Appice says that the idea for Rocker Records came after he had some business dealings with Cusanelli, who inquired if Appice or any of his many other classic rock pals had material they'd like to release.
"He was looking for bootlegs, live shows, unreleased things, and I looked on my hard drive and had a lot of it. And the live CD with [Pat] Travers actually came from a fan." Appice offers. "So we cleaned them up, remastered them, and here you have the first four records."
At this stage, the current and future Rocker music is available only as digital downloads. And while Appice doesn't rule out physical releases, he says that the realities of the music industry today provide some steep challenges.
"The way the business is today, there's no way to sell hard copies -- especially for music like this -- unless you're AC/DC or Van Halen and you make a deal with Wal-Mart," Appice laughs. "Plus, given our [age demographic], some of our fans might not even know how to use a computer to download stuff!"
Coming Thursday: How Appice came to co-write Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?", his plans for a very busy 2014 and why Houston is the setting for the opening scene of his upcoming autobiography.
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