San Francisco based funk-rock band Rubicon was made up of Dennis Marcellino (lead vocals, sax, tambourine and flute), Brad Gillis (guitar), Greg Eckler (lead vocals, drums), Max Haskett (trumpet, vocals), Jimmy Pugh (keyboard), Jerry Martini (sax) and Jack Blades (bass).
Formed in the late '70s Rubicon enjoyed success with 2 albums, Rubicon and American Dreams and in 1978 had a hit single with "I'm Gonna Take Care of Everything" that went to #28 on Billboard.
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Night Ranger
It all started when five hard-rockin’ kids from the San Francisco Bay Area joined forces in the early 80s to form Night Ranger. Like no other 80s rock band, Night Ranger both epitomized and transcended the sound and style of that decade.
Early on, their sing-along rock songs and good looks packed clubs and theaters drawing the attention of legendary promoter Bill Graham. Soon Night Ranger was appearing in concert with major artists but it wouldn’t be long before they were headlining their own ARENA shows. Night Ranger’s debut album Dawn Patrol hit the charts hard, going instantly Top 40 with the, now anthemic single, “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me”.
Night Ranger left an indelible mark with a string of best-selling albums that sold more than 16 million copies worldwide. The band’s popularity was fuelled by an impressive string of instantly recognizable hit singles and signature album tracks, including “Sister Christian,” “(You Can Still) Rock In America,” “When You Close Your Eyes,” “Sentimental Street,” “Goodbye” and the afore mentioned “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me.” Harnessing the frenetic drive of heavy metal to hook-laden rock songs, throwing in a stunning twin lead guitar team, and melodious, radio-friendly power ballads, Night Ranger inspired new descriptive phrases such as “melodic metal” and “metal power pop”. They became the standard-bearer of a new sound.
Then, following a seven-year absence, Night Ranger reunited in 1996 for a tour of Japan and a summer US tour. Fans proved that they still loved the music and the band. In 1997, the three-time Oscar-nominated film Boogie Nights spotlighted “Sister Christian” as one of the songs that defined the previous decade. Also that year, the band released Neverland, and the following year, Seven, studio albums that set the standard for the 80s rock revival. Nearly every summer since, Night Ranger has toured across the country, sharing stages with such acts as REO Speedwagon, Styx, Journey, Bad Company, Pat Benatar, Loverboy, Poison, Cinderella, Boston, Heart, Sammy Hagar, Cheap Trick, and Kansas.
In 2000, responding to the astonishing success of their continual touring, MCA Records released The Best Of Night Ranger, a digitally remastered compilation. In 2004, acknowledging the band’s enormous popularity in the first decade of the music video, MCA issued The Best Of Night Ranger/The DVD Collection, featuring five of the band’s best-known videos. In 2005 the album titled Hit’s Acoustic and Rarities was released on IROCK Records thru Universal. 2007 proved to be another busy year for Night Ranger with a Sony/BMG release of a Live Japan record and a new studio album, Hole In The Sun released in Europe, Japan and the US.
The bright lights and rock ‘n’ roll nights never end for Night Ranger. You can still Rock in America!
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Damn Yankees
When the Motor City Madman decided it was time to put a new band together, he looked no further than Styx veteran Tommy Shaw. The two began jamming together with powerhouse hitter Michael Cartellone, a save from Tommy's last solo venture. When filling the bassist slot, Night Ranger's Jack Blades was the obvious choice and Damn Yankees was born. The fusion of these four masterminds of music proved the right formula with their debut album in 1990. The platinum selling album, chock full of rock n roll anthems and power ballads, spurned a chart topping number three hit "High Enough". Next up, the platinum Don't Tread in 1992. Going on what was believed to be a temporary hiatus in 1994, the group disbanded with the members going their separate ways soon after.
In 2000, the band recorded what was supposed to be the third Damn Yankee's album for Portrait Records but pulled the plug on the project after expressing dissatisfaction on the finished product.
The boys say that we haven't seen the end of Damn Yankees. Only time will tell.
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Shaw Blades
Formed in 1995, Jack Blades and Tommy Shaw teamed up for an ephemeral time, when on hiatus from Damn Yankees. With songwriting skills that are frequently compared to that of Lennon and McCartney, the 1995 Warner Brothers release Hallucination is nothing short of spectacular.
Oddly enough, it was to be their first and last album together for many years as Tommy returned to Styx and Jack to Night Ranger. Their songwriting partnership remains still to this day with a new collaboration of sixties/seventies cover tunes called Influence.
Influence is the duo’s first album since their recently re-released 1995 debut, Hallucination. Like the debut--and unlike their history-carving decades as icons in the more hard-rock minded Styx, Night Ranger and Damn Yankees--the latest release is rooted in acoustic guitar and organic production, harvesting a decade of musical influences into 11 tracks (on which Blades and Shaw played all the music except for drums and the occasional keyboards). With classics from the ‘60s and ‘70s including the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’,” Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work,” Influence offers a track-by-track chronology of the musical era that helped define modern rock.
Whether the songs are delivered in faithful tribute, as is the case with Simon & Garfunkel’s epic masterpiece “Sounds of Silence,” or given a modern rock transfusion, as in the duo’s 1966 folk anthem “I Am a Rock,” the results are the same, sparkling like a beacon illuminating the mainstream roots of rock and roll’s formative years.
“I cringe at the thought of Paul Simon hearing our stuff,” laughs Blades, only half-jokingly. “I honor his spirit so much, and I’m such a huge fan. As far as I’m concerned, they invented the word genius to go along with him, and we just wanted to make sure that we did their songs justice. Tommy and I have that special symbiotic relationship that doesn’t come along a lot. Simon & Garfunkel also had it, we have a reverence to it, and it was something that we just wanted to dig into.”
“As writers, we’re like two old friends who finish each other’s sentences,” adds Shaw. “We became best friends as a result of the music and the experiences we’ve had because of it.”
But Influence isn’t about the experiences of Shaw Blades, it’s about the inspiration that helped create the experiences. “This album has been years in the making,” continues the Styx/Damn Yankees guitarist. “The recording process didn’t take years, but the concept had been looming in our conversations for a long time. We’d always sit around with a couple of guitars and play songs we both knew from or younger days, spontaneous harmonizing and all that, and we slowly eased into the idea of making this record.”
One of the most prolific duos in the history of hard rock, Shaw and Blades have sold more than 50 million albums amongst their three bands, scored 12 Top 10 singles on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart, debuted 16 albums in the Billboard “Top 200” albums chart, and share joint songwriting credits for the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, Cher and Alice Cooper.
Even so, Influence offered the pair an invigorating musical freedom. “With Shaw Blades,” offers Blades, “we’re able to take liberties that our respective bands couldn’t do. We need to be Styx-sounding, we need to fit in that Night Ranger world, and we even need to think about Damn Yankees, so that’s what’s fun about Shaw Blades--we get to be our alter-egos when we want to be, yet we can truly be ourselves. We grew up singing harmonies and songs with massive vocals, so it’s a wonderful thing to have that freedom here. This was a complete labor of love.”
“You can always tell a brilliant song, whether it was written 30 years ago or yesterday,” says Blades. “Every song we picked is identifiable in its own right, and they’re all immediately recognizable. What does that tell you? That the songs are the stars. That’s what we wanted to do on this record, we wanted the songs to be the stars. I think that’s what we accomplished.”
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TMG: Tak Matsumoto Group
The outpouring of immense creative talent is obvious when listening to the songs off of the debut disc TMG1 by the Tak Matsumoto Group.
A definite super group in the making, it boasts the genius of guitar virtuoso Tak Matsumoto, Damn Yankees/ Night Ranger bassist/vocalist extraordinaire Jack Blades, Eric Martin, the hypnotic soulful crooner of Mr. Big/EMB fame and Brian Tichy, drumming powerhouse behind Slash's Snakepit.
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