Ron Gallo - Really Nice Guys - VINYL LP

FOREGROUND MUSIC, the title of Ron Gallo's 4th LP, and debut for Kill Rock Stars might also be a suitable name for his own genre. In simplest terms it's the opposite of background music - unavoidable, urgent, in your face - Gallo's consistent theme is to confront, disrupt and sometimes even confuse people into a sense of awareness. The intention to steer away from apathy and self-empower by focusing on what we can control and make light of in a world designed to take it away. The guitar is less an instrument and more of a primal noise machine. This record is a challenge to everything and everyone, including his own self, who is holding back the progress of humanity (especially in America) into a more open, empathetic and collective unit - the words delivered with a punkish tenacity and lining even the heaviest topics with an ever-present sense of humor. It covers the full spectrum of emotion. This music feels like life feels right now. In his eyes, how could it not?

Vinyl LP pressing. Peacemeal is yet another reinvention for Ron Gallo. Gallo exits the noisy confines of the garage and goes outside where there's no limit to embracing all aspects of himself. The result is a colorful hodgepodge of 90's hip-hop, R&B, weirdo pop, jazz, and punk. The sounds change, but the sense of humanity and humor is the common thread in all of Gallo's music. Mostly written and recorded during a period of self-isolation in summer 2019, it's an uncanny foreshadowing of the global situation that was to come and give all the songs a new meaning. This is feel-good music that attempts to confront and understand human existence. Ron Gallo just wants to be himself, destroy expectations and encourage you to do the same in a world that does just about everything to try and box us in - Now, eat before it gets cold!

EU collection. If you romanticize the idea of making your way through the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong's harbor on a junk, rock & roll songs are unlikely to come to mind first and foremost. But the Far East, inaccessible China and it's centuries-old culture as well as Hong Kong's special status became a popular musical theme in the 1950s and early '60s, not least because the USA had become a new home for millions of Chinese immigrants since the 19th century. Hong Kong itself was an enclave of the British Empire. Far Eastern and European lifestyles came together here. With it's culinary specialties, the Chinese gongs or the weird sounds of the Chinese zither, the fascination of big cities like Hong Kong or Shanghai - a variety of themes were reflected in the rock 'n' roll and country music of the '50s and early '60s. Jerry Lee Lewis sings the classic Hong Kong Blues written by Hoagy Carmichael, Webb Pierce keeps coming to Shanghai unintentionally until he finds his love there and stays in Shanghai intentionally, and Annisteen Allen is about to explode and makes it clear to her guy that if he carries on like this, the atom bomb will be nothing against her wrath.