Billy Joel- Billy the Kid- UConn 12-76

“From a town known as Oyster Bay Long Island, Rode a boy with a six-pack in his hand...” As Billy Joel prepares to blow out the candles on seventy this week, it felt right to dust off something more akin to seventeen. There are moments…

Styx- Blue Collar Man- 2120 Michigan Ave, Chicago- 2004

Styx here live in blues legend Willie Dixon's recording studio at 2120 Michigan Avenue, the site of the original Chess Records, back in 2004 laying down a soul-infused reading of Tommy Shaw's working class musical manifesto "Blue Collar Man".…

Matthew Sweet- Girlfriend- Altered Beast- 100% Fun

The news that Intervention Records was staging one to rehab  past Matthew Sweet releases was cause for considerable buzz of a healthy kind in 2018. After all, we are talking about Girlfriend,  his 1991 third album which The Village Voice …

Boston- Hyperspace Pedal Blues- Tom Scholz

Irrefutable proof of why Tom Scholz of the band Boston had to move from his apartment house in Watertown , MA .Turn it up as loud as your gear can go . -Redbeard

Tommy Shaw- Girls With Guns- Dallas Ft. Worth 11-84

When Tommy Shaw, just recently estranged then from arena-fillers Styx, brought his Girls With Guns  solo band to a Ft. Worth nightclub in an otherwise empty strip mall on a chilly Sunday November night in 1984, what I expected to see and hear,…

Soul Asylum ” I Will Still Be Laughing” live 4-98

After several alarming live tv meltdowns exposed widespread lip-synching to recorded tracks, there  was a debate raging among rock cognoscenti twenty years ago about whether the majority of Nineties acts who were selling on the charts could…

Peter Frampton- Black Hole Sun- Austin 10-18-11

Way way back to even the eponymous Humble Pie  album in 1969 when barely out of his teens, I thought that Peter Frampton's lyrical, almost jazzy lead guitar figures set him apart from so many of his less imaginative peers, and it has been…

John Fogerty- Susie Q- I Put a Spell on You -rehearsal 5-97

Here's John Fogerty and his terrific band performing live at rehearsal in Burbank in 1997, reprising two Screamin' Jay Hawkins  songs which Fogerty's  Creedence Clearwater Revival covered on their debut,"Susie Q/ I Put a Spell on You".

Rolling Stones- Miss You- London Hyde Park 7-6-13

Rolling Stones sounding miraculously vital on this tasty version of "Miss You" when playing their "local", London's Hyde Park, back in July 2013...

John Fogerty- Born on the Bayou- May 1997 rehearsal

John Fogerty and his ace band to an adoring small private audience at band rehearsal May 1997 in Burbank, performing the Creedence Clearwater Revival classic which he wrote, "Born on the Bayou".