After the success of our request for reader questions to Andy Partridge a few weeks ago, we decided we’d give it another go and let our dedicated Popdose readers have the opportunity to offer up queries to another pair of pop music legends: Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs.
The duo are on the cusp of releasing their second collection of cover songs – Under the Covers, Vol. 2, scheduled for a 7/21 release on Shout Factory – and have agreed to answer your questions as part of the promotional blitz for the album. The deadline for submission is June 18th, so if you want to know about their collaborations, their respective solo careers, or their band work (the Bangles, Rainy Day, Oh OK, Buzz of Delight, the Thorns, or even Ming Tea), leave your questions below. And, yes, asking about this film is considered to be fair game:
Only one word of warning: don’t expect me to ask either of them, “Why are you such a wanker?” Trust me when I tell you that, based on my recent experience, artists do not like it when you ask them that.
He denies being the man who murdered love, but he is one of the men who served as a member of XTC. That’s right, he’s Andy Partridge, and this upstanding musical legend was kind enough to take on the daunting task of answering the questions of the Popdose readership…questions which, it must be said, ranged from the obscure to the ridiculous and hit virtually every spot in-between. Mr. Partridge was a gem throughout the conversation, however, and endured them all with great aplomb, never failing to come back with a witty retort.
(”You bastard” still counts as witty, right?)
Join us now as we enter into the Popdose Interview with the one and only Andy Partridge… (more…)
I can still remember the first time I became acquainted with the band known as Wonderboy. I was writing for Flash Magazine – the Hampton Roads entertainment publication formerly known as RockFlash – and I’d stopped by their offices to shoot the shit with the editor in chief, Bonn Garrett. When I walked into his office, he handed me a copy of the band’s third album, Napoleon Blown Apart, and said, “Here, this just looks like something you’d like.” The best description of his tone that I can offer is that it was both boisterous and mocking – in other words, he was having fun at my expense (our tastes in music didn’t exactly run parallel) and loving every minute of it – but I have to give the guy credit: though I would come to grow very tired of being teased by him, Bonn generally did know what I’d like, even he himself couldn’t stand it.
I’m still not entirely sure what it was about the cover of Napoleon Blown Apart that set him off and convinced him that this was outside of his musical comfort zone. Maybe he saw the piece of cake and perceived it as an advance warning that the contents would be sugary sweet…? Whatever the case, I was intrigued from the moment I checked out the credits and saw one particular name: Robbie Rist.
If you’re a trivia buff, a TV geek, or a pop culture aficionado, then you may well recognize Mr. Rist’s name. His biggest claim to fame is arguably his role as the infamous Cousin Oliver during the final days of “The Brady Bunch,” but as someone who’d recently begun devouring the Not Lame Records catalog, I had also come to know him as a power pop musician of some note. I knew of Wonderboy because I’d read about their intriguingly-titled second album, Abbey Road to Ruin, but I still hadn’t actually heard anything by them yet. What luck! Here was my chance!
As you’ve no doubt guessed, since I’m taking the time to write a column about the album, I very much dug Napoleon Blown Apart. I would later come to discover that it didn’t really sound much like the previous two Wonderboy albums, as Robbie had decided to embrace the studio and knock out some awesome arrangements with more musical flourishes than ever before, pulling in some of his pals in the Los Angeles power pop community to assist. It’s a bouncy, catchy collection of tunes, but some of the lyrics tug at your heartstrings, like “Taken,” the track that really sold me on the record. And if there’s any Jellyfish fan who can make it through “Insecurity Girl” and not want to own Napoleon Blown Apart, I’d be very surprised, indeed.
I dropped Robbie a line through Facebook to see if he’d be up for chatting about the record, and since he and I have met before and are also on the Audities list together, he gladly acquiesced. Indeed, we talked for so long that I’m going to split this into two parts, so stay tuned for the non-Wonderboy parts of the discussion in next week’s column. For now, however, let’s focus solely on the wonders of Napoleon Blown Apart!
Popdose is proud to announce that, in the wake of Ape Records reissuing the Dukes of Stratosphear’s 25 O’Clock EP and their subsequent full-length, Psonic Psunspot, the artist occasionally known as Sir John Johns…we’re speaking of Andy Partridge, of course…has agreed to answer questions posed to him by Popdose readers.
The date of the actual interview has yet to be set, but until it takes place, the floor will be open for your queries to Mr. Partridge…and by “floor,” we mean the Reply section below.
Curious about the origins of your favorite XTC song? Anxious to get an update on the status of his long-discussed collaborative album with Robyn Hitchcock? Wondering if there’s any truth to the Wikipedia claim that he provided the voice of a cricket commentator in an episode of “Family Guy”?
Here’s your big chance to pose your questions to a true musical legend. Take advantage of it!
This is how the history of Dave Wakeling goes: The English Beat, General Public, solo career, then back to General Public, and then to bring it nicely full circle, back to the English Beat once more, which is where he currently resides.
Granted, the current incarnation of the band that’s touring North America at the moment isn’t quite the same as you remember it from the 1980s…Wakeling fronts the English Beat here, while Ranking Roger and Everett Morton are at the helm of the Beat in the UK, while Andy Cox and David Steele sit at home on piles of Fine Young Cannibals cash…but the moment the instant familiarity of Dave’s voice washes over you, you’ll most likely make the snap decision to just shut up and dance.
Popdose had the opportunity to chat with Mr. Wakeling not only about the past history and present state of the English Beat but about his entire career, making stops to check on the status of Saxa, to get a little bit of the lowdown on all three General Public albums, to find out why it took so long between the release of Wakeling’s first solo single (”She’s Having A Baby”) and the subsequent album (No Warning), and to see what he thinks about his former boss at IRS Records, Miles Copeland.
Popdose: Well, I know you’re on tour, but where are you at the moment?
Dave Wakeling: I’m in Calgary, in a carpark at a Best Western Hotel. It’s beautiful, and we’re just heading out in about an hour to the university, where we’ll play a show tonight. And then we’ve got a beautiful drive to Minneapolis.
Ah, very nice.
Yeah, 1,400 miles of very nice. (Laughs)
(Laughs) I hope you guys get along.
Yes!
So how’s the tour been going thus far?
The tour has been going absolutely fantastic. You know, you never want to tempt fate, but it feels like we’re on a bit of a roll, to be honest. The capacities are all bigger than last time, the reviews are better than last time, and just everything seems to be heading in a very positive direction. The new songs in the set are going down great, and people are lining up at the t-shirt stand, asking where they can buy a new CD, so I should say that everything’s heading in the direction of my dreams at the moment.
It certainly sounds as though it bodes well.
Yes!
Well, the idea of the English Beat doing a 30th anniversary tour makes me feel old, so I can only imagine how it makes you feel. Or does playing music keep you feeling young?
Well, there is that as well. Thank heavens that there’s something timeless about music, and so that helps you get through the thinking about all the years. Luckily, I was drunk for half the time, so I don’t remember much of it. (Laughs)
Well, that does help.
It did at the time. Now, I’m happily and gratefully sober, so I can sort of appreciate a bit more of it whilst I’m actually doing it.
Well, folks, it’s time to take another dip into the wonderful world of Albums I Discovered While I Was Working At A Record Store. If you’re a former record store employee (and I strongly suspect that more than a few of you are), then you’re probably in possession of quite a few records which you hold near and dear to your heart, even though the average person would give you a blank look if you mentioned the artist’s name. When you’re toiling in the music retail mines, you’re rarely doing it for money; instead, you’re doing it for the love of music and, invariably, the free in-store play CDs that find their way into the personal collections of the employees when the album in question has run its course…if not before.
The Pleasure Thieves’ Simple Escape is one of those albums for me. They were one of those poor, unfortunate artists who were signed to Hollywood Records in the early ’90s, in the midst of the Disney-owned label’s glory days as The Label Who Held The US Rights To The Early Queen Catalog. It might’ve seemed like a great place to be, since Hollywood was ensured an arseload of sales from the works of Messrs. Mercury, May, Deacon, and Taylor, but as you’ll soon read, it was a place where no-one really knew how to go about breaking new artists. As such, most of the artists signed to Hollywood ended up only sticking around for a short stay…whether they wanted to hang around or not. (One of these days, I’m going to write up another one of my favorite came-quick-and-didn’t-stay-long Hollywood Records artists: Ghost of an American Airman.)
Granted, it’s not entirely a surprise that the Pleasure Thieves couldn’t find success with their sound in 1992. Lead singer Sinjin-William Dolan rather resembles Neil Diamond at times with his husky voice…check out the album-opening “Turn Me On” for proof…and the music’s very synth-heavy. Sadly, neither were attributes that would’ve led any band to success in the early ’90s, when you pretty much had to be flying the flannel to earn yourself rock radio airplay. They did manage to score a little bit of airplay with the album’s lead singer, “My Favorite Drug,” but it wasn’t enough to save them from Hollywood’s purge of virtually all of their artists with names that didn’t start with the letters “Q-U.” But, man, did I love that record, which was evidenced by the fact that more than a few of my mix tapes from the era feature the pop-tastic, horn-driven hook of “Wild Miracle.”
And, yet, for years, it seemed as though the band was a figure of my imagination. I did a posting over at ESDMusic.com in August 2006 where I bemoaned that “the group vanished so far into oblivion that they have no website, no MySpace page, nothing.” Thankfully, that’s changed a little bit since then – they now have both – but there hasn’t been much need to update the band’s site, so you’re probably better off sticking with their MySpace page, run by the band’s keyboard player, Matt Everitt.
If you’re a guitar guy, then all I have to do is write the name “Phil Keaggy” and you’re probably already prepared to offer up praise for his abilities. The man’s prowess with the guitar is legendary, so much so that he can’t turn around without someone bringing up the longstanding urban legend that no less an authority than Jimi Hendrix once declared him to be the best guitarist of all time. It’s been pretty well decided that such words never came forth from Hendrix’s lips…or, at least, Keaggy’s pretty sure of it, anyway…but God knows that plenty of other axe men have offered compliments along those lines.
The reference to the almighty is an intentional one. Although Keaggy started in the more traditional rock world as a member of the band Glass Harp, he’s been a staple of the Contemporary Christian music industry since the early 1970s. But, c’mon, don’t freak out, okay? I’ve always been mystified about how music fans can be totally psyched to hear about an album, only to dismiss it because there were lyrical references to religious beliefs. It’s music, people. No-one’s saying you have to embrace the lyrical content as the truth…but you can certainly enjoy the tunes.
My buddy Chris Commander is the person who was responsible for introducing me to the music of Phil Keaggy. This was in the early ’90s, when the members of my circle of friends were…you’ll forgive the expression…worshiping at the altar of Jellyfish and Crowded House. Chris said, “Dude, you’ve got to check out the album,” and he handed me a copy of Phil Keaggy and Sunday’s Child. I’m sure he mentioned that Keaggy was a Christian recording artist, but that’s not the sort of thing that would’ve turned me off, anyway, and, besides, I knew Chris’s tastes and he knew mine, so if he thought I’d like it, he didn’t have to tell me twice. And, of course, he was absolutely on the money. From the Beatles homage on the cover art to the plethora of pop hooks, this was very much my kind of album.
Given that the Osbourne family became the toast of MTV in 2002, thanks to their then-groundbreaking reality series, “The Osbournes,” it came as no real surprise when it was announced that Ozzy’s youngest daughter, Kelly, would be releasing an album of her own. It was entitled Shut Up, and it was dismissed by…well, just about everyone, really.
It’s really not as bad an album as you want it to be, though, particularly given that you know full well that she only scored her recording contract because of her dad and her family’s TV show. But, man, having her cover Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” defines the concept of “a little too on-the-nose,” you know what I mean? Once Sony made her do that, there was never any chance in Hell that she was going to be taken seriously by critics as a recording artist.
Indeed, Sony quickly proved that it had little interest in promoting the record beyond its novelty value. After “Papa Don’t Preach,” the label lazily released the title track as the next single, which was only a so-so song; as a result, any attempt to push “Come Dig Me Out,” the third and arguably best of the album’s three singles, was rebuffed by radio, which is a shame.
If you dare to go back and check it out, you’ll find that there are a couple of punk-pop songs which sparkle with a little Joan Jett flair, and if we’re making comparisons to other female artists of Miss Osbourne’s era, it would not be untoward to suggest that they hold up as well as anything by, say, Avril Lavigne. Two of my favorite examples from the album: “Right Here” and “On the Run.” No, her voice as strong as Miz Lavigne’s, but, frankly, the songs rock enough that I don’t really care.
If you’re not buying into my praise of Shut Up, I won’t hold it against you. After all, even the woman who recorded the album is dismissive of it. I managed to talk to Kelly Osbourne for a few fleeting moments when I was at the Fox party during the January TCA tour, and when I asked her if there were any songs on her debut that she remembered fondly, her response was immediate.
“No,” she said. “The lesson learned there was that you shouldn’t just take the money and run. I have no regrets, but I just don’t like that record.”
When it comes to the album that followed Shut Up, however, her opinions are decidedly more favorable.
How can you tell the difference between a good music critic and a bad music critic with a single question? Well, your mileage may vary on this, but for my money, you need only ask them to tell you their guilty pleasures. If they offer no hesitation whatsoever before launching into their list, then you should consider their opinions to be suspect. On the other hand, if they hem and haw for a moment before offering up a response that’s half an answer and half a clarification that “if you like something, then you shouldn’t feel guilty about it,” then it’s probably worth adding their RSS feed.
If you’re wondering, I don’t have the ego to suggest that I’m a must-add, mostly because I’m prone to answer the question by saying, “I know I shouldn’t feel guilty about liking them, but…” And as you’ve probably guessed, I have on more than one occasion ended that particular sentence by citing The Click Five.
In 2005, the Click Five released their bouncy debut album, Greetings from Imrie House, and picked up two distinct audiences the moment they left the gate: the power pop fans, most of whom discovered the album because Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne) had a hand in writing two songs on the record, and the teenaged girls, who just thought the band was cute. It’s sad but true that the former audience is pretty well negligible when it comes to sales figures, but the latter helped Imrie House sprint to #15 on the Billboard album chart, thanks to the powerhouse first single, “Just the Girl.” If you scour the song titles and the credits, you’ll see that one of the two Schlesinger songs is “I’ll Take My Chances,” which was originally recorded by Swirl 360, who’ll score their own “Hooks ‘N’ You” column one of these days. You’ll also discover that Paul Stanley…yes, the one from KISS…co-wrote “Angel To You (Devil To Me),” and that Elliot Easton – late of The Cars – contributes guitar to that song and well as “I’ll Take My Chances.” In other words, it’s not hard to argue that there’s more street cred here than on your average bubblegum pop-rock album.
So how did they decide to follow it up? Why, by replacing their lead singer, of course!
If you’ve been dreading the return of this column ever since Popdose ended its holiday hiatus, then allow me to tell you who you have to blame for my decision to come out of hiding: the one and only Dw. Dunphy. There had been precious little in the way of concern about the absence of “Hooks ‘N’ You” from the Popdose landscape, and fair enough to that, given how much fantastic stuff is already filling the site on a daily basis, but Mr. Dunphy called me out on Facebook for the column’s absence, and I felt obliged to rise to the challenge and prove that, yes, I’m still around. And what better way to prove this than by spotlighting the soundtrack to a film with a title that handily describes my ongoing level of sanity?
There are plenty of great rock-themed flicks out there, and, indeed, many of them have some phenomenal soundtracks to accompany them. I have found, however, that not nearly enough fans of this genre are aware of “Still Crazy.” The film chronicles a ’70s stadium rock band called Strange Fruit, which ended its existence rather badly after first suffering through the unexpected death of their original lead singer and then replacing him, only to have their stage set-up struck by lightning during the 1977 Wisbech Rock Festival, an event which led to the break-up of the group. In 1998, the Fruits – as they are prone to call themselves – attempt to perform a resurrection of sorts and not only bring the band back together but rewrite history and be remembered for their music rather than their misfortunes.
It’s a blending of bits and pieces from several real-life tales, but “Still Crazy” is also a film that achieves a remarkable degree of realism in the way it portrays the majority of the former band members not as a bunch of guys living posh off their royalties but, rather, real people who have spent the interim years since their original success having to struggle to make ends meet. Plus, it has a great cast, including Bill Nighy, Billy Connolly, Timothy Spall, Hans Matheson, Stephen Rea, and Juliet Aubrey, currently best known as the villainous Helen Cutter on BBC America’s “Primeval.” Most importantly, though, it’s full of more musical references than you can shake a stick at. My personal favorite has always been when Connolly’s character, Strange Fruit’s longtime roadie, drives up in the band’s new tour bus and boasts that it offers “tinted windows, air conditioning, and twin portaloos, not to mention an extensive library of pornography, courtesy of the Psychedelic Furs!”
Given this information, it will likely not surprise you that is a film very much beloved by quite a few musicians, including the members of the Fratellis, who not only named their first album after Stephen Rea’s character, Tony Costello, but, indeed, made time during the acceptance of their award for British Breakthrough Act at the 2007 BRIT Awards to thank the members of Strange Fruit. Furthermore, those who have seen and fallen in love with “Still Crazy” are almost certain to run out and purchase its soundtrack…and this is where we transition from talking about an unheralded film to discussing an unheralded album.
