Paul McCartney presents this romantic tune from his new album just in time for Valentine’s Day .“My Valentine”  from “Kisses on the Bottom” features the tasty guitar of Eric Clapton . Listen now by clicking the “Live” tab near the top of this page , then scroll down to “P” for Paul .

As a boy growing up in the segregated South around Daytona Beach , Florida in the 1950s and early 1960s , the younger of the Allman brothers , Gregg , had a friend named Floyd Miles . “He took me , literally, across the (railroad) tracks of town ,” Gregg told me .” Back then , maybe 1960 , it wasn’t cool to go over to’Black Town’ .You know what I mean? He took me to this combination drugstore-barber shop-7/11 convenience store-record shop. All in one room. And there was this big bin in there full of records , and they were on sale for , I think , like a buck ! And he (Floyd) started going through them , saying ‘ This is Sonny Boy Williamson , and this is Jimmy Reed, this is Otis Redding , this Howlin’ Wolf.’ And the music was gutsy , man , and it had something to hold onto . I just became totally infatuated with it . And every dime I got went to that record store . And I’d set at home learnin’ them licks , learned to play .”

Had the plane carrying Georgia soul singer/writer Otis Redding and several of his band members not plunged into that icy Wisconsin lake in December 1967, it’s highly unlikely that Redding’s Macon-based manager Phil Walden would have been actively looking to develop new , unknown bands in 1969 . Redding was poised to cross over from the soul / r & b world to a wider ( and yes,whiter) mainstream audience at the time of the tragic plane crash , evidenced by his “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” going #1 on the pop charts in early 1968.

Songwriter/organist/singer Gregg Allman and his older brother , guitarist Duane , were at the creative epicenter of the Southern Rock genesis  , forming the Allman Brothers Band in March 1969 with a repertoire of blues standards by Muddy Waters , T-Bone Walker , and Willie Dixon – black Americans all . It’s clearly evident that the ABB was integrated from the outset , musically and otherwise ,which continues to this day . While true that the group would soon become augmented with original songs by the 21 year-old Gregg , how ironic  that the Southern Rock movement , led by the Allman Brothers Band on Walden’s Capricorn Records , and later often associated with white Dixie flag-waving good ol’ boys , was actually borne from the musical success and misfortune of Otis Redding , a black American . – Redbeard

On July 4th weekend in 1978 , almost 100,000 people crammed into the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, TX on the hottest day of the decade to watch Van Halen, Heart, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Journey, Eddie Money, Walter Egan, Head East, & Frank Marino . It was one of the first  stadium rock shows of this magnitude  ever  held in the South, and more importantly , it was the first of more than a decade of Texxas Jams to follow . To tell the story in an independent film documentary has been the long odyssey of producer Brian Hedenberg (yes , he was there ) . Against all odds in the worst economy since the Great Depression , Hedenberg has completed his dream and will unveil this thorough telling of the tale by the promoters who imagined it , bankrolleded it , and organized it ; the bands who played the first Texxas Jam that day in 1978 ; and the fans who made rock history . Check out the preview trailer from Texxas Jam ’78 , then look for the debut screenings at upcoming film festivals in Dallas and Austin this Summer . – Redbeard

I was all set to write this rave review of the new Andy Timmons all-instrumental album Andy Timmons Band Plays Sgt Pepper , whereby the Dallas-based fretmeister lovingly reinterprets the Beatles classic with just his three-piece band with no overdubs . But when I read the five-star reviews on Amazon.com , I realized that these fans of Andy Timmons say it better than me .-Redbeard

http://www.amazon.com/Plays-Sgt-Pepper-Andy-Timmons/dp/B005LE8CPU/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1322800859&sr=1-1-fkmr0

In the In the Studio rockumentary series , we’ve interviewed The Beatles’ Paul McCartney and George Harrison about the White Album , Metallica’s James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett about the Black Album , and now … The Green Album !

What ? What do you mean ,” That’s not rock’n'roll ” ? Are you prejudiced or something ? Are you a hater ? Remember, as Kermit says in this week’s interview ,” It ain’t easy being green.” Redbeard

You may have never known his name , but if you have been on the planet since the early 1960s and have even a passing interest in rock/pop culture , then you have known and admired Barry Feinstein‘s  work adorning the covers of Bob Dylan‘s second album , Janis Joplin‘s last , and George Harrison‘s first .

Amazing how authentic this year’s Halloween costumes were in Abbottabad Pakistan , just north of the country’s capital city of Islamabad . Reports are that these highly-motivated costumed trick-or-treaters traveled thousands of miles just to knock on doors there . Locals were impressed with the incredibly realistic attention to detail , yet found it curious that the costumed outfit mysteriously arrived for trick-or-treating  six months early…

Redbeard:” Tell me about the events leading up to your 2007 cancer recovery album , the cathartic The Awakening .”

Melissa Etheridge:” It’s been such a crazy journey. When I started putting records out, my first couple were very innocent,they were. They were the music that I loved, the music that was coming out of me , that I was playing .And then somewhere along the line, the music business kind of…it started becoming ,’OK,let’s make something that the people want, or that they’ve already wanted, so let’s make something just like that’ . And I started kind of fumbling around in my career . I mean , I was still writing from my heart and stuff, but every time I went in (the studio) , my intention behind it was …I think there was a lot of fear involved. My own personal journey was getting more courageous and more centered. And then I made the album Lucky which was a lot of fun , but I still felt that I had to make a certain sound to get on the radio , which is an awful thing to be on your back . I felt like I had been to the mountain top and seen it , thank you very much . And then I kind of just shrugged my shoulders and looked up to the universe and said,’What now ?’ I really thought that there was something more that I was going to do . I felt like I had stopped dreaming .”

“And literally , I’m not kidding you , I remember it was Ottawa Canada and I was talking to Kenny my drummer and “Chainsaw” , and I said,’You know, I just kind of feel like I don’t know what’s going to happen next ‘. And that night I felt the lump in my breast for breast cancer . And it just changed . I was diagnosed , and all of a sudden my whole world was completely blown apart. Just BOOM . Completely exploded and imploded. ”

“And I got to lie still, and I stopped being a rock star. I stopped working, I stopped striving, I stopped everything. And I was completely still . And being still is the best thing you can do for yourself. I mean it. We just don’t do enough of it in our lives , and it is so important. And I just laid still, and I finally got to the point where my brain stopped chattering. It stopped waking up and wandering, and I started dreaming again. I started dreaming of what I wanted the rest of my life to look like .”

RB: “With the diagnosis of breast cancer, you still could make plans for the future even before you completed chemotherapy and radiation ?”

ME:” Oh my gosh , I want the rest of my life ! No no no, I’m not done at all, I’m just beginning . And with that new excitement, I started looking at what I had created , what I’m creating now, and what I wanted to create. I started reading like crazy , I started reading everything from cosmology to quantum physics , string theory, agnostic gospels, Buddhism, everything ! And everybody is saying the same thing , this simple thing : that we’re all here to create, to be happy, and to love. You know, give me the peace signs and all the gooey stuff, but that’s really what I started feeling.And when I started thinking ,’Oh my gosh , I want to write a new album ‘ , I had this joy behind it . I had this great desire to put my experience down and to ignite people and light ‘em up and say , ‘Look , you can do this too . We don’t have to do it this way ‘. ”

RB: What attitudes and behaviors should we all look at ?

ME: Today , right now, we have a choice .We have marketed ourselves into a little bitty corner of sound bites and fast food , and we think we can sustain ourselves on this . We think we can go to McDonald’s every day , eat in our car , and be fine . We can just download that one little song that sounds just like that other song . They’re little pieces . If you want to live your life on just little pieces of life , okay , that’s your choice . But I think that there’s a large bunch of us who really want more , who really do believe that the best food comes from the earth ; that it grows up out of the dirt ; and then you eat it and it nourishes you . And that music is made channeled through an artist . They craft it , they put it down in a certain place , and you can enjoy it for three minutes , or an hour , or you can even go to a live concert and enjoy it for three hours . Imagine giving yourself that time !  But I think our society needs to take a breath and step back , and get off this wheel that we’re on of faster , faster , faster . I do .”

As a companion to the biography book above with the same title Living in the Material World , don’t miss film-maker Martin Scorsese‘s rockumentary on George Harrison conclusion tonight on HBO .- Redbeard

“To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.” R.E.M.

In their own words: The guys share their thoughts on why now.

MIKE

“During our last tour, and while making Collapse Into Now and putting together this greatest hits retrospective, we started asking ourselves, ‘what next’? Working through our music and memories from over three decades was a hell of a journey. We realized that these songs seemed to draw a natural line under the last 31 years of our working together.

“We have always been a band in the truest sense of the word. Brothers who truly love, and respect, each other. We feel kind of like pioneers in this–there’s no disharmony here, no falling-outs, no lawyers squaring-off. We’ve made this decision together, amicably and with each other’s best interests at heart. The time just feels right.”

MICHAEL

“A wise man once said–’the skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave.’ We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we’re going to walk away from it.

“I hope our fans realize this wasn’t an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way.

“We have to thank all the people who helped us be R.E.M. for these 31 years; our deepest gratitude to those who allowed us to do this. It’s been amazing.”

PETER

“One of the things that was always so great about being in R.E.M. was the fact that the records and the songs we wrote meant as much to our fans as they did to us. It was, and still is, important to us to do right by you. Being a part of your lives has been an unbelievable gift. Thank you.

“Mike, Michael, Bill, Bertis, and I walk away as great friends. I know I will be seeing them in the future, just as I know I will be seeing everyone who has followed us and supported us through the years. Even if it’s only in the vinyl aisle of your local record store, or standing at the back of the club: watching a group of 19 year olds trying to change the world.”