He has played Mellotron, 12 and 6-string Guitar, Bass and Piano on dozens of Top 40 hit records throughout the early 1970′s , and 1980′s, scoring many US and UK chart placings throughout his career. He has been a member of the seminal folk rock group The Godz, a founding member of folk rock group Thornton, Fradkin & Unger and a founding member of the Pop rock group “California” which scored a chart hit in 1981 with “Summer Fun Medley” which led to a special appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. He has performed as a member of the Pop rock group Edison Lighthouse, performed and recorded with John Lennon’s protege- Rock Protest Artist David Peel and The Lower East Side and has opened shows for such Artists as diverse as Roger McGuinn, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Livingston Taylor, Sonny Geraci and The Outsiders, Ron Dante and The Archies, The Box Tops, Gary Pucket, The Turtles (Flo & Eddie), The Spiral Staircase and John Lee Hooker. He has also produced recordings for numerous other Artists including The Left Banke, The Drifters, Earl Lewis, Mara Lynn Brown, Venus In Bluejeans, Amber Gomez, and Napoleon’s Ghost and executive produced the 4 Volume 41 Artist compilation: “Timeless Flyte – A Tribute To The Byrds”.

In 1976, Les was selected over thousands of other auditioning guitarists to appear in the original cast of the smash hit Broadway musical “Beatlemania” playing lead guitar and the part of “George Harrison” in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago along side Paul McCartney lookalike and sound alike Mitch Weissman. Running for two and a half years from May 1977 thru October 1979, every show (including over 1000 in New York alone) was sold out and the Beatlemania musicians quickly became celebrities with magazine cover stories (“Newsweek”,”Time”, “People”, “Rolling Stone”) and many major television show appearances. With his guitar-playing in the international spotlight from the show, Fradkin developed a cult following that has avidly followed his career and made him a celebrity among guitar fans.

In 1978, Arista Records released the Original Cast Album “Beatlemania-Live At The Winter Garden”, which scored a placing on Billboard’s Top 100 and featured the original cast members, including Les on Lead guitar.
In the 1980′s, he pioneered the introduction of tapeless MIDI recording and MIDI Guitar, scoring many national jingles and TV film music with Score Productions, ABC-TV and NBC-TV, including a 4 year stint composing and programming for the Soap Opera “One Life To Live”. He continues to be one of the foremost virtuosos of MIDI Guitar in the world today.

Since 2000, he has enjoyed chart success on the Internet as well, with several of his songs reaching mp3.com’s 1 position 16 times! New Gandy Dancer Rock Magazine named Les’ CD “A Day At The Beach” it’s 2004 Album Of The Year. Les was honored with a chapter in the book “Mp3 for Dummies” by Andy Rathbone, as well as a chapter in the book “Bubblegum Music-The Naked Truth” by Kim Cooper and David Smay”. Les has also received extensive coverage in various books related to The Beatles such as “All Together Now”, “The Beatles Encyclopedia” and “Linda McCartney-A Portrait” by Danny Fields.

In 2004, Les performed with The Ventures as 2nd Lead Guitarist. Nokie Edwards of The Ventures has performed with Les on several occasions and is a featured guest on his “While My Guitar Only Plays” CD. Les has scored the Motion Picture soundtrack for several Motion Pictures, including “Accidental Icon: The Real Gidget Story”. Les has been featured in issues of 20th Century Guitar Magazine, Pipeline, Keyboard and New Gandy Dancer Magazines. Over the last decade, Les has released 20 solo CD’s on his RRO Entertainment Indie label bringing him several substantial hits on Apple iTunes and other download sites across the Internet, including his acclaimed CD’s “While My Guitar Only Plays” and “Pepper Front To Back”, both incorporating Instrumental covers of various Beatles hit compositions.

Since 2007, Les has incorporated the Starr Labs Ztar, a very advanced and High Tech MIDI Guitar, into his arsenal of instruments, and Les’ unique approach with this new technology has seen release with “Guitar Revolution” and “Ticket To A Remix Universe” (Beatles covers), “One Link Between Them” featuring his acclaimed Instrumental composition, “Lift Off” and, most auspiciously, has yielded a Chart Classical/Progressive rock placing for his CD “Baroque Rocks!” , featuring “Canon In D”, which placed #13 in the Amazon Classical Charts and #9 in the Japanese Progressive rock Amazon Charts in 2009.
He has lived in Colorado since 2000 with his wife Loretta and continues to actively perform and record.

LES FRADKIN
Parker, CO
Instrumental / Symphonic Rock / Classic Rock

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PRESS

“Two words come to mind after a listen to Les Fradkin’s music: Original Genius. One of the most original pieces or music that I have heard in a really long time. ” Metal Mark, Target Magazine

“Fradkin’s expertise on the Starr Labs Ztar Midi Guitar, is simply brilliant with an added dash of amazing. I would consider this one of the best classical homages done by a rocker.” Lee Gaskins, Prog Rock Homestead

“I first learned of you from the Steve Vai song “Liberty” which I thought you did a fantastic job with. But Orbiter ROCKS! This is one of those songs that’s so great you immediately think you’ve heard it a million times before. Great job!” funereven, YouTube

Go to Soundcloud to hear the rest

The Spin Room is the stage name of American emo/indie/pop punk musician Nick Miley from Long Island, New York. The Spin Room started 2010 out with a bang, recording his debut EP “The Dream We Keep” with producer Rob Freeman (Cobra Starship, Hit the Lights) and Nash Breen (drummer from Armor for Sleep). Nick managed to get his music featured on TV shows such as E! Channel’s “Keeping up with Kardashians”, “Kourtney and Kim Take New York” and other various shows on E!, MTV and VH1. Over the last two years, The Spin Room has gained a large online fan base on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and PureVolume. The Spin Room has spent 3 weeks on the Billboard’s Uncharted Music Charts; reaching #11. PureVolume has rated The Spin Room as one of their Top Unsigned Bands of 2011. The Spin Room was also the 25th most played band on PureVolume in 2011 and spent numerous days on PureVolume’s Top Artist and Top Download Charts even claiming the #1 spot on both many times. The Spin Room’s hit song “Fairest One of All” is being featured on the popular online game “Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4″ by Second Impact Games.”The Dreams We Keep” & “The Early Years” EP have sold thousands of records on iTunes. According to Billboard’s Jon Blistein “luck is gonna keep turning in his favor.” In 2012, Nick is preparing himself to release his latest record “Forever & Ever & Ever After.”

Soon after meeting in their home state of Oregon, Josh Schroeder and Meredith Adelaide discovered that they share common ideas about music, art, life, and their love of the beautiful Pacific Northwest. This connection fostered a creative match that quickly evolved into a musical project as Josh and Mer. Their debut album, Planet Music, was recorded with producer Jason Carter (Frank Black, Pete Yorn, Art Brut) and evokes a dreamy, experimental indie rock sound. The Portland duo furthered their artistic vision by filming and photographing elements of their collaborative process. “We each bring something to the table that we otherwise couldn’t do alone, and I think that’s why it works,” says Josh, while Meredith adds, “We’re always trying to one-up each other with concepts, visuals, and sounds.

The duo released their full-length album, “Planet Music” on Oct. 4th 2011. It is available through their website, iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, and Music Millennium in Portland, Oregon. Josh and Mer recently composed the network theme song for the BBC Kids Channel in Canada and they lent their voices, instrumental talents, and production style to the recording of the theme song.

Become more acquainted with Josh and Mer at www.joshandmer.com.

The Soft Hills recently signed with Tapete Records, a label out of Hamburg, Germany (www.tapeterecords.de). Their roster includes artists such as Jack Beauregard, Anajo, Dutch Uncles, and The Elephants. Tapete also owns Bureau B records, which features legendary krautrockers Faust and indie-electronic duo, Tarwater.

Tapete will be releasing our album in the US on February 14th. I hope you enjoy the music!

http://soundcloud.com/whoa100/train-and-benny-spirit-animal

Shadows On Stars are an indie-pop duo from Portland, Oregon. Mysterious to the masses with a few select buzz-worthy tracks online; SOS prep their debut full length album set for release in early spring 2012. True to the label of indie-pop; the band focuses on a wide range of sonic landscapes and melodies while influenced by their eclectic music taste.

http://soundcloud.com/whoa100/train-and-benny-show-w-special

From backwoods barbecues and community gatherings; Allen Stone emerges to share personal melodies, telling his tales of life after just 24 years. Getting his start singing at his father’s church in small-town America; it wasn’t until later when introduced to the greats of soul music (Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin) and then to the confessional lyrical fashion of the 60′s -70′s singer/ songwriters, did music begin to ignite intense passion, eventually carrying this boy to a musical home.

On his self-titled sophomore album – an independent self-release which hit digital shelves October 4, Allen has pushed his sound and lyricism to a greater level of noted individuality. It touches upon a range of styles and themes. Integrating classic soul, catchy pop hooks, r&b beats and folk roots with lyrical matters of testimonial broken relationships, poisonous politics and the age-old topic of simple, pure celebration. Stone’s music is notable for his finely crafted evocative songs and a fresh, smooth, soul-filled voice-one that certainly belies his age.

Allen Stone has shot up the R&B/Soul charts on iTunes, peaking at the number 2 spot, and hit #29 and #62 on the Billboard Heatseekers and R&B/Hip Hop Album charts, respectively, and has garnered national praise – USA Today called him a “pitch-perfect powerhouse” – all without any support of a label, publisher, or publicist.

The Siren is calling as the ethereal goddess of the indie scene talks about everything that’s OHBIJOU

In depth interview with the founders of Opus One Label Jeremy Wineberg and Miguel Jimenez

It’s a landmark episode for CounterTop Radio. It’s been 10! Pretty stunning if we don’t say. In this episode we wanted to discuss about the changes going on at SPIN Magazine that focuses on heavy digital/less print issues, writers that need biopics about them and we made up another new segment. It’s called “Lightning Round of Snobbery” where we listen to snippets of three songs on The Hype Machine we haven’t heard before and blast them with snap judgments.

Listen to the podcast here

CTI (CounterTop Index)

Changes at SPIN Magazine
-Is it smart to go more digital?
-Is the magazine in trouble?

Lightning Round of Snobbery: 
Songs:
-”Wleding Love” by Filur ft. Daniel Agust
-”Selfish Destruction” by People Under the Stairs
-”Dribble Drabble” by Laserdisk Party Sex

Writers that We Feel Need Biopics
-Chuck Klosterman
-Aldous Huxley
-David Sedaris
-Ernest Hemingway

Songs Featured: 
“Newlands” by Justice
“Don’t Move” by Phantogram
“Not at War” by Japanther
“HER” by Frank Ocean and SupaNatra
“French Navy” by Camera Obscura

For this week, Nate and Jett wanted to hash out a fundamental disagreement over the direction of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and their new album, “Hysterical.” Jett stood fast that the band has lost their trademarked whacky madness to their sound while Nate defends his postion that “Hysterical” is the second best of their three albums. On lighter notes, they decided to pick their candidates for best pop culture mustache and delve into the theme of sabremetrics from Brad Pitt’s raved about “Moneyball” and debate on what kind of stats we rely on most in pop culture.

Listen to the podcast here

CTI (CounterTop Index):

Sabremetrics

Do album sales mean anything anymore?

Jett makes the argument for YouTube hits and Soundtrack sales

Nate agues for TV ratings

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, “Hysterical” (2011)

Is it better or worse than “Some Loud Thunder” (2007)?

What’s their direction?

Top Mustaches

What we’re loving this week

Songs Included:

“Satan Said Dance” by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
“Hex Girlfriend” by Neon Indian
“Chloe in the Afternoon”
“Thankless Thing” by Wild Beasts
“Wildfire” by SBTRKT
“Five Easy Pieces” by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah