Category: Musician

Stray Cats / Brian Setzer Orchestra: Rock This Town

I love Brian Setzer‘s spirit, energy, guitar work, and his brilliance in merging rockabilly with big band sounds, this is a taste of it. If you only have about 90 seconds or so, you can skip to the 3:30 mark and get a sense of what this is all about:

I finally got a chance to see the Brian Setzer Orchestra for their Christmas 2018 tour, and loved it so much I got 2019 tickets as soon as they were available, I had AWESOME seats.  But unfortunately the tour was cancelled – Brian was diagnosed with severe tinnitus. Hopefully he’ll recover – the original Stray Cats are just now releasing a new album so that’s a good sign. There’s no tour that I know of, but this is the age of COVID-19 and we’re still in the midst of the pandemic, so I wouldn’t expect one.  In the meantime, you can enjoy that video and many others – look for the Brian Setzer Orchestra, especially from their Christmas tours.

Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian) – Paul Revere & The Raiders, from 1971

This is one of my favorite songs from the 1970’s:

That’s “Indian Reservation”, with the subtitle “The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian”.  It was by a band called Paul Revere & The Raiders, and I’ve loved that song since I was a kid. The lead singer is Mark Lindsay. Wikipedia reports that he says he is one-eighth Cherokee, although there’s no citation behind that, and this one edit is the only edit attributed to the anonymous Wikipedia editor behind the assertion.

Regardless, it’s a great song. And recently I learned that it was a remake.  An earlier version of this song was performed by Marvin Rainwater in 1959:

I think I prefer the version by the Raiders.

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The Best Live Band Ever is performing May 4, 2019 at the legendary Carlyle Club

“The world’s best band” – that’s how Forbes magazine describes Doc Scantlin and his Imperial Palms Orchestra. It’s true, I’ve seen them several times and there is no better show imaginable. Doc and his amazing talents and his amazing friends will be performing at the Carlyle Club in Alexandria, Virginia, on May 4, 2019.

Here’s the link for tickets: Doc Scantlin and his Imperial Palms Orchestra at the Carlyle Club.