Category / music

by Linnea Arold Michel

Skip Ticketmaster—Great Local Bands Rock Too!

There’s been a lot in the media lately about outrageous ticket prices for live music—the add-on fees exceeding the ticket price; Ticketmaster’s plan to float seat prices according to demand (euphemistically referred to as “dynamic pricing”) as is the norm with air travel prices (and why not—some tickets cost as much or more than air travel); and the debacle of Taylor Swift’s presale demand overwhelming Ticketmaster systems. All of this is merely capitalism at its best—it’s all about demand and market forces.

Those spectacular concerts and mega-shows, fees or no fees, cost significant dollars for a seat, and if you can afford the seat (or standing), you can probably also afford the $20 burger and $10 beverage, and don’t forget, there will be merch as well, making for a pretty expensive night. These shows are making somebody rich—probably the label—with a reasonable (we hope) percentage to the band and its songwriters. These are shows for bands that have arrived, bands with the clout to write their own tickets (pardon the pun).

But there’s more to the live music world than expensive flame-throwing spectacles. Elite artists, it’s safe to say, got their start somewhere else.

This was brought home to me recently at the Rivet Canteen and Assembly in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. I was happy to find that my plan to paint my daughter’s kitchen on a recent weekend coincided with an opportunity to support a local Pennsylvania band, Die Tired, whom I’d been following via Spotify and social media. My daughter had tagged me on one of their posts, I checked them out on Spotify, and told her, “We should go see these guys!”

The Rivet is located in a century-old downtown Pottstown building, with rustic styling to reflect the town’s industrial history. The venue presents both live music (their full schedule is here) and celebratory events, like wedding receptions and corporate parties. Their large room, called the Foundry (in honor of the region’s steel-making era), offers a good-sized stage, sound system and lighting, along with table seating for the audience. Die Tired was the headliner, with two other new-to-us bands on the program. All of the bands hailed from eastern Pennsylvania.

Arriving shortly after doors opened, we parked in the free lot out back and walked up to the entrance. From the street, with its big glass windows common once-upon-a-time along Main Streets everywhere, Rivet’s space looks like it might have once housed a department store. Inside, we were welcomed by a staffmember who invited us to pick a table in the Foundry room and shared menus from nearby brewpubs; she explained that we could just call them and order delivery right to the Rivet.

Choosing a table was a major decision: Do we sit really close to the action (about 15 feet in front of the drum kit) or less close, up in back (maybe 30 feet from the band) but in an elevated semicircular booth (very nice for a date night!).We opted for right in front of the drum kit.

As we sat there considering what food to order, two guys came over to chat. They revealed themselves to be with Die Tired. They’d seen my post wherein I tagged my daughter with her photographer handle, and we chatted awhile about bands she’s photographed.

Kristin went to fetch us a couple of beers—“Tripod” Belgian tripels—from the Rivet’s bar but brewed across the street at J. J. Ratigan’s. Then we began unpacking our just-delivered chili and loaded tater tots from Pottstown United Brewing Company.

Die Tired

While we were digging into our tots, the opening band, The Tressels, came out, did a quick sound check, and then hurtled full-throttle into their set. These guys could play! I was even more astounded when their vocalist said this was their first show since 2016. They wrapped up about 45 minutes later, cleared their equipment, and the next band, Hannibal-HNBL, came out, channeling ‘70s prog rock that blew me away. Headliner Die Tired capped off the show with a great set that included their just-dropped-that-day single, “Better Off Alive”, as well as another recent single, “Play”. After their sets, at the merch table, I chatted with HNBL and Die Tired band members while adding to my tee shirt collection. And all this crazy good rock ‘n’ roll for only $12 at the door!

The Tressels
Hannibal – HNBL

I only wished the crowd had been bigger for these fantastic local bands.

These musicians haven’t given up their day jobs yet. Like the rest of us, they work all day, but then they go home to practice their music.  You cannot stand up in front of a crowd and be the evening’s rock star if you haven’t put in the work. For all the excitement and spectacle of a stadium show, the mega-bands on the program of such a show did not burst full-blown onto the world stage. They had to start by getting up the courage to show up in a small venue somewhere and take their chances with a live audience for a first time, and many more times thereafter. Artists practice in private but at some point, validation requires that they go out front and play.  And we should be there to support them when they do.

One of the catastrophes of the pandemic was the impact of lockdowns on these small local venues and the bands that depend on them. I would hazard a guess that those big arenas and stadiums did not suffer the pandemic to quite the same degree. 

Remember when we were unable to go to live performances? Tours were canceled, rescheduled, canceled, rescheduled and sometimes finally scratched entirely. The venues for these performances suffered the loss of income painfully, but not equally. The arenas and stadiums knew their bread-and-butter sports teams and elite bands—and their fans—would be back as soon as the pandemic eased. Small venues and local bands had no such assurance. Many small venues did not survive.

While stadium and arena shows do inject funds into their communities, small venues do so as well on a grassroots level. Like their bigger cousins, small venues pay taxes in their communities and provide employment for local people.

But small venues have another part to play. They offer entrée into the world of artistic performance for the local bands and artists who appear there. Small venues are the proving grounds for young or new artists, where they can cut their musical teeth, discover their fans, and advance their art.

Only in the small venue can you have that in-the-room feeling, the excitement of being part of something special, sharing the atmosphere with like-minded fans in support of a group of musicians who are trying to make a go of it. In the small venue, you can watch the guitarist’s hands on the instrument as you hear the notes reverberating in the room, you can make eye contact, and connect with the artist in a way that is impossible in a mega-venue (unless perhaps you’re down there on the floor at the barrier, but that’s a different experience entirely.)

Local music will likely never have the polish of those flame-throwing mega-bands with their decades playing together. Local music will always be a little rough around the edges. But what could be better than spending a few bucks in a local spot and discovering a bunch of hard-working musicians having a great time making music for you. After all, it was a small local venue—that repurposed warehouse cellar in Liverpool known as The Cavern—that gave the Beatles their start.

For a good discussion of the key part that small venues play in the music industry, check out this pertinent article from 2020.

by Linnea Arold Michel

Book Review

Bodies: Life and Death in Music

By Ian Winwood

London: Faber & Faber Ltd, 2022

ISBN: (e-book) 978-0-571-36420-6

We’ve all seen the headlines about rock musicians dying unexpectedly. All too often we learn in the follow-up that he or she died of causes related to substance abuse and/or mental health issues. Why does this happen again and again? In Bodies: Life and Death in Music, Ian Winwood attacks this question.

Winwood writes, “This is a book about. . . music, musicians, the industry, mental health, addiction, derangement, corrosive masculinity, monomania, overdoses, suicide and a hectare of early graves. . . . But in writing this story, I’ve come to regard artists as victims and survivors of circumstance. In pursuit of a living wage, musicians are required to work themselves into the ground.” At its base, he posits, music is a “proper job” that does not pay a proper wage.

Bodies serves up an indictment of the parasitic relationship between the music industry and those who would make a career in it and the substance abuse that fuels it. In this engrossing yet disturbing read, Winwood strives, he says, “to join the dots. . . . There is something systemically broken in the world of music. It’s making people ill.”

A British music journalist whose career has included more than twenty years writing for Kerrang! and major UK newspapers, Winwood has interviewed members of Metallica, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, Foo Fighters, and the Smashing Pumpkins, plus many more whose names are yet to—or may never—become household words. He has lived a rock-star lifestyle, giving him keen insight into how rock stars and wannabes survive. . . or not. Winwood has watched musicians fly to the heights, but he has also seen them crash and burn. And he has been to the depths himself as well.

The book opens with Winwood’s 2003, world-exclusive interview with Metallica following a six-year break during which the band had issued no new music. It’s “my job to discover exactly what has been furring the arteries of one of the most popular bands on the planet,” Winwood says, and the burning question, of course, is why the silence? What went wrong? What went wrong was alcohol.

Metallica was one of the first bands Winwood saw live, at age 15, following their release of Master of Puppets. To support his music habit, Winwood worked two jobs, including one in a bookshop, where he discovered Kerrang! When, later, his mother asked him what he might do with his life after school, he replied, “I want to write for Kerrang!” With his mom’s “I don’t see why not” response, he determined to make it happen, attending a university journalism program and then hand-delivering his first-ever article to Kerrang! and other outlets in hope of getting a writing job. A job offer resulted, though not from Kerrang!

But the call does eventually come and within the week, Winwood is on his way. Life with Kerrang! is full speed ahead. Move fast, write fast, live fast. Turn in a story, head off to the next one. Jetting around the globe, following bands and musicians, Winwood has visited nearly every city you can name. During his career, Winwood has been at the rail, in the pit, and with the musicians backstage and offstage, talking with them about their lives and the music industry. Indeed, his frenetic pace matches that of the bands he interviews, and like the musicians he hangs with, his coping mechanism becomes alcohol and cocaine.

The narrative is woven with anecdotes from Winwood’s many interviews, as well as his own experiences on the road for Kerrang! Throughout, his close relationship with his father anchors him. Ultimately, Winwood believes, the circumstances surrounding his father’s untimely and unexpected death precipitate his own plunge deep into the maelstrom.

“I’m comfortable asking awkward questions; if required I will do so repeatedly,” Winwood writes. Interviewing Layne Staley, vocalist with Alice in Chains, at the time the band was promoting their album Dirt, Winwood was warned not to ask questions about drugs, but he did so anyway. Staley, Winwood says, was “the first obviously damaged person I’d ever met.” Interviewing Ozzy Osbourne in 2011, Ozzy tells Winwood that he could still get drugs anywhere in the world in under 15 minutes. On the other hand, there’s Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister: “Lemmy is an anomaly. He was the one who was in control.” Eschewing heroin, Lemmy’s tolerance for alcohol made him “the kind of drinker who never seemed to get drunk.” In the end, Winwood says, ”I think it was the cigarettes” that got Lemmy shortly after his 70th birthday.

Not long after his father’s death, Winwood is on his way to California to interview Green Day and finds himself stuck in Las Vegas due to a flight glitch. The ubiquitous flow of alcohol and his pursuit of cocaine land him on the wrong side of his appointment for his Green Day interview. For many journalists this would be a career-ending disaster. But through the good graces of the band’s press agent, catastrophe is averted. The band’s label spends a pile of money to fix schedules and rearrange flights, and Winwood finally arrives to his interview, where he’s immediately handed a drink. “It would be wrong to say that all [was]forgiven. . . . I was never really in trouble in the first place. No one ever is,” he writes. A month later, Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day’s frontman, checks himself into rehab after his own Las Vegas debacle. This stuff is simply normal in the supernormal world of music.

Careening out of control, even his editors at a magazine where chaos is routine, begin to express concerns over Winwood’s increasing lapses. The dream job begins to slip away. When a nightmare hospital stay turns out to be real, leaving Winwood with no memory of anything that transpired, he begins to awaken to the direness of his situation.

Through Winwood’s unique lens, Bodies disentangles the whys and hows of this “normal.” For this book, Winwood plumbs the archive of his interviews with countless musicians over the years. Patterns begin to emerge. The lack of accountability in the music industry, the shifting responsibility, and the casting of musicians as mere commodities that can be cast aside if they don’t produce, the relentless show-must-go-on ethic, and of course, the industry’s focus on its bottom line, as opposed to the musicians’, whose cut of the profits is ever smaller—these combine to create an environment where artists are driven to take advantage of whatever is available to keep go-go-going in their own pursuit of success.

At the time he was writing Bodies, Winwood had recently interviewed Dave Grohl, former Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters founder. Winwood writes that, in founding Foo Fighters, “Grohl worked hard to ensure that his and his group’s happiness and security would no longer be put at risk by the wild vagaries of an overwhelming and unpredictable industry.” But even that “wasn’t quite enough to prevent drummer Taylor Hawkins from taking a near fatal overdose” in 2001. With painful irony, around the time Bodies was going to press this past spring, Foo Fighters were on tour in Colombia when Taylor Hawkins died, with toxicology reports indicating a variety of drugs in his system.

Winwood doesn’t offer a fool-proof solution, and indeed, Bodies raises many questions for musicians and bands, the industry, and fans to consider. For example, do labels bear responsibility for artists’ mental health, and if so, what tools can labels use to support artists? What part do fans play? If a band pulls the plug on a tour for mental health reasons, will fans continue to support the band, hold on to rescheduled tickets, buy merch? If pay structures for musicians change, are fans willing to pay the higher ticket prices that will almost surely result? Will the industry itself evolve sufficiently to reduce mental jeopardy for artists? And what about independent musicians?

Winwood’s book is an engrossing, can’t-put-it-down read. It pulls you in; it’s captivating, for it has the highs, the lows, and even a few happy endings where bands—Chumbawumba of “Tubthumping” fame and Biffy Clyro, for example, as well as Winwood himself—have been able to save themselves and preserve their sanity and, at the same time, their art.

If you care about bands and musicians, Bodies is a must-read.

Thanks to James Kennedy (@JamesKennedyUK), independent musician, founder of the band Kyshera, and author of Noise Damage, for putting me on to Bodies via his podcast interview with Ian Winwood; find the James Kennedy Podcast wherever you get your podcasts or visit Spotify.

by Linnea Arold Michel

In Flames!

In Flames, Starland Ballroom, Sayreville NJ, September 8, 2022

Supported by Vended, Orbit Culture, Fit For An Autopsy

Anders Fridén was relaxed and full of energy as he and In Flames took the stage at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville NJ, on Thursday, September 8. Anders took us through a tour of In Flames metal history, with the band playing songs from several of their earlier albums (1994’s Lunar Strain, 1996’s The Jester Race, 1997’s Whoracle, and 1999’s Colony). To be honest, as somewhat of a newbie, I think I was the only one who couldn’t sing along with those songs. (Working my way backwards through their catalog, I’m only up to A Sense of Purpose, with a detour to Clayman).

In Flames also played their two most recent releases, with Anders promising a new album is the on the way—can’t wait for that!

This show was in sharp contrast to the Rammstein show we saw the week before. Rammstein’s arena show was a fantastic display of the band’s particular kind of artistry, but its grand scale prevented any sense of connection with the band.

Not so on Thursday. Anders’ easy banter, the mix of old and new songs, the fans’ over-the-top enthusiasm, and the intimate size of the venue, made for an exhilarating night. Well warmed up by the supporting bands, fans immediately got down to moshing and crowd-surfing, and the turned-up-high bass made sure every molecule in the room was bouncing.

In Flames was supported by Vended, Orbit Culture, and Fit For An Autopsy, all new to me—but not to the crowd—and I will be checking out their music further, especially since our pub waitperson the following night told us he was a big fan of Vended.

Here are a few of my pictures, but my daughter, photographer Kristin Michel, has far better ones; visit her Facebook page.

Above photos by Linnea Arold Michel
This photo by @robertsiliato besutifully captures the energy of the night (and I’m so happy to be in this picture)!

by Linnea Arold Michel

Rammstein at last!

Rammstein

Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, PA

August 31, 2022

I have been aware of Rammstein for a long time, possibly from 1998, when the band was banned in Worcester, and Till Lindemann and Christian “Flake” Lorenz spent a night in jail. I suspect that event may have put them on my radar as a bad boy metal band, as it certainly would have been news in puritan New England. (Check out stories by Revolver Magazine and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.)

I bought Metal Hammer’s March 2019 issue for a story on Within Temptation. The issue featured Rammstein on the cover, and I read every word of that story. Something about them resonated with me. Maybe I understood them as committed artists who were uncowed by critics and unintimidated by authority, or maybe it was simply because they knew how to play with fire. If they toured anywhere nearby, I was going to be there.

New Year’s Day 2020 drew to a close, and my daughter and I wanted to make 2020 as great a year musically as 2019 had been. Scrolling through Ticketmaster looking for shows, we found Rammstein’s North American Tour. Knowing it would be a flaming good spectacle, and having been severely let down by our Iron Maiden nose-bleed seats located so far to the side that we could see nothing of the action on the stage, we bought the best center seats we could afford, and my son-in-law agreed to join us.

Then in March, pandemic.

Rammstein’s tour was postponed, and postponed, and postponed. But now, at last, three years later, here we are!

On Wednesday night, I was expecting spectacle. But this spectacle was far beyond anything I have ever witnessed in my life. It was performance art—breathtaking—quite literally. At points, I sat there transfixed in my seat, holding my breath in anticipation of what could possibly come next. The music pounded, pummeled, rumbled, and skewered us. Till’s sonorous vocals ranged from throaty whispers to screaming rage. And the fire! Did I mention there was fire? Incredible pyrotechnics toasted us even up in our aerie seats.

Here are a few of my pictures. You can find more by Bill Raymond/Digital Noise Mag here. The setlist is here, and Kerrang! has an article discussing Rammstein’s 20 greatest songs, many of which were included in the show.

by Linnea Arold Michel

Feeling Alive Again: Kingdom Collapse and the Return of Live Music


A week ago Friday, I got in the car to drive to my daughter’s in Pennsylvania with a strange feeling of trepidation, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like something was bound to happen to derail the weekend’s plan—to attend my first, in-person live music event in over two years.

It has happened before. Like so many people, we had a bunch of shows lined up for 2020, and all, of course, went by the wayside, some cancelled outright and others keeping us dangling, with reschedule after reschedule. 

Over the last two years, my family has been very cautious. Unwilling to jeopardize our own health or the health of others, we have avoided crowds, busy times at the grocery store, and generally followed the Covid-19 guidance. But once we received our boosters, we agreed that the time had come to learn to live with the virus. You can’t avoid risk entirely; risk is a part of life, and unfortunately, so are viruses.

Now, with life returning to near normalcy, with bands announcing tours practically every day, and being fully vaxxed and boosted, I knew the time had come. So I began to watch social media for the right show in the right place.

As I’ve explained elsewhere, I’m new to this live music stuff: my first live, in-person concert ever was in November 2018. After that, my daughter, Kristin, and I caught a lot of shows in 2019—In Flames opening for Within Temptation (3 times), Iron Maiden, Evanescence, Papa Roach with Asking Alexandria and Bad Wolves, and the Impact Music Festival in Bangor, Maine, where we caught KillswitchEngage, Five Finger Death Punch, and Godsmack among others. Sabaton’s Worcester show was my first “solo flight”. It was a crazy fantastic year, and I put a lot of miles on my car as I ran up and down I-95. My last show of the year was In Flames, when their headline tour returned them to the States in December. After that, we made a lot of plans for 2020.

And then of course, nothing.

Music is addictive, I’ve come to find out, and live music especially so. That first moment when the guitars shred your chest and every atom in your body reverberates—nothing else is like it. The first time I experienced it, it was a rush like no other. I never felt so alive, and every show since that first one has felt the same.

But it’s not just the music, or seeing a favorite band live. Something else happens in that time when you’re standing packed together on the floor with hundreds of other people all there for the same purpose. It’s a unity of spirit, a connection, like we are all part of a clan or a tribe. The vocalist cries “Jump!” and we all start jumping. Watching the crowd-surfers leaves me breathless; after all, what is crowd-surfing if not a demonstration of trust—trust that all those strangers won’t drop you (at least not intentionally)? And the moshers’ crazy, primeval spiral dance—surely it taps into some ancient ritual of community.

Those first notes explode with feeling—connection, art, life itself—and as I stand there, shoulder to shoulder with other fans, I understand my connection to the world, to people. We are all there for something we all love, to participate in artistic creation. Every show is new and vital. This is the thing about art (and yes, rock and metal music are arts)—without an audience, an artist is incomplete. And without art, we are incomplete.

This was the problem in 2020. I felt disconnected, free-floating, lost in a new reality, with nothing to ground me. Yes, recorded music was helpful. But there is simply nothing else like being there to jolt you back to life.

I’ve been following Kingdom Collapse since they popped up on my Instagram in 2021, when I first listened to their songs “Uprise” and “Unbreakable”. These songs resonated deeply, coming as they did upon the heels of a tumultuous presidential election and the pandemic.

When Kingdom Collapse initially announced that they would be an opener for From Ashes To New (FATN) on their Still Panicking Tour, the dates were all in the West and Midwest. But later, Reading PA showed up on the list. I stared at the post, and thought, I need to do this. I usually go to shows with my daughter, and Reading is in her neck of the woods.

Kristin was game to come along, so we bought tickets and waited. Finally, on that Friday, as planned, I hopped in my car for that 6+ hour drive. (She wasn’t home when I arrived—pause for shameless family promotion—she was photographing Shinedown’s concert in Hershey; see her Shinedown photos here).

Saturday started gray, with frost in the forecast, despite being mid-April. We did some antiquing in Adamstown, Pennsylvania (said to be the Antiques Capital of the USA) in the afternoon, and here the shift back to a normal world was evident. I’d been down here in March (when we discovered this area and vowed to come back) and people were masking against the last grip of the pandemic. But today, no masks. It was as though the pandemic never happened.

After busting our budgets, we drove the 16 miles to Reading. On the way into town, we scoped out the line at the Reverb—no one in sight—and thought we had time to grab a little fast food first.

Twenty minutes later, we headed back to the Reverb, with rain starting to spit. Even though we were 45 minutes ahead of the doors opening, a long line had appeared. We saw lots of FATN shirts, along with several shiny new Shinedown shirts. We hugged the side of the building to avoid getting doused–every so often water poured off the narrow roof ledge above as though someone had turned on a faucet.

The Reverb staff were very organized—paper tickets go here, electronic there—through a little anteroom, and we were inside. The Reverb is a large room with a round bar in the back center and stage opposite. At this moment, a misty cloud hung about the stage area suggesting smoke machines had been tested.

We were too late to get right up front, so we hung back to one side, to avoid any moshing that might start. The Reverb is small enough that wherever we stood, we’d have a good view. Another group of Kingdom Collapse fans was gathered near the bar.

Kristin and I were chatting and observing the scene when I happened to look in the direction that Kristin was looking, to see Jonathan Norris, the Kingdom Collapse vocalist, striding toward me, smiling, and asking if he was pronouncing my name right. And he was, perfectly. We had a great talk for about ten minutes; Jon mentioned the band is working on an album, and the challenge was the volume, the number of songs needed. “It’s about quality, not quantity,” he said. “Every song has to have the quality we want.” A few minutes later, Elijah Santucci, the band’s drummer, came over and introduced himself and chatted with us awhile. He caught up with us again at the end of the night.

Jon Norris, right, with me and Kristin, left
With Eli Santucci

Kingdom Collapse was the right band to break my pandemic live-music fast. An independent band, they have, through their own hard work over the last two years—during the pandemic, no less—arrived at an amazing place. Their songs “Uprise” and “Unbreakable” have spent weeks on the Sirius XM Octane Biguns Countdown, and their latest release, “Save Me From Myself”, appears destined for the same fantastic fate. The band did not let the upside-down world of the pandemic blow away their dreams. Instead, Kingdom Collapse has given us songs that tell us we are not alone, not disconnected, that we are in this together, and together we can get through anything.

Kingdom Collapse’s set was powerful despite this being the last show of the tour. They delivered that burst of vital energy I needed. And the energy level never dropped through the rest of the night. I went to the Reverb to support Kingdom Collapse but came away discovering a couple of new (to me) bands. I was already familiar with headliners FATN and Fire from the Gods. Both were early favorites in my new musical life, FATN’s “My Name” and Fire From the Gods’ “Right Now” having had a lot of play on SiriusXM’s Octane. In the coming weeks, I will be checking out the music of Above Snakes (from Boston) who opened the night, and Blind Channel (from Finland).

Toward the end of FATN’s set, we headed outside, to get a head start on departing the parking lot. The night was quiet—no clues to the excitement inside the building. The air was heavy with a cold dampness that suggested snow, and a few cars were dusted with frost. The cold front had arrived. Time to go home.

But time too, to plan ahead for the next concert—Metal Tour of the Year, in May, to see In Flames—and what I hope will again be my new normal: another year full of live music. Can’t wait. Stay tuned.

by Linnea Arold Michel

Books: Not Just Another Rock Bio

Noise Damage: My Life as a Rock ‘n’ Roll Underdog by James Kennedy, Lightning Books Ltd., 2020

Noise Damage is a great read. It’s written in a breezy, honest style that makes you feel like you’re sitting in a pub with Kennedy as he regales you with his story. But it also feels like you’re peering into a hidden world. If you’ve ever been crushed in the pit at a rock concert and wondered what it’s like to be up there, to get on the bus every day and do it again and again, if you’ve wondered how they got there and why —Noise Damage will tell you.

Noise Damage is the story of a guy from backwater Wales who just wants to be a rock star. But the book is also a memoir, a soul-searching telling of what it means to claim your real calling. In Kennedy’s case, that calling is making music.

Born in 1980, Kennedy grew up in a working-class family in south Wales. Leaving Cardiff not long after Kennedy was born, the family moved first to a gritty, urban area, and then to a village “in the middle of bloody nowhere.” On his ninth birthday, Kennedy’s dad gave him a little Spanish guitar (that he later learned his father had “nicked from somewhere’) and showed him a few things on it. “I played that damn riff over and over (and over),” Kennedy writes, “maybe a thousand times, and the fact that I could actually do something with this thing made me feel like I’d just discovered a buried superpower.” After a few “lessons” from a one-legged, Hendrix-worshipping local guy called Sid, Kennedy knew he could only be a guitarist.

But the path to rock glory would not be easy. The road took a serious turn a year later when doctors found tumors in both Kennedy’s ears. Surgeries left him with only sixty percent of his hearing and ferocious tinnitus.

Kennedy was a “frustrating paradox”, struggling through school despite being a voracious reader well-versed in literature, history, and politics; he celebrated the end of high school by setting fire to his uniform and books. But high school was a means to an end: getting into college to study music.

Through sheer will power, Kennedy made it to college, where he encountered music theory for the first time—and snagged an opportunity to work in a real music studio.

Once Kennedy found his way around the studio, he seized a further opportunity—to make an album, “the album, that threw all of the things I loved into one giant, ambitious, uncommercial, multi-genre melting pot of seething, unpredictable musical indulgence [with] an angry dose of politics and … filthy noise and pounding drums.” This was Made in China, his first CD (later remade as Kyshera’s 2nd album in 2012).

With his no-holds-barred approach and absolute belief that he could do whatever he set his mind to, coupled with the digital technology that was changing the music industry, Kennedy made the entire album himself, writing and singing every song (despite having never written or sung a song), playing every instrument—digitally or otherwise—recording, engineering. It took two years of putting in every spare moment, often working through the night, until it was done. Then Kennedy even handled his own promotion, mailing CDs to all the music magazines.

This is where Kennedy’s story really takes off. Awash with rave reviews, every interviewer and industry big-wig wanted to know: “When are you next performing in London?” Kennedy had to get a band together. After plastering most of Wales with recruitment flyers (no social media, no internet back in the day), his band, Kyshera, began to take shape.

Kyshera’s run was a roller coaster ride. From crazed, screaming drummers and the exhilaration of the band’s first gig to the hard reality of the music industry’s crash and burn; from their first festival—before a crowd of bikers, where frontman Kennedy managed to fall and slash his face open in the middle of the set, spraying blood everywhere—to endless weekends playing covers to make money just to put gas in the bus to get to the next gig. A trip to Toronto for a major festival proved to be the gig from hell with a full-throttle adrenaline rush, sufficient to lure them back a second time—all against a backdrop of trying to hold on to the day job and have a personal life.

Peppered with British-isms, you might wish you had a Duolingo app for British slang. And if the “bad” words were left out, Noise Damage would be a much shorter read—I warned you it’s honest writing! And don’t read this book to get an understanding of the music industry or how to break into it; Noise Damage is not that.

Noise Damage is about coming of age, about truly embracing one’s calling no matter what it costs. And these days, when kids are forced to decide their direction early on, Noise Damage stands as a truthful telling of what it means to pursue your dream in a real world that can be brutal, unkind, and downright mean. Noise Damage is also an expression of irrepressible spirit, persistence despite significant odds against success, and the saving grace that is music.

Next time you get to a concert early to claim your spot at the rail, and you’re confronted with a band—the opener—that’s not the one you came to see, give them a listen anyway. As Kennedy says at the end of Noise Damage: “P.S. Please support artists. It’s harder than it looks.”

I first came across James Kennedy’s music through a tweet from July 2020, promoting the first single from his most recent album, Make Anger Great Again, “The Power”.

For something completely different, try Kennedy’s latest release, “Insomnia”.

You can also find on Spotify the audio book of Noise Damage, read by James Kennedy.

James Kennedy is also on SoundCloud & Bandcamp.

by Linnea Arold Michel

Abbey Road Studios: A Milestone on My Long & Winding Road

2015 was a pivotal year for me. 

I grew up at a time when travel was limited to a privileged few, including briefly my grandfather, whose few business trips to Paris suggested the existence of a wider world. After I married, my husband’s active duty Air Force career bounced us back and forth between the East and West coasts. “Oh, you must travel a lot,” non-military people often commented, but, alas, we were firmly stuck stateside. 

I felt like I’d never get to go anywhere.

Over the years, my husband became increasingly involved in his professional society, IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional society, and quietly climbed his way up their volunteer ranks. In 2015, he took over as the volunteer President of the IEEE board of directors. One of the President’s key roles is to represent IEEE at various events around the world, and I was fortunate to be able to accompany Howard on his global travels that year.

One such event that I shall never forget is the Milestone presentation at Abbey Road Studios.

Abbey Road is, of course, the iconic recording studio of the Beatles, and so many others—from Pink Floyd, the Zombies, and the Hollies to the London Philharmonic, and movie scores, like Lord of the Rings. Abbey Road is famous. But it is also historic, with a place in history that led directly to the creation of our present world of sound, music, TV, and movies.

The 1829 estate in St. John’s Wood, London, was purchased in 1928, and in March 1929, a young engineer named Alan Dower Blumlein, joined Columbia Gramophone, one of the predecessors of EMI. (Electric and Musical Industries, better known as EMI, resulted from a 1931 merger between Gramophone and Columbia Gramophone.)

Inside Studio 2 for IEEE Milestone Presentation

Blumlein proved to be a prodigious inventor, filing 128 patents during his brief career. Blumlein filed his most famous patent in December 1931, when he was only 27 years old, “for improvement in and relating to sound-transmission, sound-recording and sound-reproducing systems” — what we know today as stereo. 

In 1931, while at the cinema, Blumlein told his wife he could solve the problem of the unnatural sound of those early movies.  Early movies and recordings were made with monaural (“mono”) sound. Because of its static nature, this type of sound is inherently unsatisfactory; flat and stationary, it lacks the dynamic quality essential to recreating a listener’s experience. Stereophonic sound solves this problem. Blumlein went on to make the first live stereo recording of the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in 1934.

Howard Michel (left) with Simon Blumlein, son of Alan Dower Blumlein

Blumlein was not only an inventor on par with Edison and Bell. A true war hero, his work with radar inestimably aided the Allied effort during World War II. Blumlein was killed at the age of 38, when the bomber in which he was testing a new radar system crashed on a hill in Ross on Wye, England, on June 7, 1942.

On April 1, 2015, my husband in his capacity as IEEE President, had the honor to present Abbey Road Studios with an IEEE Milestone, an award honoring “significant achievements in the history of electrical and electronics engineering”.

The Milestone was presented in renowned Studio 2 to Isabel Garvey, Abbey Road Studio’s Managing Director, and Simon Blumlein, son of Alan Dower Blumlein, thanked IEEE for its recognition of his father’s achievement.

For me personally, this event was a milestone along my own long and winding road, leading me back to the Beatles, and beyond.

  • Steinway 720 Provenance D Concert Grand Piano played by Paul McCartney, Elton John, and others
  • Another view of the Steinway Concert Grand
  • Hammond RT-3 Organ used by the Beatles in Studio 2
  • Instruments on display in Studio 2
  • Schiedmayer Celeste, used for the intro to “Time” on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon
  • TG12345 Mk.II Mixing Desk (1970s) used by the Beatles for album Abbey Road and by Pink Floyd on Dark Side of the Moon
  • Another view of the mixing desk

by Linnea Arold Michel

#MerryMusic: Music for Your Happy Holidays, Christmas, Solstice, etc.

I’ve never been a fan of the standard “Christmas music” and its overworked carols and drummer boys and what not. I’ve always hunted for music that’s a little different. Out of my collection of “holiday” or winter music, assembled over the last 30 years or so (yes, there are few New Age CDs in there, an awful lot of Celtic music, plus one lonely Josh Groban), here are some that sing to me right now.

The most recent addition to my collection is Tarja Turunen’s From Spirits and Ghosts. Tarja is the former Nightwish vocalist and a true metal goddess, but this album is not what most folks think of when they think “metal”. This was the first Tarja CD I bought last year, because I found her rendition of O Come, O Come Emmanuel online (after discovering her through Within Temptation), and it is hauntingly beautiful (the video is, well, haunting). I have always found Christmas to be a bittersweet holiday, and Tarja captures that perfectly. Operatically trained, Tarja’s soprano is sweet indeed. Try Feliz Navidad.

For more of that moody, bittersweet quality, I love the old folk hymn, I Wonder as I Wander, as sung by Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, on A Holiday Celebration with the New York Choral Society. This 1988 album is a wonderful collection of less-often-heard songs, including a couple of Hanukkah songs and of course, Blowin’ in the Wind.

A heavy holiday isn’t complete without the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I’ve had The Lost Christmas CD for many years, but it was buried in the back of the cabinet. So glad I dug it out! I love Siberian Sleigh Ride, but the whole album makes for a real head-banger’s holiday.

We bought Renaissance Holiday (presented by Chip Davis of Mannheim Steamroller fame) back when our daughter was in marching band, and imagine our surprise when her band music ( Volte by Praetorius) popped up on one of the tracks! It’s been a favorite holiday CD ever since, always bookended by those other Mannheim Steamroller classics (Mannheim Steamroller Christmas and Christmas Extraordinaire) that are so familiar now.

My list would not be complete without the poignant Christmas in the Trenches, by John McCutcheon. I discovered John McCutcheon’s Winter Solstice when I first crossed into unfamiliar “winter music” territory back in the ’80s. The song tells the true story of the Christmas Truce during World War I. Here’s another take on the Christmas Truce story (as told by Doctor Who).

Lastly, in my continuing hunt for new music, here’s a holiday track, Seasons Change, from Circlefour, a rock band from the Midwest US. They’re pretty new to me, so I’ll have more to say about them in coming posts.

So there you have it–a few of my favorite things, musically speaking, for the holidays.

May your holidays be merry & bright! Rock on!

by Linnea Arold Michel

#MusicMonday: What I’ve Been Listening to Lately

Discovering some new-to-me music…

Helion Prime, a sciency power metal band from California, has a new album out, called Question Everything, and the title song could really be the anthem for some of us these days. Mary Zimmer’s vocals are beautiful (joined on the title track by Heather Michele, their former vocalist), and as I listened, I kept catching interesting lyrics that sent me back to the liner notes for more info. The track that really caught my attention is “Photo 51”; how many other song lyrics do you know that contain the words “research” , “phosphate chain”, and “science”? Not many! (Check out the lyric video, and you can find out why Photo 51 matters—fascinating stuff!) The album is built around a group of science heroes—Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, Rosalind Franklin, Katherine Johnson (sadly the women’s names are less familiar) and others—whose dogged pursuit of truth has advanced our understanding of the universe. 

Myrath is an Arabic progressive metal band from Tunisia, recommended by my friend Zaina Arekat (you can check out her music here). Myrath is the first band from their country to sign with a European label. Mostly in their present line-up since 2007, but rooted in 2001 when founder Malek Ben Arbia was 13 years old, Myrath has heavy guitars, strings, cool vocals mixing English and Arabic—all coming together for a fantastic sound. Their most recent album is 2019’s Shehili. Try these beautiful, mysterious videos, “Dance” and “No Holding Back”.

TaleTeller is a Hungarian symphonic metal band that focuses their albums around a single story cycle.  Sárközi Edina,their female vocalist, has an exquisite voice. Their new album, The Path, is due out December 21. Check out “Aurora”. 

Finally, I cannot deny my regular craving to spin an In Flames disc every so often—they’ve really become my go-to band when I need music to make the day better. Lately, it’s Sounds of a Playground Fading.  The first time I read the title of the album I knew I would buy it; I could not resist the poetry of the title. This album is among the first of the “new age” In Flames. While I enjoy some unclean vocals and screaming, I do need a good melody and great lyrics. This album points to the new path In Flames has chosen, and I love it. In Flameswe trust!

by Linnea Arold Michel

Covid-19 Notepad – Day 49 What we risk losing

The media has been much concerned of late with the idea of re-opening the economy, as states begin to dial back their stay-at-home orders and lockdowns. We were told these would “flatten the curve” and protect the healthcare system from a fatal crash. We have hunkered down to slow the spread of the virus. The deaths—of friends, acquaintances, loved ones, the bodies bagged and stacked in makeshift morgues—have terrified us, motivated us to stay in, stay home. 

Now (though we are surely not out of the woods yet), we begin to contemplate a new normal, where restaurants are half full, crowded bars are a distant memory, flight attendants wear masks, and we take a number to enter grocery stores. BBC News just ran a story about travel in this new world, complete with an airport disinfectant scenario straight out of Doctor Who. 

As we hunkered down, bans on large gatherings were among the first social distancing strategies put in place. Now it’s been suggested that such gatherings may not be allowed this year. Suppose, for the sake of argument, the bans on gatherings of 10, or 100, people remain in place for a year, two years, or longer. As we shrink our worlds to avoid the risk of infection, what becomes of concerts, performances, readings and so many other events, and the artists and artist communities that these support?

There was a time when this would have mattered less to me. I wasn’t going out to events much. But that trek to Groningen, Netherlands, to my first live rock concert ever, drastically changed my perspective. We were welcomed into a community—the metal community—where we stood shoulder to shoulder, hands raised, utterly carefree and full of life, singing the songs together as though we were singing hymns in church. What becomes of this community if we can no longer gather?

Large gatherings like this, whether 20 people for a poetry reading or 20,000 for a heavy metal concert, are intrinsic to every arts community.

If we have learned nothing else from our national experiment with Zoom meetings, it is that in-person is just better, whether it’s a meeting with colleagues, a trip to the ballgame or a concert.  Relegated to the camera’s view, we lose a powerful world of nuance and non-verbal cues, of closeness and camaraderie. But perhaps especially for art, it is that personal, real-time experience shared with others of like mind that cements our relationships and unites us into community.

While community brings people together, it also serves a another purpose. Communities sustain the artists around which they form, and the music community is no different. Indeed, artists and their art-making have generated vibrant communities around the world, helping to reinvigorate cities everywhere and making arts a vital economic engine that can help ensure the continuation of independent artists making art for the joy of making art. 

If we lose large gatherings, we risk losing the arts. The sustenance these large gatherings provide to artists—emotional, professional, financial—can vanish if performance venues can’t survive the new normal.

Without a question, even in a strong economy, arts are a tough way to make a living. A lot of parents, despite buying all those music and dance lessons, have pushed kids away from careers in the arts, telling their budding photographers and dancers, “You won’t be able to support yourself.”

This economic reality is a fact of the music world, where touring is a way of life for bands, who depend on tours to generate income. For heavy metal, historically, this has been especially true, since metal has tended not to get the radio play enjoyed by other musical genres  (a topic of its own, outside the scope of this post). Few bands have the stamina and sustained creativity, to reach that elite world of musical nirvana where significant money is to be made. Before the pandemic had even started to unhinge our world view, Kobra Paige, of Kobra and the Lotus, talked about the economic realities she and her band face.

For our part as fans, we stand to lose a kind of sustenance too. We will lose the exhilarating experience of live concerts. I went so long without them, but now, reawakened, I crave them. I think about the concerts I’ve been to in the last year, that excitement, that feeling of being a part of this big, crazy family. We fed on the bands’ energy, just as the bands fed off ours to keep them going, night after night.

Vaccines and antibody tests already in development, contact-tracing tools like apps, and other public health strategies, if they work, might permit a return to large gatherings. Vaccines are undergoing trials in several countries. Apps are in development that will allow discovery of every person who stood within 2 feet of you; China has a version, UK is about to unveil one. In the US, approaches like these will encounter significant roadblocks due, for example, to our willingness to tolerate distrust in science, or to our laser focus on individual rights to privacy at the expense of the public good. From another perspective, the fear is that these strategies would “coerce” people into trying to catch the disease.

If we want to return to even a semblance of normalcy, we need to weigh our responses to public health tools and strategies with our common good in mind. We need to think about the impact of our personal decisions on others and on the communities we care about. We can no longer think solely of ourselves and our individual happiness. We must understand, now more than ever, that our happiness and well-being are tied directly to the happiness and well-being of others.

What do you think? Do large gatherings matter?