The unending wonder of rock & roll bands begins when two or more like-spirited souls meet and decide to take a wild-eyed run at destiny. No matter that it is long odds anyone will ever hear them, or somehow a life’s pursuit can be won. That's because the music contains a magical potion which overwhelms the bloodstream, making hope a physical phenomenon shared among musicians. No matter the extreme odds against success, or even the …

Life ain't for everybody, but everyone surely has their time. For some it can stretch forward forever, like they're linked to the eternal stars above and it will never end. And others flare across the sky like comets, sharing a cosmic rush with those lucky enough to be in their presence. There is no way to change that fate, it seems, but rather accept whatever it may be. Musicians can be like that. They may …

Rock & roll is a tricky business. Bands are formed with grand visions of musical wonder, and enough hope to fill a universe. Once songs have been written, live shows performed and the path initiated to a recording studio for sessions to record the debut album, there is little thought of anything but ecstasy. Even with different band personalities hitting the inevitable push and pull of human interaction, the group stays sacred. It is them …

Nothing is stronger than the human spirit. Nothing. It creates civilizations of unending wonder, defies the odds of destructive despair and allows citizens of the world to move forward. It also provides each of us the strength needed to face hardships, accept love and let the power of human kindness enter our hearts. Without spirit, the world does not exist. Instead, it becomes a mechanical place of missing meaning. 

These are trying times. It …

Rock & roll bands in the Sixties wrote the holy scroll so many of us have lived by for these precious years. It may have started with Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and, soon enough, Elvis Presley, but when the British Invasion bands hit, everything changed into a technicolor onslaught of unbridled joy. Maybe that was because for the very first time we saw those musicians onstage as someone we could possibly be. They were playing …

Dear Jerry,
You would have been 70 today. I lined up your five albums this morning on the side of the wall and started playing them front to finish, over and over. It's the best way I can get in touch with your spirit, which you shared with me so generously for 30 years. I still get warm chills of joy when I think about how much your music--and you--changed my life. And it all …

In the early 1950s, semi-fresh from the end of War World II and the looming of a new day, a man from Dunleth, Mississippi found his way into a Chicago recording studio to share his soul with the world. He would become an unlikely prophet to a changing America, but he never doubted his abilities. Jimmy Reed brought a cosmic twist to the blues, bouncing curved realities with a hypnotic beat, singing and blowing harmonica …