Rip It Hard by Michael Katon

Armed with a wall of Super Reverbs with a Strat plugged into 'em that was soaked in sweat and beer with the bridge rusted into place, he was playing with the kind of fervor that only a musician,a true road dog, can put into it. When music is your passion, it becomes part of your fiber and being, you realize that you're married to it, and you put everything real that's inside of you inside of it and you'll play no matter where, no matter

what.

Maybe that's why Michael Katon impressed me so much that first night. Here was a guy, playin' to a handful of nobody specials in a place the size of a phone booth and he was goin' at it like he was killin' rattlesnakes. He was up there on that postage stamp sized stage, the personification of hillbilly detachment cool, channeling equal parts Lightnin'Hopkins, Albert King,and Paul Burlison, while laying it down like he was knockin'' it out with big stage presence for the festival crowd.

Soon after that night his debut album 'Boogie All Over Your Head' was released to international raves, and Katon has hardly had time to look back. European tours to ecstatic audiences have regularly been the norm since that album's foreign release in 1984. A quick look through his gig itinerary finds Katon's no holds barred style equally at home in a variety of settings; sharing international music festival stages with the likes of ZZ TOP and Iggy Pop to blues fests with Junior Wells and Son Seals, or an intimate late night jam with Buddy Guy. No matter what the setting, Katon finds his true audience.

As the 80s moved into the next decade one Michael Katon album flowed after another, all of them preaching his roadhouse manifest; 'Proud To Be Loud,' 'Get On The Boogie Train,' 'Rip It Hard,' 'Rub,' 'Bustin' Up The Joint' and 'The Rage Called Rock'n'Roll'are all part and parcel of a musician whose raw,wild and inflammatory style is all of one piece.--- Cub Koda

Now as we head into the 21st century Michael Katon invites you to fire up your 'Bad Machine' and head out to the roadhouse,the party is just starting............

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