Erie’s Nazty Boys

Jenna Croyle

In the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s Glam metal, otherwise known as pop metal swept the country, offering a new and creative sound that millions fell in love with. Much like the rest of the nation, the make-up, gaudy clothing, leather jeans and spandex seemed to catch the attention of Erie music lovers.

Formed in 2006, Shag Nazty has taken traditional hard rock and heavy metal songs to new and innovative levels, while composing originals that have a creative mix of punk rock with a splash of pop-influences, combining catchy hooks and guitar riffs that make for a dynamic musical treat.

The fist-pumping riffs and energy driven guitar licks of T.J. Colvin creates a wave of old school shredding, while giving the band a sleek and modern sound.

The rapid fire and thunderous drumming of Kevin Reynolds not only keeps up with, but also adds to the energy and balance of masterful riffs and lightning shreds generated at every Shag Nazty show.

Joey Lorei is a top of the line bassist with the fundamental skills of old school metal with new school sound and power. Lorei always keeps perfect rhythms with exact timing while expertly blazing through octaves & fifths for a truly amazing addition to the Shag Nazty experience.

The lead singer, Ed Gangemi lends his distinctively incredible vocal skills to round out the talent packed crew that is Shag Nazty. As a veteran rocker, Gangemi pours his heart and soul into every song he sings with all the emotion, power and energy that each song demands while at all times being a crowd-pleasing sensation at every show. Ideal for Shag Nazty’s brand of Rock, Gangemi’s voice pierces the boundaries of talent for a raw, unbridled sound that resonates passion and a true love of music.    

Covering a wide variety of classic tunes such as songs by Dio, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Alice in Chains and Quiet Riot along with vast array of original material that the band has to offer their fans, makes Shag Nazty a power packed, show-stopping dynamo of a total entertainment package.

Never boring, always entertaining and talent packed, Shag Nazty has earned their spot in the Erie music hall of fame, if it existed.

For more information on Shag Nazty or their show dates, please visit Shag Nazty Facebook.

Nommin On The No-Nos In The No-No Tour, Part II

Inside Tour With In The Day and Tuesdays Too Late

By Drew Chiodo

So here we are, FINALLY hitting the stage for the first time on tour in the small town of Muncie Indiana. We have been waiting for this moment since the weeks prior to tour. All our preparation and hard work were about to come to life here on this stage… in front of 13 people. Well, at least it’s a show right?

In a business like this, you can never expect to be playing sold out venues, especially when you are barely known band 300 miles away from your own home turf. The best thing you can do in situations like this is play a tight and energetic set, so that the people at the show like you and can pass the word on to their buddies… but I guess we would have to play well for this to happen. Needless to say, Muncie Indiana was not our night.

Now, as someone who has been touring off and on for a little while, you know no one wants to hear your excuse of why you didn’t play well nor does anyone actually care, but here is the scoop. One of the big reasons we didn’t play well was because of the incompetent sound guy.

One of the biggest and best tips to remember when preparing to play a show is to play and set up just like you practice. Well, the sound guy made this nearly impossible. He had the genius idea to make us play with our amps facing each other on the side of the stage. This act is usually used when your amp is only for tone and the PA system carries out your sound to a huge room. This, however, was not the case. We couldn’t hear anything from on stage and ended up playing a not terrible set, but a below average set for ourselves. This is not the best way to start your tour out.

Nicely enough though, we sold a good deal of merchandise and made our guarantee for the night. This is all a band on the road can really ask for. Now we had money for gas and some food on the journey.

The promoter for the show was nice enough to let all 11 of us stay at his brothers house for the night, which by the way is MUCH nicer than sweating your life away in a van in a Wal Mart parking lot. I sat up for a while and edited our tour video a bit and then immediately proceeded to pass out on my cot.

After some much needed sleep and a nice sink-shower, the rest of the band and myself were ready to head out to our next show in Greenville Ohio. Oh wait, what’s this? Another problem? Great, exactly what this tour needs.

So we receive and email saying the headlining band for our show in Greenville dropped off, thus cancelling the show all together. So here we were again, showless, homeless and stranded in another parking lot wondering what in Gods name we were going to do. The harassing calls to the promoter ensued to get out guarantee for the show, which surprisingly, came pay palled to us within hours.

Our journey took us to IHop for some much needed fuel. After mowing down a plethora of waffles and syrup, we had some down time that we needed to kill. This is when we spotted almost a sign from above right across the street, a hotel swimming pool. Being that we were all broke at this point, obviously we couldn’t afford a room. So we began an inspection of the hotel.

Andy from Tuesdays Too Late and myself began to see if there was a possibility to sneak 11 loud-mouthed adults into a swimming pool without being caught and our asked to leave by the staff. After a quick walk-through it was apparent, we really just didn’t care if we got kicked out or not, we wanted that swim. So one by one, all 11 of us crowed into that hotel swimming pool and had us a good ole pool party.

After swimming for well over an hour, we crossed the street yet again into the laundry mat to avoid hotel security. Even though it wasn’t like we were stealing TVs or making a mess of their facility, they still look down upon 11 sweaty dudes contaminating their pool.

Once our clothes were dry at the laundry mat, we continued our journey onto one of our highlights for the trip, Sandusky Ohio. This planned day off was to be spent in you guessed it, Cedar Point! We had all saved up specifically for this day. Making sure we had the proper funds to support a day of nothing but roller coasters and over-priced food.

Little did most of us realize, Cedar Point has raised their prices over the years. The current price for an all day pass at Cedar Point is now $47.99, which was a little bit out of some of the bands price range. This is where our ingenuity and creativeness come into play.

So we contact Cedar Point asking about group rates, a group is 15, not 11. Four short eh? Well screw it, maybe we can find four people that want to join our group and save a little money. We scored big with this one. We managed to find the one dad that you could tell wasn’t too excited to pay almost $200.00 for his nagging wife and kids to ride coasters all day. This man literally stiff-armed his way to our group to safe a couple of bucks on his vacation.

Tickets ended up being only $33.00 for the day, not too shabby if you ask me. Plus, we helped a family out by saving them $60.00 on tickets. Win Win for everyone, well for everyone but Tony who ended up dishing out $363.00 in cash because we all had debit cards. He quickly learned getting money from 10 other broke dudes in bands is not an easy task.

So after a day of sunburn and fun, we were off to Alliance Ohio for our second show in five days. This show, well lets just say that promoter probably won’t be calling either of our bands anytime soon, unless it’s to fix his stage or to complain more about Tuesday’s Too Late dedicating their last song “Thanks For Nothing” to him and his sketchy venue.

Come read next week and find out the early conclusion to the Nommin On The No-Nos In The No-No Tour and what exactly made us almost end In The Day for good. Lets just say 80% of the band members nearly avoid a tragic death via “impaired driver” and why Nelmis is no longer with us. That poor, poor van never saw it coming. She will be missed.

R.I.P Nelmis

Brian Eno: from the Velvet Underground to Burial

By Rob Fitzpatrick

The former Roxy Music synth twiddler's fingerprints are all over hits by U2, Coldplay and David Bowie, but he's most fascinated by musicians who 'don't completely understand their territory'

I'm bloody awful at multi-tasking," says Brian Eno as he simultaneously polishes some attractive brown leather boots and talks about, well, anything you like, really. Of course, Eno can multi-task rather well. In fact, if you take a look around his studio in a quiet London mews it would appear he can handle all sorts of things: there are paintings and guitars and keyboards and computers running wonderfully obtuse programs, books, odd collage pieces, analogue reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, vinyl albums and compact discs (the latter are his favorite way to listen to music).

For 40 years now Brian Eno has devoted his life to being anything but a mere musician. His workspace is part-museum, part-laboratory, part playground; the place where he runs riot. Eno has known pop stardom in his time, having worn a feather boa and twiddled a synthesizer's wobbly bits for art-rock legends Roxy Music in their glam 70s heyday on Top Of The Pops (Rolling Stone called Eno's style "happy amateurism"). But that's just one facet. As a scientist, he contributed a chime for a clock that will only ring once every 10,000 years. And as an artist, he once wrote a soundtrack for an experimental video that only "worked" if you turned your TV on its side.

Despite his best efforts however, Eno isn't exactly what you'd call obscure. It's likely you hear more of his work and influence than you realize; not only has he produced three decades' worth of global, radio-eating hits for U2, Coldplay, Talking Heads and David Bowie, he has, by circumventing the norms in song structure and melodic progression, changed the way we hear and process music by others. His influence on dance music is just as great. If you were to remove his records and ideas from the cultural memory then you'd have to take great chunks of acid house, ambient house, jungle, krautrock, dubstep and techno out, too. Multi-tasking is not beyond Brian Eno

Ostensibly, we're here today to talk about Eno's new "spoken word" record, Drums Between The Bells, a collaboration with poet Rick Holland. It's a fine collection, infinitely warm in a post-rave, early-90s, all-back-to-Brian's sort of way. Holland's words are spoken by a variety of different people, including, on the sublime Dreambirds, a woman who works in Eno's local health club.

"I was queuing up and I heard this amazing voice," he says, tucking a brush into the polish. "So I asked her to come back to the studio and read a little."

Did you have to assure her you weren't, you know, an oddball?

"It's all right, she knew me!" he laughs. Eno says this new record is about noticing "moments of energy between music and a voice and trying to make more of them". It's an idea he's become more and more involved with having largely lost interest in the idea that singer should be at the centre of music and that pop music itself is somehow autobiographical.

"It's insane that since the Beatles and Dylan it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves," he says, "It's that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings he's telling you something about his own life. It's so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway! This is my problem with Tracey Emin; who fucking cares?

"I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, 'Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!'" Eno laughs. "Someone like Bowie never wrote those sorts of songs. People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them. Bowie played a double game as well as he appeared to live it, too. He played with the form and the expectations brilliantly."

While that dismissal may sound jaded, Eno is not without enthusiasm. Far from it. On one of the shelves in the studio sits a large pine box that holds the six-CD set Goodbye Babylon, a collection of rare, vintage religious music recorded between 1902 and 1960. Eno says it's this very collection that has recently reignited his love for popular music all over again.

"It's just bursting with incredible ideas," he says, "all these amazing ways of singing. I don't know what these people are doing, I don't know how they got to this music; it makes me think, 'What did they think they were doing? Is it rules and principles, or is it pure pleasure?' That's an exciting idea."

If there appears to be a thread apparent in Eno's current taste – one of conflict or contrast – it apparently applies to his interest in current music, too. "Sometimes I can't listen to pop music for a long time," he says. "Then other times I think, 'Christ! It's terrifying how much is going on!' I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work."

One recent CD had a track on which Eno was excited by in the sense it was "nearly brilliant" but just missed something. He found out later it was a song from Radiohead's King Of Limbs.

"They hadn't quite exploited all the drama in the mix," Eno says. "As a listener there was an opportunity missed. But it's such a good record …"

'Burial is so curiously clumsy you can't help but be moved. It's so un-Hollywood and the rhythms are so un-danceable'

Recently asked to choose some new music for a BBC radio show, he was caught between wanting to introduce to people things they've not heard and might like, but also having an aversion to being willfully obscure.

"I'd like people who hear it to think, 'He's a bit of a twat but he knows a tune …'" We go on to talk about Toronto's Owen Pallett (he of Final Fantasy fame) and how his song Keep The Dog Quiet "starts on the worst possible note he could sing; it's like a mistake, but it's fantastic …" and Eno reveals he likes dubstep more in principle than in fact.

"I love its completely confident embrace of all known recording technologies," he says. "And I love how it's not all horrible and computery, but it's just not a music I very often have reason to play."

So, you enjoy a quick spot of the old womp-womp then move on?

"Exactly!" he says. "Then perhaps some Joni Mitchell. I do like Burial, he's so curiously clumsy you can't help but be moved. It's so un-Hollywood and the rhythms are so un-danceable."

It is, I suggest, dance music you can't dance to.

"And that," he laughs, putting the finished boots on the floor in front of him, "is the very thing that is so very appealing about it. I love the Velvet Underground and they had a drummer (Mo Tucker) who couldn't drum."

We move to a bench outside to better enjoy the afternoon sunshine. Across the way a bewhiskered gent is piloting a heavy, royal blue Jaguar. As Eno leans forward to talk to the man I notice the scar on his head. In early 1975, while walking home from a recording studio, Eno was hit by a taxi and nearly killed. A few weeks later, as he slowly recovered at home, a friend brought over an LP of 18th-century harp music. They put the record on then left, but the stereo was so quiet Eno could barely hear the music over the rain on the windows. Tuned out, he realized he heard light and color and texture as well as sound. So ambient music was born.

At the time, Eno was being launched as a solo artist. His first solo album, 1974's Here Come The Warm Jets, was a full-on, deliciously odd pop record that battled it out in the charts with the Eagles and Isaac Hayes.

"I was interested in sound design," he says, "and there wasn't any competition. Music was becoming like painting; that's why so many art students like me were so comfortable with it. And it was an easy gig, to be honest."

Now Eno occupies the role of Britain's favorite cultural polymath, someone as delighted by an online radio station from New Zealand called Radio Active ("I'm sure there's rather a lot of high-quality ganja involved in the mix") as he is discussing the late experimental British composer Cornelius Cardew's political shift from minarchism to totalitarianism. Frankly, we are lucky to have him.

A taxi arrives to ferry Eno to a radio interview. In 1978, I tell him, the now defunct Musician, Player And Listener magazine described him as "a good, clear-headed producer, a limited instrumentalist, an adequate vocalist, but a less than memorable melodist". How close were they to nailing you? Eno laughs out loud for some considerable time.

"That's very, very funny," he says. "I love the part about being a less than memorable melodist. Well, I've never had any delusions about what I'm good at and, to be fair, they have sort of identified that. But what's different is that 1978 was the era of musicians, while now is the era of producers. Like the 18th and 19th century was about those who understood the great innovation of that time: the orchestra. Today's great innovation is the studio, the recording process and that every piece of music, apart from being a sonic pleasure, is an experiment in social organization. There is a morality there, a producer tries to make the social unit work, and so the music you make is a statement of belief about how society could work."

He pauses and picks up the shiny leather boots: "It's quite deep really, isn't it?"

Brian Storm: six of Brian's best

HERE COME THE WARM JETS (ISLAND, 1974)

The sound of super-warped glam enlivened by breezily surreal art-pop. Eno succinctly described his debut album as having an "idiot glee" to it.

AMBIENT 1: MUSIC FOR AIRPORT (EG, 1978)

Brilliantly simple and reflective piano and choral pieces designed purely to give you a space to exist in; this is ambient music's Kind Of Blue.

BRIAN ENO & DAVID BYRNE: MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS (SIRE/POLYDOR, 1981)

Long, elliptical grooves, African and Middle Eastern folk singers and bizarre, ripped-from-the-radio cassette-based ephemera.

SILVER MORNING, from APOLLO ATMOSPHERES AND SOUNDTRACKS (EG, 1983)

Daniel Lanois's country-scented guitar piece has, thanks to Eno, the same weightlessness as the astronauts it celebrated.

HAROLD BUDD: THE PEARL (EG, 1984)

Budd is the master of improvised, minimalist piano, and Eno's production makes this a fantastically textured album of great subtlety and charm.

ANOTHER GREAT DAY ON EARTH (OPAL, 2005)

Twenty-eight years after he last sang, Eno returns with words and melodies to accompany the liquid electronica and sublime ambient-pop. Actually lovely.

Jack Barlow Dead at 87
By Beville Darden

One of country music's most beloved jack of all trades has passed away at the age of 87.

Jack Barlow started his career singing in local clubs in his hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, upon his return from serving in the Navy in World War II. His soothing baritone caught the attention of the owner of KWPC radio, who saw Jack perform at a local Kiwanis club and then tracked him down on his parents' farm.
 

Jack had several hits throughout the 1960s, including 'I Love Country Music,' 'Birmingham Blues' and 'Catch the Wind.' He continued to record into his golden years, releasing his final album, 'I Live the Country Songs I Sing,' in 2007.

The 6'4" singer also had a few hits under the name Zoot Fenster, the biggest being 1975's 'I Wish I Was the Man on Page 602.' The novelty song was inspired by the true story of an underwear model pictured in a 1970s Sears catalog. The photo showed what some argued was a bit too much of the model, but Sears insisted it was just a shadow. Jack, who did not write the song, was too embarrassed to record it under his own name. So, his buddy D.J. Fontana, a former drummer for Elvis Presley, suggested he record it under the phony name. It went on to become a Top 30 hit.

Yet another job came to Jack in the 1970s, after he sang a now iconic commercial jingle for Big Red chewing gum. That gig led to literally thousands of voiceover jobs for the singer, including ads for Budweiser and Busch beers, Chrysler, Dodge, Kraft and Kelloggs.

Jack died after battling an undisclosed illness for several years. He is survived by his wife, Dianne, seven children and several grandchildren. Music Row reports that a public memorial service will be held August 13 at 5:00 PM CT at the Harpeth Hills Memorial Garden Funeral Home in Nashville.

New music: Noel Gallagher – The Death of You and Me

Listen to Noel Gallagher's debut solo single and tell us if you think it sounds a bit .... like Oasis 

will change with the release of his first solo single, The Death of You and Me.

In many ways it's exactly what you would expect from a Noel Gallagher song: a pretty, Kinks-esque acoustic shuffle, creaky falsetto, rhyming "city" with "pretty" and "pity". But the chorus has a lovely melody and the New Orleans brass adds an element of the unexpected to a song that feels instantly familiar.

• The Death of You and Me is released on 21 August

Paul Simon Performs 'Graceland' in South Africa for Upcoming Doc
By Daniel Kreps

Somewhere between the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind and the 30th anniversary of MTV lies the 25th anniversary of Paul Simon's landmark album Graceland. To celebrate the album that helped introduced African music to rock fans and inspired a generation of Vampire Weekends, Simon performed the entire LP in its entirety last night at a small TV studio in South Africa for an upcoming documentary about the making of Graceland. .

Last night's performance featured many of the artists who appeared on the 1986 version, including guitarist/arranger Ray Phiri, bassist Bakithi Kumalo, drummers Vusi Khumalo and Isaac Mtshali, and singer Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Billboard.biz reports. "It's a great joy to be reunited after so many years," Simon said. "When I landed in South Africa, it felt like I was coming home. It's such a nice feeling." No word whether Chevy Chase was on hand to lip-synch "You Can Call Me Al."

What I Saw At The Mayhem Festival
Awesome bands, ugly T-shirts and awful ink
Posted by pdfreeman

I went to the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival tour yesterday at PNC Bank Arts Center in NJ. I was there all damn day, more or less; I left just after Megadeth finished their set, so I missed the final two bands, Godsmack and Disturbed. But I did get to see almost everyone on the two sub-stages, and that was pretty cool.

If you've never been to Mayhem, the Jagermeister and Revolver stages are set up facing each other on opposite sides of a blazing hot parking lot. As soon as a band on one stage finishes, a band on the other stage starts. There's no break from the music from roughly 2 PM to 6 PM, and then the main stage bands start up.

Bands that impressed me the most: Straight Line Stitch, whose front woman has a good voice and can really rile up the crowd; Kingdom of Sorrow, because Jamey Jasta is a hell of a frontman (and was very helpful routing EMTs through the pit to help out a guy who smacked his head on the pavement, without missing a vocal cue); Machine Head, who I've seen four times now and they've never been bad (even during their nu-metal period); and Trivium, who I've never seen before. They had a tough slot (first band on the main stage, playing while people were still finding their seats and getting comfortable in them after a long day of standing around in the sun) but won a lot of people over. Their bassist, Paulo Gregoletto, took advantage of the wireless sound system to make a full running circuit of the amphitheater, playing the whole time.

Bands that didn't impress me: Red Fang (stoner boogie is just boring live); Unearth (I like them, but if you can tell one song from another, you're a better man than me); Suicide Silence; All Shall Perish (too much "hey-we-smoke-weed-isn't-that-awesome?" between-song banter); Dr. Acula (a bunch of downtuned, breakdown-slathered noise with cheesy movie samples thrown in).

All things considered, it was a relatively fun day. The two-stages, no-waiting setup was a good idea. I'm wondering how much the free energy drinks being doled out (in the press tent, you could get Rockstar branded cans of pure water, which was something I took plenty of advantage of, believe me) helped with the Marine recruitment booth, which was running a pull-up contest. Plenty of sugar and caffeine + already testosterone-addled metal dudes looking to show off for chicks in the crowd = quotas achieved.

Mini-trend I spotted: T-shirts with really offensive slogans (stuff like "I'm Going To Tear Off Your Head And Sh*t Down Your Neck," "I Find You F*cking Disgusting" and the like) on the back in huge letters. These seem particularly popular among zit-faced teenagers who look like they'd burst into tears if you gave them the slap in the face expressing this kind of sentiment in an all-ages crowd should have rightfully earned them. Oh, and if I'd been taking pictures of all the terrible tattoos, "art" that should have caused the "artists" responsible to weep with shame, I would never have had time to watch a single band. Here endeth the "cranky old man" part of the recap.

Mayhem continues into August. If/when it hits your town, I say check it out.

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NEW FAN CONTEST!!

Shotgun Jubilee is in the market for a new logo! We'd like you the fans to show us what you've got! Draw something up, either by hand or with a graphic arts program and send us a .jpeg of your work. We'll choose the design we like the best. The winner will receive a free copy of our album! Please email all entries to ryan_bartosek@yahoo.com

Trace Adkins To Perform 9/11 Anniversary Concert For U.S. Troops In Germany
Singer’s 10th Album Hits Stores Tuesday
Posted by Phyllis Stark

Trace Adkins well help commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attached by performing a special USO concert for troops and their families at Ramstein Air Base in Germany in September. The concert will be part of Adkins’ sixth USO tour.

Later that month, Adkins will return to the oilrigs where he worked before his music career took off for an episode of the new GAC series, “Day Jobs.” Adkins will demonstrate the exhausting requirements of being a “roughneck” for a day for the episode that premieres on Sept. 14.

Alice Cooper and Universal Studios Team Up for 'Living Horror Movie'
By Cameron Matthews


Rock'n'roll veteran, face-paint aficionado, extreme golfer: Alice Cooper has done it all ... almost. As Rolling Stone reports, the 63-year-old rock legend has teamed up with Universal Studios to create a horror-themed maze for the park's 2011 Halloween Horror Night series.

'Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare' will include a variety a torture devices and performances including a guillotine, simulated decapitation, a giant snake and the darkest regions of Cooper's mind locked within a psych ward. Cooper states in a press release that the attractive will be a "living horror movie within screaming distance of the sound stages where horror movies first began."

Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Night series will run from Sept. 23 through Oct. 31. Will you make it out to the rockstar's terrifying maze? Or are you too cool.