Mitch Ryder still has a soulful voice

Hanging Out with Mitch Ryder and Len Barry


Here is a pic of a mulleted me with one of the coolest rockers ever, Mitch Ryder and Len Barry. I have seen Mitch perform a few times and he still has a very loud rock show and a voice as good as Wilson Picketts.Besides what you would expect, Jenny Take a ride, Sock it to Me Baby and Devil with a Blue Dress on, Mitch's remake exceeds the Stones on Gimme Shelter and his version is better than Velvet Undergrounds on Rock and Roll. It is a much louder concert with musicians as loud as Alice Cooper's band. Mitch's post Detroit Wheel work is some of the best in Rock History. I just wish he would do his Freezin in Hell in concert.

Paul and Fred of Little Feat

Paul Barere and Fred Tackett under a bridge on the banks of the Tennessee River


I am a huge Little Feat fan. I especially loved the band most during the post-Lowell George, pre-Shawn Murphy days when Paul Barere and Craig Fuller shared the singing roles. Craig has since departed. There is a distinction to Paul's voice that is hard to describe. I just like it a lot, and he writes some of the most intricate lyrics today. I saw the whole band as they began their Representing the Mambo tour in Chattanooga at historic Engel Stadium. These pics are from the Riverbend festival as Paul and Fred performed a duo set. I'd love to see all of Little Feat again. I think the acoustic thing has been run into the ground by everyone. But, if you wanted see a great performance, I would suggest da guys from da Feat.

Paul and Fred 

Paul Barere and Fred Tackett 

Mr B Knows Diddley

Bo Diddley


I was 20 years old when I met Bo Diddley. It remains won of the greatest legends I have ever met. Without Bo, their is a form of music (the Bo Diddley beat) that would never exist. Bo was gracious enough to sign his autograph for me with both his stage name and his birth name. He is cool.
I met Willie Dixon, another early great around the same time but, I do not believe a picture exists of the encounter.

The Moody Blues

Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues (Their soul)


This band represents some of the nicest people you can meet. Justin is a sincere person. You can tell that he is the sensitive one who wrote and sang Tuesday Afternoon. John is the ladies man, but write and sings great tunes for the band as well. It is refreshing to know that they were not a corporative entity.

John Lodge of the Moody Blues (The Ladies Man) 

Patrick Moraz formerly of Yes, keyboardist at that time of the Moody Blues.

My Favorite White Man Who Sings the Blues

John Kay


During my tenure at Kat Kountry and its sister station Light Mix 105 the next best thing to making new friends with my co-workers (Big Zack Evans, Gary Poole, Ginger Prado, Robin Daniels, and working with Greg Rambin again) was I got to meet my favorite rock blues singer, John Kay of Steppenwolf. The man still has a great voice and can really rock. I have seen John Kay and Steppenwolf more than any other act. John is legally blind and had a hard time sneaking across the border into West Germany. One of the band's best songs, Renegade documents the torture of being legaslly blind, young, and being fired upon by tanks and other artillery. Eventually John learned English from picking up 50's Rock N Roll from radio broadcats. When his family moved from Germany to Canada Kay befriended Neil Young and Rick James and was in a band with them called the Mynah Birds. Eventually Kay would move to California with other Mynah Byrd alumni including Goldie McJohn and Nick St. Nicholas to form Steppenwolf. My favorites by the band include Magic Carpet Ride, Born to be Wild, Monster, Hey Lawdy Mama, Rock Me, From Here to Their Eventually, The Ostrich, the blues suite on side two of their The Second album, For Ladies Only, and covers of 40 Days and 40 Nights, Snowblind Friend, Hoochie Coochie Man, and Hold Your Head Up. My only criticism of the band in concert is that the bass is handled by the keyboardist or pre-recorded. Every time I see them someone asks me about this. John Kay's autobiography is one of the best ever rock books.

Alice Cooper

The Nightmare Returns


I believe it was Roger Waters of Pink Floyd who said that the band would never be able to play a guitar like Eric Clapton or put on a show like Alice Cooper. And he has a point...
Alice put on a visual performance that Kiss ( a band that is also visual but tends to not have continuity on stage as they pause between each song for lengthy banter as they set-up, in my opinion, the next theatrics). Alice on the other hand kepth the songs rolling combining theatrics with magic. I saw him has his head cut off in a guillotine, and it continued singing from it. Alice is the Vincent Price of horror rock. Alice is tongue and cheek about it all whereas Ozzy when I saw him on the Ultimate Sin tour seemed to be sincere.
I saw Roger Waters a few years later. While it wasn't as good a show as Alice's, it was one of the best and a great DVD and CD are available called In the Flesh - Live.

Classic Rock All Stars 

Former Iron Butterfly, Alice Cooper Band, Blues Image Guitarist Mike Pinera

Mike Pinera


Mike Pinera is a very cordial person. I have met him 2 or 3 times. He tends to tour with the Classic Rock All Stars, a band made up of Pete Rivera of Rare Earth who is also nice and a great singer and drummer (I grew up skating to the long version of their cover of Get Ready), Jerry Corbetta, a great keyboardist and singer (his previous band Sugarloaf's Green Eyed Lady and Don't Call us are radio staples), Dennis Noda on bass (formerly of Cannibal and the Headhunters), and Mike on guitar. Mike is a great guitarist. My favorite Iron Butterfly album, Metamorphosis, had Mike as their guitarist (Butterfly Blue is a long song in an In-a-gadda-da-vida vein but trippier and was a blast to play on the radio). Mike was the lead singer for Blues Image on Ride Captain Ride and he was a guitarist in Alice Cooper's band in the 80's. I really enjoyed Alice's Flush the Fashion, Special Forces, and Zipper Catches Skin from that time period and feel that they are often overlooked by even Alice himself. Alice began bowing to the pressure of the labels shortly thereafter with Constrictor, but the above albums are fast paced, garage-type, new wave jams, and quite witty. If you get a chance to see Mike Pinera and the classic rock all stars, the show is awesome. Pollstar is a great source to find their itenerary

Yum! 

Yum!!!! 

Milton the Toaster


Does anyone else remember Milton the Toaster. As a child, Milton was an icon that was revered alongside Ronald McDonald, Captain Crunch, and Coca-Cola. Milton was the spokesman for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts and I believe another brand that they made called Danish Go Rounds.
Now in my book, nothing beat Danish Go Rounds. They were bigger and thicker than Pop Tarts, so they would hold more cinnamon or strawberry or blueberry, etc., and they were made ot of the same type crust as Pop Tarts, so if you made them a bit too brown it would not overwhelm or should I say underwhelm (since this is already a grammatician's nightmare anyway) one's taste buds. Bring them back Kellogg's.

Merry Christmas

For unto you a child is born... Luke 2

Who would win in a fight between Tom Servo and the Kellogg's Rooster?

Chicken?

Why Comedy Central Doesn't Stand Out Anymore

MST3K


Comedy Central was once a bold network that dared to stand out and produce programming that not only was braver, but also better. Oh how I wish I had all the episodes of Seasons 2, 3, and 4 (I taped a lot of the later ones on VHS) of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 or MST3K as the fans call it. It was the funniest cutting edge weekly two hours that many people were glued to their television sets. I inhaled all the cheapo movies, many old, some recent that were mocked by Joel Hodgson, Tom Servo and Crow!!! And TV's Frank and Dr. Forrester. And later Mike Nelson, and so on...

But, once the consultants came in and saw the money the network was getting, they thought they would do better homogenizing it as much as possible. While MST3K would last a few more years on the Sci-Fi Channel, it never was quite as good a fit as with Comedy Central. Sci-Fi wanted to be taken seriously. So, all that remains is the MST3K Info Club. (Although I have heard that Mike Nelson does a dialogue to the newer dvd version of Night of the Living Dead).

I am sure the consultants at Comedy Central said MST3K lacked unique viewers. These same consultants should explain why some viewers only know the Mary Joe Pell period MST3K shows.
The same staff lost Bill Maher.
And it is not funny that Comedy Central shows B-Movies now without the MST3K crew, with them the films would be funny.

Apple Ipod in Short Supply

From CNN, The colorful 4-gigabyte iPod Mini and the 20-gigabyte iPod are sold out at Amazon.com. Supplies at Circuit City stores are running out as soon as new shipments arrive every few days. Shoppers at Best Buy Co. Inc.'s online store are also out of luck on most iPod models, but that's because Best Buy is giving priority of the inventory they do have for shoppers at retail stores, said Brian Lucas, a spokesman for the nation's largest electronics retailer. WOW! A lot of people have an extra $299.00. It would be a lot less expensive to get a free one. See the details the free Ipod site.

I could use a few hits anyway. I haven't made any new progress in my free ipod mission, so no updates there. I am still hoping some more will complete one offer at http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=12273824 so I can get a free one and those who complete the offer will be on their way to getting one as well. I think the site does not like hotmail email addresses for some reason, so perhaps a yahoo email is best. If you join drop me a line, so I can make sure credit is given where credit is due. I know a k.h. and a b.j. has joined but I am not sure if they have completed an offer. It takes 5 people to join and complete an offer for you to get a free ipod. Most offers are inexpensive like bmg music.

2005 Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame Inductees Announced

Pretenders


The Pretenders, U2, Buddy Guy, The O'Jays, and Percy Sledge will be inducted into the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame on March 14, 2005.
The Pretenders first album pictured above and their Learning to Crawl album are essential in any collection. Lead singer Chrissie Hynde could really rock out on Tattooed Love Boys, Thumbelina, and Precious,and could sing the tender songs Stop Your Sobbing, 2000 Miles, and Show Me with all her heart as well.
As for U2, I am more an early U2 (before Joshua Tree) fan. New Years Day, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Pride (In the Name of Love) are some of my favorites.
Buddy Guy is the guy Clapton always boasts about. He can play a guitar like...well I guess just like himself.....He's that good.
I never got into the O'Jays that much. I wasn't too fond of Love Train, although I kind of liked Back Stabbers, and their Stairway to Heaven was better than Neil Sedaka's.
Percy Sledge's When a Man Loves a Woman always worked at softening the fairer sex. Many guys wish they would have listened to Take Time to Know Her more often though.

Many great acts nominations have come and gone. It does not look like Love, The Moody Blues, ELO, Alice Cooper, and many others will ever make it into the hall, that is, unless new categories are established. For instance, there could be a psychedlic rock, orchestral rock, and hard rock category added instead of the generic rock category.

WDXB 1490 AM


The station had been oldies for two weeks yet a lot of the songs were country crossover oldies that the station had left over from its country days of fifteen days prior. I met the music director, Rick Scott who was tickled to find out that I had a wealth of Oldies music. So, all of a sudden the station had all of the Beatles’ songs solo and together, Steppenwolf, the Doors, Alice Cooper, and my favorite at the time Arthur Lee and Love.
Eventually at this station, I would host my own underground radio/punk/early new wave/ psychedelic music show called Aftershock. One would turn in to hear artists such as the Mothers of Invention, X, Black Flag, Wall of Voodoo, Velvet Underground, Alice Cooper, Blues Magoos, Planet P. Project, Pink Floyd, Iron Butterfly, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, The Smiths, etc. Another co-worker, Bobby Q. Day hosted a blues show. Together, the two shows beat the FM competitors in the ratings.
Other gigs at the station included morning drive, afternoon drive, and middays. During these other shifts, I was the music director (after Rick). I would host the top 5 at 5, today in rock history, Coke Trivia and during Aftershock I tracked an album on Wednesday nights (the Over the Hump Hop) and Friday nights (the Friday Night Blast).
The initial announcers I worked with include Jerry Pond, Tommy Jett, Rick Scott, Bobby Q. Day, Julie Barker, Mark Cruise, Ken Hinds, Paul White, Boyd Steele, Gary Anderson, Homer and Jackie Nelson, and Jody Henderson.

WOWE

WOWE Rock 105


This was the station that came the closest to defining what a rock station should be like. I wanted to work for this station so badly that it took me 3 years as a professional to get the gig. And it would be over in a year's time. It was the last album rock station in Chattanooga. During my reign as it's night time announcer the station would double its overall rating to its highest pedestal while losing its right or left channel and having the engineer wire it so the good channel would be played in both speakers with enough seperation to keep the stereo light on in the car. It was at this station that I got to play the extended versions of Planet P Project's Why Me, 'til Tuesday's What About Love, Bruce Cockburn's If I had A Rocket Launcher, Glen Frey's Party Town, as well as old standards like King Crimson's In The Court Of The Crimson King, CSNY's Deja Vu, and Iron Maiden's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Other artists that I enjoyed playing here included The Rainmakers, The Beat Farmers, The Nails, Wall of Voodoo, The Beatles, The Pretenders, Etc. There were a few that I wished we could play a little more often that we couldn't including Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa. We had a cool syndicated program called Flashback. Features included Thirsty Thursday, New Notes, Both Sides Now (An album played all the way through brought to you by bikers emporium), The Rock of Ages (Oldies album rock), and Crank it or Tank it. I truly loved this station even though I seemed to work at it all the time in very long shifts (For radio). The station was bought out when it got higher ratings. The buy-out represented all that is wrong with radio today, just another piece of real estate. The music that replaced it was soft rock (I would choose soft pop as a better description) and the station doubled our highest ratings that had doubled its previous high. This shocked me because none of my friends would have been caught dead listening to this crap. Rock was dead. And still is. The classic rock of today is a greatest hits version of album rock and pop as if you take how you would think the song did in the past based on today's leanings which were sculpted by the same men who gave us adult contemporary, the same people who softened the oldies too.

WAWL 91 Rock 

WSKZ KZ106

Classic Rock of today.

Auburn Burned For The Third Time - Proof It Has Happened Before To Them

NCAA Blacklisted


During the SEC championship game, CBS commented that the NCAA ranked Auburn's strength of schedule at 9th in the country. Oklahoma's strength of schedule was 21st and USC's 31st. Of course the computer ranking services are physically closer to Oklahoma, then USC, and farther from Auburn. Auburn always gets screwed. USC was last years, but Auburn has been the two previous times they were up for consideration. I will be glad when there is a playoff system.
In 1983, Auburn kept getting higher and higher in the poles after losing an early game to Texas.Auburn (11-1)Auburn 09/10 Auburn 24 - Southern Mississippi 3 09/17 Texas 20 - Auburn 7 09/24 Auburn 37- Tennessee 14 10/01 Auburn 27 - Florida St 24 10/08 Auburn 49 - Kentucky 21 10/15 Auburn 31 - Georgia Tech 13 10/22 Auburn 28 - Mississippi St 13 10/29 Auburn 28 - Florida 21 11/05 Auburn 35 - Maryland 23 11/12 Auburn 13 - Georgia 712/03 Auburn 23 - Alabama 20 01/02 Auburn 9 - Michigan 7 !! Sugar Bowl !!
1983 Miami9/3 @ Florida* (9-2-1) L 3-289/10 @ Houston (4-7) W 29-79/17 Purdue (3-7-1) W 35-09/24 Notre Dame* (7-5) W 20-010/1 @ Duke (3-8) W 56-1710/8 Louisville (3-8) W 42-1410/15 @ Miss. State (3-8) W 31-710/22 Cincinatti (4-6-1) W 17-7 @ Cincinatti OH10/29 West Virginia*#(16) (9-3) W 20-311/5 East Carolina#(20) (8-3) W 12-711/12 @ F$U* (7-5) W 17-161/2 Nebraska*#(2) (12-1) W 31-30 @ Orange Bowl, Miami FL
Auburn should have been the national champs. Auburn had the hardest schedule of any team that year. Auburn beat Florida who beat Miami.
Another way to look at is#1 loses by a point to #5 (Miami).#2 loses by a point to #7.#3 (Auburn) wins by two points over #8.#4 gets hosed by 36 points to an unranked team.Why does #5 rise to #1 over #3?
In 1993, Auburn was on probation but, still undefeated. The only hope they would have would be that their record would be the only one without losses. Here is the final poll.
1993 Final PollFinal Poll released after Bowls FinalRank Team Record1 Florida St. 12-12 Notre Dame (IN) 11-13 Nebraska 11-14 Auburn (AL) 11-05 Florida 11-26 Wisconsin 10-1-1
Auburn Won Every Game
9/2 W 16-12 Mississippi 9/11 W 35-7 Samford 9/18 W 34-10 LSU 9/25 W 35-24 Southern Mississippi 10/2 W 14-10 Vanderbilt10/ 9 W 31-17 Mississippi State 10/16 W 38-35 Florida10/30 W 31-21 Arkansas 11/ 6 W 55-14 New Mexico State11/13 W 42-28 Georgia11/20 W 22-14 Alabama


Again this year undefeated with the 9th hardest schedule according to the NCAA, Auburn has to watch the number one team with its 31st hardest schedule play the number two team with its 21st hardest schedule. Auburn keeps getting screwed. Help their cause. If Auburn wins by a larger margin in their bowl game they should be number one.

Auburn Should be in the Top 2 Due to Strength of Schedule

2004 SEC Championship MVP Jason Campbell


During the SEC championship game, CBS commented that the NCAA ranked Auburn's strength of schedule at 9th in the country. Oklahoma's strength of schedule was 21st and USC's 31st. Of course the computer ranking services are physically closer to Oklahoma, then USC, and farther from Auburn. Auburn always gets screwed. USC was last years, but Auburn has been the two previous times they were up for consideration. I will be glad when there is a playoff system.