The Zombies will make a pair of appearances in New York this month as their mighty Odessey & Oracle approaches its fiftieth birthday. The brilliant rock and pop outfit from St Albans, Hertfordshire in England are experiencing an amazing phase in their career that began in 1961.  I was fortunate enough to speak to Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone the last time they were in town in the Autumn of 2015.  At that time, their album, Still Got That Hunger was just being released and they were beginning a tour featuring new songs aside all the songs from 1968’s Odessey and Oracle. (sic!)  The performance on October 9, 2015 at The New York Society for Ethical Culture on the upper west side was a triumph and it was the first time they had played O&O its entirety in the U.S.  Now they’re back for a victory lap with a show at Town Hall on March 25th as well as a book signing at the Strand on Wednesday the 15th.  (Careful with the dates, the video above is airing on NY1 on the 14th so I refer to the signing happening ‘tomorrow evening.’)  Vinyl mavens will also be pleased to know their greatest hits is back in print on wax beginning next month.  It’ll hit on April 7th.

Even before this week’s (March 17th with bonus tracks) reissue, Odessey & Oracle had been selling more copies than ever before as generations of fans continue to discover its irresistible charms.  However as Rod Argent said to me in Central Park four years ago in another interview, the last thing The Zombies want to do is be a nostalgia band.  It’s crucial to them to continue to write and record new material.  That’s what drives the creative bus but when that bus is in motion, they can fully engage in bringing older material to the stage as well.  Here’s a flashback to that chat in which he speaks about recording Odessey and Oracle, The Zombies visits in the mid 1960’s to New York City and their first wave of success, as well as the creative path forward.  The video below also features some bonus footage of the Central Park show while the video above includes performance bits that I shot at South by Southwest in Austin two years ago.  

The 43rd annual Fest For Beatles Fans brought together an impressive array of super-fans and people in a position to show and tell first hand accounts involving John, Paul, George, and  Ringo.  It was a pleasure to be able to roam around the Hyatt Regency Jersey City On The Hudson with the benefit of a camera and a microphone.  

Louise Harrison is protective about revealing the few years of her brother George Harrison’s life that haven’t been exhaustively documented.  However, she made it clear that in his boyhood, he was definitely not the quiet one!  

Maybe the best evidence of the enduring legacy of The Beatles is how much love they get from people who have worked with them.  Mark Hudson wrote and produced no fewer than eight album with Ringo while Rob Shanahan has been photographer for his record covers, tour books, and t-shirt art since meeting Ringo in 2001 through Sheila E.  They spoke of the surreal aspects of making the transition from huge lovers of the group to being in its inner circle.  They were naturally beside themselves when transcendent moments occurred like Rob photographing Paul showing up at Ringo’s show at Radio City in 2009 or Mark singing harmony vocals with Paul during a session for 1998’s Vertical Man. 

The same is true of Klaus Voormann who was as close as anyone to The Beatles with a history going back to the days on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg ion the early 60s.  He played extensively with John, George, and Ringo from ’69 to ’76 as a member of the Plastic Ono Band and on sessions for albums like Imagine, Walls & Bridges, Rock n Roll, All Things Must Pass, Living In The Material World, Dark Horse, Goodnight Vienna, and Ringo’s Rotogravure which was the last album to feature contributions from all four Beatles before Lennon’s death in 1980.  Voormann generously narrated an executive summary of his spiffy new book,  Birth of an Icon:Revolver 50 while flipping through its pages.  See the bonus video below for more with Klaus. 

Lastly, enjoy another bonus vid with Charles Roberts who invited The Quarrymen to play at a street party in ’57 at which the first photograph ever snapped of that group was taken…

New Documentary Film & Book On H.R. Of Bad Brains – Event at Saint Vitus Bar on January 24, 2017

One of the Bad Brains CDs in my collection has a sticker on it with two well chosen quotes about the band:

“If you want to hear real excitement, real energy, real soul…listen to the Bad Brains” – Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers

“The Bad Brains influenced me more than any other band in the world.” – Adam Yauch, Beastie Boys

It was brilliant to be able to get a chat with Bad Brains’ frontman H.R. in Brooklyn last week along with James Lathos and Howie Abrams who have devoted years to exploring his music, personality, and spirituality.  Lathos, who directed the documentary, told me straight up he is not a filmmaker. He builds houses in Florida for a living.  However, he is a maniacal H.R. and Bad Brains fan who used to write for a skate mag and had become friendly with his future documentary subject in their common hometown of Washington D.C.  Abrams has roots in New York City and, while researching a book he had a notion about doing, heard that interviews for a film had been going on.  He reached out to Lathos and the two decided to team up with the best bits captured on video going into the flick while the oral history allowed for transcripts of the most compelling conversations.  Lathos emphasized that the movie is not just blowing smoke (about how genius H.R. is) but looks at the struggles that he has had to endure.  

Pick up the book that’s out now and keep your eye on this website for the latest screenings about Finding Joseph I and future release info.

So, can we hope for another Bad Brains record with H.R. at the helm?  The answer is YES!  Enjoy these bonus bits from the powwow in which H.R. points to studio sessions planned for the fall as well as gives a nod to The Ramones and CBGB…

A confession: I typically do not enjoy either memoirs by or biographies about musicians.  I read a lot of them – and man, there are a lot of ’em – but it’s generally a chore.  I would must rather listen to the music that’s being parsed.  I generally don’t care where people grew up and what jobs their parents did – boring!  However, I slog through in order to glean the odd tidbit that I can pass along in radio shows and every once in a while the subject matter and the writing rise to the level of the gateway music.  That brings us to the books I’ve displayed haphazardly atop a table normally used for cookbooks at the McNally Jackson bookstore in Soho who were kind enough to indulge me…

We’ve got books memoirs by Elvis Costello, Chrissy Hynde, and Carrie Brownstein (who will be in town next month with her band) and a biography about Sam Phillips by Peter Guralnick who is best known for his two volume examination of Elvis Presley.  We’ve also got a biography on Tom Petty penned by Warren Zanes who was in a dynamite rock band himself The Del Fuegos and these days works with Steven Van Zandt in the Rock n Roll Forever Foundation.  We’ve got cultural criticism from Richard Hell and a piece of work from Patti Smith that resists any of the traditional literary categories.

Henry Diltz shot pictures at Woodstock and Monterey Pop.  The folk musician & photographer shot Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jimi Hendrix, and The Doors.  He described Jim Morrison as quiet, laid-back, and cool – not much like how Val Kilmer portrayed him in the 1991 Doors movie directed by Oliver Stone.

Joel Bernstein‘s photography of Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Tom Petty makes him one of the few people who are on a par with Diltz in the world of music photography.  Among other remarkable experiences, he was the guitar tech at The Band’s The Last Waltz concert and worked with Prince both in the studio and on tour.

Graham Nash has been in front of  both Diltz and Bernstein’s cameras and is friends with both men.  He described fondly his first meeting with Bernstein at Joni Mitchell’s Carnegie Hall show in 1969 in the early days of his role as her official photographer.  Nash is also a highly acclaimed photographer in his own right.  The night after Nash presented Diltz with the 2015 Lucie award for Achievement in Music photography, these three men gathered at the Roxy Hotel in Tribeca (on October 28, 2015) to display their work and tell some stories.  And man, do they have some stories!  When I spoke with them, they agreed that trying to plan and create photographs is generally a fool’s mission.  They’re all about capturing moments, not manufacturing them…

Anthrax has been kicking ass for 34 years!  I spoke with Scott Ian about past, present, and future of the legendary thrash metal band backstage at Hammerstein Ballroom…

An important reason Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn writes such powerful political songs is his first hand experience.  A new memoir Rumours of Glory from the folk-rock artist recalls visiting places around the world, often places wracked by war, that informed his lyrics.  He highlighted the songs he wrote about in his City Winery shows this past weekend and I had a chance to ask him about his guitar technique as well.

As hip hop artist Maino unleashes a video for his latest single Dreamer featuring French Montana, B.O.B., and Tweezie – The King of Brooklyn dropped by NY1 for a powwow that included news of a literary project.

2014 holiday season gift ideas include plenty of memoirs & biographies to read and documentaries & performances to watch…

Stephin Merritt topped an impressive lineup at Le Poisson Rouge in the West Village and offered a handful of Magnetic Fields’ faves to celebrate the release of the third issue of Radio Silence, a San Francisco based magazine whose stock in trade is the cross-fertilization of authors and musicians. It’s got kind of an artist collective spirit. I spoke with editor and founder Dan Stone together with Stephin Merritt who made an on-camera remark about writing horoscopes that may lead to fruition in future issues of the publication. Merritt, who is a Scrabble nut, has a new book called 101 Two Letter Words. He also confessed to accidentally stealing some of the Scrabble tiles at Bryant Park.  (I’m sure he’s since returned them!)

I’ve always been mad about Tanya Donelly and met her once during the Belly days. It was a treat to speak to her as well and confirm that she still sparkles. She’s promised vinyl and CD pressings of her ongoing Swan Song series of EPs – probably in the Spring – that so far have been available digitally only. After releasing very little new material over the last decade, the first of the series came out in the summer of last year.  She was joined by Rick Moody – most famous for his novel The Ice Storm but a musician who has frequently collaborated with TD over the last decade – on harmony vocals.

I shot video of both Merritt and Donelly’s performances and bumped into a few of the other talented artists populating the joint. James Murphy was a last minute addition to the bill. He joined author Sam Lipsyte for the first-ever reunion of Sam’s old band Dungbeetle. It was honest and loud.

Jim White turned in a strong set. He’ll unleash a new album with the Packway Handle Band, Take It Like A Man, on January 27 via Yep Roc Records. The gentleman Jim is speaking to in the the picture is Matthew Friedberger of Fiery Furnaces fame. Matthew took the stage for a strange interlude with rock scholar Greil Marcus whose latest book is called The History of Rock n’ Roll in Ten Songs.

[See image gallery at hollandude.com]