Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

Frank Beard, the drummer of ZZ Top, has died at age 77. Ironically, Beard was the one member of the "Texas boogie-blues-rock" trio who was usually beardless. ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill died in 2021, and now guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons is the only surviving member of the classic lineup. Before the 1969 formation of ZZ Top, Beard and Hill were members of a Texas-based quartet called American Blues, which also included Dusty's older brother Rocky Hill on lead guitar, and organist Doug Davis. Dusty was the vocalist for this band, and his vocals had a smoother and clearer tone than the raspier vocals which Gibbons would later bring to ZZ Top. American Blues began under the name The Warlocks (like the Grateful Dead also did), and released two garage rock singles under that name in 1966: "If You Really Want Me To Stay" (a high-fuzz Texas variation on British Invasion rock) and "Splash Day" (a Texan-sounding Beach Boys variation about partying on Flori...

Around the time of the formation of the Police, frontman Sting (aka Gordon Sumner) took part in the recording of a European single credited to a fictitious band called Fast Breeder & The Radio Actors. This single, titled "Nuclear Waste", was an anti-nuke protest song written by Harry Williamson, who has played with offshoots of Genesis, Gong, and Hawkwind. The single was first released in 1978 on the Nuke imprint, distributed in the U.K. by Virgin Records in a 500-copy print run, then issued a second time in 1979 on the Charly imprint, distributed by Pye Records. Harry Williamson was the son of novelist Henry Williamson ( Tarka The Otter ), and a founder of the left-wing Green Party of England and Wales. Williamson immersed himself in the hippie culture of the 1970's, so it made sense that he would fall in with the free-festival musical movement championed by the likes of Hawkwind and Gong. For this one-off single, Williamson assembled musicians from that space-rock...