“It’s like riding a bike!” Kay Hanley exclaimed last Saturday night, acknowledging the audience’s raucous response to her reunion with Letters to Cleo at the Roxy in West Hollywood. Eight years had passed since the band’s breakup, yet – with the benefit of just three days of rehearsals in an L.A. warehouse – Hanley and her mates managed to pull together an almost impossibly tight performance as they resurrected their power-pop sound of the ’90s.

The ease with which they came back together has something to do with the fact that they’ve never been entirely apart. Hanley and guitarist Michael Eisenstein are married with two children, and have worked together on her three solo releases; for much of the last year, Hanley has joined drummer Stacy Jones in traveling the world together as part of the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus “Best of Both Worlds” tour – Hanley as backing vocalist, Jones as musical director.

If the transition from modern-rock ingénue to Hannah Montana backer sounds jarring, it doesn’t to Hanley; the Cyrus tour is just one element in her scheme to fashion a permanent career in the music business, post-Cleo. To that end, Hanley and Eisenstein abandoned their hometown (and Cleo’s home base) of Boston early in this decade and relocated to Los Angeles, where both have immersed themselves in a wide range of projects. Hanley’s lengthy resume now includes her vocals on the soundtrack tunes that were the best part of 2001’s Josie and the Pussycats film; a partnership with a college friend, singer/songwriter Michelle Lewis, that has resulted in an on-again, off-again band (the Dilettantes) and a similarly occasional songwriting collective (Ladyapples); and a seat aboard the Disney mothership, from which she has written and performed theme songs for the TV series My Friends Tigger and Pooh and the film Care Bears: Oopsy Does It!

Amidst these more profitable activities, Hanley has continued to pursue an acclaimed solo career — most recently with a rockin’ CD titled Weaponize, released last spring, for which she abandoned digital for analog recording. She now calls it “my favorite thing that I’ve ever done”; listen for yourself. (more…)

With long tails and ears for hats, Josie and the Pussycats, created by Archie Comics genius Dan DeCarlo, debuted on Saturday morning TV screens everywhere in 1970 with a show copied straight from Scooby Doo, Where Are You? You had your weekly mystery, a wacky pet sidekick (in Josie’s case, it was the sorta evil cat Sebastian) and a chase scene punctuated by catchy pop songs. What Josie had that Scooby didn’t was a “real” band and a record album.

Part of Hanna-Barbera’s plans for the show was to assemble a real-life Josie and the Pussycats to record all the songs and eventually tour. After seeing hundreds of women, the line-up was finally decided - Cathy Dougher (”Josie”), Patrice Holloway (”Valerie” and sister of Brenda Holloway), and Cherie Moor (”Melody,” or as you might know her from her later stage name, Cheryl Ladd). The vocal trio was given top-notch material to work with, somewhat derivative of what was topping the charts at the time, but a step above what normally passed for music on Saturday morning cartoons.

Capitol Records released Josie and the Pussycats in late 1970, paired with the single, “Every Beat Of My Heart (Single Version)” (download), co-written by none other than Monkees hitmaker Bobby Hart. Holloway sings lead on this track, a Carpenters-esque lightweight bubblegum tune, but that didn’t stop her from belting out a great performance. Unfortunately, it failed to follow The Archies up the charts.

Capitol tried again with “Stop, Look And Listen (Single Version)” (download) - this time, Ladd took the lead. If it sounds somewhat familiar, that’s because it’s a shameless rip-off of the Jackson 5’s “ABC.” Shameless, yes, but still irresistible. Trivia note - while Ladd sings lead on the album, Holloway sings lead in the version used on the cartoon: (more…)