FEATURES

The Jags: Power Goes Pop

jagsLondon power-pop outfit the Jags had a 1979 hit with debut single “Back Of My Hand” but disappeared almost as quickly as they rose to fame. Thirty years later, MAGNET’s Timothy Gassen tells the tale of one of the new-wave era’s seminal acts. (For a history of American power pop, read our 2002 cover story.)

The term “one hit wonder” is often used as cynical criticism, usually by those who have never had even one song of their own climb the charts. What jaded music fans don’t understand is that bands that carry the weight of the “one hit wonder” tag often have a full catalog of other fine work that never reached a larger pop audience. Many pop listeners are just too lazy to search for anything but their spoon-fed top-40. That means many power-pop fans still don’t realize that the Jags remain one of the new-wave era’s most accomplished acts. And that their sound only starts with 1979 smash “Back Of My Hand.”

Record labels and radio in the U.K. were grudgingly forced to allow new-wave and punk sounds to edge onto the airwaves in the late-’70s, long before their U.S. big brothers would even consider such an experiment. The young public’s interest in these startling sounds meant a new breed of U.K. bands needed to be cultivated, signed and promoted—and quickly. The Jags were perfectly suited to seize that moment.

“The Jags started in 1978 when Nick Watkinson (vocals, guitar) and Neil Whittaker (drums) went to Wales to rehearse with John Alder (guitar) and me,” said bassist Steve Prudence in late 2007. Watkinson and Alder were the band’s busy songwriters, with plenty of original pop material to develop together. (The Jags’ John Alder is no relation to the Pink Fairies’ drummer of the same name, who is also known as “Twink.”) “The beginning was really idealistic, rehearsing in the Welsh hills. To me, it’s not so much ‘sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’—it’s ‘sweat and tears and rock ‘n’ roll.’ I could fill a half pint glass with sweat from my jacket after a gig.”

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 8 Comments

Golden Boots: Razing Arizona

scarydoorboots340Google “Golden Boots” and you’re treated to an only-on-the-Internet twist on Choose Your Own Adventure: Arizonan psych/rock or Singaporean line-dancing?

“Maybe that’s where (bassist/engineer) Nathan (Sabatino) found it,” says Golden Boots co-founder and co-frontman Dimitri Manos. “This Eastern European line-dancing crew—he’s in the middle of talking to them now. He sent them (new single) ‘Country Bat High,’ and they said if we do a Muzak version of it, they would dance to it.”

“We’ve got to get a video out of this,” says singer/guitarist Ryen Eggleston.

The song, a strangely natural backdrop for two-stepping given its relaxed 4/4 rhythm and sun-baked Western façade, is featured on The Winter Of Our Discotheque (Park The Van), issued in January. Depending on who’s counting, it was either the four-piece band’s fourth or 14th release. “[We’ve] done recordings together since 2001 … either handed out to friends or sold for a couple bucks (on tour),” says Manos.

“Love Is In The Air” (download):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Read More »

Also posted in FREE MP3s | Leave a comment

Memoir: Pansy Division’s Jon Ginoli

pansypool550Pansy Division was an openly gay rock band at a time when the very notion of an openly gay rock band seemed shocking and political. And the early ’90s weren’t even that long ago. Pansy Division is still a gay rock band—more accurately, a pop/punk band befitting its Lookout! Records/Gilman St. heritage—and have just released eighth album That’s So Gay (Alternative Tentacles), which retains the group’s signature melodic songs and humorous, homo-tawdry lyrics. Frontman Jon Ginoli, who recently published the book Deflowered: My Life In Pansy Division, tells his story:

In 1988, I’d quit playing music. After attending the University of Illinois in the mid-’80s, I’d formed a jangly guitar band called the Outnumbered. Living in Champaign, Ill., we made three albums. We played a couple hundred gigs, toured a little bit and finally wound down and split up. My band had some minor success, and I felt like I’d given music a try, so I gave it up and moved to California.

After moving to San Francisco, I became involved with activist groups such as ACT-UP and Queer Nation. A lot of the art being made in these circles was necessarily dark, shrouded in pain and cathartic; large numbers of people were dying tragic, premature deaths from AIDS. This was the moment, in 1990, when the word “queer” was transformed from an epithet into a weapon. That use of the word was a brash move, a good example of making a positive out of a negative. I thought, “What if someone did songs like that?” It didn’t take long to figure out that if I wanted to see that happen, I’d have to do it myself.

A lot of the Outnumbered’s songs, though poppy and catchy, were fairly bleak lyrically: an emotional response to the Reagan years, a reflection of how much worse things had gotten since the optimistic ’60s. Though I wanted to be as honest and sincere as possible in those songs, playing them meant reliving that frustration with each performance, and if it got me down, what was it going to do for the listener? If I was going to make music again, I wanted to make music that would uplift an audience, make them smile and make me smile, too.

None of the musicians we now know to be gay—such as the Pet Shop Boys, Michael Stipe, Bob Mould, Rob Halford, kd Lang, Melissa Etheridge, Marc Almond—was open and out back then. Some were pretty obvious, but when asked, they would still deny it. We thought that if no one else will step forward and do it, we’ll have the territory to ourselves! In the early days of Pansy Division, we felt like our subject matter was unlimited. We weren’t just gay rock musicians; we wrote songs with specifically gay subject matter: songs about our gay bar experiences, sexy songs without vague pronouns, songs about liking curved dicks. Songs with titles such as “The Cocksucker Club.” We also wrote songs about how we didn’t fit within the confines of the gay subculture—about the triumph of the superficial and about disliking Judy Garland, disco and the sometimes nasty and bitchy underside of gay life. We dared to push ourselves. What do we really want to say? What can we get away with? We were cracking ourselves up, thinking, “Wait until people hear this.”

“Twinkie, Twinkie Little Star” from That’s So Gay (download):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Read More »

Also posted in FREE MP3s | 1 Comment

George Jefferson: World’s Biggest Gong Fan?

george-jefferson3951This is one of the most mind-blowingly weird anecdotes MAGNET has ever published. Ten years ago, writer Mitch Myers profiled prog-rock legend Daevid Allen (Soft Machine, Gong), who told us of his strange encounter with actor Sherman Hemsley (a.k.a. George Jefferson). Here is the story of Hemsley’s obsession with flying teapots and his alleged den of iniquity that housed an LSD lab, a harem of naked girls and crack/freebase depots on every floor.

In 1999, I interviewed musician Daevid Allen for MAGNET at a small recording studio in San Francisco. Allen was an odd sort, with plenty of old stories to tell. Back in the 1960s, he was a founding member of wonderfully creative British band Soft Machine. But Aleen didn’t stay with the Soft Machine for long and ended up forming another psychedelic rock group called Gong.

“Movin’ On Up” (The Jeffersons theme):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 2 Comments

Exploding Plastic Inevitable

exploding550b

The gory details of selling your entire CD collection. By Matt Siblo

After 15 years, untold thousands spent and a constantly revised collection of lists protruding from my wallet, I came to the sobering decision to sell almost my entire CD collection. My reasons are not so much environmentally noble (although I will gladly accept pats on the back for my recently acquired plastic sensitivity) as they are pragmatic. Simply put, I could no longer chase the plastic ghost; I found myself unable to keep up. Times are tough, and since I’m as obstinate as any other collector type, I’d rather have nothing at all than a half-assed, incomplete lot. Thus began the arduous task of hocking an almost obsolete product (CDs) to a brand of specialty retailers swiftly on the verge of extinction (independent record stores). What follows is a bulleted recounting of the guilt-inducing experience of selling off my memories, one dollar at a time.

Modest Mouse’s “Bankrupt On Selling” from 1997’s The Lonesome Crowded West:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 2 Comments

Cut Copy: Untold Stories From MAGNET’s First 15 Years

valania-collage25rcr320All the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll (plus some petty hang-ups and tawdry gossip) that MAGNET didn’t find fit to print are now declassified, courtesy of our longtime cover-story operative. Thrill as we try to guess Kim Gordon’s age and gasp as R.E.M. kicks us out of Conan O’Brien. By Jonathan Valania

As Donald Rumsfeld once said, “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Truer words have never been spoken, although in many corners of the world, Rumsfeld is regarded as a war criminal, so take them with a pinch of salt. Be that as it may, it’s the latter, the unknown unknowns—things you didn’t even know that you didn’t know—that concern us today. None of the gruesome facts I’m about to reveal to you rise to the level of high crimes. Mostly they are low misdemeanors, sins of convenience, vanity, venality and high blood-alcohol levels that, taken as a whole, fall short of the spirit of generosity toward your fellow man we associate with likeability. In other words, they either made me or the people I was writing about look bad, so the powers that be decided to excise them from various cover stories I wrote for the magazine over the years and lock them in a basement vault at MAGNET HQ with a time-release lock set for 2077, when all the primary figures would be reasonably expected to have left this mortal coil. We got the idea from the Kennedy assassination.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 1 Comment

The Rosewood Thieves: Street Hassle

If you’re possessed with even a moderate level of curiosity about rock ‘n’ roll history, you’ll already be attuned to the Rosewood Thieves. Featuring the urgent rasp of frontman Erick Jordan, the rollicking Wurlitzer of Mackenzie Vernacchio and, above all, a timeless sense of melody, the New York band taps into all the best sounds from the heydays of John Lennon, T.Rex and the Byrds. Go ahead and tell Jordan his band sounds familiar. He won’t mind.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 3 Comments

Port O’Brien: Shore Leave

2008 was a historic year for Van Pierszalowski, singer and songwriter for Port O’Brien. For the first summer in his life, Pierszalowski didn’t join his family on Kodiak Island, Alaska, where he usually works the season on his father’s salmon boat. Cambria Goodwin, also a singer and songwriter for the waterlogged folk-pop band, wasn’t at her mainland cannery gig, either. They’ve got a good excuse, though. Port O’Brien’s “I Woke Up Today,” from the band’s self-released second album All We Could Do Was Sing, is getting a lot of attention.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Suicide: Be Careful With That Axe, Alan

“No one believed the story about the axe,” chortles Alan Vega.

With his New York accent and rapid-fire delivery, Vega is a natural raconteur, although given his audience-baiting legacy with electro-punks Suicide, perhaps provocateur terrible is a better title.

“I was on a solo tour, maybe 1985,” he continues. “I’d been telling the band this story, but no one believed me. At the end of this show, the Jesus And Mary Chain guys came in and say, ‘Oh yeah, we were at the show in Edinburgh when the axe came flying by your head.’ All the guys in my band’s jaws dropped.”

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Jenny Lewis: Fact Sheet

Sex, divorce, feeling inadequate—when it comes to her lyrics, Jenny Lewis has never held back. But somehow, between Rilo Kiley, her rootsy solo work and frequent guest spots (Postal Service, Bright Eyes, Elvis Costello), the demure, 32-year-old former actress continues to keep intrigue high. Her latest solo album, Acid Tongue (Warner Bros.), is no exception. Buffered by snaky guitars, pumping bass and harmonica, she sings about taking LSD, regretting lies she’s told and even matricide in a quivering soprano. Despite being open about vices in her lyrics (whether they’re real or not), when MAGNET reached her in Los Angeles, Lewis shyly asked only one question: “Can it be a fiction sheet?”

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Ringo Deathstarr: Hot Fuzz

With a blustery, lysergic guitar squall that evokes both the circular scuzz of Spacemen 3 and the primal noise of early Jesus And Mary Chain, the sound of Ringo Deathstarr is often pegged as some part of a sonic revivalism. The thing is, most listeners can’t seem to figure out exactly what these Austin musicians are reviving. Are they shoegaze? Are they psychedelic? Some regressive mixture of the two?

None of the above, according to guitarist and songwriter Elliott Frazier. “People are lumping us in with the neo-psychedelic bands [like the Black Angels], because there’s a wave of that in Austin right now,” he says. “We play with some of those bands, but aesthetically we’re not really doing that. We don’t have a message in our songs about any sort of social thing going on. I like fast tempos and more punk-rock kind of stuff. I think there’s a good amount of punk aesthetic on [2007’s self-titled EP], short and fast songs. I’m more into that than just geeking out on a delay pedal for five minutes.”

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 1 Comment

Son Ambulance: Grown Together

Searching for existential meaning in modern pop music can often feel like a spelunking expedition in an empty swimming pool. By contrast, Son Ambulance’s explanation of the appropriately meta-sounding Someone Else’s Déją Vu (Saddle Creek) comes straight out of the deep end.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 2 Comments

Hunter S. Thompson: Gonzo American

Best to put it forthrightly: The release of Hunter S. Thompson’s home recordings is an auspicious event in the contexts of both audiophile culture and contemporary literature. To begin with, there’s the obvious historical significance. Thompson, author of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and the founder of so-called gonzo journalism, was an obsessive home and field recorder, a writer whose purposefully chaotic final drafts masked the determined if often frenzied method by which his best work came together.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Steven Sebring: The Man Behind The New Patti Smith Documentary

It’s not unusual for dedicated directors to spend months or even a few years following musicians for a documentary. Steven Sebring took that concept to extreme lengths in creating Patti Smith: Dream Of Life. Sebring, a high-end fashion photographer with no formal filmmaking experience, tailed Smith around the globe for 11 years, not so much chronicling her life but living it alongside her.

In 1995, Sebring was assigned to photograph Smith. She was emerging from a difficult time in her life—her brother Todd and her husband, MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, died the previous year—and was ready to release Gone Again, her first record in eight years. Sebring visited Smith’s suburban Detroit home, and the two spent most of the day at a coffee shop talking. Only at the end of their time together did Sebring shoot a few rolls of film. Several weeks later, Smith invited him to see her perform in New York City.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Death Vessel: Little Voice

Let’s get this out of the way right now and be done with it. Unless you’ve already been briefed, shocked, spurned or listening in blissful ignorance, there’s something you might want to know: Death Vessel’s Joel Thibodeau sings like a woman.

“Everybody is really afraid of being fooled,” says Thibodeau of the way his voice tends to befuddle listeners. “There are plenty of singers throughout the vast history of popular music whose speaking voices sounded nothing like their singing voices. You hear your stupid voice all day when you’re talking to people. Why would you want to sing with that voice? There’s a human need to find out what else is out there. Music and art are ways that historically, people use to get to those places.”

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Jolie Holland: Songs About Death And Texas

jolieholland520

Even after being shaken from sleep by MAGNET’s early-morning phone call, Jolie Holland has a unique way—part eyeshades-wearing analyst, part streetwise tough girl—of getting her point across.

“I don’t give a shit about so much art, because it doesn’t give enough, doesn’t sacrifice enough,” says the 32-year-old singer/songwriter, who recently relocated from San Francisco to Brooklyn. “I don’t bother writing about something that’s not important to me.”

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 2 Comments

Polvo: Celebrate The New Reunited Age

When post-rockers Explosions In The Sky invited Polvo to reunite for the U.K.’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in May, the North Carolina indie-rock group graciously accepted. Having disbanded in 1998, Polvo’s core members—singer/guitarist Ash Bowie, guitarist/singer David Brylawski and bassist Steve Popson—stayed friends and, more important, stayed active in music. Yet Brylawski was a little nervous about reuniting.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Robert Diggs: A.K.A. RZA, A.K.A. Bobby Digital

Robert Diggs—known to fans by his Wu-Tang Clan handle, RZA—sits in a dimly lit corner of his tour bus in Portland, Ore. Ten nights into his North American tour in support of Digi Snacks (Koch), his third LP in character as futuristic cartoon-like superhero Bobby Digital, Diggs launches into an explanation of what’s happened to the Wu-Tang Clan since the recording of the group’s fifth album, 2007’s underrated 8 Diagrams.

“I haven’t worked with the Clan since,” he says quietly. “I’ve done some shows with them, but that’s mostly what we’re planning from here on out. Our creative ideas are going in different directions.”

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Juliana Hatfield: Exclusive Excerpt From Her New Memoir

Juliana Hatfield was an unwitting alt-rock gossip girl, emerging from the early-’90s Boston scene with the Blake Babies. But all anyone wanted to talk about was her fling with Lemonheads pin-up boy Evan Dando. All this and more is detailed in her new memoir, When I Grow Up. In this exclusive excerpt, Hatfield remembers being America’s most famous 23-year-old virgin.

In 1992, my first solo album, Hey Babe, was released on Mammoth Records. It was my first work since the Blake Babies had broken up. Mammoth was a relatively new label based in Carrboro, N.C., and they were putting a lot into the promotion of my new album. It generated a lot of press attention, especially for an independent release. The head of Mammoth, Jay Faires, had designs on being a big player in the industry, with ambitions of one day selling his label to one of the major ones, so he was really pushing me, gambling on me. Faires wanted to prove that he could succeed at building a viable, profitable record company from the ground up; and I, along with some of the many varied acts on the roster such as the Melvins, Victoria Williams, Seven Mary Three, Squirrel Nut Zippers and Fu Manchu, seemed like a good bet to help make that happen. (Seven Mary Three and Squirrel Nut Zippers went on to sell a million albums each, and Faires sold Mammoth to Disney in 1998.)

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 1 Comment

Matt Wolf: The Man Behind The New Arthur Russell Documentary

Wild Combination: A Portrait Of Arthur Russell is as apt a film title as you’ll find. Russell—an avant-garde composer, singer/songwriter, cellist and disco producer—was a gay, flannel-wearing converted Buddhist from Oskaloosa, Iowa. He collaborated with Allen Ginsberg, David Byrne and Phillip Glass, among many others, in a thriving New York City art scene in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Wild combination, indeed.

Russell died from AIDS in 1992 at age 40. His vast music catalog—he left behind thousands of tapes of partially finished songs—was largely overlooked until recently, when a series of reissues, compilations and tributes were welcomed by a new generation. After learning about Russell from a friend, New York-based filmmaker Matt Wolf felt an instant, visceral connection to his music before even hearing it. The seemingly contradictory character—the Iowa farm boy who becomes a Buddhist and downtown scenester—was fascinating.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Silver Jews: David Berman Lets In Light And Love

For a moment, sandwiched between soliloquies on art and artists, David Berman pauses. He looks around his Manhattan hotel room. He looks up, down and at Cassie, his wife and bandmate. And then, as you wait for his words just as you would in song, he begins again: “I always say things I don’t believe.”

It’s a cryptic-enough statement from a songwriter whose lyrical abracadabra and syntax have kept fans hungering for more since he first started putting them to tape on 1994 debut Starlite Walker. Under the Silver Jews moniker, Berman’s development as an artist—and as a human being—has taken turns too numerous to count. It was here in New York City that it all began, Berman having started the group in 1990 with college buddies and Pavement upstarts Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

The Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster: Memoir

In the 1980s, the Go-Betweens were every bit as brilliant as R.E.M. or the Smiths, making smart, jangly pop music that never found as wide an audience as it deserved. Led by singers/songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, the Australian band broke up at the end of the decade, only to stage a vibrant comeback in 1999. But just as the duo began writing its 10th album in May 2006, McLennan died of a heart attack. Forster recalls the serendipity that put the Go-Betweens together again.

In early 1999, the Go-Betweens’ record company decided to put out a best-of album called Bellavista Terrace. Before the record’s release, my manager phoned me at my home in Germany and asked what we could do to help publicize it. I suggested a whistle-stop world tour by myself and Grant. The idea was to hit small clubs in major cities around the world, doing interviews by day and playing acoustic shows by night. My other suggestion was that Grant and I do it under our own names—no “Go-Betweens” on the marquee. This was to take pressure off us and allow Grant and I to play what we wanted, even if that meant playing Go-Betweens songs all night. Also, with our solo careers still going, we weren’t thinking about the Go-Betweens. We approached this tour as solo artists and friends.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Flipper: Still Suffering For Its Music

flipper_300There’s no reasonable explanation why Flipper can make what appears to be an ordinary group of shoppers pogo in public. Rest assured, the band can still do it. A crowd of more than 400 jammed the aisles of San Francisco’s Amoeba Records in February, as the revered punk-rock survivors—now old enough to play on golf’s senior tour—lit into a throbbing, 40-minute set that included chromosome-damaged, post-punk faves “Ha, Ha, Ha” and “Way Of The World” to celebrate the release of Flipper Live (Target-video77), a DVD of performances from 1980-81. At the set’s conclusion, guitarist Ted Falconi, his cascading silver hair tied behind his back, was so locked into his instrument he remained onstage long after his bandmates departed.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Ray Davies: Imaginary Man

Kinks leader Ray Davies has been banned from America, bored of the 20th century and, at times, bigger than the Beatles. Davies may not be like anybody else—his songbook is one of rock’s greatest treasures—but he’s finally figuring out who he is. Interview by Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan

At one point during MAGNET’s interview with Ray Davies, the great songwriter stopped mid-sentence to peer out the window of the Dream Hotel overlooking 55th Street in Manhattan at dusk. Something had caught his eye.

“Isn’t that light out there like Edward Hopper lighting? Is that Edward Hopper time or not?”

Observing light, life and human nature with superhuman focus is Davies’ stock-in-trade. His best songs feel photorealistic and sound suspended in time. They are sometimes nostalgic and beautiful, and other times they are cynical and brutal. Davies himself is just as contradictory: combative and sensitive, a shy, self-examining middle-class hero from north London who’s had no problem indulging in rock ’n’ roll excess and showmanship. He’s often called a creative genius and a control freak, which are both compatible and necessary traits for the life he’s led.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 3 Comments

Dave Davies: Ray’s Rival Sibling

ray-dave-480

As if he was meant to fulfill some biblical prophesy, Raymond Douglas Davies was born in 1944 to Frederick and Annie Davies in north London’s Fortis Green neighborhood. He was the seventh child (and first son) of a seventh child. Then, in 1947, along came little David Russell Gordon Davies. Relations between the two brothers have run hot and cold ever since.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

10 Great Overlooked Kinks Songs

ukjiveduotone-cmykThe golden age of Ray Davies and Co. may have ended with 1971’s Muswell Hillbillies, but there are essential tracks scattered among the hit-and-miss LPs that followed:

“Sitting In My Hotel” from Everybody’s In Show-Biz (1972)
“(A) Face In The Crowd” from Soap Opera (1975)
“I’m In Disgrace” from Schoolboys In Disgrace (1975)
“Full Moon” from Sleepwalker (1977)
“Misfits” from Misfits (1978)
“In A Space” from Low Budget (1979)
“Art Lover” from Give The People What They Want (1981)
“Heart Of Gold” from State Of Confusion (1983)
“Summer’s Gone” from Word Of Mouth (1984)
“Scattered” from Phobia (1993)

Posted in FEATURES | 46 Comments

The Whigs: Rebel Vibrations

With big guitars and hard-hitting drums, the Southern-bred road warriors in the Whigs are on a mission to restore the rock trio to ragged glory. By Steve Klinge

“The phone was actually on my body and I didn’t hear it. That’s how asleep I was. It’s rather embarrassing.” Parker Gispert, the 25-year-old songwriter, vocalist and guitarist of Athens, Ga., trio the Whigs, is apologizing for missing several calls for a scheduled interview. Drummer Julian Dorio finally had to wake him in the back of the tour van.

Although it’s early afternoon, Gispert can be forgiven for his exhaustion. He’s somewhere between Cleveland and Chicago, in the middle of a tour that has the Whigs criss-crossing the Midwest. The buzz for the band’s second album, Mission Control (ATO), is growing quickly, adding to the whirlwind. A few weeks ago, they played Letterman; the following week, they’ll do Conan. The New York Times gave Mission Control a glowing review, and last year Esquire named Dorio “best drummer” in its annual Esky Music Awards.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Mudhoney: Superfuzzy Memories (An Oral History)

Twenty years ago, Mudhoney made Superfuzz Bigmuff, the landmark recording that launched grunge and put Seattle on the musical map. Here’s what really happened.

Who’s Who In the Mudhoney Story: Jeff Ament (Mother Love Bone bassist); Mark Arm (Mudhoney singer/guitarist); Nils Bernstein (journalist, record store owner); Jennie Boddy (Sub Pop publicist); Ed Fotheringham (illustrator, Thrown Ups singer); Stone Gossard (Mother Love Bone Guitarist); Jay Hinman (journalist, fan); Steve Manning (fan); Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth singer/guitarist); Bruce Pavitt (Sub Pop co-owner); Dan Peters (Mudhoney drummer); Charles Peterson (photographer); Jonathan Poneman (Sub Pop co-owner); Bettina Richards (Atlantic Records A&R person); Steve Turner (Mudhoney guitarist)

Before everybody loved them and everybody loved their town, the guys in Mudhoney were just another group of Seattle music-scene misfits and castoffs. At the beginning of 1988, the phrase “Seattle music scene” didn’t have quite the same meaning as it does now. Singer/guitarist Mark Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, drummer Dan Peters and bassist Matt Lukin ushered in the grunge era with the August ’88 release of “Touch Me I’m Sick,” Mudhoney’s debut single. The snotty, motorized garage-rock blast wasn’t exactly a shot heard ’round the world, but it was heard by the right people, and the subsequent Superfuzz Bigmuff EP, issued two months later, cemented the gloriously sloppy sound and beer-goggled vision that would make some other people in Seattle (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam) very famous.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

The Kills: Just Shoot Me

For Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart—the new-primitive art-punk duo known as The Kills—life in the information age can be a fate worse than death. By Tom Lanham

Jamie Hince has a theory. He knows it sounds crazy and maybe even a little misanthropic, but just hear him out. Our egotistical, tabloid-obsessed, knuckleheaded MySpace society—perfectly depicted in Mike Judge’s wicked 2006 send-up Idiocracy—has become nothing but a huge spectacle.

“I’ve not lost touch with myself enough to think that I’m actually part of it,” says Hince, the cynical guitarist/vocalist/drummer for blues/punk duo the Kills. “I’m not a celebrity, I’m not famous. I’m just a musician, doing my thing. But the problem now is that everyone’s fought so long for the rights of the individual that it’s finally gotten through to the other side, and individualism got mutated and went all out of control. And now it’s just out-and-out selfish shit, where the rights of the individual have blended with capitalism and made for a really ugly society. Punk rock was part of it.” He sighs dejectedly. “Individualism sounded like the most amazing thing, but now everyone’s just out for themselves.”

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 1 Comment

Jellyfish: The Men They Used To Be

For a brief spell in the early ’90s, Jellyfish was more than happy to play grunge spoiler. That much was obvious from the campy, funereal organ that kicks off Bellybutton, the San Francisco band’s effusively melodic 1990 debut.

“We went to a church in L.A. that had a massive cathedral organ and recorded it right there,” says Jellyfish keyboardist and cofounder Roger Joseph Manning Jr. “Jellyfish was actually the most punk-rock statement I ever made. We were always outsiders, musically. But unlike the sort of music geeks who would’ve gotten into jazz, we really loved classic pop.”

1993’s Spilt Milk, the band’s second and final album, is a blustery, meticulous tribute to the hook-crazed nostalgia of ’70s fandom, mining inspiration from the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Queen with a theatrical flamboyance that bordered on parody at times. While Spilt Milk confirmed Jellyfish’s immortality in the eyes of power-pop fetishists, it failed to capitalize on Bellybutton’s modest commercial success. That was enough to send band members scrambling for the exits.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | 2 Comments

The Raveonettes: Deeper Into Movies

Five years after being typecast as a retro-rock buzz band, Danish duo the Raveonettes have brought their cinematic, hooked-on-classics sound into sharp focus. By Chris Barton

2003, America was heading into an election year full of hope and promise, with the prospect of real change in the air. Although a war had just started in Iraq, the government offered comforting promises that it would be over quickly, culminating with the unfurling of a “Mission Accomplished” banner on a battleship’s deck. And in the world of music, the White Stripes, the Strokes and vintage-sounding, feedback-embracing Danish duo the Raveonettes made fans and critics swoon. It was “the return of rock,” an apparent revival of the raw energy and integrity of garage rock that would bring the genre back to its roots and, it was hoped, dominance.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

The Duke Spirit: Open Sea

The Duke Spirit creates the kind of record-collector rock that’s usually explained with mash-up descriptors that sound like they were written for a music-industry version of Robert Altman’s The Player.

“We’ve had some weird comparisons, like ‘Björk fronting Meat Is Murder-era Smiths,’” laughs guitarist Luke Ford, who grew up outside of London reading hype-afflicted U.K. music magazines. “One of our favorites was, ‘A crack whore fronting an Oasis tribute band.’ It wasn’t very positive, obviously, but we thought it was pretty funny. We almost put that on a sticker on the front of the album.”

But on an album like Neptune (Shangri-La Music), which was recorded in the California desert with Queens Of The Stone Age producer Chris Goss, it’s difficult not to point out obvious touchstones. Over the course of a dozen tracks, there are easily identifiable elements of Sonic Youth’s poppier moments, the neo-girl-group harmonies of the Raveonettes, shades of the shoegazers and cinematic ballads that would’ve made Lee Hazlewood proud. If those reference points weren’t obvious enough, the Duke Spirit’s website features photos of the band holding up albums by the Modern Lovers, Black Sabbath, Ronnie Spector and Sly And The Family Stone.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

The Billionaires: Summer Nights

When you think about Martha’s Vineyard, you probably picture scalloped frills trimming the wraparound porch, endless summers and gentle salt breezes from the Atlantic. The Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism has seen to that. But for the members of the Billionaires (all year-round Vineyard residents at some point in their lives), the associations are a bit different.

“We mowed those lawns and reshingled those roofs all through high school,” says singer/guitarist Tim Laursen.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

The Dodos: World Beaters

On first inspection, there’s nothing that unusual about Meric Long when he sloshes in from a rainstorm to take shelter in his neighborhood taqueria in San Francisco’s Mission District. Look closely, however, and you’ll spy huge, pointy talons jutting out from his fingerless gloves.

“They’re my dragon nails—fake but really strong,” explains Long, who employs them in plucking a tinny old National guitar in his anachronistic folk/punk duo the Dodos. “I used my real nails for a while, then we left on tour; after two shows, they just broke. So now I even have a manicurist, but I poke through everything.” He claws the air for emphasis. “I can’t help it! I’m dangerous, I tell ya!”

Look even closer, beneath the ash-pale 27-year-old’s shaggy black bangs, and some subtly exotic features become evident. “My mom is from Tahiti, but she’s Chinese,” says Long. “And my dad’s from Oakland, but he’s white as snow.” For an entire summer, Long relocated to Tahiti, worked at his uncle’s bread shop and soaked up as much culture as he coud, which could account for the far-off, tribal feel of Visiter (Frenchkiss), the Dodos’ second album.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment

Adam Green: Anyone Else But Him

Juno brought worldwide attention to his former band, the Moldy Peaches, but Adam Green isn’t in a cute, folk-pop mood anymore. By Kory Grow

“I was walking down 14th Street the other day and just realized that I was full of shit and that I’ve never done anything close to what I wanted to do in my life,” says New York City resident Adam Green. “Time to take some more acid, I guess.”

Green, who turned 27 in May, has had a lot to consider over the past few years. Since the age of 18, he’s been a professional musician constantly on the verge of mainstream success. Having cofounded quirky, anti-folk ensemble the Moldy Peaches with singer/songwriter Kimya Dawson in 2000, Green launched a concurrent solo career two years later. While the Moldy Peaches enjoyed critics’-darling status, Green’s solo albums, which have traversed folk, country and indie rock, have received mixed reviews at best. Whereas the Moldy Peaches played endearing, if sickeningly cute, tongue-in-cheek ditties like “Who’s Got The Crack,” Green’s solo songs were more mature, aiming for grandiosity. (Not to mention his Tourette-like river of expletive-laced lyrics: “There’s no wrong way to fuck a bitch with no face,” Green sang on his second album, 2003’s Friends Of Mine.) Though Green is accustomed to putting out an album a year, his label, Rough Trade, applied the brakes after 2006’s Jacket Full Of Danger, barring him from releasing an album last year. This is when things began to go awry.

Read More »

Posted in FEATURES | Leave a comment