January 2006 News

Various Artists: Love Sucks
It stinks, it hurts, it tears us apart. Not really the stuff of candy and flowers, huh? If you or someone you know has gotten nothing but heartache this Valentine's Day (or any other occasion involving that malevolent blood-pumping organ), this 12-song collection offers the perfect antidote.

Includes the J. Geils Band's immortal "Love Stinks," JOAN JETT's "I Hate Myself For Loving You," Gram Parsons' defining version of "Love Hurts," Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," and more.

Tracklist
Love Stinks - J. Geils Band
I Hate Myself for Loving You - JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS
Everything About You - Ugly Kid Joe
Ever Fallen In Love (with Someone You Shouldn't 've) - The Buzzcocks
Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
Pictures of You - The Cure
Answering Machine - The Replacements
You're No Good - Linda Ronstadt
I'm Not In Love - 10cc
Love Hurts - Gram Parsons
Who Loves the Sun - Velvet Underground
Glad To See You Go - Ramones

JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS will be kicking out the jams during this summer's Vans Warped Tour. The perenial punk rockers will join the longest running summer package tour that already has confirmed such acts as the Bouncing Souls, Armor For Sleep, Against Me!, Rise Against, Billy Talent, NOFX, Thursday, Motion City Soundtrack, The Casualties, Anti-Flag, Aiden, Everytime I Die, Underoath, and Paramore.

Joan is also rocking the microphone for sirius sattelite radio. She has a weekly show called The Radio Revolution with JOAN JETT, on Little Steven's Underground Garage Channel 25. The show airs every Saturday from 3-7PM and Sunday from 7 -11PM.

In related news, girl still looks hot.....

Warped founder Kevin Lyman says Jett wants to talk to the girls at tour stops.

JOAN JETT has been punk rock almost since the day she was born.

When she was 15, she was prowling the stage as a guitarist and singer in the groundbreaking all-girl group the RUNAWAYS, playing a fast and loud hybrid of American heavy metal and British punk. By the time she was in her 20s, she had produced (GI), the landmark debut album by Los Angeles gutter-punks the Germs. And by her 25th birthday, she had assembled her own brash band, the BLACKHEARTS, best known for their 1982 #1 hit "I Love Rock 'N Roll" — famously tackled by Britney Spears in her movie "Crossroads."

As it often happens in music intensive families, parents often try to pass the musical torch onto their children. That is exactly what KENNY LAGUNA’s folks tried to do, figuring that classical music would be a solid starting point for the lad. It wasn’t too long though before Kenny found that his passions were skewed in the direction of rock and roll. "I heard ‘Jailhouse Rock’ by Elvis, and I knew what I wanted to play," Kenny recalls. "Then I remember my mother telling, ‘If you want to be a drummer, we’ll get you a drum. Don’t beat on the piano!’ At any rate, I was about five years old and already knew I would make my living at music." Kenny delved into music, listening to and absorbing as much rock and roll as he could. At the age of twelve, he played in an outfit called WMCA Good Guys primarily for high school hops. WMCA was a radio station that was formerly a home of Alan Freed, and when Kenny was involved the station featured another legendary jock Jack Spector. "Jack just loved me. I knew all the songs, I worked for twenty dollars a day doing all these hops, and after that I was in. From then on I was involved in the record business."

Through his contacts at WMCA, Kenny went to work for Kama Sutra Records at the age of fifteen. It was there that the he met hit record producer Thomas Jefferson Kay, who became one of Kenny’s mentors and led the teen to the music business aspect he found he had a true passion for. Under Kay’s tutelage, Kenny helped produce the song "Emily Makes Her Own Kind Of Music" by the Nighthawks. "After that, I started making demos for Kama Sutra. Doing these demos with the songs I was writing I got to work with everybody in the studios, so I was really getting into the business. Tommy Kay and a lot of other producers there were huge influences on me." Kenny became more intensely involved in producing, although he often played or sang in the studios and on stage with some of the bands he worked with. It was in the late sixties when Kenny became immersed in the growing bubble gum rock movement, producing artists such as Ohio Express, The Archies, Jay and the Americans, and a virtual who’s who of the genre. "During a three year period, we were moving more hits than the Beatles, yet no one really knew who we were. We would sometimes make nine records a day and then go on the road with a band and come back and do more records. The labels were releasing almost everything we threw at them."

In 1969, Kenny was in Long Beach, California when an idea for a song came to him. That song was "Lord" which dealt with a Western outlaw who after being shot during a gold robbery begs the Lord to let him live long enough to see his lady one more time. A couple days later, the song was recorded under the name of Spencer Blackfoot, and included vocalist Steve Tracy, future "Grease" composer Louis St Louis" and the horn section from Meco. Many people were impressed with the song and tried to make a hit out of it, including the youthful president of MGM Records Mike Curb. Although hit status would somehow evade "Lord," Kenny’s producing talents gained widespread notice in the music industry. This helped lead to production projects with Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers, Dave Edmunds, Tony Orlando, David Essex and many other well known recording artists. In the early seventies, Kenny not only produced the album "Tighter and Tighter" by Tommy James & the Shondells, he became a member of that band for a couple years. Then in 1977, through a label contact, Kenny met a publicist who worked with The RUNAWAYS and Blondie. He ended up at a hotel in London where he was supposed to interview The RUNAWAYS to consider producing their upcoming album. "I thought that could be pretty wild, working with this all-girl band. But I didn’t have the job yet, so I went to the hotel lobby and ran into the head of Beserkley Records. He offered to give me a ride to the airport in this big limo he had, and there he told me that Cherie Currie was leaving the RUNAWAYS. So he talked me into going to California instead of staying there for this interview." Kenny went back to the Golden State, where he produced the debut album by a then unknown Beserkley artist named Greg Kihn. "The best thing for me was realizing that Greg was this cool, super talented guy who was really versatile. I’m not big at saying this guy is better than that guy, but he did seem like he really had it going." Greg Kihn’s career would explode a couple years later, and while at Beserkley, Kenny also helped produce and perhaps elevate the careers of Jonathan Richman and Earthquake.

DID YOU EVER HAVE a "Risky Business" moment a la Tom Cruise, singing into a hairbrush in the privacy of your own home?

Pleasanton's Rhonda Taylor had such a moment last October -- although hers took place in front of a video camera at a Laundromat.

Luckily, that was exactly what the "Snuggle Be A Singing Scentsation Contest" judges were looking for, and they named her a top-10 finalist in the nationwide search to create a five-mom band called "The Snuggle Scentsations."