Sub Pop recently released J Mascis‘ Several Shades Of Why, the first solo studio album from the Dinosaur Jr frontman. The mostly acoustic, 10-track LP features guest appearances from Kevin Drew (Broken Social Scene), Ben Bridwell (Band Of Horses), Pall Jenkins (Black Heart Procession), Kurt Vile, Sophie Trudeau (A Silver Mount Zion), Kurt Fedora, Matt Valentine (Golden Road) and Suzanne Thorpe (Wounded Knees). Download second single “Is It Done” below, grab an mp3 of lead single “Not Enough,” and read our 2007 Dinosaur Jr career overview.
“Is It Done” (download): https://magnetmagazine.com/audio/IsItDone.mp3
For almost 25 years, John Andrew Fredrick and a revolving cast of characters have been issuing records as the Black Watch. The California-based indie-rock institution is back with 11th album Led Zeppelin Five (Powertool), and it’s the first LP to feature the rock-solid lineup of Fredrick, guitarist Steven Schayer (ex-Chills), bassist Chris Rackford and drummer Rick Woodard. When Fredrick isn’t busy writing and recording songs, he’s teaching English at the University of California, so we thought he’d a be a natural choice to guest edit the MAGNET website. Fredrick, with some assistance from Schayer, will be doing exactly that all week. Read our brand new Q&A with Fredrick.
Fredrick: In 1986 or so, I heard the eponymous track from the Lucy Show‘s …Undone on the radio in Santa Barbara—just a Tantalus of a snippet to promote a local show for this London-by-way-of-Canada band—and I got that same tingling I remember getting the first time the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” came clarioning over the AM radio in my mom’s big, black, bulbous Buick. I wanted to jump up and down like a toddler on taffy. I think the Beatles parallel, if admittedly a bit grandiose, is apt in that the Lucy Show’s debut harbors those things—jangly arpeggios tempered by dark, Easternish drones; co-vocalists (not forgetting good old George, OK Fabs geeks?) who sound similar but who remain satisfyingly, distinctly identifiable; preposterously catchy choruses and hooks—that the (to me, at least) Ur-band from Liverpool did first, best and, of course, indelibly. The Lucies also reminded me of my two favorite bands at the time: the Cure and Echo & The Bunnymen. Yes, I had the obligatory post-punk, tweedy, threadbare greatcoats and wore them sweatily round SB in the semi-sweltering summers, suffering for my nascent art—the band I didn’t yet know but somehow sensed I was to become.
This record, thankfully re-released a couple of years ago on CD by Words On Music, really is the sine qua non of the Black Watch. After having seen the Lucies play to all of seven people, I went out and made up the first incarnation of TBW the very next day with a joe-college drummer on the crew team at UCSB (where I was teaching), a Chickasaw sweetheart 10th-year senior called Kenny who was “learning” the bass and a charming surf-star pretty-boy/math major/reconstituted candy-metal guitarist named Dave Dodd, who pleaded with me to call the band Dave Dodd And The Gods. “Come on, John,” I remember him saying, “you can be a god here! Or one of them at least! Don’t you realize what that means?!” Even though I, of course, wrote and sang all of the eight songs that comprised our first warbling, Dutch-courage-y sets opening for the godawfully precocious Toad The Wet Sprocket. I think he thought he was a sort of seaside Beelzebub, Dave Dodd did. Or maybe, like many of us at the time, he was doing some advanced after-school ‘shrooming. The math and geology students always seemed to have more/better drugs than us English majors. I met the Lucies’ Rob Vandeven at one of my acoustic gigs in London a couple of years ago and told him I started a band because of him. He might have said, “Sorry about that, John!” He’s a swell guy, and he put out a cool solo record, as has Mark Bandola (as Typewriter, and a couple, actually), but they need very very much to reunite. If you don’t know this record or the follow-up, Mania, rush out your door right now and have your GPS find you a record store. Ha! Luck to you.
For almost 25 years, John Andrew Fredrick and a revolving cast of characters have been issuing records as the Black Watch. The California-based indie-rock institution is back with 11th album Led Zeppelin Five (Powertool), and it’s the first LP to feature the rock-solid lineup of Fredrick, guitarist Steven Schayer (ex-Chills), bassist Chris Rackford and drummer Rick Woodard. When Fredrick isn’t busy writing and recording songs, he’s teaching English at the University of California, so we thought he’d a be a natural choice to guest edit the MAGNET website. Fredrick, with some assistance from Schayer, will be doing exactly that all week. We recently caught up with Fredrick via email.
Thanks to Marcellus Hall for guest editing our website all week. Be sure to check out his new LP, The First Line. Here’s the video for the album’s “During The War.”
Marcellus Hall first made a name for himself as the frontman of Railroad Jerk, which released four albums on Matador between 1990 and 1996 before breaking up. Hall and RJ drummer Dave Varenka went on to form White Hassle the next year, issuing a handful of records until disbanding in 2005. These days, Hall is pursuing a solo career, and he just released his debut album, The First Line, on Isaac Brock’s Glacial Pace label. Aside from the music, the 13-track LP also shows off Hall’s other big talent: illustration. Since moving to New York City in the late ’80s, Hall has seen his artwork appear in the likes of The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and The First Line features a 44-page book showcasing his art. Not only is Hall guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week, he’s also drawing illustrations to accompany everything he writes about. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Hall: You sat down to brainstorm cover ideas for The New Yorker. Your drawing table is next to the balcony where you sit sometimes amongst planters and morning glories. Then it’s back to the old drawing board. But not before you turn on the little pump that pumps water in a loop, like a fountain, into a rectangular planter and creates a pleasing trickling sound. Paul Simon’s new album played in the background, and Vampire Weekend didn’t even cross your mind. Memorial Day weekend was on your mind, though, as you still didn’t have a date for the prom. You were wearing the hoodie that musician Dave Dondero gave you last month. You are not a hoodie type of person. In fact, you considered yourself the last person on earth whom you’d imagine wearing a hoodie. But look at you now! It just goes to show you (as Einstein and Proust have shown us) that it’s all relative. That what you one day despise, you may one day embrace. That one man’s trash is another man’s spare tire. And that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
