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!
Back in 1992, my girlfriend received a 16th-birthday mix tape from a friend of ours named Tai. There were no artists or song titles listed on the cassette label, making the tape something of a mystery gift. My girlfriend and I listened to it while driving (because when you’re 16 you just drive, regardless of whether or not there’s a Point B), and later I borrowed the tape so I could dub the songs I liked onto a cassette of my own.
Since I didn’t know the titles of the songs I was adding to my collection, I made up my own: the Stone Roses’ “Elephant Stone” was listed as “In My Dreams”; the Hummingbirds’ “Everything You Said” became “Your Picture”; the Blue Hearts’ “Train-Train” turned into a single “Train”; Blake Babies’ “Out There” was rechristened “I Know It’s Stupid”; and Morrissey’s “Mute Witness” morphed into “That She Saw” (yes, I know I was reaching with that one). One track I did manage to name correctly was “Valerie Loves Me,” by Chicago power-pop trio Material Issue. I could’ve sworn they were British all those years ago, probably because of lead singer Jim Ellison’s English-accent affectations, as all power pop seems to lead back to the words and music of Lennon and McCartney, even though you couldn’t hear their accents when they sang.
This week’s bootleg is a radio broadcast of Material Issue playing at the Empire Concert Club in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 9, 1991. Back then they were promoting their debut album, International Pop Overthrow, whose title has since been borrowed for an annual traveling power-pop festival: the 2009 edition arrived in Chicago on April 16 and leaves town on Sunday, then starts back up in Milwaukee next Thursday. The bootleg is brought to you by Addicted to Vinyl’s Matt Wardlaw, a friend of Popdose and a heck of a nice guy. Here’s what he has to say about the venue and the concerts it hosted that aired on local radio:
“The Empire Concert Club was a great though short-lived club here in Cleveland that was only open for a couple of years at the beginning of the ’90s. In that time they did close to 100 live concert broadcasts with legendary rock station WMMS. Some of the more memorable broadcasts included shows from Cracker, King’s X, Sarah McLachlan (her first show in Cleveland), Rik Emmett, Matthew Sweet, and this show from Material Issue. Personally, I enjoyed the broadcasts because they featured a lot of artists like Material Issue who had new and fresh sounds for music fans to latch onto at a time when you could still hear that kind of thing on the radio; these live broadcasts captured many of the artists as they were about to explode on a national level. Great club, great bands — so how did it end? The Empire got nailed for filling the venue beyond capacity during a Buddy Guy concert — not their first offense — and they were penalized by having their capacity reduced by half, which led to an eventual shuttering of the club. Empire co-owner Tony Ciulla resurfaced a short time later as part of the management team for Trent Reznor’s Nothing Records.”
It’s vacation time already? Awesome! Time to kick back, relax, and…oh, wait, I forgot: this is only a part-time writing gig, and I still have to keep doing my full-time writing gig. Oh, well, at least this means I get a bit of a break from going completely insane on Monday afternoons as I try to finish up my column on time (and inevitably fail miserably at it).
Our commander in chief, Mr. Giles, has told me on several occasions that I shouldn’t feel bad about skipping a week here and there with “Hooks ‘N’ You,” since he knows how much I have to do for Bullz-Eye. Thing is, I enjoy writing this column for the same reason all of us here at Popdose offer our contributions to the site: not because we have to, but because we want to. It’s one big ol’ labor of love, folks. Plus, really, where else on the ‘net could I have the flexibility to write a column that spotlights albums ranging from George Burns to Kylie Minogue?
What it’s also given me, however, is the opportunity to have conversations with several of the artists whose records have provided me with a lot of great spins over the years. I realize that the beauty of having a regular column on a website is that people can just click on the appropriate tag and pull up every single one of your previous works, but when I looked back myself, I realized that A) I’ve talked to a lot of great artists since kicking off this column in January ‘08, and B) even *I* got bored clicking through a year’s worth of columns. So for your easy access, here’s a quick list of the folks who were kind enough to talk with me either by phone or E-mail for “Hooks ‘N’ You” in 2008:
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.
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.
Back in 1992, my girlfriend received a 16th-birthday mix tape from a friend of ours named Tai. There were no artists or song titles listed on the cassette label, making the tape something of a mystery gift. My girlfriend and I listened to it while driving (because when you’re 16 you just drive, regardless of whether or not there’s a Point B), and later I borrowed the tape so I could dub the songs I liked onto a cassette of my own.
