I was so glad I managed to pick Atwater Afternoon, the Nashville leaning limited edition disc by American Music Club when it was released back in 2008. Over the years the band has put records like this out to help finance tours--they would sell them at their shows. Fortunately I was able to pick this up a few years ago on their website. It's a somewhat stripped down collection of songs, including covers and alternate versions of songs from their studio albums. The last 3 songs are from a rougher either live in concert or live in the studio versions of songs, and they don't really fit the rest of the material so well. One of the highlights is the exquisite version of All My Love, which is a truly beautiful song.
I also enjoyed the covers--the band seems very relaxed and loose here. Eitzel has had prior success with a cover album, Music for Courage and Confidence, (American Music Club also did a nice cover of Goodbye to Love on the If I Were A Carpenter tribute) and he succeeds again here. I particularly dug the old nugget I'm Your Puppet, performed in the past by about a million other singers. They also perform the Kris Kristofferson 70's megahit, For The Good Times. The band honky tonks it up agreeably with Bill Anderson's City Lights, which reminds me of AMC Gary's Song. Another highlight is the harrowing story-song Long, Long Walk. "I'm not butter for any man's knife." What a lyricist!
Vudi contributes a song here, the uptempo rocker Little Joy, and Steve Didelot's excellent Insider's Guide to Life is also here. But you have Eitzel crooning the beautiful Who You Are, and his alternate version of All the Lost Souls Welcome You to San Francisco, which ought to be the City's new anthem. Sorry, Tony...
In any event, while Atwater Afternoon is not American Music Club's greatest moment, it's still pretty damn enjoyable. As I've said ad nauseum, Eitzel is one of the best songwriters of our generation, so go out and find out what the fuss is all about. You won't be disappointed. Get out and support the arts.
As long as there has been pop music, obviously there have been groups making hook laden bouncy pop. Sometimes it seems things don't change, with new groups replacing old groups like the eternal Menudo. The circle of pop life. Cocaina Matata. When you've heard it before, after a while you can get jaded, and you no longer get the amazing rush you felt when you first heard the Fab Four, or Paranoid, or whatever the hell it was that commanded your tiny attention span at that moment in time.
So sexy, it hurts......
On a less serious note, I've just run through The Darling Buds debut Cd for the umpteenth time, Pop Said...., and I must say it is a really great for a first album. If you have an affinity for The Bangles,The Go-Go's or Blondie, or simply catchy pop songs with big harmonies plus a little edge, they are going to be a source of enjoyment. A quartet from Newport, Wales, this little number from 1988 is a pleasure from start to finish. Led by the terrific (and beautiful) Andrea Lewis, who seems ready to take on the world with her assured vocals, the band goes from one energetic pop confection to the next. They are definitely a band of their time though, sounding similar to groups like The Primitives, nonetheless, this is a tremendously fun album. And even though it seems to be a fairly polished affair, at this point in history the studio did not become a Frankenstein's monster that overwhelms the human factor in the music.
And the Buds were a band that grew in songwriting ability and sophistication as they progressed through their all too brief three album career. But I find something refreshing in the almost Beatley youthful rush of this debut. After all in the little pop ditty Uptight, they "only wanna hold your hand". There's nothing that deep going on here folks, but that I feel no guilt in my enjoyment. In addition to Lewis on vocals, the band is comprised of Harley Farr on Guitar, Chris McDonogh on Bass, and "Bloss" on Drums.
Used copies for the Darling Buds are available used dirt cheap. If you enjoy 80's pop music in the style of the aforementioned bands I mentioned, there is no good excuse to give these guys a listen. Just another great Welsh group. Don't know what they have in the water over there, but it's getting to the point where I ought to get funding from the Welsh arts council. I know back in the Nineties in the span of a blink of an eye they tried to market Wales as a possible new Seattle. Turns out there was something to it, and noone ought to be surprised. After all, they are the California of the UK. Believe me, I've only scratched the the tip of the Welsh iceburg. And whether I am Itchy or Scratchy at the moment, I am always on the hunt for good music.
Pat Fish aka Butch aka The Jazz Butcher is one of my old favorites. I hadn't listened to his music for a while, but put on this 2fer Cd with Sex and Travel and Scandal in Bohemia compiled on it. It was Friday and I was in a foul mood, suffering from a Work hangover. Listening to Jazz Butcher was a definite game changer, turning the frown upside down. As in the lyrics from Southern Mark Smith, you've got to find out what makes your heart sing.
Regular English speaking gentlemen?
As I mentioned in the main caption, The Jazz Butcher are the band from Oxford your parents warned you about. Pat Fish's music is clearly good for the brain, a healthy tonic to the formulaic pap foisted on an unsuspecting public. It;s a potent combination of intelligence, zaniness, musical chops, humor, darkness, social commentary and alcohol poisoning--they are one of the few conspiracies of which I am proud to be a cult member. Other cults I'm not as proud of... but we'll leave that for a future posting.
It's a shame that the 2fer Cd is hard to get, because it appears that is the only version of Sex and Travel in Cd format. Otherwise, there are a few choice songs to be had on the myriad of anthologies available.
The group represented on these discs is from the early days of Pat Fish's career and is a supergroup of sorts,
including super guitarist Max Eider and David J of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. Mr. Jones was on drums. Met David J briefly in CBGB's years ago at a Trashcan Sinatras show shortly after the release of their Cake album. It was uncomfortable as one of the guys I was at the show with was a little overzealous, and he was clearly making J nervous. I later apologized to him---I don't go up to strangers like that and I was stuck in the middle of it all and just as uncomfortable. That being said, it was a good show, at that time when the young men from Kilmarnock were the next big thing, and crowd was filled with musicians eager to check them out.
The albums are all over the place, and that's a good thing. Alcohol and birthday parties are a recurring theme in the songs. You can have a magnificent sarcastic gigantic pop song like Southern Mark Smith. The song is hilarious social commentary you can tap your feet along to. Like he states on his website, Southern Mark Smith is ridiculous because the leader of The Fall is so unabashedly Northern. Like saying Chicken Marsala but made with ground beef with special sauce on a sesame seed bun.
Thousands of people are queueing for a shuttle into space There's a stupid mental picture of a happy nuclear family in a rocket... Look--In California every one's got a swimming pool in their backyard... Well, me and Max and David Jones we think you ought to get out there and stop it.
Words to live by. As is Soul Happy Hour, the finest musical tribute to alcohol you could hope for, done in a jaunty elegant fifties style. "Whiskey, Vodka, Special Brew.....". Reminds me of the old movie trailer for popcorn, except for booze. Stylistically similar is Just Like Bettie Page, where a relationship is depicted using bondage metaphors. Max Eider's guitar prowess is at the fore of this song with sinuous jazzy acoustic guitar runs. Another similarly jaunty number is What's The Matter, Boy? ("You're the man with the head of an Ass") from Sex and Travel. I wish I saw these guys live--they must have been tremendous.
Another gigantic pop tune is Girlfriend, a sensitive love song with big hooks that manages to include alcohol in the mix. Similar to Girlfriend is the beautiful pop of Big Saturday. Sex and Travel contains the lovely Red Pets---"Olga Korbut drives me mad, I'll buy some vodka for her Dad", lending some needed levity to the Cold War era. One of my favorites here is the lead song from Sex and Travel, The Human Jungle, just a really superb pop song with clever lyrics. One of Fish's finest traits is that he can elevate ordinary mundane life into something special or at least absurd. And believe me a songwriter who can be truly funny is a rare treasure--if it wasn't there would be a lot more of it out there.
Sex and Travel also contain a few other stunners, the great Holiday, which I find much superior to Madonna's song of the same title. Only A Rumour is another sensitive gem, soaked with gravitas and romance. As another famous alcoholic and songwriter Billy Joel pithily phrased it, "when you love someone, you're always insecure" and the lyrics of this tune evoke the sentiment perfectly.
But still wondering what exactly was Caroline Wheeler's Birthday Present, though I do know it had a lot to do with revenge.
So I give my highest recommendation to this album. But anything with the Fish imprimatur is a trademark of quality. Jazz Butcher releases have a lot to offer in general, so I say go out there and collect them all, trade with your friends. Fish could be a high priest for those of us who have Minds Like a Playground, or who sometime inhabit their own private Desert.
A week from now the Zombies will be performing locally in Tarrytown. I'm pretty excited about seeing these guys perform live. For practically my whole life I have heard "Time of the Season" and "She's Not There", the only songs of theirs that are allowed to be played on oldies radio stations. The former is the supposedly the most played radio song ever. Argent and Blunstone are still going pretty strong if the live DVD I picked up, the Odessey and Oracle 40th Anniversary concert from 2009 is any evidence.
Based on a rave review from Big Takeover Magazine I went full out and bought Zombie Heaven, the 4 disc box set a few years ago. The purchase was worth every penny. Each disc was uniformly excellent, but I was most impressed by the Odessey and Oracle and Lost Album disc. Odessey was one of the crowning pop recordings of the 60's, a moody baroque masterpiece. Colin Blunstone was one of the great distinctive voices of the era, and the harmonies and arrangements are peerless here. Sadly, the band split up shortly after the album was released and did not capitalize on it the way they might have through touring. When the records singles were ignored by the public, they decided to hang it up. Though I wonder how well the music could have been performed live. As they mention in the liner notes of Zombie Heaven, the songs were arranged to be recorded, in the same way that an album like Pet Sounds was put together. With the technology of today I see from their DVD, that they were able to pull off a live performance with aplomb. I also noticed that Darian Sahanaja of the Wondermints was a participant in the show, thanked profusely at its conclusion. The Wondermints are a power pop band who worked with Brian Wilson, and they were able to
make live performances of Pet Sounds and Smile a reality.
It's easy to make comparisons to the Beatles with Odessey and Oracle; qualitatively it stands on the level of their best mid-period albums. In some ways, the album bookends with The Kinks "Village Green Preservation Society" conceptually. There is a sense of nostalgia, history, Englishness in these tracks. Of particular is the Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914). World War One began nearly 100 years ago, but 40 years ago, people's grandparents fought in what was originally called The Great War, or The War To End All Wars. It seemed inconceivable after Versailles that within a generation the devastation wrought by the First War would be dwarfed by a Second War of complete annihilation. In the song a young butcher turned soldier laments over the senseless butchery of human beings on the field of battle. I first heard an excerpt of this cautionary song being sung by Julian Cope.
And I.....
And I can't stop shaking
My hands won't stop shaking
My arms won't stop shaking
My mind won't stop shaking
I want to go home...
Please let me go home...
Go Home.
But there are so many wonderful songs on this album, beyond the international mega hit. Beginning with Care of Cell 44, a very joyous upbeat song about being reunited with a released prisoner. Amazing three part harmonies on this number, perhaps more like what you'd expect from a choir than a rock album. Some of the songs are more like little stories and parables, like A Rose for Emily. Rod Argent's somber piano sets the template for a story about the ravages of time, using the changing seasons as metaphor. Similarly themed is Brief Candles, the candles being small happy memories to compensate for the overwhelming darkness.
Friends of Mine was one of the singles from the album and it is pure infectious pop. One of the unusual things about the song was that the couples mentioned throughout the song were real-life couples. They never thought to change their names. I suppose if you were Joyce and Terry, or Liz and Bryan, you would be awfully happy to be name checked on a classic album. This Will Be Our Year is one of my favorites here, probably a perfect song to play at a wedding, a musical testament to enduring love and optimism.
I just love the imagery evoked in the lyrics of Beechwood Park...
And the breeze would touch your hair,
Kiss your face and make you care,
About your world, your summer world..
And we would count the the evening stars
As the day grew dark in Beechwood Park.....
So next week I will be hearing some rock legends live for the first time, and I am definitely looking forward to that night! Hearing Colin Blunstone's timeless voice live and Rod Argent's jazzy baroque organ playing will be a real treat. Now, if only someone could get a negotiation together between Ray and Dave Davies.......
I recently picked up on EBay this 1995 7 song mini-album by Hub, a four piece Alterna-pop band from Australia. I'm having a lot of difficulty finding anything about these guys. The CD was put out by Shock Records, but I can't find the slightest reference to these guys. And this is quite a nice 90's styling alternative album!
Who is this mystery band?
Who are you? I really wanna know....
Right out of the box is 3rd Times a Charm, a very very nice pop song, coming on like an updated alternatized DM3. Nice harmonies on this one. The description made by E-bay vendor made some comparisons to The Replacements, but I hear a lot of latter period Dinosaur, Jr here also, in the interesting guitar work and song forms, and notably, one of the singers has some of Mascis' vocal mannerisms, quite evident on the second song here, Crush Luscious. Another touchstone here is the brilliant Australian band Glide, led by the much missed William Arthur, a band that any fan of alternative rock should get to know. Track down anything you can find that they did. (Not to be confused with the English Glide--a side product of Echo and the Bunnymen guitarist Will Seargeant.)
Hub was comprised of Peter Knight, Bass & Guitar, Tony Dennis, Acoustic Guitar, vocals, Steve Morrison, Drums, Bryan Karr, Electric Guitar, Vocals. This disc was produced by Laurence Maddy, who apparently has worked with a lot of Australian performers over the years. I was really surprised at the silence on the Internet about these guys. This is a pretty terrific record. The only song I'm not sold on is the slackerish Crush Luscious. I'll be Seeing You, the third song is one of the best songs here, an energetic Mascis-y exercise, with big guitar and even bigger pop hooks. Another winner is the jazz-inflected riffing of Golden Brown. The sludgy reflective eponymous ballad Feel That Way is also not bad at all.
Along with the first and third songs, the sixth tune Suitcase Mind is one of the great songs on this album. When they bash out loud catchy pop, these guys are at their very best. If you see this record selling someplace for a good price, it's definitely worth picking up. I wouldn't consider this a desert island disc by any means, perhaps just a Gilligan's Island disc. But if you like 90's alternative rock this would be a very nice addition to the collection. If this is a first recording, they certainly were off to an auspicious start. I wonder if these guys made any more records or went on to greater success. Don't know, but it would be interesting to learn some more about this mysterious band.
