Tucson's musical savant Howe Gelb has released an album of mostly instrumental keyboard music, Ogle Some Piano. It's a curious disc, even by Gelb's eccentric standards – nineteen tracks of piano meanderings in a variety of styles: jazz, rock, pop, tin pan alley and experimental avant-garde weirdness. And the titles seem a parody of art-rock pretentiousness: "Spangle Bib of Radiant Value," "Hammered and Hampered, We Then Took the Deeds Down by the Dozen," and "Someday They Will Have a Name for What Ails You as Opposed to Being Saddled with Speck Elation" are representative. The best tracks include Joey Burns on double bass and John Convertino on drums, making these tracks more or less Giant Sand pieces. There are also contributions from the usual suspects, including Nick Luca and Craig Schumacher of Wave Lab studios in Tucson, and the late great Rainer Ptacek as well.
In the late 80's, a group of friends who usually joined in an Amersfoort (the Netherlands) Pub to talk about music while taking some drinks shouted one day they wanted to form a band. After seven years Bert Heinen (one of the pub guys) had gathered enough material to release an album and he started to send some demos to different magazines and after a good response from Background Magazine and his lead to a contract with LaBraD'or records in 1997.
In 1998 with Bert in the Guitars, Keyboard and vocals plus Marien in drums and additional keyboards, Like Wendy releases "The Storm Inside" with a very melodic approach to Marillion, Pendragon, Pallas and IQ. The albums consisting of the demo tracks plus two new songs, was quite simple but pretty effective and received favorable comments of the critics…