Today is the 26th anniversary of the death of Randy Rhoads. What better way to remember him than an 8 minute guitar solo from the Quiet Riot days? You’ll find a lot of familiar pieces in this solo. Enjoy - and RIP Randy.
I also have pictures of the grave site from a trip I took back in 2005. You can find a lot more at the Diary of an Axeman web site - the definitive site on the net for Randy Rhoads “stuff”.
Tagged with: death, Guitar, Music, rhoads, Video
I am so on a Zappa kick.
I remember back in high school, the only album I had heard from Frank was Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention and I really enjoyed it - but it never really got its hooks into me in a big way. I went through a mini-spell back in 2006 after reading Zappa’s book The Real Frank Zappa Book, but back then I stuck to the two albums I had. It was nothing like this.
Since the Vai concert last September I’ve been listening to Zappa almost non-stop. Almost every weekend I’ve gone out and bought two CD’s, and I’ll listen to them the rest of the week. Luckily, Frank had a pretty big catalog, so this could go on for a while.
I think what got me interested more in Frank’s stuff was watching the Vai soundcheck. They did some pretty heavy practicing (it was actually more of a rehearsal than a soundcheck) and I was enthralled watching the detail in which the band practiced. They spent about 20 minutes on one small piece of a song, because the phrasing of a particular lick wasn’t correct for the violins. It reminded me of what I had heard about how particular Zappa was about his music being played correctly and I began to get really curious as to just how much of an influence Frank was on Vai during his “formative years”.
As is typical when I get really interested in stuff like this, I take it to the ultimate extreme. I’ve been looking for any information related to Frank and found a book at Borders called Zappa: A Biography by Barry Miles. I’ve found it a pretty interesting read so far.
I can tell you that musically for me its been an interesting few months. Zappa’s music is hard to get into initially (at least it was for me - and definitely is for Jonna), but once you’re hooked your really hooked.
I love the humor and the “off color” nature of his music and lyrics to be sure, but I think the thing that blows me away about Frank (and Vai for that matter with his latest album Sound Theories, Vols. 1-2) are how well the songs translate to an orchestra. Its interesting to me how music that starts in a “rock” vein can be musically viable enough to be played by an orchestra and in many cases be better than the original. If you didn’t know any better, you would never know that they started out as rock music.
My favorite albums so far are Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention, the first album I heard back in high school, with Strictly Commercial: The Best of Frank Zappa and Apostrophe (’) a close second and third. Strictly Commercial is a great cross section of Franks more “commercially acceptable” stuff and is a good introduction to his music. The “single versions” of these songs edit out all of the things that some may find offensive.
As I mentioned earlier, Franks music translates well to an orchestra. If you want an introduction to Zappa that even your grandmother wouldn’t find offensive, you might want to check out Strictly Genteel: A Classical Introduction to Frank Zappa.
Whichever path you take, I’m sure you’ll find it rewarding. I certainly am.
Tagged with: frank-zappa, Music, steve-vai, zappa
Jonna and I attended the Steve Vai Evo Experience at the House of Blues last night. Jonna played photographer and took about 300 or so pictures. We are in a rush this morning, but I have gotten a few up. Throughout the week I will continue to sort through and upload pictures.
Real quick review, too many people at the EVO experience this time. Last time it was about 25 and was really nice. This time it seemed there were close to 40. However, given all that, watching the soundcheck and rehearsal was completely fascinating. This guy gets better every time I see him and the new band is absolutely incredible. Probably the best Vai show I’ve ever seen. Definitely check them out if they come to a town near you.
I hate the House of Blues as a venue, however. We basically stood for 7 or so hours. We were completely dead by the end of the show. All and all though, the music and the band were second to none. Best show I’ve seen so far - ever.
More pictures will be added to the set as we have time to sort through them, and I plan on putting together a more extensive post as I have time.
Tagged with: concerts, evo-experience, Music, steve-vai
I picked up the new Beatles release Love this afternoon and am completely blown away. The 26 tracks on the album have been completely remixed. You’ve never heard The Beatles sound so good. If you are a Beatles fan, this album is a MUST LISTEN TO.
One odd thing about the album though. For some reason, I was unable to rip it into iTunes to pull it into my iPod. The disc just wasn’t able to be read properly. I wound up finally pulling out the old Gateway Windows machine and ripping the disc to MP3’s at the highest quality, moving them onto our network server, pulling them down to the Mac, and importing them into iTunes that way.
I don’t recall ever seeing this happen before - where a disc cannot be read by the Mac at all but is fully rippable through Windows Media Player (I tried iTunes on Windows as well to no avail). I looked around, and couldn’t find any reference to anyone else having problems with iTunes. Weird.
Anyway, the album is phenomenal and I highly recommend it. While I was at it, I picked up The Beatles 1 as well. Its amazing how completely timeless the music they produced is.
Tagged with: beatles, classics, Music
Its been 9 years since anything good has come from the KISS camp that wasn’t a rehash of the days before they took their make up off. The last KISS release of original material was Psycho Circus back in 1998, which wasn’t necessarily their best effort.
In 2004 Gene Simmons released Asshole his first solo album since 1978, which is hardly something I would recommend you to buy. However, being one of those goofy KISS fans that have to buy anything new from the band, I just had to buy it for some reason, a decision I regretted soon after making the purchase.
This year, Paul Stanley has released his first solo album since 1978, called Live to Win.
This album is one I’ve actually enjoyed listening to. Its quite obvious when listening to this album where most of the song writing skills within KISS actually reside. I found the songs to be strong and catchy. Its been a while since I’ve bought an album that I’ve been able to listen to all the way through and then start over again.
Some of you might have heard the title track of the album without even knowing it, as it appears in the South Park World of Warcraft episode during the scene where the kids are practicing for hours on end killing boars to up their strength in order to confront the character in the game that is killing everyone within the game.
I felt the rest of the songs were pretty strong on the album as well. This is a good effort by Stanley, and its nice to hear his voice on something new for a change, rather than rehashes of KISS’s 1970’s catalog.
I have thought for a while that it is about time that KISS let go of the make up and old catalog performances that strike one as something to just fill their coffers and get out and do something new. Stanley has made a really good effort in putting some new material out there and this is one KISS fan who actually appreciates the effort and has enjoyed listening to something fresh and new from the KISS front man.
Its pretty obvious. If the band were to break up and stop putting out “Best Of” CD’s, Paul would be the one that still has a career when the dust settles.
I just finished reading Off The Rails by Rudy Sarzo this last week. Overall, I would say I liked it.
I’ve been a fan of Randy Rhoads since first hearing the Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of Madman albums in 1983 or so. He was a unique player for his time and these two albums are of the sort that they sound just as fresh today as they did when they were released.
As a Rhoads fan, I’ve always picked up any and all information I could get on him. Every guitar magazine he’s been in, I probably have or have had it. Each article or magazine never really gave you enough, as a fan, as to what Randy was like.
Off The Rails was written using Sarzo’s daily diaries that he had kept during the Blizzard of Ozz and Diary tours between 1981 and 1982 (at the request of his accountant) and gives you an interesting glimpse of what was going on in the band at the time. While this book is probably the most detailed about Rhoads as a person, the book for me seemed to focus more on how screwed up Ozzy and Sharon were during this time, which is actually the stuff I wound up getting more interested in as the book went on.
After reading this book, you will be amazed that Osbourne has gotten to where he did, and that he actually produced the music he did over the years. Rumors have always abounded about his alcoholism and wild antics, but Sarzo gives you a very detailed glimpse into the amount of abuse Ozzy exposed himself and everyone around him to during the early days of his solo career.
Most interesting to me was the circumstances around the planned live album that became Speak of the Devil and Randy’s resistance to doing the album. Given where the band was at the time, with two albums of solo material, its easy to understand that Randy did not want to do a live album of Sabbath material, but the most telling is how Ozzy reacted and treated Randy when he refused to do the album initially.
Over the last twenty some years, we’ve heard a lot of positive things about the relationship between Ozzy and Randy. This book, if nothing else, gives you a glimpse of the “real life” circumstances on the tour and paints a much less rosy picture of the time that the band spent on the road.
That is not to say at all that Off The Rails is negative. Sarzo manages to detail all of the goings on during this time without giving the reader the feeling of reading a “tell-all” book meant to smear the participants for the sake of making money. Rudy does a great job of reporting what happened in a very balanced way that manages to get the reader to close the book and walk away thinking.
Bottom line, the book is excellent. Sarzo does a good job of reporting the daily goings on in the tour, giving you a glimpse into the life of guitar hero, and doing it in such a way that it does not feel exploitative in the least. I would definitely recommend this book to those who are Rhoads fans, or even those who just want a third party addition to the biographies already out there on Ozzy and his crew.
Tagged with: Books, ozzy, reviews, rhoads, sarzo
Photo by rbieber
After a long wait , I finally received my copy of Off The Rails by Rudy Sarzo, his diary of his time on the road with Ozzy Osbourne and more importantly, Randy Rhoads. This is the only book with detailed information on Randy out on the market, and has been waited for by fans for years.
Tagged with: Books, Music, ozzy, rhoads, sarzo
I received an email yesterday from someone letting me know that Rudy Sarzo’s long awaited book, Off The Rails is now available at Amazon.com. The book chronicles his time with Ozzy Osbournes Blizzard of Ozz band, featuring the late great Randy Rhoads.
From what I’ve heard, this book is a one of a kind. I actually headed over to Borders yesterday to pick it up, only to find it listed in their computers as out of print. I guess I will have to forego my need for ‘immediate satisfaction’ and wait for Amazon to deliver it.
Rhoads fans have been waiting a long time for this release. I’ll let you know what I think once I get it.
Tagged with: Books, guitar-heroes, Music, rhoads
I was a huge Iron Maiden fan in the 80’s. I had quite a few of their albums and was I guess was one of those people who got extremely energized when listening to any of their albums. There was just something about the way the music was put together that I really liked.
Yesterday we went on our usual weekend mall trip and while browsing at FYE saw the album A Matter of Life and Death, the bands latest release. I’m not sure why I noticed it, except that someone Jonna works with had gone to a show in Chicago and she was telling me that he was rather disappointed in that they played more new stuff than old, and he didn’t recognize any of the music.
I couldn’t imagine being disappointed at a Maiden concert. They were actually the first concert I had ever gone to, at the now defunct Poplar Creek in Chicago, on the Powerslave tour.
This, coupled with our visit to the King Tut exhibit inspiring me to pop Powerslave on in the car last week has had me jonesing a bit for some new Iron Maiden.
So, this morning I logged into iTunes and grabbed the new album. I have to say, I love it.
The band sounds better than ever. I had forgotten how much Iron Maiden had meant to me back in high school. I remember spending hours learning songs like Number of the Beast, Phantom of the Opera, Wasted Years, and Hallowed Be Thy Name, still one of my all time favorite Maiden songs.
This morning has been pretty satisfying, music wise. I’ve grabbed all of my old Maiden CD’s and ripped them into iTunes. Those I’ve lost, that I really had the urge to hear again, I’ve repurchased (with a subsequent backup - just in case).
For those who were big Maiden fans back in the day, check out this album. If nothing else, it will inspire you to pull out the old stuff and give it a listen.
Tagged with: iron-maiden, metal, Music
Last night we attended the Hard Landing event at Galt Airport in Woodstock. The featured bands for the evening were Hudson McCoy, Rare Earth, and Blue Oyster Cult.
I had never been to a Galt Airport event, so I had nothing to compare it to, but we had a pretty good time. Rare Earth and Blue Oyster Cult are seriously at the top of their game. They sounded absolutely great.
Hudson McCoy was pretty good as well, if you like blues music. I’m one of those people who likes blues, but when I’m seeing a band live its more meaningful to me if I have heard their music before. I tend to me more receptive to unfamiliar music with an album than I am seeing a live band. Most of the Hudson McCoy set seemed to be originals that I had never heard before. So overall, for me, Rare Earth and BOC was the highlight of the evening.
We tried to get pictures throughout the night, but we didn’t get many that turned out well. Our camera just doesn’t do very well at long distances when it starts to get dark.
The event was quite a bit smaller than, say, a Ribfest - and it showed. One of the things that they really have to work on for next year is having more hand washing stations around the washroom area.
I’m a compulsive hand washer - its one of those weird things for me that I’ve never been able to get under control (though, thinking about it, it seems that if your going to have an obsession, hand washing is a good one). For me, there is nothing more horrible than walking around somewhere and having the urge to wash your hands and having one station available that is completely out of water and / or soap. Worse than that though, is watching so many people come out of these washrooms trying to wash their hands and having no water available to do so.
Last night there were two scenarios. In one instance there was no soap in the station. For a neurotic like me, washing your hands isn’t washing them without soap. The second scenario was worse though - only soap and no water. For some reason, having soap all over your hands with no ability to rinse it off just sends my brain off into a ‘tizzy’ - that’s my obsessive-compulsive side at its finest. I wound up going to the beer tent and asking the people attending there to drop large handfuls of ice in my hands so that I could rinse the soap off.
So to summarize, the event was fun. There was great music and the crowd was considerably more laid back and considerate than they were at the REO concert earlier this month. The organizers definitely have to make some improvements in the hygiene facilities moving forward though.
Tagged with: concerts, Music, reviews
I was quite happy today to find out that Metallica is finally offering their music via iTunes. I asked for Master of Puppets for Christmas last year (because I had lost it somewhere) and on top of it, when I tried to rip my “black album” to my iPod I found that it was scratched beyond repair.
I never really was good at taking care of things — thats why I like digital music.
Currently the albums “Ride the Lightning”, “Master of Puppets”, the “Black Album” (Metallica) and “… and Justice For All” are available through the iTunes Music store. I rebought my two lost and “mysteriously missing” this evening, for what amounts to about $12 below what I would have paid for both of them in any other channel, if my math is right.
Three of the four (excluding the black album) have live bonus tracks — a nice value add.
I’m glad to see Lars and the boys finally get their heads out of the sand and realize that they were missing the new wave. I’ve basically refused to replace these albums until I could do it online.
When I checked iTunes at the time of this writing, only the four albums mentioned were up there. Now, the whole catalog is up on both iTunes and Napster (I had Jonna check Napster for me).
I like the way this article starts as it expresses the sentiment really well: “It’s official: Hell just froze over.”
Tagged with: itunes, metallica, Music
Over the last 6 months, I have been getting more and more addicted to the music of Frank Zappa. It would stand to chance then, that when I saw the book The Real Frank Zappa Book on a bookshelf in a local book store, I had to pick it up and leaf through it. As I leafed through it, it became pretty obvious that this is a book that I needed to sit down and read in depth.
The Real Frank Zappa Book is written by Frank Zappa with Peter Occhiogrosso and is, essentially, Franks autobiography in his words. He talks about growing up, his introduction to music, his first band, and his struggles with getting his music played by orchestras. Here’s the way Frank describes the book in the introduction:
I don’t want to write a book, but I’m going to do it anyway, because Peter Occhiogrosso is going to help me. He is a writer. He likes books — he even reads them. I think it is good that books still exist, but they make me sleepy.
The way we’re going to do it is, Peter will come to California and spend a few weeks recording answers to ‘facinating questions‘, then the tapes will be transcribed. Peter will edit them, put them on floppy discs, send them back to me, I will edit them again and that result will be sent to Ann Patty at Poseidon Press and she will make it come out to be a ‘A BOOK.‘
The style of this snippet above is a pretty good picture of the writing style of the book. It is a humorous and informative and covers all spans of Franks life from his childhood growing up in Maryland and Florida, where he was a pretty sickly child, to his first exposure to music in high school, through his attempts later in life to get his music recorded by orchestras.
The book not only gives you background on Franks life, but really gives you access to the unique outlook Frank had on life and music. Frank talks about the early days of recording, his outlook on musicians (”Very few people choose to play the bass … electric bassists are often failed guitar players, demoted to this duty after a band meeting in a garage when they were thirteen.”), and why guitarists have to do the “big solo” (he calls it “squirting”, which is, in Franks words, “end[ing] your solo by going up the scale, then grab that last note and repeat it as fast as you can.”).
Other subjects covered in the book:
One of the great pieces of the book is when Frank talks about progress. As a matter of fact, he says that he’s been quoted as saying that “Progress is not possible without deviation [from the norm]“. I liked this quote so much that I have it hanging on the door of my office. Its one of many little nuggets you get out of reading this book.
This intimate look at Frank Zappa gave me the motivation to really start listening to the work he produced during his life (and there is a lot of it) and I have to say, I’m loving it. Franks work was different. His compositional ability, coupled with his use of humor and drive to be unique make his albums an absolute pleasure to listen to. The music is different, entertaining, and timeless.
Over the last few months I’ve bought no less than ten of his albums - and each one gives a different look into the mind of a genius. Each album documents a stage in his musical evolution. This book gives the reader a glimpse of Frank from a different angle, in his own words. I would highly recommend that you give it a read. You may not be a fan of his music, but theres no denying what an interesting guy Frank Zappa was. I’m sure this book only covers the tip of the iceberg, but theres enough here to keep you entertained and fascinated.
Alright, I’m going to stop rambling now and start listening to Have I Offended Someone?, my latest purchase from the iTunes Music Store.
Tagged with: Books, Music, reviews
Yesterday while at the mall I found Rebel Meets Rebel, the result of a musical partnership between, David Allan Coe, the late "Dimebag" Darrell Abbot, Vinnie Paul Abbot, and Rex Brown. The album is an interesting mix of country and Pantera / DamagePlan type heavy metal music.
I have to admit that I was skeptical that I would like the album. I’m not a big country fan. However, I have to say that not only is the music great, but it is so nice to hear Dimebag play again. I’ve really enjoyed his playing since starting to listen to Pantera in late 2004 shortly after his death and I think was in one of those “new fan” modes where I just wanted to hear everything he had played. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before I was out of new stuff.
Now, the posthumously released Rebel Meets Rebel gives Dimebag fans something to listen to. Dimebags playing is excellent on this album, and surprisingly the mix of the two genres of music works really well, so much so that I’m tempted to pickup earlier DAC recordings to see what the pre-Dime music sounded like.
Its too bad Dime is gone. Its obvious that he was starting to really branch out and experiment with different ideas. This album gives us a glimpse into what I’m sure was only a small piece of it. I think these guys were on to something.
If nothing else, you can hear Dime again. That in itself is worth the price of the CD.
Tagged with: Music
Plane Crash Kills Rock Guitarist
A small plane crashed into a mansion and burst into flames Friday, killing the lead guitarist of the Ozzy Osbourne rock group and two other people, police said. The plane twice buzzed the house, where the rock group was staying, and on a third pass clipped the rock group’s tour bus and a tree, then slammed into the two-story colonial home, officials said. Killed were guitarist Randall Rhoads, 25, pilot Andrew Aycock, 36, and Rachel Youngblood, 58, the group’s makeup artist and hairdresser, said Lake County Deputy Sheriff Mike Smalt. All were aboard the plane. Osbourne - known for such stage antics as biting off the head of a live bat - was in the bus but was not hurt, Smalt said. Several other group members escaped unhurt from the mansion before it was gutted by flaming gasoline that spewed from the Beechcraft Bonanza, officials said. Rhodes and Ms. Youngblood were from Los Angeles, Smalt said. Smalt said Aycock lived at Flying Baron Estates, the wealthy, private airport community about three miles east of Leesburg where the crash occurred. The group was staying at the mansion before a concert scheduled for Orlando today. Members of the group quickly left the crash site and it was not known whether they would perform. Jack Barker, Atlanta regional spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the FAA flew an investigator to the scene Friday. He said the National Safety Transportation Board also would investigate. The bus - outfitted with plush chairs, video games and a stereo system - was punctured by the wing of the aircraft.
I found this Behind the Music video on YouTube and thought it was cool.
Article text courtesy of the Day The Music Died.
