Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess has shared a new performance video, which can be veiwed below.
“Rio de Janeiro, a quiet hotel room, and my JR Sorcerer brought this to life. ‘Echoes Of The Mar’—a melody for the sea, carrying a whisper of Octavarium!”
Rudess released his brand new solo album, Permission To Fly, back in September via InsideOutMusic.
No stranger to experimentation, Rudess is known for leading the charge in pushing creative, sonic, and technological boundaries. His latest endeavour, epitomizes this ethos, delving into the complexities of human existence within our multifaceted world. While some of his previous releases were true solo pursuits, this time, Rudess assembled a core group of musicians to support and elevate his vision. The album features Jordan alongside That Joe Payne on vocals, Darby Todd (Devin Townsend) on drums & Steve Dadaian on guitar, as well as guest guitar solos from Bastian Martinez.
Jordan comments: “Permission to Fly is here! This album is a dream come true and features an incredible team of collaborators. My vision has turned into reality, and I can’t wait for you to join me on this journey.”
The first single released from the album was titled “Embers”, and you can watch the official video for that track now, filmed earlier in 2024 on Cruise To The Edge:
With the music in capable hands, Rudess wanted to make sure to give the lyrics their proper attention. For that, he turned to a source close to home, his daughter. “All the lyrics on the album were written by my daughter, Ariana. While I enjoy writing lyrics myself, my primary focus tends to be on the sonic quality of the words. For this album, I wanted to delve deeper and offer something that resonated on a more profound and cerebral level. Ari did an exceptional job.”
Permission To Fly is available as Limited CD Digipak & Gatefold 180g 2LP (both incl. bonus material), as well as digitally. Order here.
Tracklisting:
“The Final Threshold” “Into The Lair” “Haunted Reverie” “The Alchemist” “Embers” “Shadow Of The Moon” “Eternal” “Footstep In The Snow” “Dreamer” “Incarnation” (Bonus Track) “Chopin Fm” (Bonus Track)
“Shadow Of The Moon” video:
“The Alchemist” video:
Renowned as the “Best Keyboardist of All Time” by Music Radar Magazine, Jordan Rudess stands out as the extraordinary keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist for the platinum-selling, Grammy Award-winning progressive rock band, Dream Theater. Embarking on his musical journey as a classical prodigy, Jordan initiated his studies at the illustrious Juilliard School of Music at the age of 9, laying the foundation for a career marked by a distinctive fusion of classical and rock influences.
Beyond his role in Dream Theater and the power group, Liquid Tension Experiment, Jordan’s musical prowess has resonated across a diverse spectrum of collaborations. From Deep Purple and David Bowie to Steven Wilson and Jan Hammer, he has left an indelible mark on the industry. Notable projects such as LMR (his side venture with Tony Levin and Marco Minneman), Steven Wilson’s Blackfield, guest appearances with Deep Purple and the Dixie Dregs and collaborations with artists like Enrique Iglesias, the Paul Winter Consort, Annie Haslam, and many others, underscore the breadth of his musical reach.
Venturing into the realm of cutting-edge technology, Jordan has emerged as a pioneer with a focus on state-of-the-art keyboard controllers and music apps. As the owner of the highly successful iOS app development company, Wizdom Music, he has spearheaded the creation of award-winning apps, including GeoShred, MorphWiz, SampleWiz, Vythm, Polywave, Jam with Jordan and SampleWiz 2. GeoShred, Wizdom Music’s latest triumph, was a collaborative effort with moForte, founding members of Stanford University’s Sondius team. Rudess is currently working on an AI interactive project as Visiting Artist at MIT’s Media Lab in the Responsive Environments group.
“Sometimes the ‘you’ in my songs is me talking to me. Other times I can be talking to somebody else. It’s up to you to figure out who’s who”: The epic story of Bob Dylan’s holy trinity of mystical, magical mid-60s albums
(Image credit: Fiona Adams/Redferns)
As the upcoming Timothée Chalamet-starring biopic A Complete Unknown proves, few musicians have had the same impact as Bob Dylan had in the 1960s – particularly the trio of albums he released over a stellar 14 month period in 1965 and 1966, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde. In 2016, Dylan biographer David Dalton looked back on the holy trinity that changed music forever.
Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde are the high-water mark of 60s rock, and with the quasi-religious reverence due them, they are referred to by Bob Dylan fans as the Holy Trinity. The three most sublime albums in rock were created in a 14-month period from January 1965 to March 1966. In November 2015, sessions from these albums were issued as The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965-1966. It came in three formats: the ‘best of’ consists of two CDs, the deluxe edition six CDs and the collector’s edition 18 CDs – “…every note recorded during the 1965-1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric”. All three formats contain liner notes, notes on the recordings and, in a separate book, a collection of photographs.
The inclusion of a book of photographs from the Holy Trinity period is not just a gratuitous extra, because Dylan’s image especially in ’65 and ’66 was essential to his creation. You couldn’t have Billy Joel or Paul Simon singing Ballad Of A Thin Man or Visions Of Johanna. The character who sang those songs had to be dark, skinny and androgynous, a doomed visionary adrift in the neon night of the city – Rimbaud on methedrine.
It was just such an image that Dylan assembled. His wardrobe was a code: shades (from crazy jazz saints such as Miles Davis), electroshock hair (Einstein, Chopin, Bride Of Frankenstein), high-heeled suede boots (The Beatles), black jeans (the Beats), and flashy polka-dot and ruffle fencing shirts from the Brit Invasion pantomime. By the time he got this character together he was dripping with attitude.
You can see this exotic creature in action in Don’t Look Back, DA Pennebaker’s documentary of Dylan’s 1965 UK tour, and, if you’re lucky, in Dylan and Howard Alk’s speed-freak edit of footage of Dylan’s 1966 English tour (the singer has rarely allowed this film to be screened). There’s a third film using the same footage edited by Pennebaker and Dylan’s road manager/confidante Bob Neuwirth into a relatively sane documentary called Something Is Happening.
The album’s centre, its source of energy, is the creation of the character who’s singing on the album, an amped-up fantasy image of himself, Electric Bob.
Bob Dylan in April 1965, the month before he released Bringing It All Back Home (Image credit: Doug McKenzie/Getty Images)
In the summer of 1965 when I first heard Like A Rolling Stone, I began to suspect there was something supernatural about Dylan. It wasn’t just the surreal lyrics, his radiating image, his gnomic answers – as if this weren’t enough. The quirky organ, the surreal stream-of-consciousness lyrics, the distorted reality it projected was clearly an occult act. It changed you in that six minutes and 13 seconds; you saw the world through his X-ray specs. You became Bob.
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He’s telling you (or someone) something almost subliminally. You don’t know why, but you’re mesmerised by his tale. A tale you’re not quite sure you follow – but that’s what is so compelling about it. The cast of characters is straight out of a Fellini movie: ‘the mystery tramp… the diplomat with his Siamese cat… Napoleon in rags….’ It’s about whoever and what they did, but none of this matters. It’s the delivery, that insinuating tone of voice, and the expressionist language he uses to paint this bizarre Bohemian underworld diorama with all these freaks in it. You’d never heard anything like it before, but you don’t need to figure anything out, there is nothing, really nothing, to figure out.
It stunned me in the middle of the day: “What was that?” His ability to convey these freakish images channelled from some shadowy zone of Dylan’s head, as if, while listening to the song, these thoughts had spontaneously occurred to him and he had telepathically transmitted them to you. “If the songs are dreamed, it’s like my voice is coming out of their dream.” He actually said that!
Like A Rolling Stone was something new and strange delivered with a laid-back hipster’s disdain. The implication was that the world doesn’t have to be the way we inherited it. On the contrary, it can be like this. Let me show you some pictures. A sense of magic transformation projected a new age of infinite possibility and oddness. You heard Like A Rolling Stone and you were in it. It was as if you’d fallen through the rabbit hole.
When I heard Dylan was going to perform at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965, I had to go. I spotted him and his entourage walking into the dining room of the Viking Hotel. He looked like he’d stuck his finger in an electric socket or been struck by lightning – which seemed entirely possible, as how else could you explain such a fantastic apparition? And with the implicit understanding that I was cool (I’d been cool for at least five days now) and that one hipster could talk to another, I asked if I could interview him. “Later,” he said. “Much later.” Then he pointed to a cute girl in a mini-skirt and said: “Check out the box on that chick.” It sounded like a meaningless and dopey thing to say but, hey, it was Bob.
Dylan onstage during his landmark show at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965 (Image credit: Alice Ochs/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Wild stories started to circulate about him. About that alleged booing: when Dylan played his Fender Strat at Newport, there may have been some grumpy folk garden gnomes booing but I didn’t hear it. I’m not saying these antiquarians weren’t mad. Dylan had pulled down the walls of Jericho. Allegedly Pete Seeger, the grand wizard of folkdom, was backstage with an axe trying to cut the electric cable. But according to Al Kooper (who was on stage performing with Dylan) the booing was probably because he only played three songs. And we’d driven over 400 miles to get there. It had taken us seven-and-a-half hours from New York. It wasn’t so much that Dylan played electric guitar at Newport, but that he was electric in philosopher Bertrand Russell’s definition of electricity: “Not so much a thing as a way things happen.”
Mike Bloomfield, who played guitar that afternoon, thought they’d cheered. But Dylan, with his endearing perversity, loved the booing. He revelled in it, he provoked it. It fed into his rebel, outlaw image. And now it’s gone into history.
Since Dylan’s musical output was in the form of albums and the content was either pseudo-autobiographical (singing other people’s songs as if they’re your own) or outright autobiographical (mythologised versions of his own experiences), he soon realised he’d created a series of fictional characters running wild and loose and his albums were, in effect, novels. In some ways the Bob Dylan of the mid-60s is the final flowering of beat literature. Continuing the epic tradition of Jack Kerouac’s life as an ongoing series of autobiographies, but putting it all together and in such a portable, accessible way through pop songs.
And that’s the way Like A Rolling Stone started out. Like any intense, overweening book-saturated youth, he wanted to write a novel. He did eventually – sort of – with Tarantula (written in ’65 and ’66 but not published until ’71), which failed in a more or less spectacular way. He always was a brilliant writer of liner notes. In fact his so-called autobiography, Chronicles, is actually a bunch of liner notes.
Like A Rolling Stone’s outpouring of contempt came to Dylan initially in the form of a poison prose poem, a “long piece of vomit…” It started out as a Kerouac-style rant that was, in Dylan’s words, “very vomitific in its structure… A rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest. In the end it wasn’t hatred, it was telling someone something they didn’t know, telling them they were lucky. Revenge, that’s a better word.” An angry song born out of rage, which has always been a component of Dylan’s temperament.
When I got back from Newport I bought Bringing It All Back Home, which had come out the previous March. First of all let’s talk about the cover, since it has some bearing on Dylan’s image-making and mystique-mongering. It’s so strewn with pregnant symbols that it’s been compared to Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Wedding. As opposed to his earlier incarnations, the Chaplin-esque waif or earnest Dustbowl Bob, champion of the oppressed, here’s ‘Big Hair Bob’ Dylan as a hipster dandy. A sensuous woman in a red dress reclines on a couch languidly smoking a post-coital cigarette. Clues are scattered everywhere, and the whole scene is enclosed in a blurred halo, as if we are seeing it through a keyhole, down upon our knees. So provocative was this image and so enigmatic was Dylan that some hypothesised that the woman was Dylan in drag. It’s actually Sally Grossman, his manager’s wife. It’s an Easter egg hunt. But we’ll leave the deciphering of the clues to seasoned Dylanologists. Let’s put the bloody record on.
Bringing It All Back Home isn’t an album in the sense of a collection of songs, it’s a revolution in attitude. Every song – even the blues yarns Outlaw Blues and On The Road Again and the burlesque Americana of Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream – comes at you with ferocious intelligence and the most intense and inventive lyrics ever heard.
The album is half-acoustic, half-electric, but Dylan doesn’t start with the acoustic tracks, the way he did in concert. The first track, Subterranean Homesick Blues, is pure high-octane rock. Because you’re such a cool cat you recognise the title as a reference to Dylan’s idol Jack Kerouac’s book about the Bohemian underworld, and the song itself is a mutated riff on Check Berry’s rock’n’roll rant, Too Much Monkey Business. So right there you have in a nutshell what Dylan is up to: marrying modernist writing with the mojo of the blues and the raunch of rock’n’roll. As if Sonny Boy Williamson were reciting Kafka in 4/4 time while rolling a joint.
This was serious immersion in hipness. It’s punk and punchy and also an uncanny forecast of rap. This track and Maggie’s Farm are his snarling kiss-off to the protest movement. Like he said: “All my songs are protest songs.” Both were issued as singles, and Subterranean Homesick Blues crept into the US chart at No.39. Dylan’s voice itself asks: Which side are you on? He’s frequently pissed off at something or somebody, everything is broken, ecology, marriage, sundown on the unions. And we’re in the car singing right long. Wherever he goes we go.
Bob Dylan during sessions for Highway 61 Revisited in the summer of 1965 (Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Every line of It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) is neon adrenaline. A haunted landscape, a country under a spell from which we are always looking for someone to wake us up. An unsparing X-ray of American culture: all fast surface and hieroglyphics promising impossible things, dream-spinning hucksterism, Fourth Of July rhetoric, sentimentality and brutality. It was Dylan’s genius to plunge into the nightmare’s black core and resurface with an astounding litany.
Mr Tambourine Man opens the acoustic side (that’s when there were two sides to every album, and you you noticed which song opened the B-side). Dylan had tried to record it on his previous album, Another Side Of Bob Dylan, but hadn’t found its groove. It’s a song so sublime you are left dumbfounded. Maybe Rimbaud in a lyrical moment could have written it, but who knows if the little hash-eater could sing. Shortly afterwards, The Byrds made their liquid-hydrogen version, thereby inventing folk rock. Dylan always denied that it was about drugs – pot specifically. But Dylan always denied everything, didn’t he?
When Dylan became a rock star, things changed. For one thing a rock star needs a group, and once you have a cast of characters to deal with they need organising. On Bringing It All Back Home the arrangements on the rock tracks are pretty ragged. Unlike other lead singers in rock who were used to working with a group, Dylan didn’t have an intuitive sense of what and when everybody should be playing, so the musicians played full out and whenever they wanted to. In Al Kooper’s picturesque description they were “stepping on each other’s dicks”. Because of the lack of direction on the rock tracks it’s a bit of a drunken boat; a crank-filled craft on the verge of capsising and being swallowed up by the maelstrom they’ve created, spun out of the imagination and kept afloat by sheer momentum. It’s a ghost ship, but Dylan maintains his equilibrium through these unstable songs and, as with many things in Dylan’s world, the very unsteadiness creates an addictive tension, and anyway there’s so much going on you don’t notice it. At the album’s centre, its pulsing energy, is the creation of a character who’s singing the songs.
That said, there’s nothing awkward or forced about Bringing It All Back Home’s electric components. Dylan always had that electric spark in him. Even on his folk songs he played his guitar percussively, and it’s that energising, nuclear momentum inside him that drives Maggie’s Farm, like a haywire tractor knocking over an outhouse.
When you heard Dylan had recorded Maggie’s Farm in one take, and master takes of On The Road Again, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), Gates Of Eden, Mr. Tambourine Man, It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue and If You Gotta Go, Go Now (which wouldn’t make it on to the album) all in one afternoon, you knew there was something supernatural about this guy. Where’s he from, how’d he get there?
Bob Dylan – It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Official Audio) – YouTube
Well, the official version is he was born Robert Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 to Abe and Beatty Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, a place so cold the waves froze in mid-curl. Dylan, of course, has forged his own creation myth, claiming he was born from the grooves of a 78rpm record: “The sound of that record made me feel like I was somebody else. That I was not born to the right parents or something.”
Shortly after his birth his parents moved north to Hibbing, a mining town with the biggest man-made hole in the world. He wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. But as he got older Hibbing became a repository of great imagery and nostalgia. It was also where he first encountered different kinds of music. Late at night he could hear radio stations all across the United States playing blues, country, pop, swing, cajun, mariachi… These sounds would enrich his music and become the mysterious source of some of his odder ventures, such as the perplexing Self Portrait, Shadows In The Night and Christmas In The Heart.
He was in a rock band in high school, but when he went to college he discovered folk music, then a craze in the bohemian area of Minneapolis known as Dinkytown. Rock was considered corny and commercial, so he steeped himself in the strange old tunes, many through garbled transmissions that came down to us with fantastically bizarre lyrics. In Dinkytown he came up with his first great creation: Bob Dylan.
Soon afterward he discovered Woody Guthrie and made his way to New York’s Greenwich Village, a folk shtetl with coffee houses where the girls dressed in black and read weighty paperbacks. He first appeared as a Charlie Chaplin naif, his earliest songs merely imitations of Woody Guthrie’s talking blues. Like a sponge he soaked up modernist writers, avant-garde movies and left-wing politics introduced by his girlfriend Susie Rotolo.
One habit he got from Hibbing was his profound secretiveness, elusiveness and outright lying. He was a double outsider, a Jew from an obscure mining town, both of which he would deny and replace with his own handmade mythology: he was from Gallup, New Mexico, worked as a lumberjack in the great Northwest, lived with the Sioux, and so on. Writing and singing protest songs came easily to him, fired by his inner rage and resentment. He personalised radical rants by injecting modernist-word collages into his songs.
Bob Dylan backstage at the Leicester de Montfort Hall on May 2 , 1965, during his UK tour (Image credit: Leicester Mercury/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
At the 1964 Newport Festival he was anointed the crown prince of folk, but this had ironically made him a star. With the exception of the folk madonnas, Joan Baez and Judy Collins, this was not an acceptable role in the folk hierarchy. In the Kettle Of Fish, New York’s prime folk watering hole, if you had a record in the charts you got a scurvy look from the old guard. But fame and fortune were inevitable once his pop-protest song Blowin’ In The Wind was covered by Peter Paul And Mary. Although their version was criminally kitsch, it made Dylan a millionaire, and since he could no longer pretend to be part of the folk underground he decided to follow his own inclinations. He saw that writing anti-war hymns was a cul-de-sac.
Among his other talents, Dylan is the poet of rage and scathing put-downs. Even in his folk singing days his animosity could be lethal, as in Masters Of War and The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll. The electric guitar not only changed the voltage of his songs, the sting of the electric guitar also matched Dylan’s outrage and sarcasm.
Shortly after Newport, Irwin Silber, the editor of Sing Out!, the righteous bulletin of the folk movement, published an open letter to Bob about how fame had changed him – warped him, in fact: “I saw at Newport you had somehow lost contact with people.” Cocooned by his entourage, his songs were now either maudlin sentiments or attacks of gratuitous cruelty. Dylan confirmed Silber’s observation by directing at him one of the most scathing put-down songs ever: Positively 4th Street, the biting words etched by Mike Bloomfield’s lethal guitar. The pain in his voice is palpable but so is the venom.
Aside from the length of his songs and his bizarre cast of characters, one of the innovations Dylan brought to pop music was new subject matter. He didn’t, at least at this point, sing silly little love songs. The vitriol of Like A Rolling Stone was followed by two more character assassinations: the one about Irwin Silber, which made it to No.7 on the US chart, and the follow-up Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window. Nobody did righteous indignation better than Bob, but with the backing of future members of The Hawks (future members of The Band minus Levon Helm) the song was too hectic and shrill and barely made it into the chart.
His next album, Highway 61 Revisited (also released in 1965), is just a straight nuclear blast of rock. Dylan has gotten the blend down, and these musicians – Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, drummer Bobby Gregg – perform more like a group. The propulsive momentum, especially on Highway 61 Revisited itself, with its opening slide whistle, is pure punk. On Ballad Of A Thin Man, with its Halloween music and bone-chilling lyrics, you’re just glad Bob isn’t talking about you. The album ends with Desolation Row, a reference to Kerouac’s novel Desolation Angels.
Highway 61 Revisited is blues and rock, something Dylan could do easily. He actually started out as a rock singer. Granted, Bob had told us he had been in rock’n’roll bands in high school, but by then we had become wary of taking him at his word. This was just the sort of thing he could have make up. But his teenage idols really were the piano demons Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Dylan played piano in Bobby Vee’s band under the name of Elston Gunn.
At a concert in Minnesota in 2013 that Vee attended, Dylan said that he had been on stage with everybody from Mick Jagger to Madonna “but the most meaningful person I’ve ever been on stage with” was Bobby Vee. Dylan’s first single was actually a rock song, Mixed-Up Confusion, released in December 1962.
Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues (Official HD Video) – YouTube
There’s quite a bit of displaced blues poetry on Highway 61 Revisited, because that’s the highway that runs from Minnesota to New Orleans. It’s ghostly because of the blues and because it intersects with the crossroads where the Devil taught delta shaman Robert Johnson to play the blues. But the blues on the album aren’t particularly haunted. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry is a pastiche of blues lines, that would naturally involve more trains. Each verse just hangs there waiting for a song to come along. Outlaw Blues uses Southside Chicago blues to hang Dylan’s quirky nonsense lyrics on.
Dylan’s compadre Bob Neuwirth challenged him to use the line ‘when you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and its Eastertime too’ in a song, and he did just that on Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues. There never was a weirder opening line to a song, or better advice if you ever find yourself embroiled in this noir-ish tale of misspent youth:
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you…
Dylan was able to write baroque lyrics like ‘jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule…’ effortlessly, but he also caught the way people actually talked. Most pop lyrics used an artificial Tin Pan Alley diction. Dylan, on the other hand, could mimic the lope of conversation in such lines as ‘Well, anybody can be just like me, obviously/But then, now again, not too many can be like you, fortunately’ (from Absolutely Sweet Marie).
Among all these profound songs there had to be some comic relief, as in Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream, a hallucinatory cartoon of the USA as the delirious memories of a deranged Captain Ahab. And in On The Road Again he brings on stage his familiar holler-dwelling hillbilly dispensing 80-proof hokum. On Like A Rolling Stone his voice has a swirling current as he leans on the words ‘Howwww does it feeeeeel?’ with those howling vowels you can feel in your bones.
And the sound. The fusion of music and words that Dylan conjured up out of this tuning fork in his head. Anyway, he doesn’t really want to demonstrate too literally what he’s thinking. It’s better that the players follow whatever lead he gives them and that they try to approximate it. He doesn’t want the perfection of the studio musician, and to mix it up he brings in a guitar player from Chicago (Mike Bloomfield), and a guitar player (Al Kooper) to play the organ. When people tell him Kooper’s not there to play the organ, he replies: “I’ll decide about that.” The musicians are trying to tune into Dylan’s wavelength, and the tension in that created a certain suspense in the delivery of the song. But eventually they all get contact highs. Kooper later described Dylan’s recording methods as “the road map to hell!”
Bob Dylan in 1966 (Image credit: Getty)
Dylan’s sensitivity as to what music will work best with what lyrics is acute. On track five of the Desolation Row out-takes in the Cutting Edge box set, the musicians (Bloomfield, Kooper, Gregg and bassist Harvey Brooks) come up with a hurdy-gurdy carnival riff that would seem an ideal match for the freak-show lyrics. But in the end Dylan has a more subtle idea: he asks Nashville session guitarist Charlie McCoy to play a melody reminiscent of Marty Robbins’ El Paso. Perfect! The sweet cowboy melody doesn’t diminish the menace, instead it adds an eerie, foreboding tone to Dylan’s phantasmagoric images.
On the so-called Amphetamine Tour of 1966, Dylan and The Hawks were using up their ampage at a scary rate that was bound to burn everybody out. In the footage from that tour we see a possessed, skeletal Dylan, someone disconnected from reality, an almost spectral presence, but creating the greatest rock’n’roll music ever made.
Blonde On Blonde was recorded during the US leg of that tour. It has a sense of weariness, of things running down – ‘Lights flicker from the opposite loft… But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off…’ This only serves to add to the mystery of the ruminative, dreamlike nature of the album, along with its heavy doses of recrimination. We see Dylan on the cover in a ghostly, out-of-focus photo as if disappearing before our eyes. Which he sort of was, as if he knew that period of his life had to end if he were to survive.
You hear that old energy surge here and there on Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, I Want You and Obviously Five Believers, but Blonde On Blonde is different kind of record altogether. Dylan no longer feels the need to impress or stun the listener the way he did on the previous albums. By now he’s the undisputed Hamlet Prince of Rock. On Highway 61 he was breaking his ass. Princes don’t break their asses.
Dylan’s voice here is sweet and smooth, as opposed to the raw, Appalachian growl on Highway 61 Revisited or the raspy voice on his earlier records. Here he’s actually crooning ‘Where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?’ And unlike his characteristic manner of recording songs in one take, there are many takes of several Blonde On Blonde songs. One of the joys of the Cutting Edge box set is hearing them evolve. Since we know the released versions, there’s a natural reflex when you hear a false start. When they start playing Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again in 6/8 time you want to shout at Dylan: “That’s not how it goes, man!” Dylan also experiments with different genres, some quite bizarre, such as a reggae version of Visions Of Johanna and a Bo Diddley backing on Just Like A Woman. Dylan has said that on this album he got the closest to his sound – “that thin, that wild mercury sound. It’s metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up.”
The true alchemy of Blonde On Blonde is the way Dylan freaks various strains of pop music in a kind of Frankenstein experiment, like patching body parts together. The oddest is his injection of pop music undertones. If you listen closely you can hear echoes of Leslie Gore, Jackie DeShannon, Carol King and The Cowsills, as well as Gershwin, Memphis Minnie, Marty Robbins, Bo Diddley, Bob Lind, Buck Owens and Ivory Joe Hunter.
There’s no better example of Dylan’s ability to communicate the actual process of thought than Visions Of Johanna, as he moves seamlessly from one scene to another through a cast of bizarre characters. We follow his voice like a stream of consciousness as images and people drift through his brain, from Louise to the nightwatchman, to the girls out on the D-train, to the Mona Lisa, the peddler, the countess, Madonna, the fiddler… Visions Of Johanna is Dylan’s most profound song, even if, or maybe because, we don’t know what’s happening. It’s an ethereal mind movie with one of the most sublime lines in rock: ‘The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face.’
Bob Dylan onstage Island Garden, Hempstead, New York on February 26, 1966 (Image credit: Alice Ochs/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty)
Blonde On Blonde has a claustrophobic atmosphere. Things are closing in, the oxygen is almost used up, and the mood is so subterranean you come up from it trying to avoid the bends.
Dylan’s hectic schedule came to an abrupt halt with his alleged motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966. He was said to have suffered from either a broken collar bone or three cracked vertebrae. For a while he wore a neck brace, supposedly to reinforce the ‘accident story’. But a less dramatic account has come to light which claims he was never on the motorcycle. He was wheeling it out of a garage to take it down the road and put air in the tyres, when the bike fell over onto him. And there you have the 115th theory about the motorcycle accident.
But the accident provided a good cover story for an exhausted Bob Dylan at the end of his tether. He spent a few weeks in a nearby doctor’s attic bedroom detoxing from drugs. He didn’t perform or release a new album for another two and-a-half years. When he did reappear with a new album, John Wesley Harding in December 1967, it was light years from Blonde On Blonde, a mystic, ruminating, aphoristic work. Since Dylan was the Pied Piper of rock, John Wesley Harding’s move to a more pared-down style was taken as a cue to stop seeking after strange gods (Indian ragas, Stockhausen) and get back to your roots. The record that followed, Nashville Skyline, was an album of upbeat country songs featuring a duet with Johnny Cash. And since he was still seen as a prophet, country fever suddenly descended upon the land.
As if there weren’t enough Dylans running through people’s heads in the 1960s, the next five decades saw more incarnations. He currently seems to have settled on a variation of Vincent Price in The House Of Usher.
Bob Dylan – One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) (Official Audio) – YouTube
With other rock stars, such as Jagger, Hendrix, Elvis, Bowie even, our image of them eventually becomes stabilised. We can separate the performer from the human being. But with Dylan we’ve never quite been able to do this. As soon as you think you understand him he’s gone.
No one has written more autobiographical songs than Dylan, but in the notes for the Biograph box set he claimed that “None of my songs are autobiographical”. Well, of course he would, he’s a natural born liar and secretive as an old hen.
One thing is certain: he’s not about to write more memoirs any time soon. Even Chronicles wasn’t an autobiography. It’s actually liner notes Dylan wrote for projected Japanese reissues of As Good As I’ve Been To This World and World Gone Wrong cobbled together.
When he did tried to clear up the question about his multiphrenic identity, in an interview in 1985, things only got more confusing. “Sometimes the ‘you’ in my songs is me talking to me. Other times I can be talking to somebody else… It’s up to you to figure out who’s who. A lot of times it’s ‘you’ talking to ‘you’. The ‘I’ like in ‘I and I’ also changes. It could be an I or it could be the ‘I’ who created me. And also it could be another person who’s saying ‘I’. When I say ‘I’ right now, I don’t know who I’m talking about.”
Then again, you get some idea of how Dylan would like to be remembered. He says he admires “people who died leaving a great unsolved mess behind, who left people for ages to do nothing but speculate”.
Originally published in Classic Rock issue 291, January 2016
David Dalton was a New York Times bestselling author, a founding editor of Rolling Stone, recipient of the Columbia School of Journalism Award, and winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Best Rock Book of the Year award for Faithfull. He was the author of twenty-four books, including biographies of James Dean, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious, the Rolling Stones, and, in 2010 (with Tony Scherman), a critically acclaimed biography of Andy Warhol, Pop. Dalton was the co-author (with Jonathon Cott) of Get Back, the only book ever commissioned by the Beatles. David died in July 2022.
Slipknot’s Joey Jordison was one of modern metal’s greatest drummers. His heroic drum work didn’t just define the sound of the Iowa band during his time with them from their formation in 1995 to his departure in 2013, it reshaped the whole of metal. Albums such as their self-titled 1999 debut, 2001’s Iowa and 2003’s Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) brought death metal extremity and blastbeats into the mainstream.
Joey’s own taste in music ran deep and wide. He was a huge fan of everything from classic rock bands such as Kiss, Alice Cooper and Rush through 80s thrash giants Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer up to the extreme metal scene of the early 1990s. He folded all those influences into his own music, whether it was with Slipknot, his horror-themed side project Murderdolls or his post-’Knot bands Scar The Martyr and Sinsaenum.
But there was one extreme metal album more than any other that had a huge impact on Joey as a fan and as a musician. During the early 1990s, he had started paying attention to the music coming out of the Scandinavian black metal scene, and one record in particular chimed with his fondness for unholy brutality.
“I remember buying De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas by Mayhem a few months after it came out,” Joey told Metal Hammer before his death in 2021, “and it was the equivalent of when I got [Slayer’s] Reign In Blood. It was such a hugely influential record on me and on music as a whole – it’s a blueprint for so much black metal.”
Formed in Oslo, Norway in 1984, Mayhem were forerunners of the second wave of black metal. Their debut EP, 1987’s Deathcrush, was a lo-fi underground classic that influenced countless of their countrymen, while founder and guitarist Euronymous became a central figure in the emerging black metal scene.
But their music was overshadowed by controversy and tragedy. Singer Dead died by suicide in 1991, while Euronymous himself was murdered two years later by Burzum frontman (and Mayhem session bassist) Varg ‘Count Grishnackh’ Vikernes.
Mayhem’s full-length debut album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanaswas released in 1994, a year after Euronymous’ death, though his guitar parts remained intact. It was instantly held up as an atmospheric black metal classic by people who were paying attention to the still-underground scene – Joey Jordison among them.
”Of course, with the history of Mayhem and the tragedies that surrounded them, it’s more than just a record.’ he told Metal Hammer. “It’s a book. It’s so tied in with the individuals who made it and the time when they made it. You’re not just listening to music, you’re listening to a lifestyle. It’s not just the riffs or the drumming or the vocals – it’s something more than that. It’s got an atmosphere that’s totally alien, absolutely engulfing. When you put it on, you’re instantly transported somewhere else.”
He went on to compare it one of metal’s all-time great albums – Slayer’s 1986 landmark Reign In Blood, a record which redefined metal when it was released eight years previously.
“Just like Reign In Blood is the ultimate thrash metal record, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is the ultimate black metal record,” Joey said. “People have tried to copy it and rip it off a tonne of times, but no one has come close. No one will ever beat it.”
A new book exploring the Krautrock genre is to be published in March.
Krautrock Eruption, a 160 page illustrated paperback book, has been written by Wolfgang Seidel, who was a member of Eruption, alongside Conrad Schnitzler, and co-founder of Ton Steine Scherben.
The book is described as “a rousing counter-narrative to the usual depictions of Krautrock. As a fly on the wall, Seidel recounts the squats, demos and first concerts of bands such as Cluster, Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel. Just as precisely and vividly, he recapitulates the influence of minimal music composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, the origins of many Krautrock musicians in jazz and the role of the synthesiser.”
Krautrock Eruption is supplemented by a discography of the 50 most important Krautrock records, written by music journalist and Krautrock expert Holger Adam.
The book has been translated from German by Alexander Paulick, a member of Düsseldorf based avant-garde band Kreidler.
(Image credit: Ventil Verlag)
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David Gilmour has shared a new video of The Piper’s Callwhich has also been released digitally as The Piper’s Call Live Around The World.
The track was the very first single to be taken from Gilmour’s Number One album Luck And Strange, and was recorded at The Brighton Centre, Circus Maximus in Rome, the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles and Madison Square Garden in New York and edited together by Gilmour, Charlie Andrew and Matt Glasbey to form one seamless track.
“On the Luck And Strange tour, I played with the best band I’ve ever had,” Gilmour states. “Their personalities, playing abilities and enthusiasm for my new music have made for a fabulous experience for Polly and me. Romany’s voice really stands out and has its own particular character, she brings a sense of mischief and fun to the live performance, which I think we needed. Thank you to everyone who attended the shows in Europe and America and thank you for buying Luck And Strange. I hope you found as much enjoyment in the music as we did while performing it.”
The Luck And Strange tour began with two sold-out warm-up shows at the Brighton Centre before moving to Circus Maximus in Rome for six sold-out nights, followed by the same about at London’s Royal Albert Hall before moving Stateside for sold-out evenings at the Intuit Dome and Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles before concluding with five sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Our ten 1970s songs that go best with pizza, beer, and pretzels may have readers shaking their heads and wondering what the heck we are talking about. Well, actually, it’s quite simple. If you think about it, of course, there are times when we are by ourselves having pizza, beer, and pretzels, but usually, that combination of food fuels hanging out with some of your best friends. Is it party music? Well, no, not really—although, of course, anything can turn into a party.
This list of songs is all about kicking back with some old friends, hanging out at one of your houses, having great conversations, and picking some albums to play in the background that just set the mood right and bring you right back to older times when you all did the same exact thing as teens. Please understand that we are not arguing that this is background music; it’s just music that will feel good in the company of old friends because it’ll make it feel like the 70s all over again. The internet is filled with the same old tired stuff and the same old nonsense that everybody keeps copying from everybody else. You’re not going to find an article like this anywhere else—although, in a few weeks, you probably will because that’s just what happens.
In the meantime, let’s talk about it: what albums do you put on your turntable or pop in your CD player when your friends come over to hang out, talk about the old days, and reflect on all that comes with growing older while still keeping that rock and roll spirit alive?
# 10 – Animals – Pink Floyd
Released on January 23, 1977, Animals by Pink Floyd stands as one of the band’s most complex and socially reflective albums. Recorded at Britannia Row Studios in London, the album features the core members of Pink Floyd: Roger Waters on bass and vocals, David Gilmour on guitar and vocals, Nick Mason on drums, and Richard Wright on keyboards. The album is a concept piece inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm, using allegory to critique societal structures and human behavior.
While Animals didn’t spawn conventional singles, its tracks, such as “Dogs,” “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” and “Sheep,” have become fan favorites. These songs showcase Pink Floyd’s masterful musicianship, with intricate guitar solos, atmospheric keyboards, and thought-provoking lyrics. The album reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 3 in the US, solidifying Pink Floyd’s reputation as a cornerstone of progressive rock.
Animals fits perfectly into the vibe of a laid-back evening with friends. Its immersive soundscapes and introspective lyrics offer the perfect backdrop for relaxed conversation. While not party music, it’s an album that sparks thoughtful discussions about its themes, such as power and control, making it an ideal choice when hanging out with like-minded rock fans. The complexity of Animals ensures that its layered instrumentation and deep narrative will resonate with everyone in the room, creating an experience that is both reflective and communal.
Released on July 6, 1971, At Fillmore East is a live double album by The Allman Brothers Band, recorded during their performances at the Fillmore East in New York City on March 12–13, 1971. The album captures the band’s raw energy and virtuosity, showcasing their unique blend of Southern rock, blues, and jazz influences. The lineup includes Duane Allman and Dickey Betts on guitars, Gregg Allman on vocals and keyboards, Berry Oakley on bass, and the dual drummers Butch Trucks and Jaimoe, whose intricate rhythms became a hallmark of the band’s sound.
The album features extended jams on tracks like “Whipping Post” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” which highlight the band’s improvisational prowess. It also includes staples like “Statesboro Blues” and “Stormy Monday,” making it one of the definitive live albums in rock history. At Fillmore East was both a critical and commercial success, reaching No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and earning a spot in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry for its cultural and historical significance.
This album is a perfect choice for a relaxed evening with friends, beer, and pizza because it captures the essence of a live performance. The Allman Brothers Band’s seamless interplay and infectious grooves create a welcoming and dynamic atmosphere, ideal for conversation and camaraderie. The extended jams provide an ideal backdrop—engaging without being intrusive—allowing the music to complement the flow of the evening naturally. It’s an album that celebrates musicianship, making it a fitting companion for good company and great times.
Released on May 18, 1973, Yessongs is a triple live album by the progressive rock band Yes. Recorded during the Fragile and Close to the Edge tours in 1972, the album captures the band at the peak of their creative powers, with performances that showcase their intricate compositions and virtuoso musicianship. The lineup includes Jon Anderson on vocals, Steve Howe on guitar, Chris Squire on bass, Rick Wakeman on keyboards, and Alan White on drums (with Bill Bruford appearing on a few earlier tracks before his departure).
The album includes definitive live versions of Yes classics such as “Roundabout,” “Heart of the Sunrise,” and “Close to the Edge,” alongside epic pieces like “And You and I” and “Yours Is No Disgrace.” Yessongs was a commercial success, reaching No. 12 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 12 on the Billboard 200 in the United States. The album’s elaborate cover art by Roger Dean further cemented its iconic status in the progressive rock world.
This album is an excellent pick for an evening of pizza, beer, and pretzels with friends because of its immersive, atmospheric soundscapes. The extended instrumental passages and complex arrangements make it a fascinating yet unobtrusive background to deep conversations and nostalgic reflections. Yessongs creates an ambiance that’s both relaxing and intellectually stimulating, making it the perfect companion for a laid-back hangout with old friends. Pass me another Tuborg Gold!
This one was really cool, and I love the way it opened up with all the photos, especially that centerfold. Everybody had this album. Released on December 10, 1976, Wings Over America is a live triple album by Paul McCartney and Wings, recorded during their 1976 North American tour. The album captures the energy and musicianship of McCartney’s post-Beatles career, showcasing a mix of Wings’ hits and timeless Beatles classics. The lineup included Paul McCartney on bass and vocals, Linda McCartney on keyboards and vocals, Denny Laine on guitar and vocals, Jimmy McCulloch on lead guitar, and Joe English on drums.
The performances, recorded at venues such as The Forum in Los Angeles and Madison Square Garden in New York, bring to life tracks like “Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Band on the Run,” “Live and Let Die,” and “Jet.” The album also features beloved Beatles songs like “Yesterday” and “The Long and Winding Road,” giving listeners a taste of McCartney’s legacy. Wings Over America reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200, solidifying its place as one of the definitive live albums of the 1970s.
If albums could feel like a summer night on the Jersey Shore, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle would be the perfect soundtrack. Released on September 11, 1973, this record captures the boundless ambition and storytelling flair that defined a young Bruce Springsteen. Recorded at 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, New York, the album features the talents of future E Street Band members, including Clarence Clemons on saxophone, Garry Tallent on bass, and Danny Federici on organ, alongside David Sancious on piano and Vini Lopez on drums.
This second studio effort is packed with timeless tracks like “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” a jubilant tale of love and defiance, and “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” a tender ode to seaside romance. Tracks like “Incident on 57th Street” and “New York City Serenade” are cinematic in scope, immersing listeners in stories of city life, adventure, and heartbreak. Though it took years for the album to gain mainstream recognition, it has since become a cornerstone of Springsteen’s legacy.
There’s something magical about an album that feels like a window into a different world, and The Grand Illusion by Styx does just that. Released on July 7, 1977, this album is a quintessential showcase of the band’s signature mix of progressive rock, theatrical flair, and radio-friendly melodies. Recorded at Paragon Recording Studios in Chicago, the album features the core Styx lineup: Dennis DeYoung on keyboards and vocals, Tommy Shaw and James “J.Y.” Young on guitars and vocals, Chuck Panozzo on bass, and John Panozzo on drums.
The album’s standout tracks include “Come Sail Away,” a soaring anthem of dreams and self-discovery, and “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man),” a spirited reflection on overcoming doubt. With its lush arrangements and thoughtful lyrics, The Grand Illusion became a major commercial success, reaching No. 6 on the Billboard 200 and eventually going triple platinum. The record’s theme of confronting life’s illusions resonates deeply, adding to its enduring appeal.
Sometimes, an album captures the essence of a live performance so perfectly that you can almost hear the clinking of bottles and people munching on overpriced hot dogs—and One More from the Road by Lynyrd Skynyrd is one of those albums. Released on September 13, 1976, this live double album immortalizes the band’s fiery performances at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, recorded over three nights in July of that year. The lineup features Ronnie Van Zant on vocals, Allen Collins and Gary Rossington on guitars, Billy Powell on keyboards, Leon Wilkeson on bass, and Artimus Pyle on drums, with Steve Gaines making his debut as part of the band.
The album includes electrifying renditions of hits like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Gimme Three Steps,” alongside extended jams such as “Free Bird,” which became a defining anthem of Southern rock. One More from the Road highlights the band’s raw energy, masterful musicianship, and ability to connect with their audience. It reached No. 9 on the Billboard 200, earning both critical and commercial acclaim as one of the finest live albums of the 1970s.
Imagine a kaleidoscope of sound and emotion that refuses to let up for an entire two-record set—Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John is precisely that and more. Released on October 5, 1973, this monumental album shattered expectations and cemented John’s status as one of the defining artists of the 1970s. From the electrifying “Bennie and the Jets” to the poignant “Candle in the Wind” and the cinematic title track, this collection delivers hit after hit with effortless brilliance. Recorded at the Château d’Hérouville in France, the album’s creative magic stemmed from John’s collaboration with lyricist Bernie Taupin, supported by Davey Johnstone on guitar, Dee Murray on bass, and Nigel Olsson on drums, along with lush orchestrations by Del Newman.
With its unparalleled mix of pop rock flair, heartfelt balladry, and storytelling finesse, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road captivated audiences worldwide. Tracks like “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” bring unrelenting energy, while songs like “Harmony” and “Sweet Painted Lady” delve into softer, reflective moments. The diversity of styles and emotions showcased throughout the album exemplifies John’s musical range and Taupin’s lyrical depth. Beyond the hits, deeper cuts like “Grey Seal” and “All the Girls Love Alice” reveal layers of innovation and artistic ambition, ensuring the album remains endlessly intriguing.
Few albums ooze rock and roll decadence like The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. Released on April 23, 1971, this record marked a defining moment for the band, both musically and culturally. From the iconic Andy Warhol-designed cover featuring a working zipper to its groundbreaking fusion of blues, rock, and country influences, Sticky Fingers was a bold statement of artistic freedom and raw energy. Recorded across multiple locations, including Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, Olympic Studios in London, and Stargroves, Mick Jagger’s country home, the album captures the Stones at their creative peak.
The tracklist reads like a greatest-hits collection, with unforgettable songs such as “Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses,” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” The album delves into themes of desire, heartbreak, and rebellion, with Mick Jagger’s magnetic vocals and Keith Richards’ gritty guitar work leading the charge. Add Mick Taylor’s melodic solos, Bill Wyman’s steady basslines, and Charlie Watts’ impeccable drumming, and you have a masterpiece that topped the Billboard 200 for four consecutive weeks.
Sticky Fingers is a natural choice for a laid-back evening with friends. Its raw grooves and infectious swagger create an atmosphere that’s equal parts relaxed and rebellious. Whether it’s the sultry strains of “Wild Horses” or the fiery energy of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” this album demands attention while still letting the evening unfold at its own pace. It’s the kind of record that fuels stories, sparks laughter, and reminds everyone why the Stones are the embodiment of rock and roll.
Some albums transcend music to become the soundtrack of a lifetime, and Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin is one of those records. Released on February 24, 1975, this sprawling double album epitomizes the band’s creativity, ambition, and unrelenting power. Recorded at Headley Grange, a converted English country house, and other studios in the UK and the US, Physical Graffiti features all four members—Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham—operating at the peak of their musical genius.
From the hard-driving “Kashmir” and “The Rover” to the intricate acoustic beauty of “Bron-Yr-Aur” and the groove-laden “Trampled Under Foot,” this album explores every facet of the band’s artistry. Each song stands as a testament to Zeppelin’s ability to merge blues, rock, folk, and Eastern influences into something entirely their own. The album was a commercial and critical triumph, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and becoming one of the best-selling records of all time.
For us, Physical Graffiti wasn’t just music—it was a ritual. Whether hanging out in the living room, or simply basking in the sound, this album was always on the turntable, filling the room with its unmistakable energy. And we weren’t alone. For countless fans, Physical Graffiti represents not just Led Zeppelin at their best, but the spirit of an era. It’s the kind of record that turns moments into memories and reminds us why music remains the ultimate unifying force among friends.
Shock rock legend, Alice Cooper, has announced his performance at the 2025 edition of Greece’s Rockwave Festival in Athens.
Alice, who will perform at the festival on July 11, says, “Anticipating fun next year at the Rockwave Festival in Athens, join us won’t you? Tickets are live now, so what are you waiting for?”
Alice Cooper recently announced that guitarist Orianthi will be joining his band for shows January 31 through February 16, filling in for Nita Strauss, who unfortunately has conflicting obligations of her own.
Orianthi toured with Alice from 2011 to 2014, along with longtime band members Chuck Garric, Glen Sobel, Tommy Henriksen, and Ryan Roxie.
Said Cooper, “When Orianthi moved on to pursue her own career in 2014, we were lucky to find Nita. Over the past decade, Nita, Chuck, and Tommy have also launched their own projects, and we always try to coordinate our schedule so we can keep the band together, but these shows came up after Nita had already committed to another tour. So I reached out to Orianthi, and thankfully she was available to jump back in, so we’re all really looking forward to doing these shows with her. I’m so fortunate to always have such great musicians to work with.”
The tour schedule for these shows is as follows.
January 31 – Augusta, GA – Bell Auditorium
February 1 – Cherokee, NC – Harrah’s Casino Resort Event Center 2 – Greensboro, NC – Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts 4 – Mobile, AL – Saenger Theatre 6 – Orlando, FL – Hard Rock 7 – Ft Myers, FL – Barbara Mann Performing Arts Hall 8 – Clearwater, FL – Coachmen Park 11 – St. Augustine, FL – Amphitheatre 13-17 – Miami, FL – Rock Legends Cruise
Alice Cooper will be announcing further 2025 tour dates, with Nita Strauss back in the fold, including the already-annnounced shows May 9 at the Sonic Temple festival in Columbus, Ohio and August 15 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at Lincoln Financial Field with My Chemical Romance.
More information, including ticket and VIP package purchases, can be found here.
In 1994, BraveWords & Bloody Knuckles magazine was born and here we stand 30 years later celebrating the past 12 months of music on our anniversary! What an incredible ride it has been and it’s far from over! And during the past three decades, we’ve literally seen/heard thousands of releases and this is the time of the season when we crown the finest! The BraveWords scribes have spoken, so join us each day this month as we count down to the BravePick of 2024!
Remember, everybody has an opinion and it’s time for ours! Stay tuned at the end of December for BraveWords’ writers’ individual Top 20s (new studio albums ONLY), Top 5 Brave Embarrassments (a fan favorite!), What/Who Needs To Stop In 2024? and Metal Predictions For 2025.
BravePicks 2024
19) RIOT V – Mean Streets (Atomic Fire)
“Johnny Law he knew our names / On the streets we had our fame”
Riot V returned to the Mean Streets, revving up the motors with whiskey fueled heavy metal. Led by the incredible vocals of Todd Michael Hall, the iconic act have continued their bristling power/speed metal since the unfortunate death of founder Mark Reale in 2012.
The crazed Seal logo is out in full front, becoming a loved figure and the unrestrained energy matched with thoughtful riffing and song construction vaults Mean Streets to one of the best the year has to offer. Mean Streets drives in to #19.
Scribe Rich Catino scored Mean Streets an 8.0; an excerpt of his review:
“Feel the Fire” could have been a flawless second track if they just went right to the verse riff, but at its start it’s too much Priest like “Grinder”. You guys should know better. Regardless, once it kicks in a solid fist in the air rocker. Hall’s higher vocal just adds spirit and good feel to every song. Nice tasty guitars in the solo section, too. Twin guitar melodies begins that meaty riff to “Love Beyond The Grave” which is one of my favs. Again, Hall shines, and I can’t say that enough. Great backing vocal melodies, and the darker chorus. “Higher” and “High Noon” drive with quickened drums and double bass. “Before This Time” is another well-constructed melodic one with complimenting guitar leads.
Title track keeps its pace with a NWOBHM gallop. “Open Road” is another favorite, a mid-tempo rocker with those bright vocals and harmonies that flow right into the hook. Deep bass begins “Mortal Eyes”, while “Lost Dreams” possesses old-school Riot riffing. “Lean In To It” breaks out of the power metal shell also with a little funk in the rhythm section, while track 12 “No More” maybe could have been left off, or added as a bonus track.
BravePicks 2024Top 30
19) RIOT V – Mean Streets 20)PORTRAIT – The Host 21)ROTTING CHRIST – Pro Xristou (Season Of Mist) 22)SAXON – Hell, Fire And Damnation (Silver Lining) 23)ULCERATE – Cutting The Throat Of God (Debemur Morti Productions) 24)POWERWOLF – Wake Up The Wicked (Napalm) 25)ENSIFERUM – Winter Storm (Metal Blade) 26)OPETH – The Last Will And Testament (Reigning Phoenix Music) 27)DARK TRANQUILLITY – Endtime Signals (Century Media) 28)MORGUL BLADE – Heavy Metal Wraiths (No Remorse) 29)THE DEAD DAISIES – Light ‘Em Up (Independent) 30)MÖRK GRYNING – Fasornas Tid (Season Of Mist)
Anna Phoebe, who was with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra from 2004 – 2010, released her new EP, Midwinter, on November 22nd via all digital platforms. It features evocative re-imaginings of five winter favourites woven with layers of strings, synths and vocals, building a cinematic and ethereal soundscape.
Anna has released an official video for “The Angel Gabriel”, which can be viewed below.
Tracklist:
“The Angel Gabriel” “Carol of The Bells” “Stille Nacht” “O Come O Come Emmanuel” “In The Bleak Midwinter”
![Wings Over America [3 LP]](http://www.classicrockhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/51GZApH-n7L._SL500_.webp)
![The Grand Illusion [LP]](http://www.classicrockhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/51Axx8ONjjL._SL500_.webp)
