AOR Heaven NEH Records Z-Roxx Loud 1 Groove Machine Destiny Hot Tracks Target Wishing Well Perris Visual Vinyl       DAVID HUNGATE / Mecca - Bass Hi David. You are one of the legends of this rock genre, having started your recording career many years ago. Was Toto your first band? My recording career actually began in 1969....Toto began in 1977. Wow…Ok! Looking back, is their any particular segment of your career that you enjoyed most and consider the most rewarding? The period from the recording of Boz Scaggs' "Silk Degrees" (late '75) through Toto IV (1981) was the best. I worked on a number of projects with musicians like Jeff Porcaro, Dean Parks, Lukather, Jay Graydon, Ray Parker, David Paich, David Foster, and others....great rhythm sections, and some great pop/R&B music. No drum machines or click tracks...we just played. Is there a low point that stands out at all? My two years on the A&R staff of MCA Nashville (1985,86). I did very little playing and missed it greatly. What caused you to leave Toto at a period where the band was very successful? In 1982 I had already moved to Nashville and was getting my ...

Hey John, how are you going? I'm very good thanks, how have you been? Fantastic mate. I don't know if you remembered but I did interview you about 18 months ago... two years maybe. Well I do actually have a vague recollection, but it's a while ago. It was a while ago; in fact, it was when… just before When You Were Mine came out. Oh God, that is a while ago. So how have you been? Very good thanks. Very busy, thank God. Yeah, OK. Absolutely. Where are you calling from actually? From Tasmania, Australia. Oh you're calling from Australia, great. Fantastic. Any excuse to cover you, basically. God bless you. I've been trying to get a hold of you for an interview for about 3-4 months, I reckon. You're a busy man. Well it's all picked up recently. I've been doing the Journey thing, the Peter Frampton thing. The tour went on… It's been so busy, it's been like the old days, like knocking out an album and getting right back on the road. It's been very enjoyable. Fantastic. How did you find the experience with Journey? Well I didn't see much of them. I mean, Neal came out ...

Queensryche Interview - Interview conducted Thursday 20th October 2001. Geoff Tate, who is the lead vocalist for Seattle's own Queensryche, took the time to talk to Justin Donnelly about the bands new double live album 'Live Evolution'. Why a live album at this stage in your career? It wasn't planned at all, and was a kind of a spontaneous in our decision to make it. Our new record company Sanctuary inspired it. We went out to dinner after they came to see us play, when someone suggested we should do a live record. The next day, following a lovely dinner and several bottles wine, we had an agreement to do a live record. (Laughs) How was the track selection organised? Did you decide to slip in some tracks that hadn't been played for a while? Their (Sanctuary) idea, what they would ultimately like to see, was a well-rounded record. And the more we (The band) talked about it, we came up with more and more songs we wanted to include on it. It just turned into a big monster. Then we thought, 'Wow! We've got so many songs, why do we just represent our entire career by taking a couple of ...

T h e Time Passes I n t e r v i e w         Hey Kelly, thanks for your time again. The album's out in Europe, are Frontiers are going to do the US release for you? If I can get something better, they'll go for that. So I'm going to see if I can use some of my contacts around that I know. But any of the companies that I know are majors and they're not really keen on signing an act like me. What, good music you mean? Yeah. They want all that..., anyway. Maybe if you dye your hair blond and wear shorts or something and a baggy top. And pierce everything and brand my face. And play music with no melody in it at all. Absolutely. And scream a bit more. It's not a sign of age is it? Definitely not. I think we just like good music. Yeah, we do. And you know what? I've got some kids on the site that e-mail me and say, hey, I'm nineteen and I haven't been corrupted by the crap on MTV. Some of those kids do like good music. That's cool. That's great. ...

    Thanks for calling, great to talk to you again. Yeah, Rindell gave me a heads up yesterday, said we were going to finally do this, you know. I've been putting this off because I thought it would be better to do like sometime before the record was coming out...it kept on getting pushed back. Is there any way I can get a little more volume out of your phone? Possibly. You can't hear me real well? Not that well. OK. Now I can hear you pretty well. Maybe its just a case of redialing or... <break> That's definitely what it is, it's a bit of my tinitus. So the years of standing next to an amplifier have taken there toll? That and a lot of the symbols, you know, symbols are like really loud when you get drummers up on risers, you know, the sound comes right down directly at your ears. And, you know, loud motorcycles <laugh>, loud guitars and loud motorcycles. You ride do you? Yeah Where about, just around your home there? Yeah, well, you know, I go for a longer ride sometimes with friends, you know, we'll go...I've ...

    I can not tell you how long I've been bugging Rindell to set this up for me, and hoping that it would come together. Because I am a huge fan of your work, let me say. I'm flattered, I truly am. I've read your reviews and the kind words that you've said about me. I'm thankful, I truly am. You have some big shoes to fill. I think you've done it with ease. For me, although I've been at this for nearly three years now, it still seems, for this first record, I still feel like we got a ways to go as far as finding the right niche. But I think we're on the right track. I think every time we play together whether it's rehearsal, recording or shows, we still get a little closer to our final destination. And I think as time goes by, I think by the next record, I think we're going to get it. If you like it this time out, I hope to think you'll really like it next time, cause I think it will be that much more where it should be. We did a lot of experimenting through the ...

  So Johnny, the first question I should be asking you, is what have you spent your time doing with life after Hardline? Well, me and Joey started an e-commerce company that's going real well. Really? In 2000 we're going public What exactly is the company? It's a company called FULLe-com. What we do is handle the complete end-to-end transaction for an Internet site. Pretty much the Internet company comes to us and we don't do anything on the front end, we don't build sites or anything like that. We're all back office. We'll handle all the credit card authorizations. We have 327,000 square feet of distribution. We ship the product direct to the consumer. We do all the data storage and online reporting. We run Internet business for about 600 corporations. We started in a little eight by eight office 2 years ago in a little 3 car garage. We have 55 employees just on this coast. We have offices in New York and Vienna, Austria. Who else is the 'we' in that?! My brother Joey and myself run the company. Joey is CEO of the company. My sister is also involved. You are either incredibly smart cookies or had some fantastic advice or both? ...

I am totally floored at the quality of the album. Really? Yeah it was above and beyond what I was expecting to hear. Oh thank you. We're huge rock fans and I gotta tell you there were a lot of ways we could've done this record. The musical climate right now in the U.S and I'm pretty sure around the rest of the world and the thing we were up against when we made this record was to either do what we'd done all along and pay attention to our roots like early Van Halen, Aerosmith, Kiss and AC/DC or we could have gone the other way and totally gone industrial with loops and all different kinds of stuff and make that kind of record. But you know what we couldn't have done that because we're not that kind of band. We're a real rock band. I'm so pleased to hear that because several years ago there were a lot of bands making music influenced by the early '80's and the '70's and making records in that vein, but bands today, I don't know who they're influenced by. I wonder what did they grow up on. ...

February 2000 and Jeff watson is hard at work at his home studio on a new instrumental album. I talked to Jeff about that, Night Ranger's 20th anniversary, why Neverland never got the exposure it should have, the re-issue of Around The Sun and a bunch of other stuff.... G'Day Jeff! G'Day Andrew Hey how are you? I'm doing good, I'm working in the studio. Oh good, you got a few minutes to talk? Certainly. Tell me about what you're doing right now? At the moment I'm cutting a steel stringed classical guitar piece with a little bit of electric slide over them for another instrumental record like my first one, 'Lone Ranger' that came out early '90's. I'm shopping that in Japan, Europe and America. More of like the 'Windham Hill' and 'Higher Octave' kind of stuff. This is a little more intricate than that because it's a higher degree of difficulty due to some of the classical pieces I wrote. So that's coming out real good. I'm getting a real good response. I just did a song for a movie. It's a huge animation thing, a lot like Pokemon which is very very popular. I had never heard ...

Thanks for taking my call Robin. So how ya doing? I'm doing good. So how is Australia this morning? A beautiful sunny day. Nice Saturday morning in summer, it's great. You have the day off, and you're calling me - what a guy. No get real! I'm pleased to catch up with you. Like I said the other day I've been a fan since Perfect Timing. On no, now you're making me feel really old. That's not that long ago! Maybe I should start back there at the beginning. Where were you before MSG, Grand Prix right? When I was in Grand Prix, ironically I was approached by Michael at that time. Grand Prix was playing in London and they came down to a show. We were scheduled to go out on tour, I think with Sammy Hagar on the Standing Hampton tour. At the time I let it go and got some bad press out of it. 'Who does he think he is refusing this gig' & 'He mustn't know what's good for his career'. Blah blah blah....(That's Robin saying that, not me editing the interview!!) After Grand Prix I was part of a project GMT with Brian ...

Congratulations on the new album. Thankyou. Have you heard it yet? I certainly have. I've heard it and reviewed it and I'm a big fan of it. Great, it's on your website. I haven't been able to get online for the last 10 or 15 days or so. It's the lead off review right now so. Actually my laptop is broken at the moment so I can't get online. Now going back about 18 months or so I heard a tape of demos for it which were a lot more mellow And obviously a lot more unfinished and at the time I thought it was going to be a fairly mellow pop album but you've really come out fighting with it. Yeah we changed it a little bit didn't we. How did the change come around? Well when you play live you have to rock you know, you have to be energetic, you can't play ballads all the time. So we just decided we wanted to make the songs a little harder instead of soft. Bigger variety. We always thought we had to follow a certain theme but I don't agree with that anymore. I think the fans deserve a wider variety of ...

Hey Keith, I haven't seen much info on you out there, so we might go right back and get the basics from ya! You are based in Texas, right? Always been a Texan? Yes, I'm currently living in Beaumont, TX. Born and raised here, I feel blessed to have grown up in such a musically rich area that such musicians as Billy Gibbons, Janis Joplin and Edgar & Johnny Winter to name a few, came from. When did you start singing? Well, I actually started playing drums first at the age of four. I never wanted to be the front man, I hated the way my voice sounded at the time. I was more or less talked into it by friends and a few beers of course. I guess that was around 1995. Shortly after that I met Jonathan Grell and we formed Mudpie. Who were your influences growing up? My parents took me to see Three Dog Night when I was four and it was all over after that. I remember begging for Frampton Comes Alive, which I received for my sixth birthday, and then it was the usuals...Kiss, Hendrix etc... And now - are differences in what influences ...

Hey Harry. So the album is called Rubber then? Yep! So the album is called Rubber - maybe that's what you are going to call yourselves now for outside Japan? Yeah. We decided to change the name for everywhere except Japan, cause things are going so well for us in Japan, but we thought a good tie in would be to produce the same album cover and call the album Rubber. Sure, that makes for a smooth transition then doesn't it? Well hopefully, yeah..haha. Love the Rubber ducky by the way. Haha thanks! Canadian release date? Not until the New Year. They are going to be starting to go to radio in Jan - so either late Feb. or beginning of March release. It's going to be quite staggered because the Harem Scarem record isn't coming out anywhere but Japan. So we are really going to be concentrating getting things in motion for this release for Rubber and because it's a new thing they want to have a long build up time to get things organized. And we are also going to be working on other territories that we have let slip in the last few years. We are ...

A year on from my first Interview with John Waite and at a much more likable hour of the day - I caught up with the AOR legend via phone to his new Los Angeles home. More informal this time around, I really enjoyed this interview and thought John's replies were relaxed and quite funny in places. See what you think! Hey John. Andrew - how are you doing? Very well thanks. Yourself? Well I just knocked a big hole out of my guitar, trying to pick it up! Pretty good though - the sun's shining out here and everything's hunky dory! It's been a while since we had our last chat. Yeah, was that the one where it was like 3a.m. and you were sitting in front of a wood heater or something? That was me! Hahaha. Are you in the same place? Yeah, except this time it is a decent hour (midday) and it's summer, so I am not freezing my ass off! Yeah, it's tomorrow there isn't it? That's it! So you are in LA now - what inspired you to move out to LA? Well I was on the second single from my last album ...

  After many attempts at getting Dann on the phone, I was finally able to last week for a brief chat in between recording sessions in a Nashville studio. What you read may not be exactly what you wanted to hear, but at least the door is open to the chance of a new Giant record...maybe!   Hey Dann. Have you got a few minutes to talk? I sure do. I appreciate your time, thank you. Well it's great to get you on the phone. Yeah, sorry it's taken so long. No problem, it's just great to be able to talk to you. So how's life? Fine. You know, working ahead every day. Doing what seems like the same thing…but somehow you seem to make some headway and over a period of time you look back and see what you've done and it's more than you think when you are doing it. Well you've got quite an impressive body of work if I might say so, both as a producer and as a session guy now. Yeah well the session stuff has definitely been the predominant. Are you enjoying the producing side of it? Yeah it's kinda always ...

  Joe Lynn Turner: The Usual Suspect. Joe Lynn Turner talks about his new solo album, life with Richie, nursing Yngwie and some other great stories! Thanks to Ron Higgins for his work transcribing this interview!     Hey Joe, Nice to talk to you. Right. I appreciate your time. No, I appreciate your time. I mean, what took us so long to get on the phone and do an interview? I'm not sure. I don't know, because I love your site. I'm always on it. Thank you. I'm always checking things and checking new releases and who's doing what to whom. Honestly I am because I really do appreciate your take on what's good, what's not good, and so on. Well, hopefully I get it right most of the time. Oh, I think you do. That's what I mean, most people get it wrong most of the time, so you're on the other end of the spectrum. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate that. I mean that. No kidding. I'm not just kissing your ass. I'm not. I'm just saying, I check and see what you do. I listen to sound bytes and I go, “Hmm, I think Andrew's on ...

I was sitting at home when the phone rang. Andrew please...Yes, that's me...Ian Gillan here....sure Ian, yeah how are you?... Now that caught me off guard big time, but I managed to compose myself 2 days later for an interview. Ian was one of the most intelligent and interesting people I have spoken to. I would love more time someday to discuss things in greater depth, but for now, see what you think! Hello Andrew. Have I got the right time? You bet! How are you? Where are you calling from? I am looking out of my hotel window over the Bay Of Naples. I am in Italy. Fantastic! Yeah, it is pretty spectacular. I am actually recovering. They make a brew here called Strager. It is a liqueur, and it means the witch! I think it had one too many last night! haha. One too many Witches? Yeah, one too many of the Witches brew. haha. So you are out now on the Deep Purple Abandon tour? Yeah we just kicked off in Istanbul, where I called you from the other day. We are going to be on the road for a year I guess. Maybe 15 months. ...