Sunday, October 15, 2006

ROCKIN' Around with Frankie Vee and Barry W.




On Saturday, I picked up Frankie Vee (that's Frank Vacanti, head of production for the world's largest rock merchandise firm, Signatures Network) at his house, we throttled up the new Jerry Lee Lewis CD, and headed for Barry Wickham's place. Barry's one of the top record collectors in the US, and--like Frank--is a major contributor to ROCKIN' DOWN THE HIGHWAY. Hey, gotta give the boyz their books!

Frankie bought his T-Bird from Boz Scaggs' road manager (you can read about this on page 181)
when it was still painted turquoise (now it's white). He has one of the top Elvis memorabilia collections in the US, and it's his upside-down in-car record player that's shown on page 106. Frankie and I've been close friends since our days at Winterland Productions.

Barry's contributions are so many I can hardly list 'em. Many of the rare records shown on both the front and back endpapers--and throughout the book--are from his collection. You can learn more about Barry by visiting his website, www.GoldenGateRecords.com.