Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

One month after the influential 1967 Velvet Underground And Nico album turned 55 years of age, special releases by Lou Reed and Nico were issued on Record Store Day 2022. Lou Reed was the co-founder and the creative force behind the Velvet Underground. The RSD release I’m So Free: The 1971 RCA Demos was a vinyl LP containing 13 demo tracks recorded by Reed in October of ’71 at RCA Recording Studios in New York. This was Reed’s first recording session after he departed from the Velvet Underground in 1970, beginning his long solo career which continued until his death in 2013. This LP was limited to 7,550 copies. Apparently, this album was briefly released digitally on Apple Music in Europe just before Christmas 2021, with four additional tracks, but was quickly removed within days. As of this writing, plans for future releases of the album are unknown. These recordings were demos of songs which turned up in finished form on the solo albums Reed recorded for RCA between 1972 and 19...

In many rock-and-roll hearts, April 5th is a date that lives in infamy. Fans of ‘90’s grunge recognize this date as the one on which Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was believed to have taken his own life in 1994, and the date on which Layne Staley of Alice In Chains was believed to have died of a drug overdose in 2002. Other notable figures in rock history who have died on this date include Bob “The Bear” Hite of Canned Heat in 1981, and Marshall amp inventor Jim Marshall in 2012. Another name was added to this list in 2022, when early-‘60’s teen idol Bobby Rydell also passed away on this date. Yet another noteworthy rock musician on this list is Cozy Powell, who perished in a car crash at age 50 on April 5th of 1998. Born as Colin Trevor Flooks in England in December 1947, Cozy Powell was regarded as one of the greatest drummers in hard rock. After a brief stint with the Jeff Beck Group in the early 1970’s, Powell went on to play with many bands in the hard rock and heavy metal catego...