Pentimento

Get Your Half-Naked Savages Here!

Need Some Music For Your Luau?

My friend Fred Barnett and his musical group the Half-Naked Savages have just released their newest album. My favorite tune is "Hey Bahtoondah!", but all of them are wonderful. Yes, this is an Amazon affiliate link, but only so I can put the whole ad on here. Fred lives in Hawaii and is one of the funniest guys I've met up with on Facebook. Let me know how you like the album after you get it. Hey Bartoondah!

VH1 100 Greatest Hard Rock Hits Review

Once we figured out the schedule for the VH1 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs shows we made time to watch every one of them. You see, Jim and I have been around longer than hard rock. Heck, we have been around since all rocks were young...

Did any of you watch this countdown show? Did you agree with the outcome of who was #1* (spoiler below)? I'm not sure I did, but then it would be like choosing which of your children was your favorite. We like them all for who/what they are.

It certainly was a trip down memory lane for us though. We saw some of these groups from their early beginnings and it was great to see some of them still together. Drugs and alcohol, as well as age and plane crashes took its toll on many artists though. When we were in Germany from 1970-72 we were not so isolated that we couldn't pick up some European versions of albums at the BX. We didn't buy just strictly hard rock mind you, but all sorts of music from Three Dog Night to Zepplin. I think somewhere there is a picture of our son's bedroom and over his crib was a poster from a Black Sabbath album. Hey, we were young kids at the time!

You know, one of the things that really came home to me while watching all those five episode of the countdown was what great voices the artists had/have. Without those voices and the lyrics some of them wrote we would never have heard the range of their abilities. I suppose a lot of people might see hard rock vocals as just a bunch of screaming, but if you really listen to the harmonies it's amazing. The outrageous antics on stage (and off) were just icing on the cake.

One of my favorite groups was Queen, and even when our son Greg was very young we all used to sing along in the car to the convoluted lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody. While Greg was growing up he took on our music as his, but by the time the 1980's rolled around he was introducing us to his music and we became fans of AC/DC, Whitesnake, Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard, etc.  At times, it wasn't "cool" to be a Kiss fan, but Jim and I weren't constrained by social mores as much as Greg, so we liked some of their music.

Living in western Washington, we had front row seats to the birth of groups like Nirvana, Foo Fighters, and Heart. I love the song Barracudda! What are some of your favorite hard rock songs? Which groups haven't I mentioned? Hint: How about "The Who", "Anthrax", "Poison" and...?

Spoiler: It was Guns and Roses and Welcome to the Jungle.