Michael “Cub” Koda (October 1, 1948 – July 1, 2000) was an American rock and roll singer, guitarist, songwriter, disc jockey, music critic, and record compiler. Rolling Stone magazine considered Koda best known for writing the song “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room”, which reached #3 on the 1974 Billboard charts as performed by Brownsville Station, and was later covered by Mötley Crüe. He co-wrote and edited the All Music Guide to the Blues, and Blues for Dummies, and put together the CD of blues classics accompanying the latter title, personally selecting versions of each song that appeared on it. (More from Wikipedia)
Link Wray’s influence is front and center on a good 50% of the records that I play, because he is credited with introducing the “power chord” on electric guitar to rock and roll, a technique whose effect is often enhanced by distortion.
Writing for Allmusic, Cub Koda calls the power chord “the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists”. I will spare you the technical details – not least because I don’t really understand them myself – but Ray Davies of the Kinks (in their classic “You Really Got Me”) and Pete Townshend of the Who (in “My Generation”) helped popularize the power chord in the early years of the British Invasion. When Townshend is performing his famous windmill guitar technique, he is typically playing power chords.
(February 2013)
Fuzz Fest is a reissue of a 1996 album by Davie Allan and the Arrows that added two other singles, “Open Throttle” and “Chopper” (plus alternative versions of both songs). Cub Koda writing for Allmusic says of this album: “Davie Allan’s playing has scarcely changed over the intervening decades, his work in various low-rent biker film soundtracks showing how he understands the form possibly better than anyone else. . . . If you’re looking for fuzz and lots of it, you came to the right place.”
(December 2014)
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