“You can tell the history of jazz in four words: Louis Armstrong. Charlie Parker.” – Miles Davis Charlie Parker, who lived for all of 34 very full years, was easily one of the most if not the most influential jazzmen who ever picked up a horn. Wikipedia: “Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. He was a virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, a ..read more

Wha??? you’re saying? Dolenz? Micky Dolenz? Of the Monkees? That Micky Dolenz. Yes, not his daughter or anybody. I was both a Monkees and R.E.M. fan and I bet a lot of you are/were too. So I was curious as to how this endeavor came about. Read on…(Much gleaned from Goldmine magazine which I will herewith summarize. Interestingly, not much on Micky’s website,) The first thing you need to know is that, supposedly, R.E.Ms 1991 song “Shiny Happy People” was supposedly “partly inspired” by the Monkees. If that is actually true, the band kept it a pretty tight secret, maybe because they were cool a ..read more

In my last post, I talked about Rolling Stone’s sad, pathetic “Best” 250 guitar players. That piece of shit is getting trounced everywhere on the Internet and rightfully so. I had actually published this post a couple of years ago and it felt like the right time to re-post it with a couple of modifications.  Yes, yes, children. It is time for that most anticipated and yet largely unloved thing – the “favorite guitarist” list. Now before you dive in and say, “How the fuck could you leave Alex Lifeson (or Dimebag Darrell, Derek Trucks, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc.) off the list know this: This is ..read more

Yes, I know. I know. I fucking know so get off my back. I should know better than to expect anything from a Rolling Stone list. But like a moth to the flame, I am attracted. Plus I am a guitarist, renowned in my own mind. So I can’t resist. Read on… Now, this is the third such list that RS has done in the past twenty years. The first one was a top 100 list chosen entirely by rock critic David Fricke in 2003 and the Top Ten looked like this: 10 – Keith Richards 9 – Jimmy Page 8 – Ry Cooder 7 – Stevie Ray Vaughan 6 – Chuck Berry 5 – Robert Johnson 4-  Eric Clapton 3 – B. B. King 2 – Du ..read more

There is no dark side of the moon. Matter of fact it’s all dark.  Tip o’ the hat to fellow blogger Christian for reminding me that this album had come out. I re-read his review and I suggest you first read that to get some background on how this album came to be. I’ll focus on my impressions of it. You can read his blog post here.  So, firstly, like many of you, I’m a pretty massive Pink Floyd fan. They had their own niche that nobody else quite filled. And despite his sometimes being a bit of an arrogant dick, I am a fan of Roger Waters. Sonny Boy and I saw him in Boston and frankly ..read more

I mentioned in a recent post that Sonny Boy and I had won a rock trivia contest and had been offered tickets to any show we wanted to see. We couldn’t agree on much and so we went to a John Lennon birthday happening at the club. While the guy hosting it is a credible, well-known Beatlemaniac who actually has met the guys, I feared it would be hokey. Alas, it was. They couldn’t fill two hours apparently so there was a magician (!), loosely tying the Beatles in to his tricks. Interestingly, they had a Zoom session with one-time Beatle girlfriend/footnote May Pang. And, with a little help from hi ..read more

Hey, Music Enthusaist. You’ve been back, like, two minutes. Where’s your fekkin’ Allman Brothers post?  Wikipedia: “‘Midnight Rider’ is a song by the Allman Brothers Band. It was the second single from their second studio album, Idlewild South (1970), released on the (now defunct) Capricorn Records. The song was primarily written by vocalist Gregg Allman, who first began composing it at a rented cabin outside Macon, Georgia. He enlisted the help of roadie Robert Kim Payne to complete the song’s lyrics.” This is arguably Gregg’s signature song. In fact, not even arguably. After he died, it ..read more

The picture on top of the post is the first Rolling Stone cover in 1967. Lennon was in the middle of making the movie How I Won the War. Over the years, Rolling Stone has turned out to be a somewhat polarizing magazine. I think this is, in part, due to the fact that it periodically puts out “best-of” lists that everybody winds up hating. There may be other reasons as well but that’s the predominant one I can think of. Given that, I wanted to speak about RS, my past and current feelings about it and the recent Jann Wenner situation. Rolling Stone started out in 1967 as, for want of a better wor ..read more

I thought that before I got back into blogging I’d rethink my blog. You know, come up with a new theme, maybe announce that I’ll do the occasional movie review/YouTube video, etc. Then, you know, I got lazy and said ‘fuck it.’ Maybe I’ll do some or all of those things. But I figured I’d just get back on the horse, see where it goes.  MGM Music Hall at Fenway is a fairly new venue right across the street from Fenway Park in Boston. (And owned by the same guys). It’s a pretty good 5,000-seater with good acoustics, sightlines, etc. It is also one of the last places Jeff Beck played prior to ..read more

When I started my blog back in 2015, the 100% reason I did it was because I could not generate musical discussion of any sort with people on Facebook. So I figured, well, I’ll start a blog and see if I can get some disussion going. At first it was rocky as there was precious little conversation and virtually no followers. Some 8 or so years later I have roughly 1300 followers. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the vast majority of them have nothing to say. Not that I would anticipate that everybody would comment. But for a while it was very good. WordPress gives you pretty good stats ..read more