Your favorite song was recorded in Van Nuys

Fleetwood Mac. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Pat Benatar's Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Rick Springfield's Jessie's Girl. Nirvana's  Nevermind. Cheap Trick, Ratt, Guns n' Roses, REO Speedwagon, Neil Young, Carl Perkins, Barry Manilow, Johnny Cash, Dio, Rage Against The Machine...the list goes on and on. What do these artists and songs have in common? The recording studio called Sound City, in Van Nuys, CA., the subject of Dave Grohl's (of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame) documentary Sound City. I  remember as a kid looking at the back cover of Rick Springfield's Working Class Dog album and wondering why he had said, "God Bless Van Nuys", and why so many albums seem to have been recorded there in the 1980's. I remember thinking, "What is it about this Van Nuys place, and why does everyone record their albums there?" Now I know why!

Pretty Cool, and...Meh. Or: Pat Benatar and Cheap Trick

Hi boys and girls--

I went to the Pat Benatar and Cheap Trick show at AVA on June 16. I had been wanting to see Pat Benatar for years and finally got my chance. A big reason I loved Pat Benatar when I was a kid was that she was a woman singing in a more male-sounding style of music. She sounded so strong, so confident, and so cool, and I thought, "Wow. I wanna be her!" I still remember when Hit Me With Your

Best Shot came out and I just thought it was the greatest song. Here's the funny thing:  Benatar was the opening act for Cheap Trick, and I think most people (myself included) thought it would be the other way around. Benatar walked out onstage and opened with All Fired Up, one of her later hits. Her guitar player (who is also her husband), Neil Giraldo (also known as Spyder) had some really great looking guitars and I really liked his sound. She performed Hit Me With Your Best Shot (of course) and the crowd really got into it. Other songs she performed included Love Is A Battlefield, We Belong, Promises In The Dark, and Hell Is For Children. If you're not familiar with this song, it's a song she wrote nearly thirty years ago about child abuse. As she explained to the crowd, "We will continue to perform this song at every show we do until every child is safe." I had tears in my eyes and chills down my spine while they played this one.

As Benatar's set came to a close, I started to panic. She hadn't done the ONE song I really wanted to hear....

Literary Rock (or, just pretty pictures)

I'm having writer's block at the moment when it comes to actual music and Fred's post about the book The ABC's of Rock got me to thinking about some books I've enjoyed recently by various musicians and bands. So, here's a list of some titles you might enjoy....

U2 by U2:  I'll state right off the bat here that I've been a HUGE fan for over 25 years now and if the ability to time travel ever becomes a reality one of my first stops would be their show in 1985 at Compton Terrace outside of Phoenix (anyone remember THAT venue?) I was only 12 at the time and there's no way my parents would have allowed me to go, but I remember wanting to go see this band that I didn't know a whole lot about but that I was very intrigued by. I'll have to share the story of how I first heard them some other time (and no, it was NOT Bono who got my attention at first.) Anyway, about the book....