Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

This post is being written two days after the coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th, 2015. As of this writing, the official death toll is 129. Of those, at least 89 were reportedly killed inside the Bataclan concert hall, during a concert by the American rock band Eagles Of Death Metal. The band members escaped unhurt, but their merchandise manager Nick Alexander was among the fatalities. Eagles Of Death Metal is a California band co-founded by Josh Homme, who is also a member of Queens Of The Stone Age, although Homme was not with the band on tour when these attacks occurred. In addition to  the usual irony of a non-death-metal band bearing such a name -- Eagles Of Death Metal are better described as an alternative blues rock band -- it is certainly a gruesome coincidence that a band with the word "death" in their name became a part of such a tragic event. An MSN article about the attack at the Bataclan concert is linked below. (Warning: The article an...

The late Keith Relf – who died in 1976 from electrocution while using an improperly grounded electric guitar – was best known as the lead singer of the Yardbirds. Of course, that band is better remembered for launching the careers of guitarists Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. The last band that Relf played in before his tragic death was called Armageddon, and that band’s chief asset was also its guitarist. Unlike the future superstar guitarists who graced the Yardbirds, Armageddon guitarist Martin Pugh all but disappeared from the music business after that band's 1976 demise. Their sole album, 1975's self-titled Armageddon , is currently out of print in the U.S. It is, however, available as an import from the U.K. Esoteric label. After the breakup of the Yardbirds, Keith Relf moved away from that band's blues rock and embraced the progressive rock genre. Relf and his fellow ex-Yardbird Jim McCarty were the original founders of Renaissance, but both of them...