June 2009

As much as Sky Saxon has been deified – and not just in the last week or so – it doesn’t sound, from his discs during that first phase of the Seeds that the band was too much more or less than any other garage act of the time. Maybe it’s because I hear Roky Erickson in Saxon’s voice as much as Mick Jagger. It might be that most of the instrumentation on each of the group’s three proper full lengths could be relatively easily duplicated by any number of groups. Or it might just be the fact that he hit on a girl I knew at a show and left her a dirty old man message at three in the morning. Admittedly, the band was good. And those singles are on par with anything from ’65-’67. Read more

It’s always weird when knock offs end up gaining more notoriety than the originators of whatever schtick. And for the Cowsills, it must have been doubly bothersome considering the musical and theatrical implications of their career. Instead of becoming one of the first cross over stars, each of the group members eventually moved on after the group to lead relatively normal lives if not for a few brief stints with the Beach Boys’ travelling band. But that’s show business. And unfortunately, a few chance decisions probably led the brothers and sisters that made up the Cowsills to their end. Read more

dafsdIt’s odd to think of the way in which different bands gain notoriety. Some do it with creepy stage shows that owe as much to shamanistic life as rock and roll while others just rave up a racket, only scarcely associate with the press and release foggy, dense forests of sound that not only deride melody, but find only little use for regular meter or time. No Neck Blues Band has been at it, this latter way, for the better part of fifteen years. And after ingratiating themselves to Sonic Youth as well as John Fahey at the end of his life, the purposefully distant group has, as of late, been on a tear, releasing a disc per year over the last half a decade. Read more

The Velvet Underground are the most important band in rock music – that kind that matters at least, not the trite garbage littering the shelves of Best Buy, or whatever other retailer is daft enough to stock physical discs of that nature any longer. The musical background that each player brought to this group – whether academic or self taught – served to inform everyone from R.E.M. to U2 and even bands that were good. The way in which the guitar was plied in the group by Lou Reed is usually one of the first things mentioned after the trumped up charges of members being junkies. And while Maureen ‘Moe’ Tucker is usually referred to as the androgynous drummer, she was more than that. And kinda cute in a tomboy kinda way. Read more