RIGHT: James McCartney aka "Chip Stills"
You may have heard this already, but the kids of the Beatles are talking about getting together and forming a group. Good or bad idea? Remember the hype that poor Julian Lennon suffered under?
Apr 042012
Mar 132012
Recently we received the following offlist message in regard to our long-running investigation into the validity of ZZ Top‘s supposed Worldwide Texas Tour. Although not directly confirmed, this third-hand account, verified by our anonymous reporter, may lend some credence to claims of this suspect tour, which no one seems to have captured by a clear photograph or snippet of film.
Dear Mr. Mod,
While hanging out with our daughters at the playground today with my friend Charlie and I started talking about music, as we usually do, in this case large arena shows. I mentioned that I’d never been to rock show in a venue which seated more than 2500 or so people and he said that was the case for him as well, at least in the last thirty or so years. In his youth however, in Des Moines, he used to go to all the big rock shows at Veterans Auditorium, the largest venue in Des Moines. He listed several bands he saw and then, to my surprise, said, “I never saw ZZ Top, but I remember my friend Jay going and telling me that they brought a longhorn steer out on to the stage, and I was pissed because I thought that would have been cool to see.” I did a double take, and then asked him to repeat what he had said, and he confirmed that in the mid-to-late-1970s, a friend of his said he saw ZZ Top perform with a longhorn steer on stage.
Now I’m not sure where the ZZ Top cattle on stage debate was last left, but as a historian, I find this pretty compelling evidence, considering Charlie hasn’t spoken to the person who told him this story in over thirty years.
For what it’s worth,
[name withheld]
Feb 292012
Strange Days Indeed!
“I couldn’t believe it,” recounted popular Rock Town Hall moderator Mr. Moderator to an anonymous RTH Labs Hotline operator, “I was painting our upstairs bathroom while playing the ‘Elvis Costello’ channel on Pandora when a jangly song came on that sounded like something The Smiths might do…but it wasn’t the slightest bit annoying!” Mr. Moderator quickly placed the paint roller back in the tray, washed his hands, and ran to his bedroom stereo to see what was playing. Sure enough it was The Smiths’ “Is It Really So Strange?”, a song he couldn’t place ever having heard before, not even in women’s dorm rooms from his college days.
[audio:https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/The-Smiths_01_Is-it-Really-So-Strange-John-Peel-session-12-2-86.mp3|titles=The Smiths, “Is it Really So Strange”]Mr. Moderator stood before the speakers and used all of his immense powers of concentration and critical thinking to see if he could determine that the song, like all previous Smiths songs he’d heard before, did in deed suck thanks to Morrissey’s whiny vocals and ill-defined melodies. But the song in no way sucked. He couldn’t even demean the song as “wimpy.” That’s when he called the RTH Labs Hotline.
“I’d tried liking The Smiths—even the slightest bit—over the years,” Mr. Mod explained, “but I was always put off by Morrissey’s aimless vocals and resentful of the mystifying ‘guitar god’ status granted to Johnny Marr.” He continues, “One week I even immersed myself in solo Morrissey records and found I liked them better than the stuff he did with The Smiths.” He then tried listening to The Smiths again but still couldn’t understand what people heard in those records. “The solo Morrissey stuff wasn’t too bad, though. Maybe it was the influence of Mick Ronson that gave him some focus,” he muses. “This Smith song, however, is as solid as the best of those solo records. Morrissey within the song’s rhythm, and I even like Marr’s guitar playing!”
RTH Labs is currently investigating why this particular Smiths song is so much better than anything else the Moderator has ever heard by the band. Your input will be added to the investigation.
Feb 092012
The Little Man!
You’ve probably heard this already but Bruce Springsteen is bringing Clarence Clemons‘ nephew, Jake “Little Man” Clemons, on the road to cover some of The Big Man’s sax parts. I had no idea this guy existed until today, but just last week, during the Super Bowl, chickenfrank, sethro, and I were saying it would be good if Clarence had a son or small-in-stature kid he rescued from the streets who could replace him in the E Street Band. The Legacy is served.
Jan 192012
Breaking news, courtesy of Townsman diskojoe (and his friend), who writes:
A friend of mine sent me the following link to an interview of ZZ Top by Andy Kershaw of the BBC in 1987 & there’s something interesting @ the 4:50-5:00 mark when the drummer, the beardless one named Beard was asked why they didn’t tour outside the US:
Perhaps the first RTH post directly on the subject.
Jan 132012
Show me the rattlesnake!
In our continuing review of Rock Town Hall’s first 5 years as a blog, we will be providing some brief reviews of key aspects of this place. The hope is these overviews will pay homage to the contributions of our peers and provide newcomers easy access into the blog’s rich past. Let’s look at Rock Town Hall’s role as a semi-historical rock resource.
Jan 122012
I don’t know about you, but I feel like dancing! Today, January 12, 2012, marks the 5th anniversary of Rock Town Hall’s life as a thriving, all-access public blog. If you ask me, the past 5 years (and the 4 years before that) have been a fun and worthwhile extracurricular pursuit. Not a day goes by that I don’t appreciate your participation and input in shaping what’s discussed, how music fans from different backgrounds interact, and so forth. Five years seems a long enough span to look back, see how the Hall has developed, and maybe even peek into the future. Over the next few days, we’ll take a little time to pay homage to some of our favorite posts and themes to date, culminating on Monday, January 16, with the debut of a long-awaited Rock Town Hall feature.
“So,” you might be asking yourself, “should I expect a self-mythologizing exercise…after the jump?” Certainly! Sisters been doin’ it for themselves all this time; why stop now?
