The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth

It’s not often we get to throw around the phrase “legend” or “trailblazer” without hyperbole, but that’s exactly what we’ve got on this week’s program. Suzi Quatro is credited as being the first instrument playing female to lead a successful rock and roll band which - when she came upon the male dominated music scene in the early 1970s - was no small feat.  Suzi has done it all: several top ten hi...

2021 marks the golden anniversary of the band America. That’s 50 years of unique and carefully crafted rock music that was always adorned with strummy acoustic goodness, the best harmonies this side of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young and sui generis lyrical content. The band has released 18 studio albums (many produced by George Martin of The Beatles) and they still have a formidable presence on t...

Judee Sill was a California-based songwriter who came of age during the peak of the Laurel Canyon scene in the early 1970s and she mingled with the likes of Jackson Brown and Joni Mitchell. In fact, Sill was even the first artist to be signed to David Geffen’s Asylum Records label. But, Judee - and her music - generally tapped into something a little darker; more dangerous than her colleagues did....

Let’s start with the bad news, so we can get it out of the way. Musician A.J. Croce lost his father - famed singer-songwriter, Jim Croce - before he was two years old. As if that weren’t enough, A.J. went through a long period of blindness as a child, and - in 2018 - he lost his wife from a rare heart virus. Faced with those challenges, most of us might not be able to find the strength to carry on...

The path to success for most successful people in the entertainment business - or any business, for that matter - is rarely a straight one. Life is full of unexpected twists and turns, but it's all about keeping one’s cool and choosing directions that make sense, even if there is a bit of risk involved. Jim Keller knows he didn’t just wake up one morning to become the longtime manager for Phi...

The good old days of record collecting are over; the cat is definitely out of the bag. You don’t need me to tell you how sales of vinyl records have been increasing in the last few years. There used to be a time when one could walk up to a garage sale, or into a thrift store, and buy grails for a dollar, or less, but those days are now gone. Additionally, Discogs has created an environment where r...

It’s not always about money and it’s not always about fame; sometimes an artist has a desire to just share the music that they can’t help but create, but every so often the industry gatekeepers also have more of an interest in art and creativity than just dollars and cents. Meet Howie Klein, a writer, concert promoter, disc jockey, music producer, record label founder, record label executive, prog...

Some people refuse to look back, not wanting to see what’s happened in their past, not wanting to question their decisions or reopen old wounds. Most of the time, this is good advice; the past is a cashed check. However, every once in a while, we allow ourselves to wallow in a bit of nostalgia, to crack open the old high school yearbook and pass through the faces and memories of many years ago.  W...