The latest studio album from Judas Priest, those old-school British metal gods, contains some frightening music: Strings! Delicate piano! Orchestral interludes! Vocalist Rob Halford cooing so sweetly that you think he's singing a Disney flick lullaby! Halford doing his best Pavarotti imitation!
    
All surface on "Nostradamus," Priest's 2008 double-CD concept album.
     
Of course, such music is frightening only if you are a fundamentalist metal-head who insists all guitars be turned up to 11 and all vocals sound like Satan howling with a toothache.
     
But don't despair, you fundie head-bangers. When Priest performs Aug. 15 at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre, they'll be returning to their leather-and-chains roots with lots of thunder lizard guitars amid Halford's muscular grunts and screams. In fact, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the band's classic "British Steel" album, Priest will perform that work (which includes "Living After Midnight" and "Breaking the Law") in its entirety.
     
And Priest should be able to get it right -- after all, the band still features four of its founding members: Halford, guitarists Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing, and bassist Ian Hill.
     
From his home in the countryside of Worcestershire, England, Tipton spoke about concept albums and whether he believes Nostradamus, that 16th-century prophet, really could foresee the future.

What's a nice Jewish guy like Harvey Averne -- the Brooklyn-raised son of a Russian immigrant father and a mother of Polish heritage -- doing in a place like this?
     
That place in the late 1960s was swinging Manhattan, which found Averne playing vibes and fronting a hip Latin music band that fused funk, R&B and rock 'n' roll into its mix.
     
That place now is the Daytona area, particularly Port Orange. After "the bloom fell off the rose" of his music career, Averne says, he became bitter, even agoraphobic. But he found a "Garden of Eden" after moving here in 2004 following a fateful call from a long-ago friend.
 

Given some of the news flashes that have blazed across TV and social media in recent weeks -- that a certain King of Pop's casket has left the building (that's not a joke), that his ghost was spotted in his mansion -- it's a good time to check in with the Dex.
    
Better known as Dexter Holland, the lead singer of the punky rock band The Offspring, here's what the Dex, sounding very prophet-like, had to say in the song "Stuff Is Messed Up," released a year ago: "Thank god for the media, for saving the day. Putting it all into perspective in a responsible way, with more celebrity news -- typical bull*@&# views."
     
Elsewhere in the song, over the swinging, punky-pop guitar of Kevin "Noodles" Wasserman, Dexter barks with a devil-may-care attitude: "Therapy, I won't tell, rehab and LOL, worldwide calamity, TV reality, euthanize, supersize, death squads and boob jobs, VIP infamy, gratify instantly."

When Patricia Mae Andrzejewski saw a magazine ad featuring her in the 1980s, she noticed part of her top had been airbrushed away.
    
Patricia Mae -- better known to the pop music world as Pat Benatar -- could be "accommodating," writes Lucy O'Brien in her book "She Bop: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop & Soul."
     
But Benatar "was never a floozy," O'Brien notes. "When her record company Chrysalis airbrushed part of her top off for a Billboard advertisement, Benatar toned down the sexy stage image and cut her hair short."
     
Now a wife and mom with two daughters, Benatar is still touring and recording with guitarist Neil Giraldo, her husband of 27 years and musical collaborator for 32 years. Benatar, Giraldo and their backing band will be in concert June 26 at Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach.

RICK de YAMPERT
ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
    
Steely Dan, that rock band with the jazz fetish and obtuse yet hip lyrics, resumed touring in 1993 -- 13 years after disbanding and 19 years after last performing concerts.
 
For the occasion, SD's front men, keyboardist-singer Donald Fagen and guitarist Walter Becker, "bought copies of the 'Steely Dan Songbook' to help them remember their old songs. But they soon learned that the music in these books were full of wrong (notes)."
 
So claims a passage on the duo's Web site, steelydan.com. They're kidding, right?
 
Of course. But the passage reveals some of the character of Mr. Fagen and Mr. Becker, as displayed in various interviews and media exposure over the years: Don and Walt have a mild disdain for popular success and the trappings of rock stardom, even their own. They have a legendary obsession with perfection. Their sense of humor is, well, a bit quirky.
 
And there's a touch of elitism (some might say pretentiousness) hiding behind that odd sense of humor -- Steely Dan's lyrics can sound like a conversation between a frat boy, a beat poet and a smirking college archaeology professor who thinks he's smarter than you.
 
But it's no joke that Steely Dan are touring again. Fagen, Becker and company perform June 15 in Orlando and June 18 in St. Augustine.
 
You have questions about the band? We've got answers.

Australian singer-guitarist Wendy Rule says her music "is my main tool for connecting to the divine world of nature and magic. Many of my songs explore the nature of Goddess and God through the characters in the ancient mythologies of the Celts and Greeks."
    
And, she says on her Web site, "As a practicing witch, naturally my music is going to contain many references to, and explorations of, my spirituality."
     
With six studio albums to her credit, Rule has performed in her native Australia as well as France, Germany, England and Scotland. Her current tour of the United States -- her tenth -- includes two area concerts: June 10 at the Ormond Beach Performing Arts Center and June 11 at the Colby Temple in Cassadaga.
     
Rule will perform songs from her album "The Wolf Sky," released in 2006.
     
"Witchcraft is a beautiful and wild spiritual tradition that honors and strengthens our deep connection with the cosmos, and especially with the magical planet Earth," Rule says. "My music explores many of the themes and symbols of modern witchcraft: a love of nature, a willingness to explore deep emotion, an acknowledgment of the spirit world, and recognition of the wisdom contained within the world's mythologies."

When guitarist/sax player Steve Hutter moved from Louisiana to DeLand six months after Hurricane Katrina, the life-long musician knew no one in the area.
    
"I was in town, desperately looking for income," Hutter says. He met longtime area singer-guitarist Reuben "Lounge Lizard" Morgan at an open jam Morgan was hosting.
 
"When we shook hands, it reminded me of a Muppet movie, one of the songs in that thing: Old friends who had just met," Hutter says. Morgan introduced Hutter around and, he says, "Within three weeks I was working four or five gigs a week."
 
Including three of the five days Morgan played weekly at a time-share.
 
"He just gave me three of those days," Hutter says. "I know it wasn't like 'I got tons of money. I don't need that.' He'll have a gig and say, 'Hey man, I'll give you half my money, just come play.' I've seen him turn many other people on to gigs. If there's a benefit for anybody, Reuben's always there in the thick of it."
 
Now Morgan himself will be on the receiving end of a benefit. The 55-year-old Daytona Beach resident was diagnosed with hepatitis C, a liver disease, several months ago. He began treatment last week. The "No Worries" Benefit, so named after a favorite Morgan saying, will be April 26 at the Coliseum/Arena in downtown Daytona Beach. Proceeds will help Morgan and his wife, June, with medical expenses.

If You Go WHO: Stalefish, the Damned Thing and Lunatic Picnic WHEN: 9 p.m. Saturday WHERE: The Bank, 701 Main St., Daytona Beach ADMISSION: $5 INFORMATION: 386 366-1598

RICK de YAMPERT
ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

When Stalefish stepped into the ring at the old Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando, the Daytona alt-rock scene was like a hyper, euphoric chain smoker lighting up beside an open gas tank.

The year was 1996. Stalefish and other local bands -- Skif Dank, the Doomed Clowns, Lunatic Picnic, Penny Dreadful, Corn (not Korn) -- were packing such local clubs as the Other Place, the Combat Zone, 600 North and 701 South.

Indeed, Florida seemed ready to explode like the next Seattle, as Stalefish discovered when they traveled up and down the east coast and played gigs with such fledgling bands as Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, and Limp Bizkit.

After six years on the Daytona scene, after changing lead singers and morphing from alt-rock to a heavier, more aggressive sound, Stalefish had landed on the radar of an Atlantic Records rep. The rep set up a showcase with Stalefish and an Orlando band called Mighty Joe Plum.

Only one band would be signed.

"We had a 50-50 shot at coming away with a record deal," Stalefish drummer Dave Kiel says today. "We performed very well. Unfortunately -- I don't know. Mighty Joe Plum had a sound that went along with what was happening on the radio at the time."
Losing out on the record deal "took the wind out of our sails," Kiel says. Soon after Stalefish disbanded. The breakup "was almost like losing a family member. I sold my drums. I honestly felt I wasn't going to play music ever again."

But Kiel, guitarist Tim Triplett, now an Arizona resident, and singer Dennis Adelinis, now a Gainesville resident, will play a reunion concert Saturday at the Bank[RdeY: Fliers for the concert list the venue only as the Bank.] in Daytona Beach.

The show also will mark the release of the band's entire recorded output on a two-disc, 36-track set for $5 -- including "Cave," the song that so impressed that Atlantic Records suit.

"A lot of bands are always behind the curve," says Kiel, who today plays drums with the hardcore band Fortitude when he's not working at a Daytona Beach screen printing company. "I think Stalefish was a bit ahead of it. Today 'Reflect' (the band's 1996 album) sounds like the alternative stuff that came around on radio a few years later."

"We had a really good run," Triplett says by phone from his Flagstaff, Ariz., home. "We all had different angles of what we
like in music and brought to the table. I was studying jazz at UCF. Our bassist was a rap fanatic. Dave likes everything, from Neil Diamond to Metallica."

And the Daytona music scene had a good run in the '90s. Clubs would book "three to four bands that sounded different from each other, and the place would be packed," Kiel says. "People would watch every band. Everybody was friends and it was all about the music.

"The Daytona scene in the early '90s to mid '90s was incredible. I really don't know what to attribute it to, but it's gone. People can come into this town and have no idea how rich this musical scene once was. I was very fortunate to be a part of it. I miss those times."
This weekend isn't the first Stalefish reunion. Former Stalefish bassist Mike Aronson convinced Kiel, Triplett and Adelinis to do a reunion gig in December 2001. However, that concert became a memorial when Aronson took his own life one month before the show.

Stalefish played a second reunion show in December 2002.

A few years ago, Kiel created a Stalefish MySpace page "just as something to put up and see if anybody would remember," he says. "I was quite shocked at the amount of people who still remember Stalefish and held Stalefish in some high regard musically. I was very surprised, and honored and humbled.

"No matter how large or small, we made a little bit of an impact here in the Daytona music scene."

The Nightcrawlers, that Daytona Beach rock band with the cool hit song "The Little Black Egg," disbanded in 1966. Six months later the song got even bigger, landing in Billboard's Hot 100 chart at No. 85.

Guitarist Sylvan Wells is convinced the end of the group saved his life.

"All of us have said the same thing: If we had kept going, I don't think any of us would be alive today," Wells said by phone from his home near Boston. "We were lucky we got in and got out without getting heavily into the drug stuff."