The Salvation Day Interviews (1 of 2) with musician Anthony Tadlock

     Dear listener, as a special treat and for the edification of music lovers all over Tumblr this is part 1 of 2 of my Salvation Day Interviews with Anthony Tadlock, A.K.A. t-underneaththeradardancing on Tumblr. Mr Tadlock, I recently spent several hours listening to Salvation Day. Thanks for agreeing to answer some questions about your band’s music. 

    When I dive headlong into music that I’m not too familiar with there’s always this sense of discomfort, but when I started with Mercy from your EP, The Backdoor Sessions, I felt distinctly like I was sitting in a new bar and listening to an exceedingly talented local band perform live. I know we’ve discussed this one-on-one before, but for the peeps on Tumblr, what was the actual genesis of SD, and how did you and Ms Vita Rhie Quintanilla meet? What was the spark that brought you two together to record in the first place?

     to set the stage - so to speak - i had been performing with and jamming and hanging with a young musician - very loose no muss fuss - 3 weeks before meeting vita i had a mild heart attack - mild but the hospital experience was literally a nightmare and nearly killed me - a couple weeks after getting out i was invited over to play/ jam/hang out - wuz expecting at most a couple other ppl to b there - btw to digress - t is very much an introvert - to digress further - t is a stage name but the only name ppl in the music aspect of my life know me by or call me - anywaves - i had just set up my guitar and amp when i could feel a presence coming down the stairs - a young woman - at 1st i guessed 25- ish which would make her the 2nd oldest in the room - she looked at a painting of crows and i said something to her about my love of corvids - i was improvising on guitar - some blues - i think a bass player was playing along and maybe another guitar - she started singing improvising lyrics and we started riffing off each other - her voice blew me away - then she started playing her original songs - omfg ! - anyway - i hoped that we would play together again

     a couple weeks later she walked into Madrone Art Bar where i frequently played open mics -she was with my friend - both joined me on stage and we did what i call "deep space nine " which is what i called any unplanned unrehearsed collaboration onstage - i of course could not remember her name - she handed me a business card lol - she told me she had a weekly gig at a cafe i had performed at and would i like to join her - by this time i knew she was diagnosed w schizoaffective disorder - that she was 17 still in high school and a witch - we started performing together playing her gigs - open mics - on the street ...there is of course more to the story which may be covered as we go on

    I went through every song on Salvation Day’s YouTube page, the instrumentals and the voice go very well together, and I must admit, there is great synergy on display. You two had me mesmerized a few times, particularly with tunes like Para Ti and Reincarnation. Tell me, do the instrumentals come first, or do the lyrics/vocals come first, or somehow both at the same time? What goes into the process before you record?

     virtually all of salvation day songs are mostly vita - the lyrics in particular - some have come out of improvising at gigs - or as vita would say - we are just gonna pull something out of our ass now - some she has already "arranged " before i hear them others she asks me to figure out some chords and key - it should be noted that after graduating high school she moved to davis ca about 100 long miles away with no good way of getting there and back on public transit - required bus ride - a subway ride and finally a train and took 3 hours - neither of us drive though she recently learned - t cant see for shit so - and there was lots of drama in the summer preceding - however we rarely felt the need to rehearse - at early gigs i would ask whats the 1st chord and what key - sometimes the answer was - idk - jimi hendrix chords lol - sometimes they were jazz chords i didnt know - i still play a lot of chords im not quite sure the name of and double stops that suggest a chord - on a good night i play by ear and improvise mostly - when we decided we were gonna make an album - we formalized the arrangements and figured out keys etc ...

     sometimes - like last week when we got together after not playing together in a couple months - tho exchanging some snippets thru email text etc - vita thought of some lyrics on the spot - i started playing some chords - we fucked around w it a bit - made a rough recording on fones and will see if something comes of it - Reincarnation was written just before we met - vita says the songs morphed and become different thru my influence - Para Ti she had come up with a couple months after we started playing together - we were at the friends house - and he had become totally indisposed - we were supposed to start the recording process that day - we waited around to see if he would improve and she started playing it - i came up w the lead guitar lines - btw to digress to q 1 - vita was often in and out of hallucinations and delusions at the time - she has no memory of the 1st time we met and hazy about the beginning period - one last example Mercy - written entirely by vita - tho my guitar was central - she sent me an audio file - it has chords i dont know - i just followed her voice and elaborated - tbh i still dont know what key it is in lol - like jack sparrow eluding capture we just make it up as we go

    Do you have any advice for aspiring musicians out there based on your experiences with SD so far? Have you had any creative blocks or serious problems when generating new music? If so, how do you get through them, and what do you think the most important thing is for a musician to do when they feel discouraged or dejected by their own bad experiences with music making?

     whew - thats a tough one - i have been playing guitar for almost 60 years - been in a number of bands and playing situations - have been discouraged countless times - most recent was the whole experience of recording a studio album with a producer - it was hugely stressful for myriad reasons and ego deflating and not in a good way - we coped w that by recording the Backdoor Sessions ep - the bulk of was recorded in a couple hours in vita's tiny dorm room using garageband - it was done without rehearsal - and we played 2 gigs in january that we were happy with also w no rehearsal - we also released vita's book The Schizophrenic Dialogues - all while covid was rearing its ugly head - no gigs to promote anything - no spoken word opportunities - vita was in terror of infecting me - between age COPD and heart i was a likely candidate to die - so we saw each other rarely

     i had invested a huge amount of $ in the studio album - to cope vita started a collective based on Sacred Arts Productions - a jewelry biz and an art biz - i worked w our web designer / friend / collaborator maggie umber to get our web site up - and started recording daily snippets for instagram and spammed the fuck out of tumblr - vita and i met mostly outdoors - playing mostly acoustic where the chances of infecting me were minimized (she got covid twice during this period ) so i guess my advice is 1) forget the ego and bullshit that goes w doing - anything - but particularly the creative 2) forget about "success" and numbers - sales/listens/hearts...3) just keep on keepin on - that said it aint easy sometimes - i been playing as i said almost 60 years - theres still so much i dont know - i try to learn new things and ways almost daily - just showing up is sometimes a victory

     Listen to Salvation Day on Youtube. Back at the end of the next week with part 2 of my Q&A with Mr Tadlock. If you liked this post, please spread the word about SD and consider reblogging this set of interviews. And if you haven’t done it yet, scroll to the top of this post and smash play!

"Daybreak" by San Francisco, California based deathrock, noise noir, and swamprock act The Tunnel off of 2023 album Shudder

Today - March 6th, 1977 - Queen Story!

San Francisco, CA, USA, Winterland Ballroom

'A Day At The Races' tour

Freddie Mercury interview extract 1981

05-02-1981 – Melody Maker

🔸Do you ever leave a stage feeling you’ve done a really bad gig?

Freddie Mercury: "Yes, sometimes. We all scream and shout at each other and destroy the dressing room and release our energy. We set ourselves a very high standard and 99 per cent of the audience wouldn’t agree with our assessment of a bad gig. In San Francisco I lost my voice and it was awful, my register was limited to virtually a monotone. I still gave it my all but I knew it was a bad performance. They had to reschedule the tour and take three or four shows off the tour. I have nodules on my vocal chords and most tours are now scheduled around my voice.

🔸"Freddie's voice gets a real beating on a tour like that, especially if you're doing five nights in a row, which sometimes we were. So towards the end he was having a lot of trouble and he was going to great length to keep it in trim, to the length of not talking on tour between gigs and taking all kinds of medications.

We lost a couple gigs due to that, but all in all we did very well, I think."

- Brian May

Interview with Capitol Radio

📸 Photo by Chris Bradford

Mick Jones leaving the dressing room at Kezar Stadium , San Francisco , California , USA , October 13th , 1979 .

© Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS/VCG via Getty Images

The Mark Hopkins International Hotel is a genuine classic.

It appears in every movie ever made in San Francisco from Vertigo to Bullitt to the Woman in Red starring Gene Wilder.

During the big band era, the house band was Anson Weeks and the Mark Hopkins Orchestra (featuring Bob Crosby). They even composed a song named for the venue called The Mark Hop.

new grandma lore just dropped ‼️

in the 60's my nana lived in san francisco really close to haight street (haight and ashbury was where the big hippie movement kinda started in the 60s so my grandma was literally there when it happened) AND she lived a few houses down from the GRATEFUL DEAD and when she was walking to school she would see them outside playing music and they would say hi to her

also, she was a nurse in both california and oregon (apparently my dad lived in oregon this is literally the first time im finding out about this LOL)

but in california she was a nurse to timothy b schmit (the bassist for the eagles)'s grandma and timothy would come in to see them so my grandma knew him

and in oregon she was literally a nurse for the portland trail blazers (when they were actually good lol) and my dad told me that he was like five when this happened (so like 1976 ish) but he was playing outside and then a Volkswagen bus pulled up and inside it was BILL WALTON one of best college basketball players in history, the "NBA's most valuable player", and made the All NBA first team. anyways, he got out of his vk, said hi to my dad, and went to buy something from my pops apparently

this means he was chummy enough with nana to know pops enough to buy something

THEN (actually this takes place before all of this) but my nana was in an eagles AND beach boys album?????? she sang in the choir that was put in the songs. and she got her albums signed AND my dad still has them somewhere

RIP Tony

Where have I been last 2 months? well, this gets crazy.

On February 18, 2024, I got a message from @dingleberry-7708 saying, "Kingdom First is playing in Washington and Oregon." These two states are near me. I had the bright idea to drive 4 hours to see them and also drag two of my friends now bandmates, along with me, as well as get my decal Molotov cocktail record signed by both Chrises (more on this later)

I went to see the Portland show on March 2. It was a blast. The doors opened at 8, and we arrived around 8:30. We were in Once I paid for my ticket. I see Chris Stark just on his phone, sipping his drink. I approached him and asked, "By any chance, were you the drummer for the band Decal?", Exact words "holy shit, hahaha, yes." we got into good detail about the history and such it was great. Chris Stark was unbelievably cool, dude. He signed the record, and it was cool. Chris Carroll was absent from this show..... sadly ugh,

Talking to Matt Jervis, the guitarist for Clarke Nova. Matt was thrilled that I was a fan of the Clarke Nova. I asked questions about the band and such. It was great. He was cool as hell, also.

On the actual show, two bands played before K1. K1 went up, and I was in the second row in the crowd; there was so much energy from the band. Matt was so energetic for a frontman, and it was remarkable.

March 2, 2024, is gonna be remembered as an essential day in my life, I met a person I look up to and got to see K1. Thanks, Matt and Chris. You FUCKING ROCK!!!!

Listen to Kingdom first here The song being played is Look

Janis Joplin , Big Brother & The Holding Company

This is a musical entry I was originally going to save for Halloween 2023. But I’m a lazy bastard, and right now I’m riding high on all the hits I’m getting from nostalgia train content. For those who are just joining me on my blog, I’ve been digging up the fragrant bodies of dead bands for nearly two months now. And this kind of mass graverobbing wouldn’t be complete without a tune from the gothic girls of Switchblade Symphony. I have and can only recommend a handful of goth acts, and this is because I utterly hate nearly everything about goth rock. However, unlike the vast, vast majority of modern goth music, this group actually had some exceptional qualities that contributed to their cult-favorite status. A duo comprised of two goth girls from San Francisco, SS’s history began in the late-late 80’s and petered out in the late 90’s. They ended up putting out some songs and albums that were good, and some that were better than good, especially for their time… managing to stay afloat AND very successful in a veritable sea full of dark-rock + mascara-dripping + mopey-faced disposable plastic dogshit. These ladies managed to become more memorable than their 90’s goth contemporaries by boasting a sublimely poetic, operatic, harsh and lush sound that few can or have broached in the same exact way since this band’s demise. Their songs were drenched in thick orchestral dark wave and their live shows were intimate and heavy on audience participation. Sometimes, listening to their music is like watching a dreary and tonally unsettling stage performance unfurl in your mind. They were just plain fun to watch perform because of their (at the time) fresh dark sisters schtick which made them seem more like characters than actual people to me. Like many others, SS was the first goth band I ever managed to come across, cementing them as something of a standard bearer in my mind for what quality goth rock should sound like. Near as I can figure, when they broke up in the late 90’s they went on to try some solo projects and then went on about their lives as semi-normal people. This after having toured all over the country, had their songs appear in some American movies and shows, and been immortalized in the canon of symphonic rock cult legend history together. This is Soldiers from their 1997 album Bread and Jam for Frances. Smash play and enjoy dear listener, and thanks to the heroes of goth music like this that at least made the tunes quasi-listenable.

I really wish Susan Wallace and Tina Root would have stayed together, I can actually see their music evolving if they had. If you need me, I’ll be grave diggin’. I likes me some gravediggins’! More nostalgia train on the way, choo choo! Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ5jBArAq4c

Instagram: alexfeldmannphoto

Today, on 30th March, 1975 - Queen Story!

San Francisco CA, USA, Winterland Ballroom

'Sheer Heart Attack Tour'

📸 Photo by © Ron Draper

Mick Jones of The Clash at a party in San Francisco, CA , USA , February 1979 .

©️ Bob Gruen

🔓 INSTAGRAM ARCHIVES - 29 March 2022

“We still haven’t ticked a visit to Alcatraz off the list, but we’ll be back very soon San Francisco. Surf boards are ready tonight in San Diego @/observatorynorthpark - if you’re lucky you might find Bobby shopping for wetsuits.

Doors 7pm

@/juniorrrjunior 8pm

Inhaler 9pm

📸 @/lewsvans”