A.A. RockBlog

Thanksgiving has its own many traditions: stuffing (or rather overstuffing) ourselves with turkey, gravey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, a Dallas Cowboys football game, and did I mention Black Friday shopping the next day after camping outside the shopping center for hours all through the night? But, there is STILL one tradition that is overlooked by many - and that's the Alice's Restaurant Masaree as written and performed by Woody Guthrie's son Arlo Guthrie. The album of the same name was released in 1967 with the accompanying movie coming out in 1969. This talking blues classic gets played on American classic rock radio at least once during Thanksgiving The Story: This real-life, but heavily exaggerated story involves Arlo Guthrie spending Thanksgiving with his friend Alice and her husband Ray. Although the song says Stockbridge, Massachussetts, Arlo was actually in Great Barrington, Mass. when the massacree happened. Arlo and his friend offered to t

Aerosmith's lead guitarist Joe Perry collapsed at a Billy Joel concert at Madison Square Garden earlier this month. Although the press indicated that Perry was suffering from lung congestion, Joe Perry himself has quoted exhaustion and dehydration. This is not the first time something like this happened to Perry. He had a simillar problem after a Hollywood Vampires performance two years ago. For close to five decades, Joe Perry has been the lead guitarist of Aerosmith. He joined them in 1970 and played on their first five records before drug problems got the best of him and he was let go to be replaced by Rick Dufay. In 1979, rhythm guitarist Brad Withford was replaced by Jimmy Crespo. This lineup was together for five years, but in 1984, Perry and Withford officially rejoined Steven Tyler (vocals), Joey Kramer (drums), and Tom Hamilton (bass). In the years that followed, Aerosmith regained the commercial regonition they had in the 70s. As of this Tuesday, Perry has tweated t

Well folks, it's Sunday and you know what that means, ANOTHER blog post. In this blog post I will be doing something TOTALLY different. I will actually SHARE SOME MUSIC FROM MY HOME COUNTRY. My family is from the former Yugoslavia, and to be humble, our music there at the time was SIMILAR to music in the UK and US. Specifically in this post, we will be talking about the Sarajevo School of Pop Rock. This so-called "school" started out in the early 60s, and was around for about three decades (to about the start of the Yugoslav Wars).  There are three big bands in particular, Indexi (The Indexes), Bijelo Dugme (White Button), and Crvena Jabuka (Red Apple). The earliest of these bands, Indexi, was formed in 1962 in Sarajevo. Their name was derived from the Index , a student's grade log. The band worked with a whole host of drummers and keyboardists over the years, but the core of the band featured Slobodan A. Kovachevich (guitars), Davorin "Pimpek" Popovic

This blog post, I will dedicate to some classics that are ALMOST ALWAYS played in its entirety and are rather long (5+ minutes). The post will not adresss the almost countless number of progressive rock songs which, by nature, are long and quite abundant. Instead, this blog post will address all other genres with lengthy tracks. Iron Butterfly - In a Gada da Vida Ah yes! The daddy of the lengthy classics. This one runs just over 17 minutes and combines all the psychadelic elements you could ever imagine! The rest of the band thought Doug Ingle (keyboards/vocals) was saying "In The Garden of Eden," and so recorded it, but as we all know, that is so not true! Peter Frampton - Do You Feel LIke we Do? Closing out his critically-acclaimed 1976 live record Frampton Comes Alive , this one features EXTENSIVE useage of his signature talkbox. Throught the latter half, he talks to the audience through the talkbox saying stuff such as "I wanna thank you," and "Good