11.13.07 Return To Comboland is On The Road! • NECK TIE PARTY (1981) •What's the old saying about the best laid plans? Well I tried, I really tried to get Neck Tie Party transferred, but the gear was described to me as 3P0'd (translated: the wires were all pulled out). I'll try again next week. • RTC DOCUMENTARY • Meanwhile I have been on the road. Friday I shot an interview in Nashville with Dan Baird of the Georgia Satellites who talked about The Fabulous Knobs. Saturday I was in Knoxville shooting performances of The Olympic Ass-Kicking Team and interviews with Terry Anderson and Jack Cornell of The Fabulous Knobs. And Sunday I was in Warner-Robins, Georgia shooting an interview with Bruce Brookshire of Doc Holliday, as well as his Sunday service at his church, Grace Fellowship. I'm back on the road Wednesday through Sunday, first in Charlotte and then Raleigh / Durham shooting tons of other interviews. I'll let you know who they are after I know I've got them on tape! • DAVID ENLOE • On a sad note. While in Raleigh I hope to visit David Enloe of The Fabulous Knobs. He is very ill with liver disease. I would suggest you read Terry Anderson's blog about David (you may have to scroll through the page to find his comments - he's made a few). Here's the address : http://whassupta.blogspot.com/ I'll offer my thoughts after I've had a visit. • ALLAN HANDELMAN • And Allan Handelman has asked me back on his radio show to talk about the RTC project since it's now in production. I'm not sure when the show will be, but it should be soon. I'll post the info as soon as I have it. To hear Allan's show, check out his Web site for radio stations and online feeds at: http://www.ifitrocks.com/ • So with all of this travel and production going on, I will not be able to post any videos until I return, which I hope will be Neck Tie Party and some more Rough Cuts. Stay Tuned!
11.03.07 PKM - DOIN' MICKEY'S MONKEY (1984) • PKM still gets the most fan mail and so to keep the masses happy, here's another track from that great night at The Attic in Greenville. DOIN' MICKEY'S MONKEY is one of my favorite performances from the PKM concert. Originally a 1963 Holland-Dozier-Holland hit for Smokey Robinson, Mother's Finest revamped the song in 1977 with some added CUSTARD PIE from Led Zeppelin. Nantucket toured with Mother's Finest before PKM spun-off as a power trio. PKM remembered the song during the sound check for The Attic show and since a second encore was needed, they threw in this great cover of a cover. Turn it up! Play it loud!! • ROUGH CUTS • I will be at Patrick Sullivan's in Knoxville, Saturday, November 10th shooting interviews and performance of The Olympic Ass-Kicking Team. Terry Anderson and Jack Cornell from The Fabulous Knobs are the cornerstones of the group. If you are in the neighborhood, drop by and see a great show - and say hello too! Look for a Fabulous Knobs ROUGH CUT soon after the shoot.
10.28.07 ROUGH CUTS Improved and other Delights • ROUGH CUTS • Between family business and being on the road, I have not had a chance to add anything to the clip collection. If you watch the ROUGH CUT clips on this Web site (on the left side of this page), you'll find that they are improved. I have loaded them on to MySpaceTV and found that they are cleaner and load faster. PRESS PLAY and then look in the lower right hand corner of the controls, you'll see a BUTTON WITH A BOX IN IT - second to last button on the right - click that button and it sharpens the video to the cleanest I've seen on the Web. If the video looks distored that means you clicked the buttons out of order. Don't panic. Click the BOX button again and it corrects the distortion and sharpens the video. It's certainly not as crisp as the HD that I could show you if this was broadcast, but it's pretty darn good. I'll upload all of the ROUGH CUTS to both MySpace and YouTube from here on. And will link the RTC Web site to MySpace. • WEB SITE • I'm working on updating some of the RTC Web site pages too, so if you look around, you may see some changes. I'm almost done with the Comboland page and have a nice bit of video that will give you a laugh. • RTC DOCUMENTARY • I have also been shooting some interviews for the documentary and will post them in the upcoming ROUGH CUTS. • I caught up with WQDR's Rockin' Ron Philips in Ashville recently. We talked about WQRD, Barney's Army, Arrogance, PKM, Luky Owens & Revolver, Glass Moon, and The Fabulous Knobs . • I also had a chance to interview manager and founder of CMC, Bill Cain, who now lives in the Philippians, but happened to be in Nashville the other week. We talked about Nantucket, PKM, Doc Holliday, Glass Moon and CMC. • I have more interviews coming up, so look for more ROUGH CUTS soon.
10.17.07 RTC Rough Cut No.4 - The Spongetones (2007) October 6, 2007 was a special day in Charlotte, NC. The Spongetones were given a magnificent tribute by their musical peers and witnessed by a full house. Don Dixon, Mitch Easter and others were in attendance and performing. After the show, The Spongetones were kind enough to continue to talk to me at Hooverama studios until the early hours of the morning. This posting of Rough Cuts offers a small sample of the show and comments from The Spongetones. The most amazing thing about The Spongetones - besides the fact that their first album, Beat Music (1983) still puts a smile on my face and gets me on my feet - is that the original line-up of Jamie Hoover, Pat Walters, Steve Stoekel and Rob Thorne have continued as a great band for over 25 years. The evening's tribute was well deserved and a lot of fun. You should have been there!
10.03.07 RTC Rough Cut No.3 - Arrogance (2007) is now posted. Here is another sneak peek at what the Return To Comboland documentary might look like. Since these are Rough Cuts, they are incomplete and offer only samples of interviews, music and memorabilia. Any or all of these clips may or may not be used in the final documentary (if the documentary is every completed!). • Scott Davison and Robert Kirkland of Arrogance were kind enough to chat with me at Robert's house last February. You'll also find a sample of the Arrogance music video "Uh-Oh" which was shot in 1983 (this was not one of my videos) and was produced to promote the Arrogance 5'11" album. Instead the song was released on Robert's solo album, Kick The Future, which was released in 1984. The final Arrogance album, 5'11" along with bonus tracks, was not released until a few years ago. • I normally post clips on weekends, but I will be at The Spongetones Tribute show in Charlotte on Saturday. So I thought I had better post Rough Cuts No.3 now rather than later. If you have any thoughts on the Rough Cuts clips, please post them on YouTube or email me. All comments cheerfully deleted. . . err. . . a. . . accepted.
09.30.07 RTC Rough Cut No.2 - The Accelerators (2007) is now posted. Here is a sneak peek of what's involved in the Return To Comboland documentary. Driving around Raleigh during a rare snowy February day, Tony Madejczyk and I are guided by PeeWee Watson of PKM to meet with Dick Hodgin, former manager of The Accelerators. Dick offers a great description of what it was like to show up for the first time at The Pier in 1982 and play warm-up to Arrogance at the height of their power. These RTC Rough Cuts offer an incomplete sample of the documentary. Incomplete in that each artist's story would normally include numerous interviews and lots of archives. In this case the archives are limited and the interviews deal with one or two aspects of the featured artists. • A note about the video quality. These clips are shot in High Definition and look fantastic! Now, compress the video and then upload it to YouTube to have YouTube compress it again, and what is delivered to your computer looks awful. I will start posting these clips with some of the competing Video Portals and will let you know where they are so you can compare quality to YouTube. • THE SPONGETONES TRIBUTE In case you didn't know, The Spongetones are having a Tribute concert in Charlotte, NC on Saturday, October 6 th. Don Dixon and Mitch Easter will be two of the many folks playing that night, along with The Spongetones. If all goes well, I will be there with camera in hand! If you would like more information on the show, check out their MySpace site. • RTC WEB SITE UPDATES There are numerous updates throughout this site and more to come.
09.01.07 PKM - I DON'T KNOW (1984) is now posted on YouTube. I will have it added to the PKM page soon. Hands down, PKM gets the most fan mail. And so here comes another PKM song. I DON'T KNOW was another fave rave request from the fans. A great original from a great Power Trio. And as for YOUTUBE. . . When I first started posting these videos, I figured that I would have a few folks that remembered these bands or general fans from the Raleigh area. There are now over 50,000 views of the RTC videos and I have been receiving fan mail from around the world. So the music and the bands still hold an audience!!
08.26.07 Arrogance LIVE At The Pier - Part 1 and Part 2 is now posted. I thought I would post the rest of the Arrogance LIVE At The Pier show. What you are seeing is the final set of the evening. The actual set runs like this: The Fabulous Knobs MAKE IT STICK / Arrogance LIVE At The Pier - PART 1 - BLUE SUEDE SHOES, MR. CUSTER / Arrogance LIVE At The Pier - PART 2 - LITTLE LATIN LUPE LU, GLORIA, PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON. • This was the Arrogance encore set and instead of Arrogance showing up, The Knobs performed MAKE IT STICK - and then Arrogance came on stage. You can also see Terry Anderson and Jack Cornel of The Knobs singing the final song with Arrogance in Part 2 and you can hear Don Dixon make a reference to The Knobs in Part 1. • Since the quality of the original YouTube posting of Arrogance LIVE is not as good as this version, I will be deleting the old version in a few weeks.
08.19.07 Ears - HUH? WHAT! (1977) is now posted on YouTube: click here to see it. Okay, so the music is, well, dire - or at lease an acquired taste. But that was the idea in the 70's NYC Punk scene - be original at any cost. Although being original and commercial or even listenable, is a different story. This was my very fist music video, dating back to 1977, using my band Ears, as the victum of this video. The concept to Ears was to have fun and be somewhat outrageous (being in tune was not a consideration!). Frank Zappa liked the band and the concept to the point where he introduced Ears on stage one night at Max's Kansas City - so there was something there. Please read the details on the YouTube page. I will update the RTC Web site with a detail page soon. Also note that my old pal Tony Madejczyk was running camera for this performance. We started working together in New York in 1975. And the hat I'm wearing for this performance is the same hat Dave Adams is wearing in the Glass Moon video TELEGRAM SONG (1982). From this video in 1977 I was able to talk my way into my first concept music video with The Fabulous Knobs PLEASE YOU NO MORE (1981).
08.12.07 PKM - LONG NIGHT (1984) is now posted. For a band that didn't have a hit, LONG NIGHT was a hit! And for that matter so were a lot of other PKM original songs. This may (or may not) be the last of the posted songs from this concert. I have been receiving a lot of email asking if this concert will be released as a DVD. We're trying to figure it out!