Music Street Journal - Music News & Reviews

MSJ Staff

Gary Hill

Gary is a musician and has been a music fan since a young age. His main musical interests are in progressive rock and heavy metal, however he enjoys many other types of music. He has been writing for quite a long time, having worked as a freelancer for such publications as All Music Guide and Beet Cafe. He recently released his first book (other than the MSJ compilation books). He created Music Street Journal in February of 1998 as a means of covering the music that he enjoys. He has a computer oriented Associates degree and several web related certifications from various sources.




Steve Alspach Steve Alspach caught the music bug after hearing Chicago IL in 1971. His curiosity in progressive music was piqued in 1976 after hearing "Close to the Edge" on an AM radio station from Dayton, Ohio - at 4 in the afternoon! He bought himself a guitar for his 30th birthday and has been playing ever since. He also noodles on keyboard and occasionally writes songs. He writes for MSJ to satisfy his journalistic tendencies and to stay in touch with the progressive music scene. By day he is a mild-mannered support representative for a computer software company, and his other hobby is following sports - the four major sports (baseball, football, basketball, hockey) and he has recently became a cricket afficionado (though he has never bowled a googly).



Michael Bader Michael Bader lives by the motto, “what I do is not who I am.” Michael’s family lives in Orange County, California where he has resided for most of his life. He cares for his aging parents who live around the corner (not across the street). When he is not participating in his favorite pastime which is hanging with Angelina - his wife of ten years, he can be found at his office taking care of business. More information can be found at his myspace site. His passions are music, penguins and baseball, not in any particular order. Having grown up around music, he was a far superior appreciator of music than he was a player. For more than 35 years, Michael has had an opinion about appreciating live music. MusicStreet Journal offers him a way to share his thoughts and provoke opinion.



Rick Damigella Born Behind the Orange Curtain in So Cali, Rick Damigella was bitten by the music bug at an early age. An affinity for the guitar and drum sound of The Knack's "My Sharona" gave way to discovering vastly better music in the form of AC/DC and The Who. Not a musician himself (pretty much all he can play is "Smoke on the Water" and a little 12-bar blues on the six-string) Rick prefers to be a professional music aficionado (read: music geek) with tastes that range from Bach to Rock, but with metal, electronica and game soundtracks being his preferred genres. His writing background includes stints as an entertainment technology writer/producer and occasional music writer for CNN. He has written a series of video game soundtrack CD reviews (Yes! Those things do exist!) for G4TV.com. He counts Tony Iommi, Keith Emerson, Mark Mothersbaugh, Robert Fripp, Ian Anderson and The Crystal Method amongst music interviews he has done. His favorite artists include Deep Purple, Loudness, Social Distortion, Tangerine Dream and Hound Dog Taylor.



Grant Hill Grant Hill was raised in New York State and has been playing the trumpet and flugelhorn for 40 years. He is a composer, brass instructor, journalist, and performer. A 1980 cum laude graduate of St. Lawrence University, Grant spent 25 years in the financial planning and investment advisory field. He holds the Chartered Life Underwriter and Chartered Financial Consultant designations from the American College of Bryn Mawr, PA. Grant led his own eight piece jazz-rock band throughout his college years, then went on to spend 15 years with the now seven-time world champion Reading Buccaneers Drum & Bugle Corps of Reading, PA, serving for five years as executive director. He is an instructor at the Paraclete Conservatory in Orchard Park, NY, and is committed to the growth of progressive rock and jazz fusion in the 21st century. Grant resides in beautiful Orchard Park, NY with his wife, the beautiful Sonya Kukcinovich, and his two minor children, Jared and Julissa, who are conservatory students. He has three adult daughters, Lana, Jenna, and Melissa. Grant is also a huge fan of the NFL's Buffalo Bills and the NHL's Buffalo Sabres, both which he follows intently through their respective seasons. Grant is an outspoken Christian apologist in the tradition of C.S.Lewis, and a fervent supporter of libertarian ideals in a nation that he says has largely forgotten what freedom means.



Travis Jensen Travis has been teaching for 5 years at The Art Institute of Illinois in Schaumburg, IL for the interior design department. He teaches perspective, rendering and drafting 1, as well as some fundamentals courses. He has a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. both in interior design. Originally from Rhinelander ,WI, Travis now lives in DeKalb, IL on campus at Northern Illinois University. His hobbies and outside interests include spending time with his family (wife, son 6 yrs. and daughter 2 ½ years), tattooing and riding his Harley Davidson. Travis' musical background consists of being in various cover bands for roughly 10 years. He also played a bass clarinet during 4 years of his adolescent years. His musical interests consist mostly of rock and heavy metal. He has a little bit of everything in has music collection, but the largest portions in the CD racks are taken up by Slayer, Black Sabbath and Elvis. Judas Priest, AC/DC and Pantera take a close second place.



Tim Jones Tim Jones is a high school biology teacher. Despite this fact, he's a long-time fan of progressive rock and metal. He doesn't actually play an instrument, but he can sing (in fact, as previous roommates attest, it's often impossible to get him to stop singing). He's lived most of his life in the western U.S., but he's spent four years in Europe, and dreams of returning.Besides prog, Tim likes some classical music, some classic rock, and any other music that has good melody and a bit of intelligence. His favorite bands are Savatage, Rush, Pain of Salvation, and Dream Theater. He's an English minor and writes song lyrics for his personal enjoyment. His professional writing experience before joining MSJ, however, is non-existent.



Mark Jordan Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, in addition to dabbling on keys, bass and percussion, Mark has been playing guitar for 28 years. Over the years he has played in many bands with varied styles. He even received favorable reviews in Beat and Hot Metal Australian magazines of two of those bands Trouble With Tuesday and Radical Karma during the late '80's and early '90's. Mark's musical preferences include heavy rock/metal, prog, and fusion. His favorite guitarists are Allan Holdsworth, Steve Morse and Wayne Krantz. He's also a fan of Formula 1.



Bill Knispel Despite all evidence to the contrary, Bill swears the first rock album he ever listened to was Frank Zappa’s Freak Out! (in 1987, in the midst of a 2-week long bout with fever and pneumonia). He says this is why his musical tastes to this day are so warped, and why he has such a low tolerance for musical BS. Born in 1973, he has been an on and off (mostly off) musician for 15 years, having played bass and guitar in a number of basement bands. Music has been a constant companion throughout, and if given the choice between eating and buying a new CD, well...a person can go a day or so without food, right? His music collection totals somewhere in the vicinity of 7,500 to 10,000 discs, centering on progressive rock, but covering jazz, classical, traditional country and blues. His current musical obsession is extreme metal, and he counts bands such as Fintroll, Emperor and Amon Amarth as new favorites. Interested in journalism since college, he’s written for a number of outlets, always trying to focus on discussing music that might otherwise be ignored. He’s also an avid fan of live music, and has averaged 15 concerts a year for the past 5 years, including such wildly divergent performances as Ministry, Magma, echolyn, and Le Orme, to name a few. He is also an avid amateur concert photographer, evidence of which can be seen covering the walls of his apartment, and which may be seen here in concert reviews in the future. Bill lives along the banks of the Delaware River in NJ, has been flooded out of his home 3 times in 2 years, yet steadfastly refuses to move...either a sign of divine faith or divine stubbornness.



Mike Korn Mr. Korn was born in 1963 in Winnebago County (IL) and has spent his whole life in the Northern Illinois area. Yes, that is his real name and not a goof on the Jonathan Davis-led band. Graduated from North Boone High School in the cornfields of Boone County and then from Rockford College. He has had a lifetime interest in heavy metal that began in 1974 and has mushroomed into an all-consuming obsession here in the year 2000. His favorite acts range from Kiss and Blue Oyster Cult to Dismember and Bathory, hitting all points in between. He also has an abiding interest in classic horror/science fiction movies and in fact, his alter ego "Dr. Abner Mality" is in the process of trying to host a TV horror show. As "Dr. Mality", he is also the editor of The Wormwood Chronicles (web version at www.wormwoodchronicles.com), a journal dedicated to the stranger aspects of popular culture. He also has an interest in pro wrestling, cryptozoology, modern art and bashin' two bricks together!



Sonya Kukcinovich Sonya Kukcinovich was born and raised in Philadelpha, Pennsylvania. She began studying classical piano at age five, and sang in both classical and gospel choirs through high school. She became interested in progressive rock music at the age of 15 when she became first exposed to the group Yes. After that, she began writing, playing and performing her own progressive music with various bands throughout the Philadelphia region. She relocated to the great Buffalo, New York region in 1998 and now resides in beautiful Orchard Park ~ the home of the Buffalo Bills. Her husband is also an avid musician and together they have raised five children, the youngest two of which are training in piano conservatory to one day become performing artists. Besides progressive rock, Sonya's interests include listening to other cool genres of good music, concerts, NFL football and Buffalo Sabres hockey. She is committed to make great music more accessible to the greater listening public.



Vivian Lee Vivian Lee's work as a film, television, and music critic has appeared in net and print publications including The 11th Hour, Music Street Journal and Progression Magazine. A native of North Carolina, she still resides there with her family.



Eric Meli Eric was born in Rockford, Illinois and has lived there all his life. He fell in love with music at an early age, then later in life did the same with photography. His tastes range from blues to punk and anything in-between. He also likes to travel and photograph live bands.



Greg Olma It was the year 1975 when Greg first discovered music. He took one look at KISS "Alive" and said to himself, "these guys are awesome." From then on, music was all he thought about. But man does not live by KISS alone, so he branched out into other music. His biggest learning experience was getting a job at a local used record store (Record Hunt) in 1979. He was still in grammar school when he discovered other bands like Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy, and Yes. He spent 4 years working there and will always remember them as fun and exciting times. Through the years, he's stayed in touch with the music scene, spending all of his available money on CDs and concert tickets. He's attended a little over 250 concerts ranging from REO Speedwagon to Cradle of Filth. He currently spends his days as an account manager at a software company.



Lisa Palmeno Lisa Palmeno is a publicist and freelance writer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in the Writing Track with a minor in German from Rockford College. She began her professional writing career at Vital Force in 1988. Her articles have been published in The Rock River Times, Crossroads Blues Society’s newsletter, and American Classifieds. Currently, she writes music reviews for www.Beetcafe.com, www.BluesWax.com, www.FolkWax.com in addition to Music Street Journal. Lisa also wrote the script for Rockford Area Music Industry Awards Ceremony in 2006. Her poetry has appeared in Feast, Xpressions Journal, We Write In Praise of The King 2001 and We Write in Praise of The King 2002, Rockford Register Star's "Poet's Corner” and Moon Journal. She is the author of "Spotlight On Bass."



Jeremy Seffens Jeremy has had an obsession for music since he learned about the wonderful world of percussion at the age of 9. Growing up with plans to have a career centered around music, life threw the ever-present curve-ball. He is now a horror writer that uses the name J. Daniel Seffens; an editor for the International Order of Horror Professionals, Whiskey Creek Press, and Lachesis Publishing; and a parent, but the passion for his music is as hot as ever. With musical interests primarily seated in rock and heavy metal, his music collection includes everything from progressive to classical to jazz. He's probably the only person you'll know whom the cops visited to tell to turn down Miles Davis.



Billy Sheppard Billy Sheppard is a former Pentecostal boy with a missionary sister, and a brother listed among the top 20 scholars in Old Testament with a Yale Th.D. Three years at CalArts studying theater taught Billy the holy word agnostic and put him into conversations with Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, John Cage, Morton Subotnick, Eugene Ionesco, Adam Rudolph, Yoko Matsuda and Yusef Lateef. Billy's first music writing began after insulting the critic and editor of the Classical column in the now defunct Village View newspaper, a commission to write about Toru Takamitsu music performed by the LA Phil's new music group, and later a staff position writing about 20^th Century Composition. Many years later Billy began writing about all forms of music on myspace as a lark. He doesn't play anything, and doesn't write songs, and wants to keep it that way. He writes full time now out of a stone basement in Cincinnati and is working on a compendium of posted reviews across all genre's to be hosted as "Billy's Bunker."



Bruce Stringer Born in 1974, Bruce Stringer is an Australian guitarist who has played internationally and worked on various independent soundtracks and theme-scores. He is currently working on his third solo project, his second full CD. He brings to MSJ a great sense of music and strong writing talents. For more info on Bruce's music career (including some audio samples) follow this link http://www.mp3.com/bruce_stringer.



Josh Turner Hailing from Madison, Wisconsin, Joshua Turner is a huge Badgers and Packers fan almost to a point that it can be considered his religion. For a living, he performs computer consultation to various clients in the area (e.g. Government, American Family Insurance, CUNA Mutual, Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.). Some consider this to be the Silicone Prairie of the MidWest. Even though he lives in a rural state, he feels he is more in tune with big city life. He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is without question the biggest city in the state. His best friend is a fox terrier named Rex. His name couldn't suit him better. Beware, don't get a terrier unless you have the energy and commitment to devote to these adorable monsters. So, you are probably wondering, what has led his to progressive rock.. His best "human" friend Adam is quite a talented drummer. Adam even went to a school attended by the folks in Dream Theater. Well, as the story goes, Josh met Adam in college and he is kind of an outcast due to his heavy obsession with music. He would always be playing the air drums and his fraternity brothers would always be commenting on his weird music. It turns out he was listening to Dream Theater (Images & Words mostly, Falling Into Infinity was about to be released). The music intrigued Josh. They wound up road-tripping to a number of concerts in the area (e.g. Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago). Josh bought up the entire Dream Theater catalog and listened to them from time to time. Then, he heard about various side-projects. He enjoyed Mulmuzzler and Liquid Tension Experiment, but Transatlantic a couple years later was the real discovery. From there he got into Flower King's and Spock's Beard. Now he is a full-blown progressive rock junkie. He thinks we live in an era where the best music ever is being released. For all the hardcore Genesis and Yes fans out there, I agree these bands were awesome, but don't forget to check out what's new as well.