Monthly newsletter
December 2022

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INTRODUCTION
For those who are new to The Story of Rock and Roll, my name is James Daubeney, I am the author of The Story of Rock and Roll and the presenter of The Story of Rock and Roll Radio Show. The three-hour long form of TSORR Radio Show goes out every Thursday on Rebel Rock Radio between 19h00 and 22h00 South African time. There is also a short TSORR power hour every Friday from 18h00 to 19h00 on Bulldogs Radio. You can catch those two shows live on www.rrr.cat and https://bulldogs-radio.com/ respectively. The flagship 3-hour show is on podcast on most of the podcast sites, you can find it on https://www.buzzsprout.com/273305 and select your personal podcast site from there.


NEWS
TSORR has solved the load shedding problem, with the addition of an inverter I can finally say that if you don’t hear the show because of load shedding it’s not on my side (unless the cell towers go down ☹). The old system of using a generator and having to restart everything when the power goes off is officially a thing of the past. In other news, the Team at Rebel Rock Radio are busy strategizing and getting ready to make some changes for 2023. The hope is that people will love the new format and tell all their friends and make Rebel Rock Radio their number one stop for rock.
As always with TSORR, the music is the backdrop for life and there were many references to the dire situation we find ourselves in, tracks such as ‘Blackout’, ‘No Escape from Now’, ‘Bite the Hand That Feeds’ and ‘Pissed off and Mad About it’ were all aimed with precision at an incompetent government.
HIGHLIGHTS
Nita Strauss and Alissa White-Gluz, released a super cool track called ‘The Wolf You Feed’. This is a pairing that I hope we will hear more from. I think that Alissa White-Gluz is one of the best vocalists in metal and Nita Strauss is shredding better than ever. Alissa and Nita are great role models, check out any of the many interviews on YouTube.


New Queensrÿche Digital Noise Alliance is a fantastic album. During November we checked out ‘Hold On,’ ‘Out of The Black’, and ‘Sicdeth’, this last track being an absolute cracker harking back to Operation Mindcrime days. Another major highlight was finding tracks, I did not know existed by My Chemical Romance. MCR released Single 1 to 5 between 2012 and 2013, so all in all it was ten new songs I found. Known collectively as Conventional Weapons the ‘album’ is a collection of five Brendan O’Brien produced singles (A & B Sides) released between Oct 2012 and Feb 2103. I am not sure how I missed it, but it was a great find, and pretty much everyone else I know missed it too. Another highlight for November was the discovery of Niro Knox. Niro got in touch with TSORR and introduced himself with a link to the stuff he is working on, two tracks in demo form, both are excellent. He also did all the guitar and some vocals in a band called KilliT and I have been playing tracks from their album Shut It Down for the last two weeks and the video for the track is on TSORR Facebook page.
This month it was my turn to do a Rock Review for Rebel Rock Radio and I took the gap to respond to a request from Tim who asked me to feature Thin Lizzy. It was a great Rock Review to do and as always, I end up buying all the missing albums and remasters and getting thoroughly back into what I consider Ireland’s finest band. This Rock Review covered Thin Lizzy from the Gorham / Robertson era through until the final album with Gorham / Sykes on guitar. It’s on the Podcast site, check it out if you missed it.


WHAT WE LISTENED TO IN NOVEMBER
The big albums that got a lot of airplay on TSORR this month included an Aussie band named Dead City Ruins, their album Shockwave features Steve Welsh, one of the best vocalists around. Australian music magazine Tone Deaf described Dead City Ruins as “Ear splitting, bra busting, panty dropping rock ‘n’ roll.

Another cracker that got, not only airplay, but caused me a lot of trouble on air was Among the Fires of Hell, a solo album by Rotting Christ frontman Sakis Tolis whose name tripped me up completely. Listen to S5E46 near the end to hear the mirth meltdown.


Joe Lynn Turner provided the pleasant surprise of the month. The veteran frontman best known for his work in Rainbow and Michael Schenker teamed up with producer and Hypocrisy main man Peter Tägtgren to release a seriously good metal album called Belly of the Beast.

Herman Frank, ex-Accept, gave us a follow-up to 2020’s Fight the Fear with a new one called Two for a Lie. We were still busy with Ozzy Osbourne’s latest release Patient Number 9 and Megadeth’s masterpiece The Sick, The Dying and….The Dead throughout the month. The other highlight was a brand-new Skid Row featuring new vocalist Erik Gronwald. As sad as it is to have South African vocalist ZP Theart no longer in the band, the addition of Erik has re-energised Skid Row and I can only imagine how good the live shows will be when they get on to the Skid Row classics. The new album is called The Gang’s All Here. Buy it! It’s awesome.
IT’S WHAT YOU SAY THAT COUNTS
This month there were a few lyrics that needed to be mentioned on the show. Dave Hause on ‘Fireflies’ off his album Kick got the goosebumps going:
“If I can double up my salary, next year we might afford a house
I could work away my fingerprints, grind the teeth out of my mouth
You said if we can’t find our hope, we’ll end up living by our fear
But every day seems less ok and it hasn’t been our year
I’m older now and all I know how is to work to see your face
Smiling proud, knowing we carved out some tiny little space
But this clock just keeps on ticking, we can’t seem to slow it down
Let’s kick against the current and I’ll hold you if we drown
I’ll hold you if we drown” – Dave Hause
Another one that got me was ‘Light Behind Your Eyes’ by My Chemical Romance. Lyrics mean different things to different people, ‘The Light Behind Your Eyes’ for me is forever linked to that most awful time we all experience when we leave the veterinarian’s clinic alone. The whole track is very deep and on the show, I mentioned how a person on a MCR fan page I follow says she had the whole lyric as a forearm tattoo but got it covered because it was “lowkey fucking with me emotionally”. Quite understandable I reckon.
Be strong and hold my hand
Time, it comes for us, you’ll understand
We’ll say goodbye today
And I’m sorry how it ends this way
If you promise not to cry
Then I’ll tell you just what I would say
If I could be with you tonight
I would sing you to sleep
Never let them take the light behind your eyes,
I’ll fail and lose this fight
Never fade in the dark
Just remember you will always burn as bright
The light behind your eyes
The light behind your eyes – Gerard Way
SOUTH AFRICAN SCENE
This month we spent quite a bit of time listening to and talking about Diverted Disorder. These lads from The Vaal are making big waves. Their album launched on the 26 November, you can get it on various platforms or on CD directly from the band. TSORR had exclusive access to probably the heaviest track on the album titled ‘Dark Horse’ and you can hear it again on S5E43. I also played the track ‘Destroyed by Fate’, which had +60K streams that same week according to the band’s Facebook page (not because it was played on TSORR but because it’s a really great track and the guys are working hard to promote it everywhere). You can find it on S5E46 and ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ a track featuring Jared Gunston and Missy Rachel on S5E47. DD’s larger than life master of mayhem Juan ‘Prawn’ Strijdom recorded a jingle especially for Rebel Rock Radio and that’s been on every show since I got it.


Other SA musicians we checked out this month included Johnathan Martin, Jasper Dan L.A. Cobra, Shadow Club, Pebbleman (guitar god Richard Pryor’s solo project), and Ross Harding with ‘Black Sun Blues’. You can find a lot of those on S5E43 and 44. On the last show this month it was fantastic to play the brand-new track by the multi-talented Mark Haze. The Track is called ‘Don’t Say Goodbye’ and it is great to have Mark releasing tracks that to me are reminiscent of the songs he wrote as a youngster in his fantastic band 12th Avenue.


STATS & STUFF
For those of you who like this sort of stuff; Iron Maiden and Texas Hippie Coalition were each played four times this month, ACDC, Def Leppard, In Flames, Diverted Disorder, Joe Lynn Turner, My Chemical Romance, Queensrÿche, Skid Row all got played three times. In terms of countries, we had 85 tracks from USA bands, 29 from the UK, 13 from South Africa, Australia 11, Germany 10, and Sweden 8. Greece, Wales, New Zealand and Switzerland all got a look-in as well this month. Diverted Disorder were the most played SA band.
CHEERS @#$%’s
I hope you get some value out of the first TSORR monthly newsletter, I would really like to talk to you guys as much as possible and get a bit closer to you. Let me know who you are, where you live, what you listen to, what your favourite bands are and if there is anything I can play for you on the show . If you have any comments, or suggestions please let me know on The Story of Rock and Roll Facebook page or email to thestoryofrockandroll1@gmail.com (note the ‘1’ in that address). Until next month Adios Amoeba’s keep rocking and keep letting the music be the soundtrack to your life.
Regards and take care