Johnny Barnes Plan B From Outer Space CD

legendary boston guitarist/singer/songwriter johnny barnes lost & found these strange and mysterious unreleased master tapes. digitally remastered, overdubbed, and enhanced he transformed the straight ahead guitar driven original rock & roll into fresh cream. with the best boston musicians onboard these well crafted original rock tunes shine, some having been produced by legendary rolling stones and blind faith w/ eric clapton producer, jimmy miller. pure heart and soul.johnny barnes returns to his first love, rock ’n’ roll by sean mccarthy, standard-times correspondentthe new bedford standard-timesjohnny barnes was successful on the boston music scene and with a hit in england. but digital recording came along and the guitarist pursued other interests. today, the rochester patrolman has released a 17-song cd, “known offenders,” with another cd plan b from outer space. he’s also penned two murder mysteries dead men talk and sleep when i'm dead and is working on a third. it’s hard to imagine rochester police officer johnny barnes being intimidated by anything. but he wasn’t always a law enforcer. far from it, in fact. some 20-odd years ago, he was a highly successful guitarist on the boston music scene, performing in the same circles with such now-classic acts as the cars, boston, and aerosmith. he was getting airplay on boston’s two biggest rock stations, wbcn and wcoz, as well as stations around the world that were playing cutting-edge music. and then digital came along. when the world of sound recording went from tape to digital, johnny barnes was a little put off. “i was afraid of the digital era,” mr. barnes says. “i didn’t know anything about it. computers in general intimidated me.” with the switch of formats, mr. barnes was suddenly out in the cold, fearful of trying his hand at the new technology. so he reluctantly dropped out of the music scene to pursue other interests. he drove a boston taxi and worked as a private investigator, eventually parleying that experience into a police job — and a side career writing murder mysteries. but he never lost his love for music. and when he finally overcame his dread of computers, he went back to the recording studio. today, the 54-year-old johnny barnes has released a 17-song cd, “known offenders,” and has followed up with “plan b from outer space”, both on his own label, nightcrawler records. these cds are paired with two murder mysteries that mr. barnes has released in the last five years, “dead men talk” (2001) and “sleep when i’m dead” (2005), both published by author house. mr. barnes is currently working on “dead on the internet,” another murder mystery to be released within a year. “i’m as inspired as i’ve ever been,” mr. barnes says. “i really feel thrilled again to be working on these projects. “i was doing a lot fewer musical gigs when i got married and raised my sons, (jimi and jett), but now that i’ve moved back to this area and my kids are grown up, i want to run it up the flag pole one more time and see who salutes it.” and that flag had little time left to fly when mr. barnes made a significant discovery in november 2004 — the tape recordings of more than 100 of his songs. he realized they would soon be disintegrating and gone forever. taking the advice of a friend, he realized these tapes would have to be transferred to digital immediately. he had only one choice, to confront his digital demons and record his songs on computer — a format that would make them last forever. “i discovered that the world of digital was quick and easy,” mr. barnes says. “the capabilities were much greater than going into an old-fashioned audio studio. “everything could be stored in a computer. i had more than 100 songs stored away and i could also put additional tracks of other instruments on the existing songs.” as a result of this discovery, mr. barnes found himself in the rock world again.