Felt - "Stained-Glass Windows in the Sky" (1987)

Here's a fine dose of dour mid-80s jangle-pop for a lonely and occasionally hopeless Friday night. And I almost forgot to mention that I have a few C86-related posts in the works soon, if that's your kind of thing....

Notes from the Paisley Underground: True West - Hollywood Holiday Revisited (2007)

Along with bands such as The Dream Syndicate, Game Theory, and Thin White Rope, True West originally hailed from the small but very influential music scene that thrived in the college town of Davis, CA. during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and like those other bands, they ended up gravitating to the paisley underground scene based in L.A. in order to find a wider audience and a record deal. True West's sound was a fertile blend of psych-tinged roots-rock, jangle-pop, and a touch of the dark, spidery dual-guitar interplay of Television, a combination of influences that made them quite unique among the paisley crowd. After a brilliant self-released EP (which would eventually be grouped with additional tracks and released as the even more brilliant Hollywood Holiday), the band was invited by EMI to record some demos at the legendary Bearsville studio in New York with none other than former Television visionary Tom Verlaine; however, the sessions didn't go well, and EMI passed on them. Russ Tolman: "What about Verlaine? Well, he seemed real strict and stern. We jokingly called him 'the schoolmaster.' I think he got along better with other people in the band than me, and I was the big Verlaine fan, which was kinda funny. But I was real worried about things getting over-produced so I was kinda playing the sullen adversary sort of role, so he and I never really hit it off until the recording was over and we gave him a ride back to New York in our van  and at that point he turned into plain old Tom Miller, a pretty nice guy from Delaware, instead of Tom Verlaine, the artiste [....] I asked him all the questions I always wanted to know about Television and about Richard Lloyd, and it was a lot of fun."  By the time True West finally released their first proper LP, the slightly less brilliant but still quite enjoyable Drifters, they were beginning to undergo personnel changes that would eventually rob the band of much of their momentum.

Though a third album appeared a few years later, True West were never again able to hit the significant heights of their earliest recordings. Because these recordings remained out of print for more than twenty years, Hollywood Holiday is very much one of the forgotten masterpieces of the paisley scene. While its production sounds a bit thin in places, the austerity serves True West's aesthetic well, as their later recordings tended to polish the dark post-punk grime out of their sound, thus making them seem, at times, like just another jangle-pop outfit. A perfect example of what made True West so distinctive is their cover of "Lucifer Sam" from Pink Floyd's psychedelic masterpiece, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which manages to capture both the twisted whimsey of the original and to inject it with a little early-eighties paranoia courtesy of lead vocalist Gavin Blair, whose voice possesses none of the child-like naivete of Syd Barrett's. Coupled with the intertwining guitars of Russ Tolman and Richard McGrath, the song traverses new-found depths of acid-drenched darkness. "And Then the Rain," True West's signature song and easily one of the best things to come out of the paisley scene, is a tense piece of jangly melancholia that wallows beautifully in its doom-filled verses. My personal True West favorite is "Look Around," the lead track on Drifters, which features a devastating power-pop-style hook and some memorable, inspired vocals from Blair. Although the phrase "lost classic" is used far too often by music reviewers, Hollywood Holiday and Drifters exemplify this notion. Eerily similar to the fate of Big Star ten years earlier, True West was as talented as any neo-psych band of the era, but commercial success would prove frustratingly elusive and, as is so often the case, an early demise soon followed.

Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders from Mars - "Starman" (1972)

Hands down, my favorite Ziggy Stardust clip. Makes me want to break out the old eyeliner and lipstick (black of course) ;)

Mick Ronson - Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1974/2003)

Mick Ronson is easily one of the most underrated musicians of the rock era. A first rate arranger and a sublimely talented multi-instrumentalist whose fiery lead-guitar work for David Bowie's Ziggy-era band The Spiders from Mars proved to be a huge influence on both the punk and post-punk movements of the late-1970s and early 1980s, Ronson was a rock 'n' roll careerist, who, much like Bowie, had endured many failures before his star finally began to ascend. Before meeting up with Bowie in 1969 toward the end of the recording sessions for the Space Oddity album, Ronson had paid his dues knocking about in several bands in his native city of Hull, most notably, an R&B-influenced outfit called The Rats who had a few minor brushes with success in London before descending again and forever into obscurity. The story goes that when former Rats band-mate John Cambridge made the trek from London back to Hull to recruit his friend to join Bowie's new backing band, The Hype, Ronson was working as a Parks Department gardener. Understandably reluctant after his previous failures, Ronson was finally persuaded to agree and consummated his legendary musical partnership with Bowie only a few days later on the John Peel radio show. In hindsight, Ronson's influence on Bowie's glam-phase is incalculable, as he not only was the architect (along with Tony Visconti) of the darker, harder-edged sound Bowie adopted beginning with The Man Who Sold the World, but he also co-produced, with Bowie, many of the classic Ziggy-era albums. Following Bowie's sudden retirement of his Ziggy Stardust alter-ego in July, 1973, Ronson, at the behest of Bowie's manager, Tony DeFries, recorded his first solo album, which, if nothing else, clearly demonstrates the extent to which Ronson had a hand in Bowie's distinctive sound.  

Slaughter on 10th Avenue isn't the kind of solo effort you'd expect from a lead guitarist striking out on his own for the first time; rather, it attempts to present Ronson as a viable pop star in his own right, instead of merely giving him a forum to lay down impressive guitar solos. This is evident from the first song, a cover of Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender," which starts out reverentially enough, but soon converts this gentle (or sappy depending on your taste) chestnut into an over-the-top glam-rock power ballad, complete with Ronson's histrionic Bowie-esque vocals and dramatic Ziggy-style guitar work. It really should be a mess, but the song is so lovingly executed and sumptuously recorded that it simply works, and works well. Things get even more interesting on the Bowie & Ronson penned "Growing Up and I'm Fine," which listeners will either love or hate depending on their tolerance for (or love of) glam-rock excess. A fey take-off on Springsteen, it's the kind of song Bowie excelled at on albums such as Aladdin Sane, and though Ronson does a credible job on vocals, it's impossible not to wonder what Bowie might have done with the song; nonetheless, it's a great, glittery three-minute ride. And then there is "Music Is Lethal," another Bowie-penned tune that starts out sounding a little like "The Port of Amsterdam," but soon develops into a full-fledged Jacques Brel meets Scott Walker meets Bowie glam-opera. Overall, the production on Slaughter on 10th Avenue is consistently gorgeous and Ronno's guitar-work is spectacular (as usual), and while this is indeed a strange album that ultimately pales in comparison to the Bowie albums it, in many ways, tries to mimic, it still manages to feel like an essential document of a brief but inspired moment when pop hooks, gender-bending and high art could be taken in a single dose.

Mazzy Star- "I've Gotta Stop" (2013)

Hope Sandoval seems to be really resonating with Voix and I this week. This is a gorgeous track off of Mazzy Star's newest album. I was unfortunately unable to find a live performance or video for the song, but it needs to be heard anyhow.

 

The Jesus & Mary Chain (with Hope Sandoval) - "Sometimes Always" (1994)

William & Hope doing the Nancy & Lee thing, and doing it well. I'm really feeling this song right now, except for that last line- he's a bit of a presumptuous twat if you ask me....

Unreflected - A Genealogy of Mazzy Star in Five Chapters: Chapter I- Rain Parade

 

"We thought it was way more punk to play slow, spooky, sometimes gentle, sometimes hard, but always melodic music, because punk was about doing your own thing and fuck everybody else." - Rain Parade guitarist Matt Piucci

The story of Rain Parade, and in many ways, the paisley underground scene itself, begins in a Pacific Palisades neighborhood in West L.A. during the mid-1970s, where a pair of brothers, David and Steven Roback lived on the same block as a friend and schoolmate named John Hoffs, who happened to have a younger sister named Susanna. What would eventually bring David and Susanna Hoffs together was a mutual love of sixties-era music and Roback's alienated intellectual tendencies. David Roback: "I was fairly different from the other kids, I didn't get on with them [....] We didn't have many common interests. My hobbies were psychiatry and history. I'd psychoanalyze my friends." Eventually, David formed a band with Susanna and John Hoffs called The Unconscious, though the it was destined to be short-lived. David Roback: "There's an old film of us playing in that band, it's pretty interesting but we moved on because we were holding each other back. We didn't want to sing together, we didn't like the sound of male and female voice together." Susanna Hoffs has a different recollection: "What happened was my brother was sort of irritated with David and I for becoming a couple. I was his kid sister, and suddenly I’m stealing his best friend away. So then it was just David and I, and we never did get a bass player or a drummer. We never did a show, and all we did was make some living–room tapes.” By the time the summer of 1977 had rolled around, David had already gone off to college in Minnesota where he, quite by chance, met a guitar player named Matt Piucci, whom he eventually shared a dorm room with and formed a short-lived punk band called The Beatnicks. As if beckoned by fate, Piucci would end up following David back to L.A. several years later. Meanwhile, Steven had immersed himself in the burgeoning L.A. punk scene and was listening to New York art-punks like the Talking Heads and Television. However, it was an L.A. band called The Last, whose sound was defined just as much by melodic power-pop as it was punk aggression, that had a lasting influence on him. After David had returned from college, they formed The Sidewalks and began playing obscure L.A. clubs as an electric folk band; however, it would not be until the arrival of David's college buddy Matt Piucci at the dawn of a new decade, the 1980s, that a new direction for their music would come into focus. Matt Piucci: "I finally moved to LA in 1981 and we formed a band. By then the LA punk scene, which was never any good besides X and the Circle Jerks, had become this fascist thing, much like hip hop today where it was the only allowed style of music considered to be cool. Most of these bands could not play worth shit and had no melodies or songs either. We got REALLY into Television and Love, as well as, of course the Byrds and Beach Boys, pretty much anything that began with B."

Along with keyboardist Will Glenn and drummer Eddie Kalwa, the Roback brothers and Piucci formed Rain Parade in 1981. Piucci: "It did seem like we were completely on our own. I moved out in April of 1981 and we didn't play live until May of 1982, by then we had recorded out first single. Meeting Green on Red and the Dream Syndicate was nice in that they appreciated what we were trying to do, although they didn't sound much like us. We already knew the Bangles." The band recorded their first single in early 1982 at Ethan James' Radio Tokyo studio in Venice, and it didn't take long for it to garner immediate attention from indie communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Nigel Cross of the UK indie mag Bucketfull of Brains: "That first 45 on the Llama label 'What's She Done to Your Mind' b/w 'Kaleidoscope' was one of life's epiphanies- not only one of the great 7"-ers of all time but one of the first signs that psychedelic music was about to have its second flowering. Hearing those two songs filled me with a missionary zeal [....] I wanted to tell the stupid world that there was was this absolutely beautiful, mind-altering music being made again on the West Coast- as good as anything that LA had offered up in the mid-60s. The chiming electric 12-string guitars, the delicate acoustic guitar strummings, wispy organ sounds that could carry your heart, mind and body away from a grim Cold War world."  After recording some demos at Lyceum Sound (a makeshift studio created out of a two-car garage and run by The Last), which ultimately came to light on the compilation Warfrat Tales, Rain Parade found themselves at the center of a quickly growing and unusually coherent music scene, which Michael Quercio of The Three O'Clock would soon dub "the paisley underground" in a magazine interview. Guitarist of The Long Ryders Sid Griffin: "For what its worth, the original Paisley Underground was the Dream Syndicate, Three O'Clock, the Rain Parade and Bangs [....] All these bands drank beer together and lent each other amps. If one of my strings popped during a gig, I'd just hand the guitar to Karl Precoda of the Syndicate and he'd fix it. Nobody had roadies, and nobody was trying to do each other down. The whole thrust of the thing was more social than musical. Okay, so all the groups were vaguely sixties-influenced guitar-pop bands who'd moved on from punk, but the main thing about the scene was that everybody hung out. I mean, face it- the Bangs were pretty terrible when they started out."

In March of 1983, the band entered Contour studios in Los Angeles to record their first LP, the esoteric title of which was dreamed up by David Roback: "I was going through a subway in San Francisco and I noticed it was written on a sign. I thought I've got to write this down because I'm so high, I'll forget it. It reads so well, I wrote it down on a matchbox and suggested it to the band and they liked it it a lot." What they ended up recording was one of the few definitive albums of the paisley underground scene. Emergency Third Rail Power Trip is an enduring and unassuming gem of post-sixties (neo) psychedelia. While certainly taking inspiration from purveyors of 1960s jangle-pop such as The Byrds and Love, as well as the darker, more claustrophobic psychedelic textures of bands such as The Doors and early Pink Floyd, Rain Parade's debut LP is much more than simply an homage to their psych-rock forefathers; rather, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip bristles with the desire for re-invention. Led by the fuzz-guitar interplay of David Roback and Matt Piucci and Steven Roback's shamanic basslines, Rain Parade successfully integrate the blissed-out jangle of songs such as their first single, "What's She Done to Your Mind," with the dark, thick haze of songs like "Look at Merri," which sounds like a blueprint for Jason Pierce's neo-psych excursions a decade later as Spacemen 3 and later Spiritualized. Matt Piucci recalling the recording sessions: "We really did our homework. Every sound on there is well thought out and we were pretty rigorous about it. By the time we recorded, most, but not all of the parts had been decided upon." Steven Roback: "The lyrical themes and song content have a sort of punk ethos to them [....] The state of mind we were all in was pretty dark, and it was like personal therapy for everybody in the band. We were all feeling kind of hopeless and helpless about things, and the band was this sort of idealistic attempt to create some space where we could all feel really great."

Joy Division - "Transmission" (1979)

As the holy grail, the heroes, and the heartbreaking maestros of the post-punk movement, Joy Division deserves to be a huge focus of this blog.  Within the next week, I will be beginning my Manchester series where I will be scraping the fascinating grime from the grim streets of the mecca of post-punk.  I will begin with Joy Division, and also explore their influences, Factory Records, and beyond. For now, I leave you to revel in Peter Hook's brilliant bass lines, and Ian Curtis's tragically passionate stage performance.  Oh, and not to mention John Cooper Clark's fucking fantastic introduction.

Rain Parade - "This Can't Be Today" (1984)

For fuck's sake, this is a rare find- a David Roback-era Rain Parade video. The first installment of the new series on Mazzy Star is coming soon. Chapter 1 will feature the Rain Parade and include excerpts from some rare early interviews. Stay tuned...

John Foxx & Robin Guthrie - Mirrorball (2009)

At the dawn of the 1980s, John Foxx released Metamatic, a landmark electro-pop album that fused the synth-dominated sound just then coming into vogue in the UK with some of the more avant-garde tendencies of kraut-rock. The result was nothing less than a techno-punk masterpiece. However, as the 1980s progressed, Foxx's albums became less and less distinguishable from the contemporary pop mainstream, and when In Mysterious Ways was released in October of 1985, it was virtually ignored by fans and press alike, causing Foxx to put his music career on hiatus. For the remainder of the 1980s and into the 1990s, Foxx (using his birth name Dennis Leigh) worked as a graphic designer, creating covers for well-known books such as Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, and even teaching graphic design at a university in Leeds. While the rise of acid-house, which Foxx correctly surmised was deeply influenced by his best early 1980s work, inspired him to briefly resurrect his music career as Nation 12, it would be his second return to music in the late 1990s that would yield, among other innovative recordings, his ambient masterpiece Cathedral Oceans, which he collaborated on with Louis Gordon, a Manchester musician who would become a collaborative presence on many of Foxx's future recording ventures.

Robin Guthrie with Jaguar in hand

In 2005, Foxx made some live appearances playing beside Robin Guthrie, whose spidery, cascading, effects-laden guitar-work created the dazzling soundscapes that, along with Elizabeth Fraser's unparalleled vocals, made The Cocteau Twins sound so distinctive. Borne out of these appearances was a collaborative project called Mirrorball, released in 2009, the sound of which is entirely what one might expect from these singular musicians who, at this point in their careers, might be better described as sound engineers. On standout track "Estrellita," Guthrie's familiar, squishy arpeggios provide a gorgeous backdrop to Foxx's lovely, seemingly improvised vocals. As I was listening to this song for the first time, I inevitably found myself wishing Guthrie would resurrect the Cocteaus in some form, though he has said repeatedly that he would see this as a regression musically- yah, whatever Robin. Another memorable track is "Spectroscope," which highlights Foxx's ghostly vocals, and provides them with an eerily dramatic yet musically spare backdrop. However, the highpoint of Mirrorball is "Sunshower." Here, Foxx's baritone vocals are a little more aggressive and meld beautifully with Guthrie's restrained guitar-work, creating a truly memorable track, which is always a feat on an ambient-inclined album. If I have a criticism of the album, it's the overly manicured production, which I realize is nearly synonymous with ambient works like this, but can occasionally push the aesthetic into new age territory. Nevertheless, well worth hearing.