Disturbed

It takes all musical shapes and styles to fill out an OZZfest lineup, and this summer’s run is no exception—The hip-hop stylings of Tommy Lee’s post Mötley Crüe/Methods of Mayhem bounce into the industrial-metal synchopations of Static-X, which clamor into the hard rocking depths of Godsmack . And then there’s the full-on metal bombast of Pantera.

If you have the stamina, that offers a hell of a day at the mainstage, but this is America in the year 2000. In an age of instant gratification, why settle for four bands when there’s a band on the sidestage that offers everything each of those bands has to offer, and more. That’s big talk about a band that’s not even halfway to a gold record (selling 500,000 copies) with their Giant Records debut The Sickness, especially when comparing them to four bands that have sold more than 10.0 million albums between them. But Disturbed are that good. Quite honestly, they’re even better.

Black Label Society

There’s nothing subtle about Zakk Wylde. He’s the guitar demon that laid the sinister soundtrack to Ozzy Osbourne’s No Rest for the Wicked and No More Tears, breathing insanity into “Crazy Babies,” ripping through “Demon Alcohol” and raising hell on earth with “Tattooed Dancer.” He wore his Southern pride on his sleeve with Pride & Glory, enjoying fleeting success with the project, but not completely satisfying his hunger to rock with reckless abandonment. From there he split songwriting time between Osbourne’s Ozzmosis album and Guns N’ Roses, in the process, recording his solo-acoustic Book of Shadows, an album that made for an interesting sidebar for the shredding metal phenom, but only intensified his desire to raise Caine with six-string, Sabbath-inspired salutations.

When writing with GN’R seemed a dead-end road, Wylde had a revelation—he’d sing the songs himself, give them his own voice, and create a band that fulfilled his vision of rock’s most brutal attributes. He dubbed the band Black Label Society

Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown

an historic interview of this legend of the blues and grammy winner, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. Brown passed away in 2006. RIP Gatemouth

Bernard Allison

“My dad told me to never be a copy cat,” emphasized guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Bernard Allison in a recent telephone interview. “He told me, ‘you’ll have influences and idols, but you’ll need to put yourself into what you play.’” Allison, son of late titan Luther Allison, has taken his father’s message to heart in a career that reaches back more than 15 years. “I’m doing what I’ve always done – mix a 12-bar blues tune with a couple of rock tunes, and a couple of funk tunes.”

Contrary to many perceptions, the senior Allison was not the foremost musical teacher in Bernard’s early career. “There wasn’t that much teaching at the musical level,” Allison said. “I taught myself how to play guitar and sing pretty much on my own, although he showed me how to play a few things. But Our relation was more like brothers than father/son.” Bernard did note that his father gave him sage advice on other aspects of the business, however. “He did teach me about the road – but I also learned a lot from my 3 years with Koko Taylor.” That apprenticeship with Taylor, and later with Willie Dixon’s Blues All-Stars, saw the teenage Allison emerge with more of his own voice, further developed through tutoring by Johnny Winter and Stevie Ray Vaughan. So zealots who expect – or hope – that Bernard will develop into a clone of his father will be disappointed. “A lot of our music is naturally the same,” Allison said.  “Early on, there was a lot more stuff where I sounded like him. But now, you can hear a song and tell if it’s Bernard or Luther.”

Slipknot

Ten years ago, the Limelight was a landmark for bands who performed in New York City. Women danced in cages suspended from vaulted ceilings, stained glass surrounded a stage elevated on what used to be an altar, and men and women mingled in lines for unisex bathrooms. Built as a church decades earlier, the site had since been deconsecrated, converted to a nightclub, and angel-shaped disco balls hung where a crucifix was once suspended. It was the perfect not to mention haunting and eerie setting for the inspired debauchery of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll that made the late ‘80s and early ‘90s such revered times.

And almost a decade later, recently reopened, it was the perfect venue to host the live chaos that is Slipknot.

Ray Condo And His Ricochets

He’s 46 - well past living the life of your typical traveling musician, complete with vans, hotels, late nights, and lots of driving. But Ray Condo isn’t your typical anything. So he’s able to fit in quite nicely - lead the pack, actually - when the usually independent rockabilly world unites at festivals, such as last month’s Viva Las Vegas. “They’re pretty special,” he said of VLV and its kin. “It’s a ‘meeting of the tribes’ where the culture comes together once or twice a year.”

Amongst those tribes, Condo certainly rates as chief - or at least elder medicine man. The potions he mixes are old recipes - first blended in the 1930s at dance halls between Tulsa and Austin. It’s a concoction known as western swing - a blend of instrumentation and rhythm uniting the Kansas City swing of the era and early electrified country, complete with singing pedal steel guitars. “The draw of western swing is that it has so many modern elements - like speeded-up guitar and a tough rhythm section. These were the elements that formed early rockabilly and rock & roll.” Through the 1940s, artists such as Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys and the Light Crust Doughboys sent many boot heels tapping. “By the late ‘40s, Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell stripped the music into smaller combos - they were the Louis Jordans of the western scene. They put an end to those bands.”