Michael's Record Collection

The delightful Maiah Wynne from Envy of None (and a terrific solo artist) was kind enough to talk to me about her career, her musical background, working with legendary Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson and Coney Hatch's Andy Curran in Envy of None, the stories and meanings behind the songs on the band's self-titled debut album, and so much more. To learn more about Envy of None, visit the band’s websit...

For this week's episode, The Tangent's Andy Tillison joined me to discuss his band's new album, "Songs from the Hard Shoulder." Andy dove into the stories behind the songs on the record and other topics include: his intro to music, how he came to love Close to the Edge by Yes, some of the thoughts behind some of The Tangent's top songs, and much more. Find out more about The Tangent at www.thetang...

Music comes in all kinds of forms and some of them are funny as well as pleasing to the ear. In my opinion, that perfectly describes "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1985 classic, Dare to Be Stupid. Joining me to dissect this excellent slice of mid-80s pop culture is Lauren Carey from the outstanding Beer'd Al Podcast. Lauren and her brother combined their two favorite things, craft beer and the music of Wei...

I couldn't wait to get this episode out because I spoke with longtime Billy Joel drummer Liberty DeVitto. I've always been a big fan of Billy's music and part of the reason for that is his outstanding band, highlighted by DeVitto's work behind the drum kit. With Billy's The Nylon Curtain album set to celebrate its 40th anniversary in September, I wanted to talk to Liberty about a record which is v...

Derek Shulman, founding member of Gentle Giant and successful record executive, is my guest for this episode. We're here to talk about the remastered and reissued "Civilian" release that just dropped. Derek also talked about his musical beginnings, ending the band, his transition from musician to record executive, his new endeavors in the music documentary space, and what other releases Gentle Gia...

Melodic hard rock fans have another new supergroup to check out and it's a good one. Skills is a project that partnered guitarist Brad Gillis (Night Ranger), bassist Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big, The Winery Dogs, Sons of Apollo), drummer David Huff (Giant), and Brazilian vocalist Renan Zonta (Electric Mob, Brother to Brother). The band just released its debut album, "Different Worlds," and it's a really...

For this week's show I checked in with drummer Jonathan Mover, the founder of the progressive rock homage band ProgJect. Jonathan has worked with some of the biggest names in music: Aretha Franklin, Alice Cooper, Joe Satriani, and the Tubes to name a few. He was briefly a member of Marillion in the 1980s and he helped Steve Hackett and Steve Howe form GTR. Jonathan was kind enough to tell me about...

Ben Montgomery from the Records Revisited podcast became the first repeat guest in the history of Michael's Record Collection in this episode. I spoke with Ben because we both made the trip from Orlando to Tampa last week to see The Who on the band's "The Who Hits Back" tour. I didn't just want to compare notes on the show with Ben, but I also wanted to talk about how going to see bands live affec...

For this episode, I spoke with Martin Sweet and Peter London of Crashdïet, a melodic rock band out of Sweden. The duo make up half of the band and they were kind enough to spend some time with me to discuss their forthcoming album, Automaton (out April 29). The album is sure to please fans of 1980s and 1990s hard rock with its catchy, anthemic choruses and standout musicianship. We also talked abo...

Michigan progressive metal masters Imminent Sonic Destruction are about to release their third album, The Sun Will Also Set. The band already has two standout albums in its catalog and the third one may be the best of all. I spoke with guitarist/vocalist Tony Piccoli about the making of the album, the band's origins, his early influences and a lot more. Despite my promo tracks being in the wrong s...

Rock and roll doesn't get much more old school than Scottish legends Nazareth. The band is still going more than 50 years since releasing their first album. Their 25th album, Surviving the Law, is coming out in mid-April, and bassist and founding member Pete Agnew was kind enough to tell me how this fresh new take on the Nazareth sound has come about. Pete and I also spoke about his introduction t...

Legendary Irish rock vocalist Robin McAuley has been a busy guy and the former McAuley Schenker Group frontman is about to have his second release with his newest band, Black Swan, drop in early April. Robin and I spoke in depth about the new Generation Mind album, his background, having his first hit song with a "Stairway to Heaven" cover, joining M.S.G., his successful Las Vegas show ("Raiding t...

I caught up with composer and keyboard maestro Oliver Wakeman this week to discuss the release of his newest box set, Collaborations. This three-CD set contains new reissues (with bonus tracks) of his The 3 ages of Magick collaboration with Steve Howe and his Ravens & Lullabies album with Gordon Giltrap. There's also a disc of previously unreleased live material with Giltrap and vocalist Paul Manz...

Dennis DeYoung's guitarist August Zadra has been in the music business a long time. Aside from playing with the legendary Styx front man for the last 12 years, August has been in several tribute bands and has played with some of the greats in rock music. Now he's put together his first solo project under the name Zadra and released his first album, Guiding Star. I spoke with August about this exce...

This week's show is a little different. I'm discussing Journey's iconic 1981 "Escape" album with David Rohe and we're giving out song rankings from the album. Dave was the very first Michael's Record Collection Patreon supporter and I've known him for many years. We had a great time dissecting a classic record from the early 80s track by track and then ranking the songs to see how our lists compar...

This week's show discusses a criminally unknown album by a criminally unknown artist. Kevin Gilbert may not be a name you recognize but you've likely heard his work. If you don't know his bands Giraffe or Toy Matinee, you may be familiar with Sheryl Crow's debut album, on which Kevin co-wrote the majority of the songs and played multiple instruments. Kevin passed away at the young age of 29 in 199...

It's never easy to replace a popular band's original lead singer and it's twice as hard when that singer is John Wetton. But that's what John Payne did, carving out his own niche as the lead singer and bassist of Asia through the 1990s and beyond, appearing on eight studio records with the band. John is hitting the road with Asia Featuring John Payne to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the band's...

The one and only Carmine Appice is this week's guest! Carmine has been a force with Vanilla Fudge, Cactus, Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, Blue Murder, King Kobra, and several other bands and side projects and he's played with nearly every big name in rock music. I spoke with Carmine about a historic new release. A recording of the first ever Cactus concert was unearthed and released as The Birth of C...

Lana Lane has just released her first album in a decade with the outstanding new Neptune Blue. The queen of symphonic and melodic rock has taken a little of the complexity out and made more or less an album-oriented rock album that is accessible enough for the masses but with enough technical musical flourishes by her excellent contributing musicians to satisfy the progressive rock fans. I spoke w...

Author Annie Zaleski literally wrote the book on the seminal 1982 album Rio by Duran Duran. An album that began with sluggish U.S. sales turned into an iconic juggernaut on the strength of its songs, heavy rotation of hit singles on MTV, and the talent and sheer willpower of the five young men who made the record. Annie talked about how she got started as a writer, how she fell for Duran Duran's m...

Michael Sadler has one of the most unique voices in music. His work with Saga has been stellar through the years and he pops up periodically on releases by other artists. His newest endeavor is joining a band called ProgJect: the Ultimate Progressive Rock Experience. ProgJect pays homage to the progressive rock masters and the five-piece group is set to hit the road across the U.S., bringing prog...

Pat Francis from the excellent Rock Solid podcast is like the godfather of music podcasters. His show is in its 11th year and is going strong with its best guests ever. Pat's show has a rotating format. One week it's an interview, the next it's a roundtable between Pat and his friends discussing an album track by track. This week, I was delighted to welcome Pat to this show to talk about Rock Soli...

It's the first annual Michael's Record Collection awards! For this episode, you're stuck with just me (no guests) as I walk through the songs and albums that stood out to me over the 2021 calendar year. Play along at home and tell me what I got right and wrong. I have a list of albums and songs below in case you want to check out any you're not familiar with, so if you don't want to be spoiled abo...

Terry Ilous isn't exactly a household name but he's an artist that has had some success across multiple genres. He fronted his band XYZ in the late 1980s and early 90s, spent more than eight years as Jack Russell's successor as the lead singer of Great White, and has done a lot of Latin-influenced and Flamenco-type music as well. Terry's new project, Land of Gypsies, released its self-titled debut...

I'm changing things up a little for this episode as instead of discussing a new or classic album, I enlisted Matt Wardlaw from Ultimate Classic Rock to compare notes on our recent experiences seeing Genesis on The Last Domino? Tour. Genesis is my all-time favorite band, so there was never a question of whether I was going to see them, so much as a question of where and how often. Matt and I saw th...