As I feared, some of my early Notes seem to have disappeared from my Facebook page. I’m going to have to get some sort of website set up so that they are more available and won’t be lost. I had already printed out the first 18 months’ worth, but I took the time last weekend to print out the rest of them so that I at least have a hard copy of all of them. I was amazed at how much paper it took: I must have half a ream of copy now in these posts – this one is my 40th!
(March 2013)
The last album by Les Sinners is scarcely mentioned at all on the various Internet sources that I researched about this band; it came out in 1976 on the CBS Records label (basically, Columbia Records outside of the USA) and is called Le Chemin de Croix De Jos Roy (“The Way of the Cross for Jos Roy”).
I have no idea who or what “Jos Roy” might be. There is a poet in Quebec named Jos Roy (he even has a Facebook page), but he seems to be a contemporary artist, so I doubt he is the one.
(April 2013)
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You can learn more about Hollis Brown and get links to songs on their website – hollisbrown.com/ – and their Facebook page – www.facebook.com/hollisbrownmusic . Information on some of their music from last year is also available on the Band Camp Records website, hollisbrownmusic.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-the-famous-no-one . That label also shows a band called Biloxi that I will have to check out; as far as I know, they are not from around here.
(May 2013)
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Well, I finally did it: I wrote a note that was too long – actually, way too long – for Facebook. There is a 65,535-character limit that I was about to exceed, so I’ll have to present the rest of this month’s post separately.
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Holly Ramos has both a Facebook page – www.facebook.com/pages/Holly-Ramos/25110461394?fref=ts – and a website – www.hollyramos.com/ – though the website appears to still be under construction.
Fur bassist Danuta Gozdziewicz now goes by the name Danusia Roberts Trevino and is working as an actress. She also has a Facebook page – www.facebook.com/danusia.robertstrevino?fref=ts – and a website – www.danusiatrevino.com/members/DANUSIATREVINO/pts.html#/1// .
(June 2013/2)
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The bandleader of Silverbird is Ruben Ortiz (or Reuben Ortiz) who now goes by the name of J. Reuben Silverbird – in fact, almost the entire family now seems to use the Silverbird surname. He has a Facebook page – www.facebook.com/jsilverbird?fref=ts – and also a Facebook “fan club” page – www.facebook.com/groups/73767990708/ .
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A new band called Silverbird Family was launched more recently; they are a contemporary Christian group whose song “Happy Mother’s Day” won Reuben Ortiz semi-finalist status in the songoftheyear.com songwriting contest. This band has a Facebook website: www.facebook.com/pages/Silverbird-Family/522630197763115 . The bandmembers in Silverbird Family include Silverbird alumnus Mark Silverbird, his wife Tania Silverbird, and their three children: Natasha Silverbird (12), Richard Silverbird (10), and Caroline Silverbird (8). The website notes that these children represent the 5th generation of entertainers in their family.
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Another former bandmember in Silverbird, Gil Silverbird is active as a musician and also an author. His musical works include a 2004 album, World Peace, plus two 12-inch singles in 1986, “Fool’s Paradise” and “We Can’t Go On (Without Love)”.
Gil Silverbird and his brother Tim Silverbird (Navaho/Apache) are now performing under the name 2 CRAZY Indians. Their Facebook page is at www.facebook.com/Silverbird2CrazyIndians .
(August 2013)
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I feel no need to restate what I have already written on Wikipedia, since those articles are more readily accessible on the Internet than these Facebook posts.
(September 2013)
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Several years back, I picked up a cool album released in 2006 by a Spanish band called Suzy & los Quattro called Ready to Go!; I guess you could call a tribute to Suzi Quatro and the Quatro family. They released a second album in 2008 called Stick with It. Check them out on their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/Suzy-Los-Quattro/96136455524?sk=info .
(October 2013)
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One year ago, this series of Facebook posts took a different turn as the discussions became more free-ranging and as the text was more liberally illustrated with photographs. The UARB in December 2012 was the Invisible Eyes – still one of my favorite bands of the bunch – and I remarked at the time that I first encountered them as the first of a trio of CD’s that also included probably the best of the Iguana Chronicles CD’s, Open Up and Bleed! by Iggy and the Stooges; and the CD Les Hell on Heels by this month’s UARB, Les Hell on Heels. This all-female hard rock band has been on the short list for UARB status ever since, and it is high time for me to get on with it.
(December 2013)
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My proudest achievement is my tribute to legendary underground rock musician Mick Farren, which appeared in March 2014. I garnered a lot of praise that my friend Suzy Shaw of Bomp! Records forwarded to me – from past UARA and fellow bandmember in the Deviants, Andy Colquhoun (who posted a link on the band’s Facebook page), from Mike Stax of Ugly Things Magazine (who published my article on Milan year before last), and from Suzy Shaw herself.
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I also keep these pieces personally informative; in short, I learn a lot myself from putting these Facebook Notes together. While most of the kernels of what I write about are lodged in my brain somewhere, I coax the details from simple Google searches, with my primary sources being Wikipedia and Allmusic. For the UARB’s and UARA’s, I sometimes find myself mounting searches for hours. I often put in extended quotes that I find on-line, particularly for matters that I don’t know too much about. That is perfectly fine with Wikipedia, but not so much with other Internet source material.
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It was Dara Gould who got me to sign up for Facebook, sometime in late 2009. Not really knowing what to do with Facebook now that I was on it, I made a modest announcement on November 10, 2009:
Coming soon: UNDER-APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH. An article in Discover Magazine once said that the “beloved, unwieldy” Wikipedia included “scads of articles on virtually unknown rock bands”. I had to laugh out loud since I have done my part to add to those scads! Still, many great bands don’t yet have a Wikipedia article, or even an entry on “Allmusic”: www.allmusic.com. So I will try to remedy that.
My first post (on December 1, 2009 – they have been showing up very late in the month recently) was on Beast, a 1960’s “hippie-flavored” rock band that was introduced to me through a friend of a friend back while I was still in high school. On my third post, about the 1960’s garage rock band Cyrus Erie, I expanded the post to talk about the band more in context – in this case, as part of the 1960’s Cleveland music scene. Thus, in most cases I not only had to come up with a band that had no Wikipedia article yet (or only a “stub” at least), I wanted to find some aspect of music that I could talk about at the same time that hopefully had some sort of a connection to the UARB or the UARA.
I was not sure how long I would be able to keep this up; but every month, these articles seem to expand to fill up a sizable post and then some. With the Mick Farren tribute, I exceeded the Facebook limit of 65,536 characters for an entry under Notes, for the second time.
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One problem that I am almost certainly not going to have is running out of UARB’s and UARA’s. This past year was the most “current” list yet, with fully one-third releasing their first album during the past two decades. I haven’t counted up how many possible UARB/UARA candidates I still have in my record collection, but if I already owned another 60, it wouldn’t surprise me.
(Year 5 Review)
