July 30, 2017 — It’s nice when the radio DJ is a rock star, an actual one. There are many of those radio shows, but the one I listen to is Steve Jones’ show. It’s at noon, on weekday’s, on the classic rock channel, KLOS, in Los Angeles. At the noon hour I’m often driving, so I hear that show often. Steve was a former member of The Sex Pistols, hence he has a lot of stories, and he’s met a lot of people. When he has guests, which is often, he usually plays with them, or wants to if the guests will let him. He’s a person who would be good a party. Almost every time I hear his show, I learn a song or a tidbit I didn’t know. And his taste in music is all over the place, everything from the punk stuff you would expect he would like to … well, Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. He plays long song sets, and always tells you what he’s played afterwards. The songs don’t match, always from different rock genres, but yet … they do. They match, the new blending with the old.

This past week I listening to a lot, and I mean a lot, of Lana Del Rey in my house, what with the new record and surprise shows and all. However, I don’t have the ability to play music in my truck, so while driving, I listen to the radio. I don’t remember the day, but one day last week, I had KLOS on, and listened to the entirety of Steve Jones’ song set. There were three songs, or actually it was three songs I heard. The second I can’t remember, but it was good too. The first and the third are what this story is about, sort of … because you know there’s always a tangent.

The first song had a new sound, one part old school hard rock, one part … not a whole band. You see, modern indie rock often doesn’t have the formula of guitar, bass, drums and vocals. Many bands are simply guitar, drums and vocals – no bass. This band was bass heavy. Honestly, because the bass was carrying the music line, and because we talking driving in LA traffic with a stock car stereo, I wasn’t sure if I was hearing no guitar. The song had a punk crossed with indie rock vibe, even a tad of old-school rock, repeating lines about lost love, and I liked it.

The second song, which was really the third song, also talked about lost love — the theme of Steve’ song set. I loved this song. I didn’t know the song, but it was Thin Lizzy, those unmistakable vocals apparent. The vocals were nice, but seriously … the guitar! It was practically cyring. The song went on and on, something radio rarely gets away with, and a reason shows like Steve’s are a welcome addition to radio; that day I was happy there was more than normal traffic so I could hear the whole song. It was like a dream, this song. Remember how I said I can’t listen to Lana in the car? Well, I have this dream of music that crosses the emotion of Lana-like vocals with an emotional guitar. That’s all I could think about when I heard this song, how I wished I could take this guitar and write a poem to it.

Steve came on the air right after. He talked about that song. He said it was “Thin Lizzy when Gary Moore was with the band”. (I’ve done my best to find the version I heard.)

Steve called the song gorgeous. He talked about hanging out with Gary Moore, of course; like I said he knows, or in Moore’s case knew, everybody! He said Moore was nice, He said that when they were together, they played guitar. The exact words Steve said about Moore’s playing I can’t recall now, but he was emotional about it, and Jones’ gave credit to Moore for tolerating his bad behavior (my expression) in Jones’ own bad playing, comparatively. Truly, this was an example of why Steve Jones’ is so good on this show; he makes himself relatable, even though he too is a star.

Steve then went through the other songs, giving the names and the titles. I wrote the name of the first song down, believing it was a new band, but not sure because Steve plays lots of old songs that influenced him, and I am lucky to know half of them. Later I looked up that first song: I Only Lie When I Love You. The band — Royal Blood. Yes, it was a new band. I watch a lot of festival footage, and I have seen footage of that band pop up, but I’ve never clicked it. I played the song, and it was still fun, a song that could, as Steve did, be mixed with more classic rock styles.

My ears didn’t trick me either. Royal Blood is a band without guitar. In fact, it has two members, its singing bass player and its drummer. In my search, I found praise from none other than Jimmy Page, who said this is a band he likes, saying he likes their new, more rock sound, ironic since there isn’t actual normal guitar to it at all. Personally, I like the use of the bass as a lead instrument, and while I haven’t actually listened to any of their other songs, I listened to an interview of the band, and was thrilled to hear they have audiences whom the band says are eager to hear the more hard rock sounds in concert.

If I had the same audience I once had, sorry to see some of you have gone on, I’m sure the comment to this new band, other than how can you put them in a story with Thin Lizzy, Whispergirl, is that they sound like a garage band. And that is the crazy thing I learned this week – that there is an actual musical genre called “garage rock”. Indeed! My search of the band Royal Blood on Wikipedia called their genre “hard rock” “stoner rock” “blues rock” and “garage rock”.  In fact, Wikipedia even has an entire article describing garage rock, the bottom line of which left me with an image of thousands of young people playing on their own instruments, not enhanced by any production, just the raw sound. Maybe garage rock is actually a good thing? And because it’s what I do, for better or worse, and my greatest fault, back to me….

Oh my dream. If only I could play like Gary Moore … and sing like Lana. Although, then, I might not EVER leave the garage. But! I don’t actually have a garage. Could it be? Should I build a garage? Is that the answer?