Hey there!  I’ve got a cool idea. How about we each reach into our brains and pull out three of the most outrageous factoids our rock nerd-dom can muster. Make any number of your supposed facts true — from all three all the way down to zero. Share them with us, and see how many of us can correctly guess which, if any, are legit. (No fair using the internet to fact-check!) You can thematically link your supposedly true factoids for extra credit — or not, if you’re feeling lazy. Let this be a test of your rock trivia storehouse — or of your outrageous powers of creative obfuscation!

I’ll start with the following fascinating tidbits. Which, if any, are true?

Supposed Rock Fact number one: Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band was married to actress Faye Dunaway.

Supposed Rock Fact number two: Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones dated child actress Kathy Coleman (from “Land Of the Lost”) — after she was all grown up, you perverts!

Supposed Rock Fact number three: Bonnie Raitt was married to the guy who played “Danny Noonan” in the movie Caddyshack.

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

Here in the Hallowed Halls of Rock, we tend to be bit snobbish about our music. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), at times this highly developed musical and cultural acumen manifests in rock criticism that ranges from critical downgrades to lambasting to general snarkiness. But I am also aware that we at Rock Town Hall are a talented bunch: among us are musicians, lyricists, humorists, writers, fashionistas, and general pundits. In the spirit of healing, love, and showoffingness I believe that the readers of this site are able to improve on some of the lesser developed music that our tender ears have had to experience. It is time to help some of those less fortunate and ultimately help ourselves.

Below are portions from three songs that most of you will recognize. Your job, in Rocklibs style, is to replace (ie, improve) one or more words in each line. The replacements must reflect the same number of syllables and make grammatical sense. Extra points to you if you are able to change the entire tone or style of the song through your choices. For example, you could zombify it, urbanize it, or have the song (somehow) reflect the Rock ‘n Roll dream.

There is a Rock Town Hall prize awarded for the best effort, as judged by our fine splitter of hairs, Mr. Moderator. Ready, set, go!

Song 1:
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitis, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night.
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
This could be Heaven or this could be Hell.”
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way.
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say…

Guess who -- and no, it's not the Guess Who

Today we initiate a new chapter in the ongoing RTH series “Scavenger Hunt.” As you know, the basic idea here is to use the awesome rock-nerd brainpower of the Hall to find images or other relevant media on the Internet that enlighten and entertain, according to the whim of the contest quizmaster, i.e., me. I set the category within which one must search, and today, it’s that old chestnut: unusually excellent and otherwise noteworthy photos or videos of famous rockers before they were famous. You may either identify the artist you’ve re-discovered by name, or add to the fun by asking the Hall to chime in with an ID. I’ll start the proceedings off with the band featured above, which I choose not to identify.

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

PS – Remember this helpful hint by tonyola, if you want to post a photo from a site that includes the artist’s name in the URL:

If you want to hide the url, download the picture then upload it to http://tinypic.com/