I have to say a big, belated Happy Birthday to Mr. Bruce Springsteen. The man turned 67 yesterday and shows no signs of slowing down. Having seen Bruce with the “legendary” E Street Band in April, I’m stunned he’s 67. Only Mick Jagger seems to defy age more than Bruce Springsteen. And you have to…
I’m as much of a “Hard Rock” person as anybody, but every now and then you need to turn it down a bit. Actually I’m just a fan of music in general, I just mostly talk about the rockers. There are a couple of new songs, preceding albums, that have come out lately that I…
I was a huge fan of Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” but in a strange move the band compressed the music so much, in order to increase the volume, it sometimes make my speakers crack. I wasn’t as pissed as the general public, but it was annoying. When you “compress” the music, in layman’s terms, you digitally…
Long before BourbonAndVinyl, long before I collected hundreds of albums and CDs, long before my music obsession, there was my brother’s stereo… I had an old black-and-white TV in my room, and a clock radio but I only turned the clock radio on if I was listening to the Royals or the Chiefs. I never…
Me Hmmm… Isn’t someone missing here? Oh, yeah Bill Ward I was reading on-line the other day, one of those “lists” that rock and roll websites are so fond of these days (and yes, I’m guilty of that too). On the site, it listed something like, “bands who are touring without any original members.” Talk…
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” From fistfights on stage to international multi-platinum success to ugly break ups and what I can only imagine to be awkward Christmas dinners, is there anything more entertaining than brothers who form bands? The chemistry of every band is different. For every band like…
Maybe it was the release of Metallica’s hard, heavy metal single, “Hardwired” that put me in a hard rock/heavy metal mood, but all weekend long I found myself searching out something loud to listen to. I needed some “rawk!” Maybe something a little less punishingly hard than the excellent “Hardwired…” I needed some 80’s style…
Ah, Metallica. Is there a band who inspired so much loyalty in their early days and so much ire in their later career? I wasn’t in the first wave of Metallica fans who flocked to the band’s anger and alienation over the course of their brilliant first four albums: “Kill ‘Em All,” “Ride the Lightning,”…
As anybody whose read B&V before knows, I’m a huge fan of archival releases. If an artist has anything in the vault, I’m typically interested. Be it Bob Dylan’s official “Bootleg” releases, Springsteen’s “Tracks” or Van Morrison’s “Philosopher’s Stone,” count me in. Sometimes there’s a hidden gem in there, something the artist for whatever odd…
“And I’ve been putting out fire…with gasoline” It would be virtually impossible for me to pick a “favorite” Bowie tune. But perhaps influenced by the film starring a comely Natasha Kinski of the same name, “Cat People” was always a particular favorite of mine. There was something about that tune that always hit me hard……