Dot Dash, a Washington D.C. band comprised of ex-members of Julie Ocean, The Saturday People and Youth Brigade is offering up a free track from their latest album Half-Remembered Dream. Listen below, and click through for a free download!
A collection of music from some of the artists who passed away in 2013.
Your order for a Waitresses catalog reissue has finally arrived
For those only acquainted with the Waitresses through media play, their career likely consists of “I Know What Boys Like,” “Christmas Wrapping” and “Square Pegs.” The first was their lone U.S. chart success, bubbling up to #62, gaining video airplay on MTV and becoming the band’s icon. The second charted in the UK, and its inclusion on the compilation A Christmas Record gained it additional turntable action in the states. The third was the title theme for a short-lived television show that’s now become an ’80s nostalgia favorite, Their debut album, Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?, almost cracked the Top 40, a follow-up EP, I Could Rule the World if I Could Only Get the Parts, and LP, Bruisology, bubbled under the Top 100. Commercially, that was just about it, a small catalog over a few years, which makes the band’s longevity in listener’s memories all the more impressive.
The Waitresses grew out of an Akron, Ohio music scene that was spotlighted in 1978 by Stiff Records release of Devo’s “Be Stiff” and the multi-artist Akron Compilation. The latter featured three tracks by the Waitresses (“The Comb,” “Slide” and “Clones,” not included here) alongside several acts (Rachel Sweet, Tin Huey and Jane Aire) that would also get label deals. Songwriter Chris Butler was the engine behind both Tin Huey and the Waitresses, but vocalist Patty Donahue’s deadpan delivery gave the latter their signature sound. The Waitresses appeared on several more compilations (Bowling Balls from Hell, A Christmas Record and Bowling Balls from Hell II) and released “I Know What Boys Like” as an unsuccessful single in 1980 before stepping up to their 1982 debut LP. The LP showed Butler’s knack for writing in a 20-something female’s voice and Donahue’s convincing enactments to be a potent combination.
Butler wrote songs of women coming into their own; women gaining confidence, independence, introspection, wisdom, control and self-improvement, rather than girls wallowing in broken hearts, dependence or defeat. The group followed their first album with an EP that gathered together “Christmas Wrapping,” “Square Pegs” and its B-side “The Smartest Person I Know,” and added “Bread and Butter” and “I Could Rule the World if I Could Only Get the Parts.” The latter was a tight, ska-influenced live version of a song Butler had previously recorded with Tin Huey in a more Zappa-influenced style. Disc one closes with the funky, experimental instrumental “Hangover,” which had been released as the B-side of the 1983 UK reissue of “Christmas Wrapping.”
The set’s second disc opens with the group’s second and final album, continuing the self-empowered themes of their earlier releases, but with a darker, less naively buoyant tone. The group’s punchy mix of rock, ska, funk and jazz continued to read a line between almost-commercial pop and no-wave experimentalism. What becomes really clear is that the Waitresses were a lot deeper, musically and lyrically, than their novel hits suggested. Donahue left the band the following year and was briefly replaced by Holly Beth Vincent (late of Holly and the Italians), and though the former quickly returned, the band was essentially over by the end of 1984. Disc two adds remixed versions of “Bread and Butter” that were originally released as a DJ 12″. The two-disc set gathers together the band’s key releases, omitting only their pre-LP single, contributions to a few compilations, and a live set available separately from the King Biscuit Flower Hour. For those who’ve made do with original vinyl that’s long since shown its age, this is the replacement you’ve been waiting for. [©2013 Hyperbolium] 
A too-small helping of singer-songwriter brilliance
Given the wealth of Paul Simon’s catalog, both in concert with Art Garfunkel and solo, and given the many reconfigurations and reiterations of this material issued on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD and digital download, it’s difficult to place the specific utility of this new 20-track collection. Six essential tracks from Simon & Garfunkel and fourteen stretching across Simon’s solo catalog provide an enjoyable sprint through forty-five years of Simon’s masterful songwriting, singing and guitar playing. But there are so many highlights and pivotal moments missing that the end result is the Cliff’s Notes of a multivolume career. Nearly every track leaves you longing to hear its album-mates, which may just be the point: this is audio catnip for luring an unsuspecting listener into Simon’s musical lair where they can mainline The Columbia Studio Recordings 1964-1970 and The Complete Album Collection. Buy this for someone who would appreciate Simon’s craft, but for some reason (youth, most likely), hasn’t yet acquainted themselves with his work. They’ll enjoy full-panel photos, song lyrics and Jesse Kornbluth’s career overview in a twenty-eight page booklet, and with any luck, ask for more. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
Joyous Americana-pop duo from Dallas
The O’s are a Dallas-proud duo whose folk-rock marries the fervent joy of Polyphonic Spree (of which they were once members), the dually-sung testimonial uplift of the Proclaimers, and the guitar and banjo of a string band that brought along a kick drum to keep the beat. Their third album shows what a potent sound less can be, framing the duo’s vocals powerfully with guitar on one side, banjo on the other, and a kick drum (the eponymous “Thunderdog”) in the middle. Fans of the Avetts will know this balance of strings and voices from the brothers’ Gleam EPs, and Taylor Young (guitar, drum) and John Pedigo (banjo, Lowebro) sing and play with the sort of foot-stomping fervor that draws a street-corner crowd. Producing themselves for the first time, the duo brings the energy and spontaneity of their stage act to the studio. Pedigo’s voice is loaded with youthful verve, while Young sings lower and more reserved. Together they relish the sound of their paired voices, holding onto notes as their timbres bounce and interlace. With only a few additions to their basic lineup – a harmonica on the foot-stomping “Cicerone” and a fuzz banjo solo on “Kitty” – the pair makes a surprisingly large sound for such a portable band. Pedigo’s banjo can play lonely, as on the introduction of “You are the Light” and “Levee Breaks,” but it’s more often complemented by Young’s guitar strums. Pedigo adds twang with a dobro-like guitar called a Lowebro, but even as the lyrics lean to earnest folk, the hooks have the ready familiarity of pop songs. The combination mixes immediate familiarity with an unusual sparse-but-loud instrumental mix that gives the vocals a boost. This is an album that’s very easy to like from its first notes, but one that reveals additional depths as your ears roll through to the end. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
Band of Heathens refine and expand their sound
The Band of Heathens continues to surprise. While their new album offers up the Americana and Little Feat-styled funk fans have come to expect, there’s a thread of late 1960s production pop that’s a welcome addition. This opening track, “Shotgun,” tips the album’s surprise with its nod to “Everybody’s Talkin’.” Gordy Quist sings the opening “I heard that you were talkin’ ’bout me, I heard you had a smile on your face while you cried, cried, cried,” with a rhythm and melody that easily brings to mind Fred Neil’s original couplet. The song quickly establishes its own sound, but the unison singing, keyboards and electric sitar-like guitar preview echoes of Curt Boettcher, Gary Usher and Brian Wilson heard in several of the album’s tracks.
Ed Jurdi opens the album’s second song with a voice as warm and soulful as Quist’s. Where the opener was pleased to see an indiscreet ex-lover (or, perhaps, a recently departed, smack-talking founding member of the band) receding in the rear-view mirror, “Caroline Williams” is rife with the pain and confusion of the left behind. Recently arrived drummer Richard Millsap adds both rhythm and melody with his tom toms, and a short instrumental pairing of piano and wordless vocals echoes another element of late-60s studio pop. Jurdi and Quest wrote this album amid both personal and band changes, and transition is a running theme. In addition to relationships in formation, reformation and dissolution, there’s a longing for stability and simplicity.
The Heathens’ complexities come to the fore in the personal inventories of “Since I’ve Been Home,” the funky “Miss My Life” and the media-saturated world of “Records in My Bed.” The latter, with some terrific 70s-styled electric piano by Trevor Nealon, fondly remembers the thrill a favorite record brought in a world not yet fragmented by always-on media. Jurdi and Quist are memorable vocalists, ranging from husky soul to fragile Elliot Smith-like falsetto, but  the variety of duet styles they manage is even more impressive. In addition to rootsy blends of country and soul, they bind tightly for pop harmonies that suggest Simon & Garfunkel, CS&N and the Beatles. Nealon and Millsap have added new elements to a band that was already multidimensional, making the Band of Heathens’ fourth studio album their most adventurous yet. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
A 1970s George Harrison watches a 1960s George Harrison.
A virtuoso cover of Badfinger’s “Baby Blue,” played on the ukulele.
Illuminting Paul McCartney’s avant-garde credentials
John Lennon may have ended up with the larger avant-garde cred, but this fascinating 153-minute documentary suggests it was Paul McCartney who first dug into the underground. Combining period footage (including clips of the Beatles, Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Pink Floyd and Soft Machine) and contemporary interviews with a number of ’60s scene-makers, the film demonstrates McCartney’s early interest and sponsorship of counterculture art and social activities, and the role he served in bridging the avant-garde into the mainstream. Beatles fans will recognize key moments in the group’s career, but may not know the roots of the invention and synthesis that brought “Tomorrow Never Knows” and other icons to fruition. Even lesser known is the role McCartney played in supporting key counterculture activities, such as Indica Books and Gallery, the Long Hair Times (and its successor the International Times), and the legendary Million Volt Light and Sound Rave.
The story begins with the late-50s emergence of youth culture in the UK, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the expressive freedom and bohemian romance of the Beats, the cutting edge jazz of the 1960s, and the growing influence of art school on music. The program gets to the Beatles at the thirty-minute mark, when John Lennon and George Harrison dip their toe in the underground at a birthday party for Allen Ginsburg. Lennon was then living in the suburbs with his first wife and child, and didn’t find an immediate resonance with the underground. McCartney, on the other hand, was a bachelor, living in London and being introduced to the works of John Cage by the family of Jane Asher, to Karlheinz Stockhausen and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop by George Martin, and to avant-garde books and art through his association with Indica.
McCartney’s intellectual pursuits, and his experiments in a home studio (something that would continue into his post-Beatles solo career) were absorbed by the Beatles, but reiterated to the market in pop song format. The reframing of avant-garde ideas, coupled with the Beatles unprecedented renown, made it seem as if these concepts were drawn from thin air. But as this film documents, there are many antecedents from which McCartney and the Beatles drew, brilliantly recontextualized and then released into the commercial mainstream. This might seem opportunistic, had the Beatles not completed the loop by feeding back into the underground. By the end of 1966 the Beatles had abandoned touring, Lennon had met Yoko Ono (at a private showing of her work at Indica), and McCartney provided the impetus for both TNK and the “Carnival of Light” sound collage.
The Beatles continued to slip avant-garde elements into their music, but 1967 turned out to be a year of changes. McCartney’s media appearances gave a more explicit view of his involvement with the underground, but by year’s end, with the death of Brian Epstein, he’d given himself over to running the group’s business. Lennon, on the other hand, had become much more deeply enmeshed with the avant-garde, and expanded its role on Beatles records with Revolution 9. Post-Beatles, Lennon strengthened his ties to political elements of the underground, but the avant-garde influences faded from his solo music. McCartney doubled-down on the mainstream with Wings, but continued to experiment in his solo outings.
McCartney’s role as a bridge between the underground and the commercial mainstream provides the central thesis, but the film’s subtitle is a bit misleading, as McCartney himself does not occupy the majority of the program’s screen time (there are, for example, major segments on Pink Floyd and Soft Machine). The bulk of the continuity is provided by a mix of the era’s scene makers and contemporary musicologists, providing background information that is essential to understanding the avant-garde milieu in which the Beatles developed. No doubt many Beatles fans have already absorbed some or all of this material, but to those who only know the group through their records and publicity, the context for their musical experimentation will be eye opening. [©2013 Hyperbolium]
A pop cognoscente’s selection of covers
Cover albums invariably say more about the coverer than the coverees. Selecting and sequencing an album of someone else’s songs (that is, making a mix tape) is as an artistic act, but one that’s magnified by the creation of new recordings. Musically, this album doesn’t stray far from Keene’s traditional guitar-heavy pop sound, and so it says more in its range of artists and deep track selections than in its actual performances. The singers and bands Keene covers aren’t necessarily surprising, ranging from early Who, Rolling Stones and Donovan selections, through Big Star, Mink DeVille, Roxy Music and on to Echo and the Bunnymen and Guided By Voices. But the specific songs, drawn from singles, album sides and live recordings, are those of a connoisseur who can find sparkling gems among fields of even more brightly shining diamonds.
Reaching back to the Who’s long-playing debut My Generation, Keene picked Townshend’s brush-off, “Much Too Much,” tough, but not nearly as brutal as the Rolling Stones’ “Ride on Baby.” The latter was recorded in 1965, but held until the 1967 compilation Flowers, where it was buried at the end of side two, following a half-dozen Stones icons. It takes a dedicated fan to hear past the hits to the buried treasure, or in the case of the Bee Gees’ mostly hit-free Odessa to find the moody ballad “I Laugh in Your Face” leading off side four. The 1970s picks are similarly eclectic: “Have You Seen My Baby,” from the Flamin’ Groovies’ Teenage Head, Mink DeVille’s “Let Me Dream If I Want To” from the influential Live at CBGB’s, the understated “Guiding Light” from Television’s masterpiece Marquee Moon, “Out of the Blue” from Roxy Music’s pre-hiatus live album Viva! and “Nighttime” from Big Star’s 3rd.
Moving into the ’80s, Keene covers Echo and the Bunnymen’s non-charting third single, “The Puppet,” and finishes in the ’90s with Guided By Voices’ “Choking Tara.” Though each of the performances adds Keene’s trademark power-pop punch to the originals, the demo quality of the GBV original gets the biggest transformation here, with a fully fleshed-out arrangement of guitars, bass and drums. As noted, the individual  performances aren’t necessarily  revelatory, but they’re not meant to be; this is the Keene-variations, and it’s the collection as a whole that provides the thesis. What makes this work (as well as a lot of fun) are Keene’s finely-honed tastes and the power of his own sound to bring these songs under one umbrella. [©2013 Hyperbolium]