The Witzard

The Hanukkah Sessions - CREDIT: Lego Dave Grohl (@LegoDaveGrohl) Last year, Foo Fighters frontman and esteemed writer Dave Grohl and producer, multi-instrumentalist, and song-writer Greg Kurstin teamed up once more for The Hanukkah Sessions : a series of eight performance videos covering the likes of the Beastie Boys, Drake, Mountain, Peaches, Bob Dylan, Elastica, The Knack, and The Velvet Underground. Eight Jewish artists, one for each night of Hanukkah 2020. Sunday night, the first night of Hanukkah, Grohl & Kurstin re-emerged with Night One of The Hanukkah Sessions 2021. "Welcome back to the menorah, y'all. Let's kick it this year's Hanukkah Sessions with one of Dallas, Texas' favorite Jewish daughters. So, put on your coffee shop spectacles and your Betsey Johnson dress and HAVA listen to this... "Stay" by Lisa Loeb," read a video description uploaded along with Night One's festive candle-lit offering. Yes, Dave Grohl & Greg Ku...

Steve Haney is a drummer and percussionist widely known for his expansive body of work with Latin & Funk/Soul ensemble Jungle Fire. Haney's recording and performance highlights include Stevie Wonder, performing for President Obama at The White House with Oscar-winner A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire composer,) The Oprah Winfrey Show, Greyboy Allstars, The M-Tet, Joe Bataan, Quantic, Ozomatli, Kelly Finnigan, and GRAMMY-winning vocalist Gregory Porter. However, in addition to his musical endeavors, Haney moonlights as visual artist VISIONS COLLAGE (@visionscollage) tranforming mixed media into paper-cut collages. We've, personally, been Following Steve Haney's various VISIONS COLLAGE & Jungle Fire social media pages for quite a few years now. Haney's collages are typically hand-cut, extremely vibrant, often primarily feature musicians, and are, sometimes, shared with various alternate renditions. While boasting a multitude of musicians and bands from across ...

Surfin' Turf by Franks & Deans I've been, personally, mulling over something recently: what's the most creative Punk/Hardcore band name? I've since come to the conclusion that it's either The Mr. T Experience (MTX,) The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza (TTDTE,) or Franks & Deans . MTX is American Punk Rock/Pop-Punk band formed in 1985 in Berkeley, California , while TTDTE is a now-defunct American Mathcore/Grindcore band from Murfreesboro, Tennessee . Las Vegas, Nevada 's Franks & Deans —a homage to Frank Sinatra & Dean Martin , of course—have deemed themselves the "world's first Rock "N" Roll Rat Pack band tributing Sinatra and his boys of The Rat Pack ." Franks & Deans are currently signed to SquidHat Records and consists of Robert "Rob" DeTie on vocals/4-string, Mike "Pip" Ullemeyer on drums/backing vocals, Jordan "HOSS" Hoss on guitar/vocals, Ryan "Sampson" Sa...

INTRODUCTION: Maybe, it's in the gray hairs that I've started finding in my thinning hair. Maybe, it's that dreaded third decade of life that seems to have been rearing it's ugly face around every corner. Maybe, it's a quarter life crisis, but something has been keeping me up at night. I sometimes, stay awake into the early hours of the morning spinning records and fumbling with CD jackets from high school, grasping hold of my youth for dear life. I search out elusive first presses of albums I'd somehow, lost to time, hoping that they'll somehow, tighten the thread leading from middle school to adulthood. To be clear, I'm not fishing my torn band T-shirts or bondage pants from the depths of my closet, but as I make the transition into my 30's, shedding roommates and getting oil changes at regularly scheduled intervals, I can't help ruminating on where these albums came from and how they've shaped me. I can't help begging the question, ...

For all intensive purposes, writer/director Scott Crawford was roughly 12-years old during the height of "Reaganomics" (1981-89) and of course, the rise of Hardcore Punk forming adjacent to the nation's capitol: Washington, DC . D.I.Y. fanzine publisher, Crawford was a fairy instrumental player attached to DC Hardcore 's initial burst in popularity. Around the same time, young Hardcore bands like Misfits, The Ramones , and Beastie Boys were making waves on the nearby coasts of New York and New Jersey ... Now, some 30+ years later, he's piecing together an end-all-be-all documentary to properly tell the story of the genre and city that he knows best! Salad Days: The DC Punk Revolution is scheduled for a 2013 wide release and interviews are still being conducted, but we already have 2 short "teaser trailers" to help whet your appetite. In an earnest attempt to fully convey the passion-filled story of DC Punk , Scott Crawford is currently re-intervi...

30 years ago today way back in 1982 - a greatly unique, [w]reckless, and promising young man passed away @ the hands of one last fatal "speedball:" John Belushi . He was an up-and-coming comedian, who really only revealed a segment of his many talents to the word while briefly on top. Belushi was a member of the inaugural Saturday Night Live cast (1975), along with buddies Chevy Chase & Dan Aykroyd . SNL -bred John Belushi characters which present-day audiences might recognize include: Jake E. Blues & Kuldorth [Conehead] . Following his 1979 departure from the popular sketch comedy show, Belushi appeared in a number of successful movies and assorted TV shows: National Lampoon's Animal House , The Rutles, 1941 , The Blues Brothers , and lastly Neighbors (1981). At the time of his sudden death, Belushi was working on a number of projects, which were ultimately cancelled. A little known John Belushi -related factoid is that he was an avid Hardcore Punk fan and ...