Sleeping with the Bass Player

Bass players are the Rodney Dangerfields of the rock world, it seems. I tell ya, they just don't get no respect. And no wonder! On the day after God created rock stars (sometime around 4 am on a gin-soaked Saturday night in Memphis), he created groupies. And he commanded them: "Thou shalt honor thy singer and thy lead guitarist and have no false rock Gods before thee."

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Let Me Sleep All Night in Your Soul Kitchen

Heavens to Murgatroyd! How did I forget to post this item yesterday in honor of…you guessed it…National 'Men Make Dinner' Day? Shite, my man didn't make me any vittles! Well, I guess it's MY fault for not alerting him to this most important and manly of holidays. Geez, women have to think of everything. I'll bet nobody had to ask these guys…

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Steve Miller in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Go On, Take the Honor and Run.

Most columnists have had to squeeze one out now and then, so to speak. You have a tight deadline, you rack your brain for a topic that doesn’t require a lot of research or thoughtful analysis, and you dribble out a little essay that you pray won’t be perceived as lightweight or desperate. Yes, a deadline can serve as a…

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Don’t Cross Jeff’s Black Cat Path

Fighting like alley cats. That's what guitarist Jeff Beck and singer Rod Stewart used to do back in the day. And because October 27 was Black Cat Day, it gives me the opportunity to share this 2009 clip of the two battling Brits performing one of my favorite songs. "Ain't superstitious, a black cat crossed my trail." Here they are…

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Happy Trails, Hippies!

That's what Woodstock attendees might have heard at the end of the festival if Roy Rogers had agreed to close the show. Woodstock organizer Michael Lang wanted Roy to come on after Jimi Hendrix, the guitar phenomenon everyone had been dying to to see. Speaking to an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences panel on October 26, 2006, Mr.…

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