Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Steve Winwood





Steve Winwood was making music professionally at an age when most young men are still attending high school proms. As a member of the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and Blind Faith--and now as a successful solo artist--Winwood has produced highly eclectic songs based on a grafting of blues, folk, experimental rock, and rhythm and blues. His best-known pop hits have all been released since 1981, and his self-produced albums, Arc of a Diver (1981), Talking Back to the Night (1982), and Back in the High Life (1986) have all gone platinum. "That Winwood ... has come through [the 1960s] glory grind with minimal scars is evident in the supple, good-natured funk and romantic electronic-keyboard glaze of his recent work," writes David Fricke in Rolling Stone magazine. "Arc of a Diver and ... Talking Back to the Night are logical high-tech extensions of Winwood's original fusion of American rhythm and blues and European classical and folk traditions with Traffic." 

 Winwood can hardly remember a time when he wasn't singing in front of an audience. The son of a foundry worker, he grew up in blue-collar Birmingham, one of a family of amateur musicians. By the time he was six, Winwood was playing the piano; he joined an Anglican church choir the following year for his first "professional" work. "I used to get a shilling for every wedding," he told People magazine. "That was when I first realized that one can make money out of singing." Schoolwork held no fascination for Winwood. He was consumed by the popular music of the day, especially American blues and the burgeoning rock and roll sound. At eleven he joined a skiffle band, and at fifteen he dropped out of school permanently to join his older brother in a rock band, the Spencer Davis Group. The teenage Winwood provided lead vocals and organ riffs for the Spencer Davis Group, guiding it to a pair of hit singles, "Gimme Some Lovin'" and "I'm a Man." According to Lillian Roxon in her Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia, it was Winwood's "voice, his songs, his organ and piano work that made Spencer Davis' band soar. I'm a Man and Gimme Some Loving, done under the Davis umbrella, were so black and strong it took a lot of adjusting to get used to the fact that they were coming from a seventeen-year-old English kid from Birmingham." In 1967 Winwood left the Spencer Davis Group to start his own band. With Chris Wood, Dave Mason, and Jim Capaldi he formed Traffic, an experimental psychedelic pop ensemble that drew its musical inspiration from jazz, soul, blues, and folk. Traffic's debut album, Mr. Fantasy, included two British hits, "Paper Sun" and "Hole in My Shoe," and by virtue of Winwood's already-established fame, the group quickly became a favorite. "At its best, Traffic was a band to be reckoned with," writes a Rolling Stone Record Guide contributor. "The first two Traffic albums are late-sixties classics, an eclectic combination ... that was polyglot without ever becoming overextended." Unfortunately, the members of Traffic had disparate musical tastes, and the band changed personnel frequently during its seven-year run. 

Winwood himself quit Traffic briefly in 1970 to play with Blind Faith (a "supergroup" consisting of Winwood, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Rick Gretch), but he returned to cut several session albums, including the 1974 When the Eagle Flies. Winwood went solo in 1974, building himself his own personal recording studio on his fifty-acre farm in Gloucestershire. He seemed almost in retirement as the years passed, but instead he was working hard on new material, laying down every track himself at his studio and accepting help only with an occasional lyric. 

In 1977 he released Steve Winwood to unenthusiastic sales. Winwood told People that his first solo effort "got buried," and when time came to cut the next album "it was a make-or-break situation. If it hadn't been for Arc of a Diver, I might be a taxi driver." Indeed, the 1980 Arc of a Diver, with its hit single "While You See a Chance," was a great success both in England and America--even though Winwood refused to tour. A reputation for reclusiveness (and drug abuse) hounds Winwood, although he denies both charges at every turn. He spends so much time at his farm, he says, because he is a perfectionist who makes albums very, very slowly. As for the drug abuse, he told Rolling Stone that he had no interest in drugs during the 1960s or in subsequent years. "I saw what drugs were doing to people," he said of the psychedelic era, "and in most cases I had to suffer the consequences of their substandard work.... I just don't fit into the predominant image of rock and roll. I never quite understood or had the attitude that certain other bands had. We were never really involved with the smashing-up of hotel rooms, the rowdy parties, like the other bands of the period." The 1980s have been a period of resurgence for Winwood. To quote Lisa Robinson in Vogue, the artist "sits comfortably at the top of the rock pantheon, a graceful survivor of an extraordinary number of years in the music business." Winwood has followed Arc of a Diver with two more platinum albums, Talking Back to the Night and Back in the High Life, and he has even undertaken a concert tour after thirteen years off the road. "More and more," he told Rolling Stone, "I see that rock and roll doesn't just need a youthful energy and spirit to it. It also needs a craft, an experience to get it across." 

 Today, Winwood said, his aim is to make music that he likes, hoping that an audience will like it as well. "The point for me is to reach people through what I'm doing," he said. "... If I make music that people might dance to, that's fine with me." He elaborated in High Fidelity: "I try not to aim at an audience. That can be dangerous--you might just miss, and then you haven't got anything. I basically make albums because I like to make them. I like to make successful albums, too, but I make them for my own ear in the hope that other people will like the same things as me." Rock and roll is entertainment", Winwood concluded.

Monday, February 7, 2022

Spit It out!

 



Spit It Out! was founded late 1990 upon several band members returning to Varberg, Sweden after living in Los Angeles, CA during 1989-90. They recorded a number of times at the Tuff studio in Gothenburg and released a 7” single in 1991 and a CD in early 1993. Following this and a few changes in line-up the music turned heavier and the band entered Recordia Studios in 1995. This recording (Hear, See & Say No Evil) is briefly mentioned in the feature of Spit It Out! in Janne Starks – The Encyclopedia of Swedish Hard Rock & Heavy Metal.


The band has been on hiatus since 1999 but they’re still friends and you never know, it’s not impossible they might do something in the future...

Sunday, February 6, 2022

Phillip Foxley

 


 

Phillip Foxley is a multi-genre songwriter and musician. He writes and produces music from his home studio in Conwy, North Wales, UK.
 
With influences from every corner of the world, Foxley has now released his own debut album entitled “I’ll Try ‘Till I Die”, an eclectic collection of original blistering blues rock guitar and soft acoustic and piano tracks written over the years. Foxley says “Every track on this album means so much and every note is from my very soul”.
 
“This album is like my musical life story. It’s also a ‘big’ album in that there are over twenty tracks on it already and, because I don’t intend to release any more albums, I just keep adding tracks to it as they are released”.
 

Saturday, February 5, 2022

JAM RADIO. NEW BULLETIN FEBRUARY 5, 2022

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NEW BANDS FROM THIS WEEKEND ON JAM RADIO: SPIT IT OUT, HUGO REY, KEITH SHAW, PHILLIP FOXLEY AND OTHERS. EVERY WEEK WE PLAY THE NEWEST!


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READ THE LATEST BLUES-ROCK NEWS UPDATED IN REAL TIME ON THE RADIO BLOG.

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Announce your company or products to 4000 listeners we have daily on the radio or contract a banner ad for our radio site.

Get the products of JAM Radio, find them on the radio site.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND AND CONTINUE ENJOYING GREAT MUSIC on JAM RADIO!!!

Daggerplay

 



Daggerplay is a Finnish punk rock´n´roll band formed in Helsinki in the end of 2011.

The band´s sound is a combination of punk rock, traditional rock´n´roll and power pop.

Daggerplay are lead vocalist and guitarist Pekko Mantzin, guitarist and vocalist Tommi Luostarinen, bassist and backing vocalist Bryan Ugartechea, and drummer Sirpa Immonen.

The band have played over hundred gigs since they started and playing shows actively.

The second album ´Subterranean Reality´ was released in October 2018.

Discography :

Urban Campfire Songs (album) 2013
Forest Hills / Ruhkarannan Juhannus 1976 (single) 2014
One Mile Town (single and video) 2016
Ghosts (single and video) 2017
Afterlife (single and video) 2017
Cruel Wind Blowing (single and video) 2017
Subterranean Reality (album) 2018
Don´t Give Up (single and video) 2019

Site: www.daggerplay.com

Friday, February 4, 2022

Crash Midnight

 


Rock n’ Roll is back! Formed on the streets of Boston by Shaun Soho (lead vocals) and Alex Donaldson (lead guitar), CRASH MIDNIGHT has burst onto the music scene with vintage guitar riffs, pounding drums, and searing vocals. A collision of classic 70′s festival rock with a punk swagger, their trademark sound is packing clubs and turning heads. In 2018 the band relocated to Las Vegas where they quickly became the city's highest drawing independent rock act. With their exploding following and high-energy stage show, CRASH MIDNIGHT performs with all the reckless abandon of a runaway freight train and is poised to carry the torch for a whole new generation of Rock n’ Roll.

Crash Midnight has toured North America with acts like Sevendust, Adelitas Way, and The Pretty Reckless. The band has headlined all of the major Las Vegas venues including House of Blues, Brooklyn Bowl, The Hard Rock, and most recently began a residency at Fremont Country Club in downtown Vegas -selling out every show to date.  Crash Midnight secured an Artist Deal with Guitar Center and Gibson Guitars.  They make regular TV appearances in Las Vegas on NBC's "Wake Up With The CW," ABC's "The Morning Blend," and Fox 5.    Their single "Don't Need Your Advice" spent 9 months on Spotify's HARD ROCK Playlist, reaching as high as #4.  Current single, "Nothin' To Lose," is featured on Apple Music's "Breaking Hard Rock" Playlist.  Other notable spots include the song "Welcome To Boston" playing at Gillette Stadium during the New England Patriots game 2019 Super Bowl-Winning season and "Diamond Boulevard" used as the title track for the 2020 season of Formula 4 Racing.

www.crashmidnight.com

 

Thursday, February 3, 2022

Freya Wolf

 


Freya was born in Aberdare in South Wales in 1978 She lived in Aberdare, Swansea, Carmarthenshire. She moved to Street in 2008 before travelling the UK for two years, with stays in London, Scotland, North and South Wales, Cornwall, Devon, before finally settling in Somerset.

As a classical pianist she was inspired early on by Nina Simone and Beverly Craven. She then found a love for female soul singers. She says "I have varied tastes from rock to reggae, classical piano to drum and bass. However, my all time favourite soul tracks are RESPECT by Aretha Franklin and My Baby Just Cares for Me by Nina Simone. My favourite track from other genres is Brighter Days by Hybrid Minds ft Charlotte Haining."

https://linktr.ee/freyfreywolf

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Spudgun Assassins


 

UK Chichester based and formed by Tex Nash, Graham Hutchason, Steve Swatton and Graham Linn, the band have achieved their own style of melodic/mainstream rock.

Initially on forming, the intention was to concentrate on creating a live set of cover tracks in order to start playing live, however the band were immediately drawn into writing their own material which a few are now included in the live set. Although collectively their influences are varied, a natural writing chemistry was obvious from the start and the ‘Spudgun Assassins’ sound has formed naturally.

With an emphasis on strong melodies and hooks, all songs are written, recorded and produced by the band. The ‘Spudgun Assassins’ 6 track EP was the bands first release in 2018.

Plans were in place to start the process of releasing their second EP when tragically in 2021 the band lost their friend and guitarist Hutch to a heart attack. As part of a tribute to Hutch the band have collaborated with his daughter Phoebe Hutchason on keys and long time friend Ally Burnside on guitar to complete their new single release ‘All In My Mind’.

 https://www.spudgunassassins.co.uk

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

The Scaramanga Six

 


The Scaramanga Six is the brainchild of headstrong siblings Paul and Steven Morricone. Not in any way like your conventional mindless rock-star filth, The Morricone brothers appear more like a pair of polite and softly-spoken, yet viciously intense and sadistic nightclub bouncers. Raised in the Westcountry seaside resort of Weston-Super-Mare on an education of Stranglers records (by elder brothers) and Tony Bennett records (by their Mum), the young Morricone twins discovered there was much fun to be had in crooning and shouting in equal measures. The Scaramanga Six was finally realised in the dark & drizzly backdrop of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire where the band still lurk to this very day.

TyrannoPop? Luxury Rock Noir? Schitzophonic Splattercore? – whatever you want to call it, this suave and enigmatic unit have carved their own scenester-defying niche since the mid-90’s as the most unique and creative underground rock band in the UK. Every one of these individuals is hell-bent on assaulting the ears of the unsuspecting with intense and preposterous rock and roll music. Add ‘prolific’ to their wild claims – over the last decade & a half, the band have relentlessly embarked on a rampant recording spree. The average gestation period for a Scaramanga Six long-player is approximately 2 years – ‘The Terrifying Dream’ is the title of their current (and eighth) studio album, for which The Scaramanga Six decided to use the fantastic PledgeMusic platform to find and release with a hugely successful campaign. For their previous album, ‘Phantom Head’, The Six made an ambitious pilgrimage to Chicago Illinois to record with the best engineer in the world, Mr Steve Albini (Pixies, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, The Stooges, Shellac etc etc) in his own Electrical Audio studio. To get that authentic ‘Albini sound’, the recordings were all done completely live with minimal overdubs onto 2” tape using all analogue equipment and the bare minimum of post-production.

But hot on the heels of ‘The Terrifying Dream’, The Six are currently holed up in their secret underground base preparing a barrage of new material for their ninth studio album, which promises to be the most uncompromising, bloated and lavish offering to date. It seems The Six are entering a zenith of creativity, despite committing the music industry cardinal sins of mostly being over 40 and being around for over a decade.

The self-styled ‘evil pop group’ have been tearing a hole in the arse of the live circuit over recent years with their incendiary rock rituals including key slots at many UK festivals (headline set at Leeds 2007 on the Introducing stage). Their previous few albums have pulverised the minds of critics and also seen releases across Scandinavia, the Germanic countries and Japan, all through the band’s own infamous label – Wrath Records. Bookings at some of the big European festivals have also transpired (Hove Festival, Norway and Peace & Love, Sweden). All the while they have been building up and grooming a legion of die-hard crackpot fans ready to creep out from under logs or something and support the band wherever they play. 

 

 http://www.thescaramangasix.co.uk

Monday, January 31, 2022

Eddy Davis

 


Eddy Ray Davis was born on September 26, 1940. He was an American musician and bandleader of trad jazz, who was internationally known mainly through the decades of collaboration with the clarinetist and filmmaker Woody Allen.

Davis started playing banjo during his senior year in high school to play Dixieland with a college band called The Salty Dogs. The Purdue-based group played across the Midwestern United States and had pre-appearances of greats like The Four Freshmen and The Kingston Trio. He moved to Purdue for a year, then to Chicago. There, he became an integral part of the jazz scene at venues such as the "Gaslight Club" and Bourbon Street and often worked for variety or comedy acts, among others. with actor David Huddleston. He also appeared on a Dixieland revue in Disneyland and served as musical director for a tour resumption of the musical Whoopee! In 1966, he recorded his debut album "Live! At the Old Town Gate", with a group that from then on operated as "Eddy Davis Dixie Jazzmen". The next albums under the Davis name included "Whiz Bang" (1973), a satirical production with flute and tuba and "Plays and Sings Just For Fun".

Davis went to New York and received recognition from the jazz traditionalists there: he played drums in the earliest edition of Vince Giordano's "Nighthawks". In 1976, he performed in Germany with his European colleagues Herbert Christ, Jean-Pierre Mulot and René Franc in the "Hot Jazz Orchestra of Europe". In the American edition of this "Hot Jazz Orchestra" he played in 1979 with Max Kaminsky, Vince Giordano, Bobby Gordon and Dill Jones; In 1983, the clarinetist Jack Maheu and the pianist Don Ewell were part of "Eddy Davis and The Hot Jazz Orchestra". With "Stanley’s Washboard Kings" around Stan King, Davis went on a Japanese tour in the same year. He also orchestrated and conducted a musical by Terry Waldo, with whose "Waldo’s Gutbucket Syncopators", he recorded several albums.

When the conductor performed Maurice Peress Paul Whiteman's "Aeolian Hall Concert" from 1924 on its 60th anniversary, he hired Davis as a banjoist. At that time he performed regularly in the club Red Blazer Too in a trio with his banjo colleague Cynthia Sayer and the bassist Pete Compo. With Sayer, Davis also founded the "New York Banjo Ensemble", which recorded an album with compositions by George Gershwin in 1984 and an album with Rags in 2005.

Davis's connection with Woody Allen was established in Chicago in the 1960s when Davis was headlining a club on Rush Street and Allen was a comedian at that club, but also played in his band. Allen played in Eddy Davis's "New Orleans Jazz Band", with which Allen - otherwise known as a filmmaker - held the court as a clarinetist in New York for around 35 years. The band has played in the "Café Carlyle"' every Monday evening since 1997 (when it wasn't on an international tour); before that she had appeared in "Michael’s Pub" every week since 1985. Davis also appeared on the soundtrack for Allen's film "Radio Days" "(1987) and appeared on "Sweet and Lowdown" as a band member. For his contribution to the soundtrack for "Midnight in Paris" he received a Grammy Award. The documentary Wild Man Blues records Allen's first tour with Davis’s band. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Davis was also heard every week in the restaurant called "The Cajun" on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea. In the band he led there, Scott Robinson played on C melody saxophone. In addition, other recordings such as The Bunk Project (1993) or Just Sittin ’Here Strummin’ This Ole Banjo (2005) were created.

Davis was involved in 73 recording sessions between 1957 and 2012, including: with Leon Redbone, Turk Murphy, Doc Cheatham and Frank Vignola. Davis died in April 2020 of the SARS-CoV-2 infection at Mount Sinai West Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. He was 79 years old.

 https://theeddydavis.com/

Sunday, January 30, 2022

The blog of JAM Radio in the list of the top 35 Blues Music Blogs

 

This blog JAM Radio has been selected as one of the Top 35 Blues Music Blogs on the web by the site feedspot.com. 

Many thanks to feedspot.com and to all the people who visit this site every day!

https://blog.feedspot.com/blues_music_blogs/