Category: Photos

Friday is for Rawk! Hillbilly Fury


 

Colin Buis of Revolution Mother does his best Jaco Pastorius impersonation. He and drummer Brendan Murphy were rock solid anchors to the intensity that is Mike Vallely and Jason Hampton’s fuzz-soaked guitar. Revolution Mother is no vanity project like Juliette and the Licks, Vallely has a mde a career of standing out on the fringes of all that he’s done and this new band is nothing different. Come to think of it, how far out do you have to stand in order to be on the fringes of the skater set? Approach with caution…

Friday is for Rawk (on Saturday) Glory Bound

Pro skater Mike Vallely fronts a new band, Revolution Mother. Vallely is very much in the Henry Rollins mold; intense on stage and extraordinarily personable in person. Behind him are guitarist Jason Hampton (the Electric Hillbilly) and drummer Brendan Murphy (no nickname). Best question of the set: “Are there any outlaws left out there??!!” to the trucker hatted teens that surrounded the stage.

Friday is for Rawk! (Nugent on Saturday)

Uncle Ted at the Cow Palace, San Francisco in 1980  I think. The Scorpions opened the show and it was the first date I ever had with my wife. (I know, Mr. Romantic) As you can see, Nugent had entered his loin cloth stage and would make his appearance on stage by swinging in on a rope strung from the lighting rig. Pretty good show as I recall, since he was still playing the Birdland through Fender Twin stacks. At the end of the encores he leaned the hollow body against the wall of Fenders and let the feedback build up to a deafening roar as they brought the lights up in the arena.
 

Wednesday’s Lonely Beauty

This is a print of the lonely Point Loma lighthouse near San Diego. Before the city encroached on this peninsula, the keeper would go days, maybe weeks, without any contact from the people of the mainland. I could think of worse places to meditate, here looking out over the boundless Pacific.
 

Friday is for Rawk 3

 This is one of the favorites in my collection. Akira Takasaki of the Japanese band Loudness raging at the now defunct Stone in San Francisco. This band is huge in Japan but only picked up a niche following in the U.S. Technically brilliant, Takasaki is a virtuoso guitar player and the rest of the band keeps up with him. The only drawback for American ragers is that we spoke little Japanese and the phoenetic English that was used in some of the songs was very difficult to understand.

Interesting side note, these guys almost made it to my wedding. Ten minutes more…but alas it was not to be. The singer also showed up back in the Bay Area about a year later looking for a woman to marry so that he could stay in the US, but that is another story…