Rock n Rolling Snowman is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Meanie Miney Moe has been on a break for a while, developing thier new band, the Groove Train.

This Thursday they’ll be putting the train out on the tracks at the Mad River on the Market in downtown Charleston SC from 6-9pm.

This is a benefit for the Carolina Childrens Charity, a nonprofit that raises money to help pay the medical bills for children with serious illness, a very worthy cause indeed. Check out the attached flyer for more info.

For those of you who are wondering, the Groove Train is a lot like MMM except that they have added a saxophonist/guitarist, the very talented Christopher Cisneros, and they play a lot more of the upbeat, R&B and dance tunes that will get you out of your seat.

Groove Train benefit gig for Carolina Childrens Charity is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

International Festival For New Music is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

EIGHTIES heartthrob Paul Young will be there along with Chris Difford of Squeeze, Mike Scott of The Waterboys and harmonica genius Brendan Power.

They will be performing on a stage in the back garden of the Three Mariners pub, Oare, near Faversham, Kent,  as part of the third mOare music festival– the brainchild of former Average White Band guitarist Hamish Stuart.

Read more over at This Is Kent

80′s Music Stars On Stage is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Hannah Miller News is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13 @ THE SEEN
14665 Bear Valley Rd. Hesperia, Ca.
::PRESENTED BY TXC::
MOZART SEASON
LetLive
Rain Falls Grey
Yearn For Lechery
Heroes Bleed Too
TBA (Now Booking)
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ALL AGES | Doors: 6:00pm | $8 adv
GET YOUR TICKETS @

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Read more:http://www.myspace.com/txcshows

Hesperia Happenings is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Captain Kennedy – No Friend of Mine is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Before I came here, how did I imagine America to be?

I guess, like many who have never been here, I thought of a fast moving 24/7 society. I thought of guns. I thought of skyscrapers. I thought of wide open deserts.

Of course America has all those things, but it has so very much more besides. I didn’t think of sandy beaches with warm water, or oysters, or the wonderful Southern hospitality I’ve come to know and love so well.

Of course, that’s a romantic picture, and it doesn’t take a foreigner these days to tell anyone in the good ole US of A, that everything isn’t right in the garden. Then again it all depends on which side of the fence you’re politics are. Here is not the time and the place to be discussing that. Let’s just say, that there isn’t anywhere in the world that’s perfect, but the US is perhaps nearer to perfect for more people, more of the time, than anywhere else in the world.

What’s bought all this on, you may ask?

This evening I was listening to Willie Nelson, arguably one of America’s greatest songwriters.

I heard ‘Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, and then I played what, is for me, perhaps one the most American of all songs “City of New Orleans”.

I know railroads can often stir up the romantic side of many folks.

Perhaps more often those folks that haven’t been in a driving cab at 3am in the middle of winter, with newspaper wrapped around themselves to keep warm, or even scraped ice from a third rail to get a train moving in the middle of a freezing February. I’ve done those things for real, and at the time, it’s not romantic.

It’s more a feeling of  ’I must be a crazy SOAB to be doing this, when I could be like all the others, and have a nine to five job, and still be in bed’.

You see, at 3.30 am in the snow and ice, it does seem like everyone else is in bed, or asleep, except the passenger in the first car back, that has just opened the window to ask  ’WTF have we stopped?’

I don’t do that job now. Do I miss it? It’s like a marriage that went wrong.  Sometimes, you think back, dwell on it, and wish with almost your heart you were back there, and you’d enjoy it this time around; most of the time, you’re glad you moved on. Anyway, life’s too short for regrets, and you’re at where you’re at now, and that’s that.

As I almost always do, I have wandered off the tracks, diverted myself at some switch in the line.

Willie Nelson was 77 yesterday.  As I already mentioned, he wrote that song, ‘City of New Orleans’ that is for me, quite simply America.

He also wrote another song that is probably one of the most romantic love songs of all time, for one of the most romantic, and dynamic country singers of all time, Patsy Cline. That song is ‘Crazy’

I know that many well-known people who have great talent have died way too young. Buddy Holly, James Dean, Nat King Cole, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin… the list goes on.  Some of these people, had they lived,  would have simply faded away; others would have gone on to make a huge contribution to the world of popular music.  I’ve always felt sure that Patsy Cline would have been in the latter group.

As an iconic American country singer,  with singer/songwriters such as Willie Nelson writing for her, and with such a haunting melodic voice, she would have had it made.

Still dear reader, with that thought, I will bid you goodnight, as, to bastardize a well-known song title of Patsy’s, I am certainly ‘writing after midnight’.

I’d love to include a couple of mp3s to accompany this article, but I don’t think any are in the public domain, and I can’t afford to pay the assholes at the RIAA, even though I’d gladly buy Willie a few beers for letting me play one of his songs here.

Writing After Midnight is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Another lost icon from my teenage years, who died way too young. I still have both the 45, and the vinyl album, albeit gathering dust in my mother’s attic. Classic stuff.

The Late Willy is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

It’s difficult to pick a song of The Man in Black’s vast repertoire that stands out above all others, but I suppose I’ve always found the words to ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ to be moving, and the song chugs along just like a railroad train, and also ‘Five Feet High And Rising’ which is autobiographical, relating to Johnny’s childhood on his parents flooded farmland.

So why did I pick ‘Hurt’?  It seem quite poignant, as he recorded this Nine Inch Nails song not long before his untimely death nearly seven years ago.

Johnny Cash would have been 78 years old today if he were still us.

RIP Johnny Cash (February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003)

Johnny Cash Remembered is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog