30 Years of Robots and Rock 'n' Roll

2007 was not the first time the Transformers were on the sliver screen. "Transformers: The Movie" was released 30 years ago. Although not written for the film this song made Stan Bush a household name among Transformers fans. And don't forget the score was written by Vince DiCola who had previously worked on a little film called "Rocky IV." You might of heard of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A52--FKUQgU

Back to the Future

With the North Star Bar and Legendary Dobbs adding to the closed venues in the Philadelphia area I once attended a past is remembered. A past in which I used to see live bands twice a month or more. However, with an upcoming reunion show from Polymer, one of the bands I saw most often and connected so well with their audience, feeding off their energy and vice-versa, the memories are rushing back. Even though it's been almost eight years since they last played a show, and some of the members have families now and others moved to California, the chemistry returns once all of them are together in the same room or on stage. They have come together from time to time in recent years, performing at singer Ben Weldon's wedding, for instance. But in a setting like the Grape Room, the new name and original location of Grape Street, the place they played so many times, it should be amazing, like the past is present once again. Even though there won't as much room for Polymer performance trademarks such as jumping in unison and microphone twirling. Let's relive some amazing moments...

Grape Street in 2007:

Triumph Brewing Company, 2005. Not too many loud bands played there after that.

And one of my best photos from a live show, at Grape Street, 2006

Polymer performs at the Grape Room, Grape Street Manayunk on December 11th.

Past is present, no, really

Some musican friends of mine recently reminded me that the former version of this site is alive, thanks to geocites.ws which archived many of the sites hosted by GeoCities after it was aquired by Yahoo! and shut down in 2009. Most of that content will be replicated here eventually but that part of my life is over. I see less live music now, maybe a couple shows a year. Most of the bands I followed have broken up or the artists have moved onto new projects like raising families or saving the world. Laura Cheadle, Loretta Allen, JAB and Tara Hendricks (tara girl) are still active and Greg Harrigan has a new band. But another part of that site could be coming back to life. I can't say too much about it but it looks promising.

The archived GeoCities version of the site

A Winning Team

This past Friday I was back at the Tin Angel to see my friend Loretta Allen's new collaboration with singer-songwriter Stephen Rose of the band Bong Hits For Jesus. She sang backup on a few of his songs, played two of her songs with Steve on backing vocals and percussion and then they performed a new duet which they wrote together. They had a five song EP with the latter song and previously recorded songs available for an "official" donation of $5 or however much you wanted to donate. Not bad for a few months worth of work. The night kicked into high gear with the folk, rock and bluegrass of Miz and then the three-guitar power rock of Lost In Company.

Stephen Rose's Reverbnation profile

Lost In Company's Reverbnation profile

Mike Miz's Reverbnation profile

Return(s) to New Hope

Tiffany Randol was back in New Hope this past weekend during its annual film festival, first performing at John and Peter's (where I saw her with Valeze in 2004) on Saturday afternoon and at Sunday evening at Havana at the awards dinner. I had never been inside Havana before and was suprised to see a lounge and a bar across from the small resturaunt. Tiffany performed for about a half hour singing along to pre-recorded tracks on her laptop with Mickey Caputo from The Kingdom accompanying her on bass and backing vocals. Even though I had not seen any of the films I still chatted with some of the filmmakers afterward while also catching up with Tiff herself. I had been following through Valeze's mailing list since 2004, keeping up with her as she moved to California and established her solo career  so it was great to finally see her again after all those years and take a few pictures with her.