skopejulyaugust2008

Bob Moog Foundation: SYNTH PIONEER’S LEGACY LIVES ON

sk pe July/August 2008 $3.99

Diverse Music Coverage for the Digital Age

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BAROQUE AND ROLL

Black Lips

SPITTING IMAGE OF GARAGE ROCK

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Van Morrison

MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

Flo Rida

YOU’VE GOT MAIL

RAP/R&B PILEUP ON THE HIGHWAY July/August 2008

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REVIEWS:

The Whigs Babyshambles The Dodos + DOZENS MORE!

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ATTENTION!!!

Musicians Recording Artists Songwriters Artist Managers Indie Label Owners

Are You Serious About A Career In The Music Industry?

Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Book That Can Help You! Topics Include: Artist Development Techniques Improving Your Songwriting Press Kit Design Choosing Advisors Publicity Radio Promotion Music Videos Touring Record Companies Distribution Music Publishing Alternative Career Options

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ontent

features 38 Sia

Succeeding just by being herself

70 Katy Perry

SShe’s putting her exes on notice

39 Deaf Pedestrians

71 Webbie

40 Buckshot & 9th Wonder

72 Between The Buried And Me

Walking tall on Virgin debut Old and new school chemistry

Southern rapper is bringin’ heat Making metal for the discriminating head-banger

41 Luciano

Bring back with sweet Jamaica

42 Murder By Death

Like Poe…but with a cello

44 Louis XIV

Taking on their critics

52 Danny Diablo

45 Paul Oakenfold

It’s easy: just open for U2

46 Ari Hest

Songwriter trades label for fan-based experiment

48 The Bell

Land of snow and ice pop

50 We The Kings

Hometown heroes to musical monarchs on debut

52 Danny Diablo

After 15 years, he’s ready for his close-up

58 Kaki King

Ambient music that will wake you up

46 Ari Hest

60 Scary Kids Scaring Kids

A high school band graduates to rock star status

62 Sick Puppies

Australian rockers offer more than free hugs

63 Bell X1

Irish rockers move beyond television

64 Armin Van Buuren

The State of State of Trance

66 New York Dolls

Belated and unlikely success story continues

68 Freeway

Rap veteran shows core fans his softer side

48 The Bell

y d e d e a d yank

Barrio to the Bone

54 2

contents

The biggest star in Latin Music remains a mirror of the hood.

Helping turn casual listeners into active fanatics

14 Ponderosa Stomp

Going green for music and more

16 Ayre Time

The wild life of the Bodog founder

7 Publisher’s Note Michael Friedman

9 Sweet Tooth

Kathy Iandoli Breaking records…and legs.

10 Blast from the Past

Bill Kopp, Editor-in-Chief The Pretty Things, United States of America, and Air

17 Wired In

Nizzle 32 Pea cartoon by Don Mathias

18 More Than Just the Fab Four

34 Bootleg Bin

Baltimore residents have passion for hip-hop

The untold tales of rock’s infancy

20 Copping a Buzz for Dummies

Ex-High Times editors pen a counterculture bible

Bill Kopp, Editor-in-Chief Do not adjust your TV set: It’s The Tubes!

22 eJam On It

73 Scratch Pad

23 Silver, Gold, and White

75 Music Industry Tips

The next best thing to being there

Looking forward, looking back

24 Planet Defenders

Organization partners with musicians for social change

26 Giant Step

You haven’t heard of this? Join the club.

28 The Ventures

The biggest guitars in the universe

30 Florida’s Langerado Music Festival 6th Annual Langerado Music Festival

h t rockear 24

the

Kathy Iandoli Porn chicka bow wow!

Eugene Foley The Artist’s Presentation

76 The Crossover

Jeff O’Neill The Digital Music Age: Rinse, Wash, Repeat

78 Don’t Read This

Eric W. Saeger Beware the music-industrial complex.

81 CD & DVD Reviews Aaron Mitchum Apocalyptica Ariel Aparicio Big Noyd Britsh Sea Power Buck 69 Donita Sparks Dub Trio Elisa Peimer Farewell to Freeway Farm Fireflight Much More...

99 SonicBids Artists to Watch Janie Franz

3

contents

ontent

13 The ReverbNation Advantage

in every issue

skope culture

sk pe

note

staff

publisher’s

President/Publisher: Michael H. Friedman mfriedman@skopemagazine.com

W

Chairman: Irwin Friedman Editor In Chief: Bill Kopp editor@skopemagazine.com Creative Director & Ad Designer: Fran Sherman: fran@shermanstudios.com Circulation Executive: David Abramowitz magbook@frontiernet.net Media Sales Executives: Michael H. Friedman, mfriedman@skopemagazine.com Steve Everly: KI Lipton, severly@ki-lipton.com Frank Vivian: KI Lipton, fvivian @ki-lipton.com Illustrator: Don Mathias: dmathias@peanizles.com Contributing Writers: Adam Bernard, Celena Carr, Amanda Cuda, Matt Fink, Shaun Flagg, Eugene Foley, Janie Franz, Mike Friedman, Erika Gradecki, Martin Halo, Kathy Iandoli, Bill Kopp, Jason MacNeil, Jeff O’Neill, Jake Paine, j. poet, Lauren Proctor, Bill Reese, Eric W. Saeger, Todd Sikorski Len Sousa, Matthew Stern, Ethan Swann, Claudia Ward-de León, Chris West, James Wright, Nick A. Zaino III Contributing Photographers: James Johnson, TONE@photobytone, Kevin Ou, J. M. Giordano, Joni Sansone, Phoenix Taylor, Malcolm Brown, Marcus Råberg, Harry Borden, Joe Gaffney Digital Media Director: Shaun Flagg webmaster@skopemagazine.com Co-Executive Producer Skope Live!: Shizz Strothers shizz@skopemagazine.com Chief Accountant: Charles P. King CPA charleskingcpa@comcast.net Printing: Cummings Printing www.cummingsprinting.com Email us at skopemail@skopemagazine.com Go to www.skopemagazine.com to learn about submitting materials for review Skope Magazine 423 Brookline Ave # 334 Boston, MA 02215 - 5410 CD/DVD Review Submissions Mail To: Bill Kopp c/o Skope Magazine 6 Laurel Ave Asheville, NC 28804 All content herein © 2008 Skope Entertainment, Inc. (SEI). All Rights Reserved The opinions expressed on the pages of Skope are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the advertisers, editors, board members or publisher. Although Skope strives to present only current and actual opinion, readers should not consider the information herein as professional advice. Although great care has been taken in compiling and checking the information given in this publication to assure accuracy, the author (Skope Entertainment Inc.) and its servants or agents shall not be responsible or in any way liable for the continued currency of information nor for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies in this magazine, whether arising from negligence or otherwise or for any consequences arising therefrom.

elcome to another edition of Skope Magazine. To those that have been with us before, I want to thank you for returning. For those that are new to Skope, we welcome you. You will see as you read through Skope we have a deep passion for diversity in music today. These days it is rare for a music lover to enjoy only one music genre. We’re the same way, and we understand that music is better off because of this fact.

I recently treated myself to a Zune music player. My reason for choosing a Zune over the iPod was simple: my laptop runs Microsoft, so I wanted to keep it consistent. Two weeks into having my Zune, I am now addicted to buying music online. I find myself watching any of the numerous video stations on TV with a pad and paper looking for my next song to purchase.

As I sat down to download a bunch of DJ Khaled singles and some Augustana, I had a flashback. I remember that in my high school days I would go to Sam Goody and buy as many cassette singles as I could for my Nissan (the car didn’t have a CD player). The singles would range in price from $1.50 to $4.00. Today I find myself buying singles off the ZUNE Marketplace and downloading singles for 79¢. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a steal.

If you go to iTunes, songs cost about 99 cents, and on eMusic you can get some indie tracks for as low as 33¢. So how did these companies come up with this price? And will the music industry prosper under these conditions?

The overhead for a digital single is very low. As renowned producer Jimmy Iovine said, “Music flows like water on the Internet.” Music as a creative art form has an intangible value; I wonder if these prices sell the industry short. On the other hand, the industry might just be happy that people are buying more music as opposed to stealing. If you can sell one million downloads like Soulja Boy or Flo Rida you have to be heading straight to the bank. Because 79¢ adds up!

Enjoy the Issue, Michael H Friedman Publisher

soulful. passionate. uncompromising.

pick up the new cd by Racecar at: www.dancelikeaghost.com www.myspace.com/dancelikeaghost

Executive Producer: David Alyassin

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Tooth

Artist:

Fresh Daily

High fructose corn syrup of choice:

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Jolly Ranchers

Keeping It Fresh

...Daily

by Kathy Iandoli

ew York City based MC and fashion icon Fresh Daily would have originally chosen Werthers Original candies as the choice to fill his sweet tooth. But after some sinus problems, he cut out dairy, and the milk-based caramels had to go.

His choice, however, should have been Lifesavers, seeing as how the wordsmith was recently involved in an accident that could have claimed his life. “The story is cut and dry,” he explains. “I was riding my bike down a hill. At the bottom of the hill is an intersection. I have the green light. He [the driver] speeds through the red light coming from my left side in a 2002 Suburban…and smashes me out.” What’s worse is that Fresh Daily was conscious throughout the whole painful ordeal, during which his tibia and fibula snapped in half while remaining inside of his leg.”

He remains creatively optimistic about the results of this accident. “Now I’ve got a metal rod in my leg, a muscle/ skin graft, and a song produced by Madlib’s brother, Oh No, called ‘Break a Leg.’” If that broken legged phrase initiates the luck it’s supposed to, then his album Gorgeous Killer in Crimes of Passion (HighWater Music/Fat Beats) will receive the response it deserves following its release this fall.

Fresh Daily originally stepped into the scene in 1999 with the MC moniker Ill Tarzan. As Ill Tarzan, he garnered much notoriety and independent success, drawing attention from everyone… including the owners of the Tarzan franchise.

“Back in 2005, I received a cease-and-desist [order]

on the name Ill Tarzan from the family of Edgar Rice Burroughs [author of the Tarzan novels] due to them licensing that name out heavily,” explains the man subsequently rechristened as Fresh Daily. “If you did a Google search on Tarzan, only two things came up – either Tarzan novel stuff or my stuff.”

The name change produced a significant setback for FD, who had every form of digital distribution and had to pull and rename all of his product.

However, the switch ultimately proved to be a blessing in disguise, as the name Fresh Daily is apropos for a man whose swagger is damn near undeniable, from his cap to his kicks. These days, even with a leg in a cast, Fresh Daily manages to keep the opposing foot in the finest of sneakers while hobbling to the studio to finish his project. Gorgeous Killer in Crimes of Passion will feature cameos from producers like DJ Spinna, Analogic, and Two Hungry Bros with artists like the critically acclaimed Tanya Morgan. It’s a sound that Fresh Daily proudly describes as “NYC Nu-School Shit.” His futuristic style offers a new perspective to hip-hop music. Of course the “new” comes with some annoyances. “Hipsters done invaded hip-hop!” he playfully exclaims. While the alternative is geriatric MCs looking for another go’round, maybe hipsters aren’t so bad in their tight tees and jeans. Besides, Fresh Daily isn’t even pressed by the cool kid competition. “If everyone is cool, then nobody is Fresh…watch for that on a t-shirt.”

“Hipsters done invaded hip-hop!”

Photography by TONE@photobytone

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blast from the

10

sk pe

July/August 2008

by Bill Kopp

The United States of America — The United States of America (Sundazed) It’s easy to forget that in 1968, getting weird and unearthly sounds on your album (assuming you wanted them; plenty did) was no easy task. There were no presets, no samples; if you wanted the whooping effect of a ring modulator, you had to find one, and then figure out how to operate the damn thing.

The only record released by The United States of America employed that, and much more. USA made for challenging listening in ‘68, and it still does today. The album occupies that odd musical space between conservatory recital and soundtrack to a (bad?) acid trip. Don’t let that scare you away, or you’ll miss something grand.

The album kicks off with “The American Metaphysical Circus,” sounding like a gang of wooden flute-playing hippies colliding with a Fourth of July marching band. “Hard Coming Love” is a conventional song in the 1968 freakout mode, not unlike the background music you might hear on a vintage episode of Mannix. “The Garden of Earthly Delights” puts electronics to the task of sounding organic, and succeeds. Every song on the record is remarkable in its own way.

The United States of America sounds like little else in your collection; it pushes the boundaries of song and sound. With its amazingly faithful reproduction of the original packaging, the recent Sundazed reissue on vinyl is warmer than earlier CD releases, but then you probably knew I’d say that.

Past Each issue, Editor in Chief Bill Kopp takes a quick look at notable reissues from notable recording artists—some you’ll recognize; some you probably missed. All are worth a closer look.

Air – Moon Safari 10th Anniversary Edition (Astralwerks) At the very tail-end of the 20th century, Air—the duo of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel—released their debut, Moon Safari. Their blend of dance, exotica, rock and atmospheric(!) arrangements was innovative in ’98, and sounds every bit as fresh today, on this, the Moon Safari 10th Anniversary Edition.

Moon Safari isn’t all Moogs and vocoders; the disc is awash in “real” instruments, and the vocals—provided by a cast of guest starts, setting the template for later groups like Zero 7—serve as an instrument themselves.

Two bonus discs add to the value of the 10th Anniversary reissue. The remixes are more thoughtful than the standard throw-some-drum-samples-on-it approach, and the live cuts—especially the surprising live “Kelly Watch the Stars” shows that Air could (and did) rock out onstage when they wanted to. The DVD disc includes the long-out-of-print documentary about the group, Eating, Sleeping, Waiting & Playing plus four music videos and a few other goodies.

The Pretty Things — S.F. Sorrow (Sundazed) The 1968 album S.F. Sorrow

by The Pretty Things is an exemplar of a band, pushed to the wall, rising to the occasion and producing a classic. Prior to this, the Pretties were thought of as more-Stones-than-theStones, with their raw, r&b-based rock. S.F. Sorrow would change all that. The loose narrative is based on a short story by guitarist Phil May; nobody would claim that the story was focused, but then the same could be said of The Who’s Tommy, a work admittedly influenced by S.F. Sorrow.

The music is by turns rocking, folky (in an English way) and psychedelic. Yet it’s fully grounded. The group drew upon latent abilities to create a work rich in harmonies, instrumentation and dynamics.

The 2008 release on Sundazed is extra-special. Pressed on virgin vinyl in a beautiful blue hue from the original analog masters, it’s a clone of the original US release. Every detail is perfect, right down to the gatefold sleeve. The word “STEREO” appears in big letters, just like in ‘68. The only concessions to modernity are a tastefully-placed Sundazed logo and a UPC code (or “mark of the beast” if you’re Pat Robertson).

But none of that would matter if S.F. Sorrow weren’t an amazing album. It is. It’s a time capsule that takes the listener back to one of 1968’s best releases.

ulture

skope timely topics

for music lovers

Books. Movies.

Games. Icons.

Skope takes a look at â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;em all. Read about a new book of punk art; a new film from Brad Beesley; and the hottest game ever.

Learn more about a legendary photographer, a music/tech genius, and a hip-hop icon. And, of course, much more.

by Lauren Proctor

Guru Site Could Change the Face of the Music Industry

o

Steve Rifkind Forecasts Stormy Weather

n Halloween 2006, Jed Carlson and a small group of likeminded entrepreneurs took what they’d learned making marketing software for Target, American Express and other large corporations and started applying their knowledge toward helping the independent artist.

Their creation is called ReverbNation, and it’s a free (and often money making) website that simplifies and streamlines what most independent artists dread: the marketing, statistics, blogging, and everything not related to making music. Signing up for the service is like an artist scoring a guru of a manager without having to pay for their services. ReverbNation’s staff can throw down algorithms and marketing techniques with ease, and in doing so they’re helping the music they love thrive.

“We’re kind of geeks, but so far the musicians have embraced it,” says founder Jed Carlson. His own fan profile on ReverbNation reveals that Dengue Fever, Van Morrison, and The Glad Rags are some of his favorites.

Since the site’s launch 150,000 artists have signed up, and ReverbNation is adding almost 20,000 artists to its roster every month. Everyone from the independent singer songwriter just getting acquainted with the industry to Fergie, Maroon 5, and Lil’ Wayne is using ReverbNation.

When it comes to offering tools for the artist, ReverbNation is a powerhouse. The site simplifies the process of managing street teams and email lists, allows an artist to see if fans are listening to entire songs (or clicking away after a few seconds), searches the internet for articles about the artist like a controllable news clipping service, and updates to multiple blogs with a single click. There are even ways to create customized widgets and then track the viral path of these marketing tools.

ReverbNation is another place to put an artist’s name into the marketplace, but it’s not another profile they have to update all the time. “We don’t want to make another artist’s MySpace; we want to make their MySpace better,” Carlson says. The site’s clean interface widgets can be embedded into musicians’ other websites.

As a result the listener experience is mixed for fans who sign up for ReverbNation profiles. The site is a great place to discover new artists with user recommendations and exploration of other fans with similar tastes. It’s also one of the few places where you

“We’re kind of geeks, but so far the musicians have embraced it.”

Nation

Reverb

the

advantage can still hear a song at 320 kbps. However, if you’re looking for a specific artist such as Rilo Kiley, you won’t find them here, because the indie troupe hasn’t signed up for ReverbNation.

But a fan site isn’t the focus for Carlson and his team. Instead they want to help artists figure out exactly how to build bonds and turn listeners into active fans who will help spread the word of their music. The fact that ReverbNation can do so much for an artist can be intimidating and even confusing, and as a result it’s sometimes difficult for the company to communicate the advantages of the services they offer.

Album sales may be down dramatically, and a lot of people think music should be free. But rather than fight the statistics that prophesize demise to the industry, ReverbNation is forging ahead to create more opportunities. They’re looking to change the face of the industry. “We see it as our job to create ways to build revenue for artists,” says Carlson. Everything the business does is based on an “artist first” policy; ReverbNation was among the first sites to offer a Fair Share program, which gives artists 50% of all advertising revenue made on their site.

ReverbNation is also in the process of creating a method for artists to connect with brands and make money from their influence over consumers. “The artist’s influence over their fan base is still intact, and in a lot of ways with the internet, [that influence is] stronger than ever before,” Carlson explains. “We’re going to connect artists to brands.”

By the time this article publishes the site will have about as many artists signed up to ReverbNation as there are citizens in Des Moines, Iowa. In taking advantage of the artist’s ability to influence a lifestyle, ReverbNation could possibly create a new reason for people to want to be in the music industry again. How’s that for finding a guru manager who solves all the artist’s problems?

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biodiesel music

14

sk pe

July/August 2008

by Erika Gradecki

&orking w

g

etting into the biodiesel business became a smooth transition for Dale Wiley, the president of BidForGreen Touring Solutions, a California and Missouri-based environmental provider that has fueled such legends as Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Styx and Pat Metheny.

“We started the BidForGreen website in 2007, and the idea was we wanted something that would basically allow us to bring buyers and sellers of alternative fuels and concepts together,” explained Wiley.

Wiley, a lawyer-turned-environmentalist, learned about the biodiesel industry from a client of his, who happened to be an engineer. “I was trying to help him

get connected with the right people,” said Wiley. “It came from all sides—‘why don’t you do this?’”

Using the research skills he acquired while practicing law, Wiley quickly absorbed information on biofuel in the last two years, and decided to go into the business with that same client, engineer Russ Gehrke, who became his partner and co-owner of American Green Holdings.

“BidForGreen is a project for American Green Holdings,” Wiley said. “We saw that there is still a lot of confusion in the market about what’s good and what’s not.

It’s amazing how much people still have to learn about this, because obviously it’s a new thing.”

A friend of Wiley’s, Jason Hoar, had been doing biodiesel fueling for Willie Nelson, who in turn, looked to BidForGreen for fuel. Wiley, who previously owned a record label, has “always been involved with music. It was an easy transition for me to get in and start to think about it from a musician’s standpoint.

And then we had a chance meet with (Merle) Haggard, and (it) just really started to take off.”

In addition to working with Nelson and Haggard, BidForGreen also works with “moving” studios, providing fuel and logistics for such television series as CSI, as well as Shaw/Blades 2007-2008, a side project of Styx’s guitarist and singer Tommy Shaw and Night Ranger/Damn Yankees bassist and vocalist Jack Blades.

“The funny thing is, I’ve gotten to

skope culture

r e h t t oge BidForGreen provides fuel for tours and moving studios

know more cool things about music with BidForGreen than my record label,” said Wiley.

“I’ve gotten to meet Neil Young, gone backstage, really got to have a relationship Merle Haggard, one of my biggest influences. It’s wonderful. It’s, for me, the chance to get to do all this stuff and get paid for it—it’s amazing.”

In the next year, Wiley hopes that more people will get more involved with “going green” and become more educated in helping the environment. “There are a lot of questions being raised about biodiesel (like) ‘Where does it come from?’ ‘If it comes from soy, (then there are) a lot of pesticides that go into that, so how long the land can sustain”’ et cetera,” noted Wiley.

“Part of the biodiesel comes from there, (but) we are also looking for sustainable sources of biodiesel. We want to look at stuff that’s already there that we can re-purpose.”

Such by-products like chicken fat and pork lard, wastes from restaurants, have become sources of biodiesel fuel, while others can be harmful. “People talk about the strength of vegetable oil, which is actually worse on the environment,”

claimed Wiley. “If you can drink it, it’s ethanol. If you can cook with it, it’s biodiesel with some chemicals.”

“It’s a very easy conversion, not like an ethanol conversion, which is much more painful,” he added.

Wiley said that anyone that uses diesel fuel can also use biodiesel. There are several types of biodiesel, such as D-20, which is 20 percent biodiesel, and D-99 which has a larger percentage of biodiesel and costs just a dime to a quarter more per gallon than its diesel counterparts.

“You don’t want to hear people making arguments against biofuel, but you never start out something perfectly,” said Wiley.

“We can’t say ‘well, it’s better to use diesel than biodiesel.’ It’s a cleaner fuel, better burned for the environment, and I just think that we’ve got to see it’s going to take time to conquer.”

This year, Wiley hopes to reach people that have a need for large quantities of fuel, such as NASCAR and school buses. “We think that anybody that’s moving and needs a diesel product can get large quantities of biodiesel,” he said.

“It’s amazing how much people still have to learn about this.”

Photography by Brian Kanoff

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ayre time

Bodog Founder Works Hard, Plays Harder

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July/August 2008

c

alvin Ayre, the recently retired founder of Bodog Entertainment, has done a lot in his life, but there’s one leap he’s still not willing to make. “You want me to buy the Knicks?” he asks, caught slightly off guard by the question of whether or not he might want to attempt to turn around the bottom-dwelling NBA franchise. “Don’t get me wrong—I love New York; it’s one of my favorite cities in the world to visit—but come on now, the Knicks? I don’t want to get any hate mail sent to my blog, so I’ll just say, ‘I’m sorry, but no thanks. Better luck next year.’” It’s probably for the best for Ayre, whose life, despite his retirement, is filled with enough work as is.

The prevailing thought among many is that a billionaire who’s graced the cover of Forbes magazine must lead a life marked by excess and opulence. Ayre started Bodog Entertainment in 1994 with $10K and a dream and has achieved more than he could have ever hoped, so he’s sitting on the beach at his home in Antigua, right? Well, the Antigua part is right, but according to Ayre, “my life is insane. An average day consists of getting in a good workout, writing on my blog (calvinayrelife.com), answering a few dozen emails and phone calls, attending some form of media event and then catching a flight to the next location.” Of course, for all the work he puts in there are still plenty of good times. “I think it’s important to remember that even though this is serious business, there has to be a balance. Work hard, play hard.”

The “work hard” aspect of Ayre’s life, up until just recently, has been Bodog Entertainment, which is the umbrella that housed all of his ventures, including those in music (Bodog Music), mixed martial arts (Bodog Fight) and poker (Bodog Poker). “Each division or product channel has its own purpose and each has its own set of business objectives,” he explains “For example, Bodog Fight and Bodog Music provide different forms of entertainment to two slightly different audiences, but they’re both rooted in the same brand values. It’s important that each division of the Bodog brand stand on their own, but that isn’t to say

that they can’t evolve or change over time. I’ve always believed that change is a desired constant state for success.” Ayre retired to work on his latest passion, the Calvin Aye Foundation, which he founded in 2005 in an effort to give full-time support to social justice, child welfare, animal rights and environmental protection.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of the work the Calvin Ayre Foundation has done over the past few years, and continues to do,” he says elatedly. “From the new schools that we’ve built to the lives we’ve helped turn around, it’s all been so incredibly rewarding and inspiring.”

Ayre’s business ideology can be summed up in a simple maxim: “Iif you want to succeed in business you have to remain confident in your abilities to achieve and to succeed or it’s just not going to happen. It’s that simple.” Ayre’s consistent confidence in his ability to achieve in the business world has also translated into the “play hard” aspect of his life. “If you were to ask any of my closest friends, they’d tell you that I’ve always been a little crazy,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve already done the skydiving and bungee jumping thing. I’ve also gone cliff diving, wing-walking, hang gliding, air ballooning, zip trekking, scuba diving. I’ve flown a Russian MiG, taken the helm at the America’s Cup and played football with beautiful lingerie-clad women. You name it and I’ve done it.” He notes that there’s still at least one thing he’s not interested in trying, other than owning the Knicks. “I have no desire whatsoever to try street luge... unless it involves being strapped to a sled with a naked woman lying on top of me!”

Having willingly, and oftentimes gleefully, confronted some of life’s greatest challenges it should come as little surprise that Ayre has no fear about hitting the half century mark three years from now. “Turning 50 doesn’t scare me in the least,” he says confidently. “Bring it on!”

by Adam Bernard

“If you were to ask any of my closest friends, they’d tell you that I’ve always been a little crazy”

skope culture “There is an unbelievable amount

Baltimore, but to put it bluntly, nobody gave a shit.”

of talent in

wired in

by Amanda Cuda

Production duo Darkroom Parlays Mixtape Into Success

hen Juan Donovan Bell and Jamal Roberts got a call from the cable network HBO a few years ago, they assumed they were being sued. After all, the men had recently produced a hip-hop mixtape dubbed Hamsterdam – The Best of Baltimore. The album took its name from the open-air drug market that plays a prominent role in the third season of HBO’s recently-concluded drama series The Wire.

So when the phone rang, the first thought that jumped into the producers’ heads was “copyright infringement.” Nope. As Bell explained, “It turns out that the producers of The Wire had actually heard the mixtape and felt our sound was what was missing from the show.”

Darkroom was quickly hired to produce songs for the series’ fourth and fifth seasons. Bell and Roberts have since landed a publishing deal, a licensing deal with MTV/Viacom and production deals for well-known artists like R Kelly and Chamillionaire. The duo recently signed with New York based label Koch Records and were, at the time of this interview, working on their debut album – also called Hamsterdam.

Not bad for a couple of guys just looking to put Baltimore hip-hop on the map.

Bell, a native of West Baltimore, and Roberts, who grew up in Washington, D.C. and the Maryland suburbs, met about fifteen years ago and became fast friends.

At first, Bell said, creating music was the furthest thing from their minds. “Our focus was just to be young and crazy,” Bell said. “You know, chasing girls, checking for new hip-hop, chasing girls, watching sports, and of course, chasing girls.”

But chasing girls soon took a backseat to music. The two both were passionate about creating a unique sound. Roberts played multiple instruments, and Bell fancied himself a crate digger, using existing recordings to create new music. They decided to combine their interests, and Darkroom was born.

The two worked on their sound for years and started doing demos for local artists. Eventually, they landed their first professional job in 1996, remixing the k.d. lang song “Sexuality.” Ghost production deals followed for labels like Bad Boy and Columbia, as did some independent productions.

The duo was making a name for itself, but what they really wanted to do was Photography by J. M. Giordano

raise the profile of Baltimore’s hip-hop scene. “There is an unbelievable amount of talent in Baltimore, but to put it bluntly, nobody gave a shit,” Bell said. “We had no hip-hop artist make nationwide impact before. By 2005, it seemed like every other major metropolitan city had a name in hip-hop except us.”

Darkroom Productions vowed to correct that, which is how the Hamsterdam mixtape came about. The guys gathered the most talented rappers in Baltimore and produced the tape.

When it came time to name it, there was only one choice. “We wanted to force the hip-hop community to pay attention to us,” Bell said. “And at the time, the biggest thing people knew about Baltimore was The Wire. So calling the mixtape Hamsterdam was elementary.”

The mixtape was an instant success, selling more than 75,000 copies and earning Darkroom a Justo Mixtape Award in 2006 in the “Best Producer” category. The Justos are “basically the Grammy® Awards for mixtapes. 50 Cent has a Justo, and he has a half billion dollars, so we knew we were on the right track.” In 2007, the duo released Hamsterdam 2 – Stash to the Strip, a double CD that was more album than mixtape. That same year, the guys wrapped production on The Wire…and all the pieces that matter, the official soundtrack for the series.

The album was released in January 2008, right around the time that The Wire began its fifth and final season.

Bell said he and Roberts intend to keep producing for and marketing local artists like Diablo and The Get ‘em Mamis. The duo is also looking into movie production, and they are shopping a script.

Overall, their goal is become a brand in entertainment. If they achieve that goal, Bell said, it will be because of Hamsterdam. “And hopefully, that will be enough to make Baltimore proud,” he said.

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by Matthew Stern

more than just

the fab

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f

or obsessive Beatlemaniacs, the story of the Fab Four’s temporary expatriation to Germany, the rise to prominence of the Mersey Beat sound in the rough-andtumble club scene of Hamburg, and the struggle of the Beatles, in their earliest incarnations, to cut their teeth and cut a few records, is a well-documented legend.

But for every band that shot meteorically to the top of the charts in the incipient days of the pre-British Invasion, there were plenty that ended up downand-out, who returned from the burgeoning German cultural capital and its promise of fame to their gray, mundane day jobs. For every band that fled Hamburg out of necessity, there’s a story of about the promise of an escape from drudgery posed by the post-skiffle, pre-psychedelic world of pop music, and the fate of those aspiring pop stars who couldn’t quite live the dream.

Graham Sclater has worked for years on the industry end of the music business as a songwriter and producer. Before he took on his numerous business projects, which have over the years involved collaborating with James Taylor and currently include working with Brighton-based band The Decoys, he was immersed in the more hands-on side of the early rock scene.

Graham was a member of three bands that made the sojourn from England to Germany: The Manchester Playboys, The Wave, and The Birds and Bees (their name cheekily, in anglophonic slang, referencing their three singers, two of which were women and one who was a man.) Sclater headed for Germany in the immediate post-Beatles boom and remained there until the late 60s. He watched the Mersey Beat sound take over the world, then slowly give way to the sounds of psychedelia, all from the perspective of an ex-pat living in Hamburg.

Though Graham ended up working in the music industry—albeit not necessarily in the

skope culture Graham Sclater and the Untold Story of Early ‘60s Hamburg

four “What I wanted to do was to give examples and same capacity as he’d imagined when he first set out to make it as a musician— others around him weren’t so fortunate.

Not only did the experiences that Graham had as a touring musician in those earliest days of British rock stick with him, but so did the experiences of those around him.

Now Graham has begun to explore a new side of the creative world: writing.

After studying screenwriting at the Phoenix Arts and Media Center in his home town of Exeter, he’s written screenplays for a few television dramas that he hopes to see made, one entitled Street Life - Buskers, and another entitled The Other Side of the Tracks. Recently, though, he’s sought to fuse new interests with old ones in his first novel, entitled Ticket to Ride.

As The Beatles-inspired title would imply, Ticket to Ride is a book that focuses on the world of music. More specifically, it offers a fictionalized account of a band making the same fame-seeking sojourn into Teutonic territory that Graham himself made.

“People say to me, ‘You’re only writing about music,’” says Graham. “You’ve gotta really want to write about a subject to actually spend time working on a book or a film or anything else. You can’t just dabble in it, you’ve gotta know exactly

what the subject is about. And yes, I know a lot about music.”

The book shows an oft-unreported-on side of the Hamburg scene, as characters who intended to make livings as musicians end up being harassed by German cops, afflicted with syphilis, and—in one memorable scene—are rectally violated by an angry pimp wielding a blunt metal object.

Hardly painting a rosy picture of the scene that birthed the careers of John, Paul, George and Ringo, one wonders if Ticket to Ride isn’t (among other things) a cautionary tale against the decadent rock and roll lifestyle. Graham says that such is not the case. “What I wanted to do,” says Graham, “was to give examples and show what it was really like.”

And though Graham is beginning to branch out thematically as he begins work on a book set in England in 1812, he hasn’t ruled out continuing to explore the world of early British rock in another work of fiction. “I might do a sequel to Ticket To Ride,” says Graham. “That’s why I left the last line, the very last line, ‘The End... Or is it...?’”

show what it was really like.”

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buzz dummies Demystifying the Taboo

hen Entertainment Weekly Senior Writer Shirley Halperin and celebstoner.com publisher Steve Bloom first met, it was after a freshly-smoked joint at Elektra Records in New York City back in 1993.

“I was working for my school paper at Rutgers University, and I traveled into New York to interview Phish. I walked into this conference room at Elektra and it was smoky, smelly, and there were magazines everywhere. All I could think to myself was, ‘Oh my God, they just did an interview with High Times!’ I went and introduced myself to the writer,” recalls Pot Culture co-author Shirley Halperin. “It was their editor, Steve Bloom. And from that meeting I started interning for the magazine.”

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w

for

copping a

Both Bloom and Halperin both spent stints as High Times editors, and twenty years after their chance meeting across a boardroom table, the duo decided to co-author a book on the lifestyle surrounding the pot culture. Published by Harry N. Abrams, the historical and communicative piece is entitled Pot Culture: The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language and Life.

The 224-page modern cultural coffee table reader contains celebrity contributions from Rob Thomas, Redman, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Steve-O, and Amer-

by Martin Halo

skope culture “I walked into this conference room and though to myself, ‘Oh my God, they just did an interview with High Times!’” ica’s Next Top Model’s Adrianne Curry.

In addition to celebrity pieces on “How to Roll a Blunt,” the guide explores the historical perspective of marijuana use in American society.

“I always wanted to do this book,” says Halperin. “I came up with the idea when I was in college sitting around one night. I finally got a book agent when I was working at Us Weekly and Rolling Stone. When I came up with some ideas, this was the one she liked the least,” she laughed.

“I knew this was the one that was going to sell the fastest, and that is exactly what happened.”

Halperin admits marijuana has always been a creative stimulus in her life; and when she moved out to California to shack up with husband and music producer Thom Monahan she joined the cultural network that is responsible for some of the single most uncompromising figures faces in American music. The

list includes Devendra Banhart, Andy Cabic (Vetiver), Chris Robinson (Black Crowes), Jonathan Wilson, Ethan Miller (Howlin’ Rain/Comets on Fire), and Gary Louris (Jayhawks).

“In the 60s it was all about getting high and making love,” the author observes. “Then it turned into the ‘Just Say No’ era of Nancy Regan. Pot smokers were treated like criminals for most of the 80s. In the 70s and 60s the culture was more widespread, so it wasn’t as taboo. There was sort of a terrible time there, and that was the time that I grew up in. It sucked. You really did feel like a criminal, like you were doing something wrong.

“The older I got the more I realized it wasn’t such a bad thing. I am a smart person, and I didn’t see it holding me back. I view it only as a positive thing. It has opened people’s minds.

“Recently I feel it is starting to become very accepted again. There are

chronological narrative. It is laid out in the form of an eye-catching, attentiondriven, quick read. Audiences can turn to any page and be entertained.

“That is me coming from magazines for so many years,” Halperin says.

“I learned how to package things. I

learned how to write short. People have very short attention spans these days.

Because of that, we took a magazine philosophy and applied it to a book. The point of it was for it to be fun.”

“Another important thing I was going for was to span the generational gap of

stoner lead characters in movies, you can have pot on TV, and it has just become embraced. I don’t really know why, but I think the decriminalization movement had a lot to do with it. Medicinally you can have weed, and that sort of opened the door.”

Though Stoner Language is a historical look at the influence and relevance of cannabis, it is not told in the form of a

pot smokers,” Halperin says in closing.

“I wanted it to be multi-generational.

Steve Bloom was brought in to specifically handle the older stoners, the baby boomers, and I took the younger generation. In the end I think this project came together very well.”

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er rs te En om ice .c ct ng ra mi dP Jam Ban ith e w ce spa

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July/August 2008

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g chin l wat mercia r e f t info ing’s the Jamm tel’s e for o at In umer e d m 8 Cons 200 , one social how the escs S that t impr s i n e o i s r n t i o n c Ele t imag te’s m ovatio e h si l inn th g i g n m rkin ica awake the n wo log net chno ed to h from ’s bee te ag he ut sive g man sh Mo which ality, a n tu ts i n c hav r of Sm ber i . 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B s Zim a pas wh kn o dea that nk im of t imat or it n T lum site new s hioned l,” I thi ing is um ion-an ongs f nd Ha n was where s i m i s s u i a d a c m f i e G eJa e o r th old cur dly m ive act le of s nd fri levisi world vity wa t ays e a a n l the life,” s ce, bu frie for a a coup poser ing. T ic in a teracti est to n y a h s t r ” m t n . m ce pilo write ks com xt big ut mu n for i e inte for o per orman o cial as as t mwor the ne ids ab nicatio dy nich f r o e s a p r he cting Dre hip to hing k ommu a ne of t c l c m ng pters a i Gai of tea ronic ng fro n o t gin i way g elec sform f life. he be arly ad t o e n n i a y s w r a t u a a few think there s nothing that m w 0s s idly rap nstrea ly 200 , with r i ma he ea boom replaces live performance but it s T king or w t ne the next best thing to live performance

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by Matt Stern

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skope culture

Silver, Gold, and White

by Nick Zaino III

The past, present, and future of David J

D

avid J undoubtedly has a millions things he’d rather be doing than dealing with deliveries and doing press interviews. But that’s what he was doing one February morning in Los Angeles, trying to get ready for the debut of Silver for Gold, his musical based on the life of Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick, and talking Bauhaus, Love & Rockets, and producing.

He’d like to be painting, making out a set list for a DJ gig, or even seeing his son’s band, the Correct Sadists. But he hasn’t had time to see them yet. He’s barely had time to breathe.

“You don’t know the half of it, mate,” he says, speaking by phone.

Despite a new Bauhaus record and new Love & Rockets tour dates, it is Silver for Gold that has been occupying most of J’s time. He has dabbled in drama before, but this is his first full-fledged production, writing and recording music and rehearsing for his March debut in Los Angeles.

“I’ve never worked so hard on anything, ever,” J says. “There’s so many strands to pull together, but it’s coming together.

It’s just a helluva a lot of work but it’s very rewarding. I feel like everything I’ve done in the past has been leading up to doing this.”

It has been a four-year, slow-burning obsession for J, who has been captivated

by Andy Warhol, and by extension, Sedgwick, since he saw them in a magazine photo when he was ten years old. In 2004, J met David Weisman, who wrote the Sedgwick film Ciao Manhattan.

Weisman was working on a script about Sedgwick’s life, which inspired J to write a song about her. Weisman encouraged J to write a full musical production.

J put in his time researching the project, interviewing Sedgwick’s friends and listening to hours of tape recorded conversations from the Warhol Museum archives. What he found was something deeper than the story of a rock and roll starlet who overdosed in 1971.

“Just hearing her voice when she was sparkling, effervescent, in 1965, very intelligent, compassionate, interesting, such a different persona than the only one I’d been exposed to before, which was Edie towards the end in Ciao Manhattan,” says J. “I was really struck by the difference. It was only a matter of three years or so,

“I’ve never worked so hard on anything, ever.”

four years. That really informed the writing from then on, hearing that voice.”

There has always been a theatrical streak in the music J wrote for Bauhaus and Love & Rockets, something he acknowledges helped him in writing Silver for Gold. His telling of Sedgwick’s life isn’t quite a rock opera, and it’s not doggedly biographical. J imagines Sedgwick as Persephone entering hell, complete with rock band as Greek chorus.

“It operates on a lot of different levels,” says J. “It’s also just using her as a device to retell a classic myth, hero’s journey, and put in other mythic elements to tie them all together. But it’s not like a straightforward biographic portrait.”

While J attempts to mount the production in different cities, he is likely to face a few ghosts of his own. Released in March, Go Away White marks the end of Bauhaus. J is cagey about the specifics of the band finally parting for good, but he feels White is a fitting final statement. “It’s funny,” he says. “It’s almost like we knew it was going to be the last one, subconsciously.”

And while plans for Love & Rockets include summer tour dates after the band’s April date at Coachella, at the time of this interview, J didn’t see the band heading into the studio.

“That’s unlikely,” he says. “We’ll be happy just to play the old material.”

J himself, though, will most certainly be back in the studio, producing for other artists (perhaps even the Correct Sadists). He produced the recent Frank Black project Grand Duchy, as well as the solo debut from Silver pit guitarist Michael de Winter. “It’s quite satisfying when you can make it come off,” he says, “and the result being a really great piece of music, and to bring something out that’s kind of buried there and make it shine.”

Ultimately, it’s theater that has captivated J. He is already thinking about his next project for the stage, which might not even include music. “This is the way I’m going to go in the future,” he says.

“This will be my main endeavor.”

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s “They were being outmaneuvered, being outgunned,

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out-litigated…”

by Jamie Franz

the

planet defenders

Rock the Earth Marshals Action through Music ix years ago, Marc A. Ross discovered a seminal way to champion environmental causes. Ross—who has been both an environmental prosecutor and an industry defense attorney—remembers, “One common theme that I saw was that small groups of citizens that were directly impacted by environmental issues were being steamrolled by industry. They were being outmaneuvered, being outgunned, out-litigated simply because they didn’t have the PR or the financial resources to hire competent counsel and scientists to take up their very legitimate claims.”

That’s when Ross decided to level the playing field by tapping the high profile music industry’s PR strength and its ability to fundraise for charities. In 2002, Rock the Earth was born, and Ross became its executive director.

Rock the Earth brings environmental awareness to music fans, garnering not only donations for their projects but also volunteers. Today, the organization has only three paid employees and three dozen volunteer staffers and advisory board members. They also have a technical team of scientists from a variety of fields, environmental attorneys, and consultants. This broadens Rock the Earth’s ability to tackle different issues.

Early on, Rock the Earth consulted with festivals, tours, and the cruise industry to help them green their events.

Over time, other organizations, such as Reverb, CLIF Bar GreenNotes, and MusicMatters, have appeared to take on that mission and other environmental concerns.

Rock the Earth’s mission evolved to providing environmental education, fostering activism, and offering legal and technical assistance to small groups. “We’re a great plug-and-play organization,” says Ross. For example, Rock the Earth is an active presence at many festivals and concerts. They maintain a presence at Bonnaroo on the Solar Stage. “Every day, we conduct a series of interviews, panel discussions, and musical performances all on the theme of social change through music,” Ross explains. His one-on-one interviews showcase performers who don’t normally talk about these issues. At Bonnaroo, Rock the Earth has worked with a number of artists, including Bob Weir, Warren Haynes, Michael Franti, Bonnie Raitt, John

skope culture

Butler, Trevor Garrod (Tea Leaf Green), and Liz Berlin (Rusted Root).

Last year, the organization was a major presence at Ozzfest and at Warped Tour shows. “We were the first and only nonprofit to work with Ozzfest, and obviously the first environmental group to work with Ozzy,” Ross says. “A lot of Ozzy’s music has been political over the years; from ‘Crazy Train’ to some of his newer songs on his most recent album, there are political and environmentally-conscious songs.

I just don’t think the rest of the environmental movement thought about working with someone like Ozzy.”

This year Rock the Earth is also moving forward with its first environmental litigation.

Squaring off against the National Park Service, RTE focuses on mismanagement of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. “It will impact how all wilderness areas and, in some ways, public lands are treated in this country and whether concessions and recreation are put over wilderness protection,” says Ross. “Pretty soon there won’t be anywhere you can go in this country without hearing the roar of motors.”

Rock the Earth also has partnered with the Center for Water Advocacy as well as several indigenous plaintiffs, including the Oglala Sioux tribe, to stop the expansion of a uranium mine in Nebraska that affects indigenous water rights and may affect public health. “That issue has ‘legs,’ because it touches on global warming and whether or not this new Western uranium boom and

nuclear power boom is the solution to global warming,” says Ross.

This past year, Rock the Earth was successful in its first petition campaign against Wal-Mart to get them to stop buying and selling mulch from Louisiana cypress trees. The organization also conducted its first service project, partnering with the John Butler Trio, CLIF Bar GreenNotes, and two other organizations to clean up Ocean Beach in San Francisco. And, Rock the Earth’s legal and technical team worked or reviewed fifteen separate issues brought to them by the music community.

Nearly half of its 2000-plus members in all fifty states have volunteered to work tables at festivals and concerts, provide technical or legal assistance, write grants, or help spread the word. This will ensure that Rock the Earth will continue to champion the earth as its motto says: Defending the Earth One Beat at a Time.

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giant step

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by Ethan Swann

by j. poet

i

Moving forward in leaps and bounds

t’s easy to think of music marketers as puppetmasters playing with strings while their polished, painted, disposable pop star puppets lip synch and dance onstage.

But for every Britney Spears there is a Macy Gray, for every Danity Kane an Amy Winehouse. And somebody has to market them, too. Some artists don’t need to be improved or enhanced in order to sell records. Some artists are good enough that you just need to get their music into the hands of the right fans, and their tunes will do the talking.

Giant Step Marketing refers to these fans as “early adopters and influencers.”

They’re the ones always on the cutting edge, always seeking out a great new act. The folks who grew up on mixtapes and are now devoting hours to creating the perfect playlist; people who can’t wait to tell their friend about the great new band they’re listening to.

How do you market to a person who a) prides themselves on discovering music on their own, and b) doesn’t care to be referred to as a “target market?” Maurice Bernstein, Giant Step’s CEO and co-founder, has built a career doing exactly that.

For seventeen years, Giant Step has been building marketing campaigns and gaining exposure for myriad artists whose careers aren’t built on makeovers and tabloid headlines (Okay, there’s Amy Winehouse, but at least she doesn’t lip synch). Artists who don’t do reality shows or show up on Best Week Ever. You have to be good to work with Giant Step. In fact, if they don’t like your music, they won’t work for you.

Founded in 1990 by Maurice Bernstein and Jonathan Rudnick, Giant Step started out as The Groove Academy, promoting concerts and holding dance parties in New York’s growing underground club scene. Originally from Manchester, England, Bernstein avoided becoming “fat, bald, and mortgaged” by diving headlong into the NYC club scene. “I’ve always been a bit of a nonconformist, and I liked being in New York, so I decided to find a way to keep living that lifestyle in the music business.” The Groove Academy hosted shows by Maceo Parker, Isaac Hayes, The Ohio Players and George Clinton. Eighteen years later, Giant Step has grown to be a concert promoter, music and lifestyle marketing company, and independent record

skope culture “It takes eighteen years to build a brand, and thirty seconds to kill it.”

label, with a client roster that includes Massive Attack, Jamiroquai, and Erykah Badu. “We’re very selective of our clientele,” Bernstein explains. “We decide who to work with based solely on quality, which is determined by personal taste within the company.”

They seem to have good taste. In 2007, Giant Step clients Amy Winehouse, Joni Mitchell, and Common all earned Grammy® awards. The company has managed to grow rapidly while maintaining its underground cred, perhaps due to their highly selective process of choosing clients. “We’re only as good as the last thing we’ve done,” says Bernstein. “It takes eighteen years to build a brand, and thirty seconds to kill it. So we have to maintain our reputation for introducing quality. If we started handing out Britney Spears CDs, we’d be history.”

Giant Step provides a variety of marketing services, but are perhaps best known for their tastemaker promotions, DJ promos, and Giant Step events. The company hosts parties and puts on shows for a select audience of tastemakers and hipsters.

Giant Step maintains a massive early adopter database of VIPs, trendsetters, industry peeps, journalists, artists and musicians – all filed in a mailing list that could be labeled “cool kids.” Many events are open to the public. “Think of it as that kid in high school who was always turning you on to the best new artist or the coolest new band. We want to tell that kid so he’ll go and tell everyone else.” For example, Giant Step stages a series of DJ events at the Hudson Hotel in Manhattan, bringing a taste of NYC’s nightlife to the general public and accentuating its upscale-without-the-pricetag identity.

For all the success he’s had, Bernstein remains humble about the Giant Step’s accomplishments. To him, its simple: take good music, showcase it to the right people, and let them share their discovery. For artists like Gnarls Barkley, The Roots, Jill Scott, and Zero 7, that strategy has been effective. So who is Bernstein talking about now? “Be on the lookout for Little Jackie, Duffy, Jamie Liddell, and Jonelle Monae. You’ll be hearing lots about them.”

* Ah, yes, but by mid-March the number had more than doubled—doubled, I tell ya—to 28!—ed. ** Over the next 45 days, more than 100 people viewed it. Hopefully the server won’t crash under the weight of all that traffic!—ed.

“We had a terrific turnout; nearly 50,000 people voted on line.”

27

www.skopemagazine.com

by j. poet

he Ventures are celebrating 50 years as a band in 2008, and next year marks the 50th anniversary of their first hit, “Walk Don’t Run.” They’ve sold over 110 million albums, had five LPs in the Billboard® Top 100 at the same time in 1963 and recorded over 250 albums. For a brief time in the early 60s, their albums outsold the Beatles, so this year’s induction into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame doesn’t really impress them.

“I don’t know if ‘excited’ is a word I’d use [about the induction],” says group founder Don Wilson, the band’s rhythm guitarist. “We’ve been eligible for 22 years, and I’m happy that we’re finally in.

‘Cause I never liked the word ‘posthumous.’”

The Ventures introduced the concept album, laid the groundwork for surf music and brought the guitar

to the forefront as a lead instrument.

They’ve charted 14 singles and

38 albums and are the most success-

ful instrumental group in music history, not just rock history.

Like all great bands, The Ventures started modestly. As a boy in Tacoma, Washington, Wilson played his mother’s Martin tipple—an instrument with ten strings that was tuned like a ukulele—but he didn’t get serious about playing until he was 25.

In 1958 he went to a pawnshop with his pal Bob Bogle; they bought elec tric guitars and a bunch of learn-to-play books. “We called ourselves The Versitones, ‘cause after we got going, we could both play rhythm, lead

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t

Big in Japan - and Elsewhere

also suggests these artists: The Penetrators, The Tornados, Los Straitjackets

skope culture “Our sets ran from noon to midnight with a short break for lunch and dinner.”

and bass. Luckily,” he laughs, “that name was taken and we became The Ventures.”

The Ventures began playing Tacoma’s dive bars, joints that catered to servicemen.

They’d work their day jobs in construction for nine hours, then play four sets a night, mostly covers. “Club owners didn’t think we were good enough to play weekends,” Wilson recalls. “Eventually we got a weekend gig at a place called The Britannia. Our Saturday sets ran from noon to midnight with a short break for lunch and dinner. It was a good way to get tight and learn a lot of songs. We wrote a lot of stuff, too.”

They heard “Walk Don’t Run” on a

Chet Atkins album, Hi-Fi in Focus and came up with the famous arrangement playing the tune live. The song “was so popular we had to play it four or five times a night,” Wilson says. The band pressed up a few hundred copies of “Walk” on a 45 rpm single, but DJs were less than enthusiastic until the local station, KJR, used it as he lead song on the nightly newscast. Bob Reisdorf, head of Dolton Records, picked up the single, and when his distributor (Liberty Records) refused to handle it, he told them he’d recoup their losses if it wasn’t a hit. The rest, as they say, is history.

“We’re about to start our sixth decade on the road,” Wilson says, “with three original members still on board: me,

Bob Bogle who plays bass, and Nokie Edwards on lead guitar. Our drummer is Leon Taylor, son of our long-time drummer Mel Taylor, so it’s a real family affair.” The Ventures have toured every year since their inception and retain a fanatical following in Japan. They cut several albums a year for the Japanese market, and tour there twice a year. “We’ve sold 100 million records in Japan and had 20 #1 hits, but for us Japan is like Las Vegas: what happens in Japan stays in Japan.”

The band is currently putting together a box set – two CDs of music and two or more DVDs with performances spanning the life of the band, and a coffee table book - The

Ventures: “Walk, Don’t Run” 50 Years of Rock’n’Roll, full of memorabilia, photos and reminiscences from band members. They’re also selling custom-made Ventures guitars. “Mosrite, Fender and Aria all made Ventures guitars,” Wilson boasts. “The latest models are by Wilson Brothers Guitars, started by my son Tim. Bob (Bogle) and me designed these new models. We’ve been exclusively playing ‘em for three or four years now. Joe Perry owns one and Tom Hamilton has a bass, so we’re now taking over Aerosmith, slowly but surely.”

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a r e g

by Shaun Flagg

n music a l

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July/August 2008

florida’s

his year the location of the Langerado Festival was the Seminole Indian Reservation all the way out in the middle of the Everglades off of Alligator Alley. It was quite a trek into the middle of the swamp. But like the Langerado Festivals before, music fans from Florida and beyond made the journey enthusiastically. Here they could set up tents and camp out during the four-day festival. Little communities sprang up with a relaxed and free spirited vibe exuded by the tens of thousands in attendance. Hippie culture was well represented as many were attracted by acts like Phil Lesh and Ani DiFranco. In all, there were nearly 100 bands performing on three large stages and several other smaller ones setup across the enormous green space.

The biggest names at the festival included REM, Beastie Boys, 311, and Matisyahu. There was a fairly large representation of electronica with bands like Dan Deacon playing sets into the early morning. The Beastie Boys played Friday night and showed that they still had the skills that helped secure their spot in hip-hop history.

Remaining relevant even into their forties, they were confident and exuded the swagger and bravado that fans have come to expect from the legendary trio. They careened through their energetic set, retooling old songs with new beats and improvisational lyrical flows.

As the verbal alley oops bounced from rapper to rapper, these guys showed they still had that signature dynamism and kinetic energy. “Pass the Mic” showed the electricity of the band and highlighted the group’s strong chemistry. There were a lot of instrumentals, like those funky, organ-laced joints that pepper virtually all the Beasties’ albums. They displayed their musicianship by crafting these funk masterpieces with live instruments. The group played a wide gamut of their material from their newest

Photography by Joni Sansone

o d a

skope culture

festival

A Musical Refuge in the Everglades

tracks to the early 80s stuff including the obscure and dusty “Egg Raid on Mojo,” an artifact from their punk beginnings.

A smaller stage called the Chickee Hut was host to several indie rock bands of note including Minus the Bear, Of Montreal, and The National. Minus the Bear is a no frills indie rock band that merges electronic bleeps and sonic taps with driving guitars and pounding drums to form a beautiful soundscape; it is a collusion of aggressive rock and atmospheric electronics. The cloudy Sunday afternoon served as a fitting backdrop for this moody Seattle band. Understated and professional, their stage presence was subdued and they let their music do the talking. They were cohesive and tight – a solid performance from one of the finer Northwest indie outfits.

Of Montreal followed with a very different approach. Led by eccentric singer, songwriter and indie star extraordinaire Kevin Barnes, they he biggest names at the festival included brought in all the theatrics with props and costumes including masked and spandex-clad improvisational dancers. It eastie oys and atisyahu was a lot of big theatrics for such a small show – Barnes is known for putting on outrageous performances. These dramatics complimented the indie pop weirdness that that the band exudes and went well with their ambient otherworldly sound. For the last song “The Past is a Grotesque Animal” Barnes was wheeled out in an open coffin-like structure, buried in about a foot of shaving cream. He emerged amongst ethereal instrumentals and went on to sing the epic twelve-minute song with cream falling off him in clumps as if he was melting. It was very weird and very cool.

Night descended when The National took the stage; with the black sky as their backdrop, they played their somber and melancholic set with their taut musicianship pulling at our heartstrings. The warm, moody sound blanketed the crowd and we were all pulled into the private anguish of lead singer Matt Berninger. It was like watching a breakdown; he conjured up the emotional torment that is no doubt the inspiration for his music.

He paced the stage looking distraught, with his hand over his face; his deadpan baritone voice brought forth world-weary and soul-baring lyrics. He had started out sober, but (as he joked at the start of the performance) he had taken “vitamin V” (vodka), and he gradually sank into drunkenness. Surprisingly this didn’t affect his performance, but his staggering dangerously close to the high stage’s edge made all in the photo pit quite aware of the possibility of having to break his fall. Fortunately the only fall was that of the crowd’s hearts when The National concluded their set.

T

REM,

B

B

, 311,

M

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Girls Like Cigarettes

This trio—founded in Baltimore but now based in New York City—draws upon the melodic side of the rock tradition. They describe their powerpop sound as “a welcome break from the current crop of metal-influenced music.” And for that, they truly do deserve the tag “alternative.”

The catchy songs of Girls Like Cigarettes are built around the economical trio of Joe Black (vocals, bass), Jeff Reed (drums) and noted guitarist Pat Fisher. The chiming fretwork on a track like “Beautiful Death Machines” (from their debut EP of the same name) recalls the work of underrated 90s group Wire Train. They also evidence good taste by claiming influences from Hüsker Dü and Teenage Fanclub. The group plays mostly up and down the Eastern seaboard, and was featured prominently at the Seaside Music Festival in May. Their music is available from (among other places) their MySpace page at myspace.com/girlslikecigarettes

sk pe

Traedonya

Traedonya’s music is all over the place—she loves (and is influenced by) rock, funk, gospel, punk and more—but she brings to her songs something that makes them very much hew own. It’s tough to describe her sound with a short label, so let’s call it trip hop/soul/electronica. She’s a self-described “international party girl”—Treadonya has lived in The Bronx, North Carolina, Ireland, and England, though these days she claims to “live out of [her] suitcase.” And she’s in it for the long haul; she promises to “rock it until the wheels fall all the way off.”

A video for her track “Beloved” is onAOL Video, and her MySpace page (www.myspace.com/traedonya) features no less than five mixes of the popular “Beloved” track plus a couple other joints (“All Night Long” featuring Patra and a Sexy Shooter remix of “Naked Gun”) that’ll make your hips sway.

experience it online.

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www.skopemagazine.com

The Tubes

Remote Control Sessions

by Bill Kopp

The Tubes were always about satire, about social

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July/August 2008

commentary

he year was 1979, a mere five years after The Tubes broke onto the scene with their hit, the satirical “White Punks on Dope.” They followed up the first album with two more—Young and Rich and Now—that expanded the approach, but sold in decreasing numbers. They reversed the commercial downtrend a bit with 1978’s powerful double-LP What Do You Want From Live, a document of their residency at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. Even without visuals, the album conveyed the madness and theatricality of a Tubes concert. The group had long been notorious for its borderline-softcore approach to stage shows, replete with writhing female dancers and suggestive, salacious lyrics. And while many missed the point—The Tubes were always about satire, about social commentary—even they had to admit it was one helluva show.

So in 1979 the group entered the studio with legendary auteur Todd Rundgren producing and engineering. Their planned album would be their most ambitious yet: Remote Control was to be a concept (or at least a thematically-linked) album about society’s fixation on television. They brought with them a strong set of tunes. Several numbers—”Turn Me On,” “TV is King” and “Prime Time” were clever and commercial all at once, and “Love’s a Mystery (I Don’t Understand)” can now be seen as a template for their 1981 powerballad Top 40 hit “Don’t Want to Wait Anymore.”

As always, The Tubes paid close attention to creation of a

total package. The album cover featured the “Vidtrainer,” a combination baby car seat/television, with a nipple on the screen. And the back cover featured the eight members of The Tubes posed on the signature set of the popular TV game show Hollywood Squares.

Though many concert recordings circulate, few Tubes session tapes have made their way into collectors’ circles. Remote Control Sessions is one of those few, and it’s an interesting document. This eight-song set includes five songs that would end up on the finished album, albeit with different vocal takes. The vocals on Remote Control Sessions feature different phrasing plus some alternate lyrics, and lack Rundgren’s distinctive overdubbed vocals.

Three songs on Remote Control Sessions didn’t make the cut on the final album. “Baby Let’s Run Away” features the vocals of Re Styles, most well-known for her, um, touching duet with Fee Waybill on the Young and Rich standout track “Don’t Touch Me There.”

The unreleased “Baby Let’s Run Away” enjoys a Jack Nitzschestyle arrangement and would have sounded fine on the album. (It doesn’t flow with the TV concept, but then neither does “Mystery.”

Never let a concept get in the way of a good song.) The other two numbers are untitled instrumentals. The shorter one features exotic synthesizer squawks, prominently showcasing the knob-twiddling of Mike Cotten.

The other is a more conventional song with a funky melody atop a tricky time signature; the piano work of Vince Welnick (later of

Difficulty to Locate: 8 out of 10 General Listenability: 7 out of 10

The Grateful Dead) is the focus of this piece.

The ambitious Remote Control was not a huge marketplace success, and A&M would reject a followup album and then drop The Tubes. But the band regrouped, signed with Capitol and went on to release the two most successful albums of their career. Their fortunes faded again in the mid 80s: they again teamed up with Rundgren for the disastrous Love Bomb; they got dropped by Capitol; lead singer Fee Waybill briefly left; and founder Bill Spooner cleaned up and went his own way.

Four of The Tubes (with others) continue today, but there’s been little in the way of new music.

Knowingly or not, many of today’s theatrically-oriented acts owe a substantial debt to The Tubes. The group combined choreography, shock tactics, comedy, excellent musicianship and multi-part harmonies for some of the most enjoyable live shows ever. Mike Cotten is putting the finishing touches on a retrospective documentary film about the group (www.thetubesproject. com); perhaps its release will spur a re-examination of this intriguing group.

eature

highlights

the hottest of the hot

From

classic to cutting-edge.

In this issue you’ll find many of today’s hottest new acts — The Whigs, Tristan Prettyman, Black Lips, Cobra Starship — right alongside legendary figures like Van Morrison and Robert Cray.

Whatever music you’re into Skope has something — plenty, in fact — for you.

Hip-hop? Del the Funky Homosapien.

Off-center pop? Koop. The heavy stuff?

Silverstein. 80s retro? The Mary Onettes from Sweden.

All those, and more. Check ‘em out.

sia

i

From Six Feet Under to Center Stage

July/August 2008

“I thought if I named the album, Some People Have Real Problems, people would ask it about me a lot, and

I

would be reminded that some people don’t have arms and legs.”

by Matt Fink

n one of the great ironies in television history, despite the fact that everyone dies during the final moments of HBO’s hit series Six Feet Under, the woman that wrote the song that played during those climactic minutes was commercially reborn at that very moment. Unknown to nearly everyone outside of the U.K. or her native Australia, Sia Furler was getting her first introduction to American ears, with the sweeping balladry of “Breathe Me” immediately becoming ingrained in the memories of those watching their favorite characters meet their demise. Overnight, Sia was given a second life.

“Suddenly I was popular in America,” she giggles, doing a phone interview while running errands on a chilly spring morning in New York City. “The American labels—who hadn’t been interested in me at all—got into a bidding war, and decided they wanted to sign me.” She reflects on a whirlwind period during which she left the U.K. for Los Angeles and nearly abandoned the music business altogether. “After a year, Hear Music came in, and [they] were open with the idea of doing a non-traditional deal. It left me in a good position.”

For an artist who had previously been dropped by Island Records for her refusal to make music consistent with the downtempo diva persona they had crafted for her, a move to the Starbucks-owned Hear Music was a perfect fit. The move allowed the former Zero 7 vocalist to explore the sides of her personality deemed as potentially confusing for her fans. And just like that, Some People Have Real Problems began to take shape, a true anything-goes pop album largely drawn from songs that she had written for other artists while flirting with the idea of abandoning her solo career. Where her music had previously been equal does of somber and soulful, this album would be the first to capture the energy of her live shows and the bubbly power of personality. As anyone who has heard Sia giddily crack jokes during an interview can attest, there’s more than a little eight-year-old girl in her, and after getting herself a bob haircut, she was ready to come out and play.

“I wanted to introduce that playfulness, because I have a whole album of playful stuff waiting to be released,” she explains while waiting in line at a pharmacy, referring to the album that resulted in her being dropped by her previous label. “I wanted to make an album that sounded kind of live, that wasn’t retro or electro or ‘sounds of the future’—just songs done live with real instruments. But I’m really lazy,” she says, indicating that she leaned heavily on her backing band to hammer out the richly organic arrangements on the album. “I like to just have the original spark of an idea, and then I like to let other people take

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also suggests these artists: Rachael Sage, Lucky Soul, the Lonely Hearts

feature

by Chris West

the idea and run with it. And then I like to take credit for it,” she says, erupting in deep laughter. “Ask anybody in my past.”

Having already faced enough failure and false starts to render any artist a cynic, Sia admits that she has little understanding of why the universe decided to give her a second, third, and fourth chance. But if a recent sold-out tour (where people pelted her with gifts and she performed on late night television shows) is any indication, the struggles of her past are long gone. But just in case her 15 years of struggles haven’t humbled her, her latest album comes with a built-in reminder that some things are worse than having your first real success at the age of 32.

“I thought if I named the album, Some People Have Real Problems, people would ask me about it a lot, and I would be reminded that some people don’t have arms and legs,” she says. She goes on to order a soy latte at a Starbucks and joke about how she is distraught over her CD having been replaced on Starbucks counters with one by Bob Dylan. “They gave me a card so I could drink coffee for free. It’s the best record label I’ve ever worked with, I tell you…Oh, I am still here!” she squeals as the girl behind the counter recognizes her face from the cover of an album in the display case. Sia is genuinely thrilled to be recognized. “See, that’s the attention I was looking for! I thought it was over for me at Starbucks,” says the queen of second chances. “But it appears that they have extended my reign.”

deaf pedestrians Deaf debut falls on Virgin’s ears

d

eaf Pedestrians lead man Charlton Parker took a long hard look back at his upbringing and realized that there was a story within the nostalgia of comic book superheroes and Dungeons and Dragons characters. So he penned “Hail to the Geek” in the same vein as Beck’s “Loser” or Radiohead’s “Creep” and it cast his indie outfit into the limelight like a Fighter-Mage would cast a level seven Magic Missile.

“It’s tragically autobiographical,” Charlton laughted. “It’s hitting on more cylinders than you might think. It was really just a joke song that I did for my own amusement; I guess it’s garnered some modicum of success.” (The track was recently chosen for three episodes of the CW “reality” show Beauty and the Geek.)

“Hail to the Geek” is just one of the quirky tracks on their major

label debut …And Other Distractions. And while the tracks have been in the DP repertoire for roughly six years, they now bear the uber-trademark of Virgin Records.

Parker offers that the debut is “like eating an irony and shit sandwich. It’s like putting Ben-Gay® on your nipples: slightly painful, yet strangely satisfying.”

Though replete with DP’s standards of sarcasm, irony and humor, Distractions does contain cautionary tales, even if in the simplest of contexts. The lead track “Seatbelt” preaches the importance of well, wearing one. (“Yeah, that one is my public service announcement,” Parker admits.) “Idiot” is a testament to longing and love that isn’t quite returned, and “We the Sheeple” is a call for people to eastablish a sense of personal identity.

So the band laces serious subjects with humor? “Well, that’s the trick,” he said. “You’re walking the precipice.”

Deaf Pedestrians are currently writing their sophomore album and hope to enter the studio this fall. “I think [that] when people see the second record, the first one will make much more sense.”

39

also suggests these artists: Black Market Radio, Crime in Stereo, Dirty Rig

9th wonder and

t o

by Andreas Hale

k c

u b

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July/August 2008

i

h s

Cooking Up The Formula

t is rare in hip-hop to find chemistry between the old school and new school. But when it comes to producer du jour 9th Wonder (born Patrick Douthit) and Buckshot (born Kenyatta Blake), the chemistry is so incredible that it only makes sense that they reveal The Formula to their fans – new and old.

In the early 90s, before 9th Wonder was cooking up soulful beats for the group Little Brother, the young man from North Carolina tried to track down a certain song from a New York outfit called Black Moon. Buckshot was part of that group.

“The crazy things about it is that I’m only a few months younger than Buckshot,” remarks 9th. “I vividly remember going from store to store in 1993 looking for ‘Who Got the Props.’”

Over a decade later the two would connect after a suggested meeting by Black Moon’s DJ Evil Dee. A few recording sessions later and Buckshot would find the perfect compliment to his signature NY flow. The rest is history.

“The chemistry (with us) was so great that we said ‘Why don’t we just call the album Chemistry?’” Buckshot explains.

“And from there we just took it a step further with (the new album) The Formula.”

The duo’s second outing—a critically-acclaimed work that took a mere six days to create—follows the tried and true concept of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

“We basically just gave you the same formula as we did with Chemistry but cooked up a new batch,” Buckshot notes. “I can’t downplay it all,” he says, trying to explain why working with 9th is so seamless. “Recording with 9th is like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, where everything was just so natural. It ain’t that deep.”

9th Wonder’s soulful production has been lauded since his early days with Little Brother. Since then, he has gone on to collect a Grammy® and other accolades while working with the likes of Jay-Z, Mary J Blige and others. But working with Buckshot is a dream come true for the man who spent his early life chasing down songs from one of his favorite groups.

“I didn’t get in the game for the fame, to be known or to make money,” 9th beams. “I got into this game because I get to work with all the cats I grew up listening to. This is a wonderland for me. No Grammy® or platinum plaque will be able to take the feeling of that.”

While it is a joy, the only thing they ask of their fans in order to keep going is to go buy the album.

“Imagine going into a record store and stealing ten 9th Wonder albums. Would 9th be able to make another record for you to steal? No!” Buckshot exclaims. “Go to a record store and buy it. Because when you do, that contributes to [us] being able to do it again.”

“I got into this game because I get to work with all the cats

also suggests these artists: Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, Ghostface Killah

I grew up listening to.”

, a t ras r o

e a g

ot reg s,

t

feature

by Claudia Ward-de León

Luciano,

Messenger of Jah

he island of Jamaica, a mere 50 miles wide and just under 150 miles long, is small even in comparison to its immediate neighbors, Cuba and Hispañola. In the westcentral part of the country lies Manchester Parish, one of the five parishes which make up Middlesex county. Right outside Mandeville (the capital of the area) is Davey Town, where Jepther Washington McClymont was born. McClymont—better known to fans as Luciano—grew up in Davey Town and emigrated to Kingston in the 80s, to pursue music. He was told by an early mentor to ditch his real name for the stage, and there, Luciano arose.

Luciano worked hard and struggled to make it. “I had to really learn to fend for myself when I was a boy. When a boy loses his dad at eleven years, he must become a man,” Luciano says matter-of-factly.

His father left behind a guitar he had made, and Luciano built his love of music around learning to play the guitar. He loved and respected the instrument that had belonged to his father.

When he arrived in Kingston, it took a while for his musical career to take off. It wasn’t until he met Fatis Burrell, a producer for Xterminator records, that he was able to really showcase his talent.

Today, Luciano’s songs echo the great roots reggae legends like Bob Marley and The Wailers, Peter Tosh, and the Abyssinians. He tells me he is a fan of Marley and Tosh, but also adds Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles to the list. His latest album Jah Messenger dedicates a lot of time tackling the subjects of violence, Rastafarian spirituality, and social issues.

But what does being a messenger of Jah mean to Luciano?

“In the bible,” he explains, “it tells me, we should give praise and sing. Jah is a representative of God. We should try to live life to please Jah. When you come to know yourself you connect to your roots, your hen you come ancestry, and you be a source of encouragement and inspiration from day to day.” to know yourself Aside from the positive message embodied in his work, Luciano tells me music is catalyst for change. you connect to your “I try to give Jamaica a positive light. There is rising crime, but not just in Jamaica—in the Caribroots your ancestry bean as a whole, and in Africa. Other countries tend to see Jamaica as a role model. The way to fix and you be a source of the crime is to change the music being promoted.

All the music now is gun lyrics music. I know it’s encouragement not just lyrics. Our old music was inspiration, and the music and movies being promoted now are all about gun violence and sex. I don’t believe this is right. There is great art to come from Jamaica.”

“W

,

,

.”

also suggests these artists: Jah Cure, Sizzla, Jacob Miller

Photography courtesy of Luciano

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murder by death Deep and Dark

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July/August 2008

by Jeff O’Neill

omewhere, Johnny Cash smiles. Or, maybe he groans happily.

Whatever. Murder By Death is dark, brooding music that meanders lazily like a drunken, poisonous snake.

While hailing from parts around the contiguous U.S., Murder was formed in Bloomington, Indiana where the members were University students. Just a bunch of crazy Hoosiers, I suppose. And, as evidence, this interview was performed whilst lead singer and guitarist Adam Turla presided over some hot barbeque coals on a random weekday…gotta love the Midwest.

But this isn’t thrash/death metal. Instead, this is introspective, heavy folk with elements of rock. How did they stumble upon the sound? “We originally were all into very different styles, but we knew we wanted to play together – and this was what was born,” explains Turla. “We wanted to do something different,” he added, “not rock, not indie. And look what happened.”

Turla—who provides a deep baritone and some nifty finger picking—is right. The music is strange and uncomfortable, with a sense of dread. This is a soundtrack to a macabre circus in which incest and child labor are plentiful. Yet, the music is rooted in an interesting harmony that’s (at times) playful and (almost always) catchy.

Instead of piling on tuned-down licks to frame the mood, Murder instead decided to go with the cello (the same instrument used to make the “dun, dun, dun, dun” in Jaws). The consistently foreboding sound of the cello juxtaposed against the more traditional drums/ bass/guitar makes for an interesting ear feel. All it took was one visit to a band practice and cellist Sarah Balliet knew her sound would jive. “She really just fits right in,” he adds.

“We really use the cello as the ‘lead guitar,’” Turla continues. “But, actually, way more versatile,” he added before taking a brief pause to swill a domestic lite brew.

also suggests these artists: Sometree, Muse, Spoon

feature We wanted to do something different – not rock, not indie. And look what happened.”

Now to the whole Johnny Cash thing. Skope isn’t the first media outlet to compare Murder to the earlier stylings of the Man in Black.

In fact, they sound so similar, it’s downright eerie. But apparently that’s not by design.

“I took voice lessons a few years back,” Turla recalls, “and they told me to sing really low. So now I do, and I guess it works.” He notes that he doesn’t mind the comparisons to a “real American legend” but says Murder never set out to emulate the country icon. “I’m not trying to sound like anyone—and it’s an honor to be compared to

Cash,” he stresses, “but I want to have my own voice.”

Murder owns their sound, no question. And, despite listening to their recent release Red of Tooth and Claw, Turla argued that “we’ve made much darker records. This is a lot more rock influenced.” I suppose “darkness” is a relative term, since I wanted to hang myself after listening. Not because the music was bad, but because the message was somber.

Looking for a more “frenetic” sound, Murder finds that quality with a mixture of heavy cello and that deep-ass voice. Not Crash Test Dummies deep, but not far off. The listener takes a ride on a chaotic train of mad clowns.

(Again with the circus reference.

But take a listen, and you’ll know what I mean.)

Claiming that his best collaborations are with artists possessing an “old fashioned” sound, Turla and

his gang of miserable music misfits have cornered that market. Their latest release would have felt just as out of place in ’68 as it does in 2008. But, without any influence from the Summer of Love.

“I was always more interested in singing about the darker side of life instead of maybe doing love songs,” Turla says. “All that angst just comes from my inner darkness.”

The band’s lyrics include cute little word plays such as this gem: “I’m coming home/on all fours I’m coming home.” The Murder guys turn clichéd pop messages into a suffering beast of a record.

If you’re in the mood for a little snarling, Mid-Americana, you could do worse than Murder.

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buzz kill

by Bill Reese

sk pe

July/August 2008

Why’s Everyone Picking On Louis XIV? ost people would probably not include a band like Louis XIV on a list of the most misunderstood bands in rock.

They don’t call themselves antichrist superstars, appear in sex tapes or check into rehab on a monthly basis. Nevertheless, Louis XIV singer Jason Hill can’t understand why so many people have the wrong impression of his band. He chocks it up to everything from the group’s uniqueness, the redundancy of the music press and somewhat bogus notions of the band’s “irresponsibility.”

Formed in 2003 by Hill, singer/guitarist Brian Karscig and drummer Mark Maigaard, Louis XIV caught their big break—like

many bands this decade—by getting big in Europe and on the Internet, parlaying that success into a record deal with a major label. Their unlikely 2004 smash “Finding Out True Love is Blind” was getting airplay in the states

by DJs who simply ripped it off the band’s website. In 2005, the staunchly independent band— insistent on producing their own music—signed with Atlantic. They released The Best Little Secrets are Kept that year, followed by Slick Dogs and Ponies last winter.

Slick Dogs finds the band darker, bolder and sounding more diverse than their previous efforts. One of the most noticeable changes is that Hill now shares the mic with his longtime friend and songwriting partner Karscig, most notably on Slick Dogs’ lead single “Air Traffic Control.”

“I wanted it to be more of a

dual record,” says Hill about Slick Dogs. “I sing about 60 percent of this record whereas in the past, I’ve sang about 80 or 90 percent.

There is a lot more Brian on this record.”

Karscig’s ascension to part-time frontman is a result of the band’s mission to reinvent and to try different things, according to Hill, who doesn’t mind sharing the spotlight.

“We’ve written many songs together,” he said. “We write in every single possible way you could think of: on our own, together.

Assigned roles do not apply with us. It’s sort of like whoever gets the idea first.”

So what’s all the fuss about?

Plenty of indie bands have been hyped, riding the buzz to both positive reviews and some egohindering negativity. But there are probably few frontmen more

“The idea that some rock band from California is supposed to be the beacon of responsibility shows you that we’re in a bad place in America.” also suggests these artists: Cobra Starship, TheJimpster Strokes Nitin Sawhney, DutchVillage RhythmGreen, Combo,

44

aware of the opinions of their band than Hill. He spent a good ten minutes explaining why his band is so misunderstood, name dropping half a dozen publications and elaborating on his theories for the backlash. “A lot of it, fundamentally, is just a misunderstanding,” he said. “We’re different than everyone else. We’re not afraid to say what’s on our mind.”

He kept repeating that a lot of his band’s critics feel that they are too irresponsible for their own good, a sentiment that he quickly tore through. “The idea that some rock band from California is supposed to be the beacon of responsibility shows you that we’re in a bad place in America,” said the singer.

He pointed to a U.K. publication that ranked the top ten reasons why readers should not listen

feature

paul oakenfold Ready Steady Go

by Eric W. Saeger

W

to Louis XIV. One of the reasons, according to Hill, stated that the reviewer could have enjoyed the band if it “were not for them being so irresponsible.”

A lot of the band’s perceived “irresponsibility” comes from their sometimes subtle, sometimes overt sexuality, which Hill passes off as the band being “flirtatious.” He sees a double standard in his music’s reception compared to that of hip-hop.

“You don’t see that in a lot of urban music where there’s a lot more dangerous ideas floating around than being flirtatious. That’s the only thing we’re guilty of. It’s almost racist in that interpretation of it. It’s like, if you’re black, you can do it. If you’re white, it’s irresponsible.”

It is puzzling how an artist whose band is so proud of their independence, their work ethic and their music could be seemingly obsessed with the opinions of the group’s critics. While bad or misleading press is no doubt frustrating and disheartening, many of rock’s finest acts have flown in the face of their critics and often come out stronger and more determined on the other side. Knowing that your craft is special and unique is something that should always come from within, not from a press that loves to constantly hype up the next big thing only to tear them back down.

hen in the company of non-music critics (a setting I strongly encourage people to seek out), I usually clue them in to who exactly Paul Oakenfold is this way: “You know the scene in Collateral when Tom Cruise is shooting up the strobe-lit Korean bar? Well, the song playing between bursts of handgun-fire is ‘Ready Steady Go,’ one of his better tunes.”

So that’s settled – Oakenfold is one of the world’s top DJs, crafting hot, wet tracks for movie soundtracks and instigating general dance-floor chaos.

His was not a meteoric rise but a steady snowballing. It wasn’t until receiving an invitation to tour with U2 that Oakenfold realized he’d joined the DJ elite. “It’s not often that you get an opportunity to play in front of such a massive audience,” he told me. “I think that really set the tone for me with regards to the type of shows that I have gone on to play since then.”

Those shows are spectacular now, often played in your basic Enormodome wherever in the world he is. His favorite club? “I love Zouk in Singapore.

It’s got an amazing atmosphere and a top-notch crowd.”

He advises newer DJs to be persistent.

“Produce tracks, don’t just DJ; you can open a lot more doors for yourself that way.”

We are gathered here today to attend to business as well as chit-chat, of course, lest this superstar decline to give us the time of day. His most recent album, Greatest Hits and Remixes, came out on Ultra Records last year and fared well. “It had a great response – it went number one in the Billboard electronic chart and on iTunes.

I’ll be releasing my next artist album next year, but meantime I’m doing the music for three movies - Nobel Son, Humbolt Park, and Vexille, all of which will be coming out in the next few months.”

45 also suggests these artists: Sundawner, George Acosta, Progression

a grand ex

by Janie Franz

Ari Hest’s Song a Week

sk pe

July/August 2008

i

n January, singer/songwriter Ari Hest launched an ambitious project: writing and recording a song each week of the rest of the year.

Fans would then pick their favorite songs, and twelve songs would be pressed into a new album.

Fifty-two songs in a year would daunt many a songwriter, but for Hest it’s an opportunity to showcase new work. “I have a lot of ideas,” Hest says. “Music comes to me very quickly. It’s the lyrics that take a while longer. I knew that that would really be the hardest part of writing this year. There are still tons of songs I still have to write. I just have to keep life interesting and keep meeting new people for inspiration.”

46

Phhotography by Malcolm Brown also suggests these artists: Alternate Routes, Chad Hollister Band, Landon Pigg

feature

xperiment It’s not surprising that Hest is attempting this kind of project. He’s been writing songs since he was in high school. “I never thought that this would end up being my career,” he says. He was writing and playing in bands for fun. But after his last band broke up, Hest recalls, “I started to realize that I don’t need a band with the music that I was writing, which was highly percussive, acoustic guitar music.”

He began recording his own records that didn’t leave room for any other instrumentation.

Then, in 2004, he was signed by Columbia Records; the label decided to re-release one of his independent recordings. They remixed it and offered it to the public. That effort set a precedent for Hest. From that moment on, Hest was chasing his older material. For some artists that wouldn’t be a problem, but for the constantly-evolving Hest , those label efforts jerked his creative temperament.

That first recording included songs that were already three or four years old. “I thought I was done with them, but then I had to tease myself into thinking that they were new again for the general public who still had not heard them,” he recalls. “I was writing

stuff in 2004 that didn’t see the light of day until The Break In, which was my last CD in 2006. It just set this cycle up where I had plenty of material all the time. It was kind of a nice problem, but at the same time it was mentally a little challenging, knowing that you are writing better songs now but you have to promote songs that you wrote a while ago.

Really for me, the style of my playing changed. And my thinking about what I feel is a quality song— even my singing style—changed tremendously in the last three years.”

Those old songs have been good to Hest. “If you go to iTunes right now and you look at what my most popular downloaded songs are,” he says, “you’ll find that the majority of them are old. They are songs I wrote six or seven years ago. It almost doesn’t sound like what I do now. I am proud of those songs. I think the writing—especially for my age at the time—is pretty good, but I feel that I’ve gone in a very different direction, one that I’m happier with now.”

So, when Hest parted with Columbia, he decided to find a new way to produce his music. He decided

then to write and record current songs. And this time, the songs are immediate. These weren’t songs that were written months or years ago, but last week…or yesterday.

But Hest realizes that even putting a song a week on a website may not be enough involvement for his fans. “We wanted to make this more interactive. We wanted to involve them as much as we could in the creative end of things,” he says. “Basically, they’re being my A&R people. They are telling me which songs they like the best and which songs they think that other people will like the best. I’m going to listen to them.” Moreover, Hest will hire a producer to bring some cohesiveness to the album.

“Everybody needs more word-of-mouth networking,” Hest adds. “I don’t have the money to do a whole lot of publicity without a major label. I need to rely on my fans to tell their friends.”

“I never thought that this would end up being my career.”

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for whom

the bell tolls sk pe

July/August 2008

Swedish Trio Makes 80s Manchester Their Own

“L

ending the sound from your favorite time / Sixty, seventy, eighty-nine / Play something that they heard before / Don’t do it better, just do it more.”

These lyrics from The Bell’s “On and On” are an interesting challenge from a band whose music is undeniably rooted in the 80s UK alternative scene—reviews of the Swedish trio’s debut LP Make Some Quiet almost invariably reference Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division, the Cure and the like. But The Bell can get away with such commentary about recycled pop because their nod to the past comes with a confidence in their own wintery post-punk sound, and an acceptance of listeners’ need to categorize even when there’s a lot more going on.

“To a certain degree [the references are] amusing, because most of the bands we get comparisons to we haven’t been listening to since they were active and we were in our teens,” says lyricist and vocalist Mathias Stromberg. “I think that

48

by Evie Nagy also suggests these artists: Joy Division, Interpol, The Church

Photography by Marcus Råberg

feature

“If we had still been bunching bands together is the way it works.” And as for a recurring modern comparison with similarly-influenced Interpol, instrumentalist Nicklas Nilsson says that “the first time I heard Interpol I thought: ‘Ah, hey, nice, these guys have really captured essentials from The Chameleons in the mid 80s and made it sound 2000.’ I’m not saying Interpol is anything but a good band, but still, the best effect they had on me was that I started to listen to The Chameleons again.”

The Bell formed in 2006 as a result of late night parties that turned to conversations about music, politics and culture between Nilsson and Jan Petterson, the band’s other instrumentalist (the two trade off musical duties as the spirit moves, hence the lack of instrument-specific labels).

“If we had still been teenagers I don’t think we would have ever become friends,” says Nilsson. “But since we are like one hundred years old now, we both realized that friends don’t come that easily. So we managed to put up with each other, set up a small studio and [bought] a computer. Then everything got more pragmatic and we started to play and write songs. I personally don’t think I have had that kind of releasing experience since at the age of three when I crawled up and took my first notes on the family piano.” After the duo had a few songs under its belt, Petterson talked long-time friend Stromberg into adding a lead vocal.

The first Scandinavian signing to Portland, Ore. label Badman Recording Co. (My Morning Jacket, Mark Kozelek), The Bell wrote and recorded nearly one song a week for a year, finishing 35 and choosing 13 for their debut. “The melodic and harmonic parts just come very easily for us,” says Nilsson. “I suppose we are just simple junkies.” The result of this binge was Make Some Quiet, released in the U.S. last February. Stromberg says the album is held together by the idea of “trying to be calm and sensible in a world that worships the loud and arrogant.”

It’s fitting, then, that the Bell is holding off on a major tour until they can get it right. “We plan to stay out of focus,” says Stromberg. “We want to put on a real show, rather than just showing up and doing gigs. So as it is now, the machinery we need is too big to enable us to tour.” And truth be told, he adds, “I think quite a lot of bands should consider revising just what they are doing up there, every single night, just being old farts

doing the same old things as bands have for generations. I want us to do something like a modern day (Warhol & Velvet Underground) ‘Exploding Plastic Inevitable’ which of course is impossible to do unless we run into a shitload of money.”

So if North American fans instead meet The Bell on their home turf, what would we discover that broadens our knowledge of Sweden beyond IKEA and hot blondes?

Not much, says Stromberg.

“Those are two pretty accurate descriptions of Sweden. Although, nowadays, IKEA shares the wealth with [jeans manufacturers] and Skype, and the hot blondes are running the whole show.”

teenagers

I don’t think we would have ever become friends.”

49

www.skopemagazine.com

by Chris West

50

sk pe

July/August 2008

a

we the

New sires of pop-rock royalty

s Mel Brooks so eloquently put it, “It’s good to be the king.”

Despite being zygotes when History of the World pt. I was released, it seems the Florida monarchs from We The Kings made that their mantra and piped it through their 11-track self-titled debut. While on the back end of a supporting tour, Kings front man Travis Clark gave Skope the skinny on their new debut, how they turned a Florida vacation town into a marketing tool and why despite being kings, they don’t necessarily dine like royalty.

It turns out We The Kings isn’t a monarchy after all, rather an oligarchy of lifelong friends whom have known each other from Little League to high school. So when the Bradenton natives all found a calling in music, it was only logical they form a band. After all of these years the friendsin-a-band dynamic has had a profound effect on them as much as the band itself.

“As you grow up together, you just learn to read each other,” Travis said. “It just makes it much easier to work with. It’s really cool to have that close friendship with the guys. The only thing we may fight about is like ‘who ate the last Ramen noodles?’”

Taking their name from the middle school they at-

aware of what many of their contemporaries are chugging out, however it was their intent to inject a breath of fresh air to a genre often described as lamenting and woeful. Released in October of 2007, the debut is freshman testament to more tended, the newly formed band heartfelt and upbeat subject decided from the beginning matter. that instead of admiring their “We’d rather write music musical heroes from afar, they that puts a smile on your face,” would emulate them instead.

Travis said. “I think it’s more “We were basically Blinkhow we are as people and 182 kids,” he said. “When where we grew up. It’s more we decided to start a band true to us write about good we wanted to go pop. But we times rather than bad.” wanted the characteristics of The coastal city of BradenBlink—fun, energetic. On ton is fodder for a large quantistage and in their videos, they ty of the lyrical subject matter always looked like they were on We The Kings. Tracks like having a blast. So as far as “This is Our Town”, “Skyway music goes, that was definitely Avenue” and “August is Over” a big part of it for us.” are unapologeic shout-outs to After early acclaim at local the town that serves as their battle of the bands contests base of operations, inspiraand early self-booked dates tional muse and oddly enough, in and around Bradenton, the as the ultimate street team.

Kings realized “when we got “You know pretty much back from the first tour and everyone in town,” Travis said. we hadn’t killed each other, “So when tourists come to we knew we could make it as town they’ll eventually meet a band.” Shortly thereafter one of our friends or someone S-curve Records got involved we know somewhere. Then and signed the fledgling artists. we’ll invite them to hang out “We chose them [S-curve] or to one of our shows. And because they were the most if they like it, they’ll eventually family oriented, and they were really humble,” said Travis.

While We The Kings purposefully joined the ranks of pop punk, many have chided the genre as cookie cutter, assembly line and recycled en masse. Travis and company are

also suggests these artists: Anberlin, A Change Of Pace, Cute Is What We Aim For

go home and tell their friends about us. Then when we go to wherever they live, they’ll in turn bring their friends to the show in their hometown.

It creates friendships and networks at the same time.”

Furthering that social network, We The Kings are continuing to support their debut through 2008 with their headline “The Long Hair Don’t Care Tour” with Valencia, Sing it Loud and Charlotte Sometimes before appearing at The Bamboozle and the entire stretch of the Warped Tour.

“We just love the road and touring,” Travis concluded.

“Being able to stay out there for this record is going to be a huge advantage for us.”

feature

“It’s more true to us to write about good times rather than bad.”

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diablo

52

sk pe

July/August 2008

danny

Hardcore Survivor

e talks fast and with great animation, reducing the phrase “do you know what I mean?” to “n’mean?” and repeating it where normal people would pause to take a breath.

But after only a few minutes, it’s obvious that Danny Diablo talks fast because there’s no other way he could possibly explain his trajectory from the mosh pits of the nascent 1980s New York punk scene to the leading proponent of “thugcore,” the potent mix of hip-hop, metal, and hardcore that is the end result of a life spent at the confluence of different musical cultures. If he didn’t speak in rapid-fire blasts, he couldn’t recount his earlier life as Lord Exec, the name he adopted as he terrorized the streets of Queens as a graffiti artist before a stint as a roadie for Sick of It All turned into fifteen years of drifting through the underground, fronting legendary but short-lived acts such as Crown of Thornz, Skarhead, and Icepick. Now making music under his own moniker, he’s ready to make his definitive statement.

“I was always against L.A. when I was young, like ‘Fuck that Hollywood shit!’” he says, his gravelly cackle earned through years of screaming in sweaty clubs. “Now I’m the guy in Hollywood. But I’m happy. If it wasn’t for music, I never would have left Queens. I’d still be on the block, sitting out by the mailbox.

N’mean?” These days, he sits in a music studio, putting the finishing touches on International Hardcore Superstar, his debut album on Hellcat Records, the Epitaph imprint founded and run

by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong. With Armstrong riding shotgun in the producer’s booth, Diablo

by Matt Fink Photography

by Tobias Rose

by Matt Stern also suggests these artists:

Twiztid, Walter Molder, Spice 1

has a chance to reach an audience well beyond the hardcore and hip-hop ghettos. The mayor of the thugcore underground is ready for his close-up.

“This is do or die, this record,” he admits.

“This record, it has taken a lot out of me, but it’s fucking amazing. I’ve got some hard rock songs. I’ve got three radio songs, but they’re hard as hell. I don’t know if they’ll get played, because they’ve got some crazy lyrics.

I’ve got some straight up hip-hop songs. It’s like two worlds, hardcore and hip-hop,” he says, mentioning a cast of contributors that ranges from singer-songwriter Everlast to Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs and Vinnie Paz of Jedi Mind Tricks. “I’m making albums, but they’re really more collections of music. Different recordings, different studios, different people and different concepts.” But no matter what the style, Diablo’s music has the same audience.

No doubt, he has earned that audience, with tales of drunken fistfights and drug busts more numerous than his recording projects. But as a red-haired, blue-eyed kid with a Jewish dad and a Puerto Rican mother, it only makes sense that Diablo (born Dan Singer) would lean toward inclusion as an artist. Despite the eclecticism of his work, there is a uniting thread, one that represents years of pain and frustration. It’s the voice of a guy who has had to fight for everything he’s ever had. Whether hip-hop or hardcore, it’s the sound of the streets.

“We’re street kids, and people think that just because we’re different people, we won’t get along,” he says of his musical family. “But

feature “Instead of getting locked up or shot at or stabbed, we put all our energy—negative and positive—into our music.”

because of music, we’re friends, and we do get along. The last time I was in New York City, there were Latin Kings, Bloods, Mongols—everything—all at one show. And everyone respects each other, because they were all there for me and for our family.

And instead of getting locked up or shot at or stabbed, we put all our energy—negative and positive—into our music.”

Of course, that’s easier said than done for an artist whose fertile musical family tree is planted so far away from the mainstream that nurtures a comfortable lifestyle. “Sometimes in the music industry, I feel like, ‘What the fuck am I doing? I just should get a regular fucking job,’” he admits with a raspy sigh.

“But through the computer, people hit me up, and they’re like, ‘Listen, I’ve loved your music since Crown of Thornz, and I just want you to know that your lyrics have inspired me and helped me out.’ And I’ll be like, ‘Oh, my God. That’s incredible. That’s the coolest thing in the world.’ That keeps me going,” he says, turning serious for the first time in the interview. “But then I’ll be like, ‘Man, this kid must be really fucked up if I’m his role model.’”

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daddy barrio to the bone Balancing advocacy for the barrio

by Claudia Ward-de León

with celebrity endorsement deals.

“i

’m a mirror of the hood,” says Daddy Yankee. Although he is referring specifically to the barrios of his native Puerto Rico, the vision of the 31-year-old Ramon Ayala has resonated with low-income residents worldwide for the last decade and a half.

Photography by Kevin Ou

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yankee

“Nobody has done that before – an artist that really comes from the street.

As I said in one of my songs, ‘I’m the real barrio dream.’”

It was four years ago that the music that backed those messages infected the mainstream with an Interscope Records contract and the hit single “Gasolina.”

Reggaeton became a nationally recognized genre, and the Latin equivalent of hiphop stirred up the charts. No reggaeton artist was bigger than Yankee. The biggest super-star of this movement, his secret to success seems simple. “In terms of Latin music, I use fusion. That’s what makes me different than the rest of the artists.”

That fusion took the form of follow-up collaborations with Snoop Dogg, Akon and producers including Scott Storch. Although MTV and Clear Channel brought him into the living rooms and iPods of non-Spanish-speaking Americans, Daddy Yankee admit that there’s “a big difference between Daddy Yankee in the beginning then the material that I’ve got right now.”

Although this international celebrity is often portrayed in tailored suits and designer shades, his music-making stems from a populist attitude. “When I listen to my music in the 1990s, it was a great time in music.” Recalling No Mercy, his 1994 debut, he notes that it was “just street music. It was just me in the hood, with a turntable, recording an album. No studio, no nothing. Me and the DJ were making tapes.” Those primitive sessions expounded on timeless themes of suffering and brown unity, and continue to gain popularity with new waves of listeners. “For a lot of fans, I was a new artist in 2005,” Yankee observes. “Once they realized that I’ve been doing this for the last sixteen years, they went back to try and get the old material.”

Talento De Barrio, Yankee’s latest effort, doesn’t bow to the mainstream, but welcomes newcomers to the block party nonetheless. “When I work my independent albums, that’s basically for my core fans,” he says. “That’s for the people that started with me for my entire [career]. This album is 100% Spanish. It’s for my old fans in South America and Central America, the Caribbean, and in Europe. When I’m making an album with Interscope, it’s more for the States.” Releasing other titles on his own El Cartel imprint, Yankee can divide his energies between small and large pockets of fans, serving a function not unlike mixtapes (hip-hop) or EPs (rock). “When you make an independent album, you feel more comfortable ‘cause you own everything. You ain’t gotta show it to nobody. It’s just you, your heart and your instincts.”

Those instincts find the party music sensation writing about the poverty of the barrio he references in the disc’s title. “I’m thinking about all those situations that really surround us in the hood. Criminality, hope, love, losing a friend, mother’s suffering.” These are some of Yankee’s sources of inspiration. While these cries are heard throughout Latin America, Yankee—speaking from a plush New York City publicity firm—hopes they meet the ears of Americans in election season.

All while championing of the spirit of the ghetto, Daddy Yankee works endorsement deals for Pepsi and Reebok, corporations that profit off the same people that he defends. Asked if he sees a conflict in this, Yankee’s tone tightens. “Sometimes

also suggests these artists: Don Omar, Alexis & Fido, The Game

music is a help to people to really understand this side of society. I have gained a lot of people, a lot of fans because of that – who haven’t felt any struggle in their life. They see it as interesting.” Though he refuses to speak candidly about specific endorsements, Yankee claims that if any fans think he’s selling out, he hasn’t heard about it. “In hip-hop, when artists get a lot of money and really famous, there’s a lot of hate. With me, it’s the opposite. When major deals and endorsement branding [happen], all the Latinos, all over the world, feel proud of all of the things that I’m doing,” The usually nostalgic and humble artist then strives to defend himself and his culture all at once: “‘cause nobody has done that before – an artist that really comes from the street. As I said in one of my songs, ‘I’m the real barrio dream.’”

That dream refuses to be deferred. Talking about Puerto Rico within the context of United States politics, Yankee doesn’t hold back. “We’re off the radar. We need to be on the radar, and we want to play a big part in history.” The man who many consider the voice of the island’s voiceless is also quick to counter the stereotype of extreme poverty in Puerto Rico. “A lot of people think we’re a third world country; it’s not like that.” Yankee’s track record affirms his album title – there is talent in the ghetto. The man’s views on society and the world prove that there are brains and wisdom there as well.

Leveraging his profile for the greater good, Yankee has dedicated time and effort to uplifting his community through action. He funded Fundación Corazón Guerrero (in English, “Heart Warrior Foundation”), an outreach program helping troubled youth break the cycles of barrio oppression. “We’ve got kids in jail, kids under 18,” he begins. “I decided to help them ‘cause they are in a very important position in life. They’re teenagers. If you give them a hand, that transitions [their whole lives].” Yankee tells the story of one particular young man who had killed his father in self-defense, but is now an employed leader within the foundation. “I want to see him turn into a good man,” he emphasizes. “We just donated a couple of scholarships to kids. Once they get out of jail, they have the opportunity to go to college.” For Puerto Rico’s biggest urban music star, wealth and fame are resources to offer the people, just as music was there to empower him. [Editor’s note: in April, Harvard University named Daddy Yankee “Artist of the Year,” noting his “professional achievements, philanthropic contributions,” and his work with the Fundación.]

Whether it’s a multi-platinum release like 2004’s Barrio Fino or an independent purist project, Daddy Yankee balances his duties between telling the world about the barrio’s pain and giving the hood the music to escape from it. Yankee’s seemingly-endless reservoir of energy has served him well in his sixteen years of work, and it has fed his wisdom. He understands that he constantly has to reintroduce himself: “Every time that I’ve been dropping an album, it’s a new offer. I’m always trying to give [my fans] the best music I can.”

kaki

k

aki King is getting her nails done. The diminutive super guitarist is sitting in a Manhattan salon, and while the manicurist works on her right hand, she’s holding her cell phone to her ear with her left, fielding questions about her new album Dreaming of Revenge (Velour). “The guitar work itself isn’t too different from what I’ve been doing on previous albums,” King says, while the manicurist attacks her right thumb with an emery board. “There’s a lot of intricate acoustic guitar, but then we overdubbed a bunch of counter melodies to open up the arrangements. That was the idea of [producer] Malcolm Burn (Emmylou Harris, String Cheese Incident): to lay slow, meaningful electric guitar lines on an acoustic foundation.”

The songs on Revenge balance King’s driving acoustic work with measured ambient notes from various electric axes, including lap steel and baritone guitar. The tracks have a wide-open, spacious sound, the slower notes hanging in the air to fill the sonic palette with endlessly reverberating overtones. “I like to combine ambient textures and a clear, strong pulse. On ‘Life Being What It Is’ the percussion is me tapping on the cover of a book, then using mallets on the bass drums. We loaded keys, guitars and vocals on top of that. It’s ambient, but has a good drive to it.”

It was the drive of King’s acoustic playing that made people take note of her when she moved to New York City from Atlanta. She blends flurries of finger picked notes with fret tapping to create harmonic overtones, uses slap bass techniques to add pounding rhythmic accents and thumps the body of the guitar, making it as much a percussion instrument as a melodic one. “I started playing drums when I was around nine. I thought I’d make it as a drummer, ‘cause I was to shy to sing.

When I finally got serious about the guitar, the two-handed technique you need to play drums carried over.” King honed her chops playing in the New York Subway system; her percussive attack helped her cut through the crowd noise she was competing with. “My style was already there,” King explains. “I didn’t need to get louder, but the subway taught me how to not get distracted, how to get people’s attention, how to pace myself so I could play three hours straight without taking a break.”

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Guitar Goddess Rising

by j. poet

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also suggests these artists: Preston Reed, Umphrey’s McGee, Don Ross

king The manicurist interrupts. She’s concerned that the nails on King’s hand are going to be too thick. “I’m a guitar player,” she explains.

“The thicker the nail, the better the sound.”

King’s first album of self-produced demos was a response to the “Where can I buy your album?” questions she got playing in the tubes. Epic signed her, released Legs to Make Us Longer in 2004, then dropped her. “If you think you’re going to sell a million records, the majors might be able to help, but I like the attention I get from Velour.” Dreaming of Revenge (“It’s a quote from Gauguin,” King says. “‘Life being what it is, we all dream of revenge.’ It’s the chorus of one of the songs.”) follows the same template as Until We Felt Red (2006), alternating between songs with sharply etched, deeply emotional lyrics and free flowing instrumentals that show off King’s astounding technique without ever overshadowing the music. Thanks to Malcolm Burn’s engineering and mixing, the guitars on Revenge occupy

a bigger, more expansive space than before.

The tunes move from the bubbly smooth jazz of “Bone Chaos,” to the classical guitar meets country twang of “Open Mouth,” to the Talking Heads-like pop funk of “Pull Me Out Alive,” which rides a long, rolling rhythm. It features one of King’s most compelling vocals and a hook that you won’t be able to get out of your head. “Montreal” is another winner, a haunting, pulsating instrumental that morphs into a lively rock’n’roll dance tune. “I think that’s my favorite track on the album,” King says impishly. “I play two drum kits on that song, one in the right speaker and one in the left. When I listen to it in my car, I makes we want to drive down a steep hill with my foot on the gas.”

Read a review of King’s Dreaming of Revenge on page 00. —ed.

feature

“When I finally got serious about the guitar, the two handed technique you need to play drums carried over.”

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scary kids

scaring kids

p

Growing Up on the Road

in late 2007).

While Afkary is away being a rock star, his mother has use of his most prized possession, his Vespa scooter. Afkary calls his mom “the band’s number one fan,” and says she never misses a show in Phoenix. So maybe he shouldn’t have been too surprised when he came home to find his mom had gotten him vanity plates that read “SKSK” to commemorate the band’s success. Afkary relates the story with mock indignation, but he can’t hide the laughter in his voice.

“Now I drive around looking like the cockiest asshole,” he says. “I tell her how embarrassing it is, but I’m not going to take it off…because it was a sweet thought. But that’s just a small idea of what I have to deal with on a daily basis.”

Not that Afkary has too much to complain about when he sees how audiences are reacting to the new music. “When we play shows, people are just singing

sk pe

July/August 2008

ouyan Afkary can go ahead and call himself a rock star. The band he plays keyboards for, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, is touring the world in support of their eponymous follow-up to their first full-length record from 2005. They record for Immortal Records, part of the Sony/BMG/RCA cluster that amounts to the biggest label in world.

But every rock star has that weakness that can deflate them at a moment’s notice.

In Afkary’s case, it’s his mom.

Given their pounding predilection for metal that would make the heart of any I Love the 80s fan skip a beat, combined with their growing success, it can be east to forget no one in the band is more than two years past the minimum legal drinking age.

No one has moved too far from the suburbs of Phoenix, where the band first came together in high school. They started in 2002 and released their first EP, After Dark, shortly thereafter (it was re-released

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by Nick A. Zaino III also suggests these artists: Armor for Sleep, Taking Back Sunday, Hidden in Plain View

feature “We never thought of it as something that would ever make us money.”

along more to the new stuff, it seems, than to the old stuff,” he says.

With good reason. The new album may not please metal purists, but it is more diverse and tuneful than the band’s full-length debut, The City Sleeps in Flames. There is still plenty of double-kick fury and guitar shredding, but there are also quieter moments where Afkary’s keyboards come to the forefront.

“I honestly think it’s very drastically different,” he says.

Afkary says the band took more time on this album to craft their individual parts into a complete sound. “I

don’t think that the songs are completely in a different, new direction, but I think it just shows a new approach to how we’re writing music. And I think it’s a much better balanced album, from beginning to end.”

Afkary declines to define the band’s sound. Heavy guitars and drums are definitely at the core of the music, but the band consciously works to avoid a homogenous sound. “I just tell people that it’s rock, because everybody has a different idea of what a certain category should be. I would prefer that people just made up their own mind on what it

is. That way I don’t have to tell anybody what it is.”

Most of the band members were 19 years old when they recorded the last album, and Afkary notes that they have grown personally and musically in the three years since. He has seen a change in musical tastes and work ethic, “from living with our parents and ditching high school every day, to getting out on the road and forcing yourself not to eat when you’re hungry so you can put money back into the gas tank so you can continue a tour.”

The band almost gave up right out of high school, as their original drummer de-

parted; college and responsible careers called. But they decided to press forward and make the best of every opportunity, playing their music and traveling. And it has taken them further than any of them would ever have thought.

“We never thought of it as something that would ever make us money or something that would get us to the next step,” says Afkary. “We just thought, ‘you know what? If it happens, it happens. If not, at least we tried and at least we can move on to the rest of our lives.’”

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July/August 2008

sick puppies

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ho would have ever thought a hug—the act of grasping someone in an affectionate embrace—could thrust a band into a whirlwind of mainstream exposure that even got Jay Leno and Oprah talking about them.

Australia based rock-trio Sick Puppies’ name might not invoke warm fuzzy feelings, but when the group set out to create a video for their melodic ballad “All The Same” they inadvertently created a clip that became a worldwide phenomenon.

“We created it as a get-well card for a friend of mine back in Australia,” revels Sick Puppies frontman Shimon Moore.

“Before we came to the US we were all saving up money for our plane tickets, and one of the jobs I had was holding a sandwich board that advertised cheap lunch. I was out on the

street holding my sign, and another guy rolled up holding his sign. We just hit it off and became friends, so I went out videotaping him with my Dad’s camera. Then, while we were in the States making the record, he told me his grandmother passed away. So I put together this video get-well card to remind him of better times. Once we posted it on the Internet, it seemed to make a lot of other people happy as well.”

The video, which depicts a man walking the streets holding a “Free Hugs” sign, has become an Internet phenomenon all its own, registering over 25 million views on YouTube. The simple concept has since evolved into a “pay it forward” style campaign for affectionate embrace across the globe and propelled the single for Sick Puppies’ “All

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by James Wright also suggests these artists: Finger Eleven, Silverchair, Foo Fighters

Warm Fuzzy Feelings The Same” into one of the most requested tracks on commercial radio.

Moore is no stranger to getting in touch with his emotions. On the Sick Puppies’ debut album Dressed Up As Life the frontman laments about everything from love and drugs to religion and relationships in a heart-on-sleeve style confession. “It really was just whatever felt honest. We didn’t want to hold back anything, otherwise you’re just lying and it’s not going to do anyone any good,” he says. “I don’t think that anyone consciously sets out to fake something; they just don’t connect with the material.

We’re not a political band or anything like that; we just write what we see. And there is a lot of shit to see.”

Unlike the majority of bands

feature

that blend into the scene, Sick Puppies’ sound is difficult to categorize. One moment they could be channeling the melodic prowess of Incubus and then rocking out like an unapologetic Nickelback the next.

“I don’t think we’re some crazy unique band, but we just sound like ourselves. We make a conscious effort not to sound like other bands. I’ve been to a lot of concerts recently, and every show that I go to is sort of genre-specific. I wouldn’t be able to choose

T

here’s a special class of songs throughout rock music history that are ostensibly about girls but actually about heroin. A couple of these tracks have managed, somewhat perplexingly, to find their way onto commercials in the past few years. If you remember hearing a cover version of The Only Ones’s romantically skin-popping anthem “Another Girl, Another Planet” on a UK Vodafone ad a few years back, the band you heard playing the song was Bell X1.

But a significationskewing UK advert isn’t the only place on television where Bell X1 has made their mark. The Irish rock quartet’s songs were beamed into American living rooms on episodes of The OC and Grey’s Anatomy . Now that

a band and say it makes perfect sense to put our band with them, because we’re exactly like that band,” he says. “We just try and take the best elements of every style of music that we love.

I think if you were to put us on with a band like the Foo Fighters you might be ok, but even they don’t have a lot of the elements that we have; it’s a different kind of mood.”

Like any new artist that climbs the Billboard charts and racking up monstrous spins at radio, the threat

of a sophomore jinx looms overhead like a dark cloud.

But Moore seems unfazed, , ready for whatever comes his way. “We’ve got a lot of songs written, but we plan on going into our next record the same way we did this one. And that’s to make the best record we possibly can. Whatever it turns out like, it will definitely be the best record we could have made at that moment in time, which is really the most you could ask for.”

their third album, Flock (which came out in Ireland way back in 2005) received its US release in early 2008, the band has been touring Stateside, no doubt hoping to translate televised notoriety into worldwide fame.

Their recent blitz on American network television, though, shouldn’t imply that the members of Bell X1 haven’t put in their sweet time trying to make it. Frontman Paul Noonan and Co. have been on the verge of breaking through for quite some time, at least, in some incarnation. Bell X1 formed from the ashes of Juniper, a rock outfit whose career

“We just try and take the best elements of every style of music that we love.”

spanned almost the entire of the 90s, and which featured now-famous Irish singersongwriter Damien Rice as a member. When Rice sought solo fame in the late 90s, Bell X1 began, and the group spent the last near-decade trying to work their way past the shores of Ireland.

It remains to be seen whether the unobtrusive alt-rock stylings of Bell X1 will finally carry them off of the screens of Americans into their stereos. But with a couple of US tours now backing up their TV appearances, it’s clear that Bell X1 aren’t content to be consigned strictly to commercials.

also suggests these artists: Blue October, The Decemberists, Devics

Saved by the

bell

x1

?

Out of Your Living Room and Onto Your Stereo

by Matt Stern

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armin van buuren t

July/August 2008

he cyberlife of Netherlander Armin van Buuren, arguably the biggest DJ in the world, started in the early 80s with a Grundy Newbrain computer his mom won in a contest.

The immense processing power of one of those things would be completely used up nowadays by a feisty Word document. But hey, right? “I loved it,” he says wistfully over the phone from somewhere in Guatemala. “You could program your own games in BASIC.” Like Gorilla, the game where rudimentary cartoon apes throw exploding bananas? “No, I made a bowling game that was pretty cool.”

Alas, the Newbrain wasn’t up to scratch for his writing the early versions of the trance songs that would later enrapture the dance world.

“Two years after the Newbrain I got an Atari and wrote some barebones music on it, then it was on to other things.”

Other things. Sure. Like the #1 spot in last year’s DJ Mag poll. Like his Armin Only shows in Europe, played to audiences numbering ten thousand and more. And like his Ultra Records-released State of Trance albums, yearly collections considered vitally important to the genre, and their companion weekly radio show, which is now available as an iTunes download following each broadcast.

Read that again, trance-heads: that’s a new State of Trance LP every single week. Kind of. “For legal reasons I had to cut it down to highlights only, the best parts of the radio show.“ Yikes. There’s, like, talking on there? “I introduce some of the songs, tell the audience where to get a hold of them. Either way, in 20 minutes you’ll know exactly what’s going on up to the minute in the world of trance.”

Gotta love that tres-Euro lack of self-confidence, even more prominent when we start

sk pe 64

Take the DJs Cyber-Bowling

by Eric W. Saeger

feature

discussing his all-originals album, Imagine, which streeted in April. “I can honestly say it’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” he beams. “It’s very song-based, an album album, something you’ll want to keep listening to from beginning to end. I had the privilege of working with some really great singers.” Dutch diva Susana, for example, known to fans for her work on the title track of van Buuren’s 2005 Shivers LP, sings on Imagine’s melancholy roll-out single ”If You Should Go.” Ever the wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, I suddenly jump his case about his mysterious remix of the theme from the torture-glorifying Fox show 24. What, he’s a fan of that shit? “I haven’t really seen it much. It’s a funny story, though. I got a call from my label in England – EMI/Virgin does all the soundtracks for Fox, and all of a sudden I’m on a conference call with the guys who do 24. They’re all hyped up, ready to do the remix, and they’re gonna send the masters to me so I can do the remix. So weeks go by, and all of sudden it’s a couple of days before deadline and I don’t have anything from them. I ended up buying the regular soundtrack at a store and sampling the thing, and that’s where I got the basic track.”

Later on, in a show of gratitude, van Buuren got a little love on the show. “In one episode, Jack’s running into a bar, and there’s my music playing in the background. That was cool.”

Big-time stuff for a guy whose base act is playing records. But some say the days of superstar DJs are on the wane, owing in part to the DJ habit of playing for half an hour and splitting.

Van Buuren, however, is still true-blue in that regard. “I feel I do my best DJ sets at a minimum of three hours,” he says, then amends it to “three or four. Less than that and I’m not warmed up, and the crowd can’t really get into it. Nine hours is a good amount of time to really get it done.”

He plays those super-long sets fighting through bouts of jet lag in Ibiza, Miami, Madrid – everywhere on Earth. Does he ever get time to do the roots thing, look for old albums? “Occasionally I’ll visit second-hand stores. That’s where you find the really obscure sounds and records.” He pauses, remembering his life’s mission.

“99.9% of recorded music never gets out to people, and I try to change that whenever I can.”

”I feel I do my best DJ sets at a minimum of three hours”

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the second comi

“i

“It’s rock ‘n roll music; whaddya

think

66

sk pe

July/August 2008

it is?”

by Bill Kopp Photography by Joe Gaffney

have this saying,” David Johansen says, as he readies for an extensive concert tour of South America. “Everything starts out as heresy, and winds up as superstition.”

When his group—The New York Dolls—released their self-titled debut album in 1973, their in-your-face brand of rock ‘n roll was coupled with a lipstick-and-drag approach that all but dared you to ignore them. David recalls, “When we came out—not that we planned it that way—it was perceived as kind of a new, out-on-the-ledge kind of thing. I think what that did was, for people who…” he grimaces and chuckles, “liked Journey or something, it was like, ‘oh man; I don’t want to deal with this,’ y’know?”

The Dolls’ music remained rooted in rock ‘n’ roll traditions.

“It’s funny,” Johansen observes, “because I know when we began, people would say, ‘why do you play like that?’ We would look at them like, ‘this is the way we play! We don’t know how to play any other way!’ It wasn’t like we created some sort of sound on purpose or something. We had this very strong ethic about how rock and roll should be. People would ask us, ‘what kind of music is this?’ And we were like [laughs], ‘it’s rock ‘n roll music; whaddya think it is?’” Johansen points out that the Dolls drew upon the sound and approach of (among others) “Little Richard, and the girl groups, and the soul bands, and…put it all together.”

I mention to David that the lead guitar licks on their latest— the May 2008 release Live at the Fillmore East—cop phrases from the Beatles…and The James Gang. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Johansen replies. “We’ve always had little quotes of things in our songs. In ‘Trash’ (from 1973), it’s got that ‘Love is Strange’ thing.

It’s part of what we do. It’s the language; we’re just using the language.

Some groups, as the saying goes, sold few records, but everybody who bought one

went out and formed a band and became famous. The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Big Star, The New York Dolls: none enjoyed a high profile during their career; all are now revered for their prescient approach and for influence on other important acts. “I think what happened was that a lot of kids who were thinkin’ about makin’ bands and stuff really got into it,” David says. “Because it was really vital rock and roll music. It wasn’t like that plastic shit that they were sellin’ on the radio. A lot of them got inspired by it. And they went on to make bands, and eventually it became the way to play rock ‘n roll music.”

In the wake of commercial indifference, intra-band arguments and drug abuse, the group broke up in 1975. Three members of the 70s lineup had died (original drummer Billy Murcia in the 70s, legendary guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan both in the 90s). Goaded by superfan Morrissey, Johansen re-formed the group in 2004 with founding guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, and tracked down bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane. (The latterday saga is covered well—and poignantly—in Greg Whiteley’s must-see 2005 film New York Doll.)

They augmented the group with other ace players of note, including Sami Yaffa of Hanoi Rocks. “When we started this phase of the band,” David explains, “we were just gonna do [the one] show. If at that point somebody had proposed, ‘let’s do three hundred shows, and a CD, and let’s go out and do it again next year,’ I would have thought, ‘no way.’ So…we went into this thing, really, on a one-off basis, then we took a few more shows, and some festivals. Because we figured, ‘well, we’re up and running anyway. It’s fun; let’s do this for awhile.’ It wasn’t until like a year later that we realized, ‘you know, we’re a band. This is what we do.’”

Even now, what they do isn’t vying for the charts. David observes how the mainstream seems to operate: “Somebody gets a hit with something, and then as hundred other bands go, ‘oh, well, if we do that, maybe we’ll get a hit.’ So then they’re all kind of trying to create something that isn’t really coming from them. And I always figure, well, if I ever felt like I was doing that, I might as well get a job, y’know? Because to me, that’s not playing, that’s working.”

ng of

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The New York Dolls

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freeway A Man Apart

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July/August 2008

f 68

by Jake Paine also suggests these artists: Joe Budden, Jay-Z, The Diplomats

ive years ago, Freeway was the new attitude of rap music. His growling voice, his speckled past in the streets and his confessions over soulful beats made Free the last great Jay-Z-introduced artist of the Roc-A-Fella era, and the poster child of the new rap regime. After a lengthy hiatus, some label confusion and a changing of the guard, it’s another long-bearded Jay-Z protégé who also took his name from the same drug kingpin (Freeway Ricky Ross) that occupied the limelight.

Although 2007’s Free At Last was a criticallyacclaimed return for Freeway, it lacked the charts’ agreement. “Of course I think it could’ve did better, and I wish it would’ve did better, but I’m taking it for what it is,” confesses Freeway. The record approached 100,000 domestic units sold, a far cry from his 2003 gold-certified Philadelphia Freeway. “I haven’t dropped an album in four years, so I feel as though it’s a stepping-stone.

It’s a good album. People know that I can still produce quality music.”

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As Philadelphia’s rap delegates Cassidy, Beanie Sigel and The Roots have all watched attention and sales literally migrate south, it’s a bitter pill to digest. Still, that aforementioned quality music did come across within purist circles. In the shadows of a reputation built upon drug dealing, and a block-bully image, it was a pilgrimage to Mecca that influenced the sophomore album of this devout Muslim.

Take for instance Free At Last’s closing number, “I Cry.” The parting shot is not bravado or a threat of reign, but rather, the 28 year-old revealing the various points in his life where the hardened street rapper has shed tears. “That record is from the heart. Everything I said on it actually happened. I don’t feel as though [records like that] make me vulnerable, I feel as though it’s letting the fans know a little bit more in depth, a deeper situation that I’ve been through.” Whether 500,000 or 100,000, Freeway seems to cherish his supporters and want to give them whatever they desire. He adds, “I’ve never performed it, but I might sometime in the future.

People be askin’ for it when I do shows. They say they love it.”

The man they call “Free” has exercised his freedom in recent years. Despite being a one-time flagship artist on hip-hop’s most respected label, Def Jam Records, Freeway frequently books his own shows, and owns a conversion van to drive to spot dates across the country. This is how he sustained a career and a livelihood without releasing albums, and it’s how he intends on working an album that his label—from which Def Jam President Jay-Z departed in late 2007—might not see as a priority. “I’m on the road all the time, doing shows, spot dates, non-stop. I’m everywhere—wherever I can be at,” states Freeway. “I hope to jump on one of these tours and continue to promote this album and myself.”

A man apart, Freeway exposed the shift in popularity on his album as well as in his guerilla promotion. “It’s Over,” an early song on the album revealed that platinum producers Kanye West and Just Blaze left unanswered Freeway’s calls to work on his second album (both were

staples with the debut, helping solidify their careers). “I got responses from [the song],” reveals Freeway with hesitation. “It ruffled a couple feathers. It served its purpose.”

As he segues into his third album, Phinally Free, Freeway is more focused on building bridges than walls. After visiting dozens of Philadelphia high schools to speak out against the city’s bloodshed, Freeway promotes peace along with his discs.

“We’re putting together a committee of Philly rappers, along with the L.I.F.E.R.S. (an organization of inmate educators) to talk to the kids, do things on the radio, and let the kids know that they can turn their lives around.”

Unsure of his label future, perhaps disappointed with his return to rap, Freeway has grown up before our eyes and ears. As many artists muddy up their past to appeal to thrill-seeking listeners in hoods and suburbs alike, Freeway’s image remains intact, but the MC’s conscience never shined so brightly.

“I haven’t dropped an album in four years, so

I feel as though it’s a stepping-stone.”

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katy

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Not “UR” Typical Pop Princess

arly Simon once sang “you’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” If you happen to be one of pop singer Katy Perry’s ex-boyfriends, it’s not just your vanity doing the talking; according to her the song really is about you. “One of my best friends says the pro of dating Katy Perry is she’ll probably write a song about you and it will be fantastic,” she says with a grin, “the con is…if you dump her, she’ll write a song about you. And the whole fucking world’s gonna sing along.”

A lot of folks have been singing along to Perry’s “UR So Gay,” a song she says is “not necessarily targeted at one person, but was kind of my general feeling about these sensitive guys with guyliner that borrow my jeans and wear them.” Perry readily admits she’s also poking fun at herself, noting “I’m just as much a part of the joke as all of my exes. I shop at H&M and I MySpace and I do all those things.

I live in Los Feliz, which is basically the Williamsburg, Brooklyn of California.”

Los Feliz hasn’t always been home for Perry, who grew up fairly sheltered in a Santa Barbara household with parents that were traveling ministers. “My parents weren’t spinning Rolling Stones or Beatles records in the background having glasses of wine,” she remembers.

“They were teaching me ‘Oh Happy Day’ and we were taking communion.” All this changed for Perry in her teenage years when she would travel down to Nashville to work

perry “If you dump her, she’ll write a song about you.

And the whole fucking world’s gonna sing along.” under the tutelage of a number of producers and songwriters. One day one she was sent home with a question to consider. “I was asked, if I could work with one person in the world, who would it be?” Perry turned on the TV to VH1, which was airing a show on Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, Perry’s personal favorite artist and album at the time. The name Glen Ballard came up, and that’s the name Perry came back to her producer with. Shortly thereafter she and her father were pulling up to Ballard’s office for a meeting.

Perry remembers that meeting and not realizing how big a deal it really was.

“When you’re like 16 or 17 you don’t know what you’re dealing with. You’re just like, ‘I write songs, I like to sing, I like to sing about the boys that dumped me.’

You don’t know that you’re taking a meeting with Glen fucking Ballard.” Ballard, however, liked what he heard. The two started working together and Ballard gave Perry her first assignment. “He told me ‘write a song every day. I don’t care if it’s shit, just write a song every day.’ I was like, ‘who can write a song every day?!’ I’ll tell you, I can write a song every day now if my life depended on it.”

The Ballard experience was followed by a few false starts, one at the age of 18 with Island and another with a band she was a part of that was signed to Columbia. Now, however, the start is very real. Perry has the Warped Tour dates to prove it.

Knowing that Warped Tour has a notoriously rock-oriented crowd, Perry expects some skepticism when concertgoers first see her. “Since I’m an unabashed pop girl I’m sure they’re gonna come to the stage with their arms crossed wondering, ‘OK, who is this major label douchebag girl?’” Perry hopes her performances will do all the explaining for her. “Let people be surprised and entertained and have them go back Katy Perry fans saying ‘she fucking brings it.’” The “bringing it” in Perry’s case involves the mixing of a live rock show with songs that have a synth pop element to them. She’s also looking to channel a little bit of early Gwen Stefani and No Doubt from when they were on Warped Tour, noting that Stefani “looked like she was having so much fucking fun.”

It’s apropos that Perry brings up No Doubt, because much like when bassist Tony Kanal broke up with Gwen and it led to the writing of the group’s mega hit “Don’t Speak,” if you mess with Katy Perry’s heart her next song will be about you.

Katy’s latest album, One of the Boys was released June 17.—ed.

feature

the second coming of

baton rouge thugWlife ebbie

by Jimmy Rae Jr.

S

outhern hip-hop artist Webster Gradney, Jr.—better known as Webbie—has been writing rhymes since the age of five. Growing up on the rough streets of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, rapping was Webbie’s fuel. One of Webbie’s cousins showed him the way of spittin’ lyrics and laying down rhymes, but “can’t nobody really teach you how to rap, I don’t think, he says.

With Baton Rouge being only 45 minutes away from New Orleans (home to No Limit and Cash Money), Webbie felt that this whole rap thing could happen. At age 15, Webbie was signed to Trill Entertainment Records.

Since 2003, Webbie has turned out two studio albums and one compilation album along with being paired up with fellow Baton Rouge native Lil Boosie for some tracks. Webbie was introduced to the mainstream public with hits including “Bad Bitch,” “Give Me That,” “Independent” and “I Miss You.” He can’t say enough about Trill Records and his home town. “We just got a strong culture right now, as far as the fans go. Man, it’s get money time; we blowin’ up and gettin’ bigger, man.

It’s just time to get money.”

Webbie’s latest album, Savage Life 2, depicts “thug life” through his eyes. The album includes 16 tracks with guest appearances from rappers Bun B, Birdman, Rick Ross, UGK, Young Dro and the whole Trill Entertainment roster.

Webbie says “I don’t really label rappers east coast, south coast…because it’s just music, man.” He compares the evolution of rap to the growing up of his daughters. “It changed a lot, man; it’s gettin’ better. Right now, I got a little twin daughter that’s two years old already learnin’ how to use the computer. Yeah, when I was two years old I didn’t even know what a computer looked like. But that’s the same with rap: it’s just gonna get better. Ten years from now, the next generation gonna have songs better than the songs we makin’ right now.”

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also suggests these artists: Lil Boosie,www.skopemagazine.com Young Jeezy, Soulja Boy

by Matt Fink

between the buried and me

w

The Colors of Contrast

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July/August 2008

e live in an era when MTV and television commercials have created a generation of people for whom the MP3 and the skip button ensure that they never have to sit through a song that doesn’t grab their attention. Against this backdrop, the resurgence of the most complex strands of heavy metal has to rank as one of the most unexpected musical developments of the 21st century. Long gone is the era of hair metal excess and dunderheaded doom riffs, as a new

generation of metal fans prefers to do their head-banging to intricately changing time signatures, constantly shifting sonic textures, and complicated instrumental passages that emphasize concentrated attention over immediate reward. No band is more is more representative of this trend than Between the Buried and Me. They’re a North Carolina quintet who has made an album that sounds so dazzlingly complicated that it must have been the end result of hundreds of hours spent charting out and arguing over the nonstop barrage of twisted guitar riffs, growling vocals, and atmospheric flourishes. Amazingly, the opposite was true.

“For some reason, it came together very naturally, and I think we finally found what we’re trying to do with our music. But it was definitely unspoken,” says vocalist and keyboardist Tommy Rogers of the making of Colors, their fifth full-length release. “It just kind of happened. When we’re writing a record, we never try to plan what we’re going to do, and that record started to take shape very early on. We decided we wanted to write it as one piece of music, and it almost felt like a theatrical piece. A good thing about being

in this band as a musician is that you never have the fear of rejection when trying new things.”

A true creative democracy, the members of Between the Buried and Me construct their albums alone and in pieces, sending each other their song ideas and allowing the best ones to survive as seeds that won’t fully bloom until they start the heavy lifting of song assemblage. But before they enter the studio, they will record their entire album at home. They make sure they know exactly what they want to do while their tab is running, and how they’re going to recreate it every night on the road. What ends up in the final mix is anybody’s guess, and close listens to Colors will reveal contrasting shades of death metal, free jazz, thrash, metalcore, synth-pop, prog-rock, and old school country on their textural palette. Even so, the downside to being metal’s most eclectic act is that you’re running afoul of so many dogmas that you’re bound to offend someone, meaning that every show for Between the Buried and Me is a potential trial-by-fire.

“We’ve toured with everyone from Stretch Armstrong to Dragonforce, and we’re getting ready to go on tour with Dream Theater,” he says, rattling off a hardcore punk band, a speed metal band, and the legendary progressive metal act whose Mike Portnoy declared Colors the best album of 2007. “Probably the most interesting one was Dragonforce, because they’re like power metalheads. When we went on stage, you could see these dudes looking at us, like, ‘What are these shorthaired, nerdy looking guys doing?’ And then a few songs later you’d see them head-banging. I think we have something for everybody in our music.”

That said, since an album like Colors incorporates more ideas than most bands explore during their entire careers, making a follow-up requires more than a little boundary stretching. The unexpected result of reaching a new creative plateau is that you have to work harder than ever before to find the next horizon.

“It’s hard to not recreate something that you’ve done before,” Rogers admits. “You catch yourself writing a riff and saying, ‘Ah…that sounds an awful lot like a riff I’ve already written.’ Especially when our songs have so many parts, after awhile, it gets harder and harder to write,” he says, trailing off pensively. “I think we’ve come a long way as musicians, but I wouldn’t take back anything that we’ve done or written.

Everything was written to our best potential at that point, and it’s really cool to sit back and see the progression from each record. It’s exciting to think about what we’re going to be doing in the next few years, because I see this band lasting for a really long time,” he says confidently. “We’ve got a lot of things that we haven’t done yet.”

also suggests these artists: Trivium, Job for a Cowboy, Callenish Circle

Did Somebody Say PORN? Benny Blanco recalls the songs that take him back to good old fashioned classy porn.

I’ve actually met someone who makes music for porn... weirdo!

B

ow Chicka Bow Wow. No, we’re not talking about Ciara’s ex-boyfriend. It’s the notorious beat that echoes throughout every old-school, barelylegal porn film from the 70s. You know, the tight curled handlebar mustached men posing as copy machine technicians in empty offices, where one secretary had to work late. Or better yet, the cable guy who came to fix a desperate housewife’s cable box during a power outage in the dead of summer. Porn music has since evolved from three decades ago. However, somewhere in that transition, artists started crafting songs that sound like porn chamber music in either beat or lyric. Benny Blanco agrees.

The extraterrestrial producer makes music that combines elements of booty house, rock, hip-hop, and everything in between, with a sound so dirty that it could grow hair on Mr. Clean. Benny’s most recent project, Bangers & Cash, is a project with MC/ bootysmith Spank Rock. The two met while Blanco was interning for the late and legendary Disco D. “I remember one night [Disco] D was like, ‘Yo this dude named Spank Rock is comin’ through the studio and he is the shit!’” Blanco recalls. “Later that night in walks this skinny pants wearing fellow, and before I knew it, I was ordering him a tuna sandwich.”

Their friendship grew into a promotional project, which incorporated Spank Rock’s rhyming over 2 Live Crew samples, so their foundation is based upon that dirty dirty hip-hop. As Blanco continues to blaze trails for new school beatsmiths, he’s also a gifted purveyor of perversion with a penchant for cheesy porn soundtracks…well, sort of. “Sometimes, when it has a sleazy Miami Vice vibe to it,” he explains.

“Once I made a track for Hip-Hop

by Kathy Iandoli Photography by James Johnson

Honeys, which is kinda like porn. But I’ve actually met someone who makes music for those things...weirdo!”

Blanco shouts out Ron Jeremy as his favorite porn star, famed for “giving hope to other chubby long haired awkward Jewish men trying to succeed.” Fair enough.

“He is the real Hebrew hammer,” Benny Blanco states. Speaking of hammering, Mr. Blanco lists below his picks for songs that could easily fit into porn.

1) Ginuwine – “Pony” This one is self-explanatory.

2) Nine Inch Nails – “Fist Fuck” Who doesn’t like a sleazy one of those?

h c t a r c

s

8) Outkast – “Prototype” “Prototype” is sooo smooth it makes the asses wit’ the acne look like a baby’s.

9) Devo – “Whip It” This is the perfect car salesman anthem.

10) David Hasselhoff – “Jump In My Car” The Hoff is like Prince…don’t look into his eyes!

3) Prince – “I Would Die 4 U” It’s Prince…that’s it!

4) Tupac – “How Do U Want It” This one is a classic, plus the video is amazing!

5) The Meters – “Sissy Strut” This one’s the perfect setup for a threesome.

6) Teddy Pendergrass – “Turn Off the Lights” Who can resist the Philly soul era when doin’ the ‘do?

7) Lil Wayne – “Pussy Monster” “Pussy Monster” is pretty much selfexplanatory... also [Lil Wayne] is the greatest rapper alive.

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www.skopemagazine.com

Tips

Music Industry

by Eugene Foley

Industry Insider Lets You In On Proven Techniques for Success

The Artist’s Presentation

B

This article is an edited excerpt from Eugene Foley’s book, Artist Development – A Distinctive Guide To The Music Industry’s Lost Art.

efore any why should they invest time and money into you? music Begin by drafting a cover letter. Explain to the recipiindustry, ent why you are contacting them, who you are and what press or you are looking for. For example, if you are asking them media for a recording contract, a gig or radio airplay, make that n unprofession executive clear in your letter. Make sure your contact information listens to your songs, they is listed so the recipient can respond to you if they are al product tells will see your press kit. interested.

That first impression will Don’t be overly boastful or cocky in the letter. Keep the recipient carry over even after they it short and to the point. Try not to use words such as hit the play button. So “brilliant,” “genius” or “amazing.” You have every right that you are not don’t ever underestimate to speak highly of yourself, but do it in a professional and the importance of not humble manner. only sounding good, but serious about If your goal is to sell CDs at shows and use another looking good as well. portion of your order to approach music industry and I would say that at least media executives, please do yourself a favor and order your career 70% of the packages professionally manufactured compact discs. Don’t burn a recording artists send to stack of CDs in your basement, slap stickers on them and me do not contain all of call that your new album. the materials they should.

The next item to focus on is the biography. This That is an alarming numone-page document can cover information such as the ber! I can’t understand how artist’s hometown; musical background and training; early someone can call themselves a professional influences; the project’s history and formation details; musical genre; accommusician and still not know how to assemble plishments; touring experience; current activities and future goals. It could also a proper press kit. The presentation and the include some interesting or fun facts. Make sure you choose a font that is easy music have to be outstanding. to read.

The materials in the press kit should be as A one page fact sheet is another important element in your kit. The bio is, follows: however, the more detailed of the two documents. The fact sheet must use concise bullet-points listing radio stations that played your music, clubs where ● Cover Letter you performed, several one-line blurbs from press you have secured and your contact information. A well written fact sheet is so important that I include a ● CD sample in my book so that artists can use it as a guide.

You cannot underestimate the importance of an outstanding picture. A great ● Biography promotional photo can tell the public a great deal about your sound, image, personality and direction. Don’t be afraid to get creative. If you need a professional ● Fact Sheet photographer to take your pictures, go for it. Be sure to order professional black-and-white 8x10 photos for your kits. I’ve seen enough pictures copied on ● Quote Sheet a crappy home printer to last a lifetime.

If you have secured favorable press, create a quote sheet featuring some of ● 8x10 B&W photo your highlights or enclose photocopies of the actual reviews and articles. If you have gigs coming up, create a document that lists that information too. ● Press Clippings Often, I get asked if lyric sheets are important to include in a press kit, if the lyrics are not listed in the inner sleeve of the CD. I feel that if the words are ● Tour Itinerary hard to understand because of the vocalist’s singing style, then it would be a good idea to include lyric sheets in the press kit.

All of those items must be housed in a Never “shotgun” a press kit to a music industry, press or radio professional. two-pocket folder. Do not send all of these To shotgun a package means you found an executive’s address somewhere and materials loose in an envelope. Preparing mailed a CD without first contacting them for permission. You should always your CD and press kit correctly is money well call or e-mail first, introduce yourself and ask if you may submit a package. spent. An unprofessional product tells the Remember to always look good, sound good and approach people in a prorecipient that you are not serious about your fessional manner. Doors seem to open for artists who understand and embrace career. If you are not willing to take the time this concept. and effort to polish up your presentation,

A

-

.

Eugene Foley is the Founder & President of Foley Entertainment, Inc., a full service music industry consulting firm and licensed Entertainment Agency.

Foley represents artists, labels, managers, producers, songwriters and other industry participants. Clients have earned nearly 40 Gold & Platinum Records & three GRAMMY® Awards for their overall career accomplishments. Foley is the author of two acclaimed music industry educational books and lectures extensively on topics including artist development, marketing and intellectual property. Foley offers a free CD evaluation to all unsigned artists. Visit his Web site at www.

FoleyEntertainment.com.

the crossover

A

Musings, Platitudes and Contemplations From an Outsider

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hhhhh... The digital age. Music’s renaissance. Harmonious proliferation on a scale not seen before.

Third world countries with iPods.

The world, truly linked, by music.

Isn’t it wonderful…

Actually, it may be the absolute worst thing that’s ever happened to our collective ears.

“What do you mean?” you say.

“My iPod has opened up genres to me I never knew existed. My entire collection fits into my back pocket. I can buy singles!” The list goes on and on.

I will admit that the digitalization of music has had its advantages. File sharing has knocked down barriers of time and space.

File zipping has allowed us to carry entire symphonies in the palms of our hands. Really good stuff. Everything else, well…not so much.

One could argue that the tipping point for music came in the late 1990s. The ubiuitous compact disc had firmly taken hold as the music delivery medium of choice. Sound quality had never been higher. Revenues were soaring and new markets were emerging every day. The industry was fat, happy and unbelievably obtuse.

Napster changed all that. And, instead of jumping on the train and getting in bed with the new format, the record hegemons sued the bejesus out of Napster.

And that was that. Unfortunately for Warner Bros. and the rest, the new platform took hold. MP3s: truly a new beginning. And, an ignominious end.

Since the record executives had rushed scurrilously to bury Napster, they had established their position to ignore the elec-

tronic media as a viable source of alternative revenue to CDs. Now, we have an industry where total collapse is no longer a thing of fantasy. Based on where things have come in the music industry since the dawn of the millennium, it’s vastly more likely that artists will plunk down only a couple thousand dollars for ProTools, cut a single in two days, throw it on iTunes, and watch it grow. This is the worst nightmare of the people who got rich selling $18 compact discs.

The question is: how did we get here?

According to a historial text from Duke University’s web site, the advent of recorded music more or less began when Thomas Edison discovered an efficient method to record and replay sound at different volumes in around 1850. Sweet record player. The record player’s illustrious history peaked a hundred years later with improved sound quality making the ubiquitous plastic disc the only way to fly.

Then, things went nuts.

In 1960, 8-track was discovered and in 1963, music cassettes. In 1977, music cassettes overtook records as the dominant music format. The same year, the word “Compact Disc” came out of Philips Industries’ labs.

Sony unveiled its Walkman® cassette player in 1980, though it was not originally intended for mass production. But the public’s response was unbelievable, and Sony became the global leader in portable music reproduction.

But, in 1988, CDs had eclipsed vinyl and were well on their way to replacing cassettes as well.

And in the early 1990s, cassettes

had gone the route of records before them. CDs reigned.

Fast forward to today. Now, we are offered MP3s that sound terrible but are easily reproduced almost anywhere. Cars, homes, computers, cribs, phones, you name it. And as a result, CD sales have plummeted. People don’t want albums anymore. Why bother? You hear a song, you like it, you download it. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Music has, almost overnight, gone from a recognized art form to a simple and crude extension of digital, streaming media.

That’s all, and nothing more.

People’s priorities as they relate to music have fundamentally been altered by a combination of events that has proven to be the catalyst for monumental change in reproduced sound – and in just a decade.

Just ten years ago, our criteria for music was the following: expensive, high sound quality, exclusive.

Now… cheap, bad sounding, mass reproduced.

The art no longer holds value for the new generation of consumers. As I’ve written in the past, this does not bode well for live reproduction going forward.

But, you probably don’t care.

You just picked up a new outer skin for your iPod… with sequins. joneill@skopemagazine.com

by Jeff O’Neill

July/August 2008

The Digital Music Age: Rinse, Wash, Repeat.

don’t read this

F

by Eric W. Saeger

or review purposes elsewhere, I’m reading about “the real Matrix” nowadays, in The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives by Nick Turse. Turse loves him some drama and does get more than mildly hyperbolic when juxtaposing the evildoings of US corporations with the murderous attacks of killer Sentinels and Mister Smiths. But a little theater never hurts, I suppose.

Synchronicity reared its pretty head shortly after I received the book; I’d planned on hacking off a big fat j’accuse of the military-entertainmentcomplex for this edition of Skope anyway, and along comes Turse to douse the abstract’s spark with jet fuel. Just about every company you can think of – from the obvious (Exxon, IBM and the company that makes the robot vacuum cleaner, who of course makes the cave-diving bot that chases Bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan) to the depressingly surprising (Danskin, small ma-andpa companies) – has some relationship to the US military and won’t

jeopardize their profits by refusing Pentagon money. From the Today show to video games, isn’t there a weird sense that something is just fucked?

Ostensibly and traditionally, rock ‘n roll has been a force against military recruitment, and a quick scan of the webbernets comes up bupkus in a search for big rock bands sponsored by the armed services. But the “cascading code” of the Matrix isn’t that hard to glimpse behind the scenes; plenty of military-contracted parent companies allow the music business to live. Neil Young, long a tool of Reprise/Warner, may sing songs about impeaching our fascist, unelected Mr. Bush, but there was never a shadow of a fear on the part of our junta that Young’s tremblingfalsetto mumblings would inspire the proletariat to revolution (which is the only way out at this point, really).

After all, WEA’s parent company, Time Warner Telecom, has been on the sunny end of plenty of military contracts, for one the 2006 $1.1M deal to provide voice and data services to Fort Bragg.

Sony, the biggest record label on earth, also appears innocent on face, what with their release of the antiwar film Why We Fight. But the Army bought plenty of Sony 1.3-inch miniature flat panel screens for their helmet-mounted displays.

Don’t get too paranoid, though.

As Michael Moore suggested in the excellent documentary The Corporation, there’s no all-seeing malevolent Eye of Sauron, just a case of many corporate hands having no idea what the others are up to. Antiwar documentaries, military technologies – whatever rakes in a few shekels is okay.

“From the Today show to video games, isn’t there a weird sense that something is just fucked?”

More sinister to me is the dumbingdown effect of corporate entertainment.

People are fucking stupid enough as they are, but giving them the illusion of power through having their votes “counted” toward the next American Idol is just sad.

Meanwhile, underground music and interesting new sounds remain out of the national spotlight, leaving Moe and Joe Six-Pack to wallow in old-school Vegas bullshit and rock of the 70s.

That, to me, is “the real Matrix” at work, the one that flickered to life at the moment of the first TV transmission, a grainy rant from Hitler. Regular citizens (by the way, one seed of revolution is to replace the pandering term “folks” with that one) are stuck in a cultural rut, believing that there’s nothing more technologically or artistically advanced than Hannah Montana.

Obviously, you indie bands out there need to work harder. But what would you say if an Army rep offered you ten grand to soundtrack a commercial?

Let me take a wild guess

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Then you need Caravan Music Promotions

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Garth Adam has successfully learned the lessons of how to make good rock music. His latest EP, Storm in a Teacup, sports instrumentation and arrangements that uphold the tradition of catchy, tuneful (yet not lightweight) pop-rock. He explains that the EP was recorded on old analog equipment using “old guitars, old amps, old drums, a creaky 40 year old Hammond B3 organ, a slightly out-of-tune 100 year old iron frame piano and my coffee- and red wine-strained vocal cords.” No matter how it was done, the results are engaging.

Garth released two full-length albums (Great Ocean Road and Dance on Friday Night) and another EP (Kiss the World Away) before Storm in a Teacup, and while he’s played with other well-known artists, he’s all about making it on his own these days. The songs on Storm in a Teacup make that likely. Available from iTunes, eMusic and at www.garthadam. com

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target.

contact Mike Friedman: mfriedman@skopemagazine.com (617) 828-6622

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eview

cd’s & dvd’s

what to buy & what should die

We go to extremes.

Skope has nearly four dozen reviews for you this issue. And while most of them fall toward the middle (short for “good if you like this sort of thing; not great, not awful”), we have included four new releases of note.

Two of them rank right near the very top of the scale (and the five-Skope rating is from Eric W. Saeger, one of our most merciless reviewers). And two rank right near the basement, raising the rhetorical “Why was this ever recorded?” question.

Sometimes, the reviews are more entertaining than the albums!

R

eviews Apocalyptica

Where I Am

World’s Collide

Self-Released

Jive Records

sk pe

July/August 2008

It takes no small amount of gall to open your debut album with a Dylan cover, even a somewhat obscure nugget like “Watered-Down Love” from 1981’s Shot of Love. But it’s clear right from the big, rangy drum fill and opening strains of that track that Aaron Mitchum’s music is warm, welcoming, and without pretense. Mitchum slows the song down just slightly, and adds a joyful horn line that’s part Calexico, part Van Morrison. His voice is both lazy and soulful in a way that will be recognizable to fans of Eef Barzelay and Clem Snide.

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Having set the bar so high right out of the gate, Mitchum could be forgiven a few stumbles on the rest of Where I Am. But there are surprisingly few. Alternating between alt.country and laid back west coast rock, Mitchum has made himself easy to like. He’s optimistic without being obnoxious, friendly without being cloying, and has a knack for throwing strings, pedal steel, horns, banjos into an arrangement where they will best support the song. So if “Beautiful Crazy” sounds a little like a Jack Johnson b-side, or if the lyrics to “Her Beauty” are a little cringeworthy, there’s plenty to make up for it elsewhere.

Mitchum’s stated goal is modest: to create and play good music. He’s got that much down. There’s a certain immediate satisfaction in listening to Where I Am for the first time, and it still grows on you the more you listen to it.

Many fans got their first introduction to Finnish band Apocalyptica back in 1998 when their ingenious cello covers of Metallica tunes like “Enter Sandman” appeared in the indie film Your Friends & Neighbors, a movie about five disenfranchised yuppies ensnared in their own form of sexual ennui.

For Worlds Collide, Apocalyptica’s sixth studio album, the quartet relies too heavily on the musical direction of Swedish producer Jacob Hellner, who served as producer for Rammstein.

In fact, you will hear Till Lindemann of Rammstein appearing on “Helden.” While collaboration among artists is usually a good thing, “Helden,” sounds too much like Rammstein. And “I Don’t Care,” featuring Adam Gontier of Three Days Grace, is a ballad best left with the Whitesnakes and the Wingers of the world. Apocalyptica’s compositional prowess resonates enough on its own; adding cameos from a line-up of obscure metal bands does little to bolster their sound. In fact, this bizarre hodgepodge of an album cheapens the way the voice of three cellos and a drum starkly dramatize (and at times, wittily parody) the heavy metal song structure. The album opens up with the captivating “Worlds Collide,” which debonairly shows off staccato nuances and seamlessly segues into “Grace.” Both these songs imbue the album with a charm unique to the band, but once the instrumentals are gone, there’s not much left to be charmed by.

By Eric W. Saeger

by Claudia Ward-de León

Aaron Mitchum

www.arielparicio.com

www.apocalyptica.com

www.aaronmitchum.com

by Nick Zaino III

check out the latest cds from your favorite artists, and find out who the up-and-comers are

Ariel Aparicio All These Brilliant Things Bully Records

No one gets a free pass for being nice on my watch, but the proceeds from this album’s kicker single “I’m the One” are earmarked for the Paul Chester Children’s Hope Foundation, an organization dedicated to fixing the cleft lips and such of children in underdeveloped countries. If only Christina Aguilera or Radiohead deigned to display Jumbo-tron pics of those poor kids for the edification of their live audiences instead of leaving such shockingly sad shit to other artists, huh?

That said, Aparicio is a Cuban transplant now living in Brooklyn, where he owns a couple of hot restaurants. Those eateries appear to have earned him a lot more money than his handful of music releases, some of which have been lauded within the college music community. The tunes here fall into the Let It Be-era Replacements scope of things, if sans much sharpening of the guitar sound. Owing to Aparicio’s heritage, these mostly unremarkable garage songs are sung with the dusty passion of a BoDeans or Los Lobos, making the already antiquated aesthetic an even tougher sell to the US mainstream. But no biggie, right?

Where the songs aren’t busy doing a faceless me-tooing of Replacements (is there still an audience for that stuff nowadays?

At all?), there’s a pulse. “Life and Times” is a draggy garagealt anthem reminiscent of Jesus Lizard, while “Heaven” is along the lines of Neil Young meeting Nick Cave in a dark alley.

“I’m the One,” the aforementioned charity single, is a catchy belt-out worthy (honest) of whatever attention it gets.

Big Noyd’s fifth solo effort starts solidly with a handful of tracks that thunder the latest in gangsta rap, a decade after the genre hit its prime. The opener, “Snitches,” is a cliché-ridden rap that harps on the “Stop Snitchin’” street campaign that’s been pushed harder than dope in recent years. When not delivering sobering mantras that make artists like Cam’Ron say they wouldn’t snitch if a serial killer lived next door, Floyd recycles the usual gangsta rap tropes.

The album’s first single, “Things Done Changed” isn’t a Notorious B.I.G cover but a less impressive reminiscence on hip-hop trends from jewelry to weed. Affiliated with Mobb Deep since the early ‘90s and now in his early 30s, Noyd is nearly a veteran in the rap scene who can still deliver some clever lines when he wants. In “So Much Trouble” he fires off: “Niggas sippin’ on a Beck’s or chillin’ on the stoop/If you see me on the corner, you know I’m gettin’ that loot./ And I got a thug with me that’s always ready to shoot./If you pull at that thing he gonna make it do what it do.”

But by the second half of the album, Noyd starts losing his steam. He’s rhyming in circles, and each beat seems less inspired than the last. Noyd has been releasing albums almost annually since 2003, but one wonders if he’d be better off releasing full albums only every couple of years to fine-tune his tracks into one stronger album.

As it is, Illustrious is only halfway there.

Rough Trade Recordings

Dogged by the overused descriptive phrase “art band” for their varied and sometimes unusual live shows, British Sea Power have proven to be more than a social or pop cultural experiment. The group’s third album, Do You Like Rock Music? is a punched-up affair with distortion entering the fray along with an ever-present amount of white noise bleeding through the mix.

Lead singer Yan’s vocals can take a little getting used to as he divides songs between a breathy lethargy and a bouncy Morrissey vibe. But the strongest tracks on the album come when Yan abandons his vocal affectations. In “Atom,” the singer bullies into something like a rock chant—or its indie rock equivalent—while “Trip Out” offers up some mocking lyrics that read like an indictment of the genre mentioned in the album’s title: “Up then toward the see saw./Up then toward the gibberish./Up then toward being a bore./Up then toward the Apocalypse.”

“The Great Skua” is a fairly standard indie rock instrumental with some choir-like harmonies hitting during the crescendo. And “Canvey Island” filters through with some unusually poignant lyrics about the 1953 flood that claimed 58 lives and which gave musical inspiration to fellow UKers Elvis Costello and The Kursaal Flyers.

The closing track on the album, “We Close Our Eyes,” much like the airy opening track (“All In It”) is among the album’s weakest, fueled by ambient noise and effects laden vocals. But for its occasional false steps, we do in fact like this rock music.

by Jeff O Neill

by Len Sousa

by Len Sousa

Koch Records

Britsh Sea Power

Do You Like Rock Music

www.buck69.net

Illustrious

www.britishseapower.co.uk

www.myspace.com/therealbignoyd

Big Noyd

Buck 69

When She Whispers Your Name

The cover features a bottle of cheap rotgut hooch, a pistol, and a tattooed hussy lounging in a cocktail glass. One word comes to mind: unapologetic.

Buck 69’s “When She Whispers Your Name” is down home, dirty, filthy blues rock – with a hint of authentic country. Buck easily could’ve been Stevie Ray Vaughn’s backup band. Buck 69 isn’t a one-trick pony, though; no sir. Fusing driving piano and giant guitar licks, they can get funky as well. Crazy, I know.

Buck 69 is pure throwback. It’s as if the band recorded inside a time capsule. The sound is more than simply reminiscent of the blues rock killers of the 1970s. This is the sound of that time, and it’s performed supremely well.

Opening with “T-Town,” a great big Fender wails with the wah-wah in a killer riff and continues to dance the frets throughout. The typical 12-bar blues makes its presence felt, but in a really powerful sound. This song belongs on your iPod or Zune; it’s that good – a summer party cut to the max.

The album’s title track is far more chill, with an electronic piano laying down most of the vibe.

The sound is less chunky and more smooth – this work is more representative of Buck’s overall sound. “Misery” displays the same subtle stylings, interspersed with Clapton-esque licks and crooning. Actually, “Misery” could easily pass for a Clapton cut. And that’s never a bad thing.

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www.skopemagazine.com

Donita Sparks

Transmiticate

Sparksfly

by Jake Paine

www.donitasparks.com

As one of the vocalists behind the Los Angeles-based Punk girl group L7, Donita Sparks has displayed little wear (or stylistic shift) over the last twenty years.

On her first solo outing, the energetic Sparks brings with her all those missed melodies of the late ‘80s, adding some updated electronic backing in just the right places. Transmiticate is an exciting reminder that while pop princesses can’t always mask the wrinkles, a punk princess will always remain daddy’s worst nightmare.

“Headcheck” brings Sunset Boulevard’s glory back. Razor-sharp guitar playing, courtesy of Sparks, and fuzzily recorded vocals make this a soundtrack to any edgy Saturday night. “Take a Few Steps” however, relies less on melody, and celebrates Sparks’s crisper vocals, with yet another apathetic chorus and deftly-placed guitar chords. The lyrics always seem to meet the music halfway. Nothing too composed, short on the poetic, but pure attitude.

One of the best things about Transmiticate is its party attitude.

“Need to Numb” cuts back to the glory era of drug-influenced punk, without being broody or pretentious. Donita’s singing is too good, and even though the song is an outcry, the catchy chorus is laughing all the way to the pusher. Of course not all of the eleven songs capture this magic.

“Curtains for Cathy” and “My Skin’s Too Thin” find themselves trapped in that dreary grunge era of music with which Sparks is also often associated. Instead, the audience overlooks these pauses for the vocals that echo, just like the sentiments of an era that

Dub Trio Another Sound Is Dying If you’re expecting some chilled Ipecac Recordings

by Claudia Ward-de León

www.dubtrio.com

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Pull of the Moon

by Todd Sikorski

Hope Tunes www.elisapeimer.com

sk pe

July/August 2008

Elisa Peimer

out, spliff-passing dub, you’ve got another thing coming, mon.

When Dub Trio combines dub and metal, lightning strikes.

The trio responsible for Another Sound is Dying carefully handpicks guitar riffs with muscle power that dovetail with dub’s more transcendental components. They don’t shy away from an album mostly full of instrumentals. You’ve never heard anything like this before.

One of the hardest things for a songwriter to do is to write a great relationship song. This is true despite the fact that nearly everyone who has walked this earth knows how complicated keeping a strong bond with family, friends, and lovers can be.

Knowing this, kudos must be given to New York singer-songwriter Elisa Peimer for her attempt to record Pull of the Moon, a whole album’s worth of songs tackling that subject. Do not call Pull of the Moon a concept album, though. Instead, it is a

Dub Trio’s shining moments come through in tunes like “Felicitacion.” In songs like this and “The Midnight Rider,” the listener’s mind is cruising along on the dub express one minute, knee-deep in metal the next.

This is all thanks to a transition that happens so naturally, and so succinctly, that it almost goes unnoticed.

should. If these boys had shaved off a couple of songs, they’d have a perfect album, but near-perfect is nothing to scoff at. Oh, and for you fans of Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle), there’s his vocal cameo on this album. What’s more, Patton is co-founder of Ipecac Recordings, a label with the mantra “no more mediocre music.” Now that’s some good shit, mon.

The only problem with this recording is its length: it goes on for a song or two longer than it

collection of pop-rock songs that is a pleasant listen for those fond of Sheryl Crow or Norah Jones, despite Moon’s more complex subject matter.

The best thing about Pull of the Moon is Peimer’s vocal versatility.

She is equally adept at singing soft, subtle songs like “Set to Fly” and “Fallen” as she is belting out louder numbers like “I Give.” Also, she has assembled a talented backing band that is both polished and professional (guitarist Paul Cabri deserves special recognition).

Yet the album’s strengths cannot mask the fact that the lyrics are often forgettable. Most of the tracks employ shopworn phrases such as “feeling lost at sea,” “standing at the water’s edge,” and “living in a bubble.” These have been heard too many times before. The lone exception to this is the impressive closing song, “Marine Layer,” which tackles a couple’s communication problems in a fresh way.

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Farewell To Freeway boasts in its latest press release that listeners need not attempt to define their music because, graciously, “the band has already taken the liberty to do so.” But please beg the pardon of one who wishes to try.

FTF’s basic recipe: Add one part ‘80s rock riff to one part metal rhythm guitar, sprinkle in a calamitous cacophony of emo-soaked whinery, and sully with a hefty helping of dramatic Godzilla impressions. And there you have it, the concoction that breeds virtually every artist Victory Records has ever signed.

It’s not to say FTF doesn’t have its moments.

It simply means that they are, like the planets, few and far between. Both “Lemmings” and “Speak Your Words” would be among the album’s better songs if devoid of the persistent demon vocals spattered throughout. And the title track doesn’t assault the nervous system as much as some others.

As with most metalcore/screamo acts, the songs are usually well written and technically sound, but the screaming vocals, which rarely occur organically enough to sound like they belong, seem more like a petulant trend than a musical innovation. Arguably, primal screaming does less to ignite the cockles of contrived emotion than its sonic opposite, the approach of emo groups that openly weep over their own lyrics.

There may be an audience for this genre, but Farewell To Freeway isn’t likely to win over any fresh converts to its cause.

by Nick Zaino III

by Len Sousa

Victory Records

Farm

www.fireflightrock.com

Definitions

www.farmtheband.com

www.farewelltofreeway.com

Farewell to Freeway

by Chris West

eviews

Fireflight

Gray Birds

Unbreakable

Self-Released

Flicker Records

This space doesn’t really allow enough space to review Farm’s new double album Gray Birds.

Weighing in at 18 tracks this thing can only be measured in acres—instrumentation: Wurlitzer, horns, harmonica, electric and acoustic guitar, fiddle, banjo…etc. Genres: alt-country laced blues with veins of folk-indie. You get the idea; there are just too many cows to count.

The album opens with “Here It Is” which resembles a rural orchestra pit warming up. Though just over one minute long, the off-key chirps and twangs make the listener’s ears sad. Happily this gives way to “Boomtown Basement” which holds true to Farm’s rural Vermont surroundings with banjo pickings, harmonica and slight cymbals taps. The subdued harmonized vocals may be serenading the place this album was actually recorded. “Go Ahead” brings to light a time when vocalists did actually sing into a tin can. The backing indie chord strums accented with bluesy organ and more ubiquitous banjo make this one a standout. “Something I Drew” rounds out the available talent with super-distorted guitar and more tin-can vocals—it sounds like a collaboration of equal parts Kings of Leon and The Pixies in a rockabilly cocktail.

Everything on Gray Birds is just big; it’s barnsized and as thick as the maple syrup Vermont is known for. Consume this elephant of eclectic Americana one bite at a time

When Evanescence (intentionally or not) alienated the Christian rock audience in 2003, they left a bit of a void for a mainstream hard rock band in the genre. Fireflight staked their claim to that territory in 2006, when their full-length debut, The Healing of Harms, scored on the Billboard® Christian charts. Their follow-up, Unbreakable, ought to finish the job. The title track had climbed to number 20 on the “Hot Christian Songs” chart after four weeks, and the band was the Gospel Music Channel’s initial “Listen Up” artist of the month in April, just after the album was released.

Mahalia Jackson, Fireflight is not. If you didn’t label Unbreakable, you could pass it off as an Evanescence album. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Dawn Richardson has pipes to match Amy Lee, and the band has the same talent for catchy, melodic hard rock. “Unbreakable” has the same punch and sweeping chorus that made “Bring Me To Life” so popular, sans the touches of electronica. Richardson’s vocals on “You Gave Me a Promise” should hit with Avril Lavigne fans. Fireflight’s more meat-and-potatoes rock approach may even land them some fans not reached by Evanescence’s more eclectic songs.

But there is still the fact that Fireflight is following Evanescence’s blueprint, albeit very capably, and some people may tend to stick with the original. We’ll find out how closely they’re following it if they start to demand that their CDs be removed from the Christian market. But don’t count on it.

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www.skopemagazine.com

Remember a few years ago when it was impossible to turn on the radio without hearing that Jason Mraz song “The Remedy?” While not a bad song, it was so inescapable – and so friggin’ catchy – that it stuck in the mind like a Garfield doll to a car window, unremovable unless you used extreme measures. Like sticking your head under a bus.

Well, Mraz has a new album, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. But don’t run for the nearest bus. Anchored by the perky, but charming, single “I’m Yours,” the new CD is solid, mature and doesn’t make you want to hit yourself in the head with something heavy.

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The songs range from light and entertaining (the aforementioned “I’m Yours,” and “Lucky,” a sweet duet between Mraz and Colbie Caillat) to the booty-shaking (the Timberlake-esque “Butterfly” and “Coyotes”) to the downright devastating. “Love for a Child,” a sad, powerful tune told from the point of view of a child of divorce, falls squarely into that last category.

In the song, Mraz poignantly describes the dissolution of a marriage, and how it slowly erodes a child’s innocence and happiness. “When you’re young,” Mraz intones in the chorus. “it’s OK to be easily ignored.”

It’s the heart-tugging lament of someone who feels he’s no longer entitled to attention or affection.

Nothing on the album is as instantly memorable as “The Remedy,” but that’s probably for the best. Some of our heads are still throbbing.

Luaka Bop Records

Here’s something that is perfectly mellow, simple, melodic, and believable. The alt.country pursuit has been the path less travelled, but the results have yielded a nation full of blossoming fruitful expression. AA Bondy channeled Dylan, while M. Ward embedded himself deeper into the hipster world of indie. Wilco has always been a staple, and Ryan Adams didn’t die. As the genre forges on, new voices emerge. For Jim White, the potential to solidify himself in a scene of artistic visionaries is in his own hands.

Released on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop Records in October of 2007, Transnormal Skiperoo stands as the fourth full-length studio effort from the Pensacola, Florida born ex-fashion model, NYC taxi cab driver, drifter, pro-surfer, photographer, and filmmaker. All short-lived stints, one can only assume. But what’s for sure is that this record mixes as much influences as his employment efforts. The simplified guitar phrasings bleed, while the independent production, reminiscent of Saddle Creek and Omaha, reverberates through its strut.

On “Fruit of the Vine,” a seven minute psychedelic tension-filled hymnal, White explores the issues surrounding the blind-faith nature of religion, the gripping battle with American drug use, and the unpredictable nature of war.

To put the icing on the cake, White drops the line that makes the record. As part of “Turquoise House” he sings, “I’m going to let my freak flag fly. This job ain’t for the faint, but there is one thing you can’t be is something you ain’t.” Well said, Jimmy. I’ll but you a beer sometime.

by Jake Paine

by Martin Halo

by Amanda Cuda

Atlantic Records

Transnormal Skiperoo

www.junkiexl.com

We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things

Jim White

www.myspace.com/officialjimwhite

www.jasonmraz.com

Jason Mraz

Junkie XL

Booming Back At You Artwerk

The ten-year veteran Amsterdam house music producer Junkie XL attempts to do what many of his peers struggle with: stay relevant amidst the new wave of electro. Truth be told, one cannot help but dissect the influences from Justice and the DFA movement in XL’s sixth album, but Booming Back at You sounds as if the uncertain times gave him something to fight for.

“More” nods to Peaches with its raunchy sung lyrics, underneath fully distorted 808s. The sound is a bit more polished for the hipster crowd, but Junkie XL is aware of what’s going on, and he’s supplying charged dance tracks that meet the contemporary DJ playlist.

“Clash,” which sounds deeply influenced by Gary Glitter arena pop, isn’t as club friendly.

The obnoxious overload of sound feels more experimental than is to be expected from a veteran of XL’s stature.

Rather than simply exist as a DJ, it is Junkie XL’s production that makes Booming Back at You his most definitive work. Whereas “Not Enough” appeals to the dabbling-electro indie fan with its soft, pensive vocals, it is “Booming Right at You,” the almost-title tune that samples early Stetsasonic, winning over the hip-hop head. Without becoming a mixtape or a mash-up, this album is sophisticated dance music, with its careful tracking, dynamic sources and premium mixing and mastering.

Though trends are overlooking quality for edginess right now, a true veteran of the late ‘90s club revival cleans out our ears for us with a thumping collection of movers.

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eviews

Kaki King Dreaming of Revenge

by Eric W. Saeger

Velour Records

Various Artists

Live Earth The Concerts For A Climate In Crisis Reprise Records

www.liveearth.org

by Martin Halo

King is no cookie-cut genre vanguard, and she has the Golden Globe nomination (for Sean Penn’s Into the Wild) to prove it. This is a full-band record chocked with curveballs, some of them folky, others from the ambient-electro side of the tracks. “Air and Kilometers” is an odd one, suggestive of Al DiMeola adding sage jazz guitar chops to a curdling symphonic background for a meditation video of Utah rock formations.

To corral the gist of what you’re actually hearing from Kaki King’s guitar, witnessing the visual aspect is almost a prerequisite.

A long-time percussionist, she plays her Ovation with autistic animation, as if it were a zither in need of a little obedience training. King plucks impossibly quick notes out of the fretboard while almost simultaneously giving the body gentle but deliberate whaps, treating it interchangeably as both a melodic and percussive instrument.

An Atlanta-born transplant to New York, she responded to the emotional shock of 9/11 by

busking in subways, and her tunes can smack of that – you know, pretty, lost guitars going about their wispy business as the camera does slow fades and pans over whatever devastation du jour. She graces only three songs with vocals, where she exhibits about as much control over her voice as Juliana Hatfield on a good day. And Hatfield’s tonality is a close match to King’s as well, though strictly bent to fit airy quasi-ballads (“Saving Days in a Frozen Head”) with little or no Sheryl Crow rock-out ever happening.

The whole critical side of the Live Earth events is a touchy subject, mainly because the event was for an understandably important and noble cause. But there was an underlying factor involved. It was planned, it was perfectly marketed, and in the end somebody walked home with the profits. Al Gore was the public face and in the end it seemed as if the concentration was less on the cause and more focused on how great the people were for taking action to raise awareness about it.

performances by John Mayer, Madonna, Audioslave, Foo Fighters, Kean, Roger Waters, and James Blunt. The DVD includes live footage from the event but is accompanied by a documentary that focuses more on the event organizers’ political message than on the music. The vision was perfect, the plan was executed flawlessly, and in the end Live Earth was a profitable enterprise.

But the hypocrisy remains. The private jets still fly, the Hummers are still being manufactured, the politicians and musicians who supported the event for change still guzzle the gas and oil products. Not because they don’t

care, but because it is almost impossible not to.

best asset: Andrew Volpe’s lyrical delivery is high animation without being too overly theatrical. Tim Ferrell’s guitar work is technically tight, but the lyrical subject matter is clear foreshadowing for more dark and macabre to come. “Lake Pontchartrain” showcases the band’s love for horror movies while “Go-Getter Greg” is basically an ode to a stalker. With the over-the-top content of the above tracks, more sensible offerings like “Topeka,” “Such As It Ends” and “Scream, Scream, Scream” are left as a collection of sore

thumbs; they’re strangely out of place within the bounds of the album themes.

The 2 DVD/CD set is packed with a stunning live mix from the world concerts that feature

See this issue’s feature on Kaki King on p.00—ed.

In step with her playing, though,

If you can look past the political undertones and concentrate on the music, the recordings really are a gem. They feature a unified artistic structure that broke down cultural barriers for one day, spanning the length of the entire globe.

LUDO

You’re Awful, I Love You

Island Records

by Chris West

www.ludorock.com

If Weezer and They Might Be Giants are the gods of geek rock, then Ludo seems ready to round out the holy trinity with their major label debut, You’re Awful, I Love You. Their M.O. is solid musicality in a power pop vein with absolute lyrical absurdity. Think the storytelling style of Barenaked Ladies, the ridiculousness of Presidents of the United States and the darkness and horror of whatever goth band happens to come to mind.

Opening track “Love Me Dead” undoubtedly features the band’s

This one is just all over the place—the music is polished, the hooks are infectious…and the lyrics are, at times, simply revolting. It just seems too much of a leap to croon about cannibalism and stalkers over sing-songy sugar pop. It almost leaves you gagging for the “Girls on Trampolines” mentality of their EP Broken Bride. But this one just leaves you gagging.

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www.skopemagazine.com

ECHO Mountain

by Bill Kopp

K Records

With a Joe Cocker rasp, Malcolm Holcombe plays some folky country on Gamblin’ House.

Somewhere John Steinbeck rejoices.

Boy, does this album suck.

Nothing much happens musically for the first two and a half minutes of the nearly sixminute “Pontiac.” Listening to it is like wandering into a drum circle populated by robots.

The aptly-titled “Problems” evokes images of an out-of-tune Human League. Its expressionless delivery is sub-Gary Numan headache-inducing clatter. The skittering guitar runs on “Kottbusser Torr” sound a bit like early 80s Robert Fripp (King Crimson), but the track itself isn’t compelling. “Tell the Police the Truth” sounds like what you’d hear in the video arcade in a mall near you...in 1982.

“Those Birds are Bats” is the closest thing to an actual song on Kontpab, but that doesn’t mean it’s any good. “Wipe Out”—not the Surfaris hit—is more annoying start/stop noise, the sort of thing any teenager with a Casio, a drum machine and a four-track Fostex could have conjured up in a single 1983 afternoon. “Teardrops” sounds like German synth group Trio (“Da Da Da”) minus the whimsy. “Mercury” actually has a catchy beat, but the vocals—alternately spoken, wailed and moaned—are grating. The final cut “Rise Rice” starts off with a throbbing synth drone and percussion that sounds like someone kicking a 55-gallon drum down an alley. Then it gets worse. Four minutes in, you’ll beg your CD player: “Please, make it stop!” But if you let it, the track will steal four and a half more minutes of your life.

Marianne Nowottny claims to want to build an album that “as much Fleetwood Mac as Lil’ Kim.” What Is She Doing? is nothing short of eccentric but slightly appealing in an almost disturbing, offbeat way.

Marianne Nowottny What Is She Doing

by Lauren Proctor

Abaton Book Company www.mariannenowottny.com

July/August 2008 March/April

Mahjongg seems to have gathered up all the weakest bits of the 80s. If you want to hear some good industrial/synth stuff, dig out an old Throbbing Gristle record instead.

sk pe

by Jeff O Neill

Gamblin’ House

Kontpab

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www.malcolmholcombe.com

www.krecs.com

Malcolm Holcombe

Mah Jongg

Nowottny introduces herself on this album with glittery teenage sentiment. The first few tracks on What Is She Doing? are a colossal poppy, hook-laden rollercoaster ride through adolescence.

“All Over the World” is the strongest of these quirky teenage songs. The initial hook is Michael Jackson addictive, and Nowottny

While country and folk are often mutually exclusive, Holcombe does a commendable job fusing elements of both without forcing the issue. Twangy slide guitar, vocal harmonics in a duet style and harmonica all find their way to House in a sometimes brooding, sometimes raucous frame. This is music you listen to in Kentucky whilst shooting Jack Daniel’s 12-year on your dusty porch.

It’s always refreshing to hear an artist devoid of modern influence on their sound. Instead of sounding archaic, it’s just the opposite. The ear is refreshed by listening to a new spin on an established musical template.

“Goodtimes” is one of those cuts. A punchy, simple drum provides easy rhythm; it allows Holcombe to sputter and grunt his way through a fun song that’s probably even better played through the radio of an old F-150. The best music always evokes strong mental imagery… and this music is no exception.

The requisite ballad, “Baby Likes a Love Song,” is mercilessly devoid of a whiny slide guitar that would drown the sound in a sappy patina of melancholy. Instead, the more upbeat acoustic provides a welcome respite from the typical. Holcombe takes the simple instrument and emotes beautifully through it.

The title cut is straight outta Mississippi with its strong Delta drive. A quick slide solo is carefree and keeps the vibe playful – kinda like the rest of the record.

builds on this foundation with tinny percussion and spacey electronics as she fantasizes a cruise around the world with the man she dreams about.

Halfway through the album Nowottny exchanges her catchy teen bopper tracks for humid dissonance. Nowottny refuses to conform as she opts for more complicated, flighty sounds on her harmonium and other keyboards. Layered with electronic sounds, Nowottny creates a raw and experimental experience for the disc’s latter half.

“Burning Up For You” starts like

an electronic cabaret track and then transitions into wailing unified only by the saxophone. Here, Nowottny’s “oohs” and “awws” spiral into oblivion with the rest of the track; then she quickly reunites the melody into a smoky and seductive repetition of “burning up for you baby.”

It would be difficult to shove Nowottny into any one genre and unfair to try to compare her to any other artist. This album is bizarre, and her musical digressions will leave you asking, “What is she doing?” Maybe that’s the point.

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eviews

Barsuk Records

How is it possible that Nada Surf made five albums? Well, they did, the fifth being their latest Lucky, an album packed with love stories set to the tune of swaying guitars and questionably emo voices. The trio have seen minimal success in their twelve-year career; their notoriety stems mostly from their single “Popular” off their High/Low debut. Nada Surf didn’t necessarily become trailblazers for that unidentifiable genre they and every other band of the late ‘90s were funneled into, but somewhere along the way they solidified a fan base. A base that survived through three other albums that never actually captured the cheeky rock humor that their debut single promised.

Instead, Nada Surf evolved into this “take us seriously” band, which demanded respect as real musicians and not the guys who once claimed their moms think they’re a catch.

Completely wiping the funny business from memory, Lucky is a decent album, with songs of oral history like “Ice on the Wing,” the weirdly bold “The Fox,” and the bluesy folk of “Here Goes Something.” Once again, Nada Surf isn’t pushing the envelope of rock music or anything, but their simple rhythms matched with intricate wordplay are interesting enough to hold attention for ten tracks.

There’s only one dreadful cut and that’s the last one, “The Film Did Not Go ‘Round.”

Nine good tracks out of ten is a rarity in today’s music. So while Nada Surf might no longer be “Popular” they are Lucky enough this time to have created a solid album.

Addicted To Company Victor Records

Dubliner Paddy Casey is known for his Jack Johnson-like eclectic influences, ranging from hip-hop to folk to traditional Irish music. Whereas 2000’s Amen (So Be It) came as a respected gestalt of these worlds, the third album Addicted To Company feels a bit duller, as Casey attempts to be a bit more soulful.

“Fear” does little to shake off the Damien Rice comparisons that have plagued Casey since his arrival nearly a decade ago. The watered down hip-hop drums might be a distinguishing point, but the overdone production also fences in the singer’s writing and lyrical abilities. If Paddy is trying to be different, he best exemplifies that on “I Keep.” With a mellow electric piano, subtle harmonica, and a very warm delivery, the song tucks away its early ‘70s R&B inspiration nicely.

But it’s the forced bridge—which includes the lyrics, “and we taste each other in our own private air”—that reminds us why eras aren’t to be repeated, especially from youngsters.

“U and I” is another reaching effort. With an electronic percussion section in the song that starts and stops, one cannot help but sense a bedroom approach to early David Gray that’s gone a bit wrong. On top of that, the songwriting here, like much of the album, is predictable, limited and simple.

This is mellow music that beckons not to be skipped, but leaves one to wonder how much better it could sound. The overwrought production seems to win over a crowd, but bonds with no single taste.

by Claudia Ward-de León

by Jake Paine

by Kathy Iandoli

Lucky

Paddy Casey

www.gueriilafunk.com

www.paddycasey.com

www.barsuk.com

Nada Surf

Public Enemy featuring Paris

Remix of A Nation

Guerilla Funk Recordings

Subtlety has never been the modus operandi for Public Enemy. And Remix of a Nation drops like your standard PE record, charging through like a protest rally. Flavor Flav (yeah boy!) whimsically backs homeboy Chuck D, whose targets this time around include: the political mishandling of Katrina’s aftermath, The War on Terrorism, and the “Son Of a Bush Nation.” Straight from selftitled album opener, “Remix of a Nation,” Flavor Flav and Chuck D warm up for the political rhyme firestorm exclaiming “C’mon Now!” on each detonated beat. Raps segue into turntable manipulations amidst sampled newscasts, an approach similar to 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet.

Produced by the elusive recording artist Paris for his Guerilla Funk label, Remix of a Nation was intended as an enhancement to PE’s 2006 album, Rebirth of a Nation. Known for “Bush Killa,” Paris started Guerilla Funk with the hopes of spurring a label that was anti-misogyny, antidrug culture, and anti-violence.

Remix of a Nation servew as a reminder of why Public Enemy was one of the premier hip-hop acts. While Remix is not their strongest album, it is definitely better than a lot of the misogynistic, drug culture, violent dribble that’s out there.

First time listeners should check out something from PE’s golden era, and then add this album to your collection as a supplement.

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www.skopemagazine.com

Thanks for the bait and switch, Racecar. The first song on your latest CD, dance like a ghost fools the listener into thinking the album might be at least mildly interesting.

Racecar

dance like a ghost Love Slave Records

by Amanda Cuda

www.dancelikeaghost.com

Racoon Another Day Another Label

by Theodore Thimou

www.racoon.nl

About midway through the tune, the listener settles in for an entertaining, if somewhat undemanding, ride. We don’t get one.

The album quickly starts to go downhill once “Kisses” finishes.

The next song, “Just This Once” isn’t bad, but the sweet, simple energy is depleting. By the time we get to the title track (which is eerily reminiscent of the Phil Collins chestnut “In the Air Tonight” – complete with drum riff), that sense of fun is completely gone.

Instead, the album has become a

families break/ Everybody’s on the take/ All that matters today/ The kind of money that you make”—that hints at one of the album’s main themes: balancing the prospect of success against the threat of selling out. “Hero’s in Town” and “Kingsize” explore similar lyrical territory, with frontman Bart van der Weide blowing lonesome harmonica riffs and singing in an earnest but not too gritty voice; guitarist Dennis Huige experimenting with open tunings on his acoustic; and bassist Stefan de Kroon and drummer Paul Bukkens trying their best to not get in the way.

technically competent yet dreary and self-important pop-rock offering.

True, it’s not completely terrible.

But it is tedious. One song is nearly indistinguishable from the next, and the listener quickly loses interest. And that’s kind of too bad. If the rest of the album were as light and bright and kisses, it wouldn’t be a masterpiece, but at least it would be fun to listen to.

What’s wrong with that?

Yet it’s the fact that Racoon occasionally plug in and crank up the amps that rescues this album from mediocrity. The band sounds livelier and more dangerous on electric fare such as “Hanging with the Clowns” and the Clash-like “Got to Get Out.” The more decibels they deliver, the better the music gets—”If You Know What I Mean” even offers thumping tom-tom drums, overdriven guitars and a Detroit garage-rock edge that almost suggests early MC5.

Raquel Aurilla

July/August 2008

Finding My Way Shea Records

by Nick Zaino III

sk pe

Dutch quartet Racoon have already blown up throughout Europe, but can they crack the United States? While the mild acoustic rock that dominates much of their third album, Another Day, is pleasant on the ears, it doesn’t offer anything that hasn’t been done better by others. The usual touchstones of ‘90s acoustic alternative/roots rock—Indigo Girls, Counting Crows and Hootie & the Blowfish—are clear influences.

The album opens with “Happy Family,” a snappy, upbeat tune with a refrain—”But all these

www.raquelaurilia.com

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That song, “Kisses in the Morning” isn’t anything special – just a simple love song, complete with bouncy rhythms and sweet, almost trite lyrics. “When you hold me in your arms, I’m hypnotized by your charms,” croons David Alyassin, who wrote all the album’s songs and sings lead vocals on most of them. Granted, it’s not poetry, and certainly not anything groundbreaking. But

the song as a whole is fun, light and goes down easy.

Raquel Aurilia’s debut Finding My Way isn’t so much an album as an extended American Idol audition. There are bland anthems, would-be inspirational tunes, manufactured rock “edge” and even the obligatory classic rock covers you’d usually see on Idol’s 60s or 70s theme nights.

Everything is on pitch, neatly packaged, and, as Simon Cowell would say, utterly forgettable.

It feels heartless to criticize an independent artist like Aurilia who is fighting for attention like any other struggling artist, but

when someone’s sights are set so clearly for the middle of the road, it doesn’t do anyone any favors to pull punches. Aurilia has a pleasant but bland singing voice, and the original songs she has chosen (she didn’t write anything on the album) seem engineered from spare parts of other pop songs. You can sing Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” over parts of “The Need,” and it’s tough not to hum Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” over the end of “Feels Like.”

Aurilia covers Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and Gary Wright’s “Dreamweaver,” both of them curious choices.

She tries to update “Worth” with a rap outro by Kojo Obeng, but that didn’t quite work when Public Enemy sampled it a decade ago, and they actually had Stephen Stills on the track. Her “Dreamweaver” is passionless, making one wonder what inspired her to record it in the first place. If this is what it takes to make it on adult contemporary radio, we’re better off without it.

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Coast To CoastPostcards From America Bite Music Ltd.

Television programmers adopted a philosophy for viewing habits that’s founded on the idea that the public will watch the least objectionable program on television; viewers will stay glued to that channel until they see something that repulses them enough to click to another station. The Rotary Club’s album seems to be playing by the same philosophy.

Coast to Coast is full of pleasant, NPR-circuit, inoffensive story-songs that put the focus squarely on the vocals and lyrics. The instrumentation floats by, supporting the melody but never calling attention to itself. Imagine a British Jimmy Buffett—without the Key West stoner humor— and you won’t be too far off the mark.

Part folk, part Americana, the Rotary Club’s album Vis á Vis is too ordinary to stand out. The band isn’t abominable by any means, but Tom Devaney and his Rotary Club seem too constrained to make this an album worth seeking out.

The songs are nice enough. The moody “Rainfall” showcases some tasty cello lines. “And the Wave Will Sing” could pass for a lost Gordon Lightfoot track. Like most of the dozen songs on Coast to Coast, it breezes by with tasteful backing.

Time heavily marches along through much of Vis á Vis as melodies loop repetitively. When the Rotary Club does add variation to their trudging instrumentals, the creaks and synth additions contribute eccentricity rather than substance.

Tom Devaney’s labored and reedy voice has appeal and character, but the greatest strength in Vis á Vis is his clever, issues-aware songwriting.

In “Running Through Calvary” he sings “Don’t believe science / It undermines compliance with the axioms I’ve made / Darwin started fires, I’ve only just extinguished / I’ve scratched beneath the surface ’til some sense was finally made.” When Devaney turns geeky the entire band benefits, and “Running Through Calvary” is one of the album’s finest tracks.

Most charming in their quirky, alternative awareness, The Rotary Club does have potential. Neither the instrumentation nor Devaney’s voice are strong enough to carry the band unless they define themselves in another way, and for the Rotary Club captivating songwriting could be their best bet.

Wates is a fine musician. His piano playing is clear and free of filigree. His acoustic guitar serves as a solid underpinning for his songs. And his slide guitar playing (see the Jackson Brownestyled “Goodbye to the Old School”) is pleasing; at times it evokes fleeting memories of George Harrison. His voice is a bit like Colin Hay (Men at Work—remember them?).

Despite the album’s subtitle, Coast to Coast isn’t really a song cycle; it’s more of a straightforward collection of songs. Some evoke the road; some, not so much. “A Friend Called Jesus” recalls the maudlin sentimentality of Harry Chapin. “(The Ballad of) Killer Weed” is uncomfortably square, but probably goes over well at the Friday night java joint.

There’s a wistfulness about many of Wates’s songs, one that suggests vivid memories. Unfortunately, an hour spent with this album won’t leave the listener with any such thing.

by Kathy Iandoli

by Bill Kopp

by Lauren Proctor

Woodside Records

Rupert Wates

www.scumoftheearth.com

vis-à-vis

www.rupertwates.com

www.rotaryclubnyc.com

Rotary Club

Scum of The Earth Sleaze Freak Eclipse Records

So here’s a fun yet shocking factoid– people still dig metal. And not just any metal – that violent bloody metal that is both slutty and frightening all in the same power chord. When Rob Zombie’s guitarist Riggs decided to start Scum of the Earth, he knew there was a market populated by Zombie fans that would ultimately cosign his latest endeavor. As Scum of the Earth is now on their second album Sleaze Freak, it lacks the interesting, dare we say, humor of their debut Blah…Blah…Blah…Love Songs For the New Millennium.

Even their follow-up album title isn’t as compelling. Sleaze Freak sounds like a band from ’84 that performed at the Stone Pony on the Jersey Shore opening for Lita Ford or somebody else with big hair. The music doesn’t match the moniker so much, as Sleaze Freak is all hard guitars and chanting like their single “Bombshell From Hell” or other tracks like “Love Pig” and “The Devil Made Me Do It 2.” The album has thirteen tracks, with the thirteenth, “Just Like Me,” actually marked as Number 23 and not even a hidden track.

Then there’s a DVD, with Vincent Price style laughs and what resembles a diluted commentary for House Of 1,000 Corpses. As Scum of the Earth was formed in response to Rob Zombie leaving the music world, it’s understood that some overlapping might occur.

But after one listen to Sleaze Freak, you’ll be dragging Rob Zombie by his dreadlock wig back to the microphone.

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Glass Note Records

Secondhand Serenade is a one-man emo band consisting of talented singer-songwriter John Vesaly. On his debut album Awake and on this follow up effort, A Twist in My Story, Vesaly is able to produce the fullness of an entire band on his own. He is a master of layering and texturing his instrumentation and vocals. Through multi-track recording he creates a rich and vibrant sound. A common technique in his music is the use of acoustic guitar over background chords.

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On this album he deviates from his usual method by recording several of the songs with a band. This studio collaboration works well in adding further depth to his finely crafted arrangements. The themes are the typical emo fodder of romantic elation, lovesickness and heartbreak; he plays the lovelorn victim to great affect. Vesaly’s plaintive crooning reaches emotional heights with his introspective, poetic lyrics laying bare his vulnerabilities.

The intimacy of the songs is reinforced by the delicate piano and acoustic melodies that pepper the production.

For some listeners Vesaly’s vocals may seem excessively whiney and lugubrious, an exercise in decadent self-pity. It depends on what you find palatable. If you are receptive to sensitive, vulnerable lyrics and boyish vocals, this album will appeal to you. The compelling lyrics show that he is a skilled songwriter, adroit at vividly evoking those small moments that pack great dramatic weight. But it’s up to you if you are going to be receptive to this brand of honesty.

Sia

some people have Real problems

Monkey Puzzle Records/ Hear Music

Could Sia be the Mary J. Blige for the yuppie alt-hipster set? With some people have REAL problems, the Australian chanteuse makes a convincing grab for Blige’s Grammy® gold territory. It’s not just that Sia has a soulful voice or confessional (and sometimes confrontational) lyrics; it’s that her music is so indebted to modern R&B and soul music with its smooth-jam piano runs, delicately wah-drenched guitars and the occasional piercing horn.

Sia’s affiliation with the Starbucks-branded Hear Music label for her third solo effort suggests that she’s angling for a wider audience. Yet songs like “The Girl You Lost to Cocaine”—with its sharp snare-drum beat, Stones-like swagger and scattershot lyrics—prove that she’s still too edgy to appeal to soccer moms. And that’s a good thing.

The deceptively titled “Beautiful Calm Driving” highlights Sia’s jagged little edges perfectly.

The tune begins with placid, jazzy splashes of piano and orchestration in a minor key before morphing into a pounding chorus that sounds like Sia’s having a heart-wrenching moment of epiphany. But the real beauty of the album is how it balances that kind of heady fare against lighter moments such as “Death by Chocolate” and “Academia” (the latter featuring a guest appearance by Beck, plus an inane little ukulele riff).

By the time you reach the extended brass outro jam of “Electric Bird”—which sounds surprisingly similar to the theme from Rocky I and II—you realize that Sia has delivered a knockout punch with some people have REAL problems.

There’s a feature story on Sia in this issue; see p.00—ed.

by Eric W. Saeger

by Theo Thimou

by Shaun Flagg

A Twist In My Story

www.siamusic.com

www.secondhandserenade.net

Secondhand Serenade

Styles P

Super Gangster (Extraordinary Gentlemen) Koch Records

By now, fans of “real” hip-hop have received a round-table-load of consensus about this third LP from LOX/D-Block component Styles P, much of said dialog being thankfully less concerned with the D-Block/G-Unit feud than the “return of east coast hip-hop” and how Styles is leading the charge.

There are two things. One is the assembly-line manner in which Styles blaps albums into the genre’s vortex; over-saturation is a sure-fire way to dilute ideas. If this album were sloshing over with tunes as good as “Gangster Gangster” – oddly banished to track 18 of 19 despite its Chuck-D-freeze-ray bass line, pliers-andblowtorch rhymes and an assist from fellow DBlocker Jadakiss, all leading to a song capable of roping in fans of hard music in general, not just puffed-chest brag-a-thons – this could have been one for the ages.

Which brings us to the other thing. The line on Styles’ tude for this album is that he’s pissed off beyond all repair, tired of hip-hop’s descent into glamour and bullshit, and Fast Black Roberts drops a comedy skit impression of a phony-baloney grills-and-no-rhymes poser to drive the point home. But there’s a gaping disconnect. The first three or four songs aren’t all that hard, teetering between backpack positivism and the twinkly disco-ball hip-hop sound that’s common as dirt on the big airwaves.

And then, out of nowhere, the thing becomes a gangsta record done up in concrete and suspicious glances.

So, then, it’s a bipolar collection unsuitable for any one particular mood, which is, one would assume, part of the problem Styles is on about in the first place.

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Tad

During the documentary TAD: Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears, the rock journalist Charles R. Cross states that, at a certain point in the “grunge” music movement, musicians and fans from the genre often spoke in reverent tones about a musician named Kurt, who was considered very important at the time. But they weren’t speaking of Kurt Cobain, the late Nirvana frontman and media-appointed face of Seattle’s music scene.

Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears

by Amanda Cuda

MVD Visual

They were speaking of Kurt Danielson, bassist for the group TAD. TAD, the DVD suggests, was one of the most important bands com-

Temposhark

The Invisible Line

Paper & Glue

by Jeff O Neill

www.temposhark.com

Tenspoke Indies Blinded By The Sound www.tenspokeindies.com

by SMartin Halo

Decadent Suite Records

ing out of Seattle during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Though they never attained the national profile that Nirvana, Soundgarden and others did, the band developed a fervent following.

MTV pulled a video for their song “Wood Goblins,” dubbing it “too ugly.” Similar problems kept befalling the band – legal battles over record covers, getting dropped by their label, etc.

Busted Circuits is a fascinating look at how this band – fronted by massive vocalist and guitarist Tad Doyle – drew the love of many, yet never became a raging success. The film features a number of prominent musicians praising the band for its uncompromising sound.

Busted Circuits shows yet again how difficult it is to make it in the music industry. But the DVD is never depressing, and the many stories about and interviews with band members are funny and insightful. Busted Circuits is a good watch, especially for those who wonder whatever happened to this unique, overlooked band.

Yet the band faced multiple roadblocks to success. For instance,

Framed in exquisite harmonies and heavy synth, Temposhark is intriguing as it is nontraditional.

They might be too cool for some; that type of inaccessibility is uber-sexy to music snobs and obnoxious to casual listeners.

The band’s debut album features guest collaborators from all corners of the spectrum – Imogen Heap, violinist Sophie Solomon, and Guy Sigsworth (producer of Madonna and Bjork) all take turns in their respective lines.

Typically minimalist but with over-the-top effects, Temposhark runs the electronic gamut with The Invisible Line. At one point genius and at the very next utterly ridiculous, this is the stuff of art showings in NoHo. The album is pouty and challenging and beautiful all at the same time.

While sure to be a hit in the clubs and on college and British radio, the overall composition seems a bit flighty and weightless. While a strong effort, a classic this is not. The album is at times dance, at times hyper-pop, other times disco. A strong foray into one or the other would put the album into rarefied air.

With the current state of American music in disarray, the search is for saviors; not mid-nineties contemporaries. Granted, everyone has their own view of what needs to be revived; but it is not the generic Johnny Rzeznik teased hair, with the translucent aggressive riffs that entice the high school teenager to blast tunes out of their brand new convertible while they do laps around the athletic fields.

tweaked, crunch-laden guitar tones with vocal expressions that teeter the balance between careful planning and fly-by-the-seatof-their-pants exhale. Vocalist Rich Wise pushes his belting abilities; his lung power strains at points. But Wise does produce lasting melodies on “Mayday,” and “Over Your Shoulder.” The latter combines a fine vocal line with soulful in key guitar speech.

A Slash inspired guitar solo makes an appeared on “Make Me Want You.”

Capitalizing on the modern rock surge of bands finding popularity, these Tampa, Florida based grease shop rockers are fusing

“Don’t Mess With Me” opens the album in a ramble-over-violin explaining a Napoleonic paranoia that discusses the lengths to which lead singer Robert Diament will go to right wrongs.

“Blame” is a more formulaic, radio-friendly disco pop song that’s heavy on harmony and light on substance.

Rooted in melodrama, Temposhark smartly juxtaposes a brooding message with an airy sound.

produced it internally and the mastering has brought out every tone within the feedback. Another dynamic gem is a mixture of ballads and rockers. Though the disc might not make the grade as a whole, there are sections of it that listeners can easily embrace.

The band is mixing the Third Eye Blind / Goo Goo Dolls image with a bulkier tone. In an industry that is shifting back to an edgy artistic product, this record might stay grounded in the record bin and off the listeners’ shelves.

There are admirable qualities to the pressing. For one, the band

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The Epochs Self Titled

RAebel Group sian Man Records

by Todd Sikorski

www.theepochs.com

The Illustrated Alphabaggage Livid Records

by Kathy Iandoli

www.lividrecords.com

Naked Ear Records

by Bill Kopp

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The Truth Will Catch You, Just Wait... www.themotionsick.com

July/August 2008

The Motion Sick

Looking at the cover art of The Epochs’ self-titled debut, one notices the simple but vivid splotches of color sprinkled throughout; these might imply that the foursome of Ryan and Hays Holladay, Kevin Smith, and Kotchy might be some pretentious art-rock band.

That is definitely not the case.

While The Epochs do employ plenty of electronic sounds and computer programming in their music, the group’s strength is in writing strong indie-pop songs that ooze with soulful melodies and interesting harmonies. Some have compared The Epochs to a cross between TV On The

Radio and Maroon 5, but that comparison misses the point.

This New York-based band is one of a kind, and proof of that is on The Epochs’ fantastic opening three tracks.

The opener, “Thunder and Lightning,” is a loud, multi-layered rocker with great production by the Holladays and impressive drumming by Kotchy. The next two songs, “Opposite Sides” and “Love Complete,” are perfect pop songs that employ a more electronic element with drum machine-inspired beats and sweet keyboards along with soulful vocals.

The first question that pops up when hearing The Illustrated is “What genre is this?” Granted, that question could carry over into most music these days, but with The Illustrated, it’s “No, really, what genre is this?” Their debut album Alphabaggage fuses elements of punk, rock, and even a little jazz. But this sounds more interesting on paper than it actually is in practice. The opening track “Black Mountain Soil” is something of a punk song that sounds like it’s caught in suspended animation. You’re expecting an eruption into punkish chaos (even the rolling drums set

you up for it about three times), but it’s all so anti-climactic.

“Jean-Paul,” the opening track on The Truth Will Catch You, Just Wait… would have fit nicely on the Children of Nuggets compilation, alongside such artists as The Hoodoo Gurus and The Fleshtones. The minor-key ringing chords and eerie organ strike the right balance between nostalgia-once-removed and plain old rocking out. But five and a half minutes is overkill for a song that really has only one good idea. Wisely, The Motion Sick keeps all remaining tracks under five minutes each.

Sick please stand up? The song is an exercise in faux retro-rock of the Grease variety. Not bad, but not compellingly original, either.

“30 Lives” begs the musical question: will the real Motion

“The Owls Are Not What They Seem” and “Some Loney Day”

The songs “Car Chase” and “Racecar” live up to the highenergy punk standards with hints of rap before turning into three minutes of disappointing white noise on “Crush.” Then the disc carries into two more fun and caffeinated tracks, “The Zahir” and “A Torch Is Lit” before returning to white noise on “Alphaone.” It’s all so strange and unwelcome. Other “wtf?” tracks include “Scrambled Legs” and “Just Last Night,” both monotonous instrumentals packed

It’s easy to play the spot-theinfluence all the way through the disc. The countrified “Walk on Water” sounds like the Old 97s. So when the ballad “Losing Altitude” comes along, it’s welcome. The drumming on the track is extremely effective: it’s a slow-gallop through the verses, and pleasantly varied on the middle eight.

Unfortunately, much of the middle tracks on The Epochs can not measure up to those nuggets.

In particular, the mellower tracks such as “Mister Fog” and “Head in the Fire” fail to impress much and they feel out of place. Still, there is plenty to admire in the CD’s second half. The complex “Mouths To Feed” reminds the listener favorably of Kid A-era Radiohead with its manipulated guitar breaks. “Tug of War” and “Giving Tree” are smart, diverse tracks that contain numerous rhythmic surprises.

with bad guitar strumming. Let’s not forget the talked-through tracks “Scrambled Sheets” and “Mud, Inc.” that sound like a boring impersonation of Henry Rollins. It’s sad to say, but had Alphabaggage been shorter than the overkill of its 18 tracks, there might have been something interesting there. Instead, it sounds like a work from a band who forgot their point halfway through the album.

return to the territory covered on “Jean-Paul,” with menacing chord structures, clever startstops, effective synthesizer lines and thickly distorted lead guitar.

These suggest a logical future direction for the group.

The album effectively wraps up with a cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” If The Motion Sick’s fixation on early 80s new wave wasn’t obvious by now, the inclusion of this track makes it crystal clear. A pointless, tacked-on remix of “30 Lives” adds little.

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Though longtime fixtures on the Philadelphia music scene, Philadelphia’s The Swimmers released their debut full-length album, Fighting Trees, on MAD Dragon Records, Drexel University’s student-run vanity label. Frontman Steve Yutzy-Burkey et. al. offer a mix-bag album with elements of nostalgic 60s British pop to college radio wunderlings The Samples. Lyrically, the subject matter touches on the metropolitan grit of Philly and the personal feelings attached to Yutzy-Burkey’s hometown of Lancaster, PA. Album opener “It’s Time They Knew” features jangle guitar layered over backing keys and approachable vocals all tied together with a very catchy filler riff. Think an alternative take on alternative—one part Ben Folds; one part Connells. “Heaven” is a sing-songy Beatlesque homage to returning to Lancaster and finding it different than “idealized memories” in lieu of the overall cheery feel of the tune. The strange staccato keys of “Pocketful of Gold” play foundation to more-of-the-same minimalist vocal range and slight guitar chord chirps. This along with title track “Fighting Trees” play out as the most sedate and down-tempo tracks of the debut. The quirky arrangement, playful piano and jingle feel of “St. Cecilia” rounds out Fighting Trees with a return to the sing-songy vocals with an ode to the patron saint of music.

Fighting Trees is a nice grab bag of songs from The Swimmers, just edgy and weird enough without going too far out there. And while facets of the group sound familiar, you’ve probably never heard them used like this before.

by Shaun Flagg

by Theo Thimou

by Chris West

MAD Dragon Records

www.theymightbegiants.com

Fighting Trees

www.swordofdoom.com

www.theswimmers.com

The Swimmers

The Sword

They Might Be Giants

Kemado Records

Walt Disney Records

Gods of the Earth

When the Sword emerged in 2006, no one quite knew how to take the Austin-based quartet. Four guys in their mid-20s who sang about wizards and warlocks like they were the little cousins of Ronnie James Dio?!

Now the Sword are back with their second album, Gods of the Earth, and it’s something of a retrometal manifesto. Black Sabbath may be the obvious influence here, but the Sword’s style is equally indebted to mid-80s thrash metal. “The Sundering” and “The White Sea” are built around the kind of staccato, palm-muted riffing popularized by Metallica, Megadeth and others.

Singer/guitarist John D. Cronise and guitarist Kyle Shutt make a formidable axe-wielding duo. Both musicians bring some of the virtuosity that defined the venerable guitar tag-teams of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden into the netherworld of doom metal.

Drummer Trivett Wingo, meanwhile, makes it a trifecta. His commanding, punked-out performance recalls monolithic 70s kingpin John Bonham (symphonic gongs, anyone?), while bassist Bryan Richie stays buried in the mix.

If you’re looking for a literary equivalent, Gods of the Earth could be the soundtrack for the fearsome black riders in The Lord of the Rings—all galloping thrash-metal riffs accompanied by strangulated, off-key vocals. To the believers, this album will be hailed as the second coming of NWOBHM-inspired thrash/doom. The naysayers, meanwhile, will look at titles like “How Heavy This Axe” or “Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians” and know this band may be teetering on the edge of Spinal Tap territory.

To each his own.

Here Come The 123’s

They Might Be Giants turned their musical talents to children’s educational music first with Here Come The ABCs. And now they return with Here Come The 123s on Walt Disney Records.

The album is full of short catchy songs composed of soft progressive rock instrumentation and folksy vocals. The quirky, off-beat nature of the songs and the accompanying DVD with its playful cartoons, computer animation and puppetry make this a fairly successful creation. There is a lot of repetition that will help kids retain the information, and it does seem that it would sufficiently engage the young listeners. Fortunately, TMBG is adept at creating songs that are kitsch-cool and kid friendly while also retaining their signature rock sound ala intricate chord progression, textured instrumentation and John Flansburgh’s soft, soothing vocals.

Parents could tolerate their kids listening to this on repeat with out knocking their heads against the wall—definitely a step up from traditional child programming. 123s makes learning fun; parents might actually be able to participate in their child’s enthusiasm instead of feigning interest and suffering through it. In fact, there’s some first-rate rock and roll instrumentation on this disc, which could give children an appreciation for music. Maybe, just maybe, they will become more discriminating musical consumers. For what it is—educational childhood programming palatable to both parent and child—this disc deserves applause.

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Tyler Burns

Vicarious DVD

XOXOX

Uptown Boys Regular

Volcano

Slush Fund Recordings

Good Dog / Bad Dog Records

As you listen to Trances Arc’s XOXOX, you can’t stop thinking that this rock band has its work cut out for it. Why? Well, the band is based in Atlanta, a city most famous today as the home for multiplatinum rappers Ludacris, Young Jeezy, and T.I. So, as the hook-filled songs on this release hit your ears, you wonder: is it possible for this group to steal any thunder from those hip-hop superstars?

This debut EP by Tyler Burns is a brief, fivetrack introduction to the new wave singer and electronic composer. Burns manages to imitate his influences like Duran Duran and Depeche Mode yet remains unable to make an indelible mark for himself. The album is upbeat and dancey and features the usual electronic accoutrement of new wave synth music: electronic beeps, blips and synthesizer melodies.

The answer: maybe so. While rock music is not particularly in vogue nowadays, Trances Arc has potential, and XOXOX reveals that right away. The opening track “New Style” sounds like a great lost Silverchair song with its hypnotic beginning that soon switches into a catchy rock track with swirling guitars and propulsive drums. Things get even better later on with “Parliament” which is as muscular and catchy as anything the Killers have recorded.

The failure is in not just in the imitative nature of the sound but that it’s a cheap imitation.

We can all applaud and enjoy bands like The Bravery and the Shout Out Louds because they make layered and complex music even if it is highly derivative. But here the effort lacks the depth of electronic layering and composition that makes those bands so compelling. The amateurish production pegs this a little more than a demo. Better production might help mask Burns’s limited vocal range – his inability to reach vocal heights serves to ground any hope of an emotional transcendence.

July/August 2008

The “Vicarious” music video may seem at the surface like a series of disturbed, apocalyptic images haphazardly fused to Tool’s song, but in allowing many of Adam Jones’s team talk about their contributions to the music video we learn that the process for an all CGI film is more labor-intensive than a blockbuster. It takes a month or two of collaboration to lay down thirty seconds of video, and this documentary gives you a taste of how a vision became a meaningful creation.

sk pe

by Shaun Flagg

by Todd Sikorski

by Lauren Proctor

Trances Arc

You’ll be afraid to blink, your eyes glued to the screen for the entire eight and a half minute duration of Tool’s “Vicarious” music video. As enrapturing as this bizarre and unsettling CGI is, watching the included documentary will allow you to appreciate fully just how much of a masterpiece “Vicarious” really is.

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www.myspace.com/tylerburnsmusic

www.myspace.com/trancesarc

www.toolband.com

Tool

While information on artist Alex Grey’s art gallery and other extras are interesting, the best part of the Vicarious DVD is the documentary. Collaborators on the project discuss everything from storyboard and song integration (with which Jones wasn’t extremely concerned) to the importance of making dust in the desert landscape (a task mostly assigned to Karl Rogovin).

If you’re into Tool or even remotely geeky when it comes to visual effects work, this DVD is a must.

Not only does this documentary dissect how the music video was made, it also breathes magic into the inspiration and execution of a meaningful piece of art from its inception to its creation.

Much of the praise on this CD should go to the twin guitar attack of Michael Dorio and Jay Propst.

They obviously know the best power chords in the business. Kudos also to vocalist Eric Toledo who brings passion to the group. He doesn’t show much range on XOXOX, but he can make a familiar ballad like “Cold Drivers” a pleasant listen.

Despite that, Trances Arc’s chances for success might be limited: much else on the disc is standard 90s alternative rock. Stuff like the title track and “Don’t Like Leaving” might have sounded fresh ten years ago, but not today. Still, the highs on XOXOX are good enough to possibly make ATL a rock town once again.

There are no peaks on this album, only bland monotony. He tries to deviate from new wave by infusing a sort of George Michael pop sexiness, most evident on “Stop the World” with its breathy vocals. He veers off track, and in his attempt to add some sexiness he shows he hasn’t made up his mind if he wants to make pop or new wave. The former embodies vulnerability; this contrived sexiness seems terribly out of place, further confounding the already ill-conceived effort.

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artists to watch

The SonicBids picks for this month all come from southern states, but what these artists produce is definitely not what you’d expect. Grab a cold one and let me walk you through the New South.

by Janie Franz Coming out of Nashville, Van Preston is definitely a product of that songwriter mecca. Preston, however, grew up in Arkansas and only came to Music City four years ago. Her latest disc, Forever Ago, is getting considerable airplay on radio stations and is charting well. Her lyrics are uncompromising and infectious and support her strong woman point of view. Her “Bought Myself a Toy” must have raised an eyebrow or two from her country/Americana audience. Preston’s voice has a purity without twang.

Hailing from Athens, Georgia, C-Fre$h is a bright hip-hop star on the rise. His gift for distilling social issues into human terms through his rhymes and his innately joyful delivery is representative of the kind of talent coming out of the hip-hop community in Georgia. Though Atlanta has staked out the South as the new hip-hop region, you can be sure C-Fre$h is helping put Athens on that map, too.

Seminole County from Orlando, Florida, mixes hip-hop, strong R&B duets, and rock guitar hooks. Fronted by female singer/ rapper Jj (who was the only girl to play on her high school football team) and backed by Byron J, the duo has toured with the Backstreet Boys and shared the stage with John Legend. Their eclectic mix has won them fans in the US and in Europe.

C-Fresh

Also from Florida, singer/songwriter Craymo spends some of his creative time as an actor. He has appeared on General Hospital and Days of Our Lives, and last year was in HBO’s Recount, a film about the 2000 Florida election. His music crosses genres, often treading into electronic dance music as well as pop, rock, funk, and reggae.

The goth band Raven is also based in Ft. Lauderdale, but its lead singer and songwriter, Davey Strenler, is from Switzerland. Dayn Evans’s distorted guitar and Jamie Lipinsk’s driving bass round out this angst-driven group.

Raven

Charles Alison

Moving up into Chattanooga, Tennessee, Charles Allison has been writing and recording since 1997, initially with a band he pulled together called Kil Howlie Day. In 2002, he moved away from those early beginnings and began to evolve into a thoughtful songwriter, writing honest lyrics about a therapy-ridden breakup to a self-effacing love song. Though Allison’s work is more pop/ rock, his high-register vocal delivery is reminiscent of Americana songwriter Tom Brosseau.

Alabama-born Savana Lee (or just savana as she wishes to be billed) has been collaborating with Anthony Crawford, Neil Young’s sideman. Crawford has been adding melodies and instrumentation that enhances but never overshadows savana’s storytelling. The easy lilt of her delivery draws listeners into what she has to say. This is a duo to watch, and it’s no wonder Neil Young has been playing their album, Redbird, on his tour.

My Fave

Though this acoustic band hails from Houston, Sugar Bayou really epitomizes the South for me. Bob Oldreive (guitar, vocals) and April Rapier (mandolin, guitar, banjo, accordion, piano, vocals) began playing together over two decades ago.

Currently, they are joined by Bill Browder (guitar, piano, vocals), Paul Kiteck (fiddle, mandolin), Robert Knetsch (bass), and Eddie Cantu (drums). Oldreive and Rapier are the songwriters who keep pumping out song after song, with nary a one sounding like the last. Though the music for the most part is folk- and bluegrass-based, Sugar Bayou often moves into sultry roadhouse blues, jazz, Texas swing, Cajun, and soft rock. This band has the whole package. They just need to record more (they only have two CDs out), and they need to get out of Texas so that the rest of the country can experience them live!

Check out these and other new bands at sonicbids.com

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