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Rory Rocks 'Frisco

Irish guitar legend Rory Gallagher's 'lost' album is finally released after 33 years.

by UMG Online Marketing

Rory Gallagher
Notes from San Francisco
ROCK (EAGLE ROCK ENTERTAINMENT)

he story goes that Jimi Hendrix was once asked what it was like to be the greatest guitarist in the world, to which he replied, "I don't know, go ask Rory Gallagher!"

Rory Gallagher (1948-1995) is simply one of the all-time guitar greats. Slash, The Edge, Brian May, Johnny Marr, Janick Gers, Ritchie Blackmore, Glenn Tipton and Vivian Campbell have all said it. Since practically inventing the Power Trio format in Taste (both Cream and Taste debuted in 1966), Gallagher's music has stood the test of time and he's as popular now as he ever was, his influence gargantuan.

Released on May 17 Via Eagle Rock Entertainment, Irish guitar great Rory Gallagher's Notes from San Francisco is a lavish 2-CD set that includes a never-before-released 1979 concert in the city by the bay.

The story of Rory's lost San Francisco album actually starts in Japan. In November 1977, after a grueling six-month world tour, the band flew straight from their last show in Japan to San Francisco to begin working on a new album with famed American producer Elliot Mazer (who worked on Neil Young's Harvest, Big Brother & The Holding Company's Cheap Thrills and The Band's The Last Waltz). Mazer recalls the sessions grew "tense," as Gallagher thought the mixing process "too complicated." By the end of January 1978, he had shelved the whole record and broke up his band of the past five years.

Fast forward to 2011 when Rory's brother/manager Donal allowed his son Daniel to recover the album from the Gallagher archive and begin the process of mixing it with his engineer. Rory said in 1992 he hoped the album would surface one day but only if it were remixed. Bingo. Hearing this historic never-before-issued studio album from a key period of Gallagher's career (the album that would have been released between Calling Card and Photo Finish) is the Holy Grail for Rory's fans.

CD #2 is another fabulous discovery: a blistering live album taken from four December nights in 1979 at San Francisco's The Old Waldorf. In the audience Van Morrison, on stage Rory Gallagher (guitar/vocals), Gerry McAvoy (bass) and Ted McKenna (drums). Daniel Gallagher chose to add the live side to highlight why Rory chose to shelve the studio album and reduce his band back down to a three-piece. Rory, after seeing The Sex Pistols at Winterland during final mixes for his own album, was struck by the stark drama and blunt primitivism of pure punk. "It was as close to Eddie Cochran as you're going to get," he enthused. He had been saying that he wanted to get back to what he called "meat'n'potato rock'n'roll," a stripped-back primal raw immediacy hearkening back to his Taste days.

A street has been named after him in Paris; a corner in Dublin; a statue in his Ballyshannon birthplace, where The International Rory Gallagher Tribute Festival is held. There's a Rory Gallagher Place and Rory Gallagher Music Library in Cork. Annual tributes are held in Germany and Japan. The man has sold in excess of 20 million albums. Notes From San Francisco [MSRP $17.98] will be a worthy addition to his canon.  

Notes From San Francisco Track Listing:

CD 1
1. "Rue The Day"
2. "Persuasion"
3. "B Girl"
4. "Mississippi Sheiks"
5. "Wheels Within Wheels"
6. "Overnight Bag"
7. "Cruise On Out"
8. "Brute Force & Ignorance"
9. "Fuel To The Fire"

BONUS TRACKS
10. "Wheels Within Wheels" (Alt. version)
11. "Cut A Dash"
12. "Out On The Tiles"

CD 2
1. "Follow Me"
2. "Shinkicker"
3. "Off The Handle"
4. "Bought And Sold"
5. "I'm Leavin'"
6. "Tattoo'd Lady"
7. "Do You Read Me"
8. "Country Mile"
9. "Calling Card"
10. "Shadow Play"
11. "Bullfrog Blues"
12. "Sea Cruise"

Free Rory Gallagher video and audio streams:
Album Trailer (Video)
"Rue The Day" (Studio-Audio)
"Follow Me" (Live-Audio)

Rory Gallagher Official Site

'Star Wars': A Fan Remake

The fan-created Web movie 'Star Wars Uncut' may be coming to a theater near you.

by Chris Nashawaty in Entertainment Weekly

ot so long ago, in a galaxy called Brooklyn, a 24-year-old computer programmer and Star Wars nut named Casey Pugh got an idea. You could say the Force was with him. What if he asked a bunch of Jedi-obsessed fanboys, bloggers, and backyard filmmakers from around the world to remake George Lucas' beloved 1977 masterpiece? Well, not exactly remake it, but reinterpret it as a low-budget, do-it-yourself crowdsourcing project.

A year and a half ago, Pugh set up a website where he dissected Lucas' 121-minute epic into 473 15-second segments, and invited volunteers to claim up to three of the mini-scenes and reshoot them any way they wanted. "Within a week every single scene was claimed," says Pugh, now 26. After receiving close to 1,000 submissions in the first six months from as far afield as Germany, Japan, and Africa, Pugh stitched all of the snippets into a Frankenstein-monster mash-up called Star Wars Uncut. (You can see it at StarWarsUncut.com). The result is a giddy mosaic of crude -- and some not-so-crude -- animation, dads dressed as aluminum-foil droids, family dogs standing in for Chewbacca, and one Michael Bay-style orgy of explosions starring a badass C-3PO driving a stick-shift muscle car. The only common thread running through all of it is the palpable sense of of shared love for Lucas' movie that Pugh's posse brought to the unusual challenge. In the months since the project was completed, Star Wars Uncut has snowballed into a viral Internet sensation. It even won an Emmy in 2010 for achievement in interactive media, beating out the corporate-bankrolled websites for Dexter and Glee.

Pugh also learned that he has some unexpected fans. "The Lucasfilm people flew me out and gave me a pat on the back," says Pugh, adding that he has no idea whether the Big Man himself has seen the homage. "They said the wanted me to do The Empire Strikes Back Uncut next. And I was like, I have a full-time job. But if you guys want to give me some money..." Pugh's not holding his breath. His modest goal is simply to get his lo-fi epic shown at film festivals and hopefully theatrically, with the proceeds going to charity. "I'm not looking to milk this or profit from it," he says. "It's just a labor of love. I just want to get it out there."  

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