Bold, hand-clappy Francophone electropop trio fronted by Isabelle LeDoussal, whose snotty, sing-song tones lend a human face to the band’s mechanized synth-punk jingles. Think Bis meets Plastic Betrand, with a little splash of robotic sixties pop chanteuserie.
So, yeah… I have been absent for a very long time and I want to apologize. Not that folks have been wearing out the "refresh" buttons waiting for a new "A Beautiful, Ugly Noise" entry to show up, but none-the-less, I feel like the kid who hasn’t been coming to practice and can’t figure out why he is always sitting on the bench during all the games. I promise to do better, coach.
Where have I been? Well here, there, ultimately nowhere. I will shamelessly plug Waxflight, an albums-worth of songs I have recorded with lots of help from musician friends who are much more talented than myself and who I love dearly. I hope to have it all cleaned up and shiny by the time the Mayan Calendar cycles us out of existence, so I have a good 6 years left, right? Anyways, stop by the take a listen and be my friend.
Last Sunday I went to La Fonda on Wilshire Blvd for the first time since I moved to LA in 1997. Good Lord that was some slammin’ Mariachi. I want to go back when the Mariachi Divas are playing. How in the world could you possibly go wrong with an all female Mariachi Band?
Well, I am back, this is a promise. It’s been so long this is almost like another introduction. I have lots of records that I want to write about and those will be coming up soon, soon, soon.
Put me back in the game, coach.
-Craig
So like a month or three back this Vancouver based mag called The Nerve wanted to do a primer on what they call “Cozmic Country” and asked me to recommend some records and artists for it. So I did. I reprint them here one by one, and if savvy enough, day by day:
Sun City Girls- Jacks Creek (1994)
Upon release this album was reviled by the more avant hipster snob crowd. As time passes, its
While listening to my Honeybus greatest hits collection and battling writer’s block for the umpteenth time my memory sparked on something interesting: the little-known and heretofore ignored connection between Rockpile and the should-have-been legendary Honeybus.
Being the music freaks I know you are I have no doubt you know about Rockpile and it’s members Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner and Terry Williams and are fans of both the band and the individual careers of the members. Now, if you need refreshing on all that, just peruse earlier editions of this blog and you will find a few tidbits of info included therein.
The Honeybus, on the other hand, I have never written about before even though I have become a big fan since picking up an obscure comp a few years ago.
The ‘Bus never really got the fame they deserved, having only one hit in England in 1968 called ‘I Can’t Let Maggie Go’ (which was a brilliant albeit radical slice of Brit-pop) and then breaking up soon afterward. Both the group and its’ fans knew the band was ahead of its’ time and the main cogs of the band, vocalist Colin Hare and guitarist Pete Dello, toyed with the idea of starting it up again a few years after the band split. Their solo careers not really taking off probably played a huge part. Dello actually had left music to become a music teacher not long after their hit petered out. Groups had quick life spans in those days. One hit and out? Jeezus.
After securing money from an interested party the two creative iconoclasts decided to create two solo albums instead of a Honeybus group album. Both Hare and Dello played on each other’s albums with various members of the defunct Honeybus helping out including a guitarist who had filled in for a missing guitar player on a couple of Honeybus last few gigs: Billy Bremner, who plays on Hare’s album.
While I am going to devote seperate blogs to each of these albums because they are each brilliant in their own way and deserve to be analyzed and appreciated, in brief I would describe Hare’s album as a rootsy Band-like gem with flashes of power pop brilliance (no doubt somewhat inspired by Bremner’s economical but tasty guitar licks) and Dello’s album to be a wacky psychedelic masterpiece with titles like Harry The Earwig and Uptight Basil (to give you an idea of how “out there” it is). Though okay as a vocalist, Dello’s tenuous vocal style adds just a little more weirdness to the proceedings as you are never quite sure if he will be able to hold on to the melody or not.
Both of these albums have recently been reissued on CD by Hanky Panky Records (www.hankypankyrecords.com) with a whack of bonus tracks added to each. While I am partial to Hare’s because of Hare’s excellent vocals and Bremner’s excitingly brilliant guitar playing, Dello’s is quite a treat as well and both are worth picking up if you are into a fanciful look at 60’s psychedelic pop and country. Or, if you are interested in checking out a member of Rockpile long before he started playing for the best roots rock/pub rock band ever.
Your choice. I’ve made mine. Got them both and you should too.
Who’s Harry the Earwig?
The Music Nerd Knows……..
E- is for Emerals, his first band
M- is for melody, and ain’t his sweet
I- is for Id (see his interview in Scram #18)
T- is for tempo, which the multi-instrumentalist kept
T- is for tape, which when rolling can capture gems
R- is for "Really Wanted You," which is pretty near perfect
H- is for Hawthorne, his hometown
O- is for "Only Lovers Decide," little heard but loverly
D- is for daisy, daisy fresh to be precise
E- is for easy, because he makes it look that way
S- is for sixties and seventies, when he recorded mainly 
Put em all together and they spell EMITT RHODES, a good friend of the Scram gang, and subject of one of our more jaw-droppingly frank interviews. In honor of Emitt, we’ve created a gallery of rare photos from his personal archives up on flickr, which you may peruse at leisure. Many of these only appeared in Scram #18, and others have never been publically seen at all–including a few from a roll of unprinted slide film circa 1968. Thanks, Emitt, for all the great pix! And if you like deliriously catchy melodic pop, you owe it to your ears to pick up his disks, in thrift stores or import CDs.
Now, maybe it was its utterly polarizing – not to mention polarized – cover art, its hotcha buncha proto-fusion guitar solos, or maybe even (as I’d like to think) the fact that none other than Captain Beefheart scored a Billboard album chart placing courtesy of his magnificent Rats showcase “Willie The Pimp.” Yet whatever the cases may be, this album’s opening three and a half minutes, “Peaches En Regalia,” quickly became a hep FM staple throughout those glorious Nixon years (before becoming totally co-opted as late night chat show breaks thanks to Paul Shaffer and his ilk), and before he could say “hmmmm,” FZ found himself on the road to eventual artistic Stadium Rock ruin and, as a direct result, the disintegration of his first, classic, and BEST-ever batch of manic musical Mothers. Pity…
Still, despite its current digital sheen (wherein such essential elements as Ian Underwood’s mightily majestic “organus maximus,” not to mention “Peaches’” concluding Hare Krishna finger-cymbals, seem to have been all but obliterated during remix by FRANK’S LEAD GUITAR), Hot Rats still recalls to what’s left of my mind glad-happy High School daze spent with partner-in-teen-mischief Richard, crashing the local stoners’ TV parties and serving them up mayo-on-catfood sandwiches …all to the hot-rockin’ accompaniment of “The Gumbo Variations,” y’know.
“Memories”…..
Mark Phillips, aka Sono Oto, made it easy on lazy rock crits when he packed his EP of six songs about apples with so many related qualities. I could just riff on the crisp melodies, juicy hooks and all-American charms of this set, but tunes this strong deserve more thoughtful feedback. From the bittersweet pop shimmers of "Granny Smith" (where the titular fruit is sweet but irradiated, with swift decay a worrying possibility) to the childlike nostalgia of "Malus Domestica," which recalls Epic Soundtracks’ solo piano turns, to the sprightly, paranoiac "Northern Spy," Sono Oto’s applesongs reflect a smart and seductive pop craftsmanship that’d be a hit in the veggie aisle or anywhere.
Hear free tunes and learn more at myspace.com/sonooto
The early success of the Beatles spawned a slew of nice boy popsters on the foggy side of the pond, and “David and Jonathan” (actually Rogers Cook and Greenaway, writing their own songs but performing pseudonymously from 1965-68) were so especially nice that George Martin himself produced their sides and let them have a crack at “Michelle,” a top 20 hit in the US. In time, the duo would reclaim their names and become important producer-songwriters (“You’ve Got Your Troubles,” “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”), but first they dropped themselves into the gumball machine, with this turn offering idealistic folkster crooning over harpsichord (“Lovers of the World Unite”), the next nonsense big band bubblepop silliness (“Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzennellenbogen By The Sea”), and then anxious Beatle-penned melodrama (“She’s Leaving Home”). Dig lush production, Chad, Jeremy, Peter, Gordon and the Freddie? Then this, luv, is for you.
John Phillips – “John, The Wolf King Of L.A.” (Dunhill, 1970/ Varese Sarabande, 2006)
Papa John
cult of the week makes a tentative return this week…watch these spaces!
artist: S.Y.P.H.
title: Am Rhein
year: 1987
label: Atatak Records
personnel: Uwe Jahnke (guitars), Harry Rag (vocals), Jojo Wolter (bass), Ralf Bauerfeind (druns)
tracklisting: 11. frau im harem, die matchbox-generation, mein esel ist kaputt, oliver, but the girls, schwesterlein, platz da, julischka, pop horror, geteert un gefedert, sturm auf dich, taris
further info: https://www.syph.de
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