Eduardo Rivadavia (aka Ed Rivadavia) was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and by his late teens had already toured the world (and elsewhere), learning four languages on three continents. Having also accepted the holy gospel of rock & roll as his lord and savior, Eduardo became infatuated with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and all things heavy, crude, and obnoxious while living in Milan, Italy, during the mid-1980s. At this time, he also made his journalistic debut as sole writer, editor, publisher, and, some would claim, reader of his high school's heavy metal fanzine, earning the scorn of jocks and nerds alike, but uniting the small hardcore music-loving contingent into a frenzied mob that spent countless hours exchanging tapes, talking shop, and getting beat up at concerts. Upon returning home to Brazil, Eduardo resumed a semi-normal existence, sporadically contributing music articles to local papers and magazines while earning his business degree. Finally, after years of obsessive musical fandom and at peace with his distinct lack of musical talent, Eduardo decided the time had come to infiltrate the music industry by the fire escape. He quit his boring corporate job, relocated to America, earned his master's degree while suffering the iniquities of interning for free (anything for rock & roll!), and eventually began working for various record labels, accumulating mountains of records and (seemingly) useless rock trivia in the process. This eventually led him back to writing, and he has regularly contributed articles to multiple websites since 1999, working with many different rock genres but specializing, as always, in his personal hobby: hard rock and heavy metal. To quote from the insightful 'This Is Spinal Tap': "People should be jealous of me...I'm jealous of me...." Eduardo currently resides in Austin, TX, with his wife, two daughters, and far more records, CDs and MP3s than he'll ever have time to listen to.
Eduardo Rivadavia
Revisiting Frank Zappa’s Commercial Hit, ‘Apostrophe (‘)’
Frank Zappa's most commercially successful album was released on March 22, 1974.
40 Years Ago: Peter Frampton’s ‘Somethin’s Happening’ Released
The guitarist released his third solo album in March 1974.
30 Years Ago: Golden Earring Releases ‘N.E.W.S.’
When veteran Dutch rockers Golden Earring unveiled their seventeenth studio album, ’N.E.W.S,’ in March 1984, they were still feeling the love shown for their latest Top 10 single, ‘Twilight Zone,’ released just two years prior. But remember that it took nearly a decade after 1973’s career-defining h…
Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson To Pilot ‘Led Zeppelin’
Well, not THAT Led Zeppelin, of course -- but the world’s newly unveiled longest aircraft certainly bears more than a passing resemblance to the hydrogen-filled airships of old, and counts Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson among its primary champions and private investors — as well as…
Revisiting George Harrison’s 1979 Self-Titled Album
February 1979 marked a celebratory day for loyal Beatles fans, nearly a decade after the group’s dissolution, because it signaled the release of George Harrison’s first album in more than two years.
40 Years Ago: Humble Pie Release ‘Thunderbox’
Released in February 1974, Humble Pie’s seventh studio album, ‘Thunderbox’ was pivotal for the seminal hard rock group led by legendary vocalist and guitarist Steve Marriott. But not in a good way, as it signaled their commercial fall from grace.
30 Years Ago: The Alan Parsons Project Releases ‘Ammonia Avenue’
Conventional wisdom suggests that middle-of-the-road (MOR) soft rock and highbrow intellectual conceits shouldn’t make for happy bedfellows. But that was before they converged in the Alan Parsons Project, which built a remarkably successful career by applying pop music of many stripes to Steel…
The Day Iggy Pop and the Stooges Recorded ‘Metallic K.O.’ Show
One of rock’s most harrowing and authentically violent recorded documents was captured when Iggy and the Stooges unknowingly committed their last will and testament to tape (as an active '70s band, anyway) by performing the show that would go down in infamy as Metallic K...
30 Years Ago: Whitesnake Release ‘Slide It In’
Despite its far-from-stellar sales, Whitesnake’s sixth album, ‘Slide It In,’ which came out in late January 1984, is unquestionably the most pivotal record of the group’s long and storied career. It exists in two significantly different versions, due to a curious sequence of events that wound up dra…