“Keen’s vocal is of that special type that is ideally attuned to this brand of song, strong but sweet...”
TOMMY KEENE review by CHRIS HORN
BUCKETFULL OF BRAINS Issue 16 1986 (page 23) JON STOREY, Editor
The great songwriter and singer TOMMY KEENE died unexpectedly on 11/22/17. There is a loving and compelling tribute by his brother Bobby Keene at his website that is so worth a read: “A Few Words About Tommy to His Friends and Fans”. We cried through most of it.
An excerpt from Bobby Keene’s memorial tribute: “I have been listening to a recording Tommy made at the 1975 Led Zeppelin show at the Capital Center. To the chagrin of Mr. Peter Grant and all the other tour managers, we routinely smuggled our little Sony TC 119 cassette recorder into concerts. Listening to this show transports me right back in time as if I can now be the fly on the wall going back in time to that show. It is February. It is cold. It is at the very beginning of that 1975 tour, which is regarded as the band’s highpoint. On the tape Tommy is heard singing along to the songs in perfect pitch even when the flu stricken Mr. Plant could not. The performance is interrupted intermittently by the high-pitched voice of my high school girlfriend, Annie and Tommy’s protestations to her that she be quiet. Last Christmas, I had many of the self-made bootleg recordings transferred to CD as a present for Tommy. With them, for sentimental reasons, I included a very used Sony TC 119 cassette recorder exactly like our original. I purchased it on eBay for $25. I am told by Mike that Tommy was using that 50-year-old recorder to demo new songs he was writing in the very days just before he left us, just as he had done with our original recorder at the very beginning of his song writing days.”
Gerard Cosloy of Matador Records and 12XU was one of Tommy Keene’s greatest supporters for nearly 30 years . You can buy Tommy Keene records at 12XU.
