fun-loving show openers made the not-so-wise decision of giving 500 kazoos to the boisterous NYC audience, who then jammed along uninvited during Miller’s set. Also recalled is the May 1969 concert where The Who performed their rock opera Tommy in its entirety.  The performance was briefly interrupted when a fire broke out at a neighboring supermarket and Pete Townsend attacked a police officer who was attempting to get on stage to command the audience to exit.

    fillmore east history
    Jimi Hendrix: Photo by Frank Mastropolo

    Many of the musicians featured remark on the epic lengths of the shows, ones that would often culminate in jams that would go on until 6 a.m. and beyond.  Also remembered were the post-show meals at Ratner’s, the adjacent 24-hour restaurant manned by surly waiters made even more so by the paltry tips given by Fillmore staff and its cash-strapped young audience.  Also are the first-person memories of the many live recordings made at the venue. This just begins with classic sets by The Allman Brothers, Jimi Hendrix and his Band of Gypsys, Johnny Winter, Taj Mahal, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds and New York’s own mighty Mountain. 

    The backstage crew who cut their teeth at the Fillmore East, including managing directors John Morris and Kip Cohen and stage manager Chip Monck, would go on to play important roles at various record labels, radio stations and, especially, with other huge concert tours and festivals including Woodstock.  

    Graham and the above were at Woodstock.  There they witnessed how rock was turning into a very big business, where he couldn’t compete with a 2,700-seat theater. 

    Pete Townsend of The Who: Photo by Frank Mastropolo

    In the book, Mastropolo relates the math.  Where an artist could command $75,000 for a single show at Madison Square Garden, Graham could only provide $25,000, for four performances over two days.  According to the book, Graham also didn’t care for the new generation of bands like Kiss and Alice Cooper and their cocaine-fueled attitudes and demands and their “stockbroker” greed.  He and his staff were also tired of “cleaning up vomit,” something produced by the Fillmore audience’s switch from weed and psychedelics to red wine and downs.  There was also sadness that Graham could not replicate the 1968 opening lineup for the June 1971 closing weekend, as both Janis Joplin and Tim Buckley were both gone.

    fillmore east history
    Allman Brothers Band: Photo by Ben Haller

    The book concludes with a tour of the afterlife of the Fillmore East site.  This included a brief attempt to resurrect the name as NFE (The New Fillmore East) and The Village East. There was also its eight-year stint as the site of the gay disco, The Saint, followed by its life as an Emigrant Bank and, finally, the condo of today.

    fillmore east history
    Frank Mastropolo in Greenwich Village, 1968: Photo by Tony Gulisano

    Mastropolo’s book will provide a boatload of memories for those lucky enough to have been there and a motherload of info for those too young to enjoy rock’s most classic temple of sound.

  • Acclaimed Guitarist Marc Ribot Unleashes Another Power Solo in his Literary Debut

    Throughout his 40-year career, guitarist Marc Ribot has defied expectations and genre boundaries at every turn. He’s been the go-to guy serving up a singular fusion of rootsy Americana meets outré noise jazz meets Cubano swing with everyone from Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, Nora Jones and Diana Krall to John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, the Black Keys and the inexhaustibly productive John Zorn.  Now with Unstrung: Rants and Stories of A Noise Guitarist (Akashic Books), Marc Ribot is stepping into the spotlight with his literary debut.  And it is one as fresh, fiercely focused, unpredictable and delightfully disorienting as his masterfully knotty guitar work.

    First off, this is not a musical memoir per se. It is a collection of darkly funny stories and essays that, in good part, touch upon his thoughts on guitars, amps, touring, composer’s rights and iconic musical partners like punk guitar icon Robert Quine, free jazz legends Derek Bailey and Henry Grimes and producer extraordinaire Hal Willner. But this is a collection that spreads its wings far beyond the world of music. It is a razor-sharp playlist of far-reaching modernist literature, one that puts a Dadaist spin on everything from iPhone failures to treatments for absurdist films that will only ever exist in Ribot’s fevered imagination.

    In the first section of the book, “Lies and Distortions,” the guitarist turns his attention to his instrument. “My relation to the guitar is one of struggle,” he writes. “I’m constantly forcing it to be something else:  a saxophone, a scream, a car rolling down a hill… I bend them and they bend me.” Marc Ribot also pens a great ode to amps and distortion. In it, he claims his need to play amps at peak volume, to a breaking point that risks both his hearing and livelihood, provides to a guitarist “what makeup is to a drag queen.”  His love of distortion is also compared to the appeal of “vocal chords eroded by whiskey and screaming” and “the junked-out weakness of certain horn players” like Dexter Gordon or Lester Young. Ribot also pens a moving tribute to his first teacher, the renowned classical guitar master from Haiti, Frantz Casseus. Ribot’s distinct style may have been informed by his early lessons and lifelong friendship with this man, who like Bela Bartok, merged the folk of his native land with European classical tradition.  Ribot’s fierce defense of creators’ rights is illustrated in his discussions of Casseus’ hand-to-mouth existence, due to being cheated out of his composer royalties for decades until the literal last months of his life.  He also passionately tackles this issue in “The Attack on Artist’s Rights…and Me,” a much socially-shared 2014 essay first published in Talkhouse Magazine.

    Some of my favorite pieces in the book are Ribot’s generally observational ones. In “Animal Sounds,” his astute ears dissect a rooster scream, which is not a single scream at all, but a mindlessly repetitive three-part pattern, a sonic cage which is the “opposite of being free as a bird” to the author.  He also shares how a poetry exercise in 2nd grade taught him a lesson about both unconscious plagiarism and life losses.  There are also flights of fancy about a rocket scientist who dies because he can’t seem to learn how to tie his shoelaces properly and a boy, named Woody, who tries homespun horticulture to graft himself to a tree. There’s also a story where Botox leads to murder. This is all because a husband can’t detect the increasingly aggravated expressions on his wife’s newly treated and immobile face.  Like his ofttimes sensibly brief guitar solos, a good deal of the stories here are rendered in a single page or two. They have a darkly humorous, almost haiku style slapstick that brings to mind the work of the great Italo Calvino in works like Italian Folktales and Marcovaldo.

    photo by Ebru Ylidiz

    The fantasies continue in the third section entitled “Film (Mis)Treatments.”  In one, a past-its-prime avant-garde band on tour is not concerned with their performances, only where they are going to eat in each city.  When the tour is cancelled after a single disastrous performance, their manager wants to pull the travel and hotel accommodations.  So, the band kills him… and continues to eat its way across the Europe!  In “The Club Date Musician (Or Saturday Night Nausea),” he lays out the agonizing travails of the wedding band industry, for both the players and the people who hire them. He also observes how all society band leaders seems to take new names that are two first names, and waspy ones at that, like the fictional Nathaniel (Nat) Alexander in his story.

    There are also shades of what I assume is Ribot’s personal life outside music, and as a longtime New Yorker, in this brief but enjoyable book.  In one story, we learn how a 10-year rent battle with his landlord in the Lower East Side unexpectedly ends in his favor, earning him $170,000 from an escrow account and a move to leafy Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.  In “Kaddish for Joan,” we see how the slightly older artist cousin he so admired in his teens succumbs to pressures from her Jewish family – giving up art, the hippie life and going slowly mad in suburbia. A story that especially touched me was “Today I Did Something Remarkable.”  In this, Ribot stroll down memory lane and comes to the realization he is entering a new stage of life, as he slowly takes apart the Ikea loft bed his now-adult daughter used throughout her youth.

    For some musicians, talent is not limited to the world of sound and lyric.  Joni Mitchell, Tony Bennett, Bob Dylan and David Bowie are among the many musos who are pretty good painters.  Rob Zombie, George Harrison and David Bryne are among those who have produced or directed acclaimed films.  With Unstrung, Ribot is joining this boundary crossing crew, with a collection of diverse, wonderful stories that sing even when they are not about music.

    Check out Marc Ribot, as sideman and sideman, on this playlist. 

  • 50th Anniversary Reissue of Eugene McDaniels’ ‘Banned’ Soul Jazz Classic, “Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse”

    Questlove called him a “genius” and Prince had his music on his party playlist. Living Colour founder Vernon Reid dubbed him a “lodestone for the alternative hip hop of later generations” and singer/activist Aloe Blacc compared his lyrics to Gil-Scott Heron and Marvin Gaye, but “only 10 times more potent!” The Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Pete Rock, Gravediggaz, Organized Confusion, Busta Rhymes, De La Soul and many others have sampled his tracks.  And the whip-smart, savage political tenor of his work, especially his just-reissued 1971 classic, Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse (Real Gone Music), got Eugene McDaniels “banned” from the airwaves by no less of an authority than piano-plucking’ President Richard Nixon.

    Eugene McDaniels

    If people have heard of Eugene McDaniels it is most likely as the songwriter of two massive hits popularized by other artists. The first, the funky anti-war anthem “Compared to What,” was an unlikely Top 40 for jazzers Les McCann and Eddie Harris, one also covered by Roberta Flack on her debut disc, the rockers Sweetwater and John Legend with Questlove and the Roots. His biggest songwriting score was the multi-Grammy-nominated “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” a Billboard #1 for Roberta Flack in 1974. This slow jam has been recorded by scores of artists since including D’Angelo and George Benson. 

    But before all this, McDaniels’ impassioned tenor voice and movie star good looks earned him a very successful career as a singer, beginning with the 1961 Billboard Top 5 hits, “A Hundred Pounds of Clay” and “Tower of Strength.”  Then going as Gene rather than Eugene, McDaniels continued to crack the charts and also appeared in films including It’s Trad, Dad! by director Richard Lester, the man who would make The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and Help!  McDaniels continued on this track until the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King.  With it, he became politicized and hugely disillusioned with the U.S., departing to live in Scandinavia where he concentrated on songwriting.

    By 1970, McDaniels was back, at least on vinyl, with the Atlantic Records album Outlaw. This was a very different guy, with a genre-mashing sound and searing political lyrics powering tunes like “Black Boy” and “Silent Majority.”  Aloe Blacc called him “an unapologetic voice of reason cloaked in a rebelliously blended soundscape of psychedelia, funk and soul.”

    But it was with his 1971 Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse where his searing politics, couched in gorgeous composition and world-class performances, was at its most potent.  The eight tracks include proto hip-hop, psychedelicized jazz, protest ballads, subversive soul and even a Dylan-esque love song. As Pitchfork wrote in 2002, “McDaniels loved to poke bears and sacred cows, lofty institutions and the revered but hypocritical power structures that were especially fair game. This album is from 1971, so you bet racists, war hawks and Richard Nixon were on the top of his shitlist!”

    Eugene McDaniels

    The excellence of this album begins with his collaborators.  The disc is produced by Joel Dorn, the man who helmed many Atlantic classics by artists like Roberta Flack and the also super political jazz saxman Rahsaan Roland Kirk. McDaniels also had the good fortune of co-opting jazz’s most potent rhythm section of the era, Weather Report’s drummer Alphonse Mouzon and acoustic bassist Miroslav Vitous, along with pianist/arranger Harry Whitaker and electric bassist Gary King for the sessions.  Especially noteworthy is the work of guitarist Richie Resnikoff, a session ace who played with Sinatra, Buddy Rich, Dizzy Gillespie, The Village People (!) and on countless film and TV scores.  Here he unleashed funky, bluesy, psychedelicized riffage reminiscent of Motown’s psychedelic session ace Dennis Coffey.

    McDaniels’ opus of F.U. to the status quo kicks off with “The Lord is Back.”  Over a lean sharp funk with distorted fuzz blues guitar, he sings that the Lord is mad, he’s Black and he’s coming back to set things right.  On “Jagger the Dagger,” the crew lays down a mysterioso soul crawl with vibey Rhodes piano to levy an attack on his seemingly devil-worshipping, black music raiding rocker label mate. “Jagger doin’ the devil dance/Just a victim of circumstance/Jagger wheelin’ the Rolling Stone/He and the devil know he’s all alone.” On this tune, McDaniels’ tenor is complemented by the off-kilter harmonies of Carla Cargill. In the liner note, Vernon Reid praises guitarist Resnikoff’s “altered by hand” tape delay solo, something only now reproducible in boutique effects pedals.

    “Lovin’ Man” is a tight funk, the closest thing to McDaniels’ former romantic style. There’s a host with lyrical allusions to astrology over a cool bowed bass riff from Vitous.  “Headless Heroes” is one of the album’s most powerful offerings, a critique of how the powers that be keep people warring, beginning with the still-feverish Middle East. “Jews and Arabs/Semitic pawns in the master game/The Player who controls the board/Sees them all as the same/Basically cannon fodder.  Left wing and right wing/Political pawns in the master game/The Player who controls the board/Sees them all as the same/Basically cannon fodder.”  The music is a tricky stop-time funk coloring McDaniels’ leaping vocals.

    “Susan Jane” is a countrified acoustic ballad, a delightful stylistic departure from everything else here. “Freedom Death Dance” has a beautiful chill music vibe which disguises it’s nihilistic message.  “There’s no amount of dancing you can do/That will ban the bomb/Feed the starving children/Bring justice and equality to you and me/No amount of dancing’s gonna make us free.”   The current BLM movement is reflected in “Supermarket Blues.” It’s a tune that shows the danger of what critic called “shopping while black.” In true 2021 style, a simple request to exchange some canned goods turns into an assault by the store management, a mob beatdown, police engagement, etc.

    The most scorching tune is the 9:36 album closer, “The Parasite (For Buffy).”  Here, McDaniels softly, at first, sings about America’s original sin, the decimation of Native Americans. 

    It begins: “They landed at Plymouth with a smile on the face/They said we’re your brothers from a faraway place/The Indians greeted them with wide open arms/Too simple minded to see through the charms.”  The lyrics then go on to call the new arrivals “ex-hoodlums and jailbirds with backgrounds of crime” who “claimed they were good guys but acted like Huns.”  As he reaches the later verses, McDaniels uses his vocal instrument in screams and howls to illustrate the historic slaughter.  As it closes the track crashes into free jazz cacophony, the McDaniels’ screams, slashing Sonny Sharrock-like guitar slides and Mouzon’s thunderous rolls.

    When the album emerged, Atlantic Records’ honcho Ahmet Ertegun reportedly got a call from Nixon’s soon-to-be impeached Vice President Spiro Agnew to suppress McDaniels’ sonic editorializing.  The record disappeared from stores and radio, and the artist was dropped from the label.  Not so hard to understand when McDaniels’ work makes Gil-Scott Heron’s sound like Air Supply!  The always resourceful artist would go on to concentrate on his songwriting and production with artists like Melba Moore and Phyllis Hyman before passing away in 2011.

    Credit must go to Eugene’s widow, Karen McDaniels, who spearheaded this re-release, especially the limited-edition vinyl, which features fantastic liner notes including handwritten pages from the artist’s lyric notebooks, along with the original cover and label art.

    With the interest in documentaries like Questlove’s Summer of Soul, McDaniels is hoping to bring a film of her husband’s remarkable life to screens large and small. It is one that will be filled with great sounds and still relevant observations and activism, things that make this an evergreen classic.

    Key Tracks: The Parasite, Headless Heroes, Supermarket Blues

  • John Burdick Serves Up Dreamy Art Pop on Debut EP “Birds and Birds”

    The veteran guitarist and songwriter John Burdick is known in the mid-Hudson Valley as the leader of long-running stumble pop quintet, The Sweet Clementines, as well as for his work as an always tasteful sideman for Old 97’s front man Rhett Miller and his All-Stars, indie singer-songwriter Laura Stevenson and others.  The name may also be familiar to music-lovers in NYS from his years as a music critic for outlets like Almanac Weekly (now Hudson Valley One) and Chronogram.

    Birds and Birds is the name of Burdick’s latest, a four-track EP which is actually the first title released under his own name.  It’s a maddening slim selection (at a little over 14-minutes, I wish there was more) of lush down-tempo art pop, the ideal chill-out listening experience for these troubled COVID times.

    John Burdick

    With the intro to “Unison Waltz,” we can hear that Burdick has spent a good deal of time listening to the electric guitar filagree of Richard Thompson. Like all the songs here, there’s a delight swirl of textures stitched by the electric and acoustic guitars, keys and background voices.  Ten bonus points for working the word “gestalt” into the lyrics without having the tune grind to a halt!  The slacker-rock socio-economic critique “Complikate” came out of SubFamily Records’ casual quarantine experiment Seed Project (reviewed here). But it was re-mixed for this collection by the Grammy-winning producer Danny Blume. This features more distinctive organ vibes and some melodic McCartneyisms on the bass.

    The closer, “Birds of Heaven,” is a true standout, a perfect endpiece that reminds me a bit of John Cale’s placement of “Antarctica Starts Here” on his masterwork. Paris 1919. It dawns as the most minimal and poetic offering in the collection, before the thump kicks in two minutes in. Burdick’s ambient guitars, lush keys from Sarah Perrotta, the potent percussion and sound design by this track’s co-producer C.I.T.E and Dean Brown’s trombone solo on the make this another fine example of this artist’s eclectic art pop sensibilities. 

    Key Tracks: Birds of Heaven, Complikate

  • Frisell, Metheny and more Modern Masters Reveal their Creative Journeys in “Guitar Talk” by Joel Harrison

    Since 2010, the annual Alternative Guitar Summit has presented dozens of daring players who push the boundaries of this ubiquitous instrument to their most inventive, unexpected and beautiful extremes.  Now the festival’s founder, Brooklyn-based guitarist/composer Joel Harrison, is revealing the inspirations and creative journeys of 27 of guitardom’s most intrepid masters in a new book, Guitar Talk: Conversations with Visionary Players (Terra Nova Press). 

    Harrison’s overview of creative guitaring begins with some of the influential icons who emerged in the 1970s including Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser and the criminally-underrated Michael Gregory Jackson. Jackson is a multi-genre master namechecked as an influence by the likes of Metheny as well as Vernon Reid, Bill Frisell and Brandon Ross, who are also featured in the book.  Nels Cline, Julian Lage, Elliott Sharp, Ben Monder, Anthony Pirog, Mike and Leni Stern, Mary Halvorson, Wayne Krantz, Liberty Ellman, Dave Fiuczynski, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Ava Mendoza and Sheryl Bailey are also profiled in-depth. Harrison also explores lesser-known artists like Nguyên Lê, Rez Abbasi, Miles Okazaki and Rafiq Bhatia who are marrying the melodies and rhythms of their ancestral lands to the outer reaches of jazz.

    Joel harrison

    As evidenced with a listen to any of the above, an enormous, fast-expanding range of approaches and sounds now exist within modern guitaring. The instrument can howl, hum, scrape, scratch, scream, sing, pluck, grate and soothe. What stands out in this book is not so much the instrument itself, but rather the wonderful and idiosyncratic personalities of these bold souls. They are all united by their sometimes wild, often zigzagging and ultimately profound journeys toward beauty, meaning and excellence in their work.

    As an accomplished player who has known or collaborated with these artists over decades, Harrison is uniquely equipped to orchestrate these interviews. They are far more informed, revealing and absorbing than the ones you might read in general music media or hear on NPR. His intimate knowledge of their lives and creative struggles provides a unique perspective on this breed of musicians. They are the ones who take the road far less traveled to create artistry that never approaches cliche. 

    The book begins with a profile of Ralph Towner.  Towner was the man who brought nylon-string classical guitar and acoustic 12-string into jazz, along with a litany of rich classically-informed compositions, through his work with Oregon, Weather Report and his solo ventures.  He speaks about the impact of Big Band, Brazilian and Bach on his work. He also relates a humorous story of finding himself in folk singer Tim Hardin’s band at Woodstock ‘69, playing one of the “worst sets” of the legendary festival to a crowd of 450,000. 

    Many guitarists interviewed speak about the scene in Boston that grew up around the Berklee College of Music in the 1970s. It was an especially fertile one which launched players like Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Mike and Leni Stern and Pat Metheny to name a few. Metheny speaks about the development of his renowned sense of melody with his namesake quartet and also his lesser-known explorations to jazz’s far reaches with the Synclavier, Ornette Coleman and his Orchestrion records.  A name that comes up with Pat and several other guitarists is Berklee educator Mick Goodrick, a chordal master who taught many of these names and shared guitaring duties with a young Metheny in the Gary Burton Group.

    Harrison has a special reverence for the music of Michael Gregory Jackson. Jackson is a genre-hopping instrumentalist/improviser, as well as a later-day singer/songwriter in the R&B mold, who emerged as a teen in the mid-1970s NYC loft jazz scene with the Oliver Lake Group and groundbreaking solo records like his 1976 debut Clarity. Jackson packed influences ranging from Son House, Stockhausen, Hendrix, Albert Ayler and Stevie Wonder into his fast-evolving style, leaping from avant-garde to R&B to CBGB’s proto punk.  His searing melodic style and techniques, like his use of volume pedal swells, has been noted as an influence by Metheny, Frisell, Mary Halvorson and others.  The element of racism, the fact that the massively talented Jackson didn’t quite breakthrough to the big time, is sighted not only by the author but in interviews with Vernon Reid and Brandon Ross. After a quiet period, Jackson re-emerged in a big way in the last decade, recording acclaimed discs both here and in Denmark that are firmly rooted in his initial avant style.

    In his interview, Bill Frisell charts his development from his busier, fuzzier earlier style to what Harrison labels the “deceptively attainable haiku style” of current day. Like many here, Frisell credits his sense of melody and harmony to his study and friendship with the great Jim Hall, along with a love of pop songsmiths like Burt Bacharach, someone his younger self would’ve considered “way too corny.”  There’s also a fun story here about how his teenage R&B band beat one with future members of Earth Wind & Fire in a high school battle of the bands.

    The husband-wife guitarists, Mike and Leni Stern, speak frankly of their battles – in developing  unique and differing styles and with substance abuse.  Mike relates how his ill-fated jamming partner Jaco Pastorius was the unlikely figure who sent him to rehab, while Leni relates the challenge of being one of three women in a Berklee guitar class of over 200.  Mike also discusses the slings and arrows from critics for his now much imitated heavy metal bebop style introduced with Miles Davis on “Fat Time.” This was the searing opening track of Miles’ 1981 comeback album, a track titled for the nickname the trumpeter gave the then hefty guitarist.

    Nels Cline speaks of his light bulb moment of guitaristic inspiration: hearing Hendrix’s “Manic Depression” at age 12.  He also discusses the influence of artists as disparate as The Allman Brothers, early Weather Report and the avant-gardists of the AACM collective have had on his style. Cline is one of many musicians here who frankly discuss the financial struggle faced as a creative musician. He relates how he was about to quit full-time music and get a day job when he was called to join Wilco.  He laments how current listeners seem to lack the attention span of those of decades past and how much more challenging it is to create a 5-second solo for a Wilco song than an expansive jazz improvisation.

    Vernon Reid credits his interest in music to the now rare instrumental hits that made the pop charts when he was growing up, The Surfari’s surf standard “Wipe Out.”  He also discusses his shift from the avant-garde to MTV and stardom with his rock band, Living Colour.  Like Reid, Brandon Ross thinks the jazz university complex has maybe made for learned but less innovative musicians.  He relates the huge impact that hearing Joni Mitchell’s “Dawntreader” had on him as a second grader, something that has influenced his shimmering acoustic work with singer Cassandra Wilson and on his own solo records.  Ross also addresses the impossible financial challenges faced when festival bookers and A&R people can’t define a band and chose not to support adventurous bands like his edge-pushing trio, Harriet Tubman.  David Tronzo, the innovator who brought slide guitar into the Sun Ra-like avant-garde, speaks about how the financial woes facing musicians out of the mainstream has played a role in his decision to forsake the road for a teaching gig.

    Nguyên Lê is one artist who represents how jazz in evolving with the growing impact of non-Western musics and musicians, something evidenced in his album, Tales of Vietnam, and in the Indian/Cuban informed work of another interviewee, Rez Abbasi.  Young Brooklyn guitarist Ava Mendoza details how she is using free jazz, noise rock, ragtime, blues and punk to create wholly unique sounds –  in soundtracks, in collaboration with artists like John Zorn and works like her solo CD, Shapeshifters.  Veteran player and educator Dave “Fuze” Fiuczynski has been using his fretless guitar to explore the microtonality of world music for years.  Here, he discusses his journey to departing from even-tempered 12-note per octave scales for ones with 24 to 128 tones per octave.

    No guitarist among the edge-pushing modernists in this book may be as busy as Mary Halvorson.  On the subject of being a woman in jazz, she says that many of her greatest role models and advocates have been men. But the danger for women is in the learning phase – when men might try and convince you that youcan’t play. Halvorson recalls her beginnings studying traditional jazz harmony and standards before burning out and turning to the more adventurous compositions and improvisational style of her teacher Anthony Braxton.  Her singular style emerged at this time, in part with her creation of unique intervallic exercises that are still a hallmark of her work.  Through a recent MacArthur Grant, she has furthered her work on several projects. This includes her three-woman/three-man Code Girl ensemble and a move into writing songs with lyrics, inspired by her love of Fiona Apple and Robert Wyatt.

    Harrison’s book concludes with a wonderful discography of selected listenings. You can also check out his recent CD Guitar Talk, a collection of solo pieces and duets with artists like Ben Monder and Steve Swallow.  The release was celebrated with a recent performance by at Brooklyn’s newest jazz institution, the wonderful Soapbox Gallery, which can be seen below.

  • Book Review: Memoir of “The Coolest Man on Earth” – John Lurie’s The History of Bones

    As anyone who has seen the TV series Painting with John can attest, John Lurie is a storyteller of the highest order.  In his new memoir, The History of Bones (Penguin Random House), Lurie weaves a gloriously gritty, informative and entertaining portrait of Downtown NYC in the 1980s. The universe below 14th Street was a creative cauldron where edgy musicians, filmmakers and fine artists – giants like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Madonna, Bowie, Eno and Jim Jarmusch to name a few – co-existed and often collaborated to create art that still casts a profound influence on today’s culture. As for Lurie, he ultimately emerged as a player in all these spheres. He was a uniquely stylish lout with the driest of wit, someone dubbed “The Coolest Man of Earth” by a host of style arbiters for a multitude of very good reasons.

    john lurie

    John Lurie was a true “It Boy” of this mythic era when Downtown NYC was cheap, dangerous and full of creative action.  He was co-founder, chief composer and the angular “face” of The Lounge Lizards – the sharp-suited, globe-trotting punk jazzbos who helped define the “No Wave” genre.  As his musical light started to shine, Lurie added a high-profile acting career to his creative portfolio. This came via scene-stealing roles in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law, Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and others. The relentlessly touring musician also somehow found time to score 20 films including 1995’s Get Shorty, which earned him an Oscar nomination.  And before he devoted his creative energies almost entirely to visual art in the early 2000s, Lurie garnered more limelight via romances with boldfaced names like model Veronica Webb and Uma Thurman, by cat walking for European fashion designers and in a vast number of interviews –  ones where he pulled no punches in his controversial assessments of his contemporaries and the entertainment business writ large.

    Like Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Volume One, The History of Bones only tells part of this artist’s sprawling story. It concludes with a performance in Stuttgart on the New Year’s Eve 1989, as a new decade and artistic sensibility dawns in Downtown NYC. His subsequent years out of the spotlight due to chronic Lyme’s Disease, along with his development as a painter, his first TV series Fishing with John and musical ventures like his bluesman alter-ego, Marvin Pontiac, and his John Lurie National Orchestra, are only referenced in passing. But, oh what a story it is, even in part!  And unlike the mumble-prone Dylan, I cannot wait to get my hands, err ears, on the audiobook version of Lurie’s memoir. It is sure to be told in a comic deadpan that brings to mind the Godfather of Alt.Comedy, Steven Wright.

    Lurie’s book begins with his childhood, one spent mainly in Massachusetts. By 16, he had discovered the harmonica and jammed on stage with the likes of Canned Heat and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Lurie also graces readers with the oddball story of how he got his first sax. It came as a gift from a quasi-homeless man on a dark, empty street at 4 a.m., a man who claimed he was seeing statues turning into angels at the time. After his father’s death, teenage Lurie went a little off the rails. He became involved in petty theft and travelers’ check schemes before turning into a hardcore kundalini yogi and vegan. At this juncture, he would fast and practice sax for days on end, remain celibate (something that would quickly pass) and also ride his bike naked in the streets in the early morning. Lurie’s journey of lurid begins when he loses his virginity and gains a bout of gonorrhea from Crystal, a groupie who had reputedly slept with Jimi Hendrix the week before.

    Much of Lurie’s story involves his long affair with and dozens of attempts to kick heroin. His first taste comes courtesy of another famous 1980s icon, Debbie Harry. It’s one that will lead to a seven-year long habit that puts him in the company of junky jazz greats like bassist Sirone and drummer Bobo Shaw. It also leads him to the doorstep of the legendary Dr. Gong, the Chinatown acupuncturist who reportedly helped Keith Richards kick his habit.

    Even as his career as a critically-acclaimed musician takes flight, Lurie lives hand-to-mouth, due to the hunger of his habit and the petty wages paid to touring jazz musicians. His fortunes are buoyed by landing government support in the way of a monthly disability stipend and a $55 apartment on the Lower East Side, two things he wisely holds onto for years.  Unfortunately, his nicely priced abode is on a block he calls “Third Street Hell.” It was right across from a notorious men’s shelter. This leads to a few robberies, muggings and many a night spent sleepless due to the screams and fights unfolding on the street below.

    Lurie pulls no punches in his attempts to set a few records straight. Most notable is his beef with director Jim Jarmusch in whose debut film, Stranger Than Paradise, Lurie first gained acclaim for his acting. 

    According to Lurie, the original story idea for the film was his – that of a low-level gambler who has to take care of his visiting Hungarian cousin. When the movie comes out, Lurie’s expected story credit is nowhere to be seen, but he continues to work with the director anyway.  After working with Italian actor Roberto Benigni in Jarmusch’s Down by Law, Lurie writes a script for the Italian to star in. It’s inspired by a true-life story Lurie is told about an Italian cowboy who challenges and beats the legendary Buffalo Bill Cody in a cowboy contest.  Lurie’s script has Benigni traveling across a surreal Western landscape with a Native American. When he finishes the script, he sends it to Jarmusch for his input … and hears nothing. Later, when he is just starting to raise funds for his film, Lurie hears that Jarmusch is making a surreal Western with Johnny Depp and a Native American sidekick called Dead Man, a virtual copy of his premise.  Jarmusch’s film goes ahead; Lurie’s never happens.

    Lurie’s long and competitive relationship with his “best friend,” the late painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, weaves throughout the memoir. In its early days, Basquiat is homeless and crashing at Lurie’s pad for almost two years.  They spend much of their time painting together, and the then-unknown Basquiat looks up to Lurie as his Lounge Lizards begin to take off. Even with notoriety, the musician Lurie is still living hand-to-mouth. Shortly thereafter, Basquiat’s career takes off like a rocket ship. With it, Basquiat flaunts his money, fame, belongings and even competes for women with Lurie. Lurie also expresses the deep hurt over Basquiat using his idea for a poster for group show of their own – of him and Basquiat facing off in boxing trunks – as the image Jean-Michel uses for his famous collaboration with Andy Warhol. In the end, he laments the loss of this close, competitive friendship that helped both excel.

    Lurie has both praise and criticism for some of his musical collaborators, as well as many funny meetings with other Downtown NYC boldfaced names.

    He calls quixotic guitarist Marc Ribot a genius for finding a place in his and many of the other obtuse musics he has collaborated on. His comments on later-day Lizards’ six-stringer Brandon Ross are less in-depth and kind, basically only saying that his dreadlocks smelled funny! He tells a funny story about twisting the arm of a man trying to intercept a joint being passed to him at a party by actor Willem Dafoe…  only to discover it is that of David Bowie! He passes judgement on Knitting Factory impresario Michael Dorf by claiming that “dorfed” became a popular verb used by musicians of the era to express when they had felt ripped off. A truly funny story involves him going to Chinatown to buy a dead eel to photograph for the cover of the album Voice of Chunk.  Strangled, bashed about, it’s an eel that refuses to die…until taking a four-floor drop off his windowsill and crawling a half-block in the gutter.

    John Lurie

    An overriding sentiment of Lurie’s is that the acting overshadowed, or at least got in the way of people fully appreciating, his music. Thought they toured extensively and most successfully in Europe and Asia, Lurie feels The Lounge Lizards never fully broke through or rose above the “fake jazz” label put on them in the early 1980s. Lurie took work scoring and acting in films to support his band and their original music. And at the end of his memoir, Lurie is using in excess of $100k of his own money to record the Lizards’ 1989 masterwork, Voice of Chunk, because no U.S. record company would sign them. In the end, it resulted in Lurie producing another memorable piece of art, a hilarious, 30-second, late-night TV spot to market the disc directly to consumers just like OxyClean, one that included four of his ex-girlfriends as models.

    The above just scratches the surface on the many colorful anecdotes and salient observations in Lurie’s book. You can almost picture him spinning these yarns around a cracker barrel fire in a metal trash can or dumpster on Avenue C. 

    This is certainly one of the best and least scrubbed clean memoirs coming from a Downtown hipster of the era, a place-in-time that is now birthing a motherlode of such books. I, for one, can’t wait for him to get us another installment, one charting his less profiled journey from edge-cutting musician through illness and solitude to the painter-raconteur-philosopher that he is today.

  • David Murray Solo Concert with Live Painting Comes to Rustic Ridge View Farm August 7

    Jazz saxophone great David Murray will perform a unique solo performance, complimented with live painting by artist Nancy Ostrovsky, August 7 at Rustic Ridge View Farm in Ulster County.

    David Murray

    A titan of the tenor sax and bass clarinet who came to prominence in the mid-70s, David Murray has recorded dozens of albums that merge free jazz with the mature style of classicists like Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. He was a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet and has performed or recorded with luminaries like Henry Threadgill, Elvin Jones, James Blood Ulmer, Olu Dara and the Grateful Dead, for whom he recorded a tribute album with his Octet in 1996.  In 1989, Murray won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance for his album, Blues for Coltrane: A Tribute to John Coltrane, along with a Guggenheim Fellowship.  The Village Voice named him “Musician of the Decade” in 1980. 

    Deeply textured and enthralling in their execution, Nancy Ostrovsky’s paintings are, just like the music itself, free improvisations inspired by and at one with the resonant vibrations and spirit created by a musician in a live performance. Her spontaneous method of smearing, dripping, squeezing and manipulating paint onto canvas, in real-time as compelled by the music, is electrifying to witness.

    Over the years, the Accord, NY-based artist has collaborated at concerts with some of the jazz world’s leading names, including Roswell Rudd, Butch Morris, Michael Gregory Jackson, Michael Bisio and Murray.  She has performed her live painting to music at many prestigious venues including Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Eastman School of Music. 

    The event will take place Saturday, August 7 at Rustic Ridge View Farm, 15 Old Kings Highway, Kerhonkson, New York. Suggested donation is $20.  It is recommended that patrons bring their own chairs or pillows for seating at this outdoor event.  Refreshments will be available.

    More of Ostrovsky’s work and videos of her unique live painting performances can be seen here.

    David Murray

  • Eclectic Global Music Fest ‘Sound Waves’ Begins August 19 at White Feather Farm in Saugerties

    Editor’s Note/Update:  Due to concerns over Covid-19 Delta Variant, theSound Waves concert with Sxip Shirey at White Feather Farm is being rescheduled from August 5 to September 9.

    Sound Waves at White Feather Farm is a new global music series that will be held Thursdays, from August 5 – September 23, at Broken Wing Barn in Saugerties. The open-minded line-up will present world-class artists in genres ranging from Gypsy jazz and Afropop to Latin Boleros and Native and African-American folk, soul and gospel. 

    sound waves

    The Sound Waves series is being produced by Saugerties-based Isabel Soffer of Live Sounds and globalFEST and Olivier Conan of Barbés Brooklyn, in partnership with White Feather Farm, the site of the acoustically-resonant, 280 year-old Broken Wing Barn.  The Sound Waves line-up includes:

    August 5 – The World of Sxip Shirey

    Sxip Shirey tests the edge of music using his vast imagination to create playful and mischievous songs using familiar objects, mutant instruments and reconfigured sounds. he acoustic beauty. “Sxip Shirey’s imagination for sounds, sound combinations and textural color makes him one of the most curious combinations of composer-sound designer-performer meets storyteller-curator.” — CD Baby  “Eclectic and original” – NPR’s Fresh Air.

    August 19 – West Africa Dance: Mandingo Ambassadors

    The Mandingo Ambassadors was founded by griot-guitarist Mamady Kouyaté in 2005.  A veteran of the great orchestras of the golden age of Guinean dance bands in West Africa, Mamady is a living library of musical science inherited from his ancestors and from a half century of experience as an arranger, band leader, accompanist and soloist. Representing a musical tradition that stretches back hundreds of years, Mamady plays with a melodic virtuosity that pulls in listeners. “Dazzling vocal and guitar patterns over a rhythm section that is like a perfect system” – NYTIMES.

    August 26 – Martha Redbone: Native American and African American Soul, Blues and Gospel
    Martha Redbone is a Cherokee-Choctaw and African-American singer-songwriter, composer and educator known for her unique gumbo of folk, blues, and gospel fused with elements of traditional Native American music from her childhood in Harlan County, Kentucky and infused with the eclectic grit of pre-gentrified Brooklyn.  “Americana’s next superstar”– Village Voice.

    Sept 2 – Stéphane Wrembel: Django l’impressioniste

    Wrembel may be the foremost interpreter of Django Reinhardt in North America. Whether sticking to the French master’s arrangements or taking the music into new territory, Wrembel has always treated Django like a classical composer rather the cliché paragon of swing and speed the master guitarist has often been portrayed as. In addition to Wrembel’s work as a film composer and performer (he wrote the theme song to Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris and scored Allen’s last movie) Wrembel has delved into the study of Django’s “Improvisations” – the solo pieces that Django recorded throughout his life which were precisely scripted and more akin to classical preludes than jazz improv. Wrembel painstakingly transcribed and memorized the entire cycle, highlighting the influence of Ravel and Debussy on the music, as well as the original compositional approach. Wrembel released the album Django L’impressionniste back in October 2019 – a stunning work, which he premiered at the prestigious Lyon Opera house, in France.  “A revelation” –  Rolling Stone Magazine.

    Sept 23 – Miramar: The Golden Age of Latin American Boleros

    Miramar draws its inspiration from the golden age of romantic music, primarily that of the Latin American genre known as the bolero which was made popular by Mexican, Cuban and Puerto Rican combos of the 1950’s. Also referred to as “trio music,” the term bolero became synonymous with various slow to medium grooved Latin American dance rhythms. As the popularity of the bolero thrived, it also expanded and fused with other musical styles to create sub-genres of bolero-rock, jazz and disco. Miramar simply furthers expands the tradition through their own interpretations and exploration through new compositions with hopes to enrich a new audience that may be previously unaware of the genre. “Turn the lights down low, clear out the living-room carpet and find your dance partner for this one”—NPR Music

    Limited tickets are available for Sound Waves. Please consider carpooling as parking is limited. Doors open at 7, show at 8, hang out with us after the show! Ticket buyers must show a vaccination card or negative covid test within 72 hours to attend without a mask, otherwise a mask is required.

  • “Rainbow In The Dark: The Autobiography” – the Long-Awaited Ronnie James Dio book

    It makes perfect sense that the irrepressible Ronnie James Dio would be the one to tell his life story in a book completed and released 11 years after his death!  If there’s one thing this book demonstrates, it’s that the tiny but mighty Dio had the gumption to power through obstacle after obstacle in the pursuit of his many dreams. It was that tenacity married with a singular talent that has made him the most iconic and imitated voice in heavy metal – an indispensable ingredient in the mega-success of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Black Sabbath and, finally, his globe-conquering namesake band, DIO. 

    Co-written with British music journalist Mick Wall and Dio’s widow and longtime manager Wendy, Rainbow In the Dark: The Autobiography follows the metal maven from his childhood in a close knit Italian-American family in upstate New York to the pinnacle of his solo band’s success, their Madison Square Garden debut in June 1986.

    rainbow in the dark

    For me, the most interesting chapters in most musician biographies come from their striving days, and Dio has a tale of failures, tragedies and restarts that is hard to match. 

    His musical life began with the trumpet, inspired by big band icon Harry James. It was an instrument his father made him practice four hours a day starting at age 6, the axe with which he would soon begin his non-stop gigging lifestyle playing at school and social events. His love of popular music then led him to forsake the brass for the bass, then vocals, in his pursuit of a professional career.  Talk about failure?  His first serious band, Ronnie and the Prophets, scored 10 flop singles between 1962 and 1965. A later band, the Electric Elves, hatched three more duds. An overnight sensation, he was not.

    The road has taken the life of many musicians and Dio had his share of close calls. In his pre-fame days, there were three crashes he recounts in dramatic detail. The first was when his band’s car was totaled in a collision with a mule!  Far worse was the second which took the life of his guitarist Nick Pantas, his closest friend and musical partner in several early bands. A third destroyed his band’s equipment. This was when a just-hired roadie named Igor was trusted with and promptly crashed their new truck on its inaugural run. 

    rainbow in the dark

    Things finally started to turn up in 1972 when Dio’s band Elf was signed by Purple Records, a label headed by Deep Purple’s Ian Paice and Roger Glover. This led to opening slots on huge tours for the likes of Alice Cooper and Deep Purple.  When the latter band’s masterful and mercurial guitarist Ritchie Blackmore decided to go solo, it was with most of Elf’s members, including Ronnie on vocals and as co-songwriter/lyricist. Together, Blackmore and Dio would pioneer a fusion of hard rock, heavy classical and fantasy lyricism that would define a most popular style of metal.

    Some of the more entertaining parts of the book are Dio’s memories of the prickly Mr. Blackmore. This includes him ordering the diminutive Dio to “sit on a pillow” as he is meeting, for the first time, his wife- and manager-to-be Wendy at The Rainbow, the L.A. rocker haunt from which the band would take its name.  Also detailed are some spooky seances led by Blackmore when the band was recording in France at Château d’Hérouville.  At these, he reportedly summoned the spirit of Mozart (who appeared in a mirror), Thor (who made it thunder) and the pagan god Baal (who wiped some sessions from their 24-track tapes).  For all their success in recording, co-composing and sell-out touring, Dio’s time with Blackmore ends badly – with him broke, without his due royalties and stranded in L.A.

    It is through Wendy’s friendship with Sharon Osborne that Dio came to the attention of Black Sabbath leader/guitarist Tony Iommi.  With Ozzy out of Sabbath and the band in limbo, Iommi was considering a solo project. He met with Dio for a jam which morphed into a miraculously writing session that produced the iconic “Children of the Sea.” Together, Iommi and Dio would go on to write much of what would become Black Sabbath’s career-revitalizing album, 1980’s Heaven and Hell.  It was a platinum-seller that triggered a rebirth of not only the band but the heavy metal genre as a whole. 

    rainbow in the dark

    In the book, we also learn how Ronnie’s Sicilian grandmother helped give birth to “the Devil’s Horns,” the now ubiquitous hand signal of heavy metal brotherhood, one usually deployed along with a firm headbang!  His grandmother called this ancient Sicilian symbol “the Maloik” and said it would protect young Dio from “the Evil Eye” and other ill omens. Dio started flashing it at Black Sabbath shows, as his answer to the peace symbol former front man Ozzy waved.  It caught on not only at Sabbath shows but across and beyond the world of heavy metal fandom.

    Dio goes on to describe the highs and lows of his time with Sabbath and in working with Iommi, another genius but often intractable guitar god. This portion provides the most VH-1 Behind the Music-styled dish on drugs and egos and how it finally led Dio to take the plunge and start his own band, in partnership with his wife/manager Wendy and Sabbath drummer Vinnie Appice.  Once again, Dio shows how his singular commitment and personal sacrifice, now aided by his wife’s business smarts, created one of the most loved and enduring marquee acts of 1980s. Dio then goes on to the many peaks and valleys of his own namesake band, from its debut album featuring the classic “Rainbow in the Dark” through various personnel changes, breakups, reformations to their 10th and final album, 2004’s Master of the Moon.

    Ronnie began writing this manuscript several years before being diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2009.  To bring the book to completion, Wendy fleshed out unfinished sections and added some of her own observations, from her decades knowing and working with Ronnie. Journalist Mick Wall had interviewed Dio countless times and was brought in to add more detail and finalize the manuscript. With all that, the book has a casual, conversational tone that is all Ronnie.

    Not covered in this book are Dio’s later years and his inspirational battle with cancer. While there are no solid plans for a second installment, Ronnie left Wendy notes for many stories that he wanted to tell about the years beyond where this book leaves off and his final struggle with can.

    To celebrate the publication of the book, Wendy Dio will participate in an hour-long LiveSigning.com event produced by Premiere Collectibles on Wednesday, July 28 beginning at 3:00PM (Eastern time). Those who have pre-ordered the book here will have the opportunity to submit questions in advance for Wendy to answer during the event, which will stream live via the Ronnie James Dio Facebook page.

  • Surf’s Up on latest from Rochester Guitarist Greg Townson, “Off and Running!”

    Rochester twang bar king, Greg Townson, is back with another super fine collection of surf guitar instrumentals perfect for the hazy days of our post-COVID lockdown summer.  Called Off and Running! (High Tide Recordings), it features a cast of stellar supporting musicians, including his bandmates from the world renowned Los Straitjackets and NRBQ. Expert players all, they jell together wonderfully to breathe new life into classics like “The Locomotion” and “Just One Look” and Townson’s authentically retro originals.

    greg townson

    Greg has been making music most of his life, winning fans and making friends wherever he performs, from stages all across the United States to Europe, Scandinavia and beyond.  In 1998, Townson formed The Hi-Risers, a trio that put the spotlight on his singing, guitar playing, production and songwriting talents. Since then, he has continued to record and tour prolifically with that band, issuing nine records to date. The band’s most recent release is the 45, Smooth Operator b/w Hot Banana, which came out last year on Hi-Tide Recordings.

    2010 brought yet another dimension to Greg’s work when he was asked to join Los Straitjackets, the Mexican wrestling mask-wearing instrumental guitar greats. In 2012 he contributed songs to Jet Set, one of the strongest records in the band’s extensive catalog. He has since contributed his guitar and songwriting talents to five more of their releases. In 2015, Los Straitjackets and Townson teamed with legendary songwriter Nick Lowe. This dynamic union released several EP’s, toured the world and appeared on shows such as CBS This Morning and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

    As a continuation of his instrumental guitar work featured in Los Straitjackets,  Greg teamed up with Hi-Tide Recordings for the Travelin’ Guitar series of his own guitar-based recording. 2017’s Travelin’ Guitar and its 2019 follow-up, More! Travelin’ Guitar, are now complemented by his latest, Off and Running!

    The title track serves as a high-energy kick-off to the album. It boasts some cool stop-time drums, snapping leads and a very delicious ascending chordal bridge – a whole boatload of serious music, moods and fun clocking in at just shy of two minutes.  Townson’s cover of the Jackie DeShannon-penned hit for The Searchers, “When You into The Room,” launches with a play on Ringo’s great intro drum beat from The Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride,” while his cover of the Little Eva then Grand Funk hit, “The Locomotion” is pure retro SoCal surf of the early 60s, something that could’ve come from the catalog of mighty The Ventures or The Trashmen.

    Townson’s reimagining of Barbara Lewis’ 1963 R&B smash, “Hello Stranger” is one of my favorites and the most ambitious arrangements on the disc. It has an almost Space Age Bachelor pad vibe, with swirling organ and soft reeds (flutes and oboe?) that sound like a Brian Wilson Pet Sounds outtake.  Spanish modes a la Los Straitjackets drive “Aztec,” while guesting background vocalists and a growly sax add pure fun to the straight-ahead surf of “Goin’ Wild” and “Go Go Power.”

    On all these tracks, Townson is a master of taste, restraint and tone, the latter which must emanate from a garage-full of vintage gear and whole bunch of vintage vinyl digestion.  The covers give you another reason to love these wonderful songs, and add Townson’s takes on them to your playlist.  And his originals are all faithful to the era that he obviously loves – a gentler, kinder time when you could take on the world armed only with the sweet twang and reverbed roar of a Fender Strat and Twin Reverb. 

    Key Tracks: Off and Running!, When You Walk into The Room, The Locomotion, Hello Stranger