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New Concept
Stomp!
Esox Music
www.esoxpop.com
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
There’s a new band in town, just off the Lufthansa jetliner from Germany: New Concept sound like they just stepped out of a time warp from a club in what was then West Berlin, circa 1982. Maybe the members were catching a show by Ultravox, Cabaret Voltaire or Spandau Ballet. That’s because when listening to their new CD, Stomp!, memories of glorious, carefree nights and sunny days that were the early 1980s are evoked.
The label that ostensibly puts out their CDs is Esox Pop, which means that, essentially, they self-released it. New Concept is, I guess, such a new concept that they don’t even (as of this writing, anyway) have their own website. They do, however, have a MySpace page, where one can learn everything they wanted to know about the band but were afraid to ask, with pictures too! There, on the band’s MySpace page, one is exposed to all things New Concept: you get a bio, their discography, a play list with about 4 or 5 songs; a smattering of singles that can be heard, no strings attached, before making any commitments. With Stomp!, New Concept’s discography is up to two full-length CDs, two EPs, as well as a couple “digi-singles”.
Catchy, hook-laden riffs abound here; there’s a certain je ne sais quois about it that keeps one listening on and on, like a snake to a charmer. Examples of this include the title track, which is the opening cut as well. The third song, “Drowning” is a downshifted, smart pop ballad, smoothly concocted, the result being a laconic, dead man’s love song. “Slow Motion” keeps the slow pace steady, but with twangy guitar noodling throughout, a sort of musical arabesque that adds some soul amidst icy layers of synthesizers and the like.
Without sounding too dated or stale, the band – consciously or unconsciously – has a decidedly “retro” vibe to it. By “retro”, I mean the early 1980s (in the 80s, “retro” referred to all things 1960s, in the 90s it was widened to include the 70s and so on). It’s hard to tell whether they are deliberately reliving that rollercoaster of a decade by emulating the bands they listened to, growing up or if the style comes unconsciously, having been so conditioned in them that they don’t even realize whence their music comes. The answer, I think, lies somewhere in that gray middle area. One thing is definite, though: while the “concept” may not be so “new”, the music they play is, like the best stuff their musical heroes put out, filled with élan and verve, a willful joyride through fields of Mars.
What else can I say? They are neither iconoclasts, breaking ground on a new archetype, dragging in a new paradigm, et cetera, nor do they flat out suck, a vague term, so let me explain: they aren’t overly derivative, not overly pompous and narcissistic (remember the Stone Roses?) and they seem sincere enough to be taken seriously. Time will tell what’s in store for New Concept. The ultimate test, of course, is “how do they sound live? Playing live will show whether they are self-sufficient or if the “brilliance” of their music was only due to studio enhancements. -KM
Rivulets
d e m o s
Silber Records, 2010
www.silbermedia.com
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
This Rivulets, with their new debut, d e m o s is an example of what’s being bandied about as “slow-core”, which really translates into a brash attitude through the complex lyrics accompanied by a hushed, sparse background, which consists of an acoustic guitar.
Among fans of Nick Drake, Alex Chilton, Tim Buckley or the late, great Elliott Smith (Neil Young too, but that goes without saying), Rivulets will find a sympathetic ear. The music has the same laconic, laid back acoustic picking overlaid by cynical, sometimes bitter but always honest, from the heart lyrics.
The tunes on d e m o s are introspective and sometimes it seems that the one looking inward doesn’t like what he sees, such are the laments on this CD.
The quiet, sparse tone on this CD is one of things that makes it stand out. One can absorb the angst, the hopelessness and depression that’s evident on d e m o s, a good catharsis for said feelings, because we don’t need another “rock & roll suicide” – at least not from someone with great talent and erudition (why is it that only the best kill themselves- Belushi, Morrison, Cobain, E. Smith, Darby Crash, et al – while the worst of the worst just keep on churning out more and more garbage – literally refuse that should be flushed into the sewer, no-talents like Britney Spears and all the unforgettable drones that have totally ruined pop music in the mainstream, making it so that one has to go underground to find the most sincere, best written (that’s not an opinion, either, it’s just obvious) music.
I’d trade those retarded Jonas Brother’s lives to get Bill Hicks (one of the best stand up comics since Lenny Bruce, no shit!) and Elliot Smith back in a hot minute.
And don’t get me started on the freak show that surrounded Michael Jackson’s death – boy, that family sure milked the death for every penny they could get out of it. How pathetic.
Anyway, getting back to serious music, Rivulets are a band that deserve careful listen. Even the quiet, acoustic melodies accompanying the voice have a verve that doesn’t bore, but enhances the mood of the lyrics.
Picking out which songs to promote is an impossibility here, when they’re all equally poignant. But, just to give you a little bite to nibble on, if you go to their MySpace page or whatever website they have now, you should take a listen to “Swans”, “Sick Love”, “Four Weeks” and “Tugboat”, in which the singer decries all the extraneous crap that he doesn’t want to do; he just wants to be with you. “Happy New Year” is a jaded note to whomever that this new year will be just as bad as last year, no doubt, like in real life.
This is one that will definitely be an underground classic, appealing to sensitive souls. -KM
Moodring
Scared of Ferret
Silber Records
www.silbermedia.com
Review by Kent Manthie
On their Silber Records debut CD, Scared of Ferret, Moodring is set free to do anything (and everything) they want. And they certainly go to town on this disc. It’s so rich and bountiful in its layers of sounds – mostly “effects”, a “kaos pad” as well as “hand percussion”, some electronic drum machine workings and some kind of hybrid of both.
Moodring is the brainchild of Mae Starr and Monte Trent Allen, who used to play in Rollerball and was, at first, a “side project”, where the two could show off their own stuff, on their own. Moodring was the result of this split, which, of course, became permanent.
Between 2005 and 2007, Starr and Allen put out six limited run releases on the Nilla Cat label. In 2007 Jesse Stevens joined the band, at first helping out in live shows, playing the flute and drums, but he was retained, therefore added a new element or set of elements, since he plays the flute, drums and those ubiquitous “effects”, which abound on the disc, but they don’t dominate the songs, rather everything complements everything else.
On Scared of Ferret, the debut full-length CD for Silber Records, Stevens is around and also acted as recording engineer. Also, the band is now a quartet, with the addition of Michael Braun Hamilton to the band. Hamilton plays a bass clarinet plugged into an effects pedal and – wow! Hip, dude – the added dynamism of Hamilton’s jazzy horn mixed in there is a boon to their sound.
If one was comparing Moodring to another medium of art, I’d like to think that it would be to Abstract Expressionism and its predecessors. It’s not quite as outre as earlier art “schools” in the early 20th Century, like Dada or Surrealism, but the symbolism of Abstract Expressionism that was expressed in its seeming simplicity or its abstractness that, no doubt to some, appeared to be nonsensical or mocking, et cetera and not seeing or understanding how certain things represent other things and that these “symbols” can represent political overtones, social critiques, introverted ideas or paeans to loved ones or even nothing at all, which is the funniest of them all because those are the ones that art critics purport to give a “meaning to” when none exists.
The first few tunes on Scared of Ferret are slow and tres experimental. Songs like the opener, “Pole Cat Intro” and “Rintin Fire” are rather atonal and structured with chaos and “noise” a la Sonic Youth at their best, live but sans the urbane grittiness of the latter.
On cut three, “#9”, Mae’s vocalizing kicks in and only gets stronger and stronger as the album goes on. Song six, “Colin Wilson” is a slowed-down, haunting tune that reminds one a bit of the early dreaminess of the Jesus and Mary Chain.
The songs that really stand out are “Into the Doom”, which is really groovy and features Hamilton, who gets a chance to really shine here, on his bass clarinet, as well as a fiery vocalization from Starr. It’s probably the best tune on here. But that is a purely personal thing, subject to change at any time. Also good is the aforementioned “Colin Wilson”, “Bulbul Tarang”, a tangy jazzy-psych-out mix, whose eclectic sound makes it all the more inviting; “The Weasel” is pure gravy, while “Ricketts” has a bitchin’ drum solo in the middle and is a nice penultimate track, while we go out with “Horse” a dirge-like composition that mixes the “primitive ambience” of the first part of the CD with the jazzy, neo-psychedelia of songs 6-10. - KM
Locrian
Territories
Silber Records, 2009
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Locrian is back at it again. Territories is the first release I’ve heard since I last reviewed them for a cassette tape version of an album entitled Burying the Carnival/Exhuming the Carnival, a tape with one song on each side, each clocking in at around 17 or 18 minutes, a metal-tinged-stoner-jam session-thing going on, but not entirely without structure; a “skeleton” if you will, of a musical idea layered with blankets of quicksand and bright sheets of white clouds and sunbeams, both in their respective “corners” but also juxtaposition of which gives Burying the Carnival/Exhuming the Carnival a unique touch and similarly, the promise of a productive and interesting future to come for these guys.
That promise came to pass on Territories, their latest release, on Silber Records. This time I got a CD instead of the novelty of a cassette tape – I say “novelty” because cassette tapes were still around .
They’ve started to diversify, got some stuff taken care of and in the process they wrote some new, original songs, not just in that they’re their tunes, but stylistically it seems to be peerless. Territories has a bit more musical comprehension to it; gone are the long-winded, thunderous, nihilistic jams of the previous work already mentioned, which is missed, I gotta tell ya. I guess Locrian had some new ideas about their direction or else maybe they just finally found someone that could write lyrics (! – ha ha- just kidding)
One track that’s definitely worth bringing up from the past, on Burying the Carnival/Exhuming the Carnival is track number three. It’s entitled “Procession of Ancestral Brutalism”. It sounds like it could be part of a larger overall concept – you know, a screwed up childhood that leads to one abusing themselves and those around him/her, but at the same time, if there’s brilliance in that chaotic little mind of theirs, there will always be the chance to document and write, write, write as much as you can – when you’re on the street, riding the bus, get home from taking a walk or something like that, so that all through the debauchery and depravity – which are usually the best years of one’s life! – things can be accomplished – poetry or prose can be written, songs can be written and all of the above can be done. In fact, many times it’s the chaos in our lives and around us as well as the stress and the catharsis we crave that makes one’s art come alive with passion.
Well, back to Territories. I think that Locrian has come a good distance since the cassette of theirs I reviewed a couple years ago. They have a tighter musical stance, ergo, the songs go somewhere and there isn’t just an endless drone with distorted guitars tweeking out over the horizon, also, the disc is no doubt longer, which is evidence of some effort poured into this as well as a cohesiveness that you can tell is genuine – even through the dark-brooding evil ambience that Locrian does so well.
If you hate metal and don’t want anything to do with it and don’t even like talented bands or any of that newer, so-called “experimental” metal/industrial stuff, then I could say, with confidence, that you wouldn’t like Territories, but all you headbangers and thrashers out there will dig this disc a lot and as soon as they come to your town to play a show you’ll be one of the first to hop on your deck and skate down to the box office to get yourself tickets. -KM
White Widow
Black Heart
Tullo Records
www.whitewidowmusic.com
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
One of the new “queens” (and I’m not talking Greenich Village stuff here, now) of NYC is Carla Patullo. Brooklyn born and bred, Ms. Patullo finally broke through with an armful of songs, an acoustic guitar and a voice that’s both gritty and angelic, right into a deal with Tullo Tunes, an indie label out of New York.
Her debut album, under the name White Widow, is Black Heart. She is a one-woman-band, so I guess the idea is to make it seem like there is a multiplicity of wholes but instead there is just one “whole” who plays all the instruments, writes all the songs (except for the one cover of a Stevie Nicks song, “Lady of the Mountain”, a haunting, epic-poem-style tune, not unlike the Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill” in subject matter.
Songs like “Quitter” and “Give or Take” show a gritty, edgier side of Carla, but the aforementioned “Lady of the Mountain” and “In Your Life” show off a mellower, if not melancholy, side of her. I’d say she comes across as someone that fans of Ani DeFranco and/or Victoria Williams would probably like, since they are two singers that come to mind when I hear White Widow.
I’m sure a live show would be a breathtaking experience. Would there/is there a backup band for live shows? Or does she go out there Neil Young-like, with guitar and harp hooked up to your mouth and do an acoustic show or maybe a typical show is a little of both. That would be what I would like to see. -KM
The John Byrne Band
After the Wake
Self-Released, 2010
www.johnbyrneband.com
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Irishman John Byrne has brought over with him some amazing tales of life and semi-autobiographical tunes. After the Wake is the name of his debut CD and it’s a good listen
What is helpful about the sheet that’s included in the CD sleeve is that each song is written about, reading, in a paragraph or two, whatever was the impetus for writing the song, like for instance, about “Boys Forget the Whale (or John Byrne’s 115th Dream about Bob Dylan)”, which is a very good song and, in fact, is basically a cover of “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” from Bringing it All Back Home, line by line he rewrote it to, I suppose, be original and to change things around a bit to change the perspective of things, going from Bob’s POV to seeing things through Byrne’s eyes. From the liner notes on a sheet inside the CD sleeve there is written, about this song, among other things, that although it is still a “story”, a lot of it rings painfully true to Byrne. I mean Byrne really can keep up the pace that Dylan laid down on the original, although Byrne’s version has different lyrics. The song is based on the legendary meeting between Bob Dylan & Woody Guthrie, when the former met the latter in the hospital, it is written there that it’s based on a “story, just a story…”, autobiographical, Byrne himself, I guess, had sought out Dylan to play a song or two of his own and see what kind of feedback he’d get – maybe Bob spurned him or something, one can only speculate about the “painfully true…” remark in the aforementioned liner notes.
Dylan’s always been known to have been a strange cat, so, hey, don’t take it personally.
After the Wake is a CD that is filled with a variety of tunes, folkish in some way, a couple that have a distinct Irish flavor to them as well as just plain, well, tunes.
The first cut is a pretty good way to start off the disc. “In Your Savior’s Place” is purported to have been based on a romantic story the songwriter had worked on once in the past. Also worth mentioning is “It’s a Gas That Makes You Laugh Before it Kills You”, a very catchy tune that you’ll want to listen to over and over again – listen for it to pop up on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic” show (or request that they play it!), or on one of the many great college-based radio stations that are always “left of the dial” (in the 88.’s).
The songs range from the folkish to a more traditional Irish sound to some funky white boy blues, giving the disc a well-rounded sound a disc -KM.
 Alter Bridge
Live in Amsterdam
DC3 Music Group
www.alterbridge.com
Review by Kent Manthie
So, first there was a serious, creative and original (non-christian) rock band from Seattle that called themselves Pearl Jam. They got big really fast – in fact, their debut CD, Ten had about six or seven hits on there that you heard on the radio all the time. After this success the copycats came out of the woodwork – first it was Stone(d) Temple Pilots, who were mediocre at best, but Scott Weiland had just enough of that sly baritone to make them sound like a Pearl Jam for the hard-rock, teenager set. OK, then both bands stuck around awhile, making album after album until both bands exhausted themselves, creatively. Then in the first few years of this decade came around such derivatives as Creed, Staind and a band who even stole their name from an Alice in Chains song – Godsmack and so on and so on. Now Pearl Jam hardly even get their new songs played on the radio anymore – just the old “classics”, like “Even Flow”, “Jeremy”, “Black” and from their sophomore effort, VS., “Animal” and “Daughter” – but since Eddie Vedder climbed out of the marketable pigeonhole, Pearl Jam seem like persona non grata. That’s kind of ironic, seeing as they started the whole thing.
Anyway that brings us to this Creed-hybrid, Alter Bridge. I say “hybrid” because Alter Bridge is basically Creed minus Scott Stapp, their singer. Now, singing for them is this guitar player named Myles Kennedy. In case you never knew this, Creed has always had this underbelly of Christianity to them – a perverse, almost subliminal, cult-like Christianity. Simultaneously released with their new CD, Blackbird, is a concert DVD, entitled, Live in Amsterdam.
The death of Creed, I must confess, was news to me. I never knew they broke up and to tell you the truth, couldn’t care less. But now with this new incarnation of Creed, Alter Bridge, watch out – they want to convert you en masse. They don’t shoot dope or get drunk before their shows, but have prayer circles and other weird little jeezuz rituals beforehand. The first release they recorded, One Day Remains was a big hit, press releases say that critics hailed it as a great record, but I wonder which critics’ opinions they were talking about – blurb writers for People magazine or real rock critics for SPIN magazine, New Musical Express or Maximum Rock & Roll (may that mag rest in peace), because any self-respecting music critic that knows what they’re talking about would’ve said that it was derivative and not something that stuck out in one’s memory. Even lyrically it sounds like a bunch of cut & pasted words from a “banal rock band lyric machine” website.
Because of the waning popularity for bands like Creed and their ilk, which, like any other passing fad, eventually comes to an end, their original record label, Wind-Up records dropped them, leaving them to twist in the wind, that is, until they finally were picked up by Major label devils Universal-Republic (an arm of GE). That’s the label that released their latest CD, Blackbird, which, surprisingly, sounds a lot like One Day Remains.
Their new DVD, just out, Live in Amsterdam shows Alter Bridge rocking and rolling. Luckily they weren’t throwing bibles into the crowd or quoting bible verses. Seriously though, guitarists Kennedy and Tremonti nicely complement each other, riffing off each other, making for some intense guitar duets and the other two – the rhythm section of Brian Marshall on drums and Scott Phillips on Bass are a great anchor, especially the booming bass that has a great effect on the band’s overall style in the concert.
The live performance comes off without a hitch. The music rolls along seamlessly, you see a typical milquetoast-band rocking out, with all the attendant moves and grooves. -KM
Whose Running the congress? The elected representatives or the Catholic Church and the Insurance Companies?
Analysis by Kent Manthie
Harry Reid as well as the president are two individuals who are responsible for the train wreck that this “health care reform” bill has degenerated to. Why those two? Because they are so hell-bent on passing a health-care bill before Christmas that they are bending over backwards (especially Reid, in the Senate) to appease the selfish and dogma-controlled Democrats in the Senate, namely: Joe Lieberman (I-CT) who is beholden to the giant insurance companies based in Hartford, CT – he was dead-set against any kind of public option. Then, when the Democratic leadership proposed a compromise wherein the Medicare eligibility age would be reduced from 65 to 55, Joe first said that he’d be willing to go along with that. But I guess in the interim, the CEOs of Hartford-based insurance companies like Aetna, Cigna, The Hartford and the like must have reminded him of all the money with which they’ve essentially bribed him – what the hell else are campaign contributions in reality but quid pro quos? So now Joe has done a “180” and is not supporting the so-called “Medicare buy-in option”. He was on Meet the Press last Sunday where he, in that interminable whiny nasal voice and phony smile that is his trademark, defending the bill as it would be without these things – a public option or a Medicare buy-in, saying there are still plenty of “subsidies for people in the 55-64 age range” and that it’s full of cost containments aimed at insurance companies (but probably not the ones based in Connecticut) and some other BS.
Then there’s the jerk from Nebraska – Ben Nelson, who is more right-wing than his former NE Senate-mate, Chuck Hagel who was a moderate Republican. Nelson and Orrin Hatch had brewed up this horrible, 16th century type of amendment to the bill that would restrict abortion by disallowing any public monies that go to health care providers to perform abortions. What? Wait a damn minute – abortion is LEGAL, get it, Ben? It is a legal health care procedure and he seems to be taking his cues (along with another Democratic, anti-abortion, anti-choice senator, Bob Casey (D-PA) from the National Council of Bishops – which by now should be known as the Catholic arm of NAMBLA.
We have a separation of church and state for a reason and this is one of them. So – if this group of pederasts are whispering in these senators ears, telling them to put restrictive abortion language in the bill, that is politicking, plain and simple and so the Catholic church ought to be taxed just like any other lobbying group or political influence hacks. Luckily Nelson and Hatch’s amendment failed miserably (go figure!) but the issue continues to be an albatross around the necks of reasonable Democrats that want a fair bill, not a rushed through bill just to have it done before the end of the year, that is just plain STUPID.
What needs to happen is a massive email, letter and phone call campaign from grass roots American citizens to these oddballs telling them they don’t want restrictions on a woman’s right to choose and that suffering Americans that face termination of their insurance everyday right in the middle of expensive but life-or-death consequential treatment – chemotherapy, radiation treatments, MRIs to detect problems in time to save lives as well as diabetes treatments, asthma medicines and the list goes on.
Remember – 2010 is an election year and this time there will be more Democratic seats up for grabs – now, of course, if the Republicans sneaked back into the majority you can pretty much count this country out as far as any kind of “superpower” – we’ll be too broke to do anything and too sick as well.
The cavemen Republicans will do nothing at all to offer any kind of alternatives or changes; all they want to do is to kill the bill, plain and simple – that is what minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told Rush Limbaugh – another hypocrite of vast proportion – he’s nothing but a doctor-shopping, pill-popping junkie, addicted to oxycontin and that makes him no better than any heroin addict, the only difference is that he has the money to keep his habit going so he’s not going to be hitting bottom anytime soon – not while he has plenty of money to stay well every day.
This whole health care bill as it looks today is nothing but a sham for the “American People” – an idiom that is really trite but for lack of a better term… I say, screw the Christmas deadline, slow down and get this right – plus give the voters plenty of time to email en masse messages to awful, no good senators like Ben Nelson of NE, Bob Casey of PA and Joe Lieberman of CT – they all stand in the way of the real change that voters voted for in 2008. And speaking of the election of 2008, how come Obama is just sitting on his ass, not doing anything to slap some sense into these ideologues (and in Joe’s case just a selfish money-grubbing, indentured servant to the insurance industry, based in his home state. Now, you won’t hear him talking about those things, instead he’ll just gush and say how wonderful the bill will be without any public option or Medicare buy-in, that there is still plenty of “subsidies” available for the very people he is trying to screw. I don’t know what subsidies he’s talking about, maybe there’s a 1% drop in premiums or a way to get one free pill for every prescription you have to forego your heating bill to pay for.
So now it’s up to you, America, is this what you want? The last time I heard, the majority of this country was staunchly pro-choice and in favor of the public option. So, obviously, these papists and bribe takers are just demagogues, trying to jam they’re will into the legislation. So, if this kind of nonsense is not taken care of, call your Senators and Congressmen and tell them to vote NO on the bill as it is looking right now. We don’t need this kind of change, we need real reform – NOW! - KM
 The Magic Mixture
This is the Magic Mixture
Self-Released
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Originally issued in 1967
Talk about a blast from the past! The Magic Mixture – and oh what meaning that would’ve had in the lysergic 1960s music and arts scene!- has just three years of tunes re-released on this one CD, entitled This is the Magic Mixture. The first twelve tracks recorded in June of 1968, songs 13 & 14 recorded “late 1967”, with Simon Kirke on drums – the same Simon Kirke that would later show up with Paul Rodgers in both Free and Bad Company and numbers 15-18 recorded “early 1969”, with Cliff “Fifi” Reuter on drums. The main lineup, at least in 1969, consisted of Jack McCulloch on drums, Terry Thomas on guitar, Mel Hacker on bass and Stan Curtis also playing guitar.
They do a cover of a Spirit song on here (“Fresh Garbage”), but even if that wasn’t on here I’d still say that they reminded me of Spirit – they have a similar psychedelic-bluesy-pop combination that was all at once a free-spirited jam, a ripped down, guitar, keyboard, bass & drum rock ‘n’ roll set and a pop sensibility in the lyrics and the way they croon and swoon to the putative girls that they hoped would be dancing and screaming and scrambling to get backstage after the gig. Another band that comes to mind, listening to this This is the Magic Mixture is Iron Butterfly – it’s that tinny electronic keyboard that does it married with the psychedelic guitar work.
There’s a story that tells how they did an opening gig for Pink Floyd in the latter’s early days (come to think of it, Syd Barrett’s Floyd wasn’t all that different in style and sound, except the LSD wasn’t as free-flowing) and at the spur of the moment, the Magic Mixture had this bright idea to do their own version of “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, with the two guitarists jamming and freaking out off against each other. This version proved so good that when Pink Floyd took to the stage later and happened to do the same song (it was their song!) – the audience seemed to (I don’t know how this was gauged) like The Magic Mixture’s version better, which, of course, was embarrassing for Floyd and after that little gaffe The Mixture were never asked to open up for them again.
That little anecdote is just one microcosm of how groovy these guys were, how crafty and clever they were and spontaneous on their feet.
After the Mixture broke up, Terry and Stan formed a band called Ax, which featured drummer Nicko McBrain, later of Iron Maiden and later, after some internal personnel problems, Terry & Stan formed another band with John Anderson (not Jon Anderson of Yes) on bass and Steve Gadd on drums and called themselves Charlie and they went on to record some eight albums and getting radio airplay in the UK and the States. I don’t know if you remember Charlie, but after some effort, they finally scored a hit with the radio hit – their only one – “It’s Inevitable”, which was a typical 80s rock steady hit. But that’s about where the story ends.
There are three cover songs on this collection: the aforementioned Spirit song, “Fresh Garbage” as well as a Traffic tune, “Pearly Queen” and Ry Cooder’s “My Days Are Numbered”.
It’s very novelty-oriented: a collection of old second tier, acid rock numbers by a band that never quite went away but frayed and went in their own directions, at least Terry and Stan made a continuing go of it, I’m not entirely sure what way Mel and Jack went.
But now, with This is the Magic Mixture, their new compilation of 18 songs, 15 their own, they are primed for a new generation of kids who dig those groovy hippie jams.
Also – and I’m not sure if this was done on purpose to evoke the “vinyl experience” of listening to them way back when on a phonograph instead of the CD of today – you can hear, underneath the music, little scratches and that hiss that makes it unmistakable that you’re listening to a 33 1/3 record album.
A couple songs that stand out and could still be relevant today are “(I’m So) Sad”, “Tomorrow’s Sun” and “Captain Marvel”. But even though Terry Thomas’s guitar playing is really good and rings with the wah-wah pedal and fiery solos and the rhythm section keeps a good beat and the bass & drums work nicely together, it unfortunately, mostly has a dated quality to it. But anytime you want to close your eyes and take a trip back to this wacky decade, throw this CD on and like Mr. Peabody’s wayback machine, you’ll be transported back and the good part is you’ll bypass all the riots, the Vietnam War protests and all the killing that went on -the Kennedys, MLK, Malcolm X, plus myriad other unnamed civil rights workers and so on; you’ll go straight to the isle of the Summer of Love. -KM
 Ape
Survival of the Fittest
Barred Records
www.apeband.com
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Toronto-based metal band, Ape, has just released their first full-length CD, entitled Survival of the Fittest. The band was founded a few years ago by guitarist/vocalist and songwriter Everett Mason and bass player Galen Weir. To complete the circle of this trio, they’ve brought in drummer Carlos Aguilera.
Now, the label “metal” doesn’t have quite the same connotations as it did in the 1980s and the 1990s? Well, let’s just say that your average “mainstream” metal disappeared, not being able to compete with such “serious” bands as Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the former metalheads, Alice in Chains and the intense Soundgarden, whose intricate melodies and unique mixtures and textures of sound was like Teflon if you tried to call it metal – it never stuck – just when you thought you had ‘em tagged, they’d blow yer mind with something really crazy like Superunknown’s “Head Down”, for instance.
Ironically, however, the more I listened to Survival of the Fittest, the more I picked up little tidbits of Alice in Chains, not the super-groovy harmonies that Jerry Cantrell and the late, great Layne Staley sang together, but in the music – the guitar, the rhythms and the attitude, except for the junkie-’tude part, although there are some cool harmonies on here too, like on “So Lonely”, for instance.
Other tunes that stand out include “Beyond the Depths of Reality”, something that starts out like a “Korn”-fed song, but then travels beyond, without the angry, bombastic bluster, instead taking off with a frenetic, twin-guitar solo, more akin to early Iron Maiden and early Metallica fused together, at about six minutes long it goes through a few different phases and time changes, showing a real maturity in their song structures.
The next tune, “So Lonely” is the closest they come to doing a (goddamned) “power-ballad” – except for the really cool guitar riffs that rip through the whole thing. But in reality, it’s not a ballad at all, but a cathartic, angst-ridding song that reflects one who is somewhat sad at the end of a relationship gone sour. But my favorite tune on Survival… is “Irate Primate” a real jam of a tune, that starts out with a quick kick-ass drum intro, then a drum & bass jam for a few seconds that eventually cues the guitar to come in and next thing you know the whole thing takes off and you can’t stop listening, can’t stop tapping your toes or bobbing your head up & down. It too has an Iron Maiden guitar sound-alike to it in some parts, but in others it’s more Yngwie-ish and the bass is just awesome – a bumpin’, thumpin’ funkified rumbling. This instrumental jam is the one tune that will make skeptics jump the fence to the “ooh” side.
All in all, as I said, the music jumps between sounding a little like Alice in Chains and Iron Maiden, musically. Vocalistically, to coin a word, they don’t sound like anyone in particular, only their own attitude and style come through. You definitely won’t get it mixed up with some other band. But the vocals are not the crowning achievement of Survival of the Fittest, it’s the way the music metamorphosizes into an ever-higher-reaching idealistic dreamscape.
The best thing about Ape is that they too can’t – or won’t – fit into a “metal” box, even though it is definitely hard rock all the way – no synths or samples or experimentality on here, but the virtuosity of the guitar and the bass speak volumes ahead of the former. - KM
 Tippycanoe and the Paddlemen
Parasols and Pekingese
Late Bloomers Works
http://www.tippycanoe.net
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Michele Kappel, aka Tippycanoe and her band, the Paddlemen, have just come out with their latest CD – Parasols and Pekingese a countrified CD full of a Bay Area (they’re from Oakland) brand of country – not a pathetic warbling full of xenophobic lyrics about how America is such a perfect place or full of sycophantic political, right-wing jerk-offs, but more pop-filled sensibilities, upbeat narratives, the kind of laid back country you’ve heard from Neil Young’s forays into that genre over the years.
With a beautiful voice, Tippycanoe just takes over the whole band, although the musicians play great stuff as well. But her sweet, angelic voice can harmonize, solo and wail and playfully fill up the pages.
Parasols and Pekingese is a CD that has a definite Bay Area connection – and I don’t just mean because they’re from Oakland. The music evokes the myriad styles and sounds that were juxtaposed in San Francisco back in the 60s – like the jug band that morphed into the Grateful Dead, Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks that came out of Hicks’s Charlatans (not the UK popsters from the 1990s). Then there was Doug Sahm, Moby Grape and the unmistakable bluesy-boozy voice of Janis Joplin. All these characters, plus the one and only Jefferson Airplane were a part of a big clique of unique, mind-bending, mores-changing bands that did more than just play great music. They turned kids who were bored to death by the banality of the television of the era (we’re still waiting for that mess to change…) the crap that radio stations tried to force-feed down their throats (The Archies, Nancy Sinatra, The Dave Clark Five, etc) all went westward to tune in, turn on and drop out like former Harvard Psychology Professor Timothy Leary and his Harvard partner Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass told them to do – LSD was the driving force in changing attitudes, opening up hitherto unknown parts of consciousness and helping to delve into subconscious fears, ideas, needs, wants and more. Too bad it was outlawed in California on August 12, 1966 and from then on had to be bootlegged and eventually, as a result, the good, laboratory stuff was banished to the farthest corners of the CIA’s warehouses.
Anyway, back to Tippycanoe and the Paddlemen – her brand of music is not a retrograde, back-to-the-60s rehash of what’s come before, but more of a continuation of something that was lost – seemingly forever – after about 1968-69, when the whole “peace love and flower-power stuff died out and nihilism took over along with heroin traded for LSD and pot. The Vietnam War was seemingly never-ending and Nixon was a nightmare who couldn’t be trusted and after the whole Johnson fiasco, Nixon nailed the coffin shut on people trusting the government or thinking of it as the answer to anything and not the cause of the problems. OK, so NASA sent men to the moon – yea – but what about quelling the unrest in the streets of Watts or Detroit or Chicago or Harlem, and beyond? While the spacemen were walking on the moon, rioters, looters and straight-up gang-bangers, heroin pushers, junkies so sick they had to burglarize your house for a fix and more bad news was going on down here on planet earth.
Then suddenly, Watergate blew the whole government to bits, as far as any kind of trust between the governed and the government, which led to Ford, which led to a decade of cocaine and booze and a devil-may-care attitude, politics be damned. In fact, why the hell bother when all politicians were corrupt, uncaring, bribe taking criminals? So, the kids just went to the discos, snorted all the coke they could and danced the nights away to the most banal of music. There were plenty of musical exceptions – David Bowie, Brian Eno, Pink Floyd and other respectable bands and artists. But for the most part the 70s was one big sell out to the man. So what, exactly did the 60s accomplish except for the sexual revolution and looser inhibitions, but then again, what did that ultimately cost? In the 80s sex came to equal death, with the advent of AIDS. Not to continue a history of the music and its relationship to the times and ideals.
But nowadays there is another musical revolution going on – many juxtapositions and hybrids of styles and genres. In the past decade music has turned into a real democratic institution – with the advent of the internet and the ubiquity of home studios and computerized music-making capability one can sit in one’s bedroom and make a really great record, a la Owen or Lou Barlow, etc.
But back to Tippycanoe: she and her Paddlemen have taken that DIY spirit and brought back the simple, hopeful, pleasant, pie-in-the-sky hopefulness that abounded in the early to mid 60s. With Parasols and Pekingese, they showcase their adeptness at writing comfortable, mellowed out songs and release them on their own they’ve married today’s technology with the wandering, free-spiritedness that pre-dated the psychedelic “Summer of Love” acid tests.
Cheers to them and bravo to Tippycanoe and The Paddlemen for shining a light on the country-blues-rock that they want to play and can without any interference from some heartless record honcho in Hollywood. -KM
 The Shake-Ups
Breathing the Flood
Self-released 2008
http://www.theshakeups.net
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
The latest CD from power-pop mavens, The Shake-Ups, Breathing the Flood, is the fifth or sixth album from these hipsters from the heartland of the US – Indiana and it is true that some of the best bands are those that come from the strangest, most unlikeliest places a band could hail from – think Husker Du or The Replacements (or even Prince) – all from Minneapolis, MN or Sebadoh/Dino Jr, from Lowell, Massachusetts. You may not get into Breathing the Flood at first listen, but chances are that in the hours and days that follow, the memory of it will stick in your head until you realize that you just can’t get this or that tune out of your head. Something about it keeps on ringing in your ear like tinnitus. Is it Emo in drag? No, I wouldn’t say that at all, but it is somewhat derivative; I hear a little bit of Magnetic Fields in there, some shined up Cocteau Twins and the like.
To accentuate the positive, though, The Shake-Ups do have a keen sense of melody and the know how to stick barbed hooks into their music that stay in you long after the disc is over – especially the ethereal parts.
For example, on the song “Wishful Sinking” there is a groovy Doors-style (Fender/Rhodes?), pre-synthesizer electric keyboard, with that unmistakable whirligig sound, the high-pitched, carnival-esque and catchy as hell sound that drowns out much of the rest of the tuneage on the cut, but damn it’s nice to hear that style of keyboarding in new music.
On other cuts they bust out pianos, organs, synths, pre-programmed to make the apropos accompaniment to the particular song, which makes it probably the grooviest tune on Breathing the Flood. Another surprise groovy tune is the final cut – the title track, a seven minute tune that starts out with a pillow-soft, kitty-cat anthem that in that guise is only about four minutes or so long, then if you have the patience to wait through a minute of dead air you get a bonus: a trippy, synth-heavy, droning, meditative ambience that is the perfect way to wind this power-pop trip down. At the very end of it is a sample of a unintelligible, gruff male voice that mumbles something and then that is the end.
In essence, though, it’s very hard to judge Breathing the Flood because of it’s ever-changing moods (apologies to Paul Weller & Mick Talbot). For the most part, though it’s a shimmering escapist set of melodies that, luckily, evade the chasm of Emo. Also, “power-pop” is not a very good label to stick on it either, as that evokes images of spoiled white rich kids from Southern California whose dads know people that know people that get them those undeserved record contracts and then, even though it’s been officially illegal for years, the payola that is served up to myriad radio stations in markets that matter get ‘em on the radio and then the pretend popularity spawned from that eventually gets “blow-back” that sends their stuff to Nowheresville, Iowa or Steersandqueers, Texas and other great heights of America, until voila – they become hits. What a way to go, huh? Sure beats working for a living and it sure beats having to wrack your brains to come up with original, fresh and unique styles that don’t need the stupid radio machinery to gather up a cult-following, but catch on via word-of-mouth, college radio airplay and constant touring all over the country in little but cool clubs from The Whiskey or Troubadour in West Hollywood, CA to the Continental Club in Austin, TX to First Avenue in Minneapolis and the Metro in Chicago to name a few awesome little clubs. Let’s see what these cats can pull off at one of those aforementioned clubs or any other of thousands like them in a live setting – that’s the ultimate test of how great a band is – whether they can do what they do in the studio as well as on stage, with no engineers and producers to polish things up. Good luck and good night…KM
I Am Absolute Freedom
A novel by Sylvia Mick
Lulu Books, 2009
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Here is a book by Italian writer, bon vivant and generally a wild, free-spirited sexual no-holds-barred woman. I Am Absolute Freedom is the debut autobiographical book by Sylvia Mick.
Reading I Am Absolute Freedom, one is amazed at the perfect English with which she writes – no malapropisms, no awkward idioms lost in translation.
The novel is basically a fictitious (?) autobiography of a young woman who tells us about all her fantasies, her sexploits and it’s mixed in with a lot of little tidbits of lyrics from various rock songs – from bands/artists including Metallica, Eddie Vedder, Megadeth, Marilyn Manson and one of the worst bands ever, Limp Bizkit, among others. She also even quotes other authors, like John Irving, from his classic novel, The World According to Garp and the writer Hafiz. So: what does this say? To me it says that there is a lot of sophomoric writing here – “fuck this” “fuck that” “fuck, fuck, fuck” – in every other paragraph. Not that I’m a prude or hate profanity, but this is written like it’s by a 14 year-old boy from the Midwest somewhere, someone who has ultra-right-wing christian parents that force their dogma down his throat, which, as everyone with a brain knows, only makes that kid hate his parents and their stupid religion more and more and who will eventually turn into a sexual “deviant” for want of a better word – a free-spirited, devil-may-care (no pun intended), loose and either violent or filled with psycho-sexual and/or violent-sex fantasies.
But in the case of I Am Absolute Freedom it’s the naughty girl who probably grew up with hard-core Catholic parents that drove that sick, sadomasochistic dogma down her throat, which, of course, drove her to be the opposite of what her parents stood for. In this case, it leads to her sexual awakening and that awakening took off, sky high in the mean streets of Paris as well as the swanky neighborhoods too.
Mick writes this young woman’s diary wherein she proudly details all the wild and crazy things she’s done and put herself through.
But, more than that, she weaves a loom of solipsistic faux-philosophy, a rationale for her outré ways and finds connection in all the songs she quotes and the bands she names, as if they are her guiding light through life. It makes Erica Jong read like Sylvia Plath.
I hate to trash a book just for its lewd, sexual vida loca and, believe me, I’m not, but there are much better ways of doing it – subtler, metaphorical, more original (not so many excerpts from other authors and songwriters) – to put it simply, it lacks coherence and original thinking.
Of course, if you’re a bored, sexually frustrated housewife who is into reading those trashy romance books to fill a void that has been left from a sexless marriage or an abusive, drunk husband that isn’t around very often (off on “business” trips, etc) that you see scattered around library book sales or garage sales, then maybe this is the perfect read, maybe that demographic could get the nerve up, from reading from this free-spirited author and after getting through it all, gets the psycho-sexual pontificating and free-love “dogma” that is, I must say, a great alternative to free-thinking, mind-killing religion, most especially Christianity and its evil twin Islam (or is it the other way around – is Christianity Islam’s evil twin I don’t mean to denigrate one more than the other – they’re both wrong, bad and the cause of all war and violence in the history of the world).
So, depending on your taste – if you’re a literary-minded reader/scholar, you’ll be put off, at the least, by this novel, but if you are looking for inspiration to get out of your humdrum life then this is a good guide to doing so. -KM
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