Live albums have been a staple of the music business for ages, and even if you’re someone who loudly proclaims to have no interest in them whatsoever, it’s probable that you have at least one or two buried somewhere in your collection, even if it’s stretching back to your vinyl or cassette days. I’m pretty sure the first live album I ever purchased was Wings Over America, which served as my transition from the Beatles into Paul McCartney’s ’70s solo output - to this day, attempts to sing along to the studio versions of the songs from that record never fail to throw me - but there are quite a few other live records that I’ll spin with regularity, from the Smiths’ Rank to Robyn Hitchcock’s Storefront Hitchcock to Howard Jones’ The Peaceful Tour Live. (Yeah, I know, that last one might sound like a bit of a head-scratcher, but my wife and I saw HoJo in concert while on honeymoon in the UK in 2001, and that disc is a solid representation of the set he performed.)
On the whole, however, I must admit that I tend to prefer those live albums where the artists reinvent their songs by placing them in an acoustic setting. Nowadays, it’s something that everyone does…and more often than not, when they do so, it’s with an attitude generally reserved for someone who’s just reinvented the wheel. It’s as if they’re saying, “I am so awesome because I could take my song and de-rock-ify it,” when the reality is that they probably just figured, “Hey, here’s a way I can make a few more bucks off my old hits!” I’m not saying that I don’t still tend to enjoy them, anyway, but…okay, look, here’s the deal with acoustic live albums: the last one that truly mattered was Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York. Now, as far as the best acoustic live albums that mattered before Nirvana, you can vote for Clapton or Tesla or even McCartney, but I only ever think of one: Richard Barone’s Cool Blue Halo.
Now, if you’re a regular NPR listener or find yourself scouring their website, you may be saying, “Hey, this guy is totally jumping on the bandwagon started by Tom Moon in March 2007!” Not true. I picked up my copy of Cool Blue Halo on cassette in a cut-out bin way back in 1990, and I’ve loved it ever since. The reasons I picked it up were threefold: 1) I’d seen his name in my copy of the Trouser Press Record Guide and remembered the write-up as being favorable, 2) it included a cover of the Beatles’ “Cry Baby Cry,” and 3) it was less than $2.00. (C’mon, gimme a break: I was a poor college student at the time!)
As it turned out, I found myself in love with the album long before I ever hit that Beatles cover.
When Kyle Vincent released his eponymous album on Hollywood Records in 1997, it looked for all the world that, after spending over a decade on a quest to earn himself a Billboard Top 100 hit, he was about to bring a dream to fruition. Unfortunately, that did not prove to be the case, but he made enough of an impact with the album’s single, “Wake Me Up (When The World’s Worth Waking Up For),” to show up on the radar of quite a few pop fans…including me. (Like you didn’t see that revelation coming up Main Street.)
Although Vincent’s stint on Hollywood Records only lasted for that one record, he didn’t let any moss grow under his feet. Indeed, he’d returned to the studio even before Hollywood went through the corporate restructuring that would cost both he and virtually every other artist on the label their deals. In the end, he released the follow-up to Kyle Vincent on his own label, SongTree Records, but it featured just as much gloss and sparkle as anything released on the majors that year.
Sadly, the sound of Wow & Flutter was a far cry from what the cool kids of the world were listening to in 1999. Their mothers, however, would’ve loved it…if only they’d had ample opportunity to hear it.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve often found myself listening to a song and thought, “My mom would like this,” and when I do so, I’m not thinking it in a sneering, disparaging way. On a Mother’s Day many moons ago, I made my mother a mix tape called A Little Bit of Mom Music, If You Please, and I filled it with songs by They Might Be Giants, The Beautiful South, the Cure, the Smiths, Captain Sensible, 10,000 Maniacs, the Blue Nile, and probably a dozen other artists…and she loved it. I think she played in the car until they finally upgraded from a cassette player to a CD player, in fact. Just because your parents might listen to music that you can’t readily defend in a court of cool - my mother’s love of Anne Murray is one which I’ve never personally been able to embrace - doesn’t mean that they can’t appreciate some of the tunes you’re grooving to, and Wow & Flutter is definitely a record that multiple generations can appreciate.
Last week’s column opened by noting that, when you hear the name “Don Dixon,” you’re probably more likely to think of him in terms of his production career than for his accomplishments as a singer and songwriter. Although I followed this observation by noting that this tendency gets really annoying for those who’ve lived and loved to Dixon’s albums over the years, I also clarified that it should in no way be taken as a dismissal of his production work; the guy has had his hands on some of the best albums of the ’80s and ’90s, some of which you may have forgotten about. But, hey, that’s what I’m here for…
Popdose: I wanted to ask you about a couple of your production jobs…well, quite a few of them, actually, because I’m a big fan of a lot of the artists you’ve worked with. In fact, looking over your resume, it looks like you had a hand in about 7/8 of the American music I was listening to in the late ‘80s!
DD: I was busy!
PD: You were!
DD: And I made records quick. And cheap. That was the other thing. I made quick, cheap records.
DD: I love the Connells. In fact, Arrogance just played with the Connells at an outdoor thing for a…well, it was kind of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing. And the Connells still sound great.
PD: They used to play the Boathouse every other week, it seemed like, and I think I was there for most of the shows.
DD: I think I was only at the Boathouse once. We were there when Marti was opening for Chris Isaak, and I did some of the shows on that tour. I was doing some projects, so I wasn’t on every date, but she did a couple of months with him, and I think I was…no, I know I was at the Boathouse show, because I can remember exactly where the buses were parked. The Boathouse was kind of an odd show, because it was mostly theaters on that tour, and at the Boathouse, it was hard to fit all three buses in the lot.
PD: I can believe it. I’m sure they were all lined up next to the water.
When you hear the name “Don Dixon,” you’re probably more likely to think of him in terms of his production career than for his accomplishments as a singer and songwriter … and for those who have thrilled to each and every album in his oeuvre, it’s starting to get really annoying. Not that there isn’t a ton of work amongst his past efforts as a professional knob-twiddler to make him legitimately legendary in his field, but there’s just so much more to the man than that. Next week, Jon Cummings and myself will be providing ample proof of that, when we perform our first collaboration and offer up The Popdose Guide to Don Dixon, but for now, I thought I’d ease you into his work by discussing the best … okay, only … single-disc anthology of Dixon’s work: the obscurely-named (If) I’m a Ham, Well You’re a Sausage: The Don Dixon Collection.
(Actually, the title makes sense … more or less … within the first 30 seconds of the album, but until then, you’re allowed to go, “What in the hell does that mean?”)
If you know Dixon’s solo work at all, then you’re probably familiar his lone semi-hit: “Praying Mantis.” (There’s a video for it somewhere, because I definitely remember seeing it on “120 Minutes” at some point or other, but apparently it’s become so obscure that it’s not even on YouTube.) The track was definitely a highlight of his Enigma-Records-era releases, but as this collection quickly demonstrates, catchy pop tunes were plentiful within the grooves of everything he released during that time period. It’s no wonder that bands like R.E.M., the Smithereens, Guadalcanal Diary, and The Connells were drawn to his production methods; Dixon himself could jingle and jangle with the best of them, having been playing along with the guys in Arrogance throughout the ’70s and early ’80s before going it solo. Indeed, a couple of the tracks which ended up on his solo records were actually Arrogance tracks … including “Praying Mantis”!
You’ve bought a new album. You put it on and hit “play,” and as it’s playing, you find that you’re enjoying it well enough, but it’s not really grabbing you…until, suddenly, the album hits a particular song, and - bam! - you’re in love. You play the song again. Damn, that’s good. And now that your ears are open, you find yourself wondering if the remainder of the album is just as good, so you let it continue playing…and you find that, yes, it is! Then, you realize that you need to go back and start the record over from the beginning, since you weren’t really paying enough attention when it first started….and, holy crap, you must’ve been drunk or something, because it’s so obvious to you now that this entire album is brilliant!
That, in a nutshell, is what I experienced when I first heard The Devlins’ “Alone in the Dark,” and it’s how their debut album, Drift, became one of my favorite albums of 1993.
“Alone in the Dark” is, for my money, one of the sexiest and most sensual songs ever written. It has been included on many a mix tape over the years…though, of course, the only one that matters is the one I made for my wife when we first started dating, and any claims to the contrary are damned dirty lies. (Today is our seventh wedding anniversary, as it happens. Happy anniversary, sweetheart!)
It’s a song which begs to be on the soundtrack to a romantic movie, playing as the couple you’ve been rooting for throughout the entire film finally comes together, and if you don’t believe me, just read these lyrics:
I feel the storm, but it’s so strange
To feel desire without the pain
And I feel your eyes search my soul
For sometime sacred, for something more than you need
Your words are lost, but there’s no aim
It’s pure emotion that holds this flame
And the rain will fall and touch your heart
It’s pure devotion, alone in the dark
So tell me what you feel
Tell me every little thing
Tell me all that you are now
And tell me what it’s like to see
From your own heart
Now I’ve got you…alone in the dark
I can say without hesitation that today’s Hooks ‘N’ You was written more quickly and with less forethought in the history of the column, but whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is a judgment call that only you can make. I guess we’ll find out soon enough, eh?
Earlier this morning, I posted some photos on Facebook from my college days at the school which is now known as Averett University. (It used to simply be Averett College, but it’s clearly much cooler now than it was when I attended.) The majority of the shots are of the various folks who haunted the halls of Bottom Bishop, where I made my home from 1990 - 1992, but the series begins with four photos of my dorm room. When I arrived in Danville, VA, I had just spent a year working music retail for Record Bar, so I had more posters to put on my walls than I had available wall space…but believe you me, I took advantage of the opportunity to plaster every last inch with something cool. If the space wasn’t big enough for a poster, then I put up an album flat. If it wasn’t big enough for an album flat, I put up a magazine cover.
In short, it was a desperate attempt to look cool.
It would be a lie to claim that this attempt succeeded, because there have been very few occasions in my life when I have been able to pass for “cool,” but at the very least, the combination of my decor and the music that was regularly blaring out of my room managed to help me in creating a circle of friends who have remained my friends to this day. Indeed, several of them have already commented on some of these photos on Facebook (I’m sure they will continue to give me shit about a couple of them for quite some time yet), and since I’m in a reminiscing mood, I thought I’d just offer up a few comments about some of the posters that can be seen in the photos and how the music has aged over the years.
Before I start talking about the Baltimore-based power pop band known as Splitsville, I should let them start talking…and I’ll do so by offering up the very first track from their very first album, which provided at least as good an intro to the group as anything I could compose:
I’ve had a relationship with Brandt and Matt Huseman, the brothers who were 2/3 of the founding members of Splitsville, since before there even was a Splitsville. If you’re a power pop geek like myself, you already know that the Huseman boys made up half of The Greenberry Woods, whose exploits will be further discussed in a future column…but, for the record, if you don’t own their two albums, Rapple Dapple and Big Money Item, then your collection is all the poorer for their absence. Anyway, I was such a fan of The Greenberry Woods that I’m pretty sure I caught every performance they ever did in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia (including a show which remains the most bizarre double bill I’ve ever personally witnessed, where they opened for Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine), so when the group broke up, I was always going to follow its members wherever they went.
I spent years waiting for Ira Katz to release something by his subsequent band, Lovefool, but I don’t think they ever actually committed anything to disc. Fortunately, the Husemans have released quite a few albums as part of Splitsville…so many, in fact, that they’ve warranted a best-of collection called Let’s Go, after its opening track.
As it happens, “Let’s Go” was also the opening track of Ultrasound, the band’s second album. Unfortunately, the band’s first album, Splitsville U.S.A., isn’t represented on this disc (the reason why will be revealed later), but this song is such a perfect call to arms for the collection that it’s hard to argue against it as a perfect starting point. The musical callback to The Knack’s “My Sharona” says, “Yeah, we’re power pop,” and, indeed, that’s certainly a valid description for a certain amount of the Splitsville sound, but as Let’s Go shows, there’s far more to the band’s music than can be contained within a single niche.
I mean, it must. If it didn’t, would David Bash sign all of his E-mails with that phrase?
Actually, he probably would.
There are few individuals out there who’ve done quite so much in recent years to keep the genre of power pop in the public eye (and ear) than Mr. Bash, otherwise known as the founder of the pop musical festival known as International Pop Overthrow. As I type this sentence, the 2008 Los Angeles festival has come to a conclusion…and if this was 11 years ago, then David would be breathing a sigh of relief and relaxing for a couple of days before starting the planning on the 2009 festival. Nowadays, however, I have a suspicion that the guy doesn’t even take time to breathe…and how can he? The San Francisco leg of IPO begins tomorrow and continues through the 16th. The Portland stop of IPO - the first time the festival has ever traveled to Oregon - will occur from Aug. 20th - 23rd, and then it’s up to Vancouver from Aug. 26th - 30th.
A long time ago, in a lifetime far, far away (i.e. before I was married and had a lovely daughter), I attended the 3rd annual IPO in Los Angeles, where I absorbed way too many pop hooks than could possibly have been good for me, but I walked away with an experience that I’ve wanted to duplicate ever since. In this one year alone, I was witness to performances by Starbelly, Doug Powell, The Shazam, Myracle Brah, Martin Luther Lennon, the Mockers, the Rubinoos, Cockeyed Ghost, Kyle Vincent, Kara’s Flowers, Michael Carpenter, Blue Cartoon, and Phantom Planet…and that’s only to name, like, a tenth of the artists I saw. I wouldn’t pretend to claim that every line-up since ‘99 has ranked up there with that one (indeed, from what I’ve seen, some have been even better), but it certainly left this pop fan in awe…and if you’ve experienced IPO for yourself, don’t be afraid to cite some of your own favorite memories in the comments section.
No, I’m not dead, but neither can it really be said that I’ve been resting, either. Sorry for the monthlong interim between columns, but I was in Los Angeles July 7-23 covering the Television Critics Association press tour, and I returned to a combination of family stuff and car issues that kept me hopping for well over a week after my return. To give you an idea of what my luck was like with my car, it died on my wife while she was in a McDonald’s drive-thru and involved trips to the AAA Service center and Pep Boys as well as two trips to the Hyundai dealership to work out the issue. And while I was borrowing my father’s truck during all these vehicle woes, the truck managed to get a flat tire and have its battery die on me. As for the family stuff, well, as it happens, that brings me to the subject of this week’s column.
If things had gone differently, this column would’ve run last week or even the week before, because the intent was to have it go live on the week of my daughter’s third birthday. Her name is Allyson Faith Harris. She was an in-vitro baby, and we’re pretty sure the doctors at the New Hope Center for Reproductive Medicine slipped a few extra “cute” and “smart” genes into her petri dish, because she’s both things, and this isn’t just typical proud papa crap — a few weeks ago we drove past a Chick-Fil-A, and the kid said, “Look, Daddy, they have an indoor play area!” A few months ago I told her I thought we didn’t need to put gas in the car until the morning, and she put on a pouty face and said, “I’m so disappointed that we’re not going to the gas station.” This was a two-year-old. I don’t know where she stands on an emotional level, but at the very least she’s got a pretty darned advanced vocabulary for her age. As for the cuteness, you be the judge:
Allyson stayed on the bike — this time.
Yes, as you can see by her shirt, the kid is into music. She could name all four Beatles before she was two, her favorite songs are Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to Be Kind” and the Left Banke’s “Pretty Ballerina,” and, perhaps most importantly, when she hears the Crayons’ “Allyson Fell Off the Bike,” she immediately says, “That’s my song!”
Who are the Crayons? That’s a fair question. Heck, even I didn’t know who the Crayons were until I discovered them on the sixth volume of the ongoing series of International Pop Overthrow compilations, but when I happened upon their selection, a little ditty called “Allyson Fell Off the Bike,” I was enamored immediately. The slightly ominous riff at the beginning of the song instantly made me think of Echo & the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon,” which was a surprising enough touch to hear on a collection of power-pop artists, and with my interest held, I was so swept up in the huge chorus that I knew it was time to head straight to my computer and find out if the Crayons had an entire album.
Fortunately, they did, and its title asked a highly appropriate question for a band called the Crayons: What Color Are You?
I can still remember stumbling upon the CD for Voice of the Beehive’s Let It Bee for the first time. I guess you could argue that it stood out because, comparatively speaking, there just aren’t that many artists filed under “V” to catch your eye, but, no, I’m pretty sure it was the combination of the bluish tint of the cover photo and the glistening lips of the two really cute girls in the band. I mean, the blonde was blowing me a kiss, for God’s sake! How can you forget that? Granted, it wasn’t until the group started to score airplay on “120 Minutes” that I realized that they were more than just looks, but it would be a lie to suggest that the looks of Tracey Bryn and Missy Belland - they’re sisters, you know - weren’t directly responsible for bringing me into their orbit for the first time.
Although they scored some college radio hits in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Voice of the Beehive were never as huge in the States as they were in the UK. Maybe it’s because they had a slightly kitschy look about them (the Brits love a gimmick), or maybe it was their vaguely retro, harmony-laden sound, but I’ve always figured it was something to do with the fact that they had two former members of Madness - Woody and Bedders - in their line-up. Whatever the reason, they ended up with two top-20 hits (“Don’t Call Me Baby” and “Monsters and Angels“), had three more enter the lower half of the Top 40, and even made it to #12 in Australia with their fun cover of The Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You.”
Unfortunately, after the requisite support for 1991’s Honey Lingers, the band went into stealth mode…and stayed there for half a decade!
When the third Voice of the Beehive album, Sex & Misery, emerged in 1995, a fair amount had changed. For one, the band had shifted from London Records over to the Warner Brothers subsidiary label, Discovery Records. More importantly, though, the sisters were now doing it for themselves, as it were. Bedders had been gone for awhile (he came quick and didn’t stay long), but now so was Woody; also MIA were Mike Jones and Martin Brett, who’d also been stalwarts within the group. Tracey and Missy now had a new songwriting collaborator: keyboardist Peter John Vettese, who also produced and arranged the album. Vettese had some impressive pop credits to his name, having contributed keys to The Adventures’ Sea of Love, The Bee Gees’ One, Simple Minds’ Real Life, and a trio of Jethro Tull albums (The Broadsword and the Beast, Under Wraps, and Rock Island), but was he a good fit for the sensibilities of the Belland sisters?
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable who's who of music bloggers and an ever-expanding roster of writers who've made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies, TV, and books, with a dash of current events thrown in for good measure — so you don't have to. Popdose delivers coverage both in-depth (the all-encompassing Popdose Guides) and snarkily brief (the weekly Captain Video!), surveying releases both old and new. Visit often: the site publishes a minimum of twice a day.
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable who's who of music bloggers and an ever-expanding roster of writers who've made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies, TV, and books, with a dash of current events thrown in for good measure — so you don't have to. Popdose delivers coverage both in-depth (the all-encompassing 
