John Andrew Fredrick has spent the last three decades as the sole constant in one of music’s most perfect and unheralded rock outfits, the black watch. Using the Beatles as a tracing template, Fredrick has applied a kitchen-sink approach to the album at hand since his 1988 debut, St. Valentine, the opening volley in a catalog that would ultimately encompass 15 albums and five EPs, all of which inspired varying levels of critical halleleujahs and a deafening chorus of crickets at the nation’s cash registers. Fredrick will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our band new feature with him.
Jeff Martin = wow. Talk about a sorely severely under-appreciated American artist—that’s Jeff. And his quondam, late partner-in-indie-rock crime John Berry. I’ve known both of those fine fellows for yonks now and have always loved their music, its plaintive beauty and pathos and twinkling four-string guitar interplay and dissonance and distortion amidst just the prettiest melodies. And the backward guitars, my god! Sucker I am always and ever for those and use them in TBW any chance I can.
I’m terrible with titles (save Beatles songs), and with keeping track of albums but I will stop my own big mouth right-the-now and send you off a-listening, to one of, for me, the greatest bands to come out of our unfair city. Here’s a gorgeous one.
The masterly way this band sounds at once drunk (on music) and stone cold you-know-what. They have so many records now it’s hard to say where to begin. I can relate, in that we have too many LPs to choose from as well. Must be something to do with we melodic-driven L.A. guitar bands: a) have a lot to say, musically; and b) have access to studios for pretty cheap as there are so many of them. Idaho are “bigger” than the black watch, sure, and they’re still just terribly overlooked by too many music fans who are wasting their time on the latest jeffy-come-latelys. Listen to Jeff Martin and Co., kids. They’ll amaze you with beauty and guitar power and seriously gorgeous off-kilter singing and arranging. Shortly before he died, John Berry said to me, “I never thought you liked us all that much, John!” when I rang him to have a chat about tennis and life and the band. I had to say, “Are you kidding me? Idaho’s been one of my very favorite bands for years and years and years now.” Wow. One more: so sad, so pretty—like the unreal girl you got … and wish you hadn’t.
