Pencilstorm Hall of Fame Nominee: "Thunderbird" by Terry Anderson and The OAK Team - Colin Gawel

Click here for the complete nomination list for the 2016 Pencilstorm Hall of Fame. Winners announced April 14th at CD102 Big Room Bar.

As the great sage Slim Dunlap (of The Replacements, among others) once told me, "Music gives you all kinds of gifts, you just have to look for, and appreciate them." Playing shows with and then becoming friends with Terry Anderson and The Olympic Ass-Kickin Team has been one of the great joys of my rock n roll life. 

Random Highlights Include:

- Terry calling me at home out of the blue one Sunday while traveling with The Yahoos, "Colin, it's Terry, we are driving near Columbus looking for a good place to drink tequila. Anything near I-70 and mile marker 134?". My wife was like, "Who's that?"  I covered up the phone with my hand and breathlessly whispered, "It's the real Terry Anderson. On the phone. With me. Right now!"  "Um, ok. Well, what does he want?" "He wants to know a place to drink tequila close to the highway! This is so cool!"

- Terry and The OAK Team backing up Erica Blinn on her very first recording.

- Letting me write up their set-list at a show at Slim's in Raleigh, NC.

- Hanging out with the guys at a Clippers baseball game at the old Cooper Stadium on Mound Street, along with my then 3 year old son Owen. "The Clippers Welcome Terry Anderson & The OAK Team " on the scoreboard. Thanks to my pal Mark Galuska for help on that one. 

BUT, the biggest highlight (and I think Ricki C. would agree with me) was one of the first shows Watershed opened for the OAK Team was at a club in Macon, Georgia. I was already a fan but I had never seen them do a full two-set, hell-raising rock show. Standing back by the merch table with Ricki C. I remember saying, "Is it me or is this band like 1,000 times better than NRBQ?" Ricki responded in an instant, "Absolutely. I saw NRBQ a bunch back in the day, and these guys are better."

Blasphemy I know.  Don't get me wrong, NRBQ is a great band, but on this night, The OAK Team were better. In fact, every night I saw them, The Oak Team were better than NRBQ. They are just a better band with better songs. 

"It's like watching a cover band except it's all originals. Every song is so great. Everyone is so great. I don't know who to watch" I yelled in Ricki's ear. He nodded even though I'm not sure he heard me. Ricki's ears are sorta shot, though to be fair, it was loud.

Anyway, it's getting near last call, people are standing on tables, busting shit up, you know... when after telling a hilarious rap about digging around the fridge at a gas station, Terry starting singing...

"Why don't you come over here, and help me drink this Thunderbird / Why don't you come over here and help me drink this Thunderbird / Why don't you come over and help me drink this Thunderbird / Why don't you come over here and help me drink this Thunderbird"

I thought, "Oh no.. he..is..not..." That is the chorus. Read those words again. Try to imagine how that can work. Read them out loud. That CANNOT work. It's just the same lines. How can that work? How did he even show it to the band? That can't work.

Not only does it work, the hook gets drilled directly into your brain's hard drive and for the rest of your life you will find yourself singing it in some random moment. Like jogging in the park, driving in your car, or attending the funeral of a person you didn't know very well.

Writing serious songs is easy. The real trick is writing a fun song that the world never asked for but now we cannot imagine a world without. When questioned about my all-time favorite songwriters I tick them off real quick: Chuck Berry, Ray Davies, Paul Westerberg, Bruce Springsteen and...Terry Anderson.  The man is a songwriting genius and I'm sure people would argue he has 40 more deserving songs than this one. They might be right. But "they" aren't on the Hall of Fame committee and I am.  So....

I would like to ask my fellow committee members to support "Thunderbird" by Terry Anderson and The Olympic-Ass Kickin Team for inclusion in the 2016 Pencilstorm Hall of Fame. - Colin Gawel

Terry Anderson Thunderbird

The OAKTeam has been selected as finalists for the Great American Band Contest and we need your vote. Please go to: http://www.fox50.com/contests/8684162.html and vote for terry anderson and the oakteam... The band with the most online votes out of these 6 will go to vegas in the fall for the t.v.


Pencilstorm's Most Popular Stories - February 2016

Dan Baird and Homemade Sin Scheduled to Perform Hellraisin' Rock n Roll, Wednesday, March 2nd, in Wapakoneta, OH

We have all seen the movie Roadhouse like 50 times, right? Well, Route 33 Rhythm and Brews in Wapakoneta, OH has much in common with the Double Deuce. Granted, the bouncers are less attractive, but the levels of boozin' and hell-raisin' are just the same. They also throw a pretty mean rock n roll party once in awhile. 

On Wednesday, March 2nd, the great Dan Baird and Homemade Sin will be gracing the RT 33 stage as they tour America in support of their latest record, Get Loud! If you can get somebody to cover your shift Thursday morning, I highly recommend you Cbus folk make the short trip up RT 33 to Wapak to catch a small town rock n roll show that is sure to leave your big city slicker jaw agape.

Local celebrities Quinn Fallon (Dan produced some of his records) and Mike "Biggie" McDermott are rumored to be attending the show and spending the night at an undisclosed Indian Lake location.  

Click here for more info on tickets and RT 33 Rhythm and Brews

Click here for more info on Dan Baird and Homemade Sin. 

Click here for some recent setlists from Homemade Sin  

Dan Baird & Homemade Sin recorded at Akkurat in Sweden in May 2013. Dan Baird from Georgia Satellites and Warner E Hodges from Jason and the Scorchers on lead guitar. Mauro Magellan on drums and Keith Christopher on Bass. For more information about the band see http://danbairdandhomemadesin.com/ or...


Classic Album Artwork Exhibit Opening At Columbus Museum of Art - by Scott Carr

A great new exhibit entitled Spin Art is opening this Friday February 26th at the Columbus Museum of Art.

The exhibit travels back to a time when the artwork on an album cover was almost as important as the music pressed into the grooves of the vinyl. It's an art form that got lost during the CD generation but with a renewed interest in vinyl, album cover artwork is alive and well. Spin Art will display actual album covers along with information about the art on the covers. Several different genres of music will be represented in the exhibit including Classic Rock, Punk, Heavy Metal, Alternative, Funk, Hip Hop and Jazz. Many iconic covers will be instantly familiar while others will be a bit more obscure. 

Albums from Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Sonic Youth, Funkadelic, Yes and Iron Maiden are just a few that will be on display during the six month run of Spin Art at CMOA. Just as recognizable as the names of the bands that created the music are the names of the graphic artists who brought album artwork to life including Andy Warhol, Roger Dean, Winston Smith, Derek Riggs and Gerhard Richter. 

The Spin Art exhibit was put together by Jeff Sims, a creative producer for the Columbus Museum of Art. Jeff enlisted help from Brett Ruland of Spoonful Records to track down a specific list of 90 album covers to be featured in the exhibit. Brett along with his wife Amy Kesting contacted several local vinyl enthusiasts, including myself, as well as local record store owners Kyle Siegrist of Lost Weekend Records and David Lewis of Elizabeth's Records to lend records for display in the exhibit.

Several of the Spin Art contributors gathered at the Columbus Museum of Art last night for a sneak peak of the exhibit. Photo courtesy of Kyle Siegrist and taken by Amy Kesting.

Several of the Spin Art contributors gathered at the Columbus Museum of Art last night for a sneak peak of the exhibit. Photo courtesy of Kyle Siegrist and taken by Amy Kesting.

Spin Art opens on Friday February 26th and runs through August 21st. 

Below are five of my all-time favorite album covers that are NOT featured in the Spin Art exhibit but these are some covers that I would gaze at for hours in my youth.

1. Kiss - Destroyer

Not my favorite Kiss record but the cover is epic!

2. Alice Cooper - From the Inside

My favorite Alice "solo" record and the cover is very inventive. It has doors that open on the front and back of the cover that let you see inside Alice's insane asylum.

3. AC/DC - Powerage

One of my favorite AC/DC albums and I always felt like this album sounded the way the cover looks. Loud and full of energy!

4. Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak

I love this cover, always thought it looked like a cool comic book or video game.

5. T. Rex - Electric Warrior

A very simplistic design but very effective. Very iconic image.

Scott Carr is a guitarist who plays in the Columbus, OH  bands Radio Tramps and Returning April.  Scott is also an avid collector of vinyl records and works at Lost Weekend Records. So...if you are looking for Scott....you'll either find him in a dimly lit bar playing his guitar or in a record store digging for the holy grail.

 

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, The River Tour, Live In Cleveland, 2/23/2016 - by Ricki C.

(writer’s note: I first saw Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band at the Ohio Theater, April 5th, 1976.  This coming April 12th – forty years & one week later – I will see them again at the Schott.  There’ll be a big forty year Springsteen round-up at that point, so just consider today’s blog a kind of preview to that show. – Ricki C.)


The first three things you’ve gotta know are:

1)    For this tour, Bruce Springsteen has scaled the E Street Band back to (almost) their original lean, mean, rock & roll machine line-up: eight men and one woman.  No horn section.  No back-up singers.  No percussionists.  No bullshit.  Three guitarists (which is one too many, more on that later), one bass player, two keyboards, one sax, one violin, one (magnificent) drummer, five people singing their hearts out.  As I said, no bullshit.

2)    Bruce’s 1980 album The River gets played, in order, in its entirety to open the show.  The opener in Cleveland was River outtake “Meet Me In The City.”  (It’s probably been the opener everywhere, but I’m not the kinda guy to go on the InterWideWeb and pore over set lists & such.  Consider me, from this point on, your Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Drunk Uncle.)  I was hoping for more outtakes interspersed in the set (I’d’ve given anything to hear “Roulette” – video provided below), but Bruce & band just get down to it and alternately sear & simmer their way through the double-album.  Expected Highlights: the entire first side of record one, from “The Ties That Bind” to “Independence Day” (and holy shit, how many records have a whole side as great as that one?); the song “The River” itself, possibly the most grown-up rock song written to that point, and the one that extended Bruce’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town theme that everything in Springsteen World was not gonna be all fun ‘n’ games, cars & girls.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)  Unexpected Highlights: “I Wanna Marry You,” a song that often got skipped in my back-in-the-day listening (I was getting divorced at the time) and “Stolen Car,” which at that time might just as well have been the story of my life and that divorce; a truly great romp through what I have always considered the throwaway rocker “Ramrod,” including a little dance move from sax player Jake Clemons that I can’t do justice to here, you’re gonna have to go on YouTube or come to the Columbus show.

And that’s just the first two hours of the set.

3)    The next 90 minutes of the three and a half hour show are a selection of E Street Smashers that in Cleveland included “Candy’s Room” and “Because The Night” played back to back and a furious run-through of “Youngstown.”  (Culminating in the lyrics, "Now you tell me the world's changed / Once I made you rich enough / Rich enough to forget my name."  Words to remember in this election season.)  

Really, E Street Band sets make almost all other rock & roll shows seem silly and perfunctory.   
    

The second three things you’ve gotta know:

1)    Bruce Springsteen is the luckiest rocker on the planet that Clarence Clemons had a nephew who plays tenor sax the way Jake Clemons does.  Goddamn, that kid is great.  (sidelight: When Bruce crowd-surfed from the pit runway back to the stage during “Hungry Heart,” any other performer would have a roadie help him back onstage.  Oh, but no, no, no, that’s too simple for an E Street Band show; Jake hauls Bruce back one-handed WHILE BLOWING A SAX SOLO WITH THE OTHER HAND.  It’s a sight to see.  Photo below, after the videos.)  

2)    Oddly – maybe because Jake is SO good at what he does – I find myself missing Danny Federici more than I do Clarence Clemons.  Part of that, though, is because former Seeger Sessions organist Charlie Giordano is such a mook that I find I can’t even look at him on the stage.  (Luckily, my tickets in Columbus are behind Charlie, so I’ll be looking at his back.)  Seriously, Bruce, Danny didn’t have ANY relatives you could have hired before Giordano?

3)    I’ve fully known it since 1978, but this River Tour crystallizes just how tightly orchestrated and GREAT Max Weinberg’s drumming is.  It’s as good and as exact as anything Brian Wilson came up with on those killer Beach Boy tunes like “God Only Knows,” or anything classical composers came up with for tympani & snare drum parts, but simultaneously POWERS the E Street Band through 3 & ½ hours of killer rock & roll.  I witnessed Who drummer Keith Moon in his 1969 & 1972 prime, Max Weinberg is the only drummer I have ever seen even come close to that force-of-nature rhythmic onslaught.  And Keith was in his twenties then; Max is 64 fucking years old.  Really, you have to bow down to the man.

Okay, I’m well over my 500-word limit.  Everything else – including how revitalized Steve Van Zandt is on this tour, which I haven’t even touched on – is gonna have to wait until April.  All I can say right this moment is: if you haven’t already, buy a ticket to that Columbus show, you WILL NOT be sorry.  – Ricki C. / February 25th, 2016.  

   

Bruce's Three Mile Island song, one of DOZENS of outtakes presented on various box sets, compilation albums & bootlegs.  I swear, Springsteen has more and better OUTTAKES than many other rock & roll acts have SONGS.    

Check out the little moment between Bruce and Steve Van Zandt at the 1:55-2:30 mark.......

photo by Jodie Weaver; Cleveland, Ohio, 2/23/2016


Paul Stanley Solo Record Gets Hall of Fame Nod. See, It IS Better than Ace's Solo Record. - Colin G.

Click here for the complete list of 2016 nominations to THE Pencilstorm Hall of Fame.

Remember awhile back when I wrote the story, "Paul's Solo Record is Better than Ace's". Well, a bunch of you Space-Acers lost your shit and, frankly, the chatter got a little nasty. As I recall, I was even kicked out of a Facebook Ace group because - though I really liked Ace's record - I just thought Paul's was better. Geez, you would have thought that I said Peter's record was the best KISS solo record....

Well, I hate to say I told you so, but look what got nominated for THE Pencilstorm Hall of Fame? Yup, Paul Stanley's solo record. Not Ace's.

There you have it. Case closed. I win. Paul's record is better than Ace's. If it wasn't, how do you explain Paul getting nominated for THE Pencilstorm Hall of Fame and not the Spaceman?

You can't.  

And not to run up the score, but Paul's solo album contains the best song written by any Kiss member both with the band or solo. The breathtaking "Wouldn't You Like to Know Me." (And yes, Ricki C., it's better than any power pop song the over-rated Raspberries ever churned out) 

I ask my fellow committee members to give serious consideration to the Paul Stanley solo record joining THE Pencilstorm Hall of Fame. - Colin G.  #pstormhof 

The song by Paul Stanley Wouldn't You Like To Know Me

The best song on the best KISS solo record and maybe just flat out, the best KISS song ever recorded.

From the One Live KISS DVD, recorded in 2006 at the House of Blues, released in 2008. Check out the One Live KISS DVD, and CD, and Paul's album Live to Win, and pick yourself up a copy!