The Goo Goo Dolls have been a background name on my Classic Rock stations since the late ’90s, so I thought worth checking out their show at the Santa Barbara Bowl last night (9/6/25). The first 40 minutes of their set left me untouched: it was five slightly middle-aged grungy guys making a lot of […]
From the Piano Man album in 1973 through Glass Houses in 1980, with a quick step back to 1971’s Cold Spring Harbor, each Billy Joel release was a marker in time in my Young Adulthood. Piano Man itself was wonderful, and was undoubtedly my introduction, but hearing Captain Jack and Ballad of Billy the Kid first […]
The death earlier this month of Brian Wilson brought out a welcome reconsideration of the Beach Boys’ legacy. They were one of my two favorite groups of my high school days, 1961-64. The other was the Four Seasons. These were the yin and yang of those years in rock’n’roll: the Beach Boys were the West […]
In addition to my Top 25 described in a post from 2009 I’ve decided to make a running list of up to 25 more songs that I’m enshrining in my Personal Rock Hall of Fame. I’m only including Classic Rock songs that get played, not obscure personal favorites. No descriptions or analysis, just a list. […]
The newly formed Crosby Collective vindicated, nay glorified, my devotion to Classic Rock with their highly musical performance of “mashups” last night at the Lobero, which they chose for their only (so far) Southern California appearance. Each mashup seamlessly combined two rock standards in leader Jason Crosby’s own arrangement, all played in a lushly harmonic […]
Maybe not really the “worst” rock lyrics ever, but here are lines I cringe at whenever I hear them: “My shavin’ razor’s cold, and it stings…” Whoever says “shavin’ razor”? And what is how a shaving razor feels doing in a love song? (Daydream Believer, The Monkees, courtesy of Neil Diamond) “Names have been changed, […]
A funny thing happened when Ronstadt Revival featuring Shannon Rae performed at the Lobero last night (9/14/24). After her second number, Ms. Rae confidentially told the audience they could ignore management’s request not to photograph or take videos of the artists. “Go ahead and take your pictures and share them on your social media account. […]
Most bands you see “come from” somewhere, generally some place I’ve never been so I can fantasize about the music scene there. The original members of Toad the Wet Sprocket, however, grew up in Santa Barbara, which is mainly why I went to see them at the Lobero last week. A local band somehow seems […]
I’ve never been to a Phish concert, but I got the sense that the experience could be similar to the ALO concert at the Lobero last night. Described as a San Francisco jam band, the four nondescript members of ALO spun out 10-15-minute instrumentals with incidental lyrics, all with a lilting rhythm that had the […]
From “Tuesday Afternoon” through “Question” and “Nights in White Satin,” Justin Hayward gave us a retrospective of the Moody Blues’ greatest hits at the Lobero last night (June 20). What was different was his backup: instead of Graeme Edge, Mike Pinder, Ray Thomas, John Lodge and, perhaps, a full orchestra, he had a lead guitar, […]
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