Ramona Falls - 'I Say Fever'

 "I Say Fever" is one of my favorite videos in a very long time. To be fair, I rarely see videos anymore, but even when I do I rarely enjoy or take much note of them. This is definitely noteworthy. When I first saw it early in the year I focused pretty strictly on the music and just let the images sort of go by without attaching any context or looking for any meaning. Of course it was so visually interesting that I watched it several more times, paying attention to the story as well as the subtleties of the art. On all levels I find it thoroughly enjoyable. I'd be remiss if I didn't credit Mitchell Bratton of Pleasure Void for bringing it to my attention via a post of his own.
     Ramona Falls , named for a waterfall near Mt. Hood in Oregon, is another project of Brent Knopf of Menomena. Menomena is hardly a side project. That three piece came first and just released their fourth album, Mines. But with four years without a release from Menomena, you can't really say that the Ramona Falls album Intuit (2009) was a side project either. Rather the projects exist independently while at the same time seeming to inform one another. Nor is Ramona Falls fairly characterized as a solo project. While it's true that Ramona Falls is the product of Knopf's vision and solo songwriting he seized upon the opportunity to bring 35 guest musicians into the studio in order to bring the album to life. It is an excellent effort that both stands on it's own and shares a sensibility with Menomena.

Nero and The Plebians

This is about 10 years old and is a side project from Jon Boone of Pleasure Void and the Tellers. Jon  put it up on Facebook earlier this year and I wanted to spread it around. He has a terrific You Tube Channel under the name Nero 54 AD that contains many performances from his iluustrious career as well as many others he encountered along the way. The artists run the gamut from young amateurs all the way up to polished professionals on the verge of a breakout, and they're sometimes the same groups at differeent moments in time. Some of it feels a lot like traditional rock, some of it sounds contemporary (although it didn't when recorded) and some of it, like this one, is still wonderfully outside the mainstream. It really is a gem of a repository of truly underground music from the late 80s through the 90s. The quality of the video and audio are not always the best but there is a lot of good and unique stuff. It's fun to pick through and find the real treasures like this one. I'd say it's PG 13 if that's a concern. Nero & the Plebians, "Masterplan"

Check This Out...Again

I was working on my book in my office earlier when one of my kids pulled The Pixies' Bossa nova off the CD shelf and asked me to pop it in. That was two hours ago and I'm still spinning it. When I first got this album as a new or pre-release in 1990 (I think), I fell in love with it. I remember playing "Is She Weird" over and over to the point that there may have been the serious possibility of my roommates kicking me out. I just ran it about ten times in a row again; almost drove my wife out of the room.

Over the years I didn't exactly forget about it, but there's just so much music that it slipped out of my personal Top-However-Many. What a shame. I feel like I've cheated me of this great album for all these years.

Bossanova has so much to offer. The lyrics are quirky, thoughtful, and somehow say the things you wanted to say but didn't know you wanted to. The music is variably sparse and lush in all the right places and mixes a range of influences that are recognizable but clearly appropriated to a higher purpose. The album also clearly presages so much of the alternative movement that followed within the next couple of years after its release; presages but in most cases overshadows in musical quality, emotive power, and intellectual depth. It's hard to name more than a couple of other albums that have held up this well over the years.

I don't know how this classic has eluded my MP3 player for so long but I'll remedy that shortly. Join me, won't you?

Why Rockabilly Matters To Me

I grew up and got interested in music in the 1970’s while growing up in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. Certainly there was country music and bluegrass everywhere but my parents weren’t into that sort of thing so it never really entered my world as a kid. I found music through an older cousin and kids at school. My early rock heroes were Kiss, AC/DC and other popular hard rock acts; the acts so big that you couldn’t miss them. They were my default rock.

By the time I was 7 or 8 I had my first acoustic guitar. I learned to play not by songs and tab as is so common now, but by reading music and practicing scales and progressively more difficult pieces as you would learn any classical instrument. I practiced dutifully every day and the adults in my life began to catch on that I was sincerely interested in music and tried to support my interest. They didn’t buy the albums I wanted of course but rather my parents, neighbors, and aunts and uncles treated me to an eclectic collection of 70’s pop. I had Earth Wind & Fire, The Eagles, Leif Garrett, The BeeGees, Anne Margaret, Chicago and other music that interested me slightly to not at all. I also had a couple of Kiss records I bought with a 20 I found in a parking lot.

Is it any wonder, having mastered Jingle Bells and Mary Had A Little Lamb on the guitar and having this record collection, that I began to lose the musical interest that had once burned so brightly? Even the harder rock that I was exposed to was wearing thin. By that point Kiss and Aerosmith were everywhere, otherwise I wouldn’t have heard them since I had no real avenues to find music beyond other kids and the radio. The rock that had been so cool before was getting old and starting to sound the same. I didn’t know it at the time but what I was hearing was the sound of manufactured pop rock and even at that young age I wanted more. It was about this time that I was practicing Elvis’ Love Me Tender (or more accurately the folk song Aura Lee--same thing) on my guitar. My Dad noticed that I liked it better than the other tunes I was working on and that made a difference in my life.

Dad was an over-the-road truck driver who’d been a teenager in rural Missouri in the mid-1950s. Every summer he’d pick a couple of weeks that didn’t interfere with baseball season and take me on the road with him. I saw most of the country this way. As I was working on Love Me Tender in 1978 or ‘79 that time of year rolled around again. Over the next couple of weeks Dad played a lot of Elvis for me on the truck’s 8 track. I knew who Elvis was because Dad had always had the albums at home and of course the King had passed just a couple of years before and his movies still ran on television almost every Saturday afternoon in my hometown. I mostly knew Fat Elvis and Gospel Elvis and didn’t care for either.

On this trip however, we got pretty deep into the old stuff which I warmed up to a little. That led my Dad to introduce to more of the stuff from his teenage years. Over a couple of weeks I got Young Elvis but also to my lasting joy the likes of Johnny Horton, The Johnny Burnette Trio, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Bill Haley and the Comets, and the immortal Buddy Holly. All of this music was new to me but it had something more than novelty. There was an energy to it that I hadn’t encountered. It felt more genuine than anything else I had been exposed to. I wasn’t thinking then in terms of rebellion or teen angst or any of the other ways we describe the motivations of rock music. It just felt free and real and I was hooked.

Throughout my own musical evolution I’ve sought out those feelings of sincerity and independent spirit. I appreciate the technical skill but it’s the expression of individuality and the sense of an artist going their own way regardless of what may be expected of them that draws me the most. It’s not so much rebellion as personal Declarations of Independence and they can be found in almost any kind of music.

I got this from my Dad. I never thought of him as a rebel and he never seemed to get what I was all about in my teens or even my twenties. Now that he’s in his seventies I realize that not only is he still a rebel but he’s probably the single biggest influence in my own rebellions. I see now, though our musical tastes have diverged a bit, that we’re more alike than I ever admitted as a younger man and that I have followed in his footsteps with remarkable precision and ended up in a place where I feel pretty good about myself. I love my Dad and I’m grateful for who he helped me become. And that’s why Rockabilly matters to me.

Book Review: "The Dave Grohl Story" by Jeff Apter

"The Dave Grohl Story" by Jeff Apter traces the life and career of the Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer from his childhood through 2005. The book is filled with details of Grohl's professional and private life as a rock star , but these details, even the more obscure ones, are not the book's strength. The real power of the story comes from Grohl's early experiences as a fledgling musician coming of age in the DC hardcore scene and beyond. From the first gigs as a suburban punk in Northern Virginia to early indie tours of Europe and the downward spiral of the band Scream that led Grohl to Nirvana, Apter tells a compelling and relatable story.

The bulk of the book deals with this pre-world famous Dave Grohl. The author uses the experiences of others and Grohl's own statements to give the reader a sense of Grohl's character and personality that informs the musicians better known escapades and challenges later in life. Grohl's tendency to avoid delivering bad news and his habit of going against the grain establish patterns repeated throughout the story. Apter does an excellent job of illustrtaing these. The author also expertly conveys Grohl's passion for music.

The book moves at an excellent pace and is an easy read throughout the first two thirds or so but bogs down late and the more laudatory tone of this latter portion contrasts uncomfortably with the more academic and engrossing earlier chapters. It falls especially short in the comparisons that Apter draws to other contemporary groups. These are unnecessary and come across more as a fan talking down  other bands to elevate his own favorite.

Aside from this one criticism, which relates to the smaller portion of the work, this is a very good book for Grohl fans, rock music enthusiasts, and fans of of well-written biographies. I recommend it.

Carolina Chocolate Drops

I think I'm a little late on this one, so very quickly let me say that I can remember and count on one hand the number of times a band has dropped my jaw like this. In over 400 live shows and who knows how many singles and review copies I've hardly ever been blown away like this and never has it happened with a recorded rather than live performance. What a beautiful mix of styles and just first rate talent to create something truly original and at the same time familiar and welcoming. I typically don't care for covers of songs and wasn't a fan of the original "Hit 'em Up Style". This is so far beyond what the original ever aspired to be that I think it's safe to say that the Carolina Chocolate Drops have permanently and irrevocably hi-jacked this tune as their own. Nobody else deserves it anymore. Wow.