Trying to find Bill Fox these days is a bit too much like trotting the globe in a hot air balloon in search of Amelia Earheart’s plane. And trying to find an actual album of his? Well, it’s kind of like stumbling upon Atlantis, only to realize it’s just a foil reconstruction accompanied by a crayon map to the real deal.
Some swear his 1998 masterpiece, Shelter from the Smoke, is available on iTunes–so you click that stupid iTunes icon in the lower-left screen of your mp3-crippled laptop in a frenzy, only to find, yet again, absolutely no trace of this brilliant phantom. Then you read that something called “Scat Records” actually talked to the man–which, after all this time, sounds a lot like that dude who took publisher McGraw-Hill to the cleaners with his bullshit story about how Howard Hughes had chosen him to write his autobiography. So you dig a little deeper and find a story about how Shelter and his other solo gem, Transit Byzamtium, are actually going to be reissued, and that Shelter’s due out in September (as in, like, now.)
Then you go to the Scat Records website and find a tossed-off note explaining that “Bill Fox’s Shelter from the Smoke is going to be an ‘09 release” now, because they “couldn’t get the art together in time for the deadline.” This along with a stale promise that “Bill stopped writing and performing music a few years ago, but has plans to start back up again relatively soon.” Emphasize “relatively,” of course. The saga of Bill Fox’s mystifyingly difficult journey to the wider attention he so richly deserves continues, relegating him now to that dreaded remainder bin of American culture–the one marked “cult status.” Wonderful.
About 9 years ago, when I began this half-life of a music dork, I took some buddies of mine to a record sale being held up in NYC to benefit a favorite college station of mine, and stumbled upon an album called Shelter from the Smoke by a guy named Bill Fox. I had never heard of him, but the dutiful indie elves pitching CDs for their label “Cherry Pop” pushed it hard, and I bit–in the same way I bit and bought a bootleg box set of Dylan’s so-called “Albert Hall” shows with the promise that it wouldn’t have the garbled, “recorded from ten-thousand leagues under the sea” sound of most bootlegs, only to find, 200 dollars later, that it had the “recorded from ten-thousand leagues under the sea” sound of most bootlegs.
Bill Fox with “The Mice” in 1988
Fortunately, however, Fox’s album was no tinny bootleg; it was a masterful onslaught of 18 folk-pop diamonds mined in Fox’s own apartment, often with little more than a guitar to accompany a voice full of honey and heartbreak–a lachrymose and vaguely effeminate wail so eternally young that it brings to mind a nest of just-hatched birds clamoring for a worm. Many great ghosts haunt these songs–Dylan, Roger McGuinn, Eliot Smith, Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Nick Drake. You can hear Dylan’s “My Back Pages” calling from the chorus of “Junked Lot Serenade” where Fox sings about how “all the stars form their tragedies at ten.” Shades of The Byrds’ “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” color the lilting and bare-bones folk revival of “I’m Not Over Loving You,” and I think Tim Hardin dies somewhere in the distance of “Brittany Goes Right Down,” an instantly hypnotic dirge worthy of its own spot on the Velvet Underground’s Loaded (preferably in the capable hands of Nico.)
For whatever reason, I hadn’t listened much to the album since then, and hardly even gave it a second thought until Dave Eggers’s magazine The Believer came out with a piece by a guy who called himself “lefty” and went on a not-entirely fulfilling pursuit for the ephemeral Bill Fox, who had by then retreated back into telemarketing hell in some soul-choking cubicle wilderness of Cleveland, Ohio, banished to a bitter self-exile from unattained dreams. “I’m dying to lay some tracks down somewhere,” he would say in 1998, shortly before his comprehensive vanishing act from the music scene, “I’d love to record a rock ‘n roll record, but I’m not in a position to put up my own money right now.”
He’d long-since abandoned the local punk outfit he fronted with his bro on the drums, Cleveland’s “Mice,” back in the mid ’80s. “No longer was that garage-pop thing relevant for the kind of songs I was writing,” Fox told the Seattle Weekly ten years later, “I just kinda let it crumble.” He would learn not too long thereafter–to the dismay of the artist and to we who might have heard all the albums he never could afford to cut–that what will crumble will crumble whether or not he cared to “let it.”
In another prophetic concession published by Seattle Weekly in 1998, he would say “”I’m able to go a few months without working with the money I got from SpinArt”–the label the picked up Shelter from the Smoke after Cherry Pop released it to absolute critical and commercial disregard a couple years prior–”But I’m a telemarketer, and I’ll end up in that business again when the money runs out. Just living and writing songs.” All of which came true, except for the whole “writing songs” part: rumor has it that the man no longer even owns a fucking guitar, so complete has his disgust with the industry’s blindness to talent become. How fitting it is, then, that we too are left clinging to the very hope the man himself apparently abandoned so long ago, the thin likelihood that we may someday hear all those tracks he was “dying to lay down somewhere,” someday, somehow.
Praise For Bill Fox: Things I’d Rather Be Doing: “It’s a shame that Fox has soured on music, because he’s awfully good at it. On his two solo discs, he offers a total of 36 songs, and nearly all of them are keepers . . . This is folk in spirit more than sound, the songs so well crafted as to feel like public domain wonders rather than 10-year-old pop tunes recorded in the basement on weekends by a 9-to-5er.”
The Narrative Review: “Stylistically, it perhaps hearkens back to early Dylan, only it has a more polished sound despite the fact that Fox recorded it at home. Fox is accompanied by nothing more than his own guitar, but he manages to flesh out the sound through his superb playing. Fox’s voice however is not like Dylan’s nasal twang, but is surprisingly effeminate. There’s something Nico-esque about it, although it’s nowhere as a deep or given the fact that he’s from Cleavland, Germanic. However, given my literary predilections, what gets me most about the song is the craftsmanship of the lyrics.
Rakes Progress: “I’ve been clued in and listening to Bill Fox’s albums Shelter from the Smoke & Transit Byzantium. They’re pretty wonderful, I think, especially the latter. I might not go so far as to call Fox a lost genius, but he seems to have a healthy respect for the Great American Songbook and knows his craft, which makes for great pop music (that unfortunately isn’t popular at all, but could or should be).”
The Driftwood Singers Present: “It’s hard to know why Bill Fox didn’t emerge as one of his generation’s great songwriters, but we hear tell of personal dilemmas that set him back and sidelined him from the music business altogether. Mental and emotional fragility infuse his songs, which are often the sound of idealism dog-paddling to stay above the cynical waters of modern life.”
Now that we’re nearing the final third of the year [insert “how time flies” cliche here], the minds of all music dorks worth their weight in vinyl will gradually turn to the usual “best of” lists. We thought we’d put together a preliminary list of possibilities that may or may not make the final cut in December, but that’s the point: we, too, have already forgotten the names of those albums that came out in February and earned the fleeting rapture of our “this is the greatest album since OK Computer!” accolades, only to be tucked into the CD shelf and disregarded in favor of more recent thrills. So we’ve revisited that shelf of too-easily forgotten glories to take a second glance at CDs which, given the pace of things these days, will already be SO “last season” come Thanksgiving. But even if that sorry fate awaits these albums, at least they will have gotten their due here, in our not-so-middle-of-the-year list of 2008’s “Best Albums” contenders–in no particular order, by the way–what’s the difference between the fifth best and the 6th best album of the year? That’s right–nothing. So what’s the point? Check it out:
The Gossip: Live in Liverpool Not since albums like Get Yer Ya-Yas Out or Lou Reed’s Rock ‘N Roll Animal have live albums been as much of an event as The Gossip’s Live in Liverpool. For starters–the title. Come on, what rock band today DOESN’T want to put out alive album called “Live in fucking Liverpool?” OK, maybe that would have been an even better title, but try this one out: Rick Rubin thought so much of this band’s power as a live unit that he declared their show the best he’d seen “in five years.” Coming from the mouth of Rick Rubin, that’s basically akin to comparing this band to Jesus. And rightfully so: now that even The White Stripes have gone all “art rock-y” on us with the truly icky Icky Thump, and The Black Keys suffered more than a modest share of polish at the otherwise skilled hands of Danger Mouse, The Gossip proudly (and loudly) pick up the slack behind the Mama Cass of Punk (Beth Ditto) with her rockin’ posse in tow. Just the first slap or two of Hannah Blilie’s drums on downright anthems like “Standing in the Way of Control” or the magnificently powerful “Your Mangled Heart” are enough to infect you with an unshakable love of l0-fi fury. There’s a reason why Rick Rubin decided on a live album as The Gossip’s first upon signing with Sony subsidiary label, Music with a Twist: they may be the best live band on the planet right now.
The Heavy: Great Vengeance and Furious Fire The world hasn’t heard music with this much groove since RHCP lured George Clinton into a studio to lay down some tracks with them on their underappreciated Freaky Styley album 23 years ago–you know, back before the Peppers became “arteests.” As the funktastic “That Kind of Man” explodes with a relentlessly massive sound that brings to mind some dude straight out of the late 1970s with a mile-high afro and an early boombox half his size clutched to one ear as he struts right by you up the block, it becomes clear that The Heavy aren’t taking shit from anybody. That’s probably why they include “big bad wolves just doing what they do” among their band members on MySpace. There really isn’t a more accurate description of their sound than that. These boys (and one girl–clutching an axe with a murderous stare on their myspace page, no less) are here for the long haul. The Heavy’s sound is Tom Waits backed by The Stooges, Muddy Waters back from the Dead to make an album with Danger Mouse (because Danger Mouse SO needs another project on his hands.) These guys are bringing taste back in a big damned hurry, and judging from the friends they keep on MySpace, it’s hard to conceive of a more fitting band to do it–The Sonics, Howlin’ Wolf, Slim Harpo, Tom Waits, and even Waits’s great label Anti. These people know a good groove when they hear one, and they’re threatening to bring plenty more of their own for good measure. Check ‘em out.
MGMT: Oracular Spectacular Like, DUH. If, halfway through the first rack of Oracular, it already feels like you’ve taken one too many sips of hallucinogenic mushroom tea while stepping inside another episode of VH1’s “Where Are They Now,” especially the part where the featured “artists” do lots of drugs, get fat and completely forgotten by the world, and then try to not be forgotten anymore by making really terrible music in their middle age for a “comeback” tour attended by thirteen-and-a-half people worldwide, that’s as it should be: You’re listening to MGMT, a duo of self-described “mystic paganists” devoted to “opening the third eye of the world.” The album’s first track, “Time to Pretend,” which was featured in the that movie 21 about some MIT kids who took Vegas to the cleaners by learning to count cards, takes aim at every one of those VH1 cliches with the sharp arrow of the band’s notorious sarcasm. Drenched in addictive hooks that marry Prince and The Flaming Lips in a union of space-funk and soul that somehow captures exactly the sound the band describes on their MySpace page– “surf jungle country”–Oracular delivers a sound that’s as fresh in 2008 as Beck’s was in 1994, leaping onto the scene with the same “we don’t care” abandon that “Loser” brought to the biz back then. And people are “getting into it”–lots of them. It’s no accident that the album vaguely echoes The Flaming Lips. Oracular IS produced, after all, by David Fridmann, the captain at the console for many a Flaming Lips album. Roll Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots with some speed-laced nicotine and you’ve got the addictive mindfuck that is Oracular Spectacular.
Bridges and Powerlines: Ghost Types Though the brand of power-pop these guys peddle reveals a compelling brew of influences, the results are no less their own. Tunes like “Uncalibrated” or “Middle Child” are so bright you feel like you’ve just stared directly into the sun after sleeping in a hole in the ground for a week in winter (no wonder they used to call themselves “Sunspots”.) The music explodes in your ear with the relentless burst of a synthesizer that laces the song’s manic drums and guitar with an enthusiasm as focused as it is unhinged. No band has sounded this damned happy to be making music since The Thrills put out their debut “we are California” LP, So Much For the City. Equal parts Acrade Fire’s “Keep the Car Running” and Wilco’s “I’m Always in Love” with a tinge of Wolf Parade, most of the material on Bridges and Powerlines’ new album, Ghost Types, betrays the “love of the three-minute pop song” they say brought them together. With harmonies as soaring as the hooks and a psychedelic disposition that so perfectly suits the vaguely snotty abandon of taut rockers like “Half A Cent,” the band rarely lingers long in the unmapped musical terrain they explore. They prefer instead to wet their feet in the pond of your mind and run, leaving you to wonder whether what you just heard was of this world or the glittering residue of some wild and half-remembered dream. In the end, though, it really doesn’t matter–just as long as there’s more where that came from.
Sleepercar: West Texas What an extraordinary exhibition of influence these songs offer: the echo of a latter day Lloyd Cole album drives a spike through the broken heart of “Heavy Weights,” the vaguely new wave “Sound the Alarm”–perhaps the album’s finest track–almost prepares you for Hall & Oates to take the mike and belt one out about a woman who only comes out at night as Mark Knopfler straps on a guitar and awaits his part. And if none of the material here really approximates Jim Ward’s vision of a rootsy American rock album as closely as he may have desired–Ward still sounds very much like the lead vocalist of Sparta throughout West Texas, the debut album from this dainty little side project–it’s in his aspiration for a sound so alien to the music he’s known for that brings him–and his listeners–to some unexpected creative landscape where willows drip with a melting and late-season snow as an iron and sweeping sky rushes the day to dusk. You lift the collar of your coat to combat a dank chill in the air–one of the last of the season–and you grin and walk right through it as the year closes in on so many warmer days. Only “Wednesday Nights” and “Fences Down” really hit the alt-country mark Ward seems to set his sights on here, songs that could quite easily pass themselves off as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot outtakes. But, again, it’s in the album’s misfires that something genuinely fascinating occurs. Don’t miss this record; it’s as close to a guaranteed pleasure as we may have heard all year.
Raconteurs: Consolers of the Lonely “Needless to say, I was more than skeptical of the newest Raconteurs project. I accept and love that Jack White is a man of many escapades, including plastic camera and speaker manufacture, collaboration with the Gods (Loretta Lynn and Bob Dylan), cell phone protestation, and home movies of snoring band mates (sorry Meg). With the exception of the premier Raconteurs album, he hits all these ventures out of the park. Therefore, I gave him an open, yet highly analytical second chance. Consolers of the Lonely, HOT DAMN! I’m sorry my lord for ever doubting your ability. I grabble at your feet in repentance! The Kinks got busy with Icky Thump and conceived Consolers of the Lonely, plain and simple. This album delivers Jack White’s signature raw energy viciously burned with blistering horns and riffs to rival Zeppelin. The band let the album speak for itself, doing zero promotion and allowing the content to leak on iTunes and the like. Bravo boys. White and company have created radio-soluble tunes capable of pushing facileness overboard. So long Linkin Park and Flobots! This album is a must for summer and pairs perfectly with open-windowed driving.” — Sara Mrozinski
The Boxing Lesson: Wild Streaks and Windy Days As if any further proof was needed, Wild Streaks and Windy Days confirms once again that to label a band is to kill a band. It is too easy to dismiss The Boxing Lesson as a post-punk new wave act and move blithely on to your next victim. But as Whoopsy Magazine puts it, “there’s a lot more going on here . . . catchy backing vocals, surreal lyrics, and a modern pop sensibility stand out the most.” But The Boxing Lesson aren’t just another upstart “indie” band pushing the praise of rags called “Whoopsy.” The Onion calls them “a hard-charging trio,” and The Austin Chronicle praises them for “opening a Pandora’s box of psychedelia.” The Boxing Lesson take us somewhere genuinely new with Wild Streaks and Windy Days; and if they have to fumble through a jewel chest of prior eras to get there, they never look back so long as to undermine a vision of their own. Oh, and check out our recent interview with the band!
Josh Rouse: Country Mouse, City House If much of Rouse’s music is no heavier than a breeze at the beach in spring–particularly on the supine Subtitlio he recorded after splitting with his wife and defecting to Spain (as good a reason as any to be “supine”)–it is no less substantive because of it. And anyway, just when you think you’ve got this cool cat cornered, an album like 2005’s Nashville thunders with a vaguely unsettled dirge like “Why Won’t You Tell me What,” a spare and thumping chant that delivers the kind of bluesy acrimony you’d expect of a middle-aged loungesinger at some watering hole up the block, positioning his 14th cigarette in an ashtray on the lid of a beaten piano that’s knifed with the names of a thousand long-gone couples. Amid the apparent serenity of Rouse’s more recent material–breezy tunes like “Quiet Town” or the flawless “Hollywood Bass Player” from 2007’s Country Mouse album–it’s this defiant strand of discontent that completes the complex character his songs reveal, a ballsy volatility that so many songwriters might be wise to consider.
Young Knives: Superabundance When Franz Ferdinand followed up their brilliant, eponymous debut with that frenzied and self-conscious clunker of a second album, You Could Have it So Much Better (how right they were), it seemed that we had another one-trick pony on our hands, that what glories they had brought us in 2004 were not the kind of thing that comes around every year–or every ten, for that matter. As much as I hate to describe one band by discussing another–comparisons do a lot more to confine bands than they do to illuminate them–Young Knives, a geek-rock outfit out of England that look and sound every bit as “Young” as their band name suggests, are both picking up the torch that Franz left behind and taking it to the places we expected them to go. If Ray Davies is correct in his theory that a band’s third album is really the one that shows you whether or not the kids are for real, then Superabundance, the third Young Knives album (if we’re counting their 2002 EP–and why not?), documents the arrival of a potentially great band. Geek or no geek, though, give the “Terra Firma” video a little look if you doubt for a second the comparisons to Franz. The song is an incorrigible fit of post-punk revival sweetness that drives relentlessly through an adrenaline-overdrive of manic guitars laced over a backbone of disco that puts a lot into perspective: Why, for instance, a previous label of theirs was called “Shifty Disco,” or why an acoustic take on “Turn Tail,” one of several singles the album has spawned, was recorded directly to vinyl all in one take at London’s Westbourne Studios–something that hasn’t been done commercially since people like The Partridge Family could actually make a living in music. In other words, it’s been a long, long time.
Everlast: Love, War, and the Ghost of Whitey Ford OK, so maybe this album hasn’t been released yet. But dammit, it should have been! And anyway, it’s gonna be good! At least we can now hear Everlast’s mash-up cover of Johnny Cash’s legendary “Folsom Prison Blues,” which is slated to appear on this long-delayed new album. The album’s currently on deck for a September 24 release–which means absolutely nothing, of course, because the album has been on deck for a release for months to no avail, pissing Everlast off to no end and infecting his fans with a brutal case of rumor-mill blues. And that’s no fun at all–just ask AC/DC fans. While the “Letters Home From The Garden of Stone” single is strong, making waves on iTunes for months now, Everlast’s cover of “Folsom Prison” is little short of brilliant. Check it out here.
If you too wish Geico would just dump the increasingly awful “Caveman” commercial series while their marketing people might still be able to salvage a scrap of credibility, consider this telling sign of a stale imagination: the most recent installment in the “so easy a caveman can do it” series of ads–which spawned a short-lived sit-com that was so hard to watch I actually caught myself begging to have my fingernails removed with a pair of tweezers–is a clear-cut rip-off of the unsung but brilliant Giorgio Moroder’s theme for the forgotten 1978 film Midnight Express, an 8-minute disco-meets-new-wave workout called “Chase,” and a tune that did more to pioneer the new wave genre than any blue-haired synth-master you care to name (the piece is well-known to listeners of the renowned late-night AM talk show, Coast to Coast AM, a show famous for the drunk people who come home late from the club and call in to exchange their Jesus sightings and alien abductions.) The tune scored Moroder an Academy Award.
Moroder, who received Italy’s honorary title of “Commendatore” in 2005, is the unseen architect of some of disco, new wave and punk’s biggest commercial successes–from Blondie’s “Call Me” (a hit that emerged from Moroder’s downright filthy “Man Machine” instrumental for the American Gigolo soundtrack) to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and her 16-minute epic, “Love to Love You Baby.” Interestingly, the “Man Machine” demo was originally pitched to Stevie Nicks, who turned it down (Oops! Wish ya had THAT one back, eh Stevie?). Blondie, of course, turned it into a smash hit both here and overseas.
Giorgio Moroder’s “Chase”: So Easy Anyone Can Steal It
It shouldn’t be hard to see at this point that Moroder, though relatively unknown, has more than enough money to assuage his anonymity. His other noted collaborations include work with Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Queen, Sammy Haggar, Janet Jackson, Kenny Loggins, Graham Nash, Bonnie Tyler, Barbara Streisand, Cher, and, while we’re at it, the Prince of Tides, the Three Little Pigs, and each of Snow White’s 7 dwarfs. To put it simply–this man’s hands have found their way into nearly every major movement in modern music over the past five decades. Zeppelin, Queen and Elton John are known for frequenting Moroder’s Musicland Studios in Munich over the years.
Now everyone’s begging to know who performs the catchy, lo-fi disco gem featured in Geico’s ad with the new “Disco Caveman,” who blathers in wince-worthy attempts at humor about “jazz hands” and “a lotta heel work” as he glides back and forth under a sparkling mirror ball, extolling the greatness of Baltimore’s disco scene. Yes–Baltimore. It’s almost funny, if only it didn’t all come off as such a forced and condescending plea to America’s Incredible Shrinking Attention Span. The piece, slapped together by “composer” Devin Smith for Honor Roll Music, is clearly a jazzed-up (no pun intended) take on Giorgio’s comparatively primitive–and therefore better–”Chase” instrumental. Should you doubt the comparison, investigate for yourself: give Moroder’s tune a listen, and then check out Devin Smith’s “Baltimore Disco Geico” in its entirety on his myspace page here.
Geico’s Disco Caveman: ha-ha (insert “golf clap” here)
Easily one of the most interesting bands we’ve come across all year, The Boxing Lesson offer a brazen revival of the psychedelic blues sound, tinged with a love of the early punk and new-wave they grew up–and fell in love–with. Hailing from the fertile creative grounds of Austin, this is a band that’s as open about their influences as they are committed to an identity of their own, a band that made Culturespill’s recent “Most Interesting Bands To See This Summer” list, and a band whose new album, Wild Streaks & Windy Days, promises to make more lists here at Culturespill–our best-of picks at year’s end. Glistening with a lo-fi adrenaline that weaves together a perfect recipe of sounds from across the decades, Wild Streaks is clearly the work of a group of guys who play for nothing other than a love of the song, a passion that yields the kind of controlled abandon that gives way to great rock ‘n roll. Here now is our exclusive interview with Austin’s The Boxing Lesson (Oh, and check out this little tease from their upcoming video for “Brighter,” one of many killer tracks from their new album):
1.One of the things that fascinates me the most about you guys is how open you are about your influences. With song titles like “Dark Side of the Moog,” the whole space-rock persona you push, and the psychedelic blues sound of your latest album, it’s clear that Pink Floyd is a big influence. How did Floyd come to factor so prominently in your work?
Paul: I’ve been attracted to Pink Floyd’s songs and David Gilmour’s guitar tone for a long time. When The Boxing Lesson moved from Los Angeles to Austin in 2004, we were hooked on Animals, Wish You Were Here, and Meddle in addition to a lot of other things besides music. Certain albums and certain substances go hand in hand. As we were building Jaylinn ’s synthesizer rig, we were searching for those classic synth sounds that recalled the epic textures of Floyd yet at the same time modern enough to push our sound into the future.
2.As with fashion, music’s “next big thing” usually turns out to be a recycled artifact of the past, as in the still-thriving post-punk movement captained by bands like The White Stripes, The Black Keys, The Gossip, etc. Other than yourselves, though, I don’t know that there is nearly as visible a revival of the psychedelic blues sound. So maybe you can correct my ignorance here: What other bands might you credit with a revival of the sound you’re bringing back?
Paul: There is a revival of the psychedelic blues sound going on down here in Austin in some ways. The Black Angels have gotten very popular by preserving the 60’s psych sound.In regards to The Boxing Lesson, I think we have our own little twist on the psychedelic or neo-psychedelic movement due to the fact that our songs filter in other decades of music than just that one specific late 60’s sound. As we say in our bio, our sound is psychedelic but not in the traditional sense. This is modern druggie music that we are making.
3.Other than Pink Floyd, what other bands have proven to be your biggest influences?
Paul: Spoon, Brian Eno, David Bowie, The Cure and Failure
4.I’m always leery of bands brave enough to cite rock ‘n roll Gods as influences. Another band we covered in Culturespill, Low Water, liken themselves to The Kinks. Do you fear that you may be imposing lofty standards on yourselves by citing such gargantuan influences?
Paul: I’m not scared. We created this album out of a genuine place. We are not trying to be a Floyd tribute band or anything; we are trying to just be ourselves. We are huge fans of music, in general, not just Pink Floyd.
Jaylinn: You can’t help but have influences seep into the music you make when you listen to a particular album hundreds of times, especially when all you are doing is literally listening to and absorbing the music - not worrying about the outside world, but focusing on the sounds at hand. It gets into your subconscious and becomes part of who you are.
Jake: I have to agree with both Paul and Jaylinn. I love music. I love all different kinds of music. Who would not be inspired by Tony Williams, or Capitan Beefheart, or Jimi Hendrix? I grew up listing to all kinds of music and that music has made me the player that I am today. A wise man once said to me, “I don’t need to go to school to learn how to play music; my record collection is my school.” I took those words to heart. I think when you list great bands as your influences it might just mean you have great taste in music.
5.Critics have also slapped the “post new-wave” label on you guys—I do hear perhaps a vague echo of new-wave in songs like ”Brighter” or, of course, anytime that synthesizer comes roaring in. Do you acknowledge any “new wave” roots in your music? And, if so, what new wave bands in particular have contributed to the development of your sound?
Paul: We are children of the 80s. How could it not be in there somewhere? One of my first cassette tapes ever was “Never Mind the Bullocks…” While not exactly new-wave, I thought this punk sound was so risqué and powerful. It gave me goose-bumps. This lead into the whole post-punk new-wave thing for me and I fell head over heels in love with The Cure as a teenager. The Boxing Lesson has been doing a cover of “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” recently and it is so fun to play. I’ve wanted to do that song with a band since I was 16 years old. Some of the better new-wave bands had this really raw energy in the songwriting that I was attracted to.I’m really a ‘student of song’ in a lot of ways.As an adult, I went through a huge Elvis Costello phase about a year before making the move to Austin. His songwriting is exceptional and he has a voice that is so strong. It’s a voice of a generation. I feel like in The Boxing Lesson, we are attempting to morph together all the things we love about the different eras of music into our own voice and our own sound to make the music that we want to hear right now.
Jaylinn: Being in high school in the late 80s lent itself to bad haircuts, skater boys, Depeche Mode and New Order. I remember thinking New Order was probably the coolest thing I had heard – until I discovered Joy Division… And that was the coolest thing I heard until Jane’s Addiction. I went from new wave to indie in one fell Nothing’s Shocking swoop. I smoked my first joint with a dude named Chip listening to that album.
The Boxing Lesson: “Dance With Meow,” Wild Streaks & Windy Days (2008)
6.Though Paul’s roots extend back to L.A. , you guys hail from the fertile creative grounds of Austin , TX , home of the great SXSW festival. Can you talk about what it’s like to be a part of that rich culture, and how, if at all, Austin has changed over the years—especially given the increasing popularity of SXSW?
Jake: Well, Austin has changed over the years. The way the city is changing demographically has had an impact in the music scene. Downtown housing has become more and more expensive thus pushing the musician out of that area and the downtown music scene in general. The people who are moving downtown are pushing for a noise ordinance. I find it a little peculiar that one of the greatest things about Austin is its music scene and that the people that are moving downtown want to destroy it. I think if you move downtown you should expect some noise. If that is something that is going to bother you, maybe you shouldn’t move downtown. Maybe you would be more suited to live in the suburbs. Let me get off my soap box and get back to your question at hand. There is a strong community of musicians in Austin. On any night of the week you can go see (and be a part of) great live music. I cannot express enough how much I am inspired by watching a great band play. It makes me want to go home and play. I have lived all over the U.S. and there are only a handful of place that inspire me as much as Austin does. I feel that SXSW is great for Austin, maybe not so much for the Austin musician, but for Austin it is a great thing. The festival is incredible. Bands from all over the world flock to our city for a week of music and fun. It is something that any music lover should come be a part of. That being said I feel that the festival has gotten away from its roots. It is my understanding that it was for unsigned and up-and-coming acts. Now it is headlined by the likes of The Flaming Lips and Tom Waits. Please don’t get me wrong, those are two of my favorite artists, but do they really need the publicity? If you ask me their careers are well on their way. As a band from Austin, it is incredibly hard to get invited to the festival. For me it is a love/hate relationship.
7.A lot of bands out of the NYC area—particularly Brooklyn —talk about how hard it is to get noticed in a place as huge as that. But isn’t it almost—if not just as—hard to get noticed in a place like Austin, where it seems that just as many bands are crawling over one another to make it. Is that the case?
Paul: I think it’s hard to get noticed anywhere. When we first came to Austin, I thought it was going to be so easy here. In a way I was right and in a way I was wrong. It’s just different down here. Music is the cornerstone of the community and there is definitely a strong sense of support for local acts. There are a lot of bands down here fighting for shows and recognition but it is Austin and everyone is very cool about doing so.
Jaylinn: I think the recognition comes from not going away. We played over 100 shows in Austin alone our first year in town. We have not slowed down much. It’s hard not to notice a band that has shows listed every week!
Jake: I lived in Manhattan for a little while and I can attest to how many bands and musicians are up there trying to make it or even just get noticed. I always felt that New York City was very compact. I think that when you have that many people in that small of an area it is going to be tough to get noticed. I think that one of the advantages that bands from NYC have is that there are hundreds of small towns that they can branch out to and play. You can go up and down the east coast and hit college town after college town. So it might be hard to get noticed in NYC, but in general I think it is easier to tour. As for Austin, there are lots of bands here, and Austin is not a large town. We have less then a million people who live here. So when you consider how many bands and musicians there are here, it starts to become very competitive. Also to tour from Austin is a little difficult as well. If you are only doing little week long or two week long tours, it makse it a little challenging to say the least. We are in the center of one of the largest states in the union. When you drive west, that starts to become very apparent very quickly. In the end, I think that no matter where you live, if you have good songs and you love what you are doing then you have made it.
8.I love the space-rock persona you guys indulge, always making sure to credit Paul as a songwriter just as much as an “astronaut” and member of “the Cassini Spacecraft Team.” On your MySpace page, the band’s sound is attributed to “everything they collected in Space,” which included “researching the magnetometer’s detection of the presence of ion cyclotron waves in the vicinity of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.” What inspired all of this celestial imagery, this theme of space travel?
Jaylinn: I am a theoretical astro-physicist. Theoretical. And in my quest for knowledge of all things above my head and below my feet, I found the most interesting thing about Saturn. Recorded by the Cassini Huygens spacecraft, Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions. They are closely related to the auroras near Saturn’s poles. They are like the Northern (and Southern) Lights… except when recorded, they sound like a Moog. (check it out here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/sounds/) I mean, what keyboardist WOULDN’T be fascinated by a planet that creates or emits the very sounds that twiddling knobs does? It blew my mind right out of my head. When trying to get just the right imagery for the album artwork, and after weeks of frustration at different design options, I decided to watch a little Science Channel to clear the brain, and what did I find? Cassiopeia A – it’s the image on our album cover (and back). This was taken by Hubble, and although it’s touted as the “Birthplace of Stars”, it’s (more accurately) a supernova remnant (death of a big-bad daddy star) and the brightest extrasolar radio source in the sky. Neat. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/images/content/161581main_pia01903-browse.jpg
9.One of my favorite songs on the new album is “Brighter.” Can you talk about how that song came to be—the lyrics, the music, its subject matter?
Paul: This is one of the songs that just came to us in a rehearsal. We played it in its entirety the first night and luckily recorded it on the spot. The melody was there from the beginning but the lyrics evolved over the course of a few months. The opening riff is so raunchy and this song has one of the fattest bass lines on the album, in my opinion. The lyrics are about my conflict with myself over major changes that I was making in my life at the time, and the battle between being true and being free. I think it rings out loud and true. We recently shot a stop motion photography video for this song in an old graveyard in East Austin. Keep your eyes and ears open for that one this Fall.
The Boxing Lesson: “Brighter,” Live in Austin, 2-28-08
10.Songs like “Hopscotch & Sodapop”—both in sound and title—seem like such wild departures from the album’s predominant mood—it strikes me as the most distinctly “American” rock song on the LP. How did a song like that find its way onto the album?
Paul: Hopscotch was one of the last songs that we wrote for the album. I had a weekend to myself and locked myself away to write a few pop tunes that I thought the album was missing. After “Lower” I knew there had to be a quick song with a light mood to counteract the heavy theme that came before it and to give the listener a few minutes of reprieve before the album got really dark and heavy again. Hopscotch’s theme is positive and I think that vibe is needed to make the album move forward in momentum like it does. We were drinking a lot of scotch at that time and Jaylinn came up with the play on those words and named the song Hopscotch & Sodapop. It’s a breezy song with a breezy name.
Jaylinn: It’s the scotch and soda in the middle that make you wanna hop on pop at the end.
11.Is Wild Streaks and Windy Days a “concept album”?
Paul: Yeah, in a way…. but it’s far from a rock opera. It’s a concept album about our lives if it’s a concept album at all.
Jaylinn: This album embodies a time and place. It is a time capsule of sorts. Because our inspiration was specific, I can see how it could be labeled that. But it’s no Tommy, you know? We weren’t trying to be. It’s a journey from the darkest of nights to the windiest of days. It’s just not linear.
Jake: I say no. I think that these songs came to life by living them. Each song is a story of our lives one way or another. Some of the songs did not make sense till after we wrote the song. It is weird like that. We will be playing the song live and I will be singing along with Paul, and some of the lyrics just hit home with where my life is now. At the time the song was written it had a different meaning. It is truly amazing. We put so much of us in these songs that I think the listener has no choice but to come along for the ride. I think that when we recorded these songs we had a concept in mind. We recorded the album from start to finish. We started with the first song, completed it and then moved on to the next song. That was the first time I had ever done that. I feel that we really got a chance to concentrate on each song. We got it were we wanted it before we moved to the next one. I feel that that is part of the reason why it takes the listener on a journey, a true experience.
12.That raises another question, and possibly a very stupid one, so consider yourself warned: are you guys a “concept band”? Or do you worry that such a label might be too confining?
Jaylinn: A concept band? No. We DO conceptualize, though, and it seems that our last few releases are a pretty good indicator of that. Labels can be so awkward…
Jake: Concept band? I am not too sure I understand what that means. What would give you that idea? I think, no…. I know that what the three of us have is very special. We have incredible chemistry together. I feel it every time we set up and play. I felt it the first time Paul and I played together. I am not sure if that answered your question. Let me say it this way: I try and stay away from labels. I definitely would never label myself. If you think it is something and want to call it that, that is fine, but I would never label it anything other than music that I love to play with people that I love to play music with.
13.How, by the way, did “Dark Side of the Moon” become “Dark Side of the Moog?”
Paul: It didn’t intentionally start out that way. I was trying to find an introduction to our live set one day at rehearsal and I was looping big A and F chords on my Boomerang and found that opening riff and the vocal melody rather quickly. Jaylinn had been playing around with these really deep dark sounds on her Moog Voyager at the time and had named this one specific sound Dark Side of the Moog. I think it is very fitting and a great opener for the album and a good introduction for the songs that follow.
14.What did you guys think about the Pink Floyd reunion with Roger Waters at the Live 8 Show?
Jaylinn: We happened to stumble in on this one. . . We were at rehearsal and decided to take a break from the studio.We wandered in the house for drinks and on the TV there was something pretty amazing. We didn’t know it was coming on, and we’re all like, “Is this FLOYD???” Seeing David Gilmour’s face up close while he was playing was so beautiful. I could see his facial reactions to the notes that were being played. It felt like I was sitting right in front of him. Covered in chills and inspiration, we went back into the studio and had a great sesh.
15.David Gilmour looked like he couldn’t get away from Roger Waters fast enough when they wrapped up their set, putting down his guitar and scampering off the stage as soon as humanly possible. Roger had to wave him back for a collective bow. Do you guys think we’ll ever hear new material from that lineup again?
Paul: We have all heard the stories about how difficult Roger was to get along with and what he did to Syd Barrett and David Gilmour over the years. I guess some wounds cannot be healed with time alone. I don’t think we will ever see new material from that lineup again nor do we really need to. They have left quite a legacy.
16.Any thoughts on the life and death of the great Syd Barrett, by the way?
Jaylinn: Don’t do drugs.
Jake: Music is a funny thing. You don’t need it to sustain life, but without it, life is a lot less colorful. I think the world is a much more colorful place because of Syd and the music he left behind. Cheers!
17.Do you guys have any new music in the works?
Paul: Yes, we have been writing a batch of new songs recently with no purpose in mind other than to have fun and experiment with our sound. We have no idea when we are going to put out another release. Wild Streaks & Windy Days just came out in March so we are going to ride this one out for a while.
Jaylinn: If there wasn’t new music in the works, The Boxing Lesson would be disbanded - all puns intended. Paul writes new music everyday. One of the troublesome parts of releasing an album is that you are married to those songs on that album for quite a while. We play all kinds of stuff at rehearsal that won’t make it to a stage for quite some time. We are trying to give people an opportunity to hear that what we do on that record is what we do on a stage. So the answer is yes and no. Yes, we got it. No, you can’t hear it…yet.
Jake: Well as long as we keep on living, we will always have more music to write.
Not more than two seconds into a thunderous opener of “You Wreck Me,” a knock-out whiff of Moroccan hash blooms from somewhere a few rows back, and most people around me lift their noses to the air and sniff like cats in a fish market, hoping to elicit a mild high. And as soon as Tom Petty spreads his arms like some lost eagle on stage, slowly meandering through the band with a mildly disturbing aimlessness as they play with these “oh, here goes Tom again” looks on their faces, I understand that the dudes behind me aren’t the only ones who are stoned. And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be–this is a Tom Petty show, where people go to feel good, forget all the bullshit of their daily lives for a couple of hours, and cheer on the songs that sneaked their way, somehow, into some of their most vivid memories.
I wonder which memory revisits the couple in front of me, as they openly embrace immediately upon hearing the first few strokes of “Free Falling” yawn from Petty’s guitar, a vaguely florescent cloud of weed smoke cloaking their silhouettes in the dark arena–maybe it’s the song that accompanied a first kiss in a parked car under the bridge, maybe it’s the song that reminds her boyfriend of all the horrible tramps he survived to find the one he’s with, maybe it’s nothing anyone else in this writhing crowd could possibly imagine–yes, probably that–not even our closest friends and relatives are aware of even a fraction of the personal mysteries we take to our graves, after all.
Tom Petty: “Listen to her Heart,” Live in Gainsville (2006)
Few bands deliver as steady an onslaught of syrupy riffs and hooks as Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers, a monumentally underappreciated talent that cynical Emo wannabes dismiss in their desperate pursuit of an identity their friends will approve of. A public distaste for the likes of Tom Petty is as much a rite of passage among that crowd as a good ol’ fashioned paddling at the frat house; and it’s a damned shame, because the human saga that unfolds at one of these shows is as humbling as it is inspiring. Take the beer-bellied dad with a backwards Marlins cap squeezing his huge, balding head up front, for instance, clutching the gates that close him into the first row seats he probably won by calling into a local radio show one day, hoping to score a pair of seats for himself and his kid, maybe to give him a taste of what “pop music” sounded like back before it meant more than a pair of porcelain boobs and a tongue kiss at the Grammies. The lights that scroll the crowd catch him in their glare for a second–he’s belting out every line of “Listen to Her Heart” with a series of convulsive heaves, every one of which takes maybe another ounce of the world’s weight off his shoulders, if only for one night.
When Mike Campbell busts out the 12-string on “Free Fallin’” or lifts his guitar chest-high and beats another searing solo out of the thing, I almost start to believe he’s one of the most underappreciated guitarists in rock ‘n roll. But that’s before Steve Winwood takes the stage to join the band for a killer take on “Can’t Find My Way Home,” and it immediately becomes apparent that Campbell, however accomplished as he may be, is one small trout in a sea of aging but wily sharks. Winwood’s fingers flutter over the guitar he straps on and strums in a single smooth motion–one he’s performed for nearly half a century now–a fact that’s evident in his effortless aplomb as he saunters over the the organ for a surprise from his Spencer David Group days, the enduring miracle of his voice overcoming the band’s noticeably rigid interpretation of “Gimme Some Lovin’”–though the crowd’s relatively indifferent response suggests it’s not an entirely welcome one, with lines to the pisser or the beer stand assembling in the aisles.
Something seems to sour on stage in the aftermath of Winwood’s cameo, as the Heartbreakers stumble out of their cover-by-the-numbers take on “Gimme Some Lovin’” with a frenetic delivery of “Saving Grace,” a newer track from Petty’s admittedly uneven but no-less underrated solo album, 2007’s Highway Companion. The band is obviously insecure in its newer material, as they overreach to turn the tune into a raving rocker with a clutter of misguided noise that ruins what is, in its original form, a blistering and bluesy rocker. For a band that is always remarkably true to each song’s original recording on stage, it’s an especially jarring moment that feels like an eternity.
Tom Petty: “Saving Grace,” Highway Companion (2007)
But a second wind of anthems follows, and you realize, with a modest touch of awe, just how relevant these guys have managed to remain throughout four decades now, tricking high schoolers into a love of Thunderclap Newman’s 1969 hit “Something in the Air” when Petty slapped it onto his greatest hits package in 1994, discovering a polished echo of grunge’s grit on the mischievous staple “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”–a song which, the second Petty unleashes it on stage here in Ft. Lauderdale, is met with the entire crowd’s instantaneous delirium, as if they’ve gone blue in the face holding their breath for this very moment since they took their seats at 8.
Petty and the band hopsctoch in and out of the four decades they swept through–the ’70s (Refugee, American Girl); the ’80s (End of the Line, Runnin’ Down A Dream, Don’t Come Around Here No More); the ’90s (Learning to Fly, Honey Bee, Won’t Back Down). But the true testament to just how many diamonds this band has mined over the years is the crowd of kids who fumble through the lot under the peach glow of parking lot lights after the show, singing their best rendition of “The Waiting,” yet another anthem which, somehow, just couldn’t be crammed into the 150-minutes of rock ‘n roll we witnessed under the dome of Ft. Lauderdale’s Bank Atlantic Center, one of many corporate civic centers cropping up around the country that look every bit as impersonal as their names suggest–a crudeness overshadowed only by the music of those folks who, as Rocky Frisco puts it, “write from the heart, not the wallet.”
Well, Petty’s wallet is doing just fine, but there’s something about the genuinely emotional response his music evokes–that couple embracing before me, the pot-bellied dad screaming the band’s songs back at them with his mesmerized son at his side–that proves beyond any doubt that Petty is one of the heroes Frisco had in mind–an authentic pioneer the likes of whom become fewer and farther between with each passing year.
Ft. Lauderdale Set List 7-15-08
You Wreck Me
Listen to Her Heart
Won’t Back Down
Even The Losers
Free Fallin’
Mary Jane’s Last Dance
End of the Line (Traveling Wilburys)
Can’t Find My Way Home (w/Steve Windwood)
Gimme Some Lovin’ (w/Steve Winwood)
In our willfully sarcastic, postmodern age, we sometimes become so impressed with our own wit that criticism of any particular band or album becomes less an opportunity to inform people than it is a chance at demonstrating how boundlessly hip we are. The poet W.H. Auden cautioned critics against writing reviews of bad books, because “it is not possible to review bad books without showing off.” The same applies to criticism of albums we do not particularly like—what is to be gained by banging a band around for the length of an entire review, other than to massage your own ego in a public forum? That is especially the case with a relatively new group called She Wants Revenge, a darkwave band hailing from the San Fernando Valley whose 2006 debut spawned a video directed by Joaquin Pheonix for the single “Tear You Apart” (as well as another video featuring Garbage’s Shirley Manson for “These Things.”)
The crime this band commits, apparently, is that they sound like other bands. “Come on, people,” some anonymous worm spews in an amazon.com review, “Spend your money and time on the Best Of Joy Division, Bauhaus, or Sisters Of Mercy instead of this recycled/redundant nonsense that’s basically a way for the band to pick up chicks.” Oh, how clever! How ingeniously “cheeky,” as my English friend used to say. Thank God you found this band to pick on, because we otherwise might never have known how interesting you are.
Then there’s always this kind of thing: “I picked this up for four bucks thinking I was getting a great deal, having heard that they were similar to the Killers and drew influences from the Cure. However after one listen, I put it aside and actually felt regret for parting with my $4.” But if it was a Cure or Killers album you wanted, why not buy a Cure or Killers album instead? It’s like picking up a volume of poems by some contemporary poet whom, you heard in passing, draws influence from Emily Dickinson–and then burning the book on your grill in the back, convulsing with guffaws of disdain as you douse it with gasoline and fumble for a blow torch in the shed because you didn’t find any Emily Dickinson poems in it. It’s called “crazy.” This is why comparing bands to one another can be as fatal a blow to both of them as the most acerbic (and, of course, incomparably clever) CD review.
She Wants Revenge: “Tear You Apart,” She Wants Revenge (2006)
If anything is more useless than reviewing those “bad books” Auden talks about, it’s criticizing a band for having influences–as if there is any such thing as a band whose sound and ideas do not at least in part derive from the work of prior groups. Criticism of She Wants Revenge as a derivative product of obvious influences is nonsense. Influence is an inescapable fact of the artistic process; a work of art that is entirely independent of all influence would have to consist of nothing more than utter silence. Simply put, it is impossible. All art derives from influence; great art does something new with it. Once this is recognized, the only possible legitimate criticism one can level at these guys is that their influences are too obvious, and that they therefore fail to achieve a sound of their own. This is a more rational criticism that, unlike the absurd and irrelevant complaint that She Wants Revenge are infuenced by other bands, actually has some grounding in logic and is open to a diversity of opinion.
The real test is this: are these guys able to incorporate their many influences into an original sound that they can rightly call their own? Many obviously feel that the debt She Wants Revenge owe to Devo, New Order, Interpol, etc. is so significant as to be distracting. But the vast majority of people who have seen them live–an opportunity I enjoyed recently when they opened for another great band called Electric Six–will come away from the show with the understanding that they are too good, too full of energy, and too certain of their creative identity to be tossed off as mere imitation.
Some bands do indeed fall prey to their influences, while others are able to blend them into a unique sound. She Wants Revenge do just that; they are talented players whose music is more textured, layered, sophisticated and fresh than most of the influences critics nail them to. I am certain that their debut marked the beginning of a fascinating creative journey for She Wants Revenge, and I know that there is more great music to come from these guys. Crybabies whose tastes are stuck in the 80s can feel free to dust off their 25-year-old Devo and Cure albums as I gladly set foot in the future of rock ‘n roll–and I won’t be looking back.
