The Outsiders: Time Won’t Let Me (1966)

January 27, 2010

The Outsiders

Despite having four hit singles and recording four albums, The Outsiders are remembered today for this one song, Time Won’t Let Me, which reached number 5 on the American charts in 1966.

Guitarist Tom King started the band in Cleveland in 1965. When King left the band in 1968, vocalist Sonny Geraci and Walter Nims attempted to continue recording under The Outsiders name. A legal battle ensued. After King finally won the rights to the name in 1970, Geraci and Nims formed a new called Climax. The new band recorded the number 1 hit Precious and Few. Today, Geraci tours under the name Sonny Geraci and the Outsiders.

“I never met Frank Sinatra…never met The Beatles. I did meet The Beach Boys. I would have loved to have met Frank Sinatra.”

Sonny Geraci

Time Won’t Let Me fuses elements of British rock and Motown. The horn arrangement gives the song a blues sound, while the jangly guitars were influenced by the British Invasion bands.

Search The Outsiders on Amazon.com.


Died Pretty: True Fools Fall (1990)

May 25, 2009

died-prettyWhen I interviewed Paul Kelly in Adelaide, Australia in 1992, I asked him what bands he was listening to. In his response, he mentioned Died Pretty, along with The Go-Betweens and The Triffids. When I got back to the U.S., I made an effort to check them out. I’m glad I did, because it exposed me to a musical avenue that I barely knew existed at the time.

I fully understand that Died Pretty is an acquired taste. They were Australia’s answer to R.E.M., if you mutated them and transferred them to the Bizarro universe (indeed, Died Pretty opened for R.E.M. on the Australian leg of their 1994 tour). Moving right along…

Siinger Ron Peno and guitarist Brett Myers formed the band in Sydney in early 1984. During their career, which lasted until 2002, they released nine albums and four EPs. True Fools Fall is off the album Every Brilliant Eye.

Search Died Pretty on Amazon.com.


Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel: Star For a Week (1992)

May 17, 2009

steve_harleyWhat would the seventies have been without Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel?

Steve was born Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice in Deptford, South London, on February 27, 1951. He first performed with Cockney Rebel, then dissolved that band and started Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. Steve has also recorded solo projects as Steve Harley.

He’s had many hits throughout his career, including Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me), which reached number one on the UK charts in 1975. Other hits include Judy Teen, Mr. Soft, Mr. Raffles, (Man It Was Mean), Here Comes The Sun, Love’s a Prima Donna, Irresistible, and Phantom of  the  Opera (with Sarah Brightman).

Steve was and is well-known in the UK and Europe but you’d probably be hard-pressed to find people in the U.S. who’ve heard of him. His live shows always feature the audience singing along to Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me).

One of my favorite songs by Steve Harley is Star For a Week, which appeared on the album Yes You Can. The song is based on the actual story of troubled youth in Norfolk who began a crime spree because he wanted to be famous. This video clip comes from a 1989 UK concert.

Search Amazon.com for Steve Harley.


Sinéad Lohan: Whatever It Takes (1998)

May 9, 2009

Sinéad LohanSinéad Lohan is one of music’s enigmatic figure. She appeared on the international scene with her second album, No Mermaid, had a couple of minor hits, had a baby, and then vanished.

Lohan is Irish. Her first album, Who Do You Think I Am (1995), was a hit in her native Ireland. No Mermaid was released in 1998 and garnered some critical acclaim, as well as producing a couple of minor hits. The title track from No Mermaid was used in the movie Message In a Bottle.

“Nobody knows what I write about exactly. Nobody knows why I write and nobody ever sees me write. If I lived in a different century, they might have burned me as a witch for expressing myself the way I do. The funny thing is, I don’t understand most of the songs when I write them and then they become obviously relevant to what I’m going through a few months or a year later. They’re like predictions and then like comforts.”

Sinéad Lohan

Lohan had a baby in 2001 and stopped recording. A new album that was supposed to have been released in 2007 has never materialized. Lohan’s website hasn’t been updated since 2001.

Whatever It Takes comes from the album No Mermaid. Listen to how good this song is. It’s catchy and poppy without being treacly, and you can hear a Celtic influence.

Message to Sinéad Lohan: Please come back.

Search Amazon.com for Sinéad Lohan.


Katell Keineg: There You Go (1997)

May 3, 2009

katell-keinegListening to Katell Keineg, one is constantly aware of the duality in her music: modern and seemingly ancient, melodic with dissonant elements, soft but intense, deeply personal and unknowable.

Katell was born in Brittany, grew up in Cardiff, Wales, and currently lives in Dublin. When she was signed by Elektra Records in 1993, she was poised to become the “next big thing.” Unfortunately, management changes at Elektra left her with a contract to a record company that little cared about marketing her music, preferring to concentrate their efforts on pop music, which was becoming increasingly popular.

So Katell’s music remains mostly hidden to the world. I consider myself a fan and I sometimes don’t find out about new releases for months, if not years, after they’re released. Katell doesn’t seem much concerned with marketing, nor is there any real effort on anyone’s part to even keep her existing fans up-to-date. I signed up for her mailing list years ago through her website and I don’t remember getting any mail as a result. Katell released a 4-song EP called Y Gwyneb Iau/Trouble in January of this year, and I only found out about it while researching this post.

“Well, I guess it is a bit weird, getting up onstage and emoting — not that my songs are autobiographical! But at a gig, the exposure, the emotion, is through the conduit of a song. And, most important, it’s not just me; there’s an audience participating; we’re all there in the room together. That’s where the contact is. That’s where the religious element is.”

Katell Keineg, New York Times article, July 2, 2006

There You Go is from the album Jet, released in 1997. This video was recorded at The Living Room in New York City in 2006.

As much as I hate to say it, the word is never going to get out about Katell, one of the most gifted singer-songwriters of our time. Why? Funny you should ask. I’ll tell you the big secret:

Because music is dead.

Music died a while ago, and it went out with a whimper, not a bang. There are no longer any rock radio stations, other than stations that play “oldies” and alternative stations, which are an alternative to good music, mostly. There are stations like JACK FM that play a mix of music, but they never front-announce or back-announce the music (not that they’d ever play anything by Katell). How can they? They don’t have any deejays. Even the stations with deejays don’t announce tracks. Not that it would matter, since they don’t play anything worth listening to anyway.

Music is dead, unless your idea of music is rap or bullshit pop music (and if it is, I feel sorry for you). Music is dead, unless you call the phony crap that oozes out of American Idol music.

Music is dead, and Katell Keineg is too good, too honest, too intelligent, and too real to have a place in a music industry that is run by the cartel of gangsters that calls itself the RIAA.

So Katell continues to make the music that she wants to make, the way she wants to make it. And that’s why you probably never heard of her. And you’re the worse off for it.

Search Amazon.com for Katell Keineg

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House of Love – Shine On (1990), I Don’t Know Why I Love You (1990)

April 25, 2009

houseoflove230x178By the time I heard of House of Love, they had just broken up. I was in a CD store in Brookline, MA back when I was living in Boston. There was music playing in the store, something wonderful that I’d never heard before. I asked the guy at the counter what it was. He told me it was House of Love. I don’t remember which album it was, maybe A Spy in the House of Love. The copy they were playing was for sale so I bought it. Then I hunted down the rest of the band’s CDs.

There are bands that you like for awhile but then get tired of and eventually stop listening to. House of Love isn’t one of these bands. If you like their music, you’ll always like their music. Over 15 years after I first heard them, I still marvel at how good they were (Are? More on this later). They’re one of my all-time favorite bands.

House of Love formed in London in 1986. The original lineup was:

  • Guy Chadwick (vocals, guitar)
  • Terry Bickers (guitar)
  • Andrea Heukamp (vocals, guitar)
  • Pete Evans (drums)
  • Christian Groothuizen (bass)

There were a number of lineup changes, most notably when Terry Bickers left the band due to a fallout with Guy Chadwick over drugs. The band’s albums are difficult to keep track of, as none of the albums had titles until 1991 (I know this sounds like Spinal Tap but I’m not making this up).

…I was very ambitious, but in a blind way, I have to say. Looking back, I wasn’t sussed enough. I didn’t grasp what had to be done. It was pretty blind. I just had a lot of energy, musical energy, but when it came down to the business of actually developing, consolidating and keeping close as a group, I completely —— up that side of things. And it’s a very, very hard business, and if you are going to be a big star, obviously you need loads of talent, but you’ve got to be very shrewd, or you’ve got to have great management.

Guy Chadwick, 2007 interview

House of Love saw some success in England, with albums and singles reaching the top 40 or just below top 40. The band has never had any success in the United States, where they remain largely unknown.

House of love split up in 1993. Singer Guy Chadwick released one solo album, Lazy, Soft, and Slow.

In 2005, surprising everyone, Chadwick and Bickers reunited for a House of Love album called Days Run Away and a tour of the UK and Ireland.

A new album, House of Love – Live At The BBC was recently released in the UK and is scheduled for American release on April 28, 2009. The CD contains material recorded at BBC Studios between 1991 and 1992.

hol

This week, we have two featured songs. The first, Shine On, appears on six different albums in different forms. including live. The versions of both songs are from the album known as Butterfly or Fontana.

House of Love

MP3 download

The House of Love

CD


Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Rattlesnakes (1984)

April 19, 2009
Rattlesnakes

The geniuses at Universal Music disabled embedding for this video. I guess they don't want anyone promoting their music. Click the image to open YouTube in a new window.

Lloyd ColeLloyd Cole flew under my radar. I’d heard of him, but I wasn’t all that familiar with his music until sometime last year when I bought a couple of his albums, 1984-1989, and Music in a Foreign Language. How’d I miss him? I mean, I currently have 15,122 songs on my hard drive, which works about to about 1,260 albums if you allow for 12 songs on an album. Dunno, I guess it’s just one of those things.

Lloyd is British and currently lives in Massachusetts. His band The Commotions released their first album, Rattlesnakes, in 1984. The video presented here is the title track from the album.

The Commotions released two more albums before disbanding in 1989.

“I made myself write songs because that’s what you had to do if you wanted to be like Marc (Bolan) or David Bowie. My primary motivation was, in retrospect, wanting to be famous, which is quite sad but probably fairly common. Then you get to the point where you have to get a different motivation to carry on. My only goal at first was to be on Top of the Pops and on the cover of the NME.”

Interview, The Guardian, 2004

After moving to New York, Lloyd embarked on a solo career, although he released an album with New York musicians (including Jill Sobule) in 2000 under the name of The Negatives. He contributed one of the memorable tracks on 1991’s Leonard Cohen tribute album I’m Your Fan, with a cover of Chelsea Hotel.

I e-mailed Cole’s management to ask if there was a mailing list notifying fans of upcoming gigs but my e-mail was met with stony silence.

Buy From Amazon.com.

 


Paul Kelly – Before Too Long (1986)

April 12, 2009

paul-kellyPaul Kelly has received much recognition in his native Australia—he was inducted into the the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame in 1997. He remains less well-known in the United States, where the current top 20 includes albums by Lady GaGa, Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, and the rap “musicians” du jour.

Talk, the first album by Paul Kelly and the Dots, was released in 1981. Subsequent bands and projects include Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls, Paul Kelly and the Messengers, Paul Kelly (solo), Paul Kelly and the Stormwater Boys,
Uncle Bill, Professor Ratbaggy, Paul Kelly and the Boon Companions, and
Stardust Five. Paul co-wrote the hit song Treaty with Aboriginal rock band Yothu Yindi and wrote material for other musicians. He also recorded soundtracks for the films Lantana and One Night the Moon.

…Lyrics are important but the most beautiful lyrics in the world are going to be no good unless you’ve got a decent tune.

Paul Kelly, Dirty Linen Interview, 1992

I had the good fortune to interview Paul during the 1992 Adelaide Festival, after a performance of Funerals and Circuses, a play written by the late Aboriginal playwright Roger Bennett. Paul acted and sang in the play. Here’s a slightly expanded version of the interview, which originally ran in the October/November issue of Dirty Linen.

After I interviewed Paul, he was kind enough to arrange for me to pick up some of his CDs at Mushroom Records in Sydney. When I got back to Boston, where I was living at the time, I listened to the CDs and really enjoyed them. One Sunday, about two weeks after I’d returned from Australia, I decided to go to Tower Records to see if I could find any more of Paul’s music.

I walked into the CD section of the store and although their was a divider with his name on it, they were out of CDs. Back in those days, they were still selling cassette tapes, so I went into the cassette section of the store to see if they had any of Paul Kelly’s albums on cassette.

I saw this guy bending over to pick something off the floor that he must have dropped. All I could see was the top of his head facing me and I thought that from the top of this guy’s head, he looked like Paul Kelly. The guy stood up and my jaw dropped in disbelief—it was him! I’d just interviewed him two weeks earlier in Australia and I ran into him in a record store in Boston, on the other side of the planet. What were the odds of that?

Holy shit,” I said, “It really is a small world.” I asked him what he was doing in Boston and it turned out that he’d played a gig the night before and was still in town. Unfortunately, I hadn’t heard about the gig or I would have gone.

The video presented here is Before Too Long, which appears on the album Gossip.

Click image to buy Songs from the South, Vols. 1-2.

Click image to buy Songs from the South, Vols. 1-2.


Colin Hay – Are You Lookin’ at Me? (2007)

April 4, 2009

colin-hayYou may remember Colin Hay from his days with Men at Work, the pop music darlings of the 80’s. They saw meteoric success, massive overplay, and like a meteor, they crashed and burned.

But Colin never stopped making music. As he says in this song, “I was built to last.” Two appearances on the TV show Scrubs helped rekindle interest in his music.

Zach Braff used to come and see me play at Largo — before he was in Scrubs actually — and had a copy of my album for quite a few years. He then got the gig in Scrubs and said to me one night that he would try and get some of my songs placed in the music.

Colin Hay, Santa Barbara Independent interview

Colin’s wife, Cecilia Noël provides backup vocals on his songs and at his live shows (where she’s notable for her expressive dancing).  She also appears in this video.

Colin makes good music that, for the most part, doesn’t get the exposure that it deserves. The death of rock radio has made it hard for any rock act to get new music heard.

A new album is due out soon.

Buy Are You Lookin At Me? CD

Buy Are You Lookin' At Me? CD


Oysterband – Molly Bond (1986)

March 28, 2009

oysterband

Originally known as “The Oyster Band,” Oysterband is a folk-rock band formed in Canterbury, UK, some time around 1976. The band’s music fuzes rock and British folk music, and the result is electifying.

Unfortunately, the band is virtually unknown in the U.S. Back in the day when there were rock radio stations, they wouldn’t play folk rock. The only way American listeners would have been able to hear the band on the radio would have been on a college station.

The band’s current lineup is:

  • Chopper – bass guitar, cello, vocals
  • John Jones – melodeon, lead vocals
  • Alan Prosser – guitars, viola, vocals
  • Ian Telfer – fiddle, English concertina, vocals
  • Dil Davies – drums

I was lucky enough to see the band in Providence, RI back in the early 90s (during what was probably one of their only American tours) and to meet them. I have a friend in Boston who knows the band so we got to hang out with them before and after the gig. They’re about the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.

“We’ve got a song called “On The Edge” which is a rant against globalization and in particular against McDonalds…You can go into the Arctic Circle and they’ll be a McDonalds that’ll serve exactly the same food as you get in New Zealand. What is the point of that? It takes away all the fun of traveling and all the differences between the countries, and the food’s shite anyway.”

— Chopper, Folking.com interview, 2001

The band moves effortlessly between straight-on Celtic-influenced rock and traditional ballads. The ballads, such as the one presented here, showcase singer John Jones, who has one of the finest singing voices in the world.

Molly Bond tells the story of a hunter who accidentally shoots and kills his beloved Molly, mistaking her for a swan. At his trial, Molly’s ghost appears to the judge and explains that it was an accident.

This video comes from the band’s 2003 25th anniversary concert in London.

Molly Bond
(Trad. Arr. Oysterband)

Lyrics from: Step Outside

Come all you young gallants that delight in a gun
Beware of your shooting at the setting of the sun

It happened one evening in a large shower of hail
When under a bower my love was concealed

He apron flew around her, I took her as a swan
And I shot my own darling at the setting of the sun

As I walked up to her and found it was she
My limbs they grew weary and my eyes couldn’t see

The ring on her finger, most bitterly I cried
O Molly, if you were living, you’d've been my fond bride

Home to my father like lightning I did run
Saying Father, dearest father, do you know what I’ve done?

Her apron flew around her, I took her as a swan
And I shot my own darling at the setting of the sun

Her apron flew around her, I took her as a swan
And I shot my own darling, and where shall I run?

His father in the corner with his hair turning grey
O my dear Jimmy, don’t you run away

Stay in this country until the trial comes on
You never shall be hung by the laws of this land

The day of the trial to the judge she appeared
As God is my witness young Jimmy must go clear

My apron flew around me, he took me as a swan
And I know his heart lies bleeding for his own Molly Bond

Molly Bond appears on the albums Step Outside and Alive And Acoustic (no longer available). The live version is slightly different than the original album version—I think it’s in a different key.

Buy Meet You There CD.

Buy Meet You There CD.

Buy 25th Anniversary Concert

Buy 25th Anniversary Concert DVD