I lost touch with my Queens College buddy Ben Rosenblatt shortly after graduation in the early ’70s. I knew he was pursuing the rock ’n’ roll dream in a variety of phases but didn’t keep track of it all. And in my gig as a sometimes rock writer, I also had numerous occasions to encounter fellow music scribe Billy Altman as he annotated his career with high-profile stints at Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New Yorker, Spin and as a long-time editor at Creem Magazine. What I didn’t know was that at one point in the early ’80s, Ben and Billy sought potential star status releasing a song called “Anyone After You” as… The Mod Frames. You can find it if you dig around on YouTube, but my favorite aspect of the whole unbeknownst brew is their name and this depicted picture sleeve for the record. SPECtacular in multiple ways, don’t you think?

–James J. Spina





Tracking John Varvatos as an insider to his workday was a blast. And that’s where we truly picked up on Rock ‘n’ Roll being a flame for so much of his intense creativity. That’s also when we learned that classic rock singer and bass player Glenn Hughes (the solo star of this month’s Hall of Frames feature in Upfront) was a key element of that muse/fuse.

–JJS