★ ★ ★ HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU★ ★ ★

Thank you all so much for all your kind emails and comments...2013 was a spectacular year for RK and 2014 is coming in with a BANG!  So please stay tuned for lots of exciting stories and events that are coming to entertain and inform you....Much Love Kim

**Special Thanks**

Got out to my gorgeous Mom and Daughter, 

my ever lovely longtime Ypsi girl buddies,
my hunky guy buddies,
MY BEST PAL AND HAIR STYLIST RHONDA!
and 
Kevin Fry, Cathy Stoner, Karon Johnson, KK Stanislaw

D.d Kethman, Patches Arwine, Michael McDaniel

Hall of Fame
My fabulously talented contributors:
Niagara Detroit and Colonel Galaxy
Heather Harris
Johnny Ginger and Sons
Jim and Lynn Harper
Johnny Bee Badanjek
Machinegun Thompson
Sonny Vincent
Lori Bergemann and Heidi B
Scott Richardson
Paul Buono
John Neff
Miss Beaux Mitchell
Steve and Karen Hunter
Ron and Pam Cooke
Tino Gross
Arthur Nash/Mob Museum
Scott Morgan
Deniz Tek
David Winans II
Walt Miller
Jack Ashton
Emmy Etié
Ken Settle
Miss Geneva Powers
Cheri Clair
and my Snarky Aussies!

Thank you to:
All My Facebook Friends
Twitter pals
Pinterest Pinners
Google + gang

Heart felt thank you to Eddie Corbano for saving my life....

 xxooK

KIMMER'S INCANDESCENT NEW YEAR

 

 

KIMMER NEVER OWNED AN ETCH A SKETCH

If you are like me and can't draw stick men, then the Etch A Sketch was traumatizing...But if you've ever wondered about the man behind the little red rectangle you spent so much of your youth shaking, take a look at the video.

BREAKING BAD: 30 VIDEOS

 For Jimmy Henterly...

Just watched the Breaking Bad Marathon and still wanted more....I found this on the AMC website and it is fun...30 videos that trace Walter White's transformation into HEISENBERG...

SAY MY NAME AND CLICK THE CALENDER

2013 KENNEDY CENTER HONORS WAS GREAT

Photo: John Paul Filo/CBS ©2013 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.

The 36th Annual Kennedy Center Honors featured opera singer Martina Arroyo; pianist, keyboardist, bandleader and composer Herbie Hancock; pianist, singer and songwriter Billy Joel; actress/author Shirley MacLaine; and musician and songwriter Carlos Santana.

Great talent on the show I really enjoyed it...but not a breath was taken when Don Henley took the stage to honor Billy Joel...

JOHNNY BEE BADANJEK: BACKSTAGE WITH THE ROCKETS!

 Johnny Bee Badanjek

The crew loaded into the Fillmore at 9:00 am, right after going across the street and playing some ice hockey at The Winter Classic, nothing like a puck in the face to get you going in the morning. Then it's down to business, get the PA and lights up. 12 Noon Steve Badalament brought the drums in and set them up, then the rest of the guys started showing up for sound check.

By three o'clock it was time for the Rockets sound check. We kicked up a few songs and it sounded really good. Then it was Citizen Zero's turn. I sat out in the empty Fillmore and listened to this new young up and coming band that opened for Kid Rock over the summer at DTE. They were smokin'...
 

 Citizen Zero

Then the Rock-A-Billy Boys showed up for their sound check...The shit kickin' Horse Cave Trio. Anybody that says they're not nervous has never been to war before! Ok I'm glad we got there early now what the f**k were we gonna do for seven hours. I know let's lay around the dressing room on folding chairs and try and get a nap in. Ha!!!

Ron Devore photo Marty Rickard

 Horse Cave Trio

The doors open at 7:00pm and the crowd starts swarming in....Horse Cave Trio are up first and they did an ass kickin rock your shoes off set. Next up Citizen Zero with these youngsters...

And now to the head lining act everybody had been waiting for....The Rockets..were still upstairs crunched up in their folding chairs. GET UP IT'S TIME TO ROCK!!!!
 

Jim Edwards

They jumped into it like pros....The lights go down and the thundering intro of "Desire" begqn....Hot Damn. Without a moment's breath they launched into "Takin' It Back" now things were starting to sound like The Rockets the crowd came to see.

  Jim Edwards

Then right into "Don't Hold On" Then Jim Edwards, the singer says here's one Bee played on when he was with the band Detroit Featuring Mitch Ryder, and they jump into Lou Reed's penned song and the Detroit Band version of "Rock & Roll"

Things were grooving now. The Band played one of the new songs that was just recorded called "Ridin' The Earth".....And they were ridin' it alright. Next up a crowd favorite called "Born In Detroit."

  Jim Edwards and Joe Gaydos

Everybody was singing along. and then the band threw in another new song called "Whiskey Head" a hard drinking song about down south roadhouse ram shackle whiskey joints.

 Mike Marshall

Then The Rockets played their homage to all lost friends and a song written about Detroit Renegade J.B.Fields, who left us to early....

 Danny Taylor

And for all are fighting Men & women in the armed services who have not returned, in a Bee written song called "Lost Forever, Left For Dreaming." And then the band launched into another new song called "Detroit Woman" Talk about losing your balls....Hot Damn. These boys were rolling now.

Talk about a freight train. Then the band played a favorite of hard core Rockets fans from the old days called "Ramona" and then they jumped into "Turn Up The Radio"
  

Phil "Greasy" Carlisi

After this song. Greasy Carlisi put on his Bed pan guitar and played some slide guitar. Greasy always finds stuff in the alleys and makes guitars out of whatever he finds. He found it on this night. Then he threw it over to Joe Gaydos who revved up some smokin' guitar and the band launched into one of the big hits "Oh Well" which the crowd sang back loud and hard.

 Greasy's Bed Pan Guitar

After a few more encore songs the boys when back to their dressing room and sat on there folding chairs. What a night. Thank you everybody who came out. Fans, Friends, and family. Much love to all. Rocket Roll!

FANTASTIC PHOTOS!

KEN SETTLE PHOTOGRAPHY

VIEW MORE OF KEN'S IMAGES OF THE ROCKETS HERE

TWO SUPER MOONS IN JANUARY 2014

January 1, 2014 presents the first of two super moons to occur in a single calendar month. The second super moon will come on January 30, 2014. We won’t have a single calendar month with two super moons again until January 2018.

What, you say? Supermoon? But the moon isn’t anywhere near full! That’s right. These aren’t full super moons. They are new super moons; the moon is at the new phase for both the January 1 and January 30 super moon.

The term super moon didn’t come from astronomy. We used to call these moons perigee new moons or perigee full moons. Perigee means “near Earth.” An astrologer, Richard Nolle, is credited with coining the term super moon. He defines them as:. . . a new or full moon which occurs with the moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth.

GRANDE BALLROOM: ROBERT MONAGHAN PHOTOGRAPHY

One of my favorite Christmas 2013 gifts came from the lovely Californian, Heather Harris by way of  Westland, Michigan, then back to Ann Arbor...Funny!

The gift is a gorgeous color shot of the current (sad) state of the interior of the Grande Ballroom. The dance floor is in such poor shape that walking across it is dangerous. Dennis Thompson went back inside the Grande in 1999 and his leg went right through the floor.

Rob Monaghan is a facebook pal and he was kind to autograph the back of the photo for me....hope to meet in person soon!

If you'd like to purchase this photograph feel free to email me and I'll connect you to Rob.

I love this photo so much as well...I'll purchase it so I have a set!

THANK YOU HEATHER xoK

You can see more of Robert Monaghan's fabulous work on Flicker

THE DON DRAPER OF THE SPACE PROGRAM: ALAN B SHEPARD JR

Alan B Shepard Jr

"SOLVE YOUR LITTLE PROBLEM AND LET'S LIGHT THIS CANDLE"

Alan Shepard was the rock star of the space program..he avoided the press, kept his distance from friends and foes alike..he was handsome, smart, smoked, drank, stayed out late..he was the baddest dude in NASA history.. Shepard was media savvy before anyone knew what "spin" meant. 

Shepard was complicated and so cool. He was a STAR and he knew it...He is my favorite of all the astronauts. He was no boy scout...

He was a very intense guy who just wanted to get the job done and liked to move forward and not look back, and I think that reflection of that intensity of his personality is nicely summed in those few words.

“He wasn’t the most outgoing guy with the press and I felt like there had to be more to his story than what I had read,” Thompson told Universe Today. “There were a lot of aspects to his personality that were complicated and compelling and contradictory.

He was highly competitive, but he was also a softy underneath at times. He was accused over the years of being a bit of a womanizer, and yet he was married to the same woman for 40-plus years and I think they were very devoted to each other. So there were a lot of complex aspects to his personality that were fun to explore.” Read more

On May 5, 1961, Shepard sat in a capsule at the tip of a Redstone rocket and was launched briefly into suborbital flight, making him the first American in space. Massive parades, a meeting with President John F. Kennedy and a newfound national enthusiasm for space travel

Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. was an American naval aviator, test pilot, flag officer, NASA astronaut, and businessman, who in 1961 became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space.

Born: November 18, 1923, Derry, NH

Died: July 21, 1998, Pebble Beach, CA

Space missions: Mercury-Redstone 3, Apollo 14

Alan Shepard, first American in space and fifth man on the moon