Red Velvet Media ®

Red Velvet Media ®

By Holly Stephey Red Velvet MediaSociety & CultureMusicMusic Interviews
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Red Velvet Media ® episodes

  • This Is Decibel ; Indie rock Mik & Matt Pinfield
    Matt Pinfield and Mik came up with the name “This Is Decibel” while in the middle of super storm “Sandy”. They were meeting up to talk about few ideas and were forced to drive to a restaurant to find electricity. While at the restaurant, Matt suggested of the idea of starting a new project and co-writing songs with Mik. They both started to travel to the mountains of Pennsylvania in the look for inspiration while away from the city life, spending weekends listening to the best records and watching music documentaries while writing and recording every idea. 
    Decibel seemed like the perfect representation of both sound and energy, and in that moment it carried extra resonance as an idea that could deliver the electricity and light that were needed in the midst of a storm. With the formation of This Is Decibel three years later, the band builds on this origin with music reminiscent of calm in the middle of a storm, with touches of electricity. 
    Decibel has found a reliable residence, accepted amongst rock-faithful for their muscular guitar riffs, melodic hooks, and an easily digestible delivery that’s blanketed in familiarity. Their music leaps, gyrates, and contorts, while the sheer enthusiasm of the band transforms its underlying retro vibes into something totally fresh. The band shows itself to be incredibly ambitious and amazing in the way it fulfills those ambitions.  They skillfully combine a classic rock style with their own hard-hitting vocals and lyrics for an amazing new sound. There is just something awesome about the way Rocky sings and the accompanying music.  It’s so original, intricate, polished…yet raw and visceral!
    59 min
  • Richard Barone “Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village of the 1960s”
    Richard Barone is an acclaimed recording artist, performer, producer, and author. Since pioneering the indie rock scene in Hoboken, NJ as frontman for The Bongos, and reinventing himself with the chamber pop classic “cool blue halo”, Barone has produced countless studio recordings and worked with artists in every genre. Collaborators have included Tony Visconti, Beach Boy Al Jardine, Sean Lennon, Dion, John Sebastian, Alejandro Escovedo, Jill Sobule, Donovan, Moby, the late Lou Reed, and American folk icon Pete Seeger. He has scored shows and staged all-star concert events at such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. His memoir Frontman: Surviving The Rock Star Myth was published by Hal Leonard Books. Recent album releases include his studio album, Glow produced by Visconti, the deluxe CD/DVD set, '”cool blue halo' 25th Anniversary Concert”, and his latest, “Sorrows & Promises”, a new album of songs from the early 1960s music scene in Greenwich Village, where Barone lives. He is affiliated with the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University.
    1 hr 19 min
  • Chuck Prophet New Music ,"BOBBY FULLER DIED FOR YOUR SINS "
    Chuck Prophet describes his new disc BOBBY FULLER DIED FOR YOUR SINS as “California Noir.”   He says, “the state has always represented the Golden Dream, and it’s the tension between romance and reality that lurks underneath the surface in all noir films and paperbacks, and that connects these songs.  Doomed love, inconsolable loneliness, rags to riches to rags again, and fast-paced violence are always on the menu on the Left Coast. Who is Bobby Fuller? He’s the star of the ultimate Rock and Roll Babylon feel-bad story. The title track came out of an obsession Prophet shares with co-conspirator klipschutz. Prophet explains, “One day we were sitting in my so-called office South of Market listening to LPs, when out of frustration –I picked up a guitar and shouted, ‘I hear that record crackle, the needle skips and jumps!’ and klipschutz shot back, ‘“Bobby Fuller died for your sins! One thing led to another, and ten months later he found himself at the legendary Hyde St. Studios in the heart of the Tenderloin “slaving over a hot two-inch tape machine, cutting tracks with Brad Jones, Paul Q. Kolderie, and Matt Winegar riding herd.”  And pumping it all into the echo chamber. No computer in sight and two-inch tape boxes stacked up to the ceiling. The Mission Express, Prophet’s band, which includes his wife Stephanie Finch, provided the backing. “Talented, difficult people who all played their hearts out. You can hear it,” he says. And recording at Hyde Street – walking distance from his apartment – was a homecoming of sorts. “I did my first session there, in high school no less,” says Prophet.  He even dragged out his ’64 Stratocaster, a guitar that Jonathan Richman said sounds, “like gasoline in the sand, like a motorcycle at a hot dog stand.”
    44 min
  • Gerry Leonard,guitar player, songwriter and producer. Bowie, Vega, Spookyghost !
    Gerry Leonard is a Dublin born guitar player, songwriter and producer now based in upstate New York. As part of the New York scene Leonard’s distinctive ambient style has led to his working with many great artists over the years. A highlight was becoming music director / guitar player for David Bowie on his last year long “Reality” world tour and DVD (2003/2004). Apart from Bowie’s previous two records, “Heathen” (2001) and “Reality” (2003) and the subsequent tours, he is also featured on the penultimate David Bowie record titled “The Next Day” and had two co-writes with David on the album, “Boss of me” and “I’ll take you there”. “The Next Day”  came out on March 12 2013. Gerry was honored to be part of the Brit Awards Tribute to David in Feb 2016.Leonard produced and helped co-write the last full album for Suzanne Vega. “Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles” came out in Feb 2014 and has been very well received garnering 4 star reviews from Q and Mojo music magazines. He has also produced and arranged the new album from Suzanne based around the life and works of the author Carson McCullers. This new 10 song album called “Lover Beloved” will be released in the fall of 2016.
    When not touring or recording with these international artists, Leonard heads up his own project, Spookyghost. Under the name Spookyghost, he has recorded two solo albums. The first recording simply called “Spookyghost” was primarily an ambient guitar record, made in his New York apartment in 1998. His second, “The Light Machine” (2002) has been described by David Bowie as “Quite the most beautiful and moving pieces of work I have possessed in a long time.” A third Spookyghost album is currently in the works.
    1 hr
  • Punk Avenue: Inside the New York City Underground, 1972-1982
    Punk Avenue: The New York City Underground 1972-1982 is an intimate look at author Paris-born Phil Marcade’s first ten years in the United States where drifted from Boston to the West Coast and back, before winding up in New York City and becoming immersed in the early punk rock scene. From backrooms of Max’s and CBGB’s to the Tropicana Hotel in Los Angeles and back, Punk Avenue is a tour de force of stories from someone at the heart of the era. With brilliant, often hilarious prose, Marcade relays first-hand tales about spending a Provincetown summer with photographer Nan Goldin and actor-writer Cookie Mueller, having the Ramones play their very first gig at his party, working with Blondie’s Debbie Harry on French lyrics for her songs, enjoying Thanksgiving with Johnny Thunders’ mother, and starting the beloved NYC punk-blues band The Senders. Along the way, he smokes a joint with Bob Marley, falls down a mountain, gets attacked by Nancy Spungen’s junkie cat, become a junkie himself, adopts a dog who eats his pot, opens for The Clash at Bond’s Casino, opens a store named Rebop on Seventh Avenue, throws up in some girl’s mouth, talks about vacuum cleaners with Sid Vicious, lives thru the Blackout of 1977, gets glue in his eye, gets mugged at knife point, plays drums with Johnny Thunders’ band Gang War, sets some guy’s attache-case on fire, listens to pre-famous Madonna singing in the rehearsal studio next to his, gets mugged at gun point, O.D.s on heroin, gets saved by a gentle giant named Bill, lives at night? Never sleeps?
    1 hr 16 min
  • Jeremy And The Harlequins, debut Album"American Dreamer
    You know you’re doing something right when Bruce Springsteen’s right hand man decides your song is the coolest track in the world. That’s exactly what Steve Van Zandt did this June –picking ‘Trip Into The Light’ for that very accolade on his Little Steven’s Underground Garage radio show. It’s easy to hear why – the opening song from Jeremy And The Harlequins’ debut full-length, American Dreamer, it sparkles and shimmers with the glamor of rock’n’roll’s past while simultaneously forging forward into the future with confidence. Channeling the influences of 1950s and ’60s rock’n’roll through the (cell phone) camera lens of 2015, Jeremy And The Harlequins – Jeremy Fury (vocals), Craig Bonich and Patrick Meyer (guitars), Stevie Fury (drums) and Bobby Ever (bass) – have managed to capture the sound of New York both in the here and now and the there and then. It’s a record about love and loss, tragedy and romanticism, dreams and reality, as well as everything in between, and its ten songs are at once familiar and fresh, a new friend it feels like you’ve known for decades.
    55 min
  • Steve Weitzman ; We are not afraid.. And so much more!
    Steve Weitzman – Founder, has been a music and sports journalist, photographer and concert promoter. Since beginning his writing career in 1969, he has written for Rolling Stone, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Billboard and other publications having interviewed many artists including John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, Billy Joel (for Billy’s first Rolling Stone feature) and many others before making his transition to concert promoting in the late 1980’s. His photographs have been published in a wide variety of books and magazines. Since 1989 Steve has promoted countless concerts at many New York City venues including Tramps, Village Underground, Warsaw, Central Park SummerStage, Beacon Theater, Town Hall, Roseland and others working with many artists including Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Eminem, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, George Clinton and many others. Steve organized and promoted the 2006 Benefit for Arthur Lee concert at the Beacon Theater which headlined Robert Plant along with Ian Hunter, Ryan Adams and others to raise money for Lee’s medical expenses when he was suffering from leukemia with no health insurance. Today, Steve is now focused on giving back through charity events. Steve originated the idea of and is the producer for the “We Are Not Afraid” benefit video and song release.
    1 hr 40 min
  • Ed Stasium ; Producer/Engineer/Mixer and much more!
    Producer/engineer/mixer, Ed Stasium would rather just talk about the music when pressed for highlights of his career. Helping an artist clearly bring their vision to fruition while taking care to make sure the sound shines, Ed has always taken a role as "another member of the band" while leading a project to completion; in fact Ed has contributed guitar, vocals, keyboards, and percussion on every record he has worked on. He recorded, and was a member of countless garage bands during his formative years. While attending the School Of Visual Arts in Manhattan, Ed joined a local New Jersey group named "Brandywine. In 1972 he left the band and had a chance meeting with Tony Camillo and Tony Bongiovi, owners of Venture Sound Studios in Somerville, NJ. There he became involved with the building and wiring of the room and became a staff engineer where he received his first "hands on" experience in professional recording. Ed recorded and mixed his first gold single, Gladys Knight & the Pips' "Midnight Train to Georgia" at Venture Sound. In the three decades since, Ed has recorded and produced such diverse artists as The Ramones, Talking Heads, Julian Cope, Peter Wolf, Mick Jagger, Jeff Healey, Joan Jett, Marshall Crenshaw, Living Colour, Soul Asylum, The Smithereens, Motorhead, Baby Animals, Biohazard, The Reverend Horton Heat, Shirley Caesar, Misfits, The Coal Porters, Hoodoo Gurus, The Chesterfield Kings and The Empty Hearts. Today, Ed lives in Southern California. He enjoys listening to his 78, 45, and LP record collection while enthusing about the creative musical possibilities of working in the ever-changing analog/digital recording environment.
    1 hr 4 min
  • Denny Daniel ;The Museum of Interesting Things
    The Museum of Interesting Things is a traveling interactive demonstration/exhibition of antiques and inventions that goes to schools and events and inspires kids and adults to be curious. We bring back tinkering. I like to say it shows kids and adults that their ipods did not pop out of thin air! Like a circus...just no elephants!
     
    Curator and founder Denny Daniel brings his traveling interactive demonstration/exhibition of antiques and inventions, inspiring innovation and creativity for all. Heralded in the NY Times, appeared on the History Channel, The Science Channel and over 20 publications and presented at 3 TEDx talks, Daniel, an NYU Grad who often lectures there, teaches through touch and feel allowing participants to actually interact with historical items and learn from the past to invent a better future. The Museum includes departments in Science, Math, Literature, Medical, Toys, Music, Household and Photography, plus many themed exhibitions. "We bring back tinkering and show kids and adults their iPods did not pop out of thin air! Like a circus...just no elephants."
    2 hr 1 min
  • Briana Kidwell;New music Homegrown and Rhinestoned !
    Homegrown and Rhinestoned is the first full length album from Briana Christian Kidwell.  The rhinestone album is about growing up on a fourth generation family farm in Missouri and moving to Nashville, Tennessee.  It was inspired by the happiness of family, music and rhinestones.  Written from the heart to create happiness and the feeling of unconditional love for listeners all over the world.  Many sub genres and styles within country music are present on this gift to world.  It brings with her the love and experiences that span her lifetime of love.  If there is anything you can take with you from the record, we hope you carry Briana's love for you and the world in your heart forever.
    1 hr 11 min

About Red Velvet Media ®

From the publisher's feed

Holly Stephey is a successful producer , Radio show host of the very popular Radio show "Red Velvet Media Blogtalk Radio" as well as handling many high-profile individuals with her company Red Velvet Media. Holly is a very sought out person for many productions that involve non profits and is an active Philanthropist. She believes that there is a spiritual path to everything and she hopes to bring about an awareness through Music, Art, Book's, Pop Culture and her constant involvement with many organizations that further her message of LOVE and HOPE for the world.