Music: Smith/Kotzen

A couple of days ago, my morning phishing of Youtube for music to sip coffee to, whilst I read the news a new band was presented in my feed. The name was simple: Smith/Kotzen.

Now, that is two surnames, but it triggered my deep pattern recognition. No, not “Smith”, because that is as common as sand at the beach. Kotzen though, that broke through the bourbon addled brain lobes.

Ritchie Kotzen was a shredder from that decade of the rise of shred, a Shrapnel Records artist, who went on to play with Poison on a couple of albums, and then to be the first to step in for the iconic Paul Gilbert in 1999 when he left Mr. Big.

Now that got my attention.

Turns out that the “Smith” in Smith/Kotzen was Adrian Smith. Any metalhead worth their salt would recognize that as a driving force behind Iron Maiden in the 20th Century.

This is interesting. Very interesting.

Naturally, over the past couple of days I have been listening to more and more of Smith/Kotzen, and it is just in your face rock and roll. No flash, no pomp, no spandex (that I can see at least), just hard hitting rock.

And it is good. Here’s a sample:

Really fun tune. It is all like this. Worth the listen.

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