I regretfully inform you that my husband and music partner for more than 27 years, Fred Kimmel, has passed away on Friday, June 5, 2026 of a heart attack. Fred was the love of my life and the kindest soul I'd ever known. Vivacious, brilliant and passionate about life and people of this great, big world we share, he lived every day to spread joy and to teach not only music but to care for one another. Fred was my teacher in life, and for the brief time on earth he was with me, I was only privileged to have had the most amazing experiences through knowing him and his wide circle of friends and multitude of music students.
Fred's daughter, singer/ multi-instrumentalist Claudia Kimmel, has inherited Fred's powerful on stage presence and love of song. Posted above is a music video to a Fred Kimmel original filmed by his friend Robin Adams at the now defunct Palomba Academy of Music in The Bronx where Fred once taught, not far from where he grew up in Morris Park, Bronx, NY.
Dylan Taganas, Brandon Meenan, Onyinye and many other music students of Fred's can be seen in the music video with CLAUDIA.
(Planet Rose 4th original song. Produced by Owner Sumio, Featuring CLAUDIA, Composed by Fred Kimmel, Video Directed by Robin C. Adams. Claudia is 15 years old, half Japanese and American, born in Bronx NY, has been singing since she was born.)
(Edited to add additional credits to Martin Breeson for vocal engineering)
Fred's daughter Claudia Kimmel who was an integral part of Fred Kimmel's Rock Band music programs at Sam Ash Music Stores, Palomba Academy of Music and more, has created a GoFundMe page to help with funeral expenses and care for Fred's autistic son. Please visit this link.
I'm also sharing some key moments in Fred's well-lived life through long hours at work going from job to job and traveling long hours, finding time in between to do what he loved most which is to perform and create music. Posted below are photos I took of him at Beatstock with dance artist September and drummer Fabio Recine of Nuova Era band, and Fred posing for the camera with fellow music teachers and musicians in NYC.
Happy Metal Monday, headbangers! This past week, metal lovers on X started discussing this article: THE WHO's ROGER DALTREY: 'We Were The First Heavy Metal Band' published on Blabbermouth.net. I shared it with my husband Fred who isn't a metalhead per se, but is a rock guitarist and frontman of our new band, Fred and Sally, who knows quite a bit of the metal stuff I like on top of having the extensive rock knowledge he has, and here's what he had to say: 'That's actually plausible because The Who was the loudest band! Pete Townshend had those Marshall stacks!' So, The Who created the LOUD sound of heavy metal/hard rock (the rock subgenres were once one and the same), but aside from that, he also said, 'Pete Townshend and John Entwistle are excellent musicians who set the standard for hard rock/heavy metal as well. In those days, the whole band had to be great to get a record deal.' Of course, I'm familiar with famous songs like "Who Are You?" and "Pinball Wizard" but I will be listening to more of The Who.
I used to think Jimi Hendrix was the first musician to create the blueprint for intricate lead guitar playing in heavy metal, but now, I think many others including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Black Sabbath and of course The Who, were all part of the same zeitgeist, as it happens in the arts often where musicians feed off of each other. I don't mean ripping off one another as much as riffing off of, being musicians of the same time period, sharing the same influences like The Beatles and often jamming together, exchanging ideas and techniques. Metal lives on, and we're all still learning from these guys today.
Fast forward to 40 years ago: Tonight, I'm playing Dokken!!! I often say my favorite heavy metal band is Ratt or the Scorpions, but as deeply soulful and hard rockin' as those great bands are, and as much as I love the phenomenal frontmen Stephen Pearcy and Klaus Meine (I've only seen the former perform live, though Klaus is incredible on live footage, and might be the best live singer, ever), it might be Dokken. Dokken has the best ballads! These troubadours knew how to play on the girls' heartstrings. I also happen to know more of their songs. With emotional ballads as well as fun, anthemic songs in their repertoire, younger me loved them like no other band. Don Dokken's vocal tone is beautiful and ear-catching ("I'd like to see you in the morning light"); the intelligibility of his delivery is second to none, and his tone is dynamic from tender to piercing when he wants it to be. I still know pretty much all of Dokken's songs from Tooth and Nail and Under Lock and Key by heart, albums I bought on LP. I even had their poster on my wall that I got in The Village.
Tonight, I also want to talk about hair metal. Back in the day ('70s-'80s), bands like Def Leppard and Van Halen were all considered heavy metal. To me, a "heavy metal leaning" glam metal band is a heavy metal band regardless of guys in spandex (leather's hot on stage and restricts movement, y'know?) or even their guitar set up (mainly distortion, or does glam mean LOUD?). Just because some metal guys like Don Dokken are pretty boys who came after flashy, GOATed frontman David Lee Roth aka Diamond Dave doesn't make their music sound glam like David Bowie, or the band's lighthearted image take away from the serious virtuosity of George Lynch's metal guitar style like Eddie Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix, Don Dokken's vocals or heavy laden bad boy lyrics like "The Hunter" ('You're the only one I could call my own, But then the shadows fall and I'm gone again') performed by the man who put the "Don" in Adonis (just learned he's an actor, too) to every teenage girl's heartbreak, or at least to the ones that didn't prefer the tailored high fashion designer duds clad '80s glam band Duran Duran (synth pop band with "glam leaning guitar"). To call spandex glam is the joke, hair metal the classist epithet, and ultimately, it's a sexist joke like drag, but how I loved hair metal music, anyway.
I'd also like to address melodic metal. Great vocals also made heavy metal the revered branch of rock it became, bringing to mind classic metal singers par excellence from Klaus Meine to Rob Halford, Bruce Dickinson, Ronnie James Dio and so on (shall we add Roger Daltrey to the Mt. Rushmore of metal vocalists?) whose songs were aggressive yet always melodic enough to showcase those voices; heck, even AC/DC was melodic. What's called heavy metal these days includes thrash (punk metal) and nu metal subgenres fronted by rap/screamo, and often no guitar solo - there's not much melody there as much as patterns but we love bands like Meshuggah who are highly technical in their own right and nu metal that was birthed by some of the best singers and creative bands of the new era like Evanescence whose songs are very melodic. The heavy metal scene venerates seasoned musicians, but as musicians of any genre, we don't have to only conserve what already is; new players and sounds are always welcome as music is for everyone to play and enjoy. That having been said, Dokken wrote some particularly melodic, beautiful metal song melodies, solos, riffs and fills, all parts of melodic metal songwriting. Happy serious listening and have a rokken Dokken week! \m/
************************
Related article: Dee Snider Defends Jimi Hendrix Against ‘Eddie Van Halen and Joe Satriani are Better’ Claims - metalheadzone.com
I'm thrilled to reveal that as of tonight, I'm back to being Sally after being Sali for so long. The brief history behind the spelling of my name began when I had a TV show on Japan's NHK channel called "New Yorkers" from 1993 until 2003. Back then, I changed the spelling of my nickname, Sally, chosen by myself when my family first arrived from Japan as a somewhat anglicized version of my given name, Satoko, to Sali. At the time, I thought it was unique and modern, but over the years as I continued to use the uncommon spelling as a musician and blogger, I realized it actually made me more obscure by being harder to search for. Tonight, I metamorphosed into Sally again when I used Sally O. Kimmel as my new name for copyright.
So, here I am, the other half of Fred and Sally, a new band that my husband Fred Kimmel and I have formed, with our new song, "Heartbeat Sky" officially authored by Sally O. Kimmel and Fred Kimmel. From Sally to Sali Oguri to Sali O, and back to Sally but using Kimmel alongside my husband for the first time for my music, I feel like I've become exactly who I'm meant to be at this moment in time, doing the music that I've always wanted to do authentically as a singer songwriter, not alone but with the love of my life.
For the time being, I'm retaining the name Sali O for this blog because Crystal Rhapsody is also the name of my first full album following PINK MANHATTAN, an EP I released under Sali Oguri along with a blog by the same name as well as a perfume in 2005.
Sally the Witch, an anime character who inspired my choice for a nickname when I was little, also had a name change from Sunny to Sally, although I don't think it was during my lifetime. (Edited to add: In fact, I'm not sure I'd ever actually seen the anime, but I loved the opening theme song that my parents owned on a record, with the ending theme song (probably) on the B side. They (my dad, mostly) once had quite the record collection which they brought to New York.)
The last time I was at the Met to hear an opera was to sit through Parsifal as a music student, which meant 'too bad if you don't love 5 hours worth of good opera.' Star soprano Jessye Norman was in it, so, of course I enjoyed myself, but wow, did they ever give me my money's worth. Anyway, Happy Metal Monday at Crystal Rhapsody by Sali O, your new home for bad opera and power chords.🎤🎸\m/ 'Bad opera' is what I call my metal vocals as I enter my Fred and Sally rock band era. It's quite a leap from "Jazz Bad" that was coined by Fred to describe my scat jazz vocals which he took off of another recording, sped up and featured on his Y2K Drum 'n' Bass beat that appears on Space, his first album. He described "Jazz Bad" as 'a charming perversion of DnB and jazz,' but Space, an album I love, is a melding of Rock and Electronica where such experimentation fits. Our new music is comparatively straight Rock that will fit into one of my Metal Monday playlists soon.
Btw, I apologize for the previous Metal Monday posts that I posted with the wrong dates. Yes, it's May, but since April 27 when I started Metal Monday, I've been stuck in April, writing 4/4/26 instead of 5/4/26, then I did it again the following week. I presume you've already heard our daughter is getting married, but you'll hear that a lot here lately.🩷🪽🕊️🌸💭🌷☁️🌹Claudia Kimmel, daughter of Fred Kimmel and me, Sali O. Kimmel, is a singer, too, and if you haven't heard "You're My Number One" yet, she with her virtuosic soprano voice knows her way around an aria, an FYI for those of you for whom the Met stage is your stomping ground.🩰
Love is in the air; we love our iconic New York power couple Jake and Claudia, and I'm enjoying compiling these playlists of Metal and Hard Rock as well as any song that fits under the Rock umbrella (or not, as long as it rocks). Here's to another list of songs I either grew up loving or came to love as we kick off Metal Monday, 5/18/26, with this hard-rockin' and incredibly well-produced track by Mayday Parade that I haven't stopped streaming since last Monday. Repeating makes it easier to listen, and there's a lot going on in that intricate arrangement. Speaking of which, "Anywhere but Here," have you ever heard of a destination wedding?✈️🤵👰💐🧳❤️⛴️🍾
Here in NY, it's getting warmer each day as beach season begins this coming Memorial Day weekend. NYC in May fast approaching June feels like this: By the time I won't need a light jacket to go out at night anymore, it'll feel like an ice box indoors.❄️ I'll be taking Memorial Day off from blogging next week just out of respect.🇺🇲💜 See you in a fortnight; until then, keep the gods and goddess of rock from Donny to Stevie streaming on repeat till practice makes perfect the art of listening. \m/\m/
There's no mistaking whose name's on that notorious best brand choice, like a tattoo on my mind you can't erase. No Top 5 Matcha Latte list would be complete without trying one from Starbucks, so I was elated when Fred brought home the tallest one for my birthday (Venti (24 fl. oz.)), pictured above with pink roses from our beautiful, soon-to-be-married daughter for Mother's Day. Thanks, everyone, for your kind wishes! Now, without further ado...
Starbucks might make my favorite matcha latte from the largest US coffee chains, but the best matcha latte mix I've ever had had to be one by the largest green tea distributor in Japan. The winner was this sweetened Japanese matcha latte mix: authentic and flavorful. I added it to a copious helping of cold whole milk, then added water to taste. LOVE is in the air!
The same company also makes this version which at first glance looked a bit darker green but tasted the same as the other kind to me. It comes in this package that's not as attractive although the price, while higher, is more economical since the package contains more than double the servings. Another winner makes the list!
The photo is a detail of Fred with his model-gorgeous guitar player hand holding a matcha latte with me by his side at Fay Da Bakery, a chain whose selling point is their baking journey from Taiwan to Manhattan. Theirs had an authentic and pleasant matcha taste. Light and sweet, it was the best among the store bought I'd tried.
That said, Starbucks makes a fine matcha latte that I thought had an authentic, elegant matcha taste with a robust green color and flavor profile. It was better than Dunkin if I'm to compare the major brands. It's no wonder their matcha latte is so popular even though, surprisingly, it wasn't too sweet.
The matcha latte mix by this Taiwanese brand had a sweet and pleasant tasting matcha flavor. The individual packet was unique as its opening was at the bottom. The affordability plus the fact that it didn't taste like sweet red bean paste as I felt some of the more affordable matcha latte mixes did could turn this one into my regular go-to.
Have a great week! xo, Fred and Sali O. Kimmel (Fred and Sally band)
We, Fred and Sally, are in the recording studio today for "Heartbeat Sky" which we look forward to wrapping up in the next few weeks. Fred who digs the song so much so he's inspired to go Trevor Horn on the production is getting harder to stop from overproduction which of course I would never, ever do. All I could do is hail his genius. At this rate, he could get all his creative yayas out and decide we should release this hit before "Forever", the title track. Which do you want to hear first, a hard rock type of tune with my metal vocal "bad opera" opening and a bit of groove, or a quintessential rock ballad with Fred's most passionate, amazing vocals to date? We could just release them together or b2b (back to back) as we've been doing with our solo projects. We should always give you the best of both worlds, Fred and Sally, like Sonny and Cher, Ann and Nancy, Ashford and Simpson, Miley and Hannah... Anyway, it's time for another Happy Metal Monday! \m/ This week, I'm throwing everything that isn't traditional Hard Rock and Heavy Metal into what I call 'Nu Metal' and in the mix along with the kitchen sink coz rock ain't rockin' if it ain't breaking a rule. Enjoy '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s ROCK!🎸
That last song is dedicated to our daughter Claudia and her fiancé Jake who just got engaged! CONGRATULATIONS!♥️ Happy Metal Monday with an iconic '80s power ballad thrown into the mix. \m/
Frag hags are short for fragrance (loving) hags, a phrase which is self-deprecating and funny at the same time. The term came from a once popular fragrance board on an online makeup community site, and it is about as Y2K a phrase as they come because the time period of the online community's heyday started around 1999 - 2001. It was around that time when I first started chatting on a board full of people looking for a long lost perfume. I loved talking about my scent memories, but I love making new scent memories, too. My SOTN (scent of the night, a variation of SOTD or scent of the day as posted by fragrance lovers on X) is Jo Malone Beach Blossom. Nite, nite! 🌛🧹 Image: Kohl's
She is a tree of life to those who lay hold on her; and happy (blessed, fortunate, to be envied) is everyone who holds her fast. (Proverbs 3:18) - Bible.com
