The other day I got an interesting email from a woman who was producing a benefit concert for her sister, Kiva, who was battling cancer. As someone who played a bunch of benefit shows and even had to have his own benefit shows to pay for my health care when I was in an accident in 2004, this kind of stuff is near and dear to my heart.
The other interesting thing about this was that it was a bunch of older bands reuniting to help their friend and these bands were from a sect of the Boston music scene that I knew virtually nothing about. For lack of a better term, these were "hair metal" bands, or "melodic 80's hard rock" bands.
If you know me, you know I grew up on Punk Rock and Hardcore music. Most people in my scene shaved their hair off rather than grew it. I never heard of these bands. They played at long since defunct venues that I've only heard of like Narcissus.
Turned out that the woman, Dawn, and her sister, Kiva, were the nicest people. The bands displayed some incredible musicianship and all the musicians were extremely nice to me. At the end of the night I complimented one of the guitar players and we started talking about Eddie Van Halen. Turned out that his brother was non-other than Gary Cherone, the dude from Extreme, who was the third singer of VAN HALEN!?
(What dude!?)
And!!!
And!!!
Gary was next to him! So I got to meet the third singer of Van Halen. That was cool.
This is a clip of Kiva's favorite band In The Pink. Kiva ran their fan club and was instrumental in helping them with their career.
Next, I'll be editing this whole show with interviews.
Good stuff.