Steve and I had the good fortune to get VIP tickets for the Wildhearts show at the Bowery Ballroom on the 14th of this month. I took my camera, got some cool pics of the band doing soundcheck and posted them here.

Check 'em out. Thanks.

- D

..

So, the show is this Sunday, March 29th at Ollie's Point in Amityville. A lot of musicians who used to play at Sparks will be reuniting to pay tribute to our friend Barry Ambrosio, who sadly passed away in December. Here's the lineup:

Black Jack Bomber
Rondinelli featuring Bobby and Teddy Rondinelli
Stiff Richards featuring George Cintron
Strike Twice
Mike Pont from Hotshot
Nurse Diesel
Fallout
Steve Sage from Bad Medicine
Mr. Murray

Additional Artists:
Frank Vestry
Micky James
Rodney James
Bobby Simmons
Chuck Bonfante

Plus Special Unannounced Guests.

Doors open at 1:00, the music starts at 2:00.
Admission $10 - with proceeds going to the American Cancer Society in Barry's name.

More info at BambFest.com

I've been looking around MySpace and Facebook, and the thing that really mystifies me is that this band seems to operate in a vacuum, largely unnoticed by any of the 'scenes' out here on Long Island.

The blues guys? We're too rock. The tribute guys? We don't even register with those guys - we don't have the star power, heh heh (even though two out of three of us actually play in a couple of tribute bands). Other cover bands? We're the competition, so we don't get a whole lot of respect from other bands that play the same places we do. The reunion guys? They're too busy trying to bring their bands back to the level they were at back in the day.

So, here we are, working from the outside. Does it bug me? Maybe a little, but I've always been apart from whatever scene has been happening. Even back when I was in Snakeyed Su, we played all the same clubs as everybody else but we never really blended in with everybody else. Of course, we were the only band on the scene that got a chance to go to The Big Dance, however badly that may have ended - so maybe there's something to sitting at a different lunch table than the Cool Kids.

Sure, there are a few bands who know about us - Fullhouse, Finespun, Almost Queen and Blackmore's Night have come out to see us pretty often. But we pretty much remain a well-kept secret as far as Long Island's 'rock community' goes.

But I'll tell you what - I'll stack this band up against any band out there, any day of the week. For my money, we can hang with anybody. It'd be nice if we got a little more love from our fellow musicians, but even if we don't we'll still rock harder than most of those guys who play the bigger clubs. Bank it.

Be sure and check out the new video for our song 'Blue Sky Blue' at the web site!

Many, many thanks to our friend Eric Harris from Wade Digital Video for his eye and expertise in helping us get this video done. 

We got a friend request this morning from Mia Hannson, who is in the Swedish all-female band Nurse Diesel, and naturally she gets an add from us.

We've know about the Swedish ND for a while, but never thought to link to them. Well, that's remedied now, and we're sorry it took so long.

Check out Mia's space as well as the Nurse Diesel site - I'm sure if you're given the choice between looking at 3 crusty old dudes from New York or a bunch of beautiful Swedish women who rock, I know which way you're gonna go.

We were planning on rolling it out on New Year's Day, but we couldn't wait!

The newly re-designed nurse-diesel.com is live, and we've added some new stuff to make the site even more informative and interactive. Our Gigs page is now in calendar format so you can check where we're playing at a glance, the blog has been rolled into the site design, and we added a guestbook so you can leave us a comment or message.

Be sure and check it out. There's info on the new video, new guitars, upcoming shows and more stuff that we can't think of right now. The address is nurse-diesel.com.

And Happy New Year from the Nurse! We'll see you in the clubs.

I just posted the demo for the first original tune the band has started doing live, a song called 'Blue Sky Blue.' It was written a few years ago about a friend that was battling heroin addiction, but for some reason it came out sounding a lot happier than it should have considering the subject matter.

The song was written as sort of a tribute to the writing style of John Lennon - it uses a lot of the same songwriting tricks that The Beatles and Johnny Guitar used. People seem to hear some Bowie and cheap Trick in there as well - which makes sense, because both of them borrowed heavily from Lennon's style.

Anyway, hope you like it. Rate it up!

This morning we placed an order for a gross of Nurse Diesel t-shirts. Spiffy red ND logo (plus the web site and MySpace URLs) on high-quality black Ts.

We're getting them from the company that does tour shirts for all the big bands and the WWE and other huge merch outfits - which means this is the kind of t-shirt you'd be paying 35 bucks for if you were at Jones Beach and they had a ZZTop logo on them instead of a Nurse Diesel logo. No, they won't fall apart the first time you wash them, and yes, the ink will still be firmly on the shirt by the time your kids graduate from college.

And we;re giving one to everybody who comes out to the Double R Bar on the 15th of December to hail the holidays with us.

Yeah, there's a $5 cover charge, but that's club policy for Double R. And besides, what other bar could you go to and buy a spiffy black T for 5 bucks and get to rock out all night.

We'll have other stuff to give away, too. But we haven't gotten it yet. Once we get it, we'll let you know.

We were scheduled for October 19th at Pub 454 in Bohemia...

BUT...

The owner called the other night and said she wanted us to play a week later instead - so we could do their HALLOWEEN PARTY!!

That's right - we'll be doing 454's Halloween Party on Friday, October 26, then Grizzly's Halloween Party on Saturday, October 27.

We must be a scarier band than I thought.... anyway, start making those costumes NOW!!

Our drummer Steve Stavros left for a week's holiday somewhere south of here, but that didn't stop us from setting up, setting the Marshall on stun and attempting to level houses in D's neighborhood...

We played a party yesterday with the help of our friend Rich Patrick (who goes by the MySpace nick Skullguy) - Rich bought himself a new set of Pearl drums a couple of days ago and was only too glad to bring them out and help us annoy the neighbors.

Afterwards, D broke out an aged bottle of Patron and everybody got some. Tequila.

Anyway. Big fun in the Land of Diesel. No vacations for those of us who are determined to disturb the peace.