Silly Sisters - Doffin' Mistress

Silly Sisters begins in the weaving mills of the Industrial Revolution, where we learn that the workers liked to stick it to the boss as much as we do today. “Doffin’ Mistress” is sung by a group of workers called “doffers,” who had the unimaginably dull job of changing the bobbins on the weaving machines in the spinning sheds. When you have a shit job, you have three choices: bitch about it, have fun with it or both. These young ladies, as expressed through the tight harmonies of Maddy Prior and June Tabor, choose both, supporting the female supervisor in a united front against the screaming bully of a boss. The arrangement is terribly inviting, particularly in the opening measures where Martin Carthy is joined by Andy Irvine on mandolin, Nic Jones on fiddle, Tony Hall on melodeon and Danny Thompson on bass before June and Maddy enter in tandem. The melodic magic of British folk is on full display here with a joyful, exuberant melody that makes you want to join in with throats opened to full throttle. The verse where the girls align in teasing defiance of male power is sung with a hands-on-hips, energetic display of psychological independence:

And when the boss he looks round the door,
 “Tie your ends up, doffers,” he will roar. 
Tie our ends up we surely do,
 For Elsie Thompson but not for you!

We leave this relatively happy scene for a dark tale of revenge involving Scottish clans. “Burning of Auchindoon” is based on a feud between the Clan Mackintosh and the Earl of Huntly, a thoroughly disreputable character who left a thick trail of blood in his wake and traitorously plotted with the Spanish to launch an invasion against his homeland. The Clan is out to avenge the death of one of their allies at the hand of Huntly by burning Auchindoun Castle (the “ou” is the proper spelling). This chilling tale receives an equally chilling treatment from Maddy and June, who heighten the tension with dissonant harmonies sung a capella. The ending interval, where June stays on the root of the C-minor and Maddy flattens the already flattened third of the key creates a powerful sense of foreboding: though the castle is in flames, the act is certain to trigger a response, and the bloody cycle will continue. Singers in search of new harmonic possibilities are encouraged to study these patterns in detail, for “Burning of Auchindoon” is a stellar example of how to move beyond the obvious to build tension and capture mood.
Each woman has a solo on Silly Sisters, and Maddy’s is “Lass of Loch Royal.” This is a song that has morphed over the years as it traveled through different countries from Ireland to Scotland to the United States, with various artists emphasizing different features of the plot to modify the message. It is believed that the original is a tale of betrayal of a young pregnant woman by the lover’s mother, and that aspect is certainly present in Maddy’s version. Through careful verse selection and an extraordinarily vivid performance, she transforms the main theme into one of abandonment, possibly after rape, possibly after a night of passion, or something in between. The lass travels day and night with her newborn baby to arrive at the castle of her lover, only to be turned away by the lover’s mother, who dismisses her with cold cruelty:

The rain beats at my yellow locks, the dew wets me still,
 The babe is cold in my arms, love, Lord Gregory let me in.
 Lord Gregory is not here and he henceforth can’t be seen,
 For he’s gone to bonny Scotland to bring home his new queen.
 Leave now these windows and likewise this hall,
 For it’s deep in the sea you will find your downfall.

The lass has no choice but to leave and accept her fate. When Maddy arrives at the last verse, you can picture her, drenched and cold on the heath, releasing all the bitterness of betrayal in a heart-rendering climax.
“The Seven Joys of Mary” features the pair in harmony again singing a folksy version of the Christ story. For some reason, the plain folk seem to capture the positive aspects of the faith more effectively than priests or preachers. The repetition of the affectionate phrase “good man” is a reminder that Christ retains more power when he is not embellished with godlike trappings but as a representative of the best aspects of humankind. The harmonies here are especially sweet during the crucifixion verse, as June and Maddy lower their voices in respect and mourning.
The anonymous multitudes who composed British folk songs always found their way into the sack sooner or later, but in this tale, sad disappointment lurks under the counterpane. “My Husband’s Got No Courage” is a dramatic monologue sung by a young wife who finds she’s married a man who can’t get it up. Since women were not allowed to divorce in the 19th century, and the possibility of release through lesbianism, masturbation or a quick trip to the vibrator shop were not realistic options, her agony is understandable. Maddy and June sing the moaning, hand-wringing chorus together without harmony and then take turns singing the verses solo. This poor horny broad has tried everything: vittles, meats, oyster, rhubarb, clapping a hand between his thighs, throwing her leg over his and nothing she does gets a rise out of this hopeless prick. Bitter that he continues to present himself to the world as handsome and desirable, she finally explodes in the last verse, giving as clear an expression of sexual frustration you will ever hear. The frustration is made more emphatic because June and Maddy break the pattern and join together for this verse, singing it with more passion than precision:

I wish my husband he was dead 
And in his grave I’d quickly lay him
 And then I’d try another one
 That’s got a little courage in him

From: https://www.50thirdand3rd.com/classic-music-review-silly-sisters-by-maddy-prior-and-june-tabor/

Post Animal - Bolt From Above

This past Friday night, I caught up with the boys in Post Animal before they headlined night one of Chicago’s Psych Fest at The Hideout. Although the band was down one member, with this weekend being one of the first times they’ve played without guitarist Joe Keery, the remaining five members still had plenty to talk about. Throughout the conversation, I found out all you need to know about this up and coming Chicago band, including news on their upcoming album and tour, stories about their haunted recording space, their influences, and their feelings on a certain Netflix show (which, if you didn’t already know, one of them happens to star in). There’s no doubt about it, 2017 will be an incredible year for Post Animal, so get familiar with them now.
One of the first things I always want to know about musicians is how they got into playing music.  Matt Williams, Javi Reyes, and Wes Toledo all credit their parents for getting them into music at a young age.  “I started playing music when I was like four,” Wes says. “My dad was a musician too, so he just kind of started me at an early age. I started listening to the Police and bands like that, like the Beatles and my liking of music came from that," he continued on. Matt adds, “My mom was a musician so she kinda forced me to take guitar lessons. She’s a bass player, but she was like ‘you need to learn how to play guitar,’ and then I kinda got forced to.” Javi says his mom also had guitars laying around, and he first started playing the guitar that his brother was given for Christmas one year. “I  learned how to play the James Bond theme,” he recalls.
Dalton Allison says that other bands, like Black Sabbath, inspired him to start making music, while Jake Hirshland admits that his inspiration stems from just wanting to be in a band, saying, “I just wanted to be in a band so bad dude, that I like picked up a guitar and tried to get good enough.” All of the guys also agree that films scores played a big part in influencing them, with Dalton deeming the Jurassic Park score as his favorite.
Oh, and the part about Mel Gibson? That came up while Matt chatted about the early days of guitar lessons, revealing, “The very first lesson I took was so awkward. There’s like these guitar books, I think they’re called Mel Gibson, wait! Not Mel Gibson...those learning books...”  It turns out he was actually talking about Mel Bay guitar books, which we quickly figured out, thanks to a member of another band playing that night.
If you’ve ever seen Post Animal live, you know they’ve got a lot of guitars on one stage (they also have a lot of hair on one stage, but that’s besides the point). The reason for so many bandmates stems from a few of them originally being substitutes who just never left. Dalton and Matt grew up together as self-proclaimed “bad boys of Danville,” first starting a band in sixth grade. As for the rest of the guys, Matt says,“We just kinda met people through friends and through work, and then someone was like ‘Hey I know this guy who’s a really good drummer, Wes. You should play with him.’ Then we did, and someone was out of town and Javi had just moved into town. So we were like ‘Javi wanna play these couple shows with us?’ And he just never stopped playing with us.”  
“We’ve pretty much just been tacking people on. I moved to Chicago and started playing with these dudes. It was a lot of people going out of town for a while, so we were just subbing people,” Jake chimes in.  The rest of band agreed that they just can’t let anyone go.
Dalton also gives credit to the adaptability of his bandmates, saying “We’re really lucky to have a mutli-talented group. Like Javi can pretty much play anything, Matt can pretty much play anything, Jake can play anything. Wes is one of the best drummers that I’ve ever played with.”  
It’s been a minute since Post Animal released their 6 track EP called The Garden Series, but lucky for us, the next album is just about ready. How is this new full-length different than the band’s previous releases? Other than the location where they recorded it, Dalton says,“It’s the first one with all 6 of us on it, so this is the most exciting for sure,” adding on that it should be between 10 and 13 songs. He also says that this new record is more collaborative than their past work, crediting each band member with writing their own parts.  
“Yeah we’re all pumped. Recordings are done and Dalton’s in the cave doing post production on it. We’re hoping the spring time,” Jake adds about the progress and planned release of the record.  Continuing on about their recording process, he adds, “I feel like the way we recorded is also...we did a lot of stuff at the same time and we never really used the rooms we were in. Rather than recording it in Dalton’s bedroom like we’ve been doing for the last couple, we actually went to this lake house of our good friend and just squatted in the living room and played everything loud...getting all the sound of the space. I think you can tell it was recorded live.”
While we’re on the subject of the lake house, Wes drops the bomb that the place was haunted. Javi and Dalton both attest to strange glitches appearing on their recordings from the lake house, while Jake, Wes, and Matt admit to having to sleep in the same room eventually after several scares. Jake recalls one night in which a nightstand flipped over in the room they were sharing, after already being woken up by a ghost. “These old, wrinkly leather hands just tugged me awake. It was bizarre,” Jake says. The rest of the band add that they’re not big on embellishment or really into paranormal activity, with Jake continuing, “Yeah we’re rational at heart, but it was bizarre, I had no explanations for some of the stuff I was feeling and seeing. The table flying over…”
In addition to the ghost scares, coffee got spilled on their computer halfway through recording, causing the band to worry they’d lost all of their work. Despite all of these scares, the band say they still had the time of their lives recording in the house adjoining Paw Paw Lake.
At the moment, the Post Animal boys have only got a string of live dates announced for this year, including some shows in Michigan with Twin Peaks and a slot at Daytrotter Downs Festival in Davenport, IA. However, they let on that they’ve just locked in the first two weeks of an upcoming tour, with Wes adding on that they’ll be out on the road all summer.
Talking more about Daytrotter, Dalton says,“I think that’s the first time that any of us were kinda shocked that someone asked us to play. We really respect what they’ve got going on.” They’re also all excited to check out some of the other bands on the line up, with Jake shouting out NE-HI and Wes and Matt giving nods to Joan of Arc and Gaelynn Lea.  From: https://www.anchrmagazine.com/interviews/2017/1/29/get-to-know-post-animal 

Sam Phillips - Strawberry Road

Speaking of her 1994 record, "Martinis and Bikinis," Los Angeles singer-songwriter Sam Phillips recently recalled an anecdote associated with one of the songs from that album--a track called "Baby I Can't Please You." It involved one of the musicians who played on the record, bassist Colin Moulding of the British alternative rock band XTC.
"I remember Colin Moulding coming in from England," she tells CBSNews.com. "We were at Jackson Browne's studio in Santa Monica recording. And I remember when he heard "Baby I Can't Please You," he had this big smile on his face and he said, 'We should do a Bollywood duet, you and me.' At the time I thought, 'Uh, maybe not.' But now I regret that. I think that would have been a wonderful idea and maybe someday we'll get to do that duet."
Still, Phillips did have a chance to rework some of the songs from the record that now appear as bonus tracks on a new reissue of "Martinis and Bikinis," which came out Tuesday. Produced by her then-husband T-Bone Burnett (whose production credits include Counting Crows, Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, and the Wallflowers), "Martinis and Bikinis" is generally well-regarded by the critics and perhaps her most accessible work.
"It actually came from my publishers at Notable Music," Phillips said about the idea behind the reissue. "They've been talking to this company Omnivore-- they started reissuing these vinyl projects. "It's been quite a while since "Martinis and Bikinis" has been released, and also because it's never been on vinyl, they were very excited to be involved."
Released at a time when alternative rock was the rage, "Martinis and Bikinis" was Phillips' third album for her then-label Virgin Records--the others being "The Indescribable Wow" and "Cruel Inventions." One thing she recalls about the record was T-Bone Burnett playing a lot of the guitars on it. "But I also remember that of the three records for Virgin," she adds, "it was the culmination of the other two records that the process that we had started when we first did "The Indescribable Wow." I felt like they were all connected and that "Martinis and Bikinis" was we finally got to the place that we wanted to get after a lot of work. I remember months in the studio for all three of those records."
In addition to Burnett, "Martinis and Bikinis" featured musicians such as Colin Moulding, Marc Ribot, Mickey Curry and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck. And while the album was dominated by Phillips' vocals, melodic hooks, and pristine production, "Martinis and Bikinis" contained soul-searching lyrics that addressed political, personal and social themes.
"Writing melodic songs were going against the grain at that time," says Phillips, "and also going against the grain in terms of what the lyrics were saying. A friend of mine who was very wealthy once brought up the idea that he knew of a man who was a refugee and everything that he had that was of value he held in his heart. I was very struck by that, so I put that verbatim in "Same Rain." There were a lot of different ideas. "Fighting with Fire" was about having to deal with art and commerce and trying to make sense of that, trying to make a life when corporations dictate how you make art and dictate how you get paid and we're still dealing with that today. It was a very serious record."
The aforementioned "Baby I Can't Please You" was one of the many standout tracks from "Martinis and Bikinis." It took on different meanings for those involved in the record, according to Phillips. "What was funny was that [T-Bone] thought of the song was about the right-wing politicians. To me, I was just thinking of my struggle of growing up, struggling with self-image and all of that, so "Baby I Can't Please You" was more of a personal thing to me. It was really funny--he had one agenda for the song, and I had another agenda for the song, and Colin Moulding had a third agenda for the song [the Bollywood duet]. That's always been my aim to try to write songs that work on different levels--that are open to different interpretations that could be of service to the listener."  From: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sam-phillips-revisits-martinis-and-bikinis/

Delta Shade - Hollow

Hailing from the high desert, Delta Shade play hard rock with a fierce groove that provides the backbone to their soulful melodies. After starting in 2016 by members Chad Buchanan, Andrew Laich, and Travis Prine, the band quickly gained a sizable local following and became known for their lively, impassioned performances that meld a variety of music genres. Their songs are full of life’s turmoil and heartache, as well as rising above such dire experiences to make it out the other side. Delta Shade are constantly looking to the future and striving for progression, eager to avoid getting tied down to any particular genre. They released their first full-length album in 2017 and are currently working on their second album.  From: https://www.reverbnation.com/deltashade

My Little White Rabbit - Behind the Door

In the manic depressive pandemic winter, "My Little White Rabbit" throw themselves into a colorful ball pit of psychedelic garage rock and 80s synth pop. Common for all those who currently love to curl up with tea and a cozy blanket in snow-covered window panoramas; here you get the full broadside with danceable up-tempo numbers and wafting guitar walls. The quintet from Hamburg around singer and guitarist Rike Pfeiffer used the forced break last year to nestle in the Hanseatic city's Schalltona Studios and record 12 songs for the follow-up to their debut "Bullets & Poor Hearts". The fruitfulness of this creative phase under slightly different conditions can already be felt in the first energetic seconds of "Bat in my Livingroom". The songs now seem more determined, more lively and the sound overall more mature. The band, whose name is an allusion to a classic by Jefferson Airplane, dominates the political discourse just as much as their instrumental craftsmanship. The content deals with important topics that are still of social importance in the shadow of the omnipresence of Corona. While "Rusty Nail" and "Moneymaker" are a scolding of the ever-popular enemy object "capitalism", after "Lucky People" the bells should ring about what a privilege it is not to have to be an animal among humans. And "Hello Mister" is undoubtedly already one of the most humorous songs of 2021 with its subtle feminist message, its radio pop appeal and charming synth sounds. The fact that "My Little White Rabbit" handles these topics so easily and unobtrusively may be due to their humorous nature, which you can personally convince and get infected by in the band's own podcast. In addition, Pfeiffer also emphasized in an interview with HORADS: "We are not a political band that constantly points the finger at others." Associations with stylistically related representatives such as "Blues Pills" or the Würzburg band "Wolvespirit" are constantly in the air when listening, but are only permissible to a limited extent. The Hamburg band is too happy to pull out the punk rock club, or occasionally present the listener with disturbing experiments that are not designed for song length. So it rarely gets boring on "Lowest Heights". It's just that the feeling of having heard everything before in one way or another is somehow difficult to shake off with the record. Apart from that, we think the genre mix is very successful. So much so that even the streaming algorithm has to look carefully in the end to find where to locate "My Little White Rabbit". At the same time, the young collective with "Lowest Heights", as well as "Sperling" recently, provides the best arguments for the young talent offensive of German bands, whose raison d'être is now more a matter of the lack of live performance opportunities than a lack of courage to innovate and a lack of talent. However, there was already a quiet promise of a performance in the Kessel in the interview, which is why we are slowly longing for relaxations for the music and culture industry twice and three times over. Until then, you can and should take the time to warm up to this up-and-coming band.  Translated from: https://www.horads.de/albumschau-my-little-white-rabbit-lowest-heights/

Dave Mason - Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave

Dave Mason's first solo album was one of several recordings to come out of the Leon Russell/Delaney & Bonnie axis in 1970. (Other notables included Eric Clapton's solo debut and Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen.) Alone Together contains an excellent batch of melodically pleasing songs, built on a fat bed of strumming acoustic guitars with tasteful electric guitar accents and leads. Mason's vocals are embellished with harmonies from Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, and Delaney & Bonnie. Besides the well-known semi-hit "Only You Know and I Know," which was also a hit for Delaney & Bonnie, highlights include the bouncy gospel-inflected "Waitin' on You" and the banjo-bejeweled "Just a Song." "Look at You Look at Me" and the wonderfully wah-wahed "Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave" are reminiscent of Mason's former band, Traffic, whose drummer, Jim Capaldi is among the all-star cast assembled here. Alone Together represents Dave Mason at his peak. Later releases would betray lyrical shallowness, forced rhymes, and clichéd guitar licks. But here, everything comes together perfectly. The original vinyl release of Alone Together was also noteworthy for the marble grain of the record itself -- as the record played on the turntable, the tone arm appeared to be floating through the clouds.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/alone-together-mw0000193512#review

Zap Mama - Sessions at West 54th 1997

Marie Daulne, the founder and fronting member of Zap Mama since the early 1990s, has lived a life that rivals Homer’s Odyssey. Filled with peril and triumph, globe-spanning quests, and a series of personal achievements that seem almost heroic in scope, her story is one of epic proportions in the annals of world music. She stands with one foot firmly planted in tradition and the other in the progressive sounds and sensibilities of a new century, and she consistently merges the two with an effortless grace that never fails to mesmerize. Born in the Congo, but raised in Belgium, Marie spends her life crossing continents and winning the hearts of thousands of fans, while introducing her musical heritage to the world and uniting musical cultures through the wonders of voice, music and dynamic performance. “My early childhood was filled with the music of my mother, the music of the Congo,” Daulne recalls. “We had the radio when I was growing up in Belgium, so we heard a lot of French music. And of course, American music was also very popular all over Europe. Since our mother did not want us to watch TV in our home, we entertained ourselves by creating our own music. We were very musical.” After studying painting and art history in high school and college, Daulne made a pilgrimage in her late teens back to the land of her birth. In doing so, she reconnected with the pygmy culture, and discovered that the African music of her early childhood was still very much alive within her. The resulting experience, she recalls, was nothing short of an epiphany – one that changed the course of her life. “That was when I became a musician,” she said. “When I went to the Congo, I hadn’t thought of being a musician. Not at all. But I was there, and I was standing in the middle of the forest, hearing the music that had been a part of my earliest memories, and it was like an illumination, like a light.”
In 1990, Daulne assembled four other vocalists and created the first incarnation of Zap Mama, an all-female a cappella quintet, or as The New York Times called it, “a utopian multicultural dream.” Adventures in Afropea I, the group’s 1993 debut recording on David Byrne’s label, Luaka Bop, wove together music from Zaire, Tanzania, Syria, France and Spain. Afropea became the biggest selling non-compilation album in the history of the Luaka Bop label and reached #1 on the Billboard World Music Charts. The followup album, Sabsylma, came a year later and earned Zap Mama a Grammy nomination in the Best World Music Album category. Another critical and commercial success, this mix of a cappella performances and exotic rhythms further cemented the group’s reputation as one of the most innovative stylistically diverse acts on the contemporary vocal scene. In 1997, the group signed to Virgin Records and released their third album, 7, a recording aimed at a more mainstream audience by incorporating elements of R&B and pop, and a cover of Phoebe Snow’s “Poetry Man.” Guest appearances by hip-hopper Michael Franti and Jamaican-born DJ U-Roy added to the album’s overall sense of eclecticism. The exploration continued with the release of A Ma Zone, a 1999 release on Narada that included breakbeats, jazz lines on upright bass, turntable manipulation, and collaborations with Black Thought (of The Roots) and Speech from Arrested Development, spawning the popular Zap songs, “Rafiki” and “W’happy Mama.”
After a four-year hiatus, Daulne returned to Luaka Bop for the 2004 release of Ancestry in Progress. With a co-production credit going to The Roots’ Richard Nichols and guest appearances by Erykah Badu, Questlove and Talib Kweli, Ancestry upped the ante with layers of funk and soul atop the already well-established African, Afro-Cuban, R&B and jazz grooves. This album also earned Daulne another #1 spot on the Billboard World Music charts. Marie Daulne opens a new chapter of this continuously unfolding story with the August 7, 2007, release of Supermoon, Zap Mama’s debut recording on Heads Up International. An engaging blend of world, jazz, pop, funk, reggae and soul, the album includes guest appearances by stellar figures from around the globe: drummer Tony Allen; bassist Meshell Ndegeocello and Will Lee; guitarists David Gilmore and Michael Franti; pianists Leon Pendarvis and Robbie Kondor, percussionist Bashiri Johnson and many more. “With Supermoon, I reveal the way I chose to live when I started my career,” says Daulne. “It’s very intimate…You’re seeing me very close up. I hope that’s a kind of intimacy that people will understand. I’m opening a door to who I am.”  From: https://concord.com/artist/zap-mama/

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Hot Burrito #1

The Flying Burrito Brothers were a country rock band which formed in 1968 in Los Angeles, California, United States. The band’s original lineup consisted of Chris Hillman (vocals, guitar), Gram Parsons (vocals, guitar), Chris Ethridge (piano, bass) and Sneaky Pete Kleinow (pedal steel guitar). Later members of from the band’s initial existence included Eddie Hoh (drums), Jon Corneal (drums), Bernie Leadon (guitar, vocals), Michael Clarke (drums) and Rick Roberts (vocals, guitar). The group originally disbanded in 1972 following Hillman’s departure.  Kleinow and Ethridge instigated a reformation of the band in 1975 which continued through 1984. The band was reformed once again in 1985 and were disbanded for a final time in 2001.
The band best known as the “Flying Burrito Brothers” actually ‘borrowed’ their name from the original “Flying Burrito Brothers”, composed of bassist Ian Dunlop and drummer Mickey Gauvin, bandmates of Parsons from the Boston-based International Submarine Band, plus any of a loose coalition of musicians, including Parsons himself from time to time. In a deliberate choice of focusing on just creating and playing music without the distractions of the music industry, in 1968 the original Brothers moved from Los Angeles to New York City. From this base they continued to tour the Northeast playing their eclectic traditional/rockabilly/blues/R&B-oriented version of rock, using the name “The Flying Burrito Brothers East” after Parsons’ group became famous.
Meanwhile, on the West Coast, Parsons and guitarist/mandolinist/bassist/vocalist Chris Hillman thought this same moniker would be perfectly suited to the band they had been dreaming of since early 1968, when, as members of Roger McGuinn’s band The Byrds, they created one of the first country-oriented rock albums, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. They immersed themselves in their vision in their house in the San Fernando Valley, dubbed “Burrito Manor”, even replacing their wardrobe with a set of custom country-Western suits from tailor to the C&W stars, Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors (Parsons’s had marijuana leaf embroidery) and began a period of intensely fruitful creativity. At this juncture, the band also included pianist/bassist Chris Ethridge and pedal steel guitarist “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow.
Their first album The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969) did not sell terribly well, being a radical departure from anything most of the record-buying public (either rock or country) had ever seen, but the group had a cult following which included several famous musicians, such as Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones. Parsons soon became friends with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and left the group after 1970’s Burrito Deluxe, which also saw the departure of Ethridge and addition of guitarist/dobro player/vocalist Bernie Leadon and drummer Michael Clarke (of The Byrds). Rick Roberts replaced Parsons and released a self-titled album with the group in 1971. Kleinow then left to become a session musician and Leadon joined The Eagles. Al Perkins and Roger Bush replaced them, and Kenny Wertz and Byron Berline joined as well, releasing The Last of the Red Hot Burritos (1972), a live album. The band fell apart. Hillman and Perkins joined Manassas, while Berline, Bush and Wertz formed Country Gazette. Roberts reassembled a new group for a 1973 European tour, and then began a solo career before forming Firefall with Michael Clarke.
As Gram Parsons’s influence and fame grew, so did interest in the Flying Burrito Brothers, leading to the release of Honky Tonks (1974), a double album, and the recreation of the band by Kleinow and Ethridge in 1975. Floyd “Gib” Gilbeau, Joel Scott Hill and Gene Parsons (no relation to Gram) also joined, and the band released Flying Again that year. Ethridge was then replaced by Skip Battin for Airborne (1976), followed by an album of unreleased early material, Sleepless Nights. For the next few decades, the group released albums and toured and had a country hit with “White Line Fever” (1980, a cover by Merle Haggard) and then became the Burrito Brothers. Headed by prolific songwriter and ace guitarist John Beland and Gib Guilbeau, and normally featuring Sneaky Pete, this incarnation scored moderately well on the Country charts in the early 1980s. Through numerous incarnations (including Brian Cadd for a time), the band released albums and toured throughout the 1980s up till 2001 when John Beland “officially” ended FBB. While the bands work during the 1980-1999 period was exceptional, after 1984 none of the many releases had any chart impact. Sneaky created a Burritos spinoff in his new band Burrito Deluxe, which featured Carlton Moody on lead vocals and Garth Hudson from The Band on keyboards. While a good band, there has never been any real continuity with the true Burritos and this group can not be considered anything more than a spinoff. Pete however, left the band due to illness in 2005, leaving no direct lineage to the original masters.
Gram Parsons died on September 19, 1973. “Sneaky Pete” Kleinow died on January 6, 2007. Chris Hillman is still a very successful singer-songwriter, having been part of Souther-Hillman-Furay, McGuinn-Clark-Hillman, then going on to form the Desert Rose Band (1986-1993) with Herb Pedersen. He still sings with Pedersen today as Chris and Herb, having released “The Other Side” (2005).  From: https://thevogue.com/artists/the-flying-burrito-brothers/

Rose Kemp - Violence

Q: The new album, Unholy Majesty, seems to be surrounded by much darker imagery than A Hand Full Of Hurricanes. Did you deliberately set out to make a heavier record this time?

Rose Kemp: Yes is the short answer. I’ll elaborate! I had been working on my guitar sound a lot over the past year or so and when I was happy with it, it was time to make an album and not before! I have heard Burning Witch and Iron Monkey now! After that there was little chance of me being able to stay where I was musically. It deeply affected me. I had discovered horrible and harrowing music, made for the purpose of healing, pleasure and satisfaction, and it was what I had been searching for, for so long.

I love the photo of you on Myspace with the Kiss-style makeup! Is it liberating to be able to amplify the darker aspects of your personality?

Kiss-style. Ha ha. Any music I have ever done has been mostly or completely on my terms and so I am very free and fulfilled with all that I create. I stopped drinking and started eating properly, and I don’t smoke anymore, and last year I rediscovered my first love and discipline, Cecchetti ballet. So I can feel my childhood creativity is slowly growing back along with my brain cells. In the past I only ever wore make-up with a large dose of irony on the side, but now I see it as something to do now that I have few vices and I use it to make things a bit more clear for my audience, and likewise for people who aren’t familiar with what I do. It is the only time I have ever looked like I sound.

Tell us about the album artwork. The image of the crow and the blood is striking to say the least. Who drew it?

Erm *cough* it’s erm…that’s a magpie! It’s awesome isn’t it? I love it. The boldness and the intricacies of the record were captured really well I thought. Glyn at Scrawled Designs did all of the artwork, he is known as a rock poster artwork guy mainly but he is a very clever illustrator with good design sense too. The imagery on the inside cover is of a crow and a dove separating because it was thought that, in ye olden days, that was what a magpie was made from.

This is slightly old news, but I couldn’t find any info online so here goes. What provoked your drastic change in direction after Glance?

I didn’t really cite a change of direction after Glance. If Glance had been produced the way I was suggesting at the time it would have sounded more coherent in the time line and Glance would have been the departure from the a cappella album before, you see? Still, rarely does anything go quite the way you plan and even rarer is the timing right in musical matters! It has been about 8 years since I recorded Glance so there is bound to be many changes, or one would hope so anyway. If I were still making the same records, I would expect you to call me up on it!

A lot of your songs seem to progress through several complex passages, almost like movements. Do you think this shows something of your prog influences?

Well, I listen to a heck of a lot of prog so I would suppose so. I was hoping it would rub off on me one day! Actually, truth be told, I’ve always just liked messing about with the concept of ‘the song’. Most people alarmingly just stick to what people were doing in the ’60s, which gets on my wick frankly. I am massively inspired by bands who do various types of 15-minute instrumental epics, but am personally still happy to keep finding my own way and letting their sounds rather than their structures seep in to what I do.

There aren’t many women out there fusing folk and metal influences into the kind of catchy, arty rock you’re making. Who do you consider to be your peers?

I wish I knew, then I could do what everyone else in the world does and get a support slot on tour with them, get them to champion me and sign to their label and appeal to exactly the same fans and sell records and be able to make a few more albums! My advice is, don’t do what I’ve done. Just copy someone else bar-for-bar and then ask them if you can support on their world tour, get a deal with their label, and Bob will indeed be your uncle. Do not create, it’s bad for business!

Are there any other women emerging from the Bristol underground scene we should be aware of?

Rozi Plain has just made a cute album for Fence Records.

Who would win in a loop pedal war between you and KT Tunstall?

Ha ha. Funniest question yet. The only dignified answer to that is that I hope we would both be fighting using a more worthwhile piece of equipment! I only ever used mine for multi-layering vocals because arranging vocal harmonies is one of my lifelong passions and I didn’t have any other singers to take around with me on tour (it’s tricky to find flight cases for them). I WOULD NEVER use it to beat percussion in to ‘recreate’ a ‘band’ sound, the whole overuse of the ‘one-man band’ element has not aged well! I have found a way to get round the no singers thing now though, more news on that next year. I would like to think I would be the winner of a vocal duel, however!

For Unholy Majesty you worked with Biffy Clyro producer Chris Sheldon. What did he bring to the project?

He brought organisation, good use of time and telling me when we had the take and against my instincts that I should stop singing now! Frankly he is just completely fabulous darling! That’s what he would want me to say! He just makes everything sound amazing. I wanted to work with him because he just gets that sound without losing the sound that me and the band spend every waking hour perfecting. Man is a legend. End of.

Can you tell us a bit about the first single, ‘Nanny’s World’? What’s the inspiration behind that?

‘Nanny’s World’ partly refers to the so called ‘nanny state’ that the current government have handed to us, what people often gloss over is that we took it, we lapped it up. We love health and safely, when it suits us, but when it doesn’t, well, that’s a different story! Also it encompasses things such as the phrases which are a device to make people uncomfortable. I had no idea anyone would want to use it as a single! It is also partly about my own family break-up following my parents’ divorce and the fact that my heart will always belong to the English countryside. It is about many, many different things.

Having listened to the whole album, I have to say that ‘Flawless’ really stood out. To have such a powerful piano ballad in the midst of all the anger and energy really worked for me. Is this song very specific to you or do you think women in general come under too much pressure to conform to a certain appearance and lifestyle?

It is really about the music business, or rather the direction it took when TV finally realised a few years ago that ‘the kids like music’ and simultaneously the major labels started going down the pan, and so the sheer amounts of pointless, but clean, tripe we are fed on TV and radio now is frankly sick. The song is just a very heartfelt, very simple song that is arranged to be accessible so everyone will know that I don’t want to be clean and easy and Disney and indie-straight-tie-clean-shirt-car-advert or glockenspiel-acoustic-pointless-nonsense. It’s just a final statement to everyone in the business who has ever pushed me to conform to some safe ideal of a saleable woman figure and said it’s for my own good, or “everyone will like you better this way”, or “you can’t fight the way the business is” etc etc etc. ‘Flawless’ just very simply and very quietly says, “OK, that’s fine but I don’t want to work with you and I don’t want any part of what you call music”.

‘Vacancies’ is also an incredibly powerful, punishing song. Your vocal is so strong, it sounds as if you’re actually dredging the sound up right from your bile duct. How did you learn to manipulate your voice like that?

I am so glad you asked that. I am really pleased with the level of epic we managed to get into ‘Vacancies’ in all of the arrangement. Also, I have been working my bile duct off these past couple of years expanding my breath capacity and my range by warming up properly every day and exploring the resonance my body can actually create. I also cite giving up smoking and drinking and writing beyond my capabilities all the time. It’s the same mentality as buying a dress that’s obviously too small and saying “I’ll lose a bit more weight and get into it by summer”. The only difference is, I have to be able to sing/play whatever piece it is by the time I next go on stage! I constantly push myself. As you know, I have never been one for slouching around in an ill-fitting plaid shirt pretending I don’t have to try and it all comes naturally, because this kind of thing very clearly doesn’t. It comes through practice and guile. I’m so glad you noticed!

Do you have any particular favourites from the album yourself?

‘Wholeness Sounds’ and ‘Vacancies’ and ‘The Unholy’ and ‘Dirty Glow’, and the intro to ‘Flawless’. It’s fair to say I am ecstatic with the whole thing you know? I am very pleased with how it all came out. Sheldon hadn’t heard a lot of the tracks when we started the first day with him tracking at the studio so all of myself and the band’s pre-production paid off!

You seem to be completely in your element when performing live. How does it make you feel to be able to convey the passion in these songs with such energy?

It makes me feel like a living, breathing, transient being with a purpose! It is my gift and I am glad there are those who delight in receiving it.

What are you planning for your September tour? Any surprises in store?

Well if I told you about it now, it’d be a rubbish surprise wouldn’t it!

From: https://wearsthetrousers.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/rose-kemp-i-will-not-conform-to-some-safe-ideal-of-a-saleable-woman-figure/

The Dolly Rocker Movement - The Only One

The word pediophobia is derived from the Greek paidion, meaning “little child”. Technically it is not a phobia all of its own, but a subcategory of the broader automatonophobia, or the fear of humanoid figures in general. Whatever its precise psychology analytically speaking, one thing is for certain: I’ve got it bad. I’m a huge pediophobe; I’m absolutely petrified of dolls. Thunderbirds had set me well on the way by the age of about six, but it was one particularly terrifying episode of the X-Files that tipped me over the edge at around thirteen. The episode is based on the Steven King novel Chinga, and in it the object of Mulder and Scully’s investigations is an almost unbelievably satanatic children’s toy that telepathically compels its victims to gouge out their own eyes. Their own freaking eyes, man! I shit you not. And so it was against all my better judgment that I agreed to speak with Daniel of the Dolly Rocker Movement. “Chill man, they’re just a band,” Mikey the editor had tried to reassure me. “They’ve got this sort of dirty 60s-inspired garage / psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll vibe going on. You’ll love them, I promise.” Still, I couldn’t help but be suspicious. Turns out Mikey was right. The Dolly Rockers spend barely any of their time rocking dollies these days. Mostly they’re working on getting their new record – which will be their third full lengther since 2006 – to press.
“It’s a new direction for the band this year,” says Daniel. “The new record has definitely got a bit more of a hi-fi sound to it.” But it’s not actually the move from their trusty old four-track to the intricacies of pro-tools that constitutes the most significant change for the Dolly Rockers in 2009. Yes, the album’s got a bigger, more layered, more accessible sound to it than previous efforts, but on top of that the group’s whole sound has evolved. “We weren’t going for that 60s psychedelic sound on this record,” explains Daniel. “We were aiming for something a bit more modern, though with a lot of other influences thrown in to the mix. The single we just released has more of a baroque sound, for example, with harpsichord and strings. We’ve even got a few songs on the record with almost a spaghetti western vibe to them!”
Yeeha! Turns out that Daniel’s a bit of a fan of alter egos actually. When he’s not playing cowboys and Indians, there’s a fair chance he’s doing “Dandy Lyon”, the name he gives to his onstage persona. “Off the stage, I’m the guy speaking to you here, you know. This is Daniel. He’s about to cook his curry, he’s just done his grocery shopping. But when I get up there that’s when it all changes. A good performer is someone who can hold that frame of mind, hold that ego, hold the crowd for that crucial 45 minutes or an hour or whatever it is. Cos that’s all you get man. You’ve gotta make it worth it.” What’s the difference between Daniel and Dandy Lyon then? “Well, Dandy definitely likes to show a bit of skin. Even though I’m rockin’ a wife beater today. You know, sometimes it’s hard actually. It’s like having a schizophrenic mind, where you’ve got two personalities. Trying to balance them can be hard. There’s the flamboyance of Dandy Lyon where it’s definitely a world of madness. It’s an inviting world that I like to create but it’s not all flowers and sunshine either. There’s a dark side to me that can definitely creep through.” So does Daniel ever crack Dandy out in public? You know if someone pulls him over or whatever. Because he’s got more confidence? “Yeah, that’s worked a few times actually. Then again, a few times I’ve nearly had my head punched in. But Dandy Lyon can get out of any situation, so it’s all good.” As veterans of Sydney’s garage rock and underground scene, I wonder what bands are impressing the Dolly Rockers right now. Who’s coming up through the ranks?
“Actually, the band that played with us at our show on the weekend – Silver Moon Uprising (who do a sort of garage / post punk / shoegaze sort of thing) – are pretty great. A band hasn’t done that to me for ages, where I’ve just been like wow and my eyes have opened up. And there’s another band from Geelong called the Frowning Clouds. They’re probably the closest thing you’re ever going to get to seeing an authentic 60s garage rock band. They’re amazing. We play with them a bit when we go down to Melbourne.” And now that I’m finally feeling comfortable enough to confront my raging pediophobia, I just have to ask: how exactly is it that you rock a dolly anyway? “It’s just back and forth man.” Never side to side? “Well, back and forth you get more of a response.” What kind of a response he’s expecting from the poor dolly he doesn’t say. And quite frankly I prefer not to ask.  From: https://musicfeeds.com.au/features/the-dolly-rocker-movement/

Portishead - Glory Box

Formed in 1991 in Bristol, Portishead are considered one of the pioneers of trip hop music, although the band themselves have always fiercely disliked the term. Named after the nearby town of the same name, Portishead launched with singer Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley. Portishead's debut album, Dummy, was met with huge critical acclaim in 1994, and became one of the milestones of electronica and trip hop.
Portishead wrote the song Glory Box together, and it was included on their debut album Dummy. The song used a sample of Isaac Hayes's song 'Ike's Rap II', from his 1971 double-album, Black Moses. Coincidentally, 'Hell is Around the Corner' by fellow Bristol trip-hop artist Tricky also sampled the same track around the same time. What are the chances? 'Glory Box' is an Australian term for a piece of furniture, where women store clothes and other items ahead of marriage. However, the title doesn't appear in the song's lyrics. The song is about a woman who is frustrated by love, and is ready to give up on her relationship. The song features the line, "Give me a reason to be a woman, it's all I want to be is all woman," which is a plea to her partner, asking that they treat her fairly and with respect. The song had been misinterpreted as a call for the partner to take charge in the relationship, and reverting to traditional gender roles. Beth Gibbons was annoyed by this, telling the Independent: "Half the reason you write them is that you're feeling misunderstood and frustrated with life in general. "Then it's sort of successful and you think you've communicated with people, but then you realize you haven't communicated with them at all – you've turned the whole thing into a product, so then you're even more lonely than when you started."
The music video was directed by Alexander Hemming. It is set in the 1950s, and sees Beth Gibbons as a jazz singer at a club while various office workers watch her perform. Soon, sexual tension begins to rise between various characters, as all of the workers, as separate couples, attend the club. Apart from the band, the entire cast of the video appears in drag. 'Glory Box' was the third single from the album, and their first UK top 20 hit, reaching number 13. Geoff Barrow told Pitchfork that they didn't want this to be a single. He said: "We had a row with the record company because we didn't want to release it because it felt too commercial. Fine in a body of work, but not as a standalone track. "We lost the argument really. But we bought houses! It's great, but the other side of that, when you play live, I feel like a bit of a performing monkey sometimes."  From: https://www.smoothradio.com/news/chill/portishead-glory-box-lyrics-meaning-video/

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Knife Edge - Beat-Club 1970

The seeds of ELP were sown in December of 1969, when both the Nice (which featured Keith Emerson on keyboards) and King Crimson (which featured Greg Lake on bass and vocals) performed together at the Fillmore West in San Francisco.  Both bands had been at the forefront of the British rock scene at the end of the decade, and were fast gaining popularity in the States. The Nice had enjoyed several hits, known more for the wild stage show that was a showcase for Keith Emerson. Emerson was a keyboard wizard and had been tagged the "Jimi Hendrix of the Hammond organ." King Crimson had exploded out of nowhere in 1969, moving in a matter of a couple of months from club obscurity to big stars. The band's debut LP In the Court of the Crimson King had become an instant smash, and established the band in the new format of FM rock radio. Keith Emerson remembers this period:

Keith: The final months of the Nice were quite traumatic, really, because the Nice had just broken America. And we actually had offers of tours which for the band members would have been very lucrative. But internally, within the band, things weren't really happy. There was a lot of things interfering with our progress, slightly drug-oriented, I suppose. I was just not really happy with the way things were going. So I was looking for another bass-player and singer. I heard on the radio a recording of King Crimson, playing "Cat Food" and I'd heard a lot about the bass-player, Greg Lake, and what a great voice he had. By chance, the Nice were on the same bill as King Crimson in 1969, at Fillmore West and I had the opportunity to approach Greg and ask him if he'd be interested. Things really grew from there.

Greg: The chemistry of the band was unique and special. Even the forming of the band was interesting. I mean, the first person we met in fact was Mitch Mitchell, the drummer for Jimi Hendrix, and it was at one point a session arranged for Jimi and Keith and myself and Mitch to play together. And that didn't happen in the end, partly because in the meantime we'd met Carl Palmer and also shortly thereafter Jimi actually died, and so it never came about.

Emerson and Lake eventually found Carl Palmer, a nineteen year old drummer, formally trained in percussion. Palmer had been in The Crazy World of Arthur Brown before forming Atomic Rooster with Vincent Crane. Here is Keith Emerson:

Keith: I'd auditioned lot of English drummers but they didn't seem right, and I was almost going to go to America to look for an American drummer, before somebody suggested Carl Palmer. I remember Carl coming along to a session, rehearsal thing, set his drum kit up and we launched into a blues and that was it really. We said, well that's the band.

Carl Palmer remembers the first time the band played together:

Carl: I think I ended up the rehearsal room on a recommendation from Keith Emerson's manager, Tony Stratton-Smith. He is a lovely man, who's since passed away. I think that's how it came about, the rehearsal, the audition, call it what you will, but I can't really recall too much that went on. I know that we talked quite a lot about music, about things we liked, things that we disliked individually and I do recall that at that meeting, Keith and myself had various jazz records which we both bought at a very young age. So it seemed to be that we had similar tastes. It's very hard to sort of say exactly what kind of things we listened to as individuals. I didn't really speak to Greg too much on that side, I think, we might have played a couple of pieces, it might have been like a twelve bar and something else. It was a very very simple sort of rehearsal-cum-audition, I must confess.

ELP's early rehearsals were done at Island Studios on Basing Street in London in June. The band had signed with Island Records for Europe and Atlantic subsidiary Cotillion Records for the US. The recording commenced in July 1970, with Greg Lake producing. The album, simply entitled Emerson, Lake and Palmer remains one of the most popular rock albums of all time. Songs like "Take a Pebble," "Knife Edge," "Tank" and "The Barbarian" fuse the band's contemporary hard rock with a subtle nuances of European classical music and American jazz. But according to Keith, the making of the first ELP album was no small feat:

Keith: It was like pulling teeth, it was the hardest album. I think in order to get the album finished, the second side, which is mainly instrumental, because Greg and I had not really learned how to write together. I was writing music and Greg was writing lyrics and somehow we weren't managing to gel as a writing team. It was very, very hard.

Carl: So, I thought the album is very, sort of, very daring, you know, in it’s day. We each had a kind of feature, there was "Lucky Man" from Greg and there was "Tank" from myself and "The Three Fates," which was the name of the piece which Keith recorded. So I really did not know what to expect from the album. It was definitely something which was daring, it was up front and I suppose it was very fresh at that time. Things like "Knife Edge" and "Barbarian" are still key tracks which we play today.

It would be the album's final recording, an acoustic folk ballad called "Lucky Man," that would launch the group on radio around the globe. Ironically the song was added as a filler track, designed to increase the overall running time of the album. Needless to say the band was quiet surprised when it became an international hit. Greg Lake discusses the song:

Greg: It was a song I wrote when I was very young. You know, when I'd just really got my first guitar, my parents had bought me my first guitar, and I wrote this song. Interestingly enough in its entirety, everything, it never got changed ever. You know, not because of any reason that I wouldn't change it, it just kind went down like that, you know. It was complete and it got recorded 8 or 9 years later, when ELP was in the middle of - or actually at the end of recording its first album. I find that we want one track short and then the records were final and you had to have 20 minutes a side, or whatever it was, and we were one song short and it was the end of the budgeted studio time and so there was this terrible blank-faced stare, you know, around the studio: "Anybody got any more songs?" And that was all, "Lucky Man" was all there was to do and, I don't really know what it's about, it's a child's vision of what it must be like to be rich and have the nice things in life: "He had white horses and ladies by the score, all dressed in satin and waiting by the door."

Before they even had an album out, the band began playing shows. But unlike most young bands, who start in clubs, ELP made its first global debut at a 3-day music festival, that was the European equivalent of Woodstock. Although they performed one warm-up show in a small theatre, ELP made its debut for the world at the Isle of Wight Pop Music Festival on August 29 for over 500,000 British fans. Since their first album had not yet been released, the audience was not familiar with the music, but responded with thunderous applause nonetheless. The Isle of Wight, with its all star line-up that included Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Free, Sly and the Family Stone, would be a very unnerving experience for the young band, who certainly rose to the occasion. ELP is remembered today for thrilling the audience by firing off cannons on either side of the stage during the climax of its 20-minute version of its classical opus Pictures at an Exhibition. The band further caught the attention of the rock world when it performed its final song, a frenzied version of the old Nice song, "Rondo." For the ending Emerson dragged a Hammond L100 organ to the centre of the stage and proceeded to mount it and extract strange tortured sounds by stabbing the keys with 18-inch daggers. Emerson explains how the dagger routine got added to the act:

Keith: Basically it started when I was playing with a band called the VIP's - they were otherwise known as the V.I.Pills. We were in Hamburg and they had a lot of tablets and so they gave me one. I was awake for 2 nights, offered to drive the bandwagon from France to Germany, crashed the bandwagon. Played onstage that night, went kind of berserk and the band said: "That was really great, you should really do that again". One thing led to another, really. We had as our roadie a guy called Lemmy, who's now the lead singer with Motörhead. I was actually sticking screw-drivers in the keyboard at that time, to hold down notes. I think it was Lemmy who said: "If you're gonna like stick a knife in your hammond organ," he said, "you'd better get a proper one," and he gave me a couple of Hitler youth daggers, because Lemmy has the biggest collection of Nazi war paraphernalia. And that's really how that started. ELP would spend much of the summer of 1970 rehearsing and writing material for its debut album. Having been born out of three established and popular bands, ELP became one of rocks earliest super-groups, often compared from the architectural standpoint to America's Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Keith: Well, the super-group tag was provided by the media. It was as much an over-used word as psychedelic was, I suppose. They kind of aligned us to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, because we, too, used our surnames for our band name. So I guess that because CSN&Y were referred to as a super-group, the tag followed and stuck with us as a consequence. But I think it is an apt description. We were a band formed from three other very successful bands.

Greg: It was one of the first bands that ever had this regrettable title of super-group, you know, which I suppose is fair enough. We do come from well-known bands, but what it does, it thrusts you under the spotlight on day one and you never really get the chance to organically develop the band in the way that one would normally do, you know you normally go out, play a few shows somewhere quiet, get yourself together, you know. The second show ELP played was the Isle of Wight Festival.

Carl: There were lots of silly names which we put into the pot. Things like "Seahorse", I can't remember half of them, but at the time we just thought that using our surnames would be an honest way to put the game, put the actual group to the front.

From: http://ladiesofthelake.com/audiofiles/elpstory.html

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Y Control

Can a band build an entire career, a legacy even, on a handful of EPs and a boundless torrent of press? How many party dresses need to take a beer bath before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs drop the rock icon pastiche and just play some music? Over and over again, they've been accused of empty posturing, wallowing in scrofulous, self-conscious "irony," disguising themselves Predator-style as the public conception of who they were supposed to be rather than who they actually are. And yet (dramatic pause), until the stylists and spin-mongers start writing the music, why does this still have to matter? The band plays the blistering, bassless hand they're dealt, plus or minus the cards up their designer sleeves, and make the "right moves." More power to them; hype, famously, is a bitch, a shrew, and in the end, it's still theirs to try and tame. No one wants to be the ill-fated morning-after tat on the ass-end of the garage-rock revival, after all.
The really stupid part of all this, though, is that the shitstorm of publicity that's been hanging overhead the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is based on all of, what, eight songs? Two EP/singles? Robert Pollard throws away eight songs before breakfast and you sure as hell don't see him on the cover of NME. Well, hold yr breath, kids. The YYY's have finally released the plot element that their garage-to-riches Cinderella II story has most sorely lacked: The Full-Length Album. This is gonna make 'em rockstars, everybody! The final story arc-- and how's this for irony-- will conclude with them shedding their personas here, showing everyone that they've got what it takes to endure, and living happily ever after as the saviors of rock 'n' roll.
Except, they don't do any of that. Or maybe (and this is only an hypothesis) they were never all that guilty of the heinous crimes of Fashion they've been charged with in the first place? Either way, here it is, Fever to Tell, and they just play the same guitar/drums rock they have since the beginning-- what'd you expect? Sure, you can practically feel Karen O looking over her shoulder for approval with every faux-erotic squeal or disdainful shout, and a number of these tracks fall flat entirely because of the knowing, brutal swagger they try so damn hard to affect. And when it's all over, the slow-burning, gently chaotic dissolve of "No No No" (even the title is self-conscious) or the bluesy strut of "Black Tongue" will wither under anything more than passing scrutiny, but more will remain.
Reason is, first and foremost, the near-faultless musical support at the core of the YYY's: Nick Zinner and Brian Chase. If you can hear (or even care to try to hear, which you shouldn't) an ounce of "posture" in Zinner's thunderous guitar licks or Chase's relentless percussive assault, then you're a more cynical man (or woman) than I. The rhythms are never very complicated, but when it counts, Chase pounds away with enough precise desperation to project an unfailing sense of urgency; it carries through even the more emotional tracks, lending the rare vulnerability a tragic sort of transience.
Between the vicious buzz and slender trill of Zinner's strings is a breathtaking range-- the robotically looped harmonics of "Rich" coupled with the layered crunch of the wall-of-sound that collapses on top of them; the stop/start emergency-room shriek of "Date With a Night". Even Karen O seems stunned by the anthemic scope of the blazing, surf-like guitar and Chase's deafening percussion on "Y Control"; she turns in one of her most subdued vocals, as if it's all she can do just to keep up. Not coincidentally, it's also one of her most impressive turns.
That's not O's only compelling performance, though-- there are a couple moments when she drops her lacquered sneers and teases, and when this happens, it suddenly becomes very difficult to avoid seeing the music in a different light. Of course, her success varies. At times, she's the linchpin of the band-- and not just because her gratuitous sexual tension has become their trademark-- while at others she's the weakest link. The problem here is that, while the guys are definitely on here, they're still nowhere near groundbreaking, and as a result, they rise and fall depending largely on Karen's delivery. Her play-acting is what got the Yeah Yeah Yeahs slapped with the charges of shallow insincerity in the first place. It shouldn't matter if it's a façade, but it does; knowing beforehand what you're dealing with or not, it becomes very trying to accept every sleazy squeak as part of her routine. If the band ever wants to really dump these lingering doubts for good, they'll need to overcome this obstacle.
Still, for proof that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, at their core, make a better band than they do runway trendsetters, one need look no further than Fever to Tell's singular true moment of clarity-- a tune of such moving grace I can scarcely believe they're responsible for it-- "Maps". Though the song is sadly in a class by itself on this record (it would take about two seconds to call roll for the tunes that even come close), absolutely everything falls into place here. The drums are gentle enough to simply caress the tune, but still pressing enough to make it clear that this second of happiness is fleeting, and Zinner's guitar work is easily his best to date, equal parts joy and discord. But it's Karen's vocals that steal the show; for once, they fairly drip genuine, regretful emotion: When she sings, "Lay off/ Don't stray/ My kind is your kind/ I'll stay the same/ They don't love you like I love you," almost on the verge of defeated tears, the emotive response it produces is very real, and that means a lot.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8888-fever-to-tell/

The Marshall Tucker Band - You Ain't Foolin' Me

The Marshall Tucker Band’s A New Life (1974) was slightly more country than the previous album had been. The "progressive" thing gives way to a more defined rock sound too, along with some jazzy influences, despite the obviously prog-inspired cover! This is perfectly represented by the muscular rock of the opener, A New Life, a track that nevertheless still manages to reach nearly seven minutes. That old experimental/workout urge is obviously still there.  A really infectious bassline and slow rhythm underpins the excellent Southern Woman, another lengthy track. It sounds like a more melodious, less down 'n' dirty Lynyrd Skynyrd. Mid-track the band launch into a distinctly jazz groove, featuring some highly impressive saxophone and a great jazz guitar solo. This group had a lot of strings to its collective bow. They were definitely not in the stereotypical country rock pigeonhole. How many other country rock bands put out stuff as inventively different as this? Not many, if any. A very Pure Prairie League/Firefall-style lively, tuneful country sound is delivered on the enjoyable breeze of Blue Ridge Mountain Sky. Slow country blues arrives on the equally pleasurable Too Stubborn.  You would have thought the group had gone all big band with the jaunty brassy intro to Another Cruel Love, a track that doesn't let up from its first few beats. It certainly rocks strongly and the brassy vibe puts me in mind of Van Morrison. You Ain't Foolin' Me displays that ability to lay down a lengthy rock workout once more. They really are a country band like no other. Of course, there are hints of many other artists in their sound, but they also have a clear uniqueness, something that really is all of their own. Check out that jazzy saxophone break mid-song for starters. Some of Bruce Hornsby's material in the nineties reminds me of this number as well. Was he listening to this? I reckon so.  24 Hours At A Time is pure mid-seventies country rock and most fine-soundin' it is too. Very representative of its era. Great guitar near the end as well. The album ends with possibly the most country number in the grandly melodious Fly Eagle Fly. The next four albums progress from a clear, essential country sound, such as features on the excellent Searchin' For A Rainbow and Long Hard Ride to a more commercially-oriented country pop approach as the seventies progressed. Other country bands such as Pure Prairie League and Firefall tended to follow this path too, as did The Doobie Brothers. It seemed that by 1977-78 going more mainstream was the thing to do. Doing so actually gained the group their first hit in 1977's catchy and breezy Heard It In A Love Song. The melodic and attractive flute employed in the song puts me in mind of the sound Bob Dylan used a year later in his Live At Budokan show (played there by Steve Douglas). I really, really like the über-cool, immaculately-played grooves of the Searchin' For A Rainbow album but nothing on it screams out at me, begging to be analysed, despite the jazzy, sometimes even Doobie Brothers/Little Feat funky feel of some of it. In some ways that is a shame but in other ways it sort of shows that the album has done its job as something to be consumed as a whole - a collective feeling as opposed to individual song-by-song descriptions.  From: https://thepunkpanthermusicreviews.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-marshall-tucker-band.html

The Fiery Furnaces - Navy Nurse

In a grand move to restore liner notes to their informative zenith, the inky little paper accompanying Gallowsbird's Bark offers a handful of (supposedly) autobiographical clues to The Fiery Furnaces' raucous brother/sister gambol: "Matthew encouraged Eleanor to come down in the basement to make their first Fiery Furnaces music together. Maybe he should have hit and stabbed and smashed her. But he just swore." Despite some implied tongue-in-cheekiness (and the obvious fact that relentless sibling posturing is an awfully exhausted conceit right now, even if these kids really are related), it's a surprisingly apt and insightful peep into the bright blue heart of The Fiery Furnaces' blaze: violence, dark rooms, boy/girl handholding, and big selfless compromises all vie for attention on this debut, a feisty blues-rock barn-dance with enough pings and yelps to keep everyone's little hands curled tightly into fists.
The Furnaces' electric guitar, drums, sparingly applied bass, and freewheeling piano riffs recollect everything from Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones, and Gallowsbird's Bark plays like a big, half-drunken romp through golden-era rock 'n' roll-- airy and thrilling and shifty as hell. Lyrics mostly consist of quasi-rambling witticisms that somehow come together in the delivery; Eleanor Friedberger's brash, oddly assured warble (the evenly hollered "I pierced my ears with a three-hole punch/ I ate three dozen donuts for lunch") is lovingly reminiscent of the kinds of semi-absurdist snickers that Dylan got away with in the late 60s (check the baffling-but-somehow-not credo, "The sun isn't yellow/ It's chicken," from "Tombstone Blues"). Likewise, the duo's spare, confrontational guitar riffing is grating only insofar as it jars; blues-driven, feral, and scribbling all over the page, Bark's sixteen tracks house a mess of weird, undulating musical bits that are hugely intriguing despite not always making a whole shitload of sense.
"South Is Only a Home" opens the record in a sloppy downhill tumble. It's a solid, foot-stomping burst, with honkytonk piano plonking out a declining scale and a wrestled guitar making a mess that's as thrilling as it is damaging. Both "Leaky Tunnel" and "Inca Rag/Name Game" channel Lennon/McCartney melody-gone-weird ("Inca Rag" has a piano opening that's awfully close to "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da") while "I'm Gonna Run" sees Eleanor's Jack White/Chrissie Hynde growl/coo suggestively noting, "Saw my brother coming up the hill/ I tied a beach towel around my wrist." It's all muted violence and esoteric observations skidding across wily guitar foundations, bouncy piano hits, and puttering percussion. Despite just now cutting their proper debut, the Furnaces have already burned through a pile of drummers (Ryan Sawyer bravely grips the sticks here), and the duo's brother/sister throwdown seems volatile enough to ignite just about anything seated directly in its blazing path. They spew the best kinds of sparks, though: accessible, but skewed and peculiar enough to keep you peeking nervously over your shoulder every couple of minutes.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3271-gallowsbirds-bark/

The Left Banke - Pretty Ballerina

 

Tom Finn, the last surviving member of the Left Banke’s classic lineup, died on June 27, 2020 after years of declining health. Finn’s death followed the recent passings of his former bandmates Michael Brown, George Cameron and Steve Martin Caro (billed as Steve Martin during his years with the band), as well as  songwriter/instrumentalist Tom Feher, a frequent collaborator during the band’s original run. In The Left Banke’s ’60s heyday, the New York outfit’s persistent “baroque rock” tag failed to fully convey the breadth and depth of its exquisitely textured arrangements, it’s heart-tugging three-part harmonies and its evocative, emotionally resonant songwriting. The band began its recording career at the top, launching their career with the iconic, Brown-penned single “Walk Away Renee,” which became a Top Five hit and remains an enduring, much-covered pop classic. But the inexperienced teenaged combo quickly ran afoul of a series of mishaps that helped to derail its promising career. Indeed, the Left Banke’s history is strewn with poor choices, missed opportunities, interpersonal acrimony, squandered potential and managerial neglect. Originally anchored by a fragile musical prodigy and managed by his Murry Wilson-like father, the band was prematurely destabilized by internal dissension and outside pressures. Despite this, the Left Banke’s first two albums, 1967’s Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina and 1968’s The Left Banke Too, rank with the era’s most distinctive and enduring music. And the group’s subsequent absence from the public eye, combined with the longstanding unavailability of its albums—finally remedied when Sundazed Music reissued them on CD and LP in 2011—only increased the Left Banke’s mythic stature amongst its admirers. Even in the heady musical atmosphere of 1967, “Walk Away Renee,” and its Top 20 followup “Pretty Ballerina,” also written by Brown, stood out. The Left Banke’s beguiling blend of youthful innocence, autumnal melancholy and precocious musical sophistication remains in a class of its own.  From: https://pleasekillme.com/the-left-banke-story/

Mean Mary - Iron Horse

A singer and songwriter with a gift for connecting with sounds of the past, Mean Mary (real name, Mary James) has gained a loyal following for music that draws on vintage country, bluegrass, and traditional folk with just a touch of modern-day flash. A performer since she was six years old, Mean Mary grew up on the work of country artists like Dolly Parton and Hank Williams, Jr., but as she matured, she developed a taste for American folk songs of the Civil War era, and by the time she began recording prolifically with 2006's Thank You Very Much, she was combining songs of the past with fresh material that reshaped the sounds of history with her strong, emotive, blues-influenced vocals as well as her capable instrumental skills on banjo, fiddle, and guitar. While acoustic traditionalism remained the hallmark of Mean Mary's music, on albums like 2012's Walk a Little Ways with Me and 2016's Sweet found her incorporating more contemporary themes and sounds to her performances without compromising her creative vision.
Mary James was born in Geneva, Alabama on March 22, 1980, though her family lived in Florida. Her parents were rugged individualists, and when she was young, the family relocated to Northern Minnesota not far from the Canadian border, where they lived in a makeshift tent while her father built a log cabin by hand. James became interested in music when her brother, who had joined the military, sent her folks a guitar and some tapes of country artists he liked. James especially enjoyed the Dolly Parton and Hank Williams, Jr. numbers on the tape, and after learning to sing the songs, her mother taught her to play from instructional books, and she was able to read music before she entered kindergarten. By the time she was six years old, James' family had returned to Florida and the youngster was writing and performing her own songs; she became a regular on a local Alabama television series The Country Boy Eddie Show, and one of her songs, "Mean Mary from Alabam," was popular enough that it inspired her stage name, Mean Mary. She and her family opted for home schooling as she was playing regular concerts and practicing her music up to seven hours a day; she passed high school GED when she was nine. She was in her early teens when her brother Frank James joined the act, and their repertoire began leaning to traditional folk songs and songs of the Civil War as they found a lucrative specialty performing at civil war reenactments and other events celebrating American history.
After a spell in California, where Mary and Frank tried their luck in the film industry, she relocated to Tennessee, and had returned to performing when an auto accident nearly ended her life and career. In February 2003, Mary was in the front passenger seat of a car traveling on slippery pavement during a rainstorm when the vehicle spun out of control and she was thrown against the dashboard and through the windshield. The speedy intervention of emergency medical providers saved Mary despite her injured neck, but doctors soon determined that one of her vocal cords had been paralyzed. After extensive physical therapy, Mary returned to live performing, relying on her instrumental skills since she could only sing for short periods. (Mary can play 11 instruments, including banjo, guitar, and violin.) She performed extensive vocal exercises after her doctors discovered the injured cord was showing signs of recovery, and in 2006, she was well enough to cut an album with the group Jamestown, Thank You Very Much.
A solo single, "Ding Dong Day," arrived in 2008, and Mary's first full-length album on her own, Walk a Little Ways with Me, was issued in 2012. During her time off from the road, she started writing prose, collaborating with her mother Mary James on the novel Sparrow Alone on the Housetop, published in 2011. Between 2013 and 2018, Mary would publish five more books in tandem with her mother, four novels and a spiritual memoir. Mean Mary's audience grew when she began posting videos of her performances on line, which also helped spread word about her outside the United States. Along with a busy performance schedule and much time devoted to writing, Mary was prolific as a recording artist; she brought out the solo albums Year of the Sparrow (2013) and Sweet (2016) before cutting an album with her brother Frank, 2017's Down Home. 2018's Blazing was a set of songs meant to accompany her novel Hell Is Naked, published the same year, and in 2019 Mary was back with the LP Cold.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mean-mary-mn0001761489#biography

The Hooters - Karla With a K

After two years of extensive touring in support of their first major label success, Nervous Night, the Philadelphia based group The Hooters returned to the studio to record One Way Home. Like their breakthrough predecessor, this album was co-produced by Rick Chertoff, a former executive at Columbia Records, along with the band’s primary songwriters Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman. Unlike its predecessor, One Way Home was heavily folk and Americana influenced and a testament to the Hooters desire to put the music first as well as experiment with the new influences and instruments they discovered during their extensive touring.
Although there are some similarities in songwriting and instrumentation, One Way Home is a clear step forward from Nervous Night in terms of production. That 1985 release is heavy with slick, pop, eighties style production while this 1987 album, although still clearly catchy pop, is closer to the Hooters’ signature rootsy mixed sound. Along with Bazilian and Hyman, the band consisted of rhythm guitarist John Lilly, bassist Andy King, and drummer Dave Uosikkinen, who had been with the band since its inception in 1980. Uosikkinen’s distinctive drumming is the backbone of The Hooters sound as he hits those drums hard and with an intensity that keeps the sound loud and right up front.
The album begins with “Satellite”, an example of the Hooters ability to artfully blend modern synth sounds with traditional instruments. The song was inspired by a televangelist broadcasting his message and includes some space aged synthesizer sounds. “Karla with a K” takes this one step further by making a accordion sound really hip and fresh. The song, named after a hurricane, was inspired by a street performer the band met in Louisiana.
The band also included an updated version of “Fightin’ On the Same Side” from their independent album, Amore – still upbeat but with a slower tempo and the awesome addition of accordion. “Johnny B” is a haunting song about fighting addiction with an outstanding guitar solo and harmonica accents. This song remains very popular to this day with the band’s German fans. “Hard Rockin’ Summer” was inspired by a group of “heavy metal” kids who would hang out outside the band’s rehearsal space. The title song, “One Way Home” is perhaps the best on the album. It has a heavy reggae beat, similar to the Nervous Night version of “All You Zombies”. The lyrics are dark and spiritually cryptic similar to Zombies as well. “Washington’s Day” is akin to a campfire sing a long and is rumored to be Bob Dylan’s favorite Hooters Song. It has a hook that can get a crowd swaying in unison. “Graveyard Waltz” has the same eerie feeling as that on the earlier “Where Do the Children Go?”, as both songs deal with death, depression, and thoughts of suicide.
Although One Way Home did not enjoy the mass commercial appeal of its predecessor, it did open up the European market for the band due to the popularity of “Satellite” across the Atlantic. In fact, after the band performed the song on Britain’s Top Of the Pops in December 1987, they were privileged to meet their idol Paul McCartney. A month earlier, on Thanksgiving night 1987, The Hooters headlined a show at The Spectrum in Philadelphia, which was broadcast live on MTV and Westwood One radio network simultaneously, perhaps the absolute pinnacle of their American success.  From: https://www.classicrockreview.com/2012/10/1987-hooters-one-way-home/