It’s vacation time already? Awesome! Time to kick back, relax, and…oh, wait, I forgot: this is only a part-time writing gig, and I still have to keep doing my full-time writing gig. Oh, well, at least this means I get a bit of a break from going completely insane on Monday afternoons as I try to finish up my column on time (and inevitably fail miserably at it).

Our commander in chief, Mr. Giles, has told me on several occasions that I shouldn’t feel bad about skipping a week here and there with “Hooks ‘N’ You,” since he knows how much I have to do for Bullz-Eye. Thing is, I enjoy writing this column for the same reason all of us here at Popdose offer our contributions to the site: not because we have to, but because we want to. It’s one big ol’ labor of love, folks. Plus, really, where else on the ‘net could I have the flexibility to write a column that spotlights albums ranging from George Burns to Kylie Minogue?

What it’s also given me, however, is the opportunity to have conversations with several of the artists whose records have provided me with a lot of great spins over the years. I realize that the beauty of having a regular column on a website is that people can just click on the appropriate tag and pull up every single one of your previous works, but when I looked back myself, I realized that A) I’ve talked to a lot of great artists since kicking off this column in January ‘08, and B) even *I* got bored clicking through a year’s worth of columns. So for your easy access, here’s a quick list of the folks who were kind enough to talk with me either by phone or E-mail for “Hooks ‘N’ You” in 2008:

(more…)

I can’t remember exactly when I first discovered The Brandos, but I can remember where I first discovered them: in Creem Magazine.

There they were, dressed to the nines in their Western ware and looking back at me from the ad for their debut album, Honor Among Thieves. I think it might’ve been frontman Dave Kincaid’s bolo tie that really caught my eye - snazzy, Dave, snazzy - but whatever the case, their name stuck with me. As a result, whenever it was that I was introduced to the band’s music, I was, like, “Oh, right, those guys!”

If I had to guess who made me hip to their tunes, it’s a fair bet that the great introducer was Jeff Castelloe; he and I have known each other for over thirty years now - his mother was my 3rd grade teacher - but starting at the arse end of the ’80s, we also spent a few years together in the music retail trenches. Jeff has also been guilty of wearing a bolo tie at one time in his life, so maybe that’s what led him to The Brandos in the first place, but all I know for sure is that he was a fan of theirs by the time he and I started working together at Record Bar, because the store used to subscribe to both HITS Magazine and ICE Magazine, and he would regularly scour their pages for information about the long-rumored sophomore effort from the band. Little did either of us know at the time that we were waiting in vain…but more on that in a few minutes.

Right now, let’s talk about this great little nugget of Americana from 1987 known as Honor Among Thieves.

(more…)