REVIEW: Wes Hollywood, dynamite and the Lipstick EP

T he first music that I’m listening to in 2019 is the latest album from Wes Hollywood, dynamite (ironic that he titles it using the deliberately understated e e cummings style of lower-case letters where a capital letter would be used; as Di says, the album is DYNAMITE!!), and the 4-

song EP Lipstick, both released in the back-half of 2018. Wes and I hung out a lot back in the ‘90s; to this day, he’s a great like-minded guy with excellent taste in music, a killer record collection, and a wonderful sense of humor. Razor & Die have been playing his great new album almost weekly, and it’s been knocking me out with how great it is. In this transitional post-physical-media sometimes-digital-only music landscape that we find ourselves in, it’s both easier (if you are willing to buy only the digital version) and harder (if you NEED to have a certain album on a certain format, like CD or LP) to procure an artist’s new album. This long preamble is my lead-in to say I was gonna buy Wes’s new album, and was looking into how to do that, when Wes (the saint that he is) gifted me with a copy of his new LP and the new EP. And ladies and gentlemen, I must confess that Di Kulka was right when she told me that Wes’s new releases are AWESOME!! KILLER!! His music is so tuneful that you can’t swing a cat without whacking into a really affecting melody with insightful lyrics. Vocally, he reminds me of Frankie Safes O'Malley and the late Tommy Keene (two of my favorite singers). Musically I guess you can call it power-pop, but if that genre rubs you the wrong way (too limiting, too twee, whatever), then I recant it and say it’s just tuneful rock music made by a guy who loves music for people who love music and who love when music makes them happy, helps them take a load off. Wes and his band make awesome, accomplished music that reminds me of Marshall Crenshaw, Tommy Keene, Buddy Holly, but doesn’t flat-out steal from them. Really, I can say with full confidence that there is absolutely no downside if you were to buy the new Wes Hollywood album *and* EP for the brand new year. And tell him Tommy Durkin sent ya!! 😉

https://weshollywood.bandcamp.com/ 

https://m.soundcloud.com/weshollywoodmusic 

CD Review: Back Alley Riot, Damned If You Do

Right off the bat, you need to know that Back Alley Riot brings it.  Their 2015 release Damned If You Do rocks, it cooks, it takes no prisoners.  The danger in all music, but somehow a bit more in the musical zip code where Back Alley Riot lives, is repeating what's come before and merely going through the motions.  That type of lazy genre re-tread two-step just isn't good enough for bandleader Mike Nakis and his band of scowling scallywags.  Their punkabilly songs are full of energy, passion, and grit. They even dare to tackle bigger issues like the disappearing middle-class.  Nakis sings with such passion that you can't help but believe that every word of "Lake Street Lockdown" is true, even if they embellished.  "Piss and Pride" and "Blue Collar Army" are full of swagger and confidence, autobiographical without being pretentious.  Live, they kill it as well.  Do your music collection a favor, and pick up the latest Back Alley Riot CD.  And get ready to let yer adrenaline flow.

I've been thinking...

I've been an ecstatic consumer of music for all my life, but for some weird reason, there's a little voice in my head pulling at me, telling me that it's time to contribute some of my own to the world. I have no idea if it's going to be any good, or if anyone will want to ever listen to it more than once out of curiosity. But maybe that isn't the only reason to make music anyway. There's always a very good chance the songs I write will really suck. Maybe those songs never make it out of the basement. But then again, what if some of the songs I write DON'T suck? 

And if I'm going to do this, I don't want to play it safe. I look at Geddy Lee of Rush, and the singing that he did on 2112. There's absolutely no way that he can sing those songs easily today; his voice has changed. I'm sure a voice in his head realizes this and says, "what the hell was I thinking when I wrote that song?" I want to write songs like that. Songs that might be easy to perform at 42 might be difficult for me to perform at 72. I'll need to not take that into consideration when I write. I need to write today's songs today, future feasibility be damned.

So what am I waiting for?

For Scott Miller, a tribute.

I honestly don’t know how to properly pay tribute to one of the musicians whose art really touches my soul, without getting too maudlin, too overtly complimentary, or any other excessive use of positive descriptor, or appear self-serving (I promise you that’s not my intent at all), so I’m just gonna go full-stream-of-consciousness ahead with what feels right. Maybe I will go back and edit accordingly; maybe I won’t.

Scott Miller was the brain behind two incredibly wonderful Northern California-based groups whose music (a wonderful, slightly psychedelic, sometimes experimental, highly intelligent, somewhat quirky, always wonderful brand of power pop) still holds me in thrall: Game Theory and The Loud Family. Those groups lasted between 1982 or so until 2000, and released a total of seventeen albums and EPs. After that, Scott released the occasional track online here and there, performed the occasional gigs only in the Bay Area, near his home, released an album with Anton Barbeau in 2006, wrote a book which came out in 2010, and lived a life as a father and database programmer / consultant. All of this came to a rather abrupt end on April 15, 2013 with his untimely passing. Scott was 53.

Those are the bald, passionless facts, but they don’t explain what Scott Miller and his music meant to me, so let me somewhat autobiographically attempt to make sense of that part. Game Theory first came to my attention by accident while I was still in college. I got to like the two CDs by Animal Logic, which was a supergroup trio composed of renowned jazz bassist Stanley Clarke, ex-drummer from the Police Stewart Copeland, and a newcomer singer/songwriter Deborah Holland. When I asked my friend Andy if he knew whether or not Deborah Holland had done anything prior to Animal Logic, he thought on it for a couple of weeks, then told me he thought she’d been in Game Theory. But after scanning the backs of the Game Theory CDs (this was when you could still somewhat easily find them in used CD stores, before their relative scarcity drove the prices up to sky-high levels), I discovered no mention of Deborah Holland’s name, and later determined that a) Deborah Holland had not indeed done anything professionally prior to Animal Logic, and b) that my friend Andy must have confused Deborah Holland with Game Theory’s Donnette Thayer, two women whose singing styles are only slightly similar to each other.

The next time that Scott Miller crossed my attention was in 1994, when I was working as an assistant manager at the Rogers Park Coconuts. By this point, I had become a massive Big Star fan, and had heard that both of Scott Miller’s groups had done Big Star cover versions (Game Theory had done “You Can’t Have Me” on Real Nighttime; The Loud Family had covered my favorite Big Star song “Back Of A Car” on their EP Slouching Towards Liverpool). An Alias Records retail publicist called the store and asked if we would be willing to play current Alias releases in-store. I said sure, and isn’t The Loud Family on your label? “Why yes, and the song you’re looking for is on this particular CD, do you want me to send it along too?” Why sure! So along with Knapsack and Tommy Keene CDs (I think we got an Archers Of Loaf CD, but I’m not sure), there was Slouching Towards Liverpool. The Big Star cover version was indeed great, but the songs on it that really got me hooked were “Aerodeleria” and “Slit My Wrists” (both presented on that EP as live-in-studio versions which had been recorded practically up the street from Rogers Park, at WNUR in Evanston). Both were really great, quirky, complex, and musically wonderful songs, and I had to have more. I special-ordered the debut Loud Family CD Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, and fell for Scott Miller’s music HARD. Wow!!!! What an amazing album. It is still one of my top 5 albums of all time (don’t ask me what’s my #1; it’s a constantly changing thing depending on the day). For an extended review of this album, see my blog review of the album here. Next, I found a copy of the quintessential Game Theory LP Lolita Nation, and let’s just say I liberated it from its existing place and gave it a good home. I’m not always proud of that, but it is what it is, ahem. I will say it wasn’t shoplifting, and let me leave it at that. While working at that Coconuts, my boss realized he had a CD copy of Lolita Nation (which by that point HAD become rare, and highly sought after), and sold it to me very cheaply. The catch? It had a rather severely water-damaged cover, but played perfectly. (A few years later I had one of those moments where God truly must have been smiling down on me, and managed to score a perfect copy of the CD for $7.99 in a record store that obviously didn’t know the CD’s true market worth, thank God). I became a part of the online fan community Loud Fans, and little by little, I began accumulating the entire catalog of Game Theory and Loud Family CDs, and learned that in 1995, he would soon be releasing a new CD, Interbabe Concern. I special ordered that, and got it on the day it was released. Another winner. It wasn’t as accessible on first listen as Plants and Birds… was, but ultimately in the long term just as satisfying.

I also was able to catch the band live on that tour. Back during this time, I placed a personal premium on trying to get as many autographs of my favorite musicians as I could. But I also wanted to ask Scott to explain a lyric of his that had me stumped. In his song “Idiot Son”, Scott sings a line, “And I saw real estate that I would not call land”, which perplexed me. So before the concert started, I approached Scott, asked him for his autograph on both my Plants and Birds… CD and my Lolita Nation LP, and asked him if he could shed some light on that lyric. He told me that it had to do with land whose practical use had been exhausted, and the only purpose that it served was its financial value. He told me the song contained not only an environmental concern, but images he’d compiled from a dream. He’d used dream imagery for a few of his songs, he told me. Wow… Later on, we talked some more, and he’d enthusiastically told me that he’d been reading a book called I and Thou, written by a Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. He was really fascinated by what he was reading, and had me read a passage of the book. On first blush, the passage he had me read and also his interpretation of it were heady stuff, very intellectual, but at no point during his very intelligent explanation of the philosophy did he use his obvious intelligence in an arrogant way. Rather, you could see his very real enthusiasm for it, and his want to share that with me. I was really touched that he’d spent so much time speaking with a fanboy like me. I honestly think I got to know him somewhat well that night. And the concert was amazing too, of course. Scott and his band really gave it their all. Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt was at that show, standing a little behind me, and when Scott launched into “Like A Girl Jesus”, she sang along with the first two lines of the song. It was an unintentional duet, and while that wouldn’t mean much to most people, I thought it was cool that here are two musicians whose works mean a lot to me singing along together. And I was there to hear it.

The Loud Family’s next release in 1997 was Days For Days, and on that album, he gained a new keyboardist in Alison Faith-Levy, but also a new drummer who looked familiar to long-time fans… Gil Ray, who had been the long-time drummer in Game Theory!! We fans were ecstatic at this turn of events; Gil is a hell of a drummer. With both Gil and Alison on board, it not only allowed the band to put some Game Theory songs back into their live set which Donnette Thayer had originally sung background vocals, but retained some of that male/female dynamic interplay which frankly enhanced the Game Theory albums. This lineup (with longtime bassist Kenny Kessel) would remain the same until the group called it a day in 2000. The tour behind Days For Days was also great, and Scott signed more autographs for me and talked with me some more.

In 2000, The Loud Family’s contract with Alias Records was coming to a natural close, and it would not be renewed (Alias was not the record company it once had been, and Scott’s hipster cachet had faded somewhat, certainly not due to lack of quality music). Knowing this, not only did I buy the last Loud Family CD Attractive Nuisance at Tower Records’ midnight sale the day it was released, but I made a point to catch not only the Chicago show of that tour but the New York City show as well. At that time, my brother was a student at Pratt Art Institute, and gladly loaned me the couch in his dorm room. Airfare was inexpensive, since my father worked for the airline and got it virtually free. Both shows were great, and I think Scott still remembered me. I remember asking him before the NYC show started if he minded if I took photos; he smiled, and gave me a look that said, “Are you kidding? Go for it!” I never want to take that question for granted with any artist, let alone one who I really respected.

And for the Loud Family, that was it, sort of. The record company 125 Records put out two wonderful documents after the fact: the live CD From Ritual To Romance, compiled from recordings made on the Interbabe Concern and Days For Days tours, and the wonderful live DVD entitled Loud Family Live 2000. On the occasion of the release of the DVD, I asked Sue at 125 Records if Scott would mind if I did a long-form interview with him in Glorious Noise webzine to promote the DVD. Scott said yes, and I submitted a rather long list of what I thought were atypical questions to Scott via email, all of which he answered candidly, thoroughly, and with quite a bit of humor. The finished article was part history of Game Theory and Loud Family, and partly my review of his CDs. Scott wrote me a note complimenting my mini-history of his groups, saying that he felt that it was one of the most extensive articles written about his groups to that point. I was on cloud nine that he took the time and wrote that to me.

In 2006, Scott and Anton Barbeau released the collaborative CD What If It Works. Scott graciously submitted to another email interview for Glorious Noise with me, in which I tried to bring up to speed what had happened in the interim, as well as promote the CD. During the course of that interview, he made some joking reference to being happy that What If It Works was outselling the Grease 2 soundtrack on Amazon. To my horror, my editor sort of tacked on his own paragraph to the end of the article I submitted (without noting that it was from him, not me) what he thought was his own jokey rejoinder saying that it wasn’t so, that as of the publication of the article, Grease 2 was indeed still outselling What If It Works. I emailed Scott to apologize for it, especially since it was being passed off as something I had written when the opposite was true. Scott took it in stride, and said something to the effect that he had always had better success making his music than promoting it.

And that was that. I kept up reading his online Ask Scott column, the serialized Music: What Happened? columns as they came out, and watched enviously from Chicago as Scott would perform the occasional show in the San Francisco area where he lived, but not tour outside of California. I knew that his computer day job he’d held during his musical career was now something he could concentrate on more fully, as well as getting married and having two wonderful daughters.

I guess I always hoped that Scott might be coaxed back into recording, releasing another album and touring nationally behind it. But it wasn’t to be. Scott’s passing is still hurting me incredibly; not only is there now a musical void, knowing that such a great guy like Scott is no longer with us really hurts. I honestly have never been this affected by the passing of any other of my musical heroes; maybe because Scott was always so generous with his time, his thoughts, his humor with all of his fans, the fact that he never pulled a “star turn” and tried to distance himself from us, maybe that’s why not only I but so many of us who are fans of his music, maybe that’s why we’re still in such shock and heart sick. Scott’s passing doesn’t make sense; he was too young. I know his music, and the memories we have of him will live on forever (we fans will see that he achieves immortality in that sense), but like another fan's tribute to him alluded to, I think many of us would trade in every last LP / CD / mp3 we own if it meant he were still here. This one hurts, and for me, it probably will for a really long time. Thank you Scott for your generosity in so many areas both musically and personally; may you go gently to the other side, and please tell everyone there that you meet that we miss them, too.

More coming soon

I promise!!

signed, the management.

Joe Walsh - "Dreams"

Just when you think you have one of your favorite artists more-or-less pegged, they throw you a wonderful curve. Joe Walsh is one of those artists I've declared a favorite of mine, based purely on the strength of his unique guitarin' skills, his fun-loving attitude which is infectious (and infused in his music), and the strength of his two Asylum-era albums: "But Seriously, Folks..." and There Goes The Neighborhood. I own a whole lot of his solo albums (my big gaps are the individual James Gang albums and the live album You Can't Argue With A Sick Mind; everything else I own in one format or another, sometimes multiple formats). Two recent additions are vinyl copies of both So What and The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get, both on original ABC Dunhill. The former has some great tunes, but sort of let me down. The latter has found ways to quietly blow my mind...

This song in particular, "Dreams", is just such a wonderful departure from what one would expect of a "typical" Joe Walsh song. In this song, there are elements of Todd Rundgren circa Runt: Ballad Of Todd Rundgren, Carole King, and Leon Russell. Yet the results are also very much of Joe Walsh. It's fascinating that the lead instrument is piano; Joe's known primarily as a force to be reckoned with on guitar, yet songs like this one and "Pretty Maids In A Row" off of Hotel California remind the world that he's no slouch writing (and peforming) a song on piano.

I guess that I've sort of placed a lower priority on discovering the Smoker You Drink... album until recently, maybe because "Rocky Mountain Way" is such a cliche song. Yet I've always loved "Meadows", which you think would have encouraged me to want to find out more about the source LP. I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that it's taken me as long as it has to really get to know this album, and I heartily recommend that you pick up a copy of The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get.


Off-topic:I'm sorry I'm sort of slacking on Blogvember; life is funny, and so are one's priorities. Don't count me out yet, I'm just nowhere near as prolific as I'd hoped.

My Stack 'O Tunes for 11/3

Part of a high-volume blog month is the cliche filler post. At the very least, they call attention to tunes we didn't know existed, or merely serve to illuminate the headspace of the blogger. Here's a quick look at what today's tuneage consists of:

• Gene Chandler, "Groovy Situation" / "Not The Marrying Kind": Gene Chandler is most famous for "Duke of Earl", which was recorded for Vee-Jay in Chicago. When that label crashed and burned in 1966, Chandler went up the street to Mercury Records (also, at that time, in Chicago), and recorded this big hit ("Groovy Situation", that is). The flip side is the one that always hooked me as a kid; I was given this record by my Aunt Margie, from whom a very large portion of my singles collection stems. She thought I might like it (keep in mind I was, like, nine years old). Listening back to "Marrying Kind", it's just as great as I remember it.


• Jerry Butler and Betty Everett, "Let It Be Me": This chestnut comes to my attention via my recent acquisition of The Story of Vee-Jay, a budget-priced double CD of the late great Chicago record company. The song is bathed in symphonic string crescendos worthy of Mr. Spector; Butler and Everett make what could have been a bathetic paean of love instead be a soaring plea that if Heaven is your love, may it never end. Gorgeous.


• Peter, Paul, and Mary, "Flora": The B-side to "Blowin' In The Wind" is a quickly-strummed tale of a faithless lover and of jealousy turned to murder. Great little song.


• The Ventures, "Walk, Don't Run '64": The surf-guitar classic gets updated, though not necessarily improved or ruined. It's still a great song, regardless of the overlaid Farfisa organ and echoey arrangememts.


• Apocalypse Hoboken, Daterape Nation EP: I've had this one in my collection since the '90s. I'd played one cut of the EP ("Pop Sensibilities") pretty regularly at the time of its release, but couldn't delve too much further (for on-air purposes, anyway) due to its punk-rock-but-not-FCC-friendly language. I finally revisited it, knowing that they might have hailed from my current hometown, and it's awesome pop-punk as sung by Johnny Rotten's cousin. Awesome; I wonder if this ever made it onto CD. My copy is a double 7", in a gatefold sleeve.

P.S.: MSWord 2010 really stinks as an ad-hoc HTML editor!!