ROCHELLE HARPER (THE ROCHELLE HARPER BAND)
One local band that is a personal favorite, the Rochelle Harper Band has a little more prominence than most, and they have been active on the Coast the whole time I have lived here (more than 15 years). I have two of their CD’s that were released about 6 years apart, Live at Castaways (Castaways is another long-lived nightclub in Ocean Springs) and Mississippi Hippie Blues (the title song “Mississippi Hippie Blues” is also called “The Shed Song”, after the popular barbecue and blues joint near Ocean Springs called The Shed – they won a national competition on Live with Regis and Kelly several years ago and achieved some odd measure of fame when their website was hacked last year by a Jihadi terrorist group).
* * *
Mississippi Hippie Blues (a great title for sure) has a “Peace Note” emblem that Rochelle Harper designed, and the CD came in a proprietary CD package that she also designed called “All-n-One” that folds beautifully around the CD. Her first national release, called Lilt came out earlier this year.
(December 2015)
* * *
Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
December 2015 – 1990’s pop/punk band AMANDA JONES; Story of the Month on the early American singles by the Beatles; also, Rochelle Harper, Lisa Loeb, 3 Doors Down, Level with the Ground, Chris Stamey with Yo La Tengo, Meri Wilson, Bobby Brown, the Cruzados / the Plugz, Terence Trent d’Arby, An Emotional Fish, Bruce Hornsby and the Range, Hunters & Collectors, Looters, Shakespear’s Sister, Robert Tepper, Y Kant Tori Read / Tori Amos, Ugly Kid Joe, Paul Young, the Rolling Stones, Mandy Brix, the Joneses.
(Year 7 Review)
