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Giving credit to Woodstock hero Alvin Lee
Friday, March 8, 2013
His frantic, flashy guitar playing on the nearly 10-minute "I'm Going Home" made British rock musician Alvin Lee, who died this week at age 68 in southern Spain, one of the heroes of Woodstock, both the music festival and the subsequent movie....sfgate

Singer Rick Stevens embraces 2nd chance
Monday, January 28, 2013
Wearing a glacial-white suit and tie, set off by a blood-orange shirt, the compact, dark-haired vocalist Rick Stevens leaned into "You're Still a Young Man," his signature song as lead vocalist of Tower of Power, when the band burst out of the East Bay funk scene 40 years ago and Stevens had a promising future. ...sfgate

Review: Johnny Cash Columbia boxed set
Monday, December 3, 2012
Johnny Cash had to disappear from the skyline before it became obvious how tall a tree he truly was.

If any doubts remain, the newly released 63-disc boxed set, "Johnny Cash - The Complete Columbia Album Collection" - takes the full measure of the man's recorded legacy. With the addition of a single disc covering his first three years of recording for the Sun Records label - and Cash's absent latter-era sessions with producer Rick Rubin notwithstanding - this unwieldy set is an American treasury along the lines of....sfgate

2 Generations of Hoodoo Rhythm Devils
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
A son who grew up barely knowing his father and a musician who still misses his partner more than 30 years after his death will team up to bring back to life the music of the Hoodoo Rhythm Devils, a little-remembered band that was one of the great almost-was, hard-luck stories of the '70s San Francisco rock scene....sfgate

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival ends
Monday, October 8, 2012
As Emmylou Harris walked out on stage Sunday to close the 12th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park, as she has every year, a light ocean breeze picked up, signaling the end of a great musical weekend....sfgate

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival review
Monday, April 30, 2012
Seven years later, New Orleans is back and hotter than ever.With record-breaking attendance at the first weekend of the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival - highlighted by appearances from Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and the re-formed Beach Boys - the town's many restaurants, bars and clubs packed with patrons and the French Quarter overrun with visitors, Jazz Fest has finally equaled and exceeded pre-Katrina prosperity. ...sfgate

Saxophonist Bobby Keys rolls with rock's royalty
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Keith Richards likes his pal's book better than his own. " 'It gets to the meat of the matter faster' is what he said," says Bobby Keys, saxophonist for the Rolling Stones for the past 40 or so years and pirate mate to swashbuckling Richards. ...sfgate

Levon Helm: an appreciation by Joel Selvin
Saturday, April 21, 2012
At the heart of the clapboard honesty that made the Band sound so revolutionary when it emerged on the rock scene in 1969 was the impossibly dusty voice of Levon Helm. Everything he sang was the truth - an unmistakable sound. ...sfgate

Fete for a King: Dan Hicks at 70
Monday, April 2, 2012
Dan Hicks is feeling the pressure, as he inspects a piece of scenery being painted at the studio above Mill Valley's Throckmorton Theatre. It is a giant cutout of a '40s automobile, all fender and tires, which he calls "Hicksville ambience." He regards painter Joan Reynolds balefully......sfgate

Big Brother & the Holding Company live CD review
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Bear's Sonic Journals Presents Big Brother and the Holding Company Featuring Janis Joplin Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968: Columbia/Legacy, $9.99.

A new compact disc of old live recordings by Big Brother & the Holding Company captures not only that band at its enviable peak but perhaps the entire San Francisco '60s Haight-Ashbury thing in one of its last shining hours. ....sfgate

Chubby Checker awaits reward for life of twists
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Lincoln, -- Placer County - Chubby Checker is ticked off. But only in the very nicest possible way.

The 70-year-old creator of the twist, the greatest dance sensation in history, doesn't feel the respect he thinks he deserves. He sits in his modest suite on the top occupied floor of the Thunder Valley Hotel and Casino, where he will perform that evening once again, trying to explain how he feels.....sfgate

Johnny Otis - Rhythm and Blues Renaissance Man
Monday, January 23, 2012
If rhythm and blues ever had a renaissance man, his name was Johnny Otis.

Otis, who died Tuesday at 90, was a bandleader, an administrative assistant to the lieutenant governor, a minister with his own church, a disc jockey, a college professor, a painter and sculptor, an author, and a celebrated chef. ....sfgate

Warren Hellman's passion spawned world-class fest
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Warren Hellman stood behind his desk in the corner office. He was wearing his trademark faded denim shirt and no tie - hardly the expected gear for billionaire investment bankers. He punched up a website on his laptop and broke into a huge grin as the voice of coal miner's daughter Hazel Dickens sputtered forth......sfgate