Gradually Going Tornado

Might as well. I mean, we've had just about everything else here in the northeast, as weather goes. We're getting even more tonight and possibly lots more this weekend.

Anyway, remember that series of early '80s rock I told you about? Well, here's the first of the rest of it.

Here's a little '80s prog from Bruford. Bill Bruford, that is. He's a drummer who's played with the likes of King Crimson and Yes. This album is the last he did with his own group. Jeff Berlin played bass, and on keys was Dave Stewart. No, the other Dave Stewart, not the one from The Eurythmics. On guitar, The Unknown John Clark replaced Allan Holdsworth from Bruford's two previous albums. All About Jazz has a nice piece that sums up Bruford's history. You can find this album and its forerunner, The Bruford Tapes, at Bill Bruford's very own website, billbruford.com.

Before there was Lena, there was Inga. Inga Rumpf came from Hamburg, Germany. She got her start as a member of The City Preachers, a folk-rock outfit, who became Frumpy after a change in drummers. Frumpy morphed into Atlantis, and a few years later, Inga gave us this solo album on RCA. Along with a few originals, Inga gave us a couple of interesting covers: Love Potion No. 9, Roxanne, and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' Break Down.
Though she never really made a dent here, Inga's still as popular as ever back home in Germany. In fact, she's going on tour in March. Her site, ingarumpf.de has all the details - in German, of course.

I have the press kit on this one, so I can cheat a little. Jerry Moss, the "M" of A&M Records, signed Burning Rome to his label the same day he signed The Human League in 1982. The deal-sealer was 22-year-old lead singer Vicki Thomas, who A&M's Dave Anderle claimed was one of three women born to sing rock & roll. The other two? Janis Joplin and Bonnie Bramlett. That's some company. MMicky Shine (the extra M is his), who you can hear on Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True album and some Tommy Tutone and Huey Lewis songs, got tapped for drum duties. Rochester's Ron Murray is on bass, and Steve Dougherty rounds things out on guitar.
So what happened that this was Burning Rome's only album? Mmicky said in this interview that A&M gave the album "no support" and the album didn't do much. To remember it by, here's the video for Once Over.