Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

This past April 11th, the Rolling Stones released a limited edition, white-labeled 12-inch vinyl single titled "Rough and Twisted", under the pseudonym The Cockroaches. This one-sided single was limited to 1,000 numbered copies worldwide. As of four days later, the song has still not been released to streaming services, and the single is being sold for big bucks on eBay and Discogs. Why the fake name? The Cockroaches was a name that the superstar rock band sometimes used in the 1970's, when they wanted to secretly perform a gig in a low-profile venue away from the spotlight. The distribution of this single was done in a similarly secretive way. Signs began to appear around London, advertising a mysterious band called the Cockroaches, with a QR code that connected visitors to their official website . This website featured a graphic of the disc's plain white cover, and when a "flip" link was clicked, it listed GPS coordinates referring to locations of stores...

Cats were a rock band based in Philadelphia, who were active from 1976 until 1981, and released one self-titled new wave-era album in 1980. The band Cats had no connection to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical; the very first stage performance of Webber's Cats took place one year after the Cats album was released. One of Cats' songs, "(He's Got) The Rest Of His Life", sounds lyrically similar to Billy Joel's hit "You May Be Right", which was released the same year. However, that Cats song had appeared the previous year on a 1979 various artists compilation which showcased Philadelphia musicians, so it predated the release of Joel's song. Also, since this band bore some musical similarity to Queen, you might suspect them of lifting the title of their album's opening track "On The Prowl" from Queen's "Man On The Prowl", but -- guess what? Cats predated that Queen song by four years. Considering the band's 1976 ori...