Random musical tidbits from That Music Guy™...

[bayonetbrant]

New Tunes
1. If you haven't checked out anything from The Winery Dogs, Blackberry Smoke, Iron and Wine, or Adrenaline Mob, you're missing some very good music out there.

2.  A-Mob had an all-covers EP that has some interesting selections on it, but of note were the following: Kill the King (Rainbow), The Mob Rules (Black Sabbath), and Stand Up and Shout (Dio).  Three tunes from different bands, all of which were co/written and sung by RJD.  Clearly, A-Mob's got some influences they were wanting to acknowledge.  It's almost disappointing that Kill the King is one of the least popular (at least by iTunes download tracking), because it's an excellent rendition of an otherwise criminally underrated song.

3.  There was a free download of a tune called "Recovery" by a British dude named Frank Turner that sounds like a totally quintessential mid-80s BritPop tune with a borderline-punk backbeat.  The thundering drumroll right by the first chorus is just screaming inside my head that it sounds just like ___________________.  That's the problem, I know that drum roll and the hammering guitar that comes in right on top of it from somewhere but can't place it for the life of me.  It's not "Bigmouth Strikes Again" and it's nothing I've got from The Jam.  It sounds like it should be from The Jam, but it's not.  This is going to drive me stark-raving ape-shit for months now until I figure it out.

Vintage Tunes

4.  Rediscovery – if you get past the bad hair, there really was some excellent songwriting, riffs, and performances with conviction in the late-80s / early-90s metal scene.  Put together a playlist of Kid Ego, No Bed of Roses, Miss Mystery, Madeline, I Don't Believe in Love, Dropping Like Flies, Some Lie For Love (live if you can find it), Scared, Lady Red Light, 7 Wishes, When the Rain Comes, Sweet Little Sister, Blooze, Walkin' Shoes, I Keep On Believing, Rumblin' Train, Dancing on Coals, and 10000 Lovers in One.  There's some great music out there to be had if you look for it.

5.  Ozzy's best solo album for the underlying guitar work?  No contest: No More Tears.  It was Zakk's second album with Ozzy, and SIN, Desire, Zombie Stomp, AVH, and Mr Tinkertrain are all total guitar-god perfection.  Notice we haven't even mentioned the 'hits' from this album you're stuck with on the radio all the time – Mama I'm Coming Home, Road to Nowhere, or the title track.

[bayonetbrant]

The Satellites

When I was in high school, The Georgia Satellites released "In the Land of Salvation and Sin."  Anyone who thinks they were just some one-hit wonder gimmick band from the 80s really needs to check out this album.  It's an absolutely epic showcase of expansive songwriting, quality riffs, clever lyrics that manage to surprise and delight while still retaining their blue-collar ethos, and a variety of musical styles that really showcase a band with much, much greater range than they were ever given credit for.  There's a reason that about 6 of the songs ended up on their Greatest Hits CD.

The opening tune sets the tone as well as any opening riff in any bar-band concert you've ever been to, and "Bottle of Tears" is a perfect second song, before they build toward "All Over But the Crying" and "Six Years Gone" – a pair of tour de force anthems that deserved the arena treatment the Satellites were never destined to get.  The acoustic "Another Chance" at the end of side one showed that everyone in the band could sing, and if you parse out the lines from each of the singers and rearrange them by the guy singing them, really shows a new side of simple little song, as each singer gets to exhibit some personality cleverly interspersed throughout the song.

"Sweet Blue Midnight" is the perfect redneck making-out-in-the-pickup-truck-after-a-sixer tune that's probably responsible for a whole lot of broken bra clasps across the deep South (or at least it should be).   "Days Gone By" feels like a more wistful "Six Years Gone" – as though Dan Baird didn't quite get all the pain and longing out of his heart on the first song, and decided to get even more deeply personal and introspective in the second song.  Not one to linger too much on sentimentality, Baird takes the band through a variety of formulaic-but-well-executed A-chord romps like "Bring Down the Hammer" and "Slaughterhouse" and "Crazy"; "Games People Play" is a perfect drunken-audience-singalong.  The riff-laden escapist fantasy of "Dan Takes Five" isn't just the band leader escaping a bad relationship, it's a true valedictory sign-off from band as a whole, as it's clear from the southbound dust-trails that they're headed to nowhere and you're not invited, with this album as their last love-letter to where they came from, and no clues where they're going.

It's funny that when I was in college, about 2-3 years after this album was released, I'd crank up the headphones with "Six Years Gone" and "Another Chance" and think back about occasional nights at the lake with a nostalgic eye toward a past that never really existed for me.  But now, 20+ years later, those same songs will bring up the exact same mental pictures that never really existed, and never happened since then, either.  It's almost as if it's the soundtrack to someone else's youth that I just got to watch through occasional hazy videos.

While the Satellites never got around to following this one up, there was a musical cousin that plays out very much like the sequel they never quite recorded.  When he left G'n'R, Izzy Stradlin put together the Ju-Ju Hounds as his backing band for his first album, and brought in ex-Sats fretman Rick Richards as the lead guitarist.  Rick's guitar sound, phrasing, chords, riffs, and general demeanor on Izzy's first album are direct descendants of what he did on "In the Land of Salvation and Sin" and back-to-back, you'd almost think the same band just changed lead singers and decided to pay more homage to the Rolling Stones than Lynyrd Skynyrd.  The long solos from "Take a Look at the Guy" and "Cutting a Rug" could almost serve a bridges between the two albums, and "Shuffle it All" is every bit as expansive and sweeping as "All Over But the Cryin".  "Train Tracks" sounds like someone threw a new motif over top of "I Dunno"s wild energy, "Time Gone By" crosses "Another Chance" with the motifs of "Six Years Gone" and "Days Gone By" and "Come on Now Inside" is the mellow send-off that offers a fade-out counterpoint to "Dan Takes Five" burnout.

Two albums, two different bands, both terribly under-rated, and both infused with a common musical and thematic thread that almost makes them the incestual second-cousins-related-on-both-sides-of-the-family that everyone loves to tease about in the deep South.  If you're a fan of well-written, thoughtful, immaculately arranged Southern rock, you could do a lot worse than mixing these two albums into a playlist, and shuffling the iPod a bit.  In fact, you should just Shuffle it All and think of Days Gone By.

[Staggerwing]

The thundering drumroll right by the first chorus is just screaming inside my head that it sounds just like ___________________.  That's the problem, I know that drum roll and the hammering guitar that comes in right on top of it from somewhere but can't place it for the life of me.  It's not "Bigmouth Strikes Again" and it's nothing I've got from The Jam.  It sounds like it should be from The Jam, but it's not.  This is going to drive me stark-raving ape-shit for months now until I figure it out.

Brant, you suck >:( Now I'm going to have that stupid drumroll/guitar riff in my head because I also got that 'just out of memory's reach' feeling.  :(

OH! Wait! Nick Lowe! Try this:

It's also been covered by Dave Edmund as well as Rockpile (which has included both Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds at times...)

[bayonetbrant]

actually, that's not it, but that's not a bad tune :)

[bayonetbrant]

These guys
http://www.rocktopia.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2232:candy-whatever-happened-to-fun&catid=910:cd-reviews&Itemid=121
http://wilfullyobscure.blogspot.se/2009/07/candy-whatever-happened-to-demos-1986.html

became these guys

and later evolved into these guys
http://www.popmatters.com/review/loveless-tale/

Sucker Punched by the Fist of Fate: The Loveless

You might have expected the favourite album of a PopMatters writer like myself to be one of the classics by the usual suspects of the musical canon—the Beatles, the Stones, or Nirvana. However, because of a desire to both defy convention and inform about a band that people don't know enough about, I have chosen a band from the opposite end of that spectrum: the Loveless.


Yeah, I know, you've never heard of them, right? Well that may be the case, but although the now defunct New York four-piece were not exactly a household name, and despite the fact their one and only opus, A Tale of Gin and Salvation did not signal a sea change in the musical climate in the same way as way albums like Nevermind, the band still takes pride of place in my CD rack.


It's an album so good, I bought it twice, and until now, I'd never really analysed the reasons why I like it so much. Obviously, its superlative lyrics, unforgettable melodies and the perfect musical chemistry between the band members make it one I never tire of, but on a general level the album represents much more than just great music: A Tale of Gin and Salvation is a sophisticated collection that was ahead of its time in many ways, and one that stands as an example of the artistic triumph of the independent band over the corporate machine.


The Loveless were John Schubert on drums, Jonathan Daniel on bass, John Ceparano on guitars, and Shane on vocals. Everyone except Ceparano were the surviving 'veterans' of '80s pop-rock band Candy (who scored a minor hit with their 1985 Mercury power pop album Whatever Happened To Fun), and '90s pop-metal act Electric Angels (who released one self titled record on Atlantic towards the end of the hard rock era). Both bands had fallen victim to unfortunate timing, and also the fickle nature of major record labels. Both were largely ignored by the music buying public, despite the songwriting talent of Daniel shining through on songs like "Whatever Happened To Fun" and "True Love and Other Fairytales" to name but two.


But Jonathan Daniel wasn't about to give up his musical career because of a record label. In a move that mirrored the punk spirit and ethos of bands that influenced him as a teenager, the demise of Electric Angels convinced the bassist to gather together Schubert and Shane and enlist the help of New York musician John Ceparano to join him in a band free from the creative shackles of a major label that wasn't supportive, and the result of long nights and spare time weekends spent independently in the studio was astonishing.


A Tale of Gin and Salvation was released in 1995, and everything about it reeks of quality—the film noir concept artwork, the sharp suits and ultra-cool look of the band, the witty, acerbic lyrics and cast-iron melodies, and also the shift in emphasis from raw, intelligent hard rock to a slick, polished, and sophisticated power pop sound that provided the perfect vehicle for the songwriting brilliance of Jonathan Daniel. Utilising resources such as the fledgling Internet for marketing, and a home studio for recording, it was a low-budget do-it-yourself production that sounded fabulous, and was packaged just the way the band wanted it. More importantly, it was exactly the type of record that a major label exec wouldn't know what to do with.


Yet in enigmatic vocalist Shane, The Loveless possessed the quintessential pop star; a precocious talent with a sensational voice, and the rest of the band were a perfect fit for each other. Drummer John Schubert pounds the skins with conviction when necessary, yet his playing is wonderfully understated on occasion, and John Ceparano on guitar shows tremendous talent, versatility and originality in colouring the songs with some wonderful lead flourishes and jangle-infused rhythms.


Of course, it's those Jonathan Daniel compositions that really put the icing on the cake, and without exception the 12 cuts on the album are consistently clever, cynical songs that are smooth yet edgy, and melancholic yet darkly funny. Opening with the raucous anthem "If I Only Knew Then", the bassist's penchant for carefully crafted, sardonic lyrics that deliver a wry, humorous twist becomes clear: "The story of his life is a book of regrets / The might-have-beens and the days he'd rather forget / So busy jumping someone else's train / He always missed the boat / Another missed opportunity, another song somebody else wrote".


Not a word is wasted, every line evokes a familiar feeling of recognition with the emotion and the clichéd phrase you might expect to hear is actually given a neat flip, making these songs something truly different. The delicate "I Almost Miss You" follows the same pattern before the finest three-minute pop song never to have made the charts appears in the form of the simply superb "The Return of the Ex-Girlfriend".


The dual theme of disappointment and growing older are brilliantly explored in "Growing Up Has Let Me Down" ("There's a pretty girl I used to know / Unforgettable, she's all but forgotten now / There's a rainbow with no pot of gold / Growing up has let me down"), and then the energetic melancholy of "Bittersweet Dreams" takes centre stage. "Lies My Father Told Me" is brilliantly acidic and possibly the darkest cut on the record, but is contrasted by the gentle acoustics of "Heaven, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades".


The conventional rock ballad is turned on its head in "Can't Stand Loving You" while "Postcards From My Heart" raises the tempo and the humour levels again. Then the country-tinged strains of the expertly arranged "Wish I Could Fly" and the heavy power-pop of "Sex, Drugs and Rock N Roll Are Dead" brilliantly close out the album and confirm once more Daniel's mastery of songwriting.


By borrowing from what came before, and injecting those influences with diversity, style and wit, the Loveless created an album that deserved to have been the soundtrack for a disenfranchised and disenchanted generation. Yet like the album, the band was all over far too quickly. The music industry of 1995 was too busy making stars out of the likes of Hootie and the Blowfish to 'get' the band's classic sound, and as most independent bands find out, without the deep pockets of a major label to fund promotion and radio play, the chances of wider recognition are slim. Despite A Tale of Gin and Salvation gaining rave reviews from anyone that heard it, and after a handful of live shows in NYC, the Loveless split up a few months following the release of the album, and its various members found a life outside music.


Or at least some of them did. The strange thing is—and I'm sure the irony of this situation is not lost on him—after experiencing harsh treatment by the business side of the industry whilst playing in bands, Jonathan Daniel now works very successfully in it as a manager, for acts as diverse as American Hi-Fi, the Cure, Butch Walker, and Sade. John Ceparano returned to his swing-pop band Jet Set Six, Shane hasn't been heard of much since and John Schubert hung up his sticks to go back to college and concentrate on a career at Time Inc. in New York City.


However, in the same way as other bands I could name that narrowly missed out on the fame and fortune that should have been rightfully theirs, the Loveless have stood the test of time. I know of fans that were lucky enough to grab a copy of A Tale of Gin and Salvation who still e-mail Jonathan Daniel asking him (in hope more than expectation) if a follow-up will be released, and the album itself still sounds remarkably fresh today. Indeed, if this article has convinced you to rush out and buy a copy, you'll have a real search on your hands. EBay is probably your best option, but suffice to say you'll never find either of my copies of this irreplaceable disc on there .

yes, I'm totally grooving to the Electric Love Candy playlist on the iPod today

[bayonetbrant]

the bootleg follow-up.  There's at least a half-dozen awesome tunes on here and you just wish they'd had a more fleshed-out production on them...
A bunch of them later showed up in slightly altered forms on The Loveless "Tale of Gin and Salvation" (see review above)

This was excellent early-90s hard rock with clever lyrics and more topics than just "let's get laid"

5. God´s children 17:09
8. Def generation 28:29
9. Color of hate 32:48
11. New York city girl 40:56
14. Hung up on a pin up girl 54:10
16. Ain´t going home with you 1:04:03
17. Cheap lipstick 1:07:30

[Skwerl]

I just discovered Blackberry Smoke a couple of months ago - very interesting band. 

Based on your description I'm also very interested in the Adrenaline Mob- I'm a Rainbow (and all around Ronnie Dio) obsessive! 

[bayonetbrant]

Adrenaline Mob is a pretty heavy group, but not like Damageplan where it's barely-controlled noise.  It's got some great groove to it

Plus, who the hell covers a Badlands tune?  But it rocks :)

[Skwerl]

Some easy listening:

[bayonetbrant]

so apparently the Stage Dolls are still active.

http://www.stagedolls.com/news.html

not particularly doll-like, either