JEREMY MORRIS TAKES THE GREATS TO NEW HEIGHTS

LOVE IS ALIVE: The highly prolific composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist JEREMY MORRIS (pictured above in February 2026) continues to wow the faithful with a plethora of new releases, including a pair of tribute albums that salute the Byrds and Pink Floyd.  Editor / Publisher Michael McDowell takes a post-Flyte tour with Morris below (Click on above image to enlarge).

SET THE CONTROLS FOR

THE HEART OF THE SON:

COVERING UP WITH

JEREMY MORRIS

By Michael McDowell

"The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of the man in his prime".

That opening line from the 1972 song Free Four remains a highlight of Pink Floyd's Obscured By Clouds album. But more than a half century after the fact, the band's surviving members seem to have only marginally lived up to that observation. To wit, lead guitarist David Gilmour has remained a prolific solo artist, although drummer Nick Mason has toured extensively in recent years with a Pink Floyd tribute band, Saucerful Of Secrets.

That dichotomy in part factored into the rare move by the highly prolific solo artist Jeremy Morris to deviate from his primary focus on original material and release a pair of tribute albums. The first of these, There Is Somebody Out There takes a look at the Pink Floyd legacy from a unique perspective.

"I think the different stages of Pink Floyd are all of value", said Morris.

"There are three stages of the the band: The Syd Barrett era, the Gilmour and (Roger) Waters era, and the Gilmour era minus Waters. I covered only the first two eras. So the disc goes from 1967 to 1979. 

"With all due respect, I think the final era of the band is the least interesting. The music is still excellent, but does not rise to the heights that they previously achieved. The band made a lot of music. So I selected the tracks that I felt that I could expand and improve upon."

To that effect, one area in which Morris found that room for improvement was with an answer song of sorts that enabled him to set the controls for the heart of a key component of his own mission statement.

"The title of the album, There Is Somebody Out There is a call and response to the Pink Floyd track, Is There Anybody Out There", Morris said. 

Given the somewhat defeatist perspective professed by Roger Waters in the aforementiond Free Four, Morris' subtle reference to the Good News brings relentless optimism full circle. It does so in a way that was only hinted at previously in his own earlier renditions of the Lemon Pipers' Green Tambourine and the 1910 Fruitgum Company's 1-2-3 Red Light. 

Suffice to say that Morris' other all new collection of cover material takes that perspective to the next level. Flying High does just that with a fresh look at eleven tracks that helped define the vast and enormously influential catalog of the Byrds.

"With the Byrds' Flying High tribute, I focused on the true nature of the band to explore and expand musically with different sounds", said Morris.

The Byrds themselves reiterated as much by citing visionary saxophonist John Coltrane as a key inspiration behind their early 1966 Eight Miles High single for Columbia. It has been said that Coltrane himself offered the band a word of encouragement in the wake of that development. 

With that in mind, Morris invoked his own propensity towards expansion within several key tracks in this collection.

"For example, My Back Pages expands from the original three minute song into an eighteen minute epic", he said.

"I covered material from the years 1965 to 1969. After this, the band was not the same. The last few Byrds albums were basically Roger McGuinn solo albums, and not really true Byrds albums in spirit. Roger was moving father away from the use of the twelve-string as center stage. For me, it's all about the use of the twelve-string and those magnificent harmony vocals."

To be certain, other artists took similar cues from the Byrds in their wake, from the Three O'Clock to Tom Petty And The Hearbreakers. And just as both of those bands were far more in their respective elements with their own duly inspired original material, Morris likewise returned to the studio to complete several new collections of original material (Love Is Alive, The Promise and Opener Of Eyes). The highlights of those collections (including Promised Land, You Rescued Me, Work In Progress, Back From The Grave, The Truth Is Revealed and Vulture Culture) underscore his commitment to that "Someone Out There"; a commitment that he also champions as the senior pastor of a church in his home base of Portage, Michigan.

"The response has been amazingly positive to the music and its lyrical content", said Morris.

"People in general need hope and positive inspiration. I am instinctively bringing that to the music table in whatever I do."

Interestingly enough, there has risen over the past couple of years a crop of gifted composers and vocalists who have taken their cues from veteran greats and applied it to their own work in a generally uplifting manner. Among them are avid record collector Sabrina Carpenter, as well as Sombr, AJR, Benson Boone and Olivia Dean.

Granted, the focal points of their music varies somewhat from that of Morris; confounded in part by the fact that much of their primary target demographic maintains a different perspective on the use of certain verbiage that at one point was considered anathema to the potential of any mainstream success of a given work. 

However, the recent increase in interest in the Gospel among certain factions of that demographic suggests that a mighty work may well be in progress. While maintaining a matter of fact perspective on that possibility, Morris continues to pursue his art and that mission statement with the same resolve that guided him through the creation of an astounding nearly one hundred solo albums since the closing years of the twentieth century. 

"I think we are living in an age of fast food music", he said.

"Easy access, easy listening, internet buffet sampling approach. Listening to more music, but hearing it less.

"I will continue to champion music as an art form and making it in the most purely possible way. 

"What that means for me is this: real music with real meaning. Played and created by real people using real instruments."

Given that such inspirations as Pink Floyd were notorious at certain points in their career for laboring on a single given release for months (or even years) at a time, Morris' astoundingly vast catalog suggests that setting the controls for the heart of the Son has enabled him to both reap and offer blessings on an extraordinary level.

"More music to come", he said.

Indeed, in the words of one of the standout tracks from Love Is Alive, Morris is Making The Most of those blessings.

CINECYDE DRUMMER DIANE SCHROEDER DIES

REMEMBERING DIANE SCHROEDER: As the beloved veteran quartet was gearing up to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, tragedy struck suddenly on 04 February 2026 with the passing of CINECYDE drummer Diane Schroeder. Blitz Magazine - The Rock And Roll Magazine For Thinking People Editor / Publisher Michael McDowell celebrates Schroeder's legacy, followed by a December 2025 interview with band co-founder and front man, Gary Reichel.  (Click on above image to enlarge).

CINECYDE DRUMMER

DIANE SCHROEDER DIES

By Michael McDowell

Triumph suddenly turned to tragedy on Wednesday the fourth of February for the veteran Michigan band Cinecyde.

"It is with an indescribable sadness that we let everyone know of the sudden passing of our drummer, Diane Schroeder", said band co-founder, front man and principal visionary, Gary Reichel.

"She was our band mom, our little sister, our rebellious pixie and our voice of reason all rolled into one".

The beloved quartet, which also includes co-founder and guitarist Jim Olenski and bassist (and Flirt co-founder) Skid Marx, was gearing up to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2026. Their 1977 Gutless Radio single for their own Tremor label was hailed by Blitz Magazine - The Rock And Roll Magazine For Thinking People as one of the definitive anthems of the so-called punk/new wave movement of the mid to late 1970s.

The band had spent the closing weeks of 2025 in the studio in preparation for the celebration.

"We have a nice group of songs recorded and mostly completed", Reichel told Blitz Magazine in December 2025.

For now, that celebration will have to wait, as Cinecyde comes to terms with this tragedy.

"We haven't wrapped our heads around the news", the band said in a collective statement.

"Gary, Jim, Skid and Diane's husband Matt also ask for a bit of room to process this loss. We will let you know more when we figure it out."

Memorial services are pending.

(Blitz Magazine - The Rock And Roll Magazine For Thinking People's December 2025 interview with Cinecyde's Gary Reichel follows below).

I'M GONNA LOOK:

CINECYDE PREPS

FOR A MILESTONE

By Michael McDowell

Where does an ambitious band go when it has created one of the definitie anthems of a musical movement?

In the case of the Michigan-based Cinecyde, that anthem was the 1977 Tremor label single, Gutless Radio. A hard hitting look at the state of the mainstream media of the day, Gutless Radio became one of the premier rallying cries of the so-called punk/new wave movement that rescued rock and roll from a protracted aesthetic slump. 

In 2026, Cinecyde will celebrate the half century mark as a band. Since that initial triumph, the band has sustained its momentum magnificently with such duly inspired singles as Tough Girls and Burn The Crack House Down, as well as such acclaimed albums as I Left My Heart In Detroit City and 2021's magnificent Vegetable Or Thing.

In anticipation of their forthcoming milestone, Cinecyde closed out 2025 with the release of a new Tremor label single, Everyday / I'm Gonna Look. True to form, the band challenged itself to surpass its own high standards and has succeeded magnficently in that respect.

"Everyday is about my regrets about not doing enough for friends in my life", said band co-founder, front man and principal visionary, Gary Reichel.

"People who got off track, and then things got much worse. I wish I could have stepped in more".

Sadly, Reichel drew from first hand observation in this case.

"I think of our late bass player, Chris Girard", he said.

"A slo-mo train wreck".

Girard's passing in July 2019 marked the band's first change in personnel. Reichel recalled those difficult moments in a September 2021 interview in Blitz Magazine.

"Chris Girard was appreciated, loved and a great player", he said at the time.

"His health took a huge turn downward and we lost him".

True to his altruistic nature, Reichel drew inspiration from that tragic turn of events and paid it forward accordingly.

"I'm currently helping a homeless friend", he said.

"He's now in subsidized housing. But if I could have guided more several years ago, he wouldn't be in this mess. 

"I know that ultimately it's his own responsibility. But my wife and I have watched this slow motion train wreck for years".

Not surprisingly, continuing to create hard hitting and thought provoking original music has proven to be therapeutic, as evidenced by their current single. Cinecyde's current line up (which includes Reichel and founding guitarist Jim Olenski, along with bassist and Flirt co-founder Skid Marx and drummer Diane Schroeder) has done much to sustain the band's front runner status in the present decade. 

"We have a nice group of songs recorded and mostly completed", said Reichel.

"I'm Gonna Look. I appreciate it as a good rockin' song with garage influences. I also wanted to be a bit politically incorrect, because that's just the way I am!

"The recording engineer said it reminded him of the Cramps. Jim's lead at the end has echoes of (the Stooges' late guitarist) Ron Asheton."

However, in recent weeks, health concerns once again threatened to sideline (if not derail) the band's momentum.

"Things sure can be difficult", said Reichel.

"Skid has some issues he is dealing with. We have a show scheduled for January at Bowlero with the Flipsters. Skid is confident he will be back in action".

That Royal Oak, Michigan venue has hosted a wealth of front running artists throughout the current decade, from the supergroup the Rearrangements to Dream Syndicate co-founder and front man, Steve Wynn. Cinecyde's repeat performances there have long been a top draw, inspiring the band to challenge itself to even greater heights in spite of the aforementioned day to day concerns.

"(Our) next release will probably be Nutzology!", Reichel noted, with tongue in cheek.

But if a near half century of first rate creative vision is any indication, Cinecyde's legacy is certain to be a continuation of an observation the band made in 2007: Today The World Will Rock!"