September’s Questions Answered
Max Roach and Art Blakey. Hi Everyone – today it’s just answers to last month’s questions. Fabian Broicher - Date: 24.09.2011 - I've read somewhere, Bill, I just can't remember where, that you once wrote [...]
Unidentified Yes, an antique SDX
One of my two elderly Simmons SDXs goes off to a new home. See question below. Fourth of July holiday weekend, so everyone in the US will be snoozing - or, over here, catching up [...]
Garland on Bruford
With Tim Garland. Pic: David Sokol If you'd like to know a bit more about ex-Earthworks saxophonist/multi instrumentalist Tim Garland, you could do no better than catch the recent UK national BBC Radio 3 profile [...]
The right of reply
With great drummer Adam Nussbaum last night at ‘the Pizza’… Conventional wisdom has it that, like the Queen of England, working performers have no right of reply. Anyone posing as a ‘critic’ may villify you [...]
A little slice of History
L-R: Hagger, Banks, Anderson, Squire. Here's a slice of history. Mabel Greer's Toyshop was the short-lived late 1960's British band best known for having three future Yes members (Jon Anderson, Peter Banks, and Chris Squire) in its [...]
Tips on composing drum parts for songs: Part 1
The following fairly complicated question came in, and I thought it might be good to try to air an answer in public. It’s a bit long, so I’ll split the answer in two, with Part 2 to [...]
10 albums that changed my life
10 Albums that changed my life. Goldmine Magazine has had a few people offering ‘10 Albums that Changed My Life’ recently. Sounds a bit portentous, but it’s true - some of them really did change [...]
Missing persons identified!
Aymeric Leroy from France has written in to help with the unidentified people in the Gong picture below. He says: "the first person on the left seems to be Francis Linon (aka Venux de Luxe), [...]
The passing of Mick Karn
With many others I’m saddened to hear of the recent death of Mick Karn, who recently at age 52 lost his struggle with cancer. Master of the fretless snakebass, I played with him and guitarist [...]
Bruford rummages in Yes archive…
Rummaging through his early Yes posters for an upcoming book project, Bill came across this fine example of the sort of intricate poster art that was much used on the European scene in the 60s [...]