Jetset ~ 2004/1987
Tallulah (Remastered 2-Disc Edition)
Showing posts with label Power-Pop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Power-Pop. Show all posts
Friday, January 13, 2012
Saturday, January 7, 2012
The Go-Betweens- 16 Lovers Lane (1988) Remastered (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC
Monday, January 2, 2012
The Hot Dogs- Say What You Mean (1973) Japanese Remaster (Roots of Power Pop Series) MP3 & FLAC
JVC Victor Japan ~ 2003/1973
The Hot Dogs were a Memphis power-pop band and label-mates with Big Star at Ardent Records in the early seventies. While lacking the edgy off-center quality of the legendary work of Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, The Hot Dogs' brand of power-pop was more obviously influenced by Memphis soul. Lead guitarist and producer Terry Manning did a wonderful job of giving this album the same sumptuous sound that is found on Big Star's debut (which he also had a hand in creating). A rare Memphis power-pop gem that you don't want to miss if you like Big Star.
Say What You Mean (Japanese Remaster) in FLAC: Grab, Try, Then Buy!
Friday, October 7, 2011
Terry Manning- Home Sweet Home (1970) MP3 & FLAC
"I got a Mazerati GT with the snakeskin upholstery. I got a charge account at Goldsmith,
but I ain't got you."
but I ain't got you."
As a teenager, Terry Manning emigrated from El Paso (where he had played in several bands with Bobby Fuller of "I Fought the Law" fame) to Memphis and somehow talked Stax Records producer and master session guitarist Steve Cropper into making him an assistant engineer at the legendary label after having simply walked in off the street one day. Manning quickly became a mainstay at Stax, going from sweeping up and making tape copies to gaining a reputation as a sought after engineer and producer in a matter of only a few years. The extent of his reputation can be gleaned from the list of artists whose best albums he had a hand in shaping, including Ike & Tina Turner, Otis Redding, The Staple Singers, and The Box Tops (to only name a few). As many of Stax's recordings were cut and mixed at neighboring Ardent Studios owned and operated by John Fry, Manning became a fixture there as well, eventually leading Fry to make him the studio's first official employee by hiring him to be Ardent's chief engineer and manager. Terry Manning: "Neither studio had a problem with this arrangement [....] In the musical sense, Memphis was fairly isolated [...] Its music style was homegrown, even though technically we were trying to emulate the big boys in London, New York and Los Angeles. Musically, Stax was doing what it liked, and together with Ardent we were just one big happy family of people wanting to do music." During this time, Manning was also an active participant in the local Memphis music scene, playing in various bands and befriending many of the musicians who would later craft, with the help of Manning and Fry's willingness to give them free access to Ardent's state-of-the-art recording equipment, the Power-Pop sound that characterized early-seventies Ardent bands such as Big Star, The Hot Dogs and Cargoe.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Paisley Underground Series, #24: The Three O'Clock- Sixteen Tambourines (1983) / Baroque Hoedown EP (1982) MP3 & FLAC
"Jet fighter man that's what I am 'cause tanks go too slow. Airplanes fly
and yet I feel so low."
and yet I feel so low."
As was the case with more than a few fledgling L.A.-area Garage-Rock bands during the late-seventies and early eighties, Salvation Army got their first real exposure by having a demo played on Rodney Bingenheimer's legendary L.A. radio show, Rodney on the Roq, which eventually led to a recording contract with Frontier Records and the release of their eponymous debut album in mid-1982. However, when the actual Salvation Army threatened legal action over the band's appropriation of its name, Michael Quercio & co. decided to rechristen themselves The Three O'Clock (the time of day they would meet to rehearse), while Frontier decided to promptly shelve the album the band had released a few months earlier as Salvation Army (it would re-appear under the moniker Befour Three O'clock a few years later). During the same period, the band experienced some personnel changes that resulted in the addition of Danny Benair, who had previously played drums for bands such as The Quick and The Weirdos, and ex-Great Buildings keyboardist Mike Mariano, both of whom helped shape the Garage-inflected Power-Pop that soon became The Three O'Clock's trademark.
On the back of these changes, the band, along with former Sparks guitarist Earle Mankey in the production booth, began recording the tracks that would comprise their first release as The Three O'clock: The Baroque Hoedown EP, which proved to be a significant step forward for the band artistically as well as sonically, as it captured them taking their first steps toward melding strands of Psychedelia, Power-Pop and New Wave into a sound that would, as much as any other, come to define the Paisley Underground scene. Leading off with the nonsensically titled classic "With a Cantaloupe Girlfriend," an extremely accomplished slice of Jangle-Pop bliss that is propelled by Quercio's fey vocals and Benair's energetic drumming, Baroque Hoedown boasts a handful of The Three O'Clock's finest moments on tape. While "I Go Wild" captures the sheer euphoria at the heart of the psychedelic experience better than just about any other song that comes to mind, it is the band's brilliant mod-beat-style cover of The Easybeats' classic song "Sorry" that stands above the rest. With Louis Gutierrez's stuttering guitar sound and Quercio's childlike yet swaggering vocals, the band accomplishes the rarest of feats: actually bettering a mid-sixties Garage-Rock gem.
After releasing Baroque Hoedown, The Three O'Clock immediately re-entered the studio, once again with Mankey at the helm, to record Sixteen Tambourines, an album that continued the band's evolution toward a brighter, jangly, more technically accomplished sound, but did so at the expense of the Punk aggression that had always been implicit in their sound. Nevertheless, the album features a number of paisley-tinged Power-Pop gems, including "Jet Fighter," which garnered the band a significant amount of exposure outside of the confines of its Southern California home base. Perhaps the highlight of Sixteen Tambourines is "Fall to the Ground," a wistful, Beatlesque song that finds the band dialing down their wide-eyed exuberance a bit in favor of a more baroque sound that clearly indicates the rapid growth they had undergone as songwriters. A year after releasing Sixteen Tambourines, The Three O'Clock left Frontier to sign with the higher-profile indie I.R.S. Records, a move that, at the time, seemed like a logical step for the band, but one that never lived up to its promise, as I.R.S. was more interested in having them record more songs like "Jet Fighter" than providing the kind of support and financial backing that would have made it possible for them to evolve their sound in new directions rather than to slowly, album-to-album, devolve into the faceless twee-pop band they had become by the time they disbanded in 1988. Despite this, it would be hard to name another band who captured the spirit of the early Paisley scene quite as joyously as The Three O'Clock.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Paisley Underground Series, #23: Wednesday Week- What We Had (1987) / Betsy's House EP (1983) MP3 & FLAC
"There's no going back, too much has changed. It's mostly me though that's not the same."
While often unfairly overshadowed by Paisley Underground cohorts The Bangles, Wednesday week boasted an impressive pedigree that at various points in the band's evolution included stints by Steve Wynn & Dave Provost of The Dream Syndicate and Kjehl Johansen of The Urinals. Driven creatively by sisters Kristi and Kelly Callan, the band went through several name changes before issuing their first recordings on a pair of legendary L.A. underground music comps: Warf Rat Tales and Radio Tokyo Tapes. In fact, it was Vitus Mataré, the curator and producer of the former, as well as the keyboard player for The Last, who forced the Callans to come up with the name that would endure for the remainder the band's existence. When they first drew interest from Warf Rat Records, the Callans' called their band Narrow Adventure, a name Mataré wisely objected to; as a result, he issued the band a terse ultimatum: change your name or you'll be dropped from the comp. Inspired by The Undertones' classic song of the same name, the band rechristened itself Wednesday Week and set to work on the Betsy's House EP, a group of songs that demonstrate Wednesday Week's Garage-Rock origins to a far greater extent than the significantly more polished work they later issued on Enigma Records. For example, on "I Don't Know," the band's trademark jangle is certainly there, but it's dressed in harsh, cutting tones, lending the song, with some help from Kristi Callan's wonderfully wounded lead vocals, a significant emotional bite.
By the time Wednesday Week had issued their presciently-titled debut album, What We Had, a staggering four years later, the Paisley movement was showing signs of decline, and though Jangle-Pop was still popular with the college-rock crowd, any hope Wednesday Week might have had for a commercial breakthrough along the lines of The Go-Gos or The Bangles was in vain. Nevertheless, their Enigma debut, though a bit over-polished in places, stands as a fine example of late-eighties Jangle-Pop and also has the distinction of being produced by one of the architects of the eighties jangle-revival, Don Dixon. Interestingly, Dixon manages to give the album both a glossy sheen and a dark murkiness that results in a sound that is certainly reminiscent of The Bangles' earlier work, but the band consistently demonstrates a melodic sensibility that sets them apart to some extent from their contemporaries. On "Missionary" for instance, the Callan sisters reach for a heavier sound that they beautifully punctuate with yearning lead vocals and a memorable harmony-driven chorus, resulting in one of the better singles released during the waning days of the Paisley scene. Another distinctive characteristic of the band's sound that tended to go unmentioned in the context of all the Bangles comparisons is their emphasis on Power-Pop over psych-rock. While there are certainly subtle psychedelic flourishes sprinkled throughout What We Had, songs such as "Why" and the brilliant "Forever" suggest the Callan sisters spent as much time listening to Big Star as they did The Byrds. What We Had is the kind of album that can slip by unnoticed but if given half a chance, has a wealth of hidden gems to offer. Unfortunately for Wednesday Week, few took the time to listen in 1987, and the band called it quits three years later.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Wednesday Week- "Why" Video (1987)
Here's a clip from one of the lesser-know Paisley bands, similar to The Bangles, but without the same level of mainstream ambition (which is a compliment)...on a side note, ever heard Mojo Nixon?
Monday, August 15, 2011
Paisley Underground Series, #21: Rain Parade- Crashing Dream (1986) / Demolition (1991) MP3 & FLAC
"Imagine all of your sorrows have left you behind."
The aptly named Crashing Dream was fated to be Rain Parade's one and only full-length studio album after David Roback's exit from the band, in early 1984, to work on the Rainy Day project with his then-new flame, former Dream Syndicate bassist Kendra Smith. According to many accounts, Roback's departure was an acrimonious one; as fellow Paisley scene icon Steve Wynn recalls, "It would be like me being thrown out of Dream Syndicate [....] I never knew why it happened." Roback's version: "It became a drag. I just had to get away and do something else [....] Musically it wasn't working out." Whatever the reason, Roback's exit left his former band-mates, including his brother Steven, at a crossroads in terms of what direction the band's sound would take without its lead guitarist. In addition, the band faced towering expectations from fans and record execs alike to replicate the brilliance of their classic debut, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. For the time being, Rain Parade decided to proceed as a four-piece and recorded the Explosions in the Glass Palace EP, which, while missing David Roback's deftly subtle touch in places and showing an occasional proclivity for adopting a more traditional approach to song structure than before, suggested that Rain Parade was not eager to relinquish its place as one of the leading bands of the Paisley scene. Fatefully, it was during this time that Rain Parade made its jump to the majors by signing with Island Records, a move that would lead to the band's demise only two years later. Rain Parade released two albums during it's tenure at Island: a live LP recorded in Japan, Beyond the Sunset, and their final studio album, the aforementioned Crashing Dream, which functions as a strange epitaph for this seminal Paisley band, as some see it as Rain Parade's escape from the commercial ghetto of psych-revivalism, while others view it as another example of a great band sent down the road to creative ruin by a major label taking control of the creative process. Taken on its own terms, Crashing Dream is a consistently good, and occasionally brilliant, slice of late-eighties psych-pop that from the opening track, "Depending on You," suggests the band is looking to cut ties with the hazy psychedelia of its debut. The song's slick production and reliance on studio synthetics is a bit shocking initially given Rain Parade's psych-rock pedigree, but as soon as the vocals and lead guitar appear in the mix, the song begins to take form as a nice piece of shiny Power-Pop. The next track, "My Secret Country," moves in more of a country-rock direction, sounding not unlike a slower number by The Long Ryders, and by all rights, it should have become one of the most memorable anthems of the Paisley scene, but its emotional impact is marred by a meandering bridge and the production, which robs the song of much of its grit. Crashing Dream was unjustly ignored upon its release, and Rain Parade decided to call it quits soon after; however, they did briefly reform in 1988 to record a double album, which never materialized until the release of Demolition in 1991. The first half of Demolition is comprised of an alternate ("as originally intended") version of Crashing Dream, which, if nothing else, suggests that Rain Parade were not as eager to leave their psyche-rock roots behind as the over-produced Island version seemed to indicate. As the true epitaph to this legendary L.A. band, Demolition is both a revelation and a further reason to grieve over the untimely demise of a band that deserved a much better fate.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Rock City- S/T (2003) MP3 & FLAC
"I feel like I'm dying, never gonna live again. You better stop your lying and think about what's in the end."
By the time Chris Bell teamed up with Alex Chilton in 1971 to form the nucleus of what eventually became Big Star, Bell had been active on the local Memphis music scene since the mid-sixties. At the tender age of sixteen, obsessed with the sounds of the British Invasion, he played lead guitar for a band called The Jynx, which is how he first crossed paths with Chilton, who regularly attended The Jynx's shows (and even briefly sang for them) before joining The Box Tops along with Jynx bassist Bill Cunningham. Toward the end of the sixties, Bell had gravitated into the orbit of Ardent Studios and its founder John Fry, eventually becoming a part-time engineer at Ardent (he was also attending college at the time). In 1969, Bell, by this point writing his own material, developed a fateful friendship with one of Ardent's full-time engineers, Terry Manning, who, strangely enough, recorded a solo album around the same time, Home Sweet Home, for legendary Memphis R&B label Stax Records, which regularly bought studio time at Ardent. Bell and Manning formed a loose-knit band with a revolving cast of characters (including several future members of Big Star) that was known, at various points, as Rock City and Icewater. As Manning recalls, "During all of this, I, of course had the 'day job' at Ardent Studios: engineering for the rental clients. But when there was free time, John Fry was most gracious in allowing, and helping, everyone to try something new on their own." In essence, what this meant was that Bell and Manning were able to record and mix their own songs using a state-of-the-art recording studio without the support or limitations of a recording contract. The plan was to record an album under the moniker Rock City, which at this point was comprised of Bell, Manning, Tom Eubanks- who contributed the bulk of the songs- and future Big Star drummer Jody Stephens. Despite never having been released until a few years after it was rediscovered in a storage room in 2001, Rock City is an important recording because it provides a detailed glimpse into the formative days of a band that would eventually metamorphose into Big Star; however, more than that, taken on its own terms, the album contains some very good, if occasionally derivative, guitar-pop that every so often hints at something exceptional. An example of the former is the opener, Eubanks' "Think It's Time to Say Goodbye," a solid piece of Power-Pop that, despite limping in places due to Manning's limited vocal abilities, manages to do a respectable imitation of Badfinger. The album's flashes of originality occur when Bell takes center stage, as on "Try Again," a song that would be rerecorded to even greater affect for Big Star's debut, #1 Record. While Bell's vocals are a little shaky in places, they are unmistakably Chris Bell, and the song itself belies its guitar-pop foundation, offering up a dark, soul-searing sense of isolation that is miles ahead of anything else on the album in terms of distinctiveness. While Rock City pales in comparison to the greatness that was just around the corner after Bell jettisoned the modestly talented Eubanks and subsequently brought Alex Chilton into the fold, it nevertheless offers a fascinating glimpse of Bell taking his first significant strides toward the muse that would eventually destroy him.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Paisley Underground Series, #19: Various Artists- WarfRat Tales: Unabridged (1983) MP3 & FLAC
"The seas and the trees calling me. She's a river between day and night. I'm looking for her light, creeping coastline of lights."
At the dawn of the eighties, the L.A. underground music scene was comprised of a heady mix of bands and styles that included punk, post-punk, cow-punk, neo-psych, power-pop, jangle-pop, rockabilly, and everything in between. In addition to its quite unprecedented musical diversity, what also set this underground scene apart from others before it and those since was the genre-defying camaraderie between the various bands involved. As such, it was not unusual to see someone like Chris D. of The Flesh Eaters- ferocious purveyors of an exceedingly dark blues-punk hybrid that made them legends among the hardcore crowd- befriend and support a band such as The Dream Syndicate, who were in the process of spearheading a psych-revival that would come to be known as the Paisley Underground. Many of these relationships were forged through shared ties with the indie record labels that mushroomed in and around the scene whose rosters often reflected the amazing variety of the L.A. underground itself, a phenomenon that helped give rise to the era of the indie compilation as the best way to promote the music. A storied example of this was Warfrat Records, a tiny artist-run label, whose recordings were made in a (literally) makeshift studio called Lyceum Sound, which was actually a sound-proofed two-car garage (we're talking egg-cartons on the walls here) that had been rented out by members of The Last as a rehearsal space. The "studio" was originally conceived as a much preferred return to sonic austerity for The Last after having had their sound subjected to the sterilizing effects of the professional recording process on their debut LP, L.A. Explosion! Eventually, Lyceum Sound played host to bands such as The Gun Club, Rain Parade, The Long Ryders and Savage Republic to name but a few, all of whom engaged in something like recorded rehearsals. As The Last's manager Gary Stewart remembers, the WarfRat record label was born out of necessity: "I didn't so much dream up the WarfRat label as I was forced to start it, as a way of releasing a single [...] that was getting some airplay on Rodney Bingenheimer's Sunday night radio show." The compilation WarfRat Tales was intended as a way to promote many of the bands who regularly passed through Lyceum Sound as well as to pay off some bills (according to Stewart, the album accomplished only one of these objectives). The album itself is one of the better comps to emanate from the L.A. underground, and has the added advantage of being primarily comprised of unique "demo" performances that are often superior to the more polished versions available elsewhere. The opener, "Try to Rise," a creepy, campy psychedelic rocker by The Last that sounds a bit like Frankenfurter of The Rocky Horror Picture Show fronting The Doors, sets the tone for this consistently great and intensely moody set of songs. Another highlight is "Stop the Clock" by the Earwigs, a strange mash-up of punk, ska and early new-wave that functions as a tension-filled time-capsule of cold war paranoia. WarfRat Tales also features some wonderfully scruffy cuts from Paisley Underground mainstays Rain Parade, including a stunning rendition of "This Can't Be Today," later re-recorded for their debut LP, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. Perhaps the most essential track is "Creeping Coastlines of Light" by The Leaving Trains, a twangy, moody, transcendent slow-burner that is the equal of anything recorded by the scene's more well-known "roots" bands such as The Long Ryders and True West. WarfRat Tales is worth revisting because it offers a significant glimpse into an amazingly vibrant music scene long since gone; however, what makes it truly distinctive is the way its austerely-recorded tracks capture the passion and camaraderie that made the L.A. underground what it was.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The Soft Boys- Underwater Moonlight...And How It Got There (1980) Expanded Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC -For sradams777-
"In the primitive jungle of love, it's funny what you're capable of."
The Soft Boys' debut, A Can of Bees, is the sound of a band joyously sneering in the face of both commercial and creative expectations. Wedding Power-Pop and neo-psychedelia to the aesthetic minimalism of the Post-Punk movement then in full-swing, The Soft Boys were simultaneously anachronistic and visionary, yet sublimely unconcerned with (or blissfully unaware of) the implications of either. While their debut consistently refracted their Jangle-Pop tendencies through the twin-prisms of a cheeky brand of experimentalism and a blunt Punk sensibility, their follow-up and criminally under-appreciated masterpiece, Underwater Moonlight, refines these to some degree and, in the process, clearly sketched the blueprint for the countless neo-psych bands that would spring up in the years to come. It has been famously said of The Velvet Underground's debut that only a thousand people initially bought the album and every one of them ended up starting a band; something similar could also be said of Underwater Moonlight without any fear of lapsing into exaggeration. On the opening track, "I Wanna Destroy You," The Soft Boys' create a unique hybrid sound that can best be described as "jangle-punk"; contrasting Robyn Hitchcock's biting lyrics, such as "They feed your pride with boredom and they lead you on to war," with irresistible pop-song hooks and harmonized choruses, it's hard to imagine how profoundly unprecedented this song must have sounded in 1980. The next song, "Kingdom of Love," is a stunner; presaging the jagged Funk of Solid Gold-era Gang of Four, while also managing to integrate Nuggets-style Garage-Rock with a liberal dose of Syd Barrett added in for good measure, the song is easily one of Hitchcock's finest as a Soft Boy. Perhaps the most obvious influence on bands such as R.E.M. and The Three O'Clock is "Queen of Eyes," a marvelous piece of Byrds-inspired Jangle-Pop that is one of the best examples of neo-psychedelia I have ever come across. To say that Underwater Moonlight is one of the most influential albums of the Post-Punk era is both an understatement and an irony given The Soft Boys' decidedly un-Post-Punk tendency to overtly incorporate sixties-era influences into their sound. While at the time, this approach cost them any hope of commercial or critical success in response to their albums, it is hard to imagine the Athens and Paisley underground music scenes growing to prominence in the early eighties without the influence of The Soft Boys' groundbreaking work.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
The Soft Boys- A Can of Bees (1979) / Invisible Hits (1983) MP3 & FLAC
"And darkness is the shore of light, the truth is framed with lies. And a girl can smile sweetly though her mouth is stuffed with flies."
The Soft Boys, originally formed as Dennis and The Experts at the height of the U.K. Punk movement, were a band seemingly constructed out of contrarian tendencies, for, quite of of step with the musical zeitgeist of the late seventies, they dressed their brand of Post-Punk in the kind of late-sixties psych-rock and Brit-Rock signifiers that were anathema to the "three chords or less" minimalism then in vogue. What wasn't so obvious at the time of the release of their debut, A Can of Bees, was that Psychedelic revivalism would blossom just a few years later in the U.K., U.S. (most notably in Athens, GA. and Los Angeles, CA.), New Zealand, and Australia. As such, there can be little doubt that The Soft Boys played a major role in connecting the dots between Post-Punk and neo-psychedelia; as head Soft Boy Robyn Hitchcock has noted, "Big Star and us were the rickety bridge between The Byrds and R.E.M." Hitchcock's "rickety bridge" metaphor is both apt and a little modest. Apt because while neither band had any commercial success (though in Big Star's case, this was largely due to poor promotion), they both exerted a huge influence on the musicians who peopled the early-eighties psyche-rock resurgence. Modest because both bands demand to be heard on their own terms, as their music, in and of itself, is just as distinctive and influential as the music that inspired them. In the case of A Can of Bees, this is a sound as likely to indulge in the jagged abrasiveness of Post-Punk as it is the Jangle-Pop that would become more prominent on the band's second album and undisputed masterpiece, Underwater Moonlight. Opening with the bluesy swagger of "Give It to The Soft Boys," what stands out immediately is the dual guitar attack of Hitchcock and Kimberly Rew, which, while certainly echoing a band such as Television, seems to burn along according to its own slightly-skewed logic. The Soft Boys' unique intersection of influences is clearly on display in "Human Music," which reveals their Jangle-Pop roots, but passes this sound through a darker, dirtier, less polished prism that provides a perfect musical context for Hitchcock's Lou Reed-inspired vocals. R.E.M., were you listening? And then there's "Sandra's Having Her Brain Out," an unlikely but brilliant combination of Post-Punk cynicism and Beatlesque vocal harmonies. An album such as A Can of Bees couldn't have been more out of place in 1979, the same year Joy Division released their debut, Unknown Pleasures. And while The Soft Boys' debut garnered barely a murmur commercially, its influence continues to be felt thirty years later.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Robyn Hitchcock- "Devil's Radio" (2001) from Storefront Hitchcock
Here's a warm-up for some Soft Boys just around the corner:
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Paisley Underground Series, #17: True West- Hollywood Holiday (1983) / Drifters (1984) MP3 & FLAC
"The rain it's fast and hard, pooling like quicksilver on the ground, ran for the shelter of a nearby door, and I watched the drops come down."
Along with bands such as The Dream Syndicate, Game Theory, and Thin White Rope, True West originally hailed from the small but very influential music scene that thrived in the college town of Davis, CA. during the late seventies and early eighties, and like those other bands, they ended up gravitating to the Paisley Underground scene based in L.A. in order to find a wider audience and a record deal. True West's sound was a fertile blend of psych-tinged roots-rock, Jangle-Pop, and a touch of the dark, spidery dual-guitar interplay of Television, a combination of influences that made them quite unique among the Paisley crowd. After a brilliant self-released EP (which would eventually be grouped with additional tracks and released as the even more brilliant Hollywood Holiday), the band was invited by EMI to record some demos with Tom Verlaine; however, the sessions didn't go well, and EMI passed on them. By the time True West finally released their first proper LP, the slightly less brilliant but still quite enjoyable Drifters, they were beginning to undergo personnel changes that would eventually rob the band of much of their momentum. Though a third album appeared a few years later, True West were never able to hit the significant heights of their earliest recordings again. Because these recordings remained out of print for more than twenty years, Hollywood Holiday is very much one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Paisley scene. While its production sounds a bit thin in places, the austerity serves True West's aesthetic well, as their later recordings tended to polish the dark, almost Post-Punk grime out of their sound, thus making them seem, at times, like just another Jangle-Pop band. A perfect example of what made True West so distinctive is their cover of "Lucifer Sam" from Pink Floyd's psychedelic masterpiece, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which manages to capture both the twisted whimsey of the original and to inject it with a little early-eighties paranoia courtesy of lead vocalist Gavin Blair, whose voice possesses none of the child-like naivete of Syd Barrett's. Coupled with the intertwining guitars of Russ Tolman and Richard McGrath, the song traverses new-found depths of acid-drenched darkness. "And Then the Rain," True West's signature song and easily one of the best things to come out of the Paisley scene, is a tense piece of Jangle-Pop melancholia that wallows beautifully in its doom-filled verses. My personal True West favorite is "Look Around," the lead track on Drifters, which features a killer Power-Pop-style hook and some memorable, inspired vocals from Blair. Although the phrase "lost classic" is used far too often by music reviewers, Hollywood Holiday and Drifters exemplify this notion. Eerily similar to the fate of Big Star ten years earlier, True West was as talented as any neo-psych band of the era, but commercial success would prove frustratingly elusive and, as is so often the case, an early demise soon followed.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Big Star- Live (1992) / Nobody Can Dance (1999) MP3 & FLAC
"I'll buy you breakfast; they'll think you're my wife. Come up to my hotel room,
save my life."
save my life."
Live is the official release of a late-1973 in-studio performance by Big Star (at this point a trio) recorded by WILR-New York, which had been circulating for years, in one form or another, as a bootleg. The circumstances for the recording were the promotion of a two-day residence at the historic Manhattan nightclub Max's Kansas City in support of their newly released, Radio City, which the band hoped would avoid the tragic commercial fate of their brilliant debut, #1 Record (unfortunately, it didn't). Alex Chilton's frustration and tentativeness regarding the band's commercial prospects at the time are palpable during the brief interview that sits (quite awkwardly) in the middle of the WILR show. For example, in response to DJ Jim Cameron's somewhat generic praise of the new album, Chilton, a master of sarcasm, responds, "Yeah, that's, uh, nice. I hope it sells." However, by late 1973-early 1974, the band was either in a state of transition or deterioration, as both Chris Bell (the band's originator) and original bassist Andy Hummel had quit, the latter, having had enough of the music industry (and working with Chilton), decided to head back to college to pursue a career in engineering. At the time of the WLIR show, Hummel's replacement, John Lightman, had only been with the band for three weeks. Despite the incipient turmoil and Chilton's growing sense of diminishing artistic returns, the band manages to turn in a typically lovely, shambolic and world-weary performance on Live, including a fantastic acoustic cover of Loudon Wainwright III's "Motel Blues," which also appears as a studio-demo on the Keep an Eye on the Sky box set. It's easy to understand what attracted Chilton to this song as it is a razor-sharp depiction of the loneliness and waywardness of life on the road. His fragile, defeated vocals lend the song a tragic character that arguably bests Wainwright's slightly more ironic version. On the other end of the sonic spectrum is a sexy, grungy version of the rave-up "Mod Lang," which sounds something like T. Rex on Quaaludes while playing a gig underwater. Also noteworthy is a fine rendition of "You Get What You Deserve," featuring some impressive guitar-playing by Chilton, mixing his trademark grimy, jazzy chime with some down & dirty lead work. Big Star's live recordings never seemed to capture the band in optimal conditions; nevertheless, Live finds the band in ragged but committed form, energized by the then-recent release of their second masterpiece. This is well-worth hearing.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Hoodoo Gurus- "I Want You Back" Video (1984)
Hands down, one of the best neo-psych songs of the eighties, and one of my all-time favorite videos (especially the singing dinos)
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Paisley Underground Series, #14: Game Theory- Real Nighttime (1985) MP3 & FLAC
"Send me home counting the chances I've had. I could fill up three digits,
but that's not what it means to be sad."
but that's not what it means to be sad."
While The Paisley Underground is commonly characterized as a bastion of neo-psychedelia (the moniker unfortunately promotes this), as a movement, it was actually diverse enough to include everything from cow-punk to Power-Pop. Another myth about The Paisley Underground is that it was primarily an L.A.-based phenomenon; in reality, many of the core bands in the movement had migrated south, in one form or another, from Davis, CA., which was home to its own vibrant music scene that functioned as something of a precursor to the more famous Paisley scene. Bands such as The Dream Syndicate, True West, Thin White Rope and Scott Miller's Game Theory all got their start, at least to some degree, in the Davis scene. Game Theory, whose sound was predicated more on seventies-style Power-Pop than the psychedelia embraced by many of their contemporaries, formed in Sacramento in 1982 and quickly found themselves playing the same clubs as the bands that would later foment the Paisley scene in L.A. By 1984, they had built up enough of a reputation to attract preeminent Jangle-Pop producer Mitch Easter (who had produced R.E.M.'s brilliant debut Murmur) to man the production booth for their first professionally recorded LP, Real Nighttime. While Miller and co. were clearly in thrall to Big Star and sixties-era Brit-Rock, on Real Nighttime, their brand of Power-Pop is anything but derivative, as it incorporates elements of New Wave such as keyboard textures, smart, often irreverent, lyrics and no lack of odd structural twists and turns. For example, on "24," what at first sounds like a straightforward piece of R.E.M.-style Jangle-Pop quickly turns in to a quirky hybrid of jangly guitars, cascading keyboards, and Miller's sweet lead vocals that occasionally sound Chilton-esque in their upper-register earnestness. Speaking of Alex Chilton, perhaps the album's true highlight is Game Theory's cover of "You Can't Have Me" from Big Star's 3rd. This has never been one of my favorite Big Star songs, but in the hands of Miller and co., it sounds both more developed and more raw. Brief though it is, it ranks with Kendra Smith's version of "Holocaust" from the Rainy Day album as among the best Big Star covers I've heard. Game Theory were one of the more melodically gifted bands of The Paisley Underground, and though they largely avoided overt neo-pyche elements in their sound, their unconventional approach to the Big Star Power-Pop template makes them yet another worthy Paisley (re)discovery.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Paisley Underground Series, #13: The Stems- At First Sight Violets Are Blue (1987) Remastered Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC -Thank You Cudawaver!-
"Well I'm feeling like a weed in the garden of love. I'm looking like an aphid on a rosebud."
While precious little has been written about the history and influence of the various music scenes devoted to psychedelic revivalism that bloomed in the U.S. during the early eighties (The Paisley Underground being the closest thing to an exception here), even less has been written about the concurrent Australian neo-psych movement that was just as rich with talented (re)interpreters of the psychedelic tradition. Bands such as The Lime Spiders, The Hoodoo Gurus, Celibate Rifles, Died Pretty, The Church, and The Stems comprised a diverse scene ranging from Nuggets-style garage-pych to Byrds-inspired Jangle. While Dom Mariani's The Stems began firmly (and brilliantly) in the Garage-Rock end of this spectrum, by the time of the release of their first full-length, At First Sight Violets Are Blue, in 1987, the band had become (equally brilliant) purveyors of seventies-style Power-Pop. While the production is a bit on the tinny side, there is no denying that Mariani and Richard Lane are adept at writing hook-filled, Rickenbacker-drenched Jangle-Pop. There is no better example of this than "At First Sight," with its compressed guitar sound, jangly arpeggios, and sugar-sweet vocals, it is just as reminiscent of The dB's as it is of The Byrds. While much of At First Sight Violets Are Blue proceeds in a similarly gorgeous melodic vein, there are a few throwbacks to The Stems' earlier Garage-Rock days; for example, "Mr. Misery," which follows on its Bo Diddly-esque intro with an electric organ-driven burner that trots out one irresistible hook after another. On the strength of their first album, The Stems went from cult indie band to the top of the Australian charts seemingly overnight, a development that sadly led to the band's demise just as quickly. Nevertheless, The Stem's debut album stands as one of the sweetest slices of neo-pysche Power-Pop you're likely to find.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Chris Bell- I Am the Cosmos (1992) Deluxe Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC
"So it goes, on and on, my love grows, and yours is gone."
Chris Bell's exit from Big Star after the commercial failure of #1 Record has, over the decades, become shrouded in speculation and mystery. His brother, Dave Bell, has suggested Chris quit his own band due to feeling overshadowed by Alex Chilton, whose celebrity extended beyond Memphis as a result of his stint in The Box Tops. There are also stories of Bell falling into a crippling depression as a result of the ill-fated fortune of Big Star's debut album, which he had worked on obsessively for nearly two years, but whatever the reason, Bell's departure was a bitter one, and featured, according to speculation, fights with other band members and spitefully erased master tapes. While Bell would eventually mend fences with his Big Star band-mates, he never again officially rejoined the band that he had originally started. In the aftermath, Big Star became Chilton's band and continued to languish in vastly undeserved obscurity, while Bell began work on a solo career that sadly would not come to fruition until 14 years after his tragic death, at 27, in a car accident. On one level, I Am the Cosmos is a compilation of the various studio sessions and demos that Bell had worked on throughout his post-Big Star years, but on another level, it functions as a cohesive and often brilliant reminder that Bell (even in absentia) played a big role in crafting Big Star's singular brand of Power-Pop. Nowhere is this more evident than on the gorgeously dark title track, which is easily the equal of anything he recorded in Big Star. With lyrics such as "Every night I tell myself I am the cosmos / I am the wind / But that don't get you back again," the song is a stark and unforgettable reminder of Bell's personal demons and his tortured pop genius. Another lush descent into romantic despair is the open-tuned ballad "Speed of Sound," which features some of the most beautifully recorded acoustic guitar you're ever likely to hear. Once again, Bell is preoccupied with the apparent hopelessness of connecting with others, but the song is dressed in such beautiful textures (including some Moog toward the end), that it refuses to succumb to the inconsolable desolation conveyed in the lyrics. Bell's is one of the more tragic stories in the annals of rock music, and while I Am the Cosmos carries some of this weight (it is his epitaph after all), it is also a great piece of pathos-soaked Power-Pop that demands to be heard.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
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