Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018

 Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018 - Part 1

 

 Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018 - Part 2

 

Ben Serna-Grey: You incorporate a lot of different styles into your compositions but your personal sound stays cohesive and authentic. How do you approach your songwriting when it comes to combining all these stylistic elements? 

Gautier Serre: Combining all those elements is natural for me as it is basically the way I want to hear the music. Some styles of music are awesome to combine with their opposite, like for example Baroque and Death Metal, those are very opposite styles and they work together a bit like the Yin and the Yang. One is light and easy and the other one is dark and brutal, they articulate each other very well and can be used together if you find the good balance. Combining genres is not the main goal, combining genres is the result of the main thing, which is to use contrast in music. The contrast in music is very helpful to underline the message, you can contrast a genre of music with its opposite and it will make it feel stronger, like with noise, the noise will never feel so noisy when you contrast it with silence, and on the other way around, the silence will never feel so silent when you contrast it with noise. You can check the track Parpaing on the album Spirituality and Distortion, Parpaing is a very heavy track with no concessions at all. Full brutality. George Fisher delivered extremely brutal and heavy vocals, Sylvain Bouvier did a impressive performance at the drums. It is indisputably loud and powerful. Martyn Clément as well brought a absolute killing guitar riffing on it. Here comes the contrasts to articulate the music.
With Parpaing, and its ridiculously heavy vibes, the perfect contrast that can be given to that is the lightest music possible, a 8-bits Chiptune music, that’s why I set up this track in 3 parts, it starts with simple and almost normal death metal, as heavy as it might be, then I contrast the music with its opposite, the 8-bits Chiptune, and then the death metal comes back, slapping and killing the 8-bits Chiptune music. It has been pretty clear in my mind of how this track should be from the beginning, but one day, I tried, just for fun, to let go another George Fisher verse, not on the death metal this time but on the Chiptune, I felt like this was it, this was the perfect music I was searching for, the perfect link, the absolute combination of sounds. Death metal has no wish to sound like 8-bits Chiptune music at all, and 8-bits Chiptune music has no intention to sound like death metal at all, that’s why each genre has plenty of space to fit with each other.

You also use a lot of micro-rhythmic and microtonal shifting within a line. Is this something you began doing deliberately or did it come more organically for you?

As you said, it’s something which comes like organically, I would even say instinctively. Music is a matter of emotion, when you create music, you express what you feel, or what you want to feel. The best example which comes into my mind now is on Downgrade Desert, at the end of the track, on the last part of it, there is a bend on one note of the guitar floating on the blast beat, a bend from down to up, which passes through all the micro possible tones from one note to another, this makes you feel like your heart is going up and down and your whole body is following it, it’s almost a physical sensation, it’s made in purpose, at some points, those musical effects brings you out of the usual musical rules where all the notes has a precise name and should sounds in tune with the A 440Hz. Microtonal helps to feel a bit out of this for a moment, while micro-rhythmic, specially with the breakcore parts helps to reach a very detailed work and vision on the sound,  so for those who are interested in details in music, there is a insane amount of work on this over all the Igorrr albums. Some things I’m sure to be the only one to hear, but makes me smile.

What are some of your influences—musicians, books, art, etc? 

I have many musical influences, coming from Bach, Cannibal Corpse, Chopin, Meshuggah, Beethoven, Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Mr.Bungle, Taraf de Haïdouks, Aphex Twin, Sepultura, Mayhem, Domenico Scarlatti or Gabi Lunca, again extremely various and different artists, all beyond amazing, but this is just a very small part of my influences, I’m listening tons of very different music since my childhood so I have a heavy and diverse musical background. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about books, I got a kind of hyper activity disorder, so I’m not able to focus long enough to read a book or at least having enough patience to get into a book, this sucks, because books looks awesome and it’s frustrating not to be able to really read one. 
Except music and video, I’m not really much going further into art, I’m more a nature man, I live in the countryside with my girlfriend and I’m fascinated by wild nature and the Mediterranean fauna and flora, this is what I do during the short moments when I’m out of music, learning the infinite complexity and speechless creativity of nature, which can be seen as the finest Art ever. 

What kind of music did you grow up with? 

I grew up with parents which are listening to a music which I dislike very very much : Chanson Française (French Chanson). I’m not interested in lyrics in music, and Chanson Française is like 90% of lyrics and a musical support just to help the lyrics, plus the music is usually made there  in a manner that I find demagogic and fake. I’m not sure that helped me very much to develop Igorrr, but on my personal parcours, I grew up with Korn, Nirvana, Pantera, Metallica and Morbid Angel for the metal/rock part, also with Apex Twin, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares or Bogdan Raczynski for the electronic part, and Bach, Chopin and Mozart for the classical part, plus some really popular bands which I like pretty much after all like Dire Straits, Jean Michel Jarre or Muse. I didn’t grow up in one single kind of music, I have always been hungry of something else, curious of something else because I always had this feeling that something is missing, something which I’m creating in Igorrr now, like to finally hear the music I’ve always been searching for. 

Is there anyone in particular you’d like to collaborate with that you haven’t yet? 

My personal hero in the death metal world is George Fisher, so the collaboration with him on Spirituality and Distortion feels like a kind of accomplishment already, so I feel pretty much satisfied about collaborations at the moment. They are still many people I would be happy to collaborate with, but Igorrr is not about that, Igorrr is a musical project that I created to express the music which makes sense to me, whatever what people might think or whatever if the label will be able to sell it or not, it’s a honest music, made with no compromise at all, there is no aim to collaborate with this or that person, it’s working on the other way around, if the music needs it, then I’m happy to collaborate, in the case of George Fisher, the music definitely needed him, but I’m not thinking about doing any collaboration since I don’t have the music which really needs it. I would say I’m doing anything in order to serve the music, the rest is out of the process.

From: https://toiletovhell.com/review-and-interview-igorrr-spirituality-and-distortion/ 

 

Ringo Deathstarr - RIP

Vice: I just want to let you guys know how much I enjoyed the new album. When I heard the single, “RIP,” streaming online, I was blown away. Was this a particular song where after you rehearsed it for the first time you were like, “Wow, we really have something here?”

Elliot Frazier [singer/guitarist]: It just sounded way different when we recorded it then the demo, and we were like, “Well, this is cool.” It went in a very unexpected direction with the Heavy Metal-type guitar.

Alex Gehring [singer/bassist]: It started off as a really crappy garage band demo of mine. I didn’t really know how to record anything, so I played my bass acoustically and then layered it with a million vocals and sent it to Elliot just on a whim thinking “Eh, maybe he’ll think this is kinda cool,” and I guess he liked it and wanted to turn it into a song. Now it’s a lot different as far as the guitar goes.

I noticed that “RIP” was the only song, aside from “Brightest Star,” that made use of the tambourine. Do you feel that the tambourine is an underrated instrument?

Elliot: Oh yeah. We had tambourines on most songs on the last album. But live, we don’t really have anyone to play the tambourine, so we’re trying to go for a sound that we can create live on this album where we can use the tambourine successfully. Some songs had to have a tambourine.

Who’s the tambourine player of the band?

Elliot: That’s me. It’s harder to play than it looks [laughs].

I bet it is. Like all instruments, it seems like something you have to fine tune overtime to really perfect. [Not said with a hint of sarcasm at all!—Totally lying].

Elliot: The egg shaker is really hard, too.

I bet.

Elliot: [Laughs] You really have to get your whole body into it.

Exactly. It’s a very physical instrument to play. But did it take a while before you found the singing chemistry that you found with Alex? Were there a lot of people who auditioned/tried out that failed?

Elliot: It wasn’t really auditioning; people were in the band and then they would just quit, and Alex didn’t quit.

Alex: Hooray!

Elliot: [Laughs] And then we went on tour and she still didn’t quit. I told everyone when they joined the band that they could quit when they wanted. But after Alex joined, I definitely felt that the band was serious now. And then Daniel [Coburn, RDS’s drummer] came in—I went to High School with him—and we used to play in bands back in the day. It just felt good because we had played music together in the past. Everyone else who was in the band was just a waste of my time for the past two years. It was really frustrating.

Why were people leaving the band?

Elliot: Most of the time they had other bands they were in simultaneously. With Alex, she had never really been in a serious band before.

Alex: It was right out of high school that I joined. I had been in bands in school before, but never ones that played shows or went on tour.

Elliot: I was trying to find people that were like Alex, who weren’t that experienced, and who weren’t jaded or bitter or lazy.

Yeah, that makes sense. Jaded musicians are no fun to work with. How about noise rock? What was the appeal of playing it?

Elliot: You don’t have to be very skilled to play it. You can kind of get away with not having to know how to play the guitar and not really knowing how to sing very well.

Alex: We can put a lot of reverbs on our vocals to help mask them. We’re not very talented singers.

I’ll have to disagree with that, but in the past you’ve also mentioned that you’re not talented songwriters, either. Is this how you really feel?

Elliot: Yeah, I mean, I feel like a songwriter is someone who sits down and really thinks about a song—like the structure/how to arrange it to make it appeal to people—like my Uncle. He does these songwriting workshops and he’s always trying to get me to go. If I played my songs with an acoustic guitar it really wouldn’t make any sense.

Right.

Elliot: It’s just music that’s fun for us to play. We’re not necessarily worrying about if songs need to have a hook, or if it’s going to be on the radio.

So you’re geared more towards the musical aspect than the lyrical side?

Elliot: Yeah. It’s just an excuse to play shows, for me. I love playing, I love going on tour, and that’s really the most important part.

On your last LP, Colour Trip, critics said that you failed to come up with a new kind of music…

Elliot: Guilty as charged!

…and that you were channeling your influences instead of having an original sound. Can you foresee critics saying the same thing about Mauve?

Elliot: I don’t know. I stopped reading all that stuff a while ago. I’m hoping I can use my mental power to just ignore what they think.

I think not giving a fuck is the best mentality to have.

Elliot: It’s like we should start saying that stuff to other bands: “Oh! The new Ty Segal album! He failed to make himself sound exactly like The Rolling Stones.” [Laughs]

I can imagine that reading anything negative about your band is annoying. Is it equally as annoying as being asked about The Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine as influences? Does it make you want to kill the people who ask that question?

Elliot: We’re just tired of hearing the word ‘’Shoegaze.”  I mean, we’re not gazing at our shoes, and we’re not playing all these delayed guitars. I think that’s the only term that they always consistently think of calling us.

It’s just critics clumping you into a category that’s fairly trendy.

Elliot: We meet a lot of bands who are considered “Shoegaze” bands; it’s such a stupid word and latched onto bands who play mellow, dreamy music. We just tend to be more aggressive; we have more of an angry sound than a laid-back one.

Are there other bands, aside from the ones that you’re constantly compared to, that you would like to be compared to more often, or is that a thing, too? Would you just not rather be compared to anyone?

Alex: I feel like it’s almost inevitable; everyone is constantly compared to some bands. But it would be nice if people were to take us as an original, unique sound.

Elliot: For me, the best thing would be for people to just say, “Yeah, I want to go watch and see this show because it sounds cool.” It’s all about what’s happening right now. I’m sure we sound like some bands from the past, but you can’t go see those bands, and we never could go see those bands. We just want to do it right now. Maybe we’ll sound like what a new Black Flag would equal. That band was definitely a huge influence, too.

From: https://www.vice.com/en/article/we-interviewed-ringo-deathstarr/ 

Spirit - I Got A Line On You

Based out of LA, Spirit were a psychedelic band of the 60s, 70s and 80s, with a modestly sized but very enthusiastic international following. Their name came from a book popular in the late 60s: ‘Spirits Rebellious’ by New York-based Lebanese poet Kahlil Gilbran. (A good book but with Gilbran, start with his utterly beautiful masterpiece, ‘The Prophet’.) For a few weeks, they were indeed Spirits Rebellious – such a great name - then shortened their name simply to Spirit. 
Their lead guitarist, Randy California - real name, Randolph Wolfe - received his stage name from a young Jimi Hendrix. That’s already a pretty big claim to fame. The 15-year old guitar prodigy Wolfe, born in LA, played in Hendrix’s band - James and the Blue Flames - before Hendrix left NYC for London. There was another Randy in the band, so Hendrix chose a name to distinguish which Randy had arrived from California. 
Spirit’s drummer - Ed Cassidy - was California‘s stepdad. This is the only father-son relationship I’ve heard of in a significant rock band. Cassidy, also known as Mr. Skin due to his completely shaved head, had previously played with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. His drumming style was jazzy/spontaneous and showed great feel for the music. His drum kit setup was unique, with two huge angled toms on stands either side of the kit. 
Cassidy and California were to become the longest serving members of Spirit. They were joined by three friends who’d met each other at university, UCLA. On keyboards was John Locke, who later joined Scottish hard rock outfit Nazareth. A key part of the songwriting team, Locke was a highly talented musician, as was Spirit’s bassist Mark Andes. Completing the five-piece Spirit with cool looks, vocals and moves, was singer and songwriter Jay Ferguson. 
Their debut album, the eponymously titled ‘Spirit’, did well in the charts, hitting no. 31 in the US Billboard in 1968. It contains excellent, innovative songs such as ‘Fresh Garbage’ and ‘Elijah’. Touring the album in the US, Spirit were supported by the newly formed Led Zeppelin. After opening the show, Zeppelin would join the audience to watch the main act. Years later, Zeppelin were sued for - it was alleged - lifting a chord sequence from Spirit’s song ‘Taurus’ (from the first album) and placing it into ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Listen out for it yourself. There is a passing similarity for a couple of seconds… but the judge didn’t hear it this way, and in court Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were able to successfully defend the song that is so much a part of who Zeppelin are. 
Back to the late 60s: At this point, Spirit were living together in a West Coast commune with friends and a cat, in a house overlooking the Topanga Canyon in the Santa Monica hills. This time is captured in their dreamy song ‘Topanga Window’, from their first album. Spirit scored a hit single with the catchy ‘I Got a Line on You’, taken from their second album. The single reached no. 25 in the US charts, their only Top 30 hit. Their album - The Family That Plays Together - did even better, peaking at 22 in the US. Personally I prefer their first album, although many fans like the second. 
The album’s title expresses how the group saw itself: a family, living as a small commune (part of the West Coast late 60s zeitgeist), which happened to play as a band. But as in many families, there was friction between the members. Reading between the lines, this was probably about personality, power and ego. Randy California, the baby of the group, had joined Spirit in 1967 at the age of just 17. At this point songwriting was mainly handled by the others, and vocal duties went to Jay Ferguson. California rapidly found his stride, established his presence, wrote more, was often the singer and frontman: witness the video of I Got a Line on You, where he is looning with a fishing rod on a steam train, while the rest of the band are nowhere in sight. California’s dynamism and desire to take centre stage must have grated on Ferguson, Andes and Locke, while I guess Cassidy was a little more indulgent towards his stepson.  From: https://www.reddit.com/r/psychedelicrock/comments/pdt43z/spirit_a_journey_through_a_psychedelic_band_short/ 

The Mamas & The Papas - I Saw Her Again

A decade before Fleetwood Mac’s critically wounded marital relationships spilled blood on the tracks of the classic Rumours album, The Mamas And The Papas similarly spun gold from domestic strife. John Phillips’ “Go Where You Wanna Go” and Lindsey Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way” are like two sides of the same coin lyrically, as well as the work of two songwriters brave enough to let the world sing along to their State Of The Marriage addresses. But “I Saw Her Again” is where things really get twisted.
As a piece of pop music “I Saw Her Again” is pure brilliance. John Phillips was one of very few who could rival what Brian Wilson did in terms of layering vocal parts. Even if you’ve heard this song a thousand times, a fresh listen with special attention to the complexity of the vocal arrangement can be a revelation. Also, as was the case with much 60’s pop, some cool stereo panning effects were used. If you’re able to listen to the song through only the left speaker, then a second time using only the right, you’ll have two totally different listening experiences.
As for the twisted part, the song arose from an affair between Phillips’ wife (and bandmate) Michelle and Denny Doherty, the lead singer of the song–an affair which caused such tensions within the group it even led to Michelle’s temporary expulsion from it. Although Doherty has a co-writing credit on the song, the extent of his input is unclear and may have only been on the musical side. Essentially the song was John’s retribution against Doherty for the affair. One might imagine a tense vibe in the room when the song was recorded, to say nothing of Michelle and Denny’s discomfort at having to sing the song in public every night. It seems John Phillips’s creativity wasn’t limited to the recording studio. “I Saw Her Again” is the best case on record of songwriting as revenge.
Of additional interest is Doherty’s famous false entrance on the last chorus of the song. If you listen just after the 2:14 mark you’ll hear him come in prematurely with the words “I Saw Her…”. Producer Lou Adler, on hearing the playback, loved the way the mistake sounded and left it in. The side-to-side stereo panning of the first and second “I Saw Her” helped make it sound more like an intentional part of the song’s arrangement (more studio genius). But to one discerning listener named Paul McCartney the lyric’s accidental nature was obvious. “No one is that clever”, he’s reported to have said.  From: https://edcyphers.com/2012/02/19/songs-with-stories-1/

 

Ouzo Bazooka - Clouds of Sorrow

Ouzo Bazooka are an Israeli band whose colorful synthesis of psychedelia, surf, and garage rock is made even more distinctive by the heavy Middle Eastern influences they employ. Overtly retro and with a penchant for mysticism and wild, energetic live shows, they are led by singer/guitarist Uri Brauner Kinrot, who formed the band in the mid-2010s. Following the 2014 release of their self-titled debut, Ouzo Bazooka have consistently increased their international presence, especially in the European psych rock scene. The group's early output was released on the Bristol-based Stolen Body label, after which they signed to the more globally oriented Batov Records for 2021's Dalya. Their sixth album, 2025's Kapaim, bore a more spacious, instrumentally focused sound. 
Multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter Uri Brauner Kinrot is a well-established figure in the Tel Aviv indie scene and first rose to international attention with his Mediterranean surf rock band Boom Pam while also collaborating with acts like Balkan Beat Box and Firewater. After forming Ouzo Bazooka as a solo studio project, it evolved into a full-on rock band with the 2014 release of their self-titled debut. With their global fusion of psych rock and Middle Eastern melodies, the band earned critical acclaim and began playing European festivals and widening their profile. Follow-up albums like 2016's Simoom and 2019's Transporter were similarly well-received, earning Ouzo Bazooka a more widespread fan base. They eventually switched from Bristol, U.K.-based label Stolen Body to London's more eclectic and internationally focused Batov Records which released their fifth album, 2021's Dalya. Kapaim, released in 2025, steered more directly into expansive, groove-based tracks and was a largely instrumental album.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ouzo-bazooka-mn0003423396#biography 

Mates of State - Get Better

PopMatters: So how did the drums/organ set-up come about? 

Kori Gardner: It just came about by chance. We were playing in a guitar band at the time. We had rented practice space and that band wasn’t practicing. We left our drum set and my organ that I bought two years prior to that up there. We just sat behind the instruments and played and it grew into something that we liked.

Jason Hammel: We didn’t even think about writing songs. We just started fiddling about. Maybe that’s a song? And then one song turned into seven songs.

KG: We’ve been in tons of bands before, and [in those bands] it’s always been a conscious effort. Let’s write this song, let’s have it be this long, it’ll have this many parts in it.

JH: We’ll have this many songs, we’ll have a set.

KG: Yeah, and with this band [Mates of State] it was never like that. I think that’s why we both feel a little more laid-back about the songwriting process with this band. I think it’s just because of the way we look at music, and I don’t mean to sound pretentious at all, I think we just go about it and whatever sounds good to us is what we play.

JH: We see the value in all of the music we like, but we certainly don’t want to set up to rip somebody off.

KG: You can’t help not to be influenced by bands. Everybody is. But the difference with us is that we don’t set out to sound like anything. We just go to practice and if we like a part, I don’t know what it sounds like, it just sounds good to us. I hope we can always stick by that. I like it that way.

PM: So what does influence you?

KG: It’s not just music that influences us, it’s film, it’s books, it’s friends, it’s things that happen in our lives. It’s stories that people tell us. Music is the peak of it all because those are people being influenced by stories and books and all that too. I can’t imagine a band that’s only influenced by music. Maybe they just say that, but there are many other experiences in my life hopefully . . .

JH: That you think about, or can express through music. 

PM: Musicians often seem reluctant to discuss non-musical influences, scared even. 

KG: We went to this independent documentary festival in San Francisco was going on a couple of weeks ago and I’m still talking about that, it was so much fun. We saw this one called Spellbound about following these kids around in the national spelling bee. The fact that I’ve been talking about it constantly — it was just a great idea. Anything that is really human, and you see true emotion in this documentary.

JH: Being in California too, there is such a wide variety of people. It seems like every day we meet somebody and we can’t believe their story. A couple of weeks ago we went out to see a concert and I started talking to this guy about a book and the next thing I know I’m talking to the leader of the Satanic church in Berkeley. The book was about 19th century Satanism and I was talking about the book, wondering if it was still going on in the Bay Area, or whatever. And the next thing I know he’s like “One of the guys you need to talk to is here.”

KG: Next thing we know there’s like 15 people in the place who are satanic worshippers! 

The band seems to have shaken off this element of the local crowd. At the Great American Music Hall there are no pentagrams or sacrificial lambs, just a packed audience eager for fun. Mates of State give a glimpse of this newly discovered local color in one of the new songs they play, which has a refrain that sounds like its built around an old haunted house at an amusement fair. The song is not trying to be scary and it does not come across as cheesy. That Mates of State can test such new material out a live audience and make it work shows how several months of touring behind their latest album Our Constant Concern has only perfected the band. They are confident and capable, the songs given life by the band’s performance. If the songs sound great on record, they shine when played live, positively brimming with life. The simple drums and organ arrangement is devastatingly effective, sounding rich and full. Over the next hour, Mates of State play a triumphant set. It’s their biggest headline show yet in their adopted home town of San Francisco (the duo met while at studying in Lawrence, Kansas, and moved out west soon after graduating) and they band are cheered and applauded like they’ve been given the keys to the city. The atmosphere is one of such jubilation it feels as if we’re watching the band through a ticker-tape parade, confetti raining from the skies and ribbons streaming down the lampposts. With such a deceptively simple framework, it is tempting to draw comparisons to other rock ‘n’ roll duos. It might seem particularly lazy to make comparisons to that other couple on the alternative scene, but the White Stripes serve as a good counterpoint to Mates of State. While the White Stripes present a risqué sexual chemistry, an illicit thrill, Mates of State are the exact opposite, being open and honest. Watching Mates of State perform doesn’t feel like voyeurism but like a celebration. 

From: https://www.popmatters.com/mates-of-state-020530-2496083511.html 

At The Drive-In - Invalid Litter Dept

This song is about women in Mexico who take jobs at factories known as maquiladoras. They work almost for free, and then they disappear, later to be found dead. This song is about how this happens in Juarez, Mexico. 
Maquiladoras are assembly plants located in Mexico, which are owned and operated by some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. These plants employ more than one million Mexican workers, who assemble parts (computer parts, toy parts, etc.) to be exported to the United States. More than 60% of these workers are women and girls, many of them as young as 13. Though they are paid as little as 50 cents an hour for a standard 10-hour-a-day six-day week, as a means of income they have little other choice.
Juarez lies just south of the Texas border, and is notorious as a place that draws tens of thousands of these young women from small, poor towns, looking for assembly-line jobs. And they are being murdered. By 2005, more than 300 women had been murdered in Ciudad Juarez. Bodies found in desert graves by city roadsides in 1993 were the first discovery of the killings. Since then, scores of other young women and girls - many of them sexually assaulted - have been found murdered, their bodies littering the dry desert sand.
The workers' mode of transportation to their jobs at the maquiladoras are the factory buses that collect them from a dusty roadside before the sun has even lighted the sky. They are driven back to the same area, in the same fashion, well after dark, and then face the long walk home in the ink blackness of night. Many of them vanish, with no witnesses to tell the story. The city of Juarez, Mexico's fourth-largest city, is now notoriously referred to as "the capital of the murdered women." Arrests have been made, and human rights groups are keeping attention focused on the killings in hopes of putting a stop to the murder. But the killings continue.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/at-the-drive-in/invalid-litter-dept

Hooverphonic - Mad About You

Throughout their 17 year history, the need to constantly evolve as a band has made Hooverphonic impossible to place into a particular musical genre. Their first album, “A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular,” had a definite trip hop sound to it, but soon they began adding strings for a more lush, organic sound. They’ve continued to surprise listeners over the years, as they did on “The President of the LSD Golf Club” in 2007, where they shifted to a stripped-down, more psychedelic rock-oriented style. Hooverphonic is the type of band you should never write off if you’re not happy with a change in style–chances are that next time around they’ll sound a bit different again. The core of Hooverphonic over the years has been Alex Callier and Raymond Geerts. They’ve gone through several lead singers, with Noémie Wolfs currently on vocals. Hooverphonic’s 2010 album “The Night Before” has FINALLY been released in the US; in a Skype interview, Callier discussed the release, the band’s history, creative process, and more.

Like many of your recent albums, there was quite a delay between the original and US release of “The Night Before”–why?

Alex Callier: “For us, what changed in the last 17 years is that back in the early days, you just released an album worldwide. Sony would just put it out worldwide. Now, we really want to find the right label in every country–a label that is really convinced and enthusiastic. So it took us about a year and a half to find one that was really enthusiastic and said ‘we really really want to do this.’ And that’s why we said ‘ok, if you really want to do it, then we’ll go for it.’ In every country we do that, because we want to work with people who really are not just doing their job. We want to work with people who are really believing in what we do. So that’s why it took so long.”

Are you worried that this will lead to piracy, with fans in different countries who don’t want to wait?

Alex Callier: “Well yes, sure, but that’s the world we’re living in. We don’t care too much. It took us a couple of years to get used to the idea, but it is what it is. We still believe that real fans buy our music, people who really love what we do will buy it. And if they don’t buy our album, they will come to see our shows. It’s true that over the last 17 years, our income kind of went from selling records to more of the live side. We sell a lot of tickets here in Europe, and don’t have any financial problems, so for us it’s ok. Of course in the beginning, when the internet just started being very popular, it was a shock. But after a while you adapt. We just try to see everything positive–positive energy is the best thing. It’s like when singers leave the band, we try to see things positively and say ‘well let’s look for another one, an even better one.’ The reason why Raymond and I have been doing this so long is because we’re very positive and enthusiastic about everything we do.

You have worked with a few different vocalists. When looking for a new singer, do you focus on finding one who will bring something new to the sound, or making sure they can sing the existing material well?

Alex Callier: “It’s a balance. We’re looking for someone who can bring something new to the band, but at the same time….when we first started looking for a new singer, we worked with a few people on new material and it was really fantastic. And they we said ‘well let’s do 2Wicky and Mad About You and Eden,’ tracks we have to play live. Then we’d find ‘oh no, this isn’t working.’ The next step was that whenever we contacted a new singer, we did it the other way around. We started first with the old material and if that worked out, we started working on some new material. It took us two years I think before we finally found someone in our back garden. That’s the funny bit, we got more than a thousand applications from girls all over the world; Americans, English, even Russian, Polish, Italian, whatever. And finally we ended up with a singer from Belgium, which was something we didn’t expect, actually. It was quite funny. For us, finding someone who can re-interpret our old stuff, really give it a new life, that was really important of course.”

When you are writing and working in the studio, are you thinking about how your music will be presented live?

Alex Callier: “No we don’t. In the studio we’re like ‘ok, now we need an orchestra, a 40 piece orchestra!’ and then live we’d go ‘ok, how are we going to play this live? I don’t know, maybe we should downsize it.’ Most of the time we see the live concert as completely different than an album. And also, when I go to concerts by other bands, I don’t like them to copy their albums live. Why bother? I want to see people reinterpret their work. We sometimes do a tour without strings. This time we have a 12 piece string orchestra, last time we were touring with a 40 piece orchestra. With ‘President of the LSD Golf Club’ it was just mellotrons and keyboards. So when we’re recording a track, we don’t really think about it. But, I have to admit that through the years, we’ve noticed that whenever we have strings with us on the road, the crowds go ballistic. So the strings are really important. Since last year, we’ve been been constantly touring with strings, whether it’s 12 or 40 piece, we need strings. I think we’re always going to need them from now on.”

Are there particular tracks that changed considerably from their studio to live versions?

Alex Callier: “Oh yeah, ‘Mad About You’ we did a new version of. ‘Eden’ we played for years in a different version but for the past year have been playing the original. We tend to change things. ‘2Wicky’ is quite close to the original, while for years we played it in more of a bluesy way. So yeah, every tour we try to take a couple of tracks back to the original way, and a couple of other tracks we kind of completely rearrange. Like ‘Renaissance Affair,’ which was on the 2nd album, we made a completely new version on this last tour. Every tour needs to be different, every time people come to see us, they need to be amazed and surprised. It’s like going to the same restaurant every week and if it’s every week exactly the same, after a while you’re fed up with it. So we just need to evolve constantly, I think. With everything in life, not just music, everything needs to evolve.”

From: https://chaoscontrol.com/hooverphonic/

Ben Folds Five - One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces

Lugging a baby grand piano onto a punk club stage in the ’90s was about conspicuous as bringing a baby elephant—and twice as inconvenient. But any patrons who feared that they were about to endure a Gershwin recital were soon set straight by Ben Folds, frontman and primary songwriter of Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Ben Folds Five. 
Flanked by an explosive rhythm section in the form of stickman Darren Jessee and bassist Robert Sledge, Folds earned a reputation as the Jimi Hendrix of the piano—a violent virtuoso who punished all 88 keys like they stole his girlfriend and his favorite black t-shirt. After unleashing an onslaught of energetically-uptempo-yet-unerringly-tuneful numbers, he’d throw in a tricky riff from “Rhapsody in Blue” just to show you that he could. 
Folds, with a mix of trademark self-deprecation and accuracy, later dubbed the act “punk rock for sissies,” yet the melodies were far more sophisticated, the harmonies tighter, and the wise-ass lyrics way more cutting than your average three-chord jam. Ben Folds Five’s 1995 self-titled debut allowed them to broaden their sonic range, but their follow up, 1997’s Whatever and Ever Amen, would be their breakthrough. 
Ironically, the song that took them out of the clubs and into the global charts was not one of their hard driving, ivory bashing anthems or skewered caricatures of whatever sap managed to get on Folds’ bad side. Instead it was “Brick,” a mournful, deeply personal ballad stemming from his experience accompanying a high school girlfriend to have an abortion. Hinting at Folds’ vulnerability, the song resonated with millions and became a Top 20 hit around the world. 
The reputation of “Brick” ran the risk of overshadowing the rest of the songs on the exceedingly strong album, which threw in unusual jazz time signatures, heavy metal distortion, vocal arrangements worthy of Brian Wilson, and a rowdy eastern European Klezmer section—and make it look easy. Even 20 years later, it represents pop music craftsmanship at its finest. 
Folds, a passionate photographer—he recently served as a guest editor for National Geographic‘s Your Shots web community—is similarly adept with his lyrics, creating portraits of friends (and enemies), and evocative scenes drawn from his life, the lives of others, or his imagination. In honor of Whatever and Ever Amen‘s 20th anniversary, the maestro offered People verbal snapshots detailing the production of each track on Ben Folds Five’s beloved classic. 

1. “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces” 
“I had a scenario in mind, and the scenario was a guy had made a shit-ton of money, become famous and successful in some way, and used that to summon all of his enemies to his basement. He’s got his enemies in the basement and he’s going past them one at a time. I imagined him sort of pacing and they’re all tied up like a gimp. 
That’s what I had in mind, and I realized how ambitious that was. I had only written a couple hundred songs in my life at that point and was still trying to rein in certain things. I remember playing it for a friend and my friend saying, ‘You told me that song was this, and I don’t get that from what you’re saying.’ I remember the frustration of that and I worked on it ‘til I got closer.” 

From: https://people.com/music/ben-folds-five-whatever-and-ever-amen-20th-anniversary-track-commentary/

Aerosmith - Live Detroit, MI 1974

01 Write Me A Letter
02 Mama Kin
03 Lord Of the Thighs
04 Woman Of the World
05 Dream on
06 Pandora's Box
07 Same Old Song and Dance
08 One Way Street
09 Somebody
10 Train Kept A Rollin'
11 Walkin' the Dog

After their raw but potent debut in 1973, Aerosmith really started to forge their classic 1970s rock sound with their second album, Get Your Wings. This was due, in small part, to the arrival of producer Jack Douglas, who would go on to produce a total of seven albums with the group. Douglas helped Aerosmith translate their sound to the studio process of the 1970s and found a nice niche somewhere between blues and rock n’ roll to help launch the group into the mainstream for the first time. In a way, Get Your Wings shows Aerosmith at the crossroads of both finding the rock sound that would proliferate in the 1980s while continuing with the raw, barroom-style tunes of their earliest days.
Aerosmith toured constantly from their earliest days of 1971, through the support for their 1973 debut Aerosmith. Later that same year, they finally took a break and headed into the New York studio to concentrate on this second album for about a solid month. Front man and lead vocalist Steven Tyler continued his compositional dominance by writing three songs solo and co-writing every other song with the exception of the album’s single cover song.
Guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford also continued their dual-axe attack, trading lead and rhythm duties and seamlessly switching between blues-rock and more standard fare hard rock. With this arrangement, many early critics of the band deemed them clones of the Rolling Stones, but that comparison was overtly simplistic as Aerosmith was surely blazing their own, bold trail even at this very early juncture in their career.  From: https://www.classicrockreview.com/2014/07/1974-aerosmith-get-your-wings/

OOIOO - Gold and Green

 OOIOO - Gold and Green - Part 1

 

 OOIOO - Gold and Green - Part 2

 

01. Moss Trumpeter
02. Tekuteku Tune
03. Grow Sound Tree
04. Mountain Book
05. I'm a Song
06. Fossil
07. Ina Hukuno Mori
08. Unu
09. Idbi
10. Ki6ressya
11. Emeraldragonfly
12. Return to NOW!!!

 

It took something like this to get me out of the doldrums and get back into the swing of listening and writing about music I dig. I've been playing this thing like crazy and it just gets better every time I throw it on. It's playful, mischievous and wild...kind of like that cute but crazy girl that wriggles her way into some slacker dude's mopey life to add spark in so many indie flicks and Korean comedies. And what a band name; I'll be honest in that I'm not too familiar with The Boredoms (in which Yoshimi is their drummer), and that the reason I got into this group in the first place was in fact their funky looking band name. Whatever works I guess, because this album will not be leaving any of my top lists anytime soon.
Avant prog isn't the easiest prog-pill to swallow, but once it's down the hatch the benefits will be felt. Gold And Green mesmerizes by swirling together serene sonic vistas with tribal drumming complementing a playful paganistic wink while sometimes soaring into frantic krautrock psychedelic madness. And some of this stuff grooves like one mean mutha! Damn I need a new pair of shades.
"Moss Trumpeter" sets the mood with its peaceful yet majestic trumpet melody punctuated by some heavy rhythmic percussion, catchy enough to entice yet different enough to wonder what the hell the next tune is going to sound like. I love nutty playful albums like this. The album's heart and soul reveals itself with three mini epics in a row, "Grow Sound Tree", "Mountain Book" and "I'm A Song". "Grow Sound Tree" starts off by a woodwind based loop, although played in organic and wistful fashion. Then the drums kick in. Yoshico is some kind of monster behind the kit, punching out these kickin' beats I get so immersed in that I don't even realize how bizarre and absurd this would sound to some random chump passing by. "Mountain Book" opens as this open air pastoral soundscape overlain with a real sweet vocal melody that repeats itself throughout as the music builds in crescendo to dizzying heights with some insane drumwork. "I'm A Song" has this funky vibe that comes across like a krautrock take on Japanese pop while evolving through occasional tempo changes. You can hear the band having a blast playing this utterly fun yet progressive number.
That ain't all she wrote though; this whole album is essential to my ears these days, although a tune like "Fossil" took a bit of getting used to with its odd chants that eventually won me over after a few plays of the entire album. "Ki No Rukujou Ressha" is flat-out greatness, an instant winner with a driving rhythm, great bass and guitar playing and an energetic playful atmosphere. "Emeraldragonfly" boasts some memorable vocals and one stellar change of pace boosted by strong instrumental skills. These gals can PLAY. And there's "Idbi". Where would my life be without this song? I don't want to know. It's like a little kitten, puppy and bunny morphed into one cute but weirdly enigmatic critter. It's fun to whistle along with too. OOIOO has a few other strong efforts out there, with Taiga being in particular noteworthy, but Gold And Green is my jam, and what a glow-in-the-dark wild gold and green colored jam it is!  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=12683  

 

 

Van Halen - S/T - Side 1

01. Runnin' with the Devil
02. Eruption
03. You Really Got Me
04. Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
05. I'm the One

It didn’t sound at first listen like something to change the course of rock music. When Van Halen’s self-titled debut came to market on February 10, 1978, it received substantial media attention, earned reviews that ranged from enthused to ennui-filled, and sold well behind a solid push from Warner Bros. Records. Its landing was substantial, but didn’t seem as momentous as it would later prove to be. The four-piece California band didn’t spawn a procession of imitators (as a full enterprise, that is; one member’s innovations have been pilfered virtually non-stop for a generation), nor change the course of how rock music was made, but its debut marked a turning point, one achieved by the considerably more difficult trick of changing the audience itself.
Van Halen broadened hard rock’s audience with music that appealed to the mainstream without putting off purists. Over the course of its six-album original-lineup run, the band opened the door for hard rock on the pop charts, and made an ever-increasing number of Top 40 listeners receptive to music previously limited to AOR stations. Even then, the group retained substantial credibility as a rock enterprise for the simplest of reasons—no one would ever have dared call guitarist Eddie Van Halen a pretender.
The younger of the two Van Halen brothers who gave the band its ultimate name (it had been Mammoth until 1974), Eddie drove the group’s signature sound with guitar riffs built on explosive virtuosity much more digestible than the average blowout interlude. Combined with the loopy charm of vocalist David Lee Roth, the band sported two unique appeals, a combination of musical proficiency and party-animal joie de vivre not easily duplicated.
On its debut, those qualities were in place, though at a smaller scale than would manifest on later records. Eddie Van Halen would later express regret that the band’s first single was a cover tune, yet the group’s take on “You Really Got Me” is an ideal introduction. Reimagining the Kinks’ classic with substantial heft, the track finds Roth chomping on scenery, punctuating lyrics with charismatic howls and sharp wails, while rhythmic electric guitar prods its pace before breaking into a decorative and memorable fill. Oozing broad personality and lively energy, the song reached as high as #36 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and fueled the collection reaching as high as #19 on Billboard’s album chart, a harbinger of things to come.
Though its path hadn’t been meteoric, Van Halen was always on someone’s radar. A fixture on the Southern California music scene once it locked in its classic lineup of Roth, Eddie Van Halen, his drummer brother Alex and bass player Michael Anthony, the quartet saw little result from 1976 demos financed by Gene Simmons. The following year, Warners’ Ted Templeman and Mo Ostin attended a performance at Hollywood’s Starwood, and signed them soon after. By fall, the band was at Sunset Sound with producer Templeman, who shepherded a three-week recording process.
The direction of their collaboration is audible from the opening of the album’s first track (and second single), “Runnin’ With the Devil.” An approaching train (could be an aggressive car) horn decelerates as it nears, Anthony’s mechanical bass throbs from its remains, and a drizzle of piano cues drums and swatches of gritty electric guitar that aren’t at all showy. Roth jumps in with a caterwaul, then plays with the lyric. It’s nice enough, but hardly distinguished. Then, just under its two-minute mark, Eddie jumps in with a sizzling guitar fill that’s just 10 seconds long, but punctuates the entire enterprise and unveils the tonal quality that would be as much a signature of his work as its technique. It’s a meshing of pop and rock that doesn’t surrender its edge, a thunderous heralding of the group’s strongest appeals in nascent forms.  From: https://bestclassicbands.com/van-halen-debut-album-review-8-20-18/ 

Mary's Danish - Julie's Blanket / 7 Deadly Sins / Hellflower

“I’m caught between hideous and forgotten,” bemoan Mary’s Danish in one of the finer tunes from the lamentably forgotten band’s far-from-hideous and impossibly eclectic catalog — a catalog whose eclecticism is especially notable considering its relatively small volume. Mary’s Danish, which came together in Los Angeles in the late ’80s, was itself a diverse lot — in personality and background — that served up funk, pop, punk and country. The blending of the last two genres clearly betrays the influence of X, from whom lead singers Gretchen Seager and Julie Ritter also inherited intricately woven harmony vocals. They were joined in Mary’s Danish by bassist Chris “Wag” Wagner, drummer James Bradley Jr., guitarist David A. King and second guitarist Louis Gutierrez, who had played in the Three O’Clock. All were accomplished musicians with an uncanny pliability, but their secret weapon was frequent sax sideman Michael Barbera, who added jazz and R&B flavor to the mix. Mary’s Danish were as varied thematically as they were sonically, with religion, domestic violence, social criticism and biting self-analysis all receiving narrative attention.
There Goes the Wondertruck ably introduces the band’s offbeat stylistic fusion. The bizarre narrative of “Mary Had a Bar” does not seem to be a band theme song, and “What to Do” is not a Stones cover. It’s not revealed what “BVD” stands for, but “It’ll Probably Make Me Cry” does just that. The catchy college rock favorite “Don’t Crash the Car Tonight” impressed some in the West Coast music biz, including Peter Asher, who became the band’s manager.
Five of the six live tracks on Experience are more fully realized versions of songs from There Goes the Wondertruck, particularly a frenzied, beefier “Blue Stockings” and the high lonesome croon of “It’ll Probably Make Me Cry.” The disc’s studio track, a riotous take on Hendrix’s “Foxey Lady,” slyly recasts the classic rock staple with a letter-perfect Led Zeppelin quote inserted into the bridge.
With funding from pseudo-indie Morgan’s Creek, Mary’s Danish beefed up the production values to adequately match their expanded palette of musical ideas. A veritable omnibus of musical styles, Circa encircles just about every genre imaginable. The metallic crunch of “Mr. Floosack” leads into the introspective back-porch southern rock of “Hoof.” The folky instrumental jam “Down” begets the Devo dada of “These Are All the Shapes Nevada Could Have Been.” It’s easy to get lost within the stylistic shifts of Circa, where “Julie’s Blanket (pigsheadsnakeface)” is the only straight-ahead rocker. As few of the 17 tunes exceed three minutes, the five-minute “7 Deadly Sins” seems positively epic. Despite its attention deficit, the presence of songs as clever as “Beat Me Up” and “Cover Your Face” helped make this label debut a promise of big things to come.  From: https://trouserpress.com/reviews/marys-danish/

Matthews' Southern Comfort - And Me / Tell Me Why / My Lady / And When She Smiles

Joni Mitchell’s version of the song “Woodstock” was released on “Ladies Of The Canyon” in April 1970. Two months later, Matthews Southern Comfort recorded a set of songs for a Radio 1 session. They were told that they needed one more song and Ian Matthews, having bought “Ladies Of The Canyon” a week before, decided to record “Woodstock”. Listener response was so positive that the band were encouraged to release the song as a single and the record company put pressure on the band to include it on their forthcoming album, “Later That Same Year”, which was to be released in November 1970. The single stayed at Number One on the U.K. Charts for three weeks in October/November 1970. Their version is slower than CSN&Y’s and more deadpan than Joni Mitchell’s. The musical style is “country-rock” and it’s too easy to dismiss their version as dull. To me, it’s sad, melancholic and resigned. Their version makes it sound like a song sung by someone leading a humdrum life, not in touch with their emotions, wandering directionless through the world. The way that Ian Matthews sings “I have come here to lose the smog and I feel just like a cog in something turning” is desperately sad and yet, simultaneously heartwarming. Here’s my confession. Ian Matthews resisted the record company pressure to include “Woodstock” on “Later That Same Year” although it was included on the American version and is a bonus track on the CD re-issue. So I’ve been writing about a song that’s not, officially, on the album.
Ian Matthews MacDonald changed his name to Ian Matthews to avoid confusion with Ian MacDonald, the multi-instrumentalist for King Crimson. He joined Fairport Convention and sung lead vocals on their first two albums with Judy Dyble (whose boyfriend was Ian MacDonald) and Sandy Denny. When Fairport Convention changed direction to explore English folk music, he left the band and formed Matthews Southern Comfort who released an eponymous album in 1969, “Second Spring” in 1970 and later that same year, “Later That Same Year”. The pressure of a hit single was too much for Ian Matthews who left the band (who continued to record as Southern Comfort) to release two solo albums in 1971, before forming Plainsong. Moving to the USA, he has had a prolific career, releasing over 40 solo albums. A note for the pedant – he changed his name, again, to Iain Matthews in 1989.
I’ve written a lot about a song that doesn’t appear on the official release of this album. However, over the last few days, after Peter suggested that I listen to it, I have listened to the U.S. version of the album non-stop. It’s absolutely wonderful. Whereas, many acts over the last 20 years have adopted the label “Americana” to produce music that is faithful to the concept of music emanating from the country heartland of the USA, none have captured a sound so pure, effortless, relaxing, timeless and beautiful as Ian Matthews managed 52 years ago. “And Me” features gorgeous harmonies and sensational acoustic guitar playing. “Tell Me Why” is the opening track from “After The Goldrush”, released in September 1970, at the same time that “Later That Same Year” was recorded. “Brand New Tennessee Waltz” is a cover of a wonderful song by Jesse Winchester from his eponymous first album, released at around the same time as “After The Goldrush”. Best of all is “For Melanie“, a seven minute song that reminds me of Trees’ “On The Shore“, with a stunning instrumental coda.  From: https://addsomemusictoyourdayblog.wordpress.com/2022/07/23/later-that-same-year-by-matthews-southern-comfort/

Rickie Lee Jones - A Lucky Guy

From the jaunty tilt of her scarlet beret to her languid drawl, Rickie Lee Jones was the epitome of effortless cool in 1979. That winter, pop radio and the Billboard Top 100 was a hodgepodge: Rod Stewart rasping about his sexy quotient, the sleek glitter-ball grooves of disco, and the softballs of what's now kindly dubbed yacht rock.
On the more outer fringes of fanzines, downtown record stores, and adventurous FM, the choices were boundless, whether the insolent thrash of punk, the jagged riffs of Talking Heads, or the Sugar Hill Gang's seeds of hip hop. But Jones's jazzy shuffles, embroidering blithe, bluesy and savage tales of streetwise souls, strolled into all worlds: mainstream radio latched onto "Chuck E.'s in Love" (written for her L.A. compadre, the singer and songwriter Chuck E. Weiss) while everyone else swiftly picked up on tracks like "Young Blood," "Weasel and the White Boys Cool," and "Danny's All-Star Joint." The album's wistful jewel, "On Saturday Afternoons in 1963," even showed up on the soundtrack to 1980's "Little Darlings." (And improbably, "Chuck E.'s in Love" even made an appearance in a 2014 blind audition for NBC's "The Voice.")
The songs on Rickie Lee Jones, which turns 40 at this writing, were not so much sung as viscerally lived by Jones. There's an vibrant immediacy to the record that still feels fresh today, whether the elegiac "On Saturday Afternoons in 1963" or the street hustle of "Young Blood," with its sassy after-midnight strut. The desolate "The Last Chance Texaco" is a hundred Edward Hopper paintings tucked inside of a single song; never has anything that lonely sounded more beautiful.
When Jones appeared on "Saturday Night Live" in April 1979, singing "Chuck E.'s in Love" and the rueful, hushed "Coolsville," the aftermath was as seismic as Kate Bush's ethereal performance on the show a handful of months earlier. Each musician cast light on her unicorn-like uniqueness, unapologetically nonconformist and forthright in their femininity.
Jones's wild child mystery was both her superpower and her fortress in her early twenties. She won a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1980, the only woman nominated in an ocean of testosterone (her fellow nominees were Dire Straits, Robin Williams, the Knack, and the Blues Brothers), but she remained skittish with her sudden surge of fame. In early interviews, she longed for her artistic authenticity to be acknowledged — she was not a schtick, beret be damned — and sometimes expressed her frustration with other musicians, like Joni Mitchell, who she felt didn't understand jazz or rough living as Jones did. In retrospect, it's curious to read the mystified description of Jones offered by her ex-lover Tom Waits in Rolling Stone, published the summer her debut album blew up on the charts.
”I love her madly in my own way — you’ll gather that our relationship wasn’t exactly like Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor — but she scares me to death," said Waits to writer Timothy White. "She is much older than I am in terms of street wisdom; sometimes she seems as ancient as dirt, and yet other times she’s so like a little girl.”
When asked about Waits's quote years later by The Guardian, and why she might have scared her then-boyfriend, Jones replied, "Well gee, I dunno. I know he loved me… but I probably wasn't the safest of personalities, you know? And I was a pirate."
Perhaps Jones's feral instinct, that pirate's bravado, saved her, enabling her to survive that jarring trampoline bounce to fame. While girlish insouciance flashes through some of Jones's songs on 1981's Pirates, her astonishing second album, it's a brilliantly mature work for such a young musician. Jones and producers Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman (who had also produced her debut) knew they likely couldn't match the runaway success of Rickie Lee Jones, so they freely experimented, restructuring the shape, terrain, and space of her songs and the nuances of her labile voice. Jones's lyrics not only excavated the pain of her breakup with Waits, but immortalized drug buddies and bad habits, as she explained to NPR back in 2017. "It's not possible to walk the footsteps I walked back then," she said.
Pirates opens not with a punch, but a full-throated plea via three songs of infinite contemplation: "We Belong Together," "Living it Up," and "Skeletons." Jones revels in her vocal versatility, track by track, relishing the brash scatting of "Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking" and surrending to gossamer gasps that barely hold "The Returns" together, before the song dissipates like morning mist.
If anything, Rickie Lee Jones and Pirates gave Jones the determination to be herself, a proud originality that followed on releases like the winding romantic vexation of the 1984's The Magazine and the exquisite dreamscape Flying Cowboys, produced by Walter Becker, which followed five years later. Jones smartly gathered dozens of like-minded collaborators along the way, like her longtime friend Sal Bernardi, Leo Kottke, Syd Straw, Dr. John, David Hildago, Alison Krauss, and Lyle Lovett. (Lovett and Jones's 1992 duet, "North Dakota," from Lovett's Joshua Judges Ruth, might be one of the prettiest songs ever recorded).  From: https://wfuv.org/content/rickie-lee-jones-3

The Four Tops - Bernadette

Today’s classic Motown song of the day is “Bernadette” by the Four Tops. It was released in February of 1967 and peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #3 on the Billboard R&B Singles chart. “Bernadette” was a ground-breaking tune, especially for bass players. Motown legend James Jamerson played bass and showed all the other players out there what could be done on the instrument. 
Here’s what I’m talking about, in the form of Jamerson’s isolated bass line for “Bernadette.” Just listen to how he’s all over the fretboard, It’s not a normal root and fifth bass part, it’s full of passing tones, chromatics, and much, much more. This one song redefined the role of the bass player in rock and soul music. Every single bass part you liked from 1967 on started with James Jamerson on “Bernadette.” It is thrilling. 
James Jamerson was the bass player for the Motown sound. He played on all the big hits from Smokey Robinson’s “Way Over There” in 1959 through Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” in 1971. In all that time he never changed his bass strings (La Bella heavy-gauge flatwound), saying that “The dirt keeps the funk.” He played all those notes with a single index finger he called “The Hook.” His main instrument was a Fender Precision Bass, although he sometimes played upright bass. 
“Bernadette” was written and produced by the legendary team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. It’s one of their more dramatic compositions, with the band dropping out for lead singer Levi Stubbs to passionately exclaim, for all to hear, “Bernadette!” The secret to a lot of Four Tops songs, especially during the H-D-H era, was to put the melody right at the top of Levi Stubbs’ range. That caused him to almost shout out the lines, making the vocals more powerful. As fellow Top Duke Fakir recalls:
“Eddie [Holland] realized that when Levi hit the top of his vocal range, it sounded like someone hurting, so he made him sing right up there. Levi complained, but we knew he loved it. Every time they thought he was at the top, he would reach a little further until you could hear the tears in his voice.” With Levi Stubbs and the Four Tops, it was all about power and raw emotion. Nobody did it better.  From: https://classicsongoftheday.com/bernadette-the-four-tops/

 

 

Mary Jane - Eve

Mary Jane were formed in late autumn 1993 from a group of Southampton University students, mostly novice musicians whose prior experience consisted of short-lived The Magic Cat and scattered other appearances. Despite several lineup changes the group managed a record deal with the German label September Gurls on the strength of demos consisting of the traditional tune "She Moved Thro' the Fair", "Lagan Love" and the original "The Snow", penned by a friend of the band.
Founding member Peter Miln's departure led to an unplanned hiatus for the band, during which Jo Quinn and Paul Alan Taylor recorded a studio album under the name Zaney Janey and briefly joined the heavy blues-rock band Ultimate Blue Day, though Mary Jane continued to perform live and eventually released the EP 'Isle of Wight' and LP 'The Gates of Silent Memory' with yet another lineup. Nick Davies from their Ultimate Blue Day period returned in time to record with the band on their third studio album 'Tacit'. Three more albums followed in the ensuing years with continued personnel changes including an ongoing relationship with Arlen vocalist Lucy Rutherford. The band's most recent releases include the studio album 'Eve' in 2010 and a compilation titled 'Brigit's Daughter', both on the Talking Elephants label. The band also continues to perform live, primarily around the Southampton and Portsmouth areas.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=7245 

Figueroa - Weather Girl

Amon Tobin announced a new electronic folk project called Figueroa, and will be releasing his debut album, The World As We Know It on July 31. The album will be released via Nomark Records, and will showcase Tobin’s shift in sound. Tobin worked with producer Sylvia Massy, who’s portfolio includes Tool, Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers and more, on the album. Tobin had been working on the project for the past 10 years, going through periods of self-isolation in the northern California woods. For nearly a decade, he left the tracks to sit, unsure of what he wanted to do with them. Tobin utilized his electronic production expertise for the album, creating sounds of a guitar without playing one. He changes from his typical electronic sound to a psycho folk one, describing each song to be an experiment. Tobin frequently changes monikers for several projects, releasing several songs as Cujo, which had been his original moniker, last year. As Tobin, he recently teamed up with Thys, a member of the electronic group Noisia, to release the Ghostcards EP. His last album, Long Stories, was released last October. Tobin, who hails from Brazil, began working with production and electronic music in the mid-’90s. Tobin has also produced music scores for various motion pictures, including The Italian Job and 21.  From: https://music.mxdwn.com/2020/06/25/news/amon-tobin-has-a-new-electronic-folk-project-called-figueroa-announces-debut-album-for-july-2020-release/

Josie & The Pussycats (Kay Hanley) - Money (That's What I Want)

Usually a film soundtrack becomes a big seller for one of two reasons: because the disc features music that played an indelible role in a hit movie, or because it includes one or more hit singles. But then there’s the curious case of Josie and the Pussycats, a 2001 film whose box office totaled just $14 million and which featured no charting songs, yet whose soundtrack reached Number 16 on the Billboard album chart and sold well over half a million copies. So, what could possibly explain this anomaly, this rupture in the cinema-soundtrack continuum? Was it baby-boomer nostalgia at the prospect of hearing once more the theme from the animated Josie series of the early 1970s? Doubt it. Did the film’s trailer for some reason send viewers running for the record store rather than the movie theater? Probably not.
Perhaps untold thousands of record buyers discovered it the same way I did — on a listening post at a Virgin Megastore — and wound up making an impulse purchase of an album whose accompanying film they had no intention of seeing. Whatever else may have been going on, it certainly didn’t hurt that the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack rocks. It features 11 girl-power-pop classics, leavened with a couple of nifty parodies of the boy-band dreck that dominated the Hot 100 at the time of the film’s release. It was pulled together by executive-producer Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, with songwriting contributions from Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz, the Gigolo Aunts’ Dave Gibbs and Steve Hurley, once-and-future-Go-Go Jane Wiedlin, and Fountains of Wayne/”That Thing You Do!” tunesmith Adam Schlesinger.
But the key to Josie‘s success was Josie herself. Kay Hanley brought to the fictional band’s lead vocals the same balls-out propulsiveness that she gave Letters to Cleo’s hits during the 1990s, and her fiery delivery of such terrific tunes as “3 Small Words” and Duritz’s “Spin Around” lend them a credibility that the film itself sorely lacks. Hanley also provided on-set guidance to the film’s Pussycats, Rachael Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson and Tara Reid, leading a “band camp” with the actresses and working with Cook in front of a mirror to help her figure out how to lip-sync and mime playing a guitar. Ironically, Hanley was brought onto the project to sing not as Josie, but as the Pussycats. “They already had a Josie when I signed on,” she says, “but by the time I got to L.A. they had let the original Josie go — not because she sucked, but because she was too good. Kenny had chosen somebody from his world, and it was like a woman’s voice coming out of Rachael Leigh Cook’s mouth. It just didn’t work.
“That left me in a position to swoop in and get the gig, but it didn’t happen immediately. They kept me hanging around for awhile, and to make a long, protracted story short, I eventually heard they were flying in Tracy Bonham to sing Josie’s part. So I quit! But Kenny brought me back, and it wound up being a very good thing that he did.”
Hanley’s husband, former Cleo guitarist Michael Eisenstein, wound up playing guitars and bass on the soundtrack’s songs. Meanwhile, Edmonds was helping Hanley overcome her insecurities. “This was my first gun-for-hire gig,” she says, “and there was a lot of trepidation going in. I had never considered myself much of a singer — I saw myself as a one-trick pony, and not a very good one at that. So to be asked to work on a project like this, specifically because of my qualities as a singer, was definitely weird for me.
“The songs had been written already [though Hanley and Eisenstein contributed the track “Shapeshifter”], and fortunately most of them were in a style I was at least vaguely comfortable with. But when they played me the demo for the ballad “You Don’t See Me,’ I said, “I can’t sing that!’ Kenny said, “Yes, you can,’ and he worked really patiently to boost my confidence. To this day, I can’t listen to that track without thinking, Wow, I can’t believe I did that.”
While Hanley, Edmonds and their colleagues conspired to create a soundtrack that could stand impressively on its own merits, the Josie film itself was a mess. Its ingredients were enticing enough — a trio of teen-comedy starlets as the Pussycats, indie-cinema darlings Parker Posey and Alan Cumming as a pair of loony-yet-conniving record-label execs, and a nice comic subplot involving teen consumerism, subliminal messages and mind control. Unfortunately, director/screenwriters Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan (also the purveyors of Can’t Hardly Wait and Made of Honor, among other non-classics) mashed those elements together in a jumble of spark-free dialogue and over-the-top sets and costumes that proved difficult to watch. “It’s a shame, because Harry and Deborah were really funny,” Hanley recalls. “I thought it was going to be a great film, but it ended up not being executed as well as anybody had hoped.”
Still, the music did manage to escape the shadow of the film’s failure, and Hanley wound up parleying the soundtrack’s success into a post-Cleo career encompassing a wide range of Hollywood projects as well as a series of terrific solo albums. “That [Josie] record was such a lucky break, in a lot of ways,” she says. “It sold more than all the Cleo records combined, and the money allowed us to create some savings for the first time in our lives, allowed us to buy a house in Boston and then another one in L.A. when we decided to move here. When I really think back on it, we turned that Josie money into our life. I’ll always be grateful for that.”  From: https://popdose.com/jesus-of-cool-kay-hanley-the-pussycats/

 

Kay Hanley