The new year of 2006 began with a bang. I spent my New Years eve & day at the Huntington Beach home of Maria Christian, the “Ann Wilson” of the new Heart tribute BAD ANIMALS, which if you haven’t seen them yet, I highly recommend you do- as all the members are indeed, extremely excellent musicians. Julie Van Doren is an incredible Nancy, not only is she a beautiful lady, but she even plays the mandolin! It was a real treat to meet her and hear her play along with Led Zeppelin on her unique instrument.

There were many many tribute band members to be found at this gathering of good friends and seasoned musicians. Dino, who is the “Steven Tyler” of Pump, and “Steve Perry” of Infinity - does not only sing I discovered, but he also plays guitar and drums as well. Joey Grillo, aka “Roger Daltry” of the WHOSHOW made an appearance with his lovely wife, Shanna. Full House, who had a gig up the street at Tumbleweeds arrived promptly at 3am and yes, the party was still in full swing. They have a great studio room in their home, and everyone that wanted to got a chance to play in there; it was really cool - especially when they did an entire set of AC/DC for me.

But what a great year 2005 was!!! I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Worlds Largest AC/DC festival, the BIG BALL. I have always wanted to go to the UK, and I think I will just have to make this a habit every August. I was also very pleased to discover that I had been voted the Big Balls “Best Party Animal”. What an honor!!! Also in the running for that competition was Stephanie Leigh, of THUND-HER-STRUCK, a HUGE party animal, but I understand my closest competitor was a splendid Australian chap that I met thru the event by the name of Aussie Bruce, who did in fact take home two other awards, for “Who rocks the Hardest” and the “Best Person Met”. Congratulations for that Bruce!!!! Other categories included “Who looks best in Leather trousers” the winner of which was Bonsballs, (who incidentally I have never seen in leather), and also there was the “Who would you most like to Drink with” award, which went to Viv Griffiths.

I can’t wait to display that award along with my All Access magazine recognition plaque that I also received this year - with all the other Rock n Roll memorabilia I collected this past year.

Other highlights of 2005 for me included Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp, a David Fishoff production, in which anybody with $8,000.00 could attend and jam with major rock stars for a week and perform at the HOB with their “Fantasy” band. I got to meet Roger Daltrey at that. There was also the RUST festival, a recreation of the US festival, which featured the original lineup of the US festival, using tribute bands, which was very cool. Triumph was replaced with the Iron Maidens, and I got a huge kick out of New York based MINI-KISS, and although it is more of a karaoke thing, these little people were the most fun for me! And they like to party!! Check them out if you get a chance, you will be highly entertained.

The OJAI Music festival which was way the hell up the 101 was a lot of fun too!! It was an entire day of music, starting with Led Zepagain, Peacefrog, (the Doors), 4 Way Street, (CSN&Y), the WHOSHOW, & Sticky Fingers (Stones) and topping off the night was Cubensis (Grateful Dead), I had lots of fun there.

All Access Magazine had hugely successful Toys for Tots event, and the All Access Music Awards show was also a big highlight of 2005. There were special guest presenters, including Joe Lynn Turner, who incidentally tore it up the night before with a special show – There was the All Access Magazine CD release party event (which was the first of the three events Deb Stocker put together) featuring most of the bands from the CD compilation. Trashdaddy is a new favorite of mine, Dyna Shirasaki performed her own project which I found to be very well put together, some one told me she sounded like Madonna meets Marilyn Manson, and that would be accurate. She is so talented and beautiful, I would love to see her do something with boyfriend Kelly Hansen, who left Heaven & Earth this year to join Foreigner as their new lead singer. I caught the new line up at the House of Blue in Anaheim, and was very impressed with the way Kelly fit right in with the boys and sang all their hits just so amazingly well,,,,, that is definitely another show I want to catch in 2006.

I made a lot of new and exciting friends this year, and with the NAMM show coming up, I hope to make even more. Myspace.com is a huge thing,,,, if your not on myspace promoting your band or business, (or personal life for that matter) why not? It’s a great tool for bands,,, and they are many myspace editors in which you can very easily create slide shows, add sound bites, video clips, comments, post bulletins, and it is very addicting but like I said , a cool tool for marketing!!! 42 million members had signed up by the end of 2005, so where is your myspace???