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LAKE COUNTY – Bottle Rock Blues and Rhythm Band formed in Lake County in August and describes its music as “Smokin’ R & B!” It is not often that one finds a band that has roots as deep and a family tree as broad as this one.
The band coalesced around 1960s legend Mike Wilhelm, vocal and guitar; and Neon Napalm, vocal and percussion.
Wilhelm is known as a founding member of the Charlatans, San Francisco’s first psychedelic group, as well as for his work with cult heroes Flamin’ Groovies.
Napalm, a card-carrying member of the Cherokee Nation, is the popular lead singer formerly with Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers, a Native American band well known throughout the Southwest.
“I had a concept for a rhythm and blues band featuring harmony vocals and a rock style rhythm section,” said Wilhelm. “I designed a logo with the letters 'Bottle Rock,' made from obsidian, common in Lake County and known locally as ‘bottle rock.’ I also had certain personnel in mind.”
First on his list was Napalm, whom he had met in the Lake County Blues Allstars.
“Neon is not only one of the best female vocalists I’ve ever heard – and I have heard many over the years – but we had already been singing harmony together in the Blues Allstars,” Wilhelm said.
Wilhelm and Napalm started playing with guitarist and vocalist Stephen Holland. He hails originally from Clarksdale, Miss, central to the Mississippi Delta, the ancestral home of Chicago blues.
Born in 1950, he has been playing for 44 years and has an original style all his own. He has played with the Bay Area band Cottonmouth and with members of Soundhole, Huey Lewis and the News and Tower of Power.
Holland introduced them to bassist Bill McMenomy, who had recently moved to Lake County after spending a number of years playing in the Portland, Ore., area.
McMenomy is originally from San Francisco. Back in the day, he played with the San Francisco rock trio Aum. He sings backup has a very powerful rock bass style, which is just what Wilhelm had in mind for the band.
Drummer Mark Phillips is probably best known as a member of the Grateful Dead cover band Street Dogs. He is an extremely well-seasoned player having played with P. T. and the Pleasers during the early 1980s in the Bay Area opening for acts such as Greg Kihn and Huey Lewis and the News.
In demand as a recording session musician, Phillips has divided his time between the Bay Area and his native England.
The resulting band has the much-sought-after quality of being more than the sum of its parts.
In addition to the R&B repetoire, they are also mixing in some classic rock from the 1960s and 1970s including songs associated with the Charlatans and Flamin’ Groovies.
For performance dates, visit www.flyingsnail.com/Scrapbook/Mike_Wilhelm.html. For bookings email
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- Written by: Wellman Moody
With a title borrowed from an Ian Fleming short story, “Quantum of Solace” seems designed to prove that a story is somehow unnecessary to realizing a James Bond movie.
Surprisingly, there are three writers credited to crafting the screenplay, when it’s obvious that a graduate student at film school, possessing knowledge of James Bond lore, could have managed just as well.
“Quantum of Solace,” tricked out by its aggressive video game sensibilities, is so heavy on action that there’s hardly a moment of respite. You may have heard this elsewhere, but it bears repeating that James Bond is now almost indistinguishable from the Jason Bourne character.
Forget about Sean Connery, Roger Moore or even Pierce Brosnan. Daniel Craig is the James Bond for a new generation, even if he comes off as a possibly grittier version of Matt Damon.
Craig’s James Bond can still wear the tuxedo with elegant grace, but this guy’s tougher than Steven Seagal in a dozen martial arts films. He delivers the goods with the brutal efficiency of an almost robotic assassin.
Steeped in its revenge story, “Quantum of Solace” presents agent 007 as an unstoppable killing machine, indestructible in pursuit of his mission. But just like his boss, M (Judi Dench) the head of the British Secret Service, you may question exactly what his mission is about.
Picking up where “Casino Royale” left off, the opening scene has Bond being pursued by a carload of baddies, probably because he’s got Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) stuffed in the trunk of his Aston Martin.
Not exactly a sentimental guy, Bond is nonetheless anxious to track down the criminal mastermind behind White’s sinister organization, knowing that it may enable him to exact revenge for the death of Vesper Lynd. As you may recall, Vesper is the woman he fell in love with, despite good reasons to be wary of any romantic entanglements.
After an interrogation of Mr. White and an unexpected betrayal in a secret location in Spain, Bond is off to Haiti to track down an MI6 traitor.
In a case of mistaken identity, Bond is introduced in slapdash fashion to the beautiful but feisty Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who has her own vendetta agenda, but one that coincides with Bond’s plans.
Camille leads Bond straight to the bug-eyed Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a ruthless businessman who hides under the cover of his environmental credentials. Al Gore will be none too pleased at how this green planet advocate abuses his trust.
Linked to Quantum, Greene has sinister plans to take control of vital natural resources in Bolivia for his own gain, primarily by forging a deal with corrupt General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio), itching to stage his own coup d’etat.
The scheme turns out to be barely more evil than the theft of water from the Owens Valley in “Chinatown.” Whatever happened to ominous plots for world domination? Bond villains, like Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Auric Goldfinger, used to have ambitions that matched their outsized egos. Now we have some creepy environmentalist telling a gathering of gullible rich folks to support his green initiatives.
Pared down to the shortest running time of any Bond film in history, “Quantum of Solace” expends its energy mostly on an almost nonstop sequence of car chases, fights, running across rooftops, explosions, airplane chase and more fights. Especially when Bond dashes across tile roofs in hot pursuit, it seems like another chapter in a “Bourne” movie.
With all the chasing and fighting, there’s little time for Bond to display much personality. Though the consummate tough guy, Sean Connery always had time to drop a few witticisms. Humor is almost nonexistent in this all-business affair.
It’s comforting to know that Bond still has some of his bad habits, though they don’t seem to include smoking or drinking martinis shaken not stirred. Still, he manages time to seduce the very attractive Agent Fields (Gemma Arterton), while going undercover as part of a teachers’ group that apparently hit the lottery jackpot.
Sadly, Fields’ most memorable moment is a tribute to “Goldfinger.” Not so memorable is Bond tailing bad guys doing business at the avant-garde Austrian opera house. Nor does he have any truly memorable scenes with the sexy Camille, who appears stripped of any real personality. Oddly enough, there’s zero chemistry between Bond and Camille.
I have enjoyed every single James Bond film, all 56 or 57 of them if you count the Woody Allen spoof. Despite a few misgivings on style and substance, I find “Quantum of Solace” another worthy entry, though for reasons far different than the early Sean Connery ones. The action and the stunts are absolutely breathtaking, and Daniel Craig is the definitive contemporary Bond.
Nevertheless, a few things amount to letdowns, the most egregious of which is the worst Bond title song ever, even more dreadful than the one by Madonna.
DVD RELEASE UPDATE
I am wondering when the DVD market will reach the saturation point. If you don’t want to watch current TV shows, Paramount Home Entertainment is pushing old series at a rapid clip.
This week alone brings at least four oldies, including “Star Trek The Original Series: Season Three,” now remastered for the first time.
“Odd Couple: The Final Season” allows the last look at Tony Randall and Jack Klugman as the two comic misfits, one a slob and the other a fussbudget.
Wouldn’t it be great to have an acting career working on location in Hawaii? The enduring popularity of “Hawaii Five-O” continues with the release of its fifth season.
Not exactly in the vintage category, all eight seasons of “Charmed: The Complete Series” features some beautiful women as sibling witches. The Deluxe Edition has a suggested retail price above $300, and I am curious about the volume of sales for this type of product.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
