Out this week is the new multi-disc compilation, “Surrender to the Rhythm: The London Pub Rock Scene of the Seventies”. The collection is an excellent overview of pub rock, a phenomenon that helped paved the way for British punk. Before we get any further, though, we need to address a question many of our readers are probably asking themselves: What is “pub rock?”
“Pub rock” was a movement that lasted for a handful of years in the early to mid seventies. Pub rock bands played a back-to-basics style of rock-n-roll that was loose and unassuming. Though very much a London scene, pub rock was kick-started by an American group. In the spring of 1971, Eggs Over Easy were in London recording, when they convinced a local pub, the Tally Ho, to let the band play there on a regular basis. Their subsequent performances at the bar were a popular attraction, and other musicians and pub owners took notice. By 1973, it was a thriving scene.
Our copy of the last great pub rock anthology, from EMI in the 1990s, “Surrender to the Rhythm” is probably the last word we could ever want to hear on a genre that history seems to have crunched into a boozy after thought, but which in reality was the most fun you could have by saying “oh yes, I’m definitely over eighteen” in a deep voice on a Friday night.
Sequestered in Kentish Town to record an album with Hendrix/Slade producer Chas Chandler, in the spring of 1971 exiled American band Eggs Over Easy persuaded the landlord of local pub The Tally Ho to let them perform at the venue. Though the band were back in America by the end of the year, they inadvertently became the catalysts that sparked the pub rock revolution, with the likes of Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe and Bees Make Honey playing a burgeoning circuit that included The Kensington in Russell Gardens, The Lord Nelson on Holloway Road and The Nashville in West Kensington.
All of the key acts are here, and three CDs, seventy-plus tracks, mean they more than outweigh those peculiar gatecrashers. The Feelgoods, the Kilburns, the Hot Rods, the Kursaal Flyers, Brett Marvin,Eggs Over Easy, Brinsley Schwarz, Roogalator and, a few tracks earlier, frontman Danny Adler’s Smooth Loser predecessors, and Supercharge… Spin Cycle’s own pick of the bunch, on the strength of so many nights spent in dark, smokey pubs while Albie and the gang mashed high octane funk with low-brow humour, and turned “Save Your Kisses For Me” into a memory to be cherished. Surrender To The Rhythm charts the origins and development of the London pub rock scene throughout the Seventies, featuring all of the aforementioned bands.
Great choice of songs, too. Ian Gomm’s brooding take on Chuck Berry’s “Come On,” Bees Make Honey playing “My Funny Valentine,” Ducks Deluxe’s “Heart on my Sleeve” and frontman, the late Sean Tyla, popping up later with his Gang.
We hear Graham Parker kick through a live “Back to Schooldays” and Dave Edmunds, who was a godfather of the whole scene without ever actually playing the circuit, offers up a couple of numbers. Cado Belle, fronted by the magnificent Maggie Riley, Chilli Willie and the Red Hot Peppers, Starry Eyed and Laughing, Ace….
Yes, things do get a little weird towards the end as the likes of Darts, Chris Rea, Sniff ’n’ the Tears and the Fabulous Poodles start snapping at the originators’ ankles. But the always excellent Philip Rambow kicks out “Young Lust” like a lover, and the Inmates’ “Dirty Water” threatens to launch a whole new Pub Rock movement just as the third disc ends. A magnificent package, then, full of magnificent music. If you were there the first time, it’s a lot of what you yourself might have chosen. And if you weren’t, pick up a pint, light a ciggy, grab a space at the front, and please try not to sweat in my beer. With four hours of vital, vibrant music – including several previously unreleased tracks – bolstered by a 48-page booklet crammed with photos, memorabilia, anecdotes etc, Surrender To The Rhythm is the definitive aural document of a movement that would revolutionise the British music scene.
Matt Berninger of The National is releasing his debut solo album, “Serpentine Prison”, on October 2nd via Book, Berninger’s new imprint with Concord. Now he has shared another song from it, “Distant Axis,” via a video for it. Matt’s brother, Tom Berninger, and Chris Sgroi directed the video which features Matt lying on the floor while various objects are dropped towards him (including, randomly, a Predator VHS tape). Matt wrote the song with Walter Martin (formerly of The Walkmen).
“I met Walter Martin fifteen years ago when the The National opened for The Walkmen on a tour of shitty clubs in the American southeast. On that tour, I learned a lot about how to be in a band without ruining your life. I also learned a lot about Florida, Tennessee and Georgia. Walt and I have stayed friends, and about three years ago we started passing ideas back and forth. Distant Axis started from a sketch Walt sent me named Savannah. I think it’s about falling out of touch with someone or something you once thought would be there forever.”
Previously Berninger shared the album’s title track, “Serpentine Prison,” via a video for it. Booker T. Jones produced Serpentine Prison, with additional production by Sean O’Brien. The album features an array of special guest players, including: Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Jonathan Fire*Eater, Muzz), Andrew Bird, Mike Brewer, Hayden Desser, Scott Devendorf (The National), Gail Ann Dorsey (David Bowie, Lenny Kravitz), Booker T. Jones, Teddy Jones, Brent Knopf (EL VY, Menomena), Ben Lanz (The National, Beirut), Walter Martin (The Walkmen, Jonathan Fire*Eater), Sean O’Brien, Mickey Raphael (Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan), Kyle Resnick (The National, Beirut), Matt Sheehy (EL VY, Lost Lander), and Harrison Whitford (Phoebe Bridgers).
Back in February, before the pandemic overtook America, Berninger shared a cover of Mercury Rev’s classic “Holes,” from their 1998 album Deserter’s Songs. The cover is part of the 7-Inches for Planned Parenthood series and was originally shared via a video for the track. In April, for Late Night with Stephen Colbert Berninger performed the cover from home, aided remotely by Steph Altman on piano.
In April Berninger contributed guest vocals to “Quarantine Boogie (Loco),” a hilarious new COVD-19 themed song by Walter Martin.
Last year Berninger teamed up with Phoebe Bridgers for the new song, “Walking On a String,” which they performed in Netflix’s Between Two Ferns: The Movie. Then they shared a studio version of the song via a black & white video featuring them recording it .
The National released a new album, I Am Easy to Find, back in May 2019 via 4AD.
At the beginning of the year, Berninger, along with The National, surprised fans with a cover of INXS’ classic hit, “Never Tear Us Apart.” Their rendition of the ‘80s hit was for Songs For Australia – a covers compilation, featuring songs mostly by Australian acts, that benefitted country’s rehabilitation efforts, following devastating wildfires.
The official video for Matt Berninger’s “Distant Axis”, from his forthcoming solo album ‘Serpentine Prison.’ Produced by Booker T. Jones, the album will be released via Book Records in conjunction with Concord Records on October 2nd.
Consistency was a hallmark of Creedence Clearwater Revival in more ways than one. During the Northern California rock band’s prime, there really was no such thing as a long wait for the next CCR album, with the group pumping out five studio albums in two years.
Without hesitation or ambiguity, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug “Cosmo” Clifford agree that CCR’s output was fuelled in large part by a steady thought running through the mind of singer, songwriter and guitarist John Fogerty: If Creedence dropped off the charts, the public would forget about the band.
Cook says he doesn’t know where Fogerty came up with that idea, but at the same time, Cook theorizes that CCR “was treated too well by radio,” meaning stations cycled through the band’s singles at an accelerated pace.
“They always flipped the singles over and played the B-side,” he explains. “They killed the A-side early and flipped it. So we had a lot of platinum singles, but we were going through them like wildfire. We didn’t get the normal chart life out of any one song; two songs kept us on the charts about as long as one and half songs (would have for another band).”
He adds, “Creedence was a singles band, and when we had enough singles, then we would go into the studio and crank out the remainder, and then we had an album.”
Creedence Clearwater Revival released its self-titled debut album on Fantasy Records in 1968. Then the band pumped out three albums in 1969: Bayou Country, Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys, with “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising” and “Down on the Corner” among their Billboard Hot 100 hits that year. The steady output continued into the new decade, withCosmo’s Factory arriving in July 1970 and eventually spending nine weeks at No. 1 on the American charts. And while in many ways it’s true to the CCR albums that came before and after, Cosmo’s Factory also stands apart for subtle as well as significant reasons.
Preceding an album’s release with a single was typical for Creedence, but with Cosmo’s Factory, the band issued two singles well in advance. “Travellin’ Band”/“Who’ll Stop the Rain” entered the Billboard Hot 100 in late January 1970, followed by “Up Around the Bend”/“Run Through the Jungle” in late April. From the subsequent sessions that filled out the 11-song album came another two-sided single, “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”/“Long As I Can See the Light,” which hit the Hot 100 in early August.
In classic Creedence fashion, most of the singles were short recordings, but Fogerty, Cook, Clifford and guitarist Tom Fogerty outdid themselves with the feverish, saxophone-supported “Travellin’ Band,” which barely surpasses two minutes.
“Well, ‘Travellin’ Band’ is a tribute to the great Little Richard,” Cook says. And in coming up with his part, Cook put himself in the position of the bassist who played in the rock pioneer’s backing band.
“If we’re going to borrow from Little Richard, let’s go all the way and be true to the whole thing,” Cook adds. “So I just picked a simple bass part that drove it and didn’t get in the way. It was well within my playing skills.”
Conversely, Cosmo’s Factory contains two of the longer tracks in the Creedence catalogue. The 11-minute cover version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” had humble beginnings. This was an idea of John’s that started out very loosely as presented to the band, and we basically jammed for weeks,” Cook says. “We jammed the jam, back and forth (on the chords), for a couple of hours per day, Monday through Friday. And then a week before we went into the studio to record it, John said, ‘Oh yeah, I’m sticking “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” on the front of (the jam).’ And we said, ‘Sounds good to us.’ ” Cook adds, “The jam was really a jam; it was probably Creedence’s only jam. We all threw ideas around, and each of us as players kept coming back and refining the stuff that we thought individually and collectively worked best on the track. And when the red light was on, all we had to do was fall back on the stuff we’d been jamming on for some period of time, and it went down in one or two takes, like most Creedence recordings.” Normally, Clifford would have his drum parts planned out, but that wasn’t entirely the case with “Grapevine.”
“When we were cutting it, it reached a magic point where there are things I had never played before and John had never played before,” he recalls. “That was pretty exciting, and at the end, when we had the take, I said, ‘I kinda varied on some spots.’ And he said, ‘So did I,’ and that was rare for him to (do that).”
Then there’s “Ramble Tamble,” the long and intricate track that opens the album. “The song, to a nonmusical ear, has a good flow, has different parts and fits together well,” Cook says, “but it’s very strict in its sections that, when combined, make up the entire arrangement, which was completely unlike what the other Bay Area bands were doing at the time.” Over the course of the song’s seven-plus minutes, Clifford incorporates a double-time beat and also a steady-snare Motown-style beat. “The tough part in that song was slowing down the tempo, and (it was also a challenge) bringing it back (up) — and it had to be exactly right, or the song didn’t work,” Clifford says.
Cosmo’s Factory closes with the slow, soulful “Long As I Can See the Light,” which like “Travellin’ Band” features saxophone. Yet it’s Clifford’s high-hat work as the song winds down that stands out, the result of him switching from 14-inch to 18-inch high-hat cymbals. “I wanted a more melodic tone from the high-hat,” says Clifford. But in that quest, he encountered a problem: Due to the weight of the bigger high-hat cymbals, he couldn’t get them to open. “So I went to the hardware store and got a spring, put it in there, cut it down to size, put it back in, and it worked perfectly,” he says. “I opened them up at the end of that song, and they were really screaming — wide open, just pounding them with the shank of the stick, trying to get as much wood on them as possible.”
The ominous opening to “Run Through the Jungle” was the result of some experimentation.
“We had a (toy version of a) kalimba, the African finger piano — that, with a slowed-down backward tape, just trying to use some of the techniques that George Martin was using at the time,” says Cook. “A guitar string being hit, then tuned at the same time — tuning it up, then down. Speeding things up, slowing them down so they got a surreal texture. Laying that all onto the multitrack, then trying to come up with a blend.”
Clifford credits John Fogerty with coming up with the title for Cosmo’s Factory, and the factory itself was the band’s rehearsal space in Berkeley at 1230 Fifth St., where the album cover photo was shot by another Fogerty brother, Bob.
Like every CCR album cover up to this point, Cosmo’s Factory showed all four members of the band — only this time, there were plenty of props, too.
“Coming up with any kind of a picture is not quite as hard as coming up with a band name, but what do you do?” Cook says. “We took a bunch of junk that was laying around … the Lite-Brite kit (positioned under Tom’s raised feet). Doug was on his 15-speed bike. John had his motorcycle; I was laying on the floor playing some toy piano.” “I rode that bike to work every day,” adds Clifford. “I lived up in the hills, seven and a half miles away. Coming to practice was all downhill, and going home after playing drums for hours, it was (uphill through the traffic).”
Five decades later, Cosmo’s Factory remains the bestselling non-compilation album in the Creedence Clearwater Revival catalogue, with the Recording Industry Association of America bestowing multiplatinum status for sales of 4 million. CCR’s heyday wrapped with Pendulum, released in late 1970, and the band broke up after 1972’s Mardi Gras.
Even though its title contains Clifford’s nickname, Cosmo’s Factory is the drummer’s second favourite CCR album. At the top, he says, is Bayou Country, and for good reasons: “It wasn’t too far away from when we were playing in the bars, six nights a week, five sets a night. And ‘Born on the Bayou’ is my favourite Creedence song of all time.”
Cook describes Creedence as “an incredible rocket ride” that followed “nine and a half years of struggling,” during which the band went by other monikers, such as The Golliwogs.
“Now I can look back 50 years later (at Cosmo’s Factory) and go, ‘Well, I still love it,’ ” he adds. “It’s a great album.”
John Lee Hooker – A San Francisco favourite, John Lee Hooker came a long way from Tutwiler, Mississippi to the Bay Area. He was the son of a sharecropper and rose to prominence playing an electric-guitar-style adaptation of the Delta Blues. He developed his own boogie rhythm style in the late 40s. In the mid-30s, Hooker lived in Memphis where he performed on Beale Street and house parties. He worked at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in 1943 and frequented Blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street in the black entertainment district on Detroit’s east side. Hookers’ style took off in a city not noted for guitar players. His recording career began in 1948 with Modern Records in Los Angeles who released a demo he had recorded in Detroit. “Boogie Chillen: became a hit and the best-selling race record of 1949. He was on his way. Later in the 60s, he recorded “Boom Boom,” (covered by the Animals) and “Dimples,” two of his most popular songs for Vee-Jay Records of Chicago. He toured Europe in the annual American Folk Blues Festival beginning in 1962. Hooker eventually began to record and perform with Rock groups such as the Groundhogs, and Canned Heat, The Heat recorded “Hooker ‘n Heat” with him in 1970. Other later collaborations included Van Morrison, Steve Miller, Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmy Vaughan and others. Hooker died in 2001 at the age 83.
John Lee Hooker is a “blues legend” and you’re not just mouthing a cliche. You’re missing the specificity of what he brought to the form, the unique strand of DNA he sent coursing through the gene pool of countless rockers and blues artists in his wake. Hooker honed the blues into something new – a grinding, hymnal vamp, which he finessed for all it was worth. Hooker’s essential sound dispensed with the usual 12-bar blues progression to throw the focus on the thrust of the rhythm. It’s deep groove music he made, with a sound as indebted to the beat as funk, and as enamoured of repetition as an incantation. In Hooker’s greatest recordings, repetition bred intensity, both in his guitar playing and in his vocals which, in their chanting, droning cadence, could reach the transcendence of devotional singing.
All of this is worth noting as we approach what may or may not be the 100th anniversary of John Lee Hooker’s birth. The star, who died in 2001, upheld the blues tradition of not being overly concerned with exact birth dates. A variety of origin years have been credited by various sources, so let’s just settle on the one chosen by the record company now releasing his music, Vee-Jay Records. It picked this year to toast his centennial, marked by a well-curated, 16-song compilation of Hooker’s work, titled “Whiskey & Wimmen”.
Hooker’s anniversary arrives after the loss of another pivotal figure in 20th-century music – Chuck Berry, who was 90. In the same way Berry proved crucial to creating rock’n’roll, Hooker held a seminal role in the birth of the boogie branch of blues. On one level, his style transposed the earlier style of boogie-woogie piano to the guitar, then distilled it down to a ground breaking, minimalist kind of blues. To help create it, he used a different tuning than most blues players do. He went with “standard” tuning, as opposed to the “open” tuning favoured by most such artists. Hooker learned that style from his stepfather, Will Moore, an entertainer himself who had worked with Charley Patton and Son House.
Hooker, who was born in Coahoma County, Mississippi, left the family by age 14 and went to live in Memphis, where he performed on Beale Street. He cut his first records, starting with 1948’s Boogie Chillen, for the LA-based Modern Records. Hooker’s early songs were all singles, for a variety of labels, but he later developed into a prolific album artist imitated by thousands. Over the years, his songs were covered by stars such as the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana and countless others. Amid his sprawling catalogue, these 10 pieces best express his rarity and genius.
Boogie Chillen
Hooker’s first single became a No 1 jukebox hit, selling over 1m copies. It set the template for a style that often put its trust in a single riff, which he’d repeat, elaborate and then concentrate through the sheer dynamics of his playing and force of his vocal character. In that sense, Hooker’s approach had more in common with a Sufi singer like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan than with most anyone reared in the Mississippi delta. He was now loud enough to compete with city life, and became a regular performer in clubs on Detroit’s East Side. A demo made its way to Modern Records in LA, which released ‛Boogie Chillen’. It was an R&B chart No.1 and Hooker’s career was under way.
Sally Mae
Hooker’s follow-up to his Boogie smash finds him singing with a knowing wink, addressing a woman who’s been driving him mad. The song showcases his sexy vibrato and his darting acoustic guitar work, which finds subtle intricacies in the beat.
Crawlin’ King Snake
Hooker’s reinterpretation of this song, originally recorded by Blind Lemon Jefferson in the 1920s under a different title, gave him a top 10 R&B hit. His version takes full advantage of the directness of his acoustic guitar style, sometimes paring a solo down to a single repeated note. Better, it features a vocal that’s both low-down in its lust and elevated in its perfection. While JohnLee was a juvenile, his sister took up with another bluesman, Tony Hollins, who gave him a guitar and taught him songs that would serve the kid all his days. Among them was an essential track for every John Lee Hooker playlist, ‘Crawlin’ King Snake’, which Hooker first recorded in 1949 – and copyrighted. Hence when rock came along and the likes of The Doors covered it on LA Woman in 1971, John Lee Hooker done got paid. The same goes for the times he recorded it himself, of which there were many.
I’m in the Mood
Bonnie Raitt was so moved by the need and randiness in Hooker’s original version from 1951, she later cut a take with him on an all-star duets album, The Healer, in 1989. Their tandem recording won Hooker his first Grammy, while the album earned the star his highest-listed album on the pop chart. Raitt later said working with Hooker changed the way she thought about men in their 70s and 80s. Modern enjoyed another R&B chart-topper in 1951 with ‘I’m In The Mood’ (a lewd ditty Hooker recorded eight times over the years and which tempted Bonnie Raitt into a duet with him decades later), and then he was off again, working with the Chicago label Chess, which got sued by Modern in 1952 over the single ‘Ground Hog Blues’. The thing is, John Lee was a star: his hard-rocking boogie style was hard to replicate and that made him worth fighting over. Modern finally bowed out of his increasingly tangled career in 1955
Frisco Blues
Hooker was moving in soon-to-be-famous circles as he worked with various Supremes, Vandellas and other Motown musicians during ’63-64. Taking this John Lee Hooker playlist in a slightly different direction, ‘Frisco Blues’, from an album that attempted to place him in yet another genre, The Big Soul Of John Lee Hooker, may have been a Detroit sound on a Chicago label (Vee-Jay), Only the title of this 1963 track gives you the slightest hint that Hooker took inspiration from Tony Bennett’s I Left My Heart In San Francisco, which hit the year before. Hooker’s hard blues overhaul, complete with raging electric guitar, features uncredited backup vocals from the Vandellas, who hid their role due to contractual obligations to Motown. Listening to Hooker’s vocal salute to San Francisco’s “cool, cool nights” on a “high, high hill”, we hear cadences that later influenced another singer devoted to a chanting style, Van Morrison. Unsurprisingly, Hooker and Morrison recorded many songs together decades later.
I Cover the Waterfront
Of all the Hooker/Morrison hook-ups, Waterfront features the greatest rapport between the two. Its elegant jazz melody, composed in 1933 by Johnny Green, leaves space for maximum improvisation, a hallmark of both stars’ styles. Hooker also cut his own version, in 1967, on a like-named album, letting him showcase a very different style from his usual boogie.
One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
In 1966, Chess again branded him a traditional artist on The Real Folk Blues, though Hooker was working with a bruising band. The album’s most famous tune, ‛One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’, has a history dating back to Amos Milburn’s early 50s version, though Hooker imbibed it as he saw fit. George Thorogood brought this song to the rock masses in the 70s, crediting Hooker’s version as his inspiration. In fact, the song was written by Randy Toombs and made into a hit in 1953 by Amos Milburn. Still, Hooker’s 1966 version goes deeper than the other interpretations, especially the macho one by Thorogood. Hooker leaves more space in the song, talking his blues rather than barking them. He lets the inebriation in the lyric sink in to the point where it achieves a nearly psychedelic headiness. The vibrato he puts on the word “beer” gives it a beautiful resonance. What’s more, Hooker’s rocking backing band features some players Chuck Berry used on his hits, including Lafayette Leake on loosey-goosey piano.
Boom Boom
Hooker laid down the hammer on Boom Boom, a sexy vamp with a sly guitar and a rolling piano. One of his biggest hits, cut in ’62 and redeployed in 1980 in the Blues Brothers movie, the song has been covered by everyone from the Animals to Mae West. Its stop-start rhythm lends it a killer hook while Hooker’s conversational vocal plays it cool. Folk was not the only new market opening up for Hooker. In London, rhythm’n’blues was rapidly becoming the sound of clubland, and his tunes soundtracked the fashionable dances performed by the original mods. The contemporary ‘Boom Boom’ was certainly no folk ballad: this tough dancefloor-aimed I-fancy-you ditty made the lower reaches of the US pop charts. but this version of ‘Boom Boom’ somehow didn’t make the soundtrack album – perhaps there were fears its authenticity might make some of the other tracks look weak. Hooker would have to wait until 1988, when he was apparently 76, for a big revival thanks to The Healer, an album which featured rock stars queuing up to pay homage to their hero on vinyl. Its title track, featuring guitar star Carlos Santana, attracted attention and the record made the US album chart, setting Hooker up for a rewarding old age in both financial and artistic senses.
I’m Bad Like Jesse James
Another notable Riverside session delivered ‛I’m Gonna Use My Rod’, later retitled ‘I’m Bad Like Jesse James’ and ‛I’m Mad Again’. Hooker seemed fine with being portrayed as a folk singer, despite his gun-totin’ lyric, which was hardly peace and love. Was he gettin’ paid? Then call him what you like – he’d already changed his name numerous times on record. Should you be in any doubt as to his credibility with the folk crowd, Hooker played in New York in 1961 – and the support act was Bob Dylan, making his debut in the big city.
Dimples
Hooker proved he could be as effective in a more conventional blues as in a boogie with Dimples. He wrote it about a friend’s wife, whom he had a crush on. His delivery laces his leer with a self-aware humour. The original 1956 take features wailing lead guitar from Eddie Taylor. Signing to Vee-Jay, Hooker issued ‘Dimples’ in 1956. By now he was recording with a full band and this easy-rolling hit about an attractive woman enjoyed an extended afterlife. In 1959, Vee-Jay realised the burgeoning folk boom in the US might provide Hooker with an opportunity, and also realised that it was not the label to facilitate it, so it licensed Hooker out to the New York company Riverside, which extended Hooker’s reach into a white audience through two albums, the first of which, The Country Blues Of, included another John Lee Hooker playlist staple, ‘Tupelo Blues’: a much-revisited song about a flood in the Mississippi town Elvis Presley had been born in. The song possessed a sense of history just like ‘Natchez Burning’ had for Howlin’ Wolf, establishing Hooker as a man with roots.
Hooker ’n Heat
By the late 60s, the hippie generation was returning to the roots of rock’n’roll, and Canned Heat, perhaps the band most steeped in Hooker’s boogie style, cut a double-LP with the singer, Hooker’n’Heat, the first of several they’d make together – and the first of his high-profile collaborations to feature on this John Lee Hooker playlist. It featured a fine version of ‘Whiskey And Wimmen’.
To Hooker, it was Groundhog Day: he’d already recorded with white bands he’d inspired, having cut an album in London with The Groundhogs in ’64. They’d named themselves after his ‘Ground Hog Blues’. There’s a bit of a cheat going on here. Hooker ’n Heat is actually a full album – a double set, in fact – rather than a single song. In 1971, when Hooker was living in LA, he met the members of the boogie-rock band Canned Heat. Together, they cut a classic, 17-track set that contains some of the star’s most committed performances, as well as some of his most intuitive collaborative works. Together, that resulted in Hooker’s first charted album. In deference to his genius, the band gives all of side one to him alone. For side two, the Canned Heat member’s Alan Wilson comes in on piano and harmonica; in the final songs, the whole band chimes in. It culminates in a sprawling, 11-minute rethink on Hooker’s very first record, Boogie Chillen No 2, demonstrating just how far, and free, his vamps could roam.
He couldn’t boast the effortless authority of Muddy Waters. He wasn’t an outlandish marketable character like Bo Diddley. He couldn’t terrify you from across the hall like Howlin’ Wolf. But John Lee Hooker was a blues survivor who’d rock you to the socks that were poking out of the hole in your soles; he was street-smart, adaptable, even crafty. And armed with nothing but a guitar and his dark, moody, mumblin’, barking voice, he’d make you dance with: ‘Boogie Chillen’, as he once called it. but isn’t the blues a noble cry of the poor African-American who is suffering? Hell yes, but Hooker’s telling us if you got feet, you can use them to beat the blues.
Hooker’s final album before he passed away, in 2001, was Don’t Look Back, a moving affair that nonetheless still bore his boogie-and-coulda-bin trademarks. The title track might have been ironic, as Hooker was doubtless aware of his impending demise. And he was looking back: he’d recorded the song before, but it had never sounded like this. Now it was a spiritual affair and an apt finale to a unique career
Bay Area emo supergroup SPICE is Ceremony’s Ross Farrar (vocals), Sabertooth Zombie’s Cody Sullivan (bass), Ceremony’s Jake Casarotti (drums), Creative Adult’s Ian Simpson (guitar) and Victoria Skudlarek (violin). They used what they call “the power of groupthink” to create a full, all-encompassing world on their self-titled album, and it shows. The melodies are enveloping, and the atmosphere is rich; the songs feel carefully crafted.
As a collective thought, Spice’s self-titled debut album offers a deliberate isolation of pain as interpreted through different vehicles. Less than 30-minutes in length, the record diverts from a singular mood, tempo, or delivery, instead focusing on orchestrating emotional drain as single impulses—fast, slow, driving, simple, and layered—that coalesce in their machinations. At its core, Spice’s debut is wired together by brawny and brittle guitars, lock-groove rhythms, and vocals announce each moment and mood.
Formed in 2018 and based across California, each members’ roots are in the North Bay of San Francisco. Spice’s sound pulls from the sense of melody and drive inherent to Bay Area pedigree, peppered with modernity and awash with an anthemic haze. The hook is in the connection as much as melody, with each song building its inner narrative and exploration of affliction.
Traversing guitar-driven indie-pop and call-to-action impulse, Spice balances their urgency by interspersing violin melodies and layers, creating depth without oversaturating the heart of each song. Building complexity with laser focus, Spice shares the authoritative drive of Jawbreaker, J Church, The Horrors, and Fugazi, set in their own world of unrest. The treatment of each song is a statement that informs the whole – anecdotes that can bleed slowly or swirl quickly. In a sense, the album itself is an entire song, with each track becoming the verses, choruses, and interludes that narrate its intent. Ending with the final track they workshopped for the album titled “I Don’t Wanna Die in New York,” the album ends with a punch before winding back into meditation.
The third single “I Don’t Wanna Die in New York,”, from SPICE’s debut album on Dais Records, out now. Spice is: Ross Farrar (vocals), Cody Sullivan (bass), Jake Casarotti (drums), Ian Simpson (guitar), and Victoria Skudlarek (violin).
Honed over late nights at Panda Studios in Fremont, California with producer Sam Pura (Basement, The Story So Far, Self Defense Family), Spice spent hours tweaking it until it became a little world formed by what they refer to as “the power of groupthink.” Sprinkled with field recordings—audio snapshots from the member’s every-day-lives—the record offers an intimate twist that builds on its theme of a single thread that connects everything with continuity, making it a single organism with as many depths as questions.
This EXCLUSIVE bundle comes with a 10″x14″ paper placemat that is a replica of the original Pleased To Meet Me promo item from 1987, a bumper sticker, a 3″ Patch and a limited edition cassette. The cassette features a previously unreleased interview with Paul Westerberg recorded just before the release of the Pleased To Meet Me album. Brief excerpts from the interview were originally included in a radio promo LP that was released in 1987 but this marks the first time that the complete interview has been made available.
Pleased To Meet Me is the critically acclaimed fifth studio album by the American rock band The Replacements. Released in 1987 by Sire Records, Pleased To Meet Me is the only album recorded by the band as a trio, after original guitarist Bob Stinson acrimoniously left the band.
Following last year’s widely acclaimed Dead Man’s Pop release, Pleased To Meet Me will be receiving a similar ‘deep dive’ treatment with a 3-CD/1-LP deluxe boxed set, which will tell the story of the album in ways not previously possible with more than 50% of the content previously unreleased
New remaster of the original album by Justin Perkins, who was also behind the boards for our Dead Man’s Pop regimaging
1986demo session with Bob Stinson – his last recorded Replacements performance
Additional 1986 demos with the band as a three-piece outfit (sans Bob)
Previously unreleased rough mix of the album with alternate track listing
Studio outtakes from the album recording sessions (Memphis, 1987)
Rare single mixes
The making of Pleased To Meet Me was a transformative journey for The Replacements, one that began with the combustible Minneapolis combo on the brink of collapse and culminated in one of the definitive albums of the band’s career. That transformation is chronicled in-depth on the group’s latest boxed set, Pleased To Meet Me (Deluxe Edition).
More than half of the music (29 tracks) on this Deluxe Edition set has never been released, including demos, rough mixes, and outtakes as well as Bob Stinson’s last recordings with The Replacements from 1986.
The music is presented in a 12 x 12 hardcover book loaded with dozens of rarely seen photos along with a detailed history of the Pleased To Meet Me era written by Bob Mehr, who authored The New York Times bestseller, Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements.
Pleased To Meet Me was recorded over three months at Ardent Studios in Memphis with legendary producer Jim Dickinson before it debuted in June 1987. The collection opens with a newly remastered version of the original 11-track album along with a selection of B-sides and a version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” that was remixed by Jimmy Iovine. All of the music included in this boxed set has been remastered by Justin Perkins, who remastered the band’s widely acclaimed 2019 boxed set, Dead Man’s Pop.
The second disc explores the creative process behind Pleased To Meet Me with 15 unreleased demos recorded at Blackberry Way Studios in Minneapolis during the summer of 1986. The first seven of these demos represent the last recordings made by all four original members of The Replacements. After those demo sessions stalled out, singer/guitarist Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson and drummer Chris Mars made the painful decision to part ways with lead guitarist Bob Stinson after recording five albums together.
The disc’s remaining eight demos feature the band as a trio and include “Shooting Dirty Pool,” two versions of “Kick It In,” and “Even If It’s Cheap,” whose opening line (“Pleased to meet me/the pleasure’s all yours”) would ultimately inspire the title of the album.
The collection’s final disc features 13 previously unreleased rough mixes by studio engineer John Hampton that include the majority of the album along with non-album tracks like “Election Day” and “Birthday Gal.” These rough mixes are also featured on the 180-gram vinyl record included in the set.
Rounding out the collection are several unreleased tracks (Westerberg’s “Run For The Country” and “Learn How To Fail,” Stinson’s “Trouble On The Way”) along with a selection of outtakes (“Beer For Breakfast” and “I Don’t Know”) that debuted on the 1997 compilation, All For Nothing/Nothing For All.
In April , 2020, Toronto’s Scott Hardware will be releasing “Engel”, his second full-length album, and first on Telephone Explosion Records. It will mark the end of a three-year process of writing, recording and letting down his guard (for better or worse.)
Engel, the recently-released sophomore album from this Toronto artist is literally and figuratively seraphic. It was inspired by the 1987 film Wings of Desire, which followed angels around a pre-unified Berlin as they comforted its populace. On Engel, Hardware imagines these angels hovering over him and his loved ones, and the backdrop is piano-led art-pop, filled with graceful swells of tender vocals and off-kilter instrumentals.
His last album, 2016’s Mutate, Repeat, Infinity, was the culmination of a years-long obsession with the HIV/AIDS crisis and how it was shaped by capitalism. Hardware’s early years after coming out were shaped by the courage of people close to him who were dealing with difficult diagnoses.“Looking at these situations from a macro/societal lens must have been the only way I could process and share those years of my life and my loved ones’ lives with an audience” Hardware recalls. “From a writing and production standpoint, I was trying to re-imagine various eras of dance music and sound as urgent and vital as they would have in their heyday of the ‘80s and ‘90s.”
Within a year of moving back (to Toronto) from Berlin, Scott watched Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire and was immediately filled with its inherent curiosity. The film, in short, follows angels around pre-unification Berlin as they listen to the thoughts of the mortals they are surrounded by. “I sought with this album to capture the film’s velvety feeling – in turns funny, depressing, dark and mundane – in LP form” Hardware says. “These songs imagine Wenders’ angels buzzing around my friends, my family and I. Writing from their point of view allowed me unfettered access to my own thoughts about them and myself.” In the title track, the subject is in a relationship with a mischievous angel (named Engel,) who is probing his mind against his will. “Here he comes to comfort me, but like a fly around my head I’d sooner swat him dead,” is sung over an off-the-grid deconstructed house piano. A symphony of creaking trains and industry envelops the banging piano and delicate strings on the chorus while our hero complains “He’s here with that look again, he knows what’s happening, inside,” not, it would seem, ready for this level of vulnerability.
Engel is filled with touching, elegant art-pop that evokes the flaws and triumphs of everyday people. Plush strings and piano are perfectly suited to this brush with angels while the occasionally jarring electronic textures that adorn this LP point to the world’s beautiful yet cruel disarray. Hardware’s rich vocals are so gorgeous that they embody the noble, supernatural and biblical qualities of these winged healers.
Taken from Engel – TER055 out April 3rd on Telephone Explosion Records.
We said Joining the Spacebomb family not only gave Nadia Reid more visibility in the US, it also allowed her to work with the label’s in-house production team of Matthew E. White and Trey Pollard, who have earned themselves a reputation for their grand string arrangements thanks to their work on recent albums by Foxygen, Natalie Prass, Bedouine, and more. The strings do wonders for Out of My Province, which is a beautiful sounding record and the most massive sounding album Nadia has released yet. But as much of a sell as they are, Nadia never relies on any of the embellishments to drive these songs home. Just like her first two records, Out of My Province brings you to the edge of your seat with the power of Nadia’s words and voice alone.
The New Zealand singer/songwriter Naida Reid released “Out of My Province”, her debut LP for Spacebomb Records, this year, and it’s one of the most eloquent, shockingly overlooked folk-pop releases from 2020. Reid cites Joni Mitchell and Rufus and Martha Wainwright as influences (especially for her song “Oh Canada,” which serves as a tribute to the country and Mitchell, the Wainwrights and all its many musical exports), and it’s not such a stretch to hear little bits of those accomplished lyricists in Reid’s soft-spoken inflection.
These are the kind of songs you might fancy listening to over a cup of coffee in the morning, or maybe moodily by a window during a summer rain shower. This is all to say they have a lovely vintage bent to them and will make you feel things. Reid can shift from sharply written soft rock “High & Lonely,” “Other Side of the Wheel” to contemplative folk “Heart to Ride” to wistful radio pop à la KT Tunstall or Colbie Caillat “Best Thing” at a moment’s notice, and all together, Out of My Province displays an artist gracefully establishing her sound through the art of genre-mixing.
Get The Devil Out is up for an APRA Silver Scroll. If you’re a member, don’t forget to vote. It’s such a strange feeling having released this record in March without touring it properly. The build-up to releasing an album is so immense; full of elation and terror…! There was a big rush of relief when it finally came out on 6 March. My highlight being the little listening party I held in Dunedin, New Zealand. I feel proud of this record and proud of this song… (written under a bunk bed at the Grace Emily Hotel in Adelaide). And is about all the big things. I can’t wait to tour this album in due time.
‘Out Of My Province’, the amazing new record from Nadia Reid the album released March 6th, 2020, on Spacebomb Records.
Dramatic country with a rough-and-tough flare: That’s what you get when you check into Jaime Wyatt’s smoky, swirling fun house. The Washington-born, California-built, Nashville-based country singer has lived a lot of life in her 34 years, including eight months in jail, one marriage and a battle for sobriety. “Neon Cross” feels like the exultant freedom on the other side of all that mess—and lots of hard work. Wyatt’s crisp, commanding voice will capture you from the first few bars of intoxicating album opener “Sweet Mess,” which you can imagine hearing from the back of a misty club as you, clad in a 10-gallon cowboy hat, pull from a fancy cigarette, and keep a tight hold on you through the sweltering “Make Something Outta Me” all the way to the Shooter Jennings-featuring “Hurt So Bad.” Neon Cross is honky-tonk with an added dose of bad-assery (Is that a word? It should be).
But sometimes the most badass thing about her is Cross’ openness and bare humanity. “Because I’ll be honest — it feels like I’m gonna die if I don’t tell people how I feel and who I am,” she said in a statement upon the album’s release. “It sounds so dramatic, but that’s the truth. It’s been just this gnarly, gnarly process, but one that is so human. So there’s been a lot of turmoil and drama. But this record is a lot about rebirth, too. If there’s one lesson to be gleaned from Jaime Wyatts latest album, “Neon Cross”, it’s that life goes on. And through it all—good times and bad, dreaming and desperation, there is truth. When it came to capturing that truth on tape, Wyatt had some assistance from Shooter Jennings, who produced Neon Cross. Together, she and Jennings boldly color outside the country lines, taking a wide-lens sonic and stylistic approach to the songs on Neon Cross.
Produced by The Avett Brothers’ Scott Avett (and featuring him throughout), Clem Snide’s recently released album “Forever Just Beyond” follows a tumultuous season of life for singer/songwriter Eef Barzelay. His marriage, money and band all fell apart within a matter of years, and he turned around and channelled his anguish into an album of thoroughly thoughtful, beautiful and imaginative indie-folk songs. On “Roger Ebert,” Barzelay ponders the film critic’s “dying words,” allowing his metaphor to take a much larger shape. “There is a vastness that can’t
“By pure coincidence, “Forever Just Beyond” came out when it could potentially have the strongest impact. Let’s be honest, with the (COVID-19) virus working its way across the globe so many of us are thinking about mortality in clear and present terms. It was always in this album’s DNA that it would address death without dwelling on it and life without pretending it’s perpetual.”
“There have been many iterations of Clem Snide over the years but by now it’s turned into a personal alias for Eef Barzelay. “Forever Just Beyond” shows him and his current ensemble at their most quietly devastating.” “The last ten years have been a rollercoaster of deep despair and amazing opportunities that somehow present themselves at the last possible second,” says Eef Barzelay. “That this record even exists, as far as I’m concerned, is a genuine miracle.”
Indeed, the road to Forever Just Beyond, Barzelay’s stunning new album under the Clem Snide moniker, was an unlikely one, to say the least. Produced by Scott Avett of The Avett Brothers, the record is a work of exquisite beauty and profound questioning, a reckoning with faith and reality that rushes headlong into the unknown and the unknowable. The songs here grapple with hope and depression, identity and perception, God and the afterlife, all captured through Barzelay’s uniquely off-kilter lens and rendered with an intimate, understated air that suggests the tender comfort of a late-night conversation between old friends.
Avett’s production is similarly warm and inviting, and the careful, spacious arrangement of gentle guitars and spare percussion carves a wide path for Barzelay’s insightful lyrics and idiosyncratic delivery. Listening to the album now, Avett and Barzelay sound like an obvious pairing, but the truth is that there was nothing obvious about the survival of Clem Snide, and the series of cosmic coincidences that led to Forever Just Beyond remains inexplicable even to Barzelay himself.
There’s levelheaded maturity and even acceptance of our collective fate that songwriter Eef Barzelay, who could be a bit of a goof on earlier albums, seems to have gained over the five years since his last Clem Snide LP. Indeed, these were hard years, defined by crises: Barzelay’s marriage floundered; the songwriter faced bankruptcy, On the Scott Avett-produced Forever Just Beyond,Barzelay is a gentle indie-folk philosopher that will share a couch with us and talk hard existential talks with patience, gravity, humour, and grace
Clem Snide from ‘Forever Just Beyond’ (2020, Ramseur Records) produced by Scott Avett.
