Though Guy Davis was raised in New York City, the son of the well-known actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, he grew up hearing accounts of life in the rural South from his parents and grandparents. He used those tales for his own songs and stories.
In the booklet for Shaffer Street’s debut album is a gauzy picture of the band’s leader, Chris Shaffer, that suggests Rob Zombie about to do some damage – long hair, beard, made-up eyes, and a sly look of malevolence.
Panama-bred jazz pianist, composer, and educator opened himself up to some scrutiny after he announced during Saturday’s concert that this was his jazz trio’s first public performance. But although the players weren’t always on the same page, it was an impressive debut.
It's a shame that most of the Quad Cities will see only one side of Danilo Perez during his week-long visit here as part of Quad City Arts' award-winning Visiting Artist series. When he performs on February 10 at Augustana College's Centennial Hall, you'll have the opportunity to see the focused jazz master infusing the most American of music forms with folk music and the musical history of his native Latin America.
Danilo Perez was born in Panama in 1966. His father, also called Danilo, was a singer. At the age of three, Danilo would play bongos when attending his father's rehearsals. He took up the guitar at the age of five and by the time he was 10, he was studying piano at the National Conservatory in Panama.
Enchanted with the ideals of the French Revolution, Beethoven originally dedicated his third symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte. But when Napoleon declared himself emperor, Beethoven tore up the title page and renamed the symphony the “Heroic symphony, to celebrate the memory of great man.
After a couple decades as a band, some developments are largely inevitable: You’ll have reached a certain comfort level with your music and your fellow musicians, you’ll have achieved a degree of technical prowess, and you’ll run out of album titles.
In an irony well-suited to the band's name, The Pimps used Mickey Mouse, then chucked him. The Rockford, Illinois, rock/rap/funk (and sometimes jazz and country) band signed with ABC/Disney subsidiary Hollywood Records ($1 million for two albums), released last year's To a Cool Person, Stay That Way, toured with Insane Clown Posse, nabbed a spot alongside Metallica and Limp Bizkit on the Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack, and then left the label.
Jason Anderson likens his band’s drummer situation – looking for number four presently, after three years – to that of the legendary, imaginary Spinal Tap, and the comparison is pretty apt. Skinny Weirdo’s “Fist” is exactly the kind of crude rock-and-roll that Tap specialized in before the guys got old and flabby.
If you're a member of a young rock-and-roll band, that first show supporting somebody big can be nerve-wracking. So imagine being Miles and Daxx Nielsen of Harmony Riley on January 12, opening for the first time with Cheap Trick and ... dad? Yes, Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen's two sons will be setting the table for him on eight East Coast dates in January.

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