Does this this performance by Eric Charden suggest feelings of hope or hopelessness? I’m pretty sure you’ll agree that this performance is lacking something, but with a little guidance from the taste-makers at Rock Town Hall, can it be worked into something worthwhile?
I look forward to your thoughts.
This is your Rock Town Hall!
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Please list this year’s nominees for inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the order in which you think they should be included. If you don’t have the patience or interest in listing them all, please just list the top 5.
And the nominees are…
Nirvana, Kiss, the Replacements, Hall and Oates, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Chic, Deep Purple, Peter Gabriel, LL Cool J, N.W.A., Link Wray, the Meters, Linda Ronstadt, Cat Stevens, Yes, and the Zombies.
Let’s review the ground rules here. The Mystery Date song is not necessarily something I believe to be good. So feel free to rip it or praise it. Rather the song is something of interest due to the artist, influences, time period… Your job is to decipher as much as you can about the artist without research. Who do you think it is? Or, Who do you think it sounds like? When do you think it was recorded? Etc…
If you know who it is, don’t spoil it for the rest. Anyone who knows it can play the “mockcarr option.” (And I’ve got a hunch at least one of you know this one.) This option is for those of you who just can’t hold your tongue and must let everyone know just how in-the-know you are by calling it. So if you know who it is and want everyone else to know that you know, email Mr. Moderator at mrmoderator [at] rocktownhall [dot] com. If correct we will post how brilliant you are in the Comments section.
The real test of strength though is to guess as close as possible without knowing. Ready, steady, go!
Sounds of the hall in roughly 33 1/3 minutes!
What a week it’s been! And I don’t mean that in a good way, but I am here, and that’s fine by me. Some of the things I’ve shared with you over the past week include the death of a friend and bandmate and a Twitter post by XTC’s Andy Partridge, in which he calls our upstanding community a nasty name. If that wasn’t enough, little Fred Savage gave us the finger. That’s just the half of it, just the pain I find fit for public consumption. Nobody told me there’d be weeks like this. Well, they didn’t have to tell me, because they happen frequently enough to stay fresh in mind the next time a wave of bad mojo hits.
Following tonight’s show I am meeting up with my bandmates, walking a few blocks down the road from my house, and playing a mini-set with the band, between sets at a private party by our friends The Donuts (featuring the Hall’s very own cdm and at least one other occasional participant in our weekly chatter). I am really looking forward to this, even though I’m a bit terrified at being, for tonight, the lone guitarist in our band. We rehearsed our mini-set on Thursday night, then pulled a bunch of ancient songs out of the hat, just to see if we could still remember the chords and get through them in more or less one piece. Man, that was fun. Man, that was the right way to celebrate the fact that we keep on rolling. May you roll on as well!
RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 116
[Note: You can add Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your iTunes by clicking here. The Rock Town Hall feed will enable you to easily download Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your digital music player.]
RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 116 by Mr Moderator on Mixcloud
Don’t pay any attention to that little squirt Fred Savage! The All-Star Jam is the place to do your own thing. Show Savage how it’s done.
Our friend and Nixon’s Head guitarist Jim McMahon passed on Tuesday morning. We hope the following “24-string salute” and link to one of the final recordings he did with us do some justice to the man.
Jim McMahon making like the fadeout from “Maggie May.”
Our friend and bandmate Jim McMahon passed away Tuesday morning after a year-long battle with cancer. Almost a year ago to the day we received notification that Jim had been diagnosed. For a group of old music friends hovering around what we generously call “middle age,” this was chilling news. We knew Jim would face this challenge head on, fully prepared, and surrounded by loving friends and family.
No one in the band showed up better prepared to learn and record a new song than Jim. He was the first to arrive at my house for practice or recording session. “I hope you don’t mind me showing up early to set up and give my gear some time to breathe,” he’d say in his cheerful, slightly mischievous Philadelphia accent. Jim would carve out his turf in our tight space, begin unpacking his perfectly organized chords and effects boxes, and tell me about the characteristics he felt the guitars he brought might lend to our night’s work.
Jim owned a lot of gear and chose his artillery wisely. The rest of us were more focused on the aesthetics of his gear. We anxiously awaited the unpacking of his black guitar with the flames and the dice for volume and tone knobs. We dreaded the rare occasions he’d unpack a “pointy” guitar, something from his ‘80s metal-loving side. Jim packed what he felt the songs needed, not paying any mind to whether we were turned on by how an instrument looked. Often his hand-painted green Strat decorated with a big Woody the Woodpecker sticker would get the call. That was the first guitar we knew Jim by. Continue reading »
