The Terrible Catsafterme

…Giddy London, home of the brash, outrageous and free…This is just one of many songs by Morrissey or The Smiths that mention places in or around London, places that I kept seeing or hearing throughout our stay. A few more examples:…all around Sloane Square…3am Northside Clapham Common…Train heave on to Euston…the Piccadilly palare was just silly slang…Turns out, all of these places are real places, not just song lyrics. I found this out as I finally got a chance to actually tour London, where our hotel and home base had been for the past week. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, here’s someone I never expected to meet and probably would have never sought out. His name is Joe Dallesandro and I would guess that most of you have never heard of him. He was, however, one of the most famous male sex symbols of American undergound films and the gay subculure of the 1960′s and 70′s. Dallesandro was one of the so-called Warhol superstars, which was a group of ‘personalities’ promoted by artist Andy Warhol. Read the rest of this entry »

Richie Scarlet is not a Big 7 member, but he plays one on stage. He had worked with former KISS member Ace Frehley in the first incarnations of his solo band and then returned to be a prominent player on this third solo studio album Trouble Walkin’. This album was cool in that it was technically as much of the original KISS as KISS themselves then were, as it also featured drummer Peter Criss as a guest performer on a few tracks. Read the rest of this entry »

The early-1990′s hair metal band Slaughter was sort-of a cousin to Big 7 band KISS. It was out of the ashes of the Vinnie Vincent Invasion (Vinnie Vincent being the last KISS member to introduce a new style of make-up before the band ‘unmasked’) that Slaughter was formed. Mark Slaughter was the lead vocalist for both. Interestingly, he didn’t appear on the first VVI album, although they had selected him from his audition tape. He had forgotten to include his contact info and they couldn’t track him down before their debut album was recorded. And in the final twist of irony, the only time that I actually saw Slaughter perform, they were opening up for KISS in June of 1990. Read the rest of this entry »

I got back to the Links condo from my excursion to Raleigh, North Carolina, on Wednesday, July 29, 2009,  just in time to meet up with everyone and head out for our 5:30 pm dinner reservations at the Miyabi Japanese steakhouse.  While I had been gone, two brothers named Stephen and David, who were friends of Ashleigh’s from home, drove down to meet up with her. Somehow Ashleigh had managed to get everyone’s approval for them to stay there the night before. I still hadn’t even met them and they didn’t go to dinner with us. Read the rest of this entry »