Life of Brion – The MacGyver of Rock

Fylgia.

That’s the word emblazoned on a plaque hanging up above the stage at The Swedish American Hall, upstairs from the Cafe Du Nord, here in San Francisco, where this past Saturday a lucky few of us experienced a rare San Francisco set by multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, composer and all around musical genius, Jon Brion.

As you may be aware, Jon Brion has written the scores and songs for films such as Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, I Heart Huckabees and Synecdoche, New York, among others. You may also be aware that he has produced and collaborated with a who’s who of contemporary songwriters, including Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Rhett Miller, Kanye West and Eels. He has only released one solo album, that I know of, which had the misleading title Meaningless, and was a key member of the influential and ephemeral power pop juggernaut that was The Grays, in collaboration with Jason Falkner, Buddy Judge and Dan McCarroll. They left only one album, Ro Sham Bo on Epic, before their four-headed monster split to follow four diverse paths, but they have retained a kind of mythical status among power pop aficionados as something of a Big Star for the 90’s pop rock crowd.

Brion, who rarely ventures out from the comfort of West Hollywood’s Largo Theatre, let alone out of L.A. itself, was up in these parts ostensibly to join one of his favourite bands, Of Montreal, the former Elephant 6 band fronted and masterminded by Kevin Barnes, who were playing at Oakland’s Fox Theatre on Friday. Having a free Saturday, and presumably having lost the revenue from missing his regular Friday gig back in L.A., Brion hastily put together a pick-up gig solo here in San Francisco.

Fylgia. I looked it up online, and according to one Norse dictionary of Deities, Fylgia is a Norse name for Guardian angel, a kind of guiding spirit who watches over souls.

How fitting, then, that Brion, whom I wouldn’t put past having looked it up himself, opened the show with a mildly bombastic and somewhat late-period Beatlesque  interpretation of George and Ira Gershwin’s jazz standard  “Someone To Watch Over Me.”  This being Jon Brion, the version had less to do with the Frank Sinatra number from Songs For Young Lovers and more in common with side two of Abbey Road. One of Brion’s favourite tricks is to create the sound of a full band on stage using live “loops,” brief sampled recordings, made on the spot, to which he adds a seemingly endless palette of “live overdubs” such as piano, rhythm and lead guitars and bass (actually low strung guitar), and any other odd or interesting sounds he can find in his onstage junkshop arsenal of musical hardware and software. There’s the Chamberlin, a kind of analog sampler from the 60’s, an old patch bay analog synthesizer up above the piano, and some toy instruments. Heck, there’s stuff up there that I didn’t even recognize.

I didn’t see a kitchen sink up there but believe me, if he had one, he’d make it sound like Pet Sounds. He may not be like the “most interesting man in the world” from the Dos Equis commercials, but he is certainly, The MacGyver of Rock.

Jon likes to work without a set-list and part of what makes his shows back at Largo so fascinating and theatrical is that snow-flake quality to his improvisations; oh sure he’s got a bag of tricks,(I mean, who doesnt?) but for two hours or so he is 100% in the moment, letting the muse or some errant glitches in the sound system, strike him. He, naturally, strikes back just as freely and even takes requests. Saturday in San Francisco was no different. In fact, it was remarkably close to the vibe of his L.A. residency, and he even shared with the audience that he saw this show as “a kind of dry run” for possibly taking the show out on a tour of selected cities.

Of his own material, he was happy to comply with fairly unadorned versions of fan requests for “Knock Yourself Out” the folkie acoustic guitar and harmonica ditty from I Heart Huckabees, “Not Ready Yet” a song he co-wrote with Mark Everett of Eels, who recorded a much louder version on their Beautiful Freak album. He even played my shouted request for “Ruin My Day,” a shoulda beena hit from Meaningless.

There were some surprises, at least for me as I hadn’t seen him in a few years. One new thing was his use of musical video clips, fashioned into loops, that he jammed with in real time. A Jamaican rhythm section loop was overlayed with a film of a violinist and a video of Ravi and Anoushka Shankar on classical Indian instruments, over which he played a whole other song on the piano.
On the lower tech end of the spectrum Brion became a silent movie house  pianna player to a Felix The Cat short Felix Goes West, over which he tinkled a medley of “California, Here We Come” which morphed into Nirvana’s “Lithium,” all in that traditional olde tyme piano tempo and style.

I’ll never forget one night in Largo, many years ago, when Jon was taking requests. A shy figure approached the stage with his request jotted down on a folded up slip of paper. That man was Elliott Smith. His request was Cheap Trick’s “Voices.”  Since then, Brion has recorded the song in his own inimitable style (it closes out Meaningless.) At the end of the night in San Francisco, I shouted – along with others – for him to play another request. My pick was “Voices” (privately in honour of the late Elliott Smith), no shy slip of paper for me though, and Brion complied with an 8 to 10 minute finale during which he looped and layered – building up from piano to full spectrum – adding everything from video samples of theremin masters and a Mexican family fiddle band.

It was a miracle to watch, even better to hear, and wherever those Norse gods in the ceiling of the Swedish American Hall were, I’m sure they watched over this unique night of music and smiled like Vikings in Valhalla.

Fylgia!!

Elton John Hipster Appreciation Update – Where we are today.

The Elton John Hipness Continuum, part 1.

About ten or so years ago, none of my rock snob friends or erstwhile hipster pals would even acknowledge Elton John as a true force of songwriting brilliance. So I was amused to read, recently, that the meme seems to be shifting today and now Elton’s first few albums, Elton John, 11-17-70, Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across The Water and Honky Chateau are considered to be the GOOD Elton albums,  made before he alledgedly jumped the shark. Extra hipster points awarded to Elton’s Friends and Empty Sky, just as deep Beach Boys fans tend to overvalue Sunflower or Wild Honey, merely because your parents ignored them.

Now, the meme reads that Elton “lost the plot” on “indulgent” works like Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.

Crazy, right?

So here’s what I’m thinking.

At this rate, in about five or ten years, Piano Player, Yellow Brick, Capt. Fantastic, heck even Caribou, will be upgraded to “Golden Age of Elton”.

In about ten to fifteen years, songs like “Grow Some Funk of Your Own,” “Island Girl” and “The Bitch Is Back” will be revered.

Maybe in 20 years, we’ll be praising “Nikita” and “Sad Songs Say So Much.”

On second thought, maybe that’s too much to ask. For now.

PS: This piece is merely addressing “rock snob” ideas of what a good Elton John album is. I already think Piano Player and Yellowbrick Road are classic.

Coffee with Ms. Patricia Lee Smith

At this stage in my writing career, having spoken to a heck of a lot of rock stars and otherwise artistic legends (particularly for my current Todd Rundgren studio history) I should be well past the tongue tied and sweaty, Chris Farley Show moments (“You’re awesome!”). But then again, maybe I shouldn’t be in a rush to be so inured to the appreciation of actual human beings in my midst who have made actual artistic contributions that affected the lives of real people. I say all this as a preamble because I just had a fan gawk moment as I sat down to interview Patti Smith in a Greenwich Village cafe.

Patti Smith by © Annie Leibovitz (used without permission)

Before she even arrived at the cafe, at which she had suggested to meet me, I was apprehensive. I had arrived a few minutes early to stake out a quiet place in which to record my interview (for the aforementioned Todd Rundgren: Sounds of the Studio, he produced Wave for the Patti Smith Group) and noticed a hand written sign that said “NO LAPTOPS.” I was in trouble. I record all my interviews these days directly onto my MacBook Pro, with Sony mic going in through an iMic USB adapter, and Apple’s GarageBand software. I don’t have a backup plan, and since I never told Patti ahead of time about my method, she couldn’t have warned me. I totally get it, this is an old beatnik place and laptops would just yuppify and wreck the ambience. But I’m screwed. She’s running a few minutes late so I tell the staff of my dilemma.

“I’m supposed to interview Patti Smith here in a few minutes,” I tell the polite waitress. “But I record onto my laptop, can you bend the rules for 30 minutes.”

“I know Patti,” says the waitress, “she comes here all the time, but the boss is very strict about the rules so I can’t let you do that.”

Patti’s not here yet. Sweat. Heartbeat. Panic. A distinct need for Pepto-Bismol.

Then I see Patti walking up the street. I walk toward her and while she’s greeting the staff I cut in and introduce myself, and start explaining my situation.

“You record on a laptop?” she says, looking geniunely puzzled that anyone would do that.

I apologize and start the self-flagellation, which in hindsight seems entirely appropriate given the Catholic imagery in her songs.

“I feel like a dork!” I blurt out, immediately regretting the poor choice of words. Me, a wordsmith and her, Patti Smith, and all I can come up with is “dork.”  Now I’m really racing. And I haven’t even ordered a coffee yet.

“You can do it,” says that manager. “But sit in the back area, and don’t be very long.”

We’re on. I rush us back to the table and start opening up my MacBook and hooking up the mic. Quick sound check. There’s a very loud refrigerator in the background, but nothing I can do about that now. The waitress turns down the radio though, which is nice.

The Wave album cover by Mapplethorpe.

And so I begin.

“First Patti,” I blurt out in a very loud and panicked tone, and way too rushed to be comprehended,  “I want to say thanks for doing this. Let’s not waste your precious time. If you don’t mind, I want to go right back to when you first met Todd…”

Patti looks concerned. She stops me, cold.

“Can I just tell you,” she leans in, “that you’re speaking very loudly, try to keep your voice lower.”
Now I’m freaked out that I’m freaked out. But also very thankful that she had the sense to calm me down before I went any further, or any faster. Her note to me wasn’t a rebuke or put down, it was maternal, like she just wanted me to not be in any distress, not to mention give her any. I took a deep breath. I smiled, quietly apologized and put my head down. Looking up, I knew it would be okay to calmly begin again.

“Thanks,” I said, “I guess it’s partly because, although I’ve interviewed a lot of ‘famous’ folks, not everyone of them is such an iconic artistic force…you know?” In a most polite, and self-effacing way, she did.

“So why don’t you tell me how you met Todd,” I began. Again.

And off she went. I had hoped for 30 minutes. I warned her at the 50 minute mark that she could stop if she needed to.  She generously, and at times, excitedly recounted the whole story. Every detail. At 75 minutes, I turned off the recorder and thanked her for her time. For her art. And for calming me the fuck down. She told me to contact her if I needed anything more and went off into the Village, down the streets where Bobby Neuwirth had once told a young bookstore clerk named Patricia Lee Smith that her poems were great and that she should write songs.

I smiled to myself at the history in these streets and how I’d been lucky enough to intersect with some of it.

I love my job.

My Love Explodes….or You CAN Get The Buttons These Days!

Rare Dukes Of Stratosphear Unearthed in Victorian Archeological Dig Near Swindon!

I recently received in the mail, from Andy  Partridge’s Ape Records, the new CD reissues of the Dukes of Stratosphear records,  the introductory EP, 25 O’Clock and its full-length album followup, Psonic Psunspot. The Dukes were (and in some dimension, still ARE) of course Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory of XTC with Dave’s brother Ian on drums, although they were never – at the time – credited as themselves, rather as “Sir John Johns” (Andy), “The Red Curtain” (Colin), “Lord Cornelius Plum” (Dave) and “E.I.E.I. Owen” (Ian). The album was produced by XTC’s producer John Leckie, under the name Swami Anand Nagara – although according to the liner notes for the new edition, this may have been his actual adopted name at the time. Of course, I had the original vinyl Dukes releases when they first came out in 1985 and 1987 respectively. Once reissued on a single CD as Chips From The Chocolate Fireball, these new issues return them to two separate products, albeit with value added features which make them highly desirable to XTC / Dukes fans. For one thing, they are now hardback “gatefold” affairs with full colour booklets and personal liner notes by Partridge, Moulding and Gregory.

Oh and now they are out of the velvet closet, and billed accordingly: XTC as The Dukes of Stratosphear.

I should point out at this point that I ordered and PAID for these reissues, no rock hack freebie here. Yet, I tell you it was an HONOUR to pay money for these finely packaged, digitally remastered gems of sonic mind candy.

And there are bonus tracks!  25 O’Clock now comes with demos for “Bike Ride To The Moon,” “My Love Explodes,” What In The World?” and the title track, plus two left over demos for never-released songs “Nicely Nicely Jane” and “Susan Revovling” plus EXTRA studio recordings of the unreleased songs “Black Jewelled Serpent Of Sound [Radio Caroline Edit]“, “Open A Can of Human Beans” and “Tin Toy Clockwork Train.”

Psonic Psunspot adds in the original demo for “Vanishing Girl” which was called “No One At Home” at the time, “Little Lighthouse,” “Collideascope,” “Shiny Cage,” “Brainiac’s Daughter” and “The Affiliated”.

Nice to get the first-person accounts from Partridge and  Moulding who dreamed up the songs themselves, but thankfully there are, over both releases (and really you should buy them both) detailed process notes by the projects MVP Dave Gregory, under the title: Stratosgear: How The Sounds Were Found (parts 1 & 2). And always the visual thinker, Mr. Partridge also writes essays about the cover art for each respective release.

There’s a line from one of the Duke’s songs, spoken by an old age pensioner “You can’t get the buttons these days…”  It’s the kind of audio clip art that matches the cut n paste Victoriana of 25 O’Clock’s album cover, itself an homage to Cream’s Disraeli Gears cover. Well, if you order both CD’s from Ape Records, you can get (for a limited time, I believe) THE BUTTONS. That’s right a set of six Dukes buttons, including “THE DEAF HEAR” seen on the cover of the EP.

You CAN get the buttons these days! (for a limited time anyway!)

I’ll be writing in another venue about the music itself, but suffice to say this is psychedelic pastiche music and you’ll thrill to these great nuggets of mind-altering and mind-altered pop, playing spot-the-influence from The Kinks and Syd’s Pink Floyd to Love or Brian Wilson.  Also worth noting, these albums, intended as psonic pside projects, so reaffirmed the band’s nascent interest in the genre that they became psignposts leading XTC to let their phreak phlag phly on subsequent “real band” releases, notably songs like “Grass” “Earn Enough For Us” or “Season Cycle” on the Todd Rundgren produced Skylarking, and just check out the cover art from the one after that, Oranges And Lemons:

And we leave you with a trippy video for The Dukes’ “Mole From The Ministry”

Music Shows I Like: Spectacle: Elvis Costello with….and Live From Daryl’s House

As you know if you’ve read my stuff, I loves me some music TV shows. Recently I posted a bit about the whole TV music thing, and I touched briefly on Spectacle, Elvis Costello’s Sundance Channel series (co-produced with CTV in Canada) and today I want to elaborate on it and also share some thoughts about a web series, Live From Daryl’s House with Daryl Hall.

I have now watched, I believe, every episode of Spectacle: Elvis Costello with… and I have to say it is now appointment television for me. Imagine Inside The Actor’s Studio, but about composers and songwriters, crossed with an element of Later with Jools Holland. Sometime Elvis shows his inexperience as a “presenter” but I rather like the idea of him as soul revue barker at the intro of most episodes and he’s gotten increasingly more comfortable with the “blue cards”, so I think he’s tightening up as he goes along. It helps that the sporadically used backup band features Pete Thomas, Davey Faragher and sometimes even Bill Frisell or Allen Toussaint. Highlights for me this season, the Police episode where EC gets to interview Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland and Sting individually and then as a group, before jamming out a sort of medley of white reggae compositions “Walking On The Moon” and it’s stylistic cousin “Watching The Detectives”. I loved Lou Reed, backed by Barenaked Ladies Kevin Hearn AND Imposters’s Steve Nieve, doing “Perfect Day.” I loved the “guitar pull” featuring a Bluebird style round up of John Mellencamp, Kris Kristofferson, Norah Jones and Rosanne Cash. I was surprised by the Renee Fleming opera episode, which also featured grand diva Rufus Wainwright!

The episode with Herbie Hancock reaffirmed my suspicions that not only is Hancock one of the greatest living jazz composers, he is also one hell of sweet guy with a huge open mind and heart. Just felt that in the playing and the chat with EC.  The She & Him episode , which also featured Jakob Dylan and Jenny Lewis, didn’t work as well for me for some reason, but I understood why EC did that. The Elton John episode was pretty cool, and he’s a producer of Spectacle too, which came in handy when EC bailed on interviewing his own wife Diana Krall for a really warm episode. The biggest success of the season, if I may be so bold, was the hour with Smokey Robinson. At the Apollo! THERE is a legend. All the hits, all the insider stories. Smokey’s voice is, well, smokier, but he’s still got it.  I would love it if there’s a season two and if EC could use his infinite charm to corral Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell and David Byrne. He should also consider Ron Sexsmith, Neil Finn and Nick Lowe. Anyway, Spectacle is great and I wish them the best with it.

Live From Daryl’s House is another great idea. It’s exactly what it says it is, a musician or songwriter -not particulary well known either – comes over to Daryl Hall’s house where he’s all set up to play and film, with T Bone Wolk (you may remember he was the bass player from the SNL pit band in the 90’s when GE Smith was there, also a Hall & Oates alumnus). They talk, they rehearse, they eat, and they  play. Daryl joins in on the guests songs, then the guests, such as KT Tunstall, Matt Nathanson and Nick Lowe, join in on some of Hall’s and Hall and Oates songs, which are amazingly (and perhaps surprisingly to rock snobs) durable.

T Bone Wolk, Daryl Hall, Nick Lowe at Daryl's House

A fave moment was T-Bone Wolk and Hall joining Nick Lowe on “Cruel To Be Kind”, and KT Tunstall giving it a little Bonnie Raitt-ish grit on “Kiss On My List”. This is one to watch. I love that Daryl is going out with newer artists, shows he’s still listening and how can you not admire that. Plus he’s gotta be the best rock soul singer on the planet. Suggestions, do one with Todd Rundgren. And John Legend. (but not John Mayer).

Here’s Nick Lowe with Daryl and T bone doing “Cruel To Be Kind”

Japan just pulled my ear…

I was just over in Tokyo between Christmas and New Years, and like so many gai-jin folks I get a kick out of the way English words and names crop up in the pop culture there. It’s probably immature or even politically incorrect, but I love a place  where they have a successful group with a name like Mr. Children, seen in this Tokyo HMV shop window:

Anyway, I’ve been back for three weeks now, but online I just heard a great single by a band called Winnie,

A Jpeg of Winnie (not Winnipeg).

They have plenty of great titles, like “Ruby Tube Tail,” “Girls Like New Softly,” “Swing Teenage Records Stain” and “We’re Good Five Sounds Enough,” from their EP entitled Restock This Falling Wrong. Their new  single, and video, is called “First Class Speed of Light” from their new mini-album Headquarter.

Since I don’t read kanji, there is very little I could tell you about the four-piece Jpop (J-powerpop?) band, other than the fact that they have hooky songs and are comprised of three guys and one girl, and that the lead vocals seem to be shared by the front guy guitarist Okuji and the girl guitarist Lori. But thanks to their website, I know Lori and Okuji’s stage setups (???)

Anyway, that’s all for now. Have a nice day. And may happiness come to you in the first class speed of light…

DVR and Me, A Followup.

NOTE: A while back I posted a short musing on the fact that I was using my DVR to capture music on TV, and in that way it was feeling a lot like an iPod. An editor asked me to write up a longer version for a magazine but it got lost in the haze, or maybe it was Axl finally releasing that Chinese Autocracy album that bumped it…whatever.  I humbly share it with you, my selective audience here at the Pulmyears Music Blog.
My DVR Is Like A Big Clunky iPod
These days, interactive TV brings music to my ears…

There was a time in my life when my friends and I were like musical detectives.
By night, we’d comb the clubs and concert halls in pursuit of local bands and touring headliners we’d read about in the NME, Trouser Press or New York Rocker. By day, we’d hang out at the three best record stores in my native Toronto; chatting with Randy over at Records On Wheels, Garwood at Sam The Record Man, or over to the Record Peddler to be humiliated by one of their cold, High Fidelity-ish clerks.

“XTC?,” the weasel in the black Joy Division T-shirt once snapped back, sarcastically, “I don’t think we have it. I’m not really into that lightweight, quirky British pop.”

That stung, but back then it was all in a day’s work and, hazing or not, we always found the time to find the tunes.

These days, I still manage to stay fairly current in my listening, but as a grown up, I’ve discovered there’s more to life than clubs and record stores. You’d think that as a professional music writer my whole day would be spent chasing down great songs and cool bands but in reality, my day’s filled with a lot of mundane tasks like tracking down publicists, recording interviews and then transcribing them. Plus, I have a life now. I frequently write and play my own music and besides happily sharing some quality time with my wife, I’ve become addicted to political television from the Daily Show through Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and (moreso during the run up to the 08 Presidential Election) the Sunday morning News forum shows.

Come to think of it, the one thing I didn’t do so much in the music detective days was stay home and watch television. Aside from the rare guest shots by Elvis Costello or Talking Heads on Saturday Night Live or Tom Snyder’s wacky Tomorrow, TV was the last place I’d look for new music.

Sure I had a VCR, but in those early days of time-shifting, the technology was dodgy; the videocassettes were bulky and unreliable and you could only record 120 minutes at a time. So, forget it. There was barely enough time to eat or sleep, let alone time to waste in front of the set.

But lately, my Digital Video Recorder has changed everything. And with its help, my television has now become my unlikely ally in the quest for new music. Recently, while scrolling through my queue of recorded broadcasts by Tom Petty, The Raconteurs, My Morning Jacket and Zappa Plays Zappa, I had an epiphany — my DVR is just a big, clunky iPod.

Well, not literally. I mean, the TV / DVR combo is too cumbersome to drag onto most public transportation, you can’t make playlists or shuffle tracks and it’s still easier to hook up an iPod to the car stereo. So on a pure volume-of-songs and portability basis, my iPod is safe as my in-pocket sound carrier of choice. But in the realm of home entertainment, my DVR rocks a big sound and big picture that, bolstered by a few premium cable channels, provides a constantly replenishing music source and I have fallen in love with its fully searchable and digitally recordable technology.

Scanning the schedules one day last year I noticed that Wilco were the upcoming musical guest on SNL, Liam Finn was on Letterman and Martha Wainwright and Bloc Party were on Conan. I set record and watched them all at my leisure, zipping straight ahead to the musical guest and past all the actors and authors plugging their movies and books. The talent bookers of the late night shows have hastened my ability to get snap shot takes on certain UK flavors of the month like the Ting Tings or Hot Chip, both of whom I first saw on Jimmy Kimmel Live, neither of whom I really got into. On the other hand, I was happy to discover Bon Iver or…

…Fleet Foxes on Conan.

Fleet Foxes on Conan O'Brien

…or Glasvegas on Late Night with David Letterman

Glasvegas on David Letterman

Though I still troll the clubs and record stores when I can, these days I also scan the TV schedules for musical guests, aided by web resources such as the Late Night TV Page (http://www.interbridge.com/lineups.html) or VH1’s Rock on TV site (http://www.vh1.com/artists/rock_on_tv/).

Living in Berkeley, I’m also well served by multiple Bay Area PBS stations, that enable me to bag multiple episodes of Austin City Limits, Soundstage, plus a Les Paul documentary and a 1977 concert by The Who. One night last year, for example I was thrilled to discover that one PBS outlet were airing an Austin City Limits with Kings of Leon in a double bill with Texan psychedelic pioneer Roky Erickson while another had the ACL with Arcade Fire. Dirty secret: I routinely fast forward through those long PBS pledge drive segments, but I swear I’ll make a donation someday soon!

The ever-expanding cableverse has only widened my recording options. For instance, the new HD channel Palladia regularly broadcasts Yahoo Studio Concerts and big festival shows from the UK while Live From Abbey Road, on Sundance Channel, recently aired intimate sessions by Brian Wilson, Teddy Thompson and The Kooks. And I just snapped up the Elton John Goodbye Yellowbrick Road episode of Classic Albums from VH1 Classic.

And lately, Elvis Costello’s Spectacle (seen here on the Sundance Channel) provided a few great moments of Elvis with Lou Reed (above), Rufus Wainwright, The Police and Sir Elton again.

Back in my teens, I never would have guessed that TV would one day become a partner in my quest for musical variety. The only problem now is, with so much music on my DVR queue, I barely have enough time to watch it all.

Can somebody please invent a machine for that?

The Day The Blog Stood Still – Klaatu Exclusive!

I don’t usually do this but I’m going to share the entire transcript of an interview I did last month with Dee Long, original member of the Canadian prog rock group Klaatu. There are THREE reasons for me doing this. First, some of this interview is incorporated into a piece that is running today on Crawdaddy.com about bands who sometimes sound like other bands, in which I discuss Klaatu’s Beatle’s controversy of the seventies and compare and contrast it with a recent Beach Boys-ish recording by South Carolina band, The Explorer’s Club. Here’s a link to that piece on Crawaddy.

The second reason is that  Klaatu is the character that Michael Rennie played in the original 1951 Sci-Fi thriller, The Day The Earth Stood Still, which has been remade and updated with Keanu Reeves in the Klaatu role. So it’s sort of timely to post a story about the band that wrote “Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft”.

Third. I’ve been busy with some things, and haven’t written a blog in a while so why not release something from the archives?

A PULMYEARS EXCLUSIVE: MY CONVERSATION WITH KLAATU’S DEE LONG (Unedited) Note: for more information on Klaatu or Dee Long check out www.deelong.com.

PAUL MYERS: Was there any conscious attempt, while you were making 347 EST, to “do a Beatles” or to infuse your songwriting or arranging with pastiche elements from the Fabs?

DEE LONG: There’s no doubt that we were, and are huge Beatles fans. When we started on the first album, there was just John Woloschuck and I. Terry Draper joined after a few songs had been recorded, one of which was “Sub Rosa Subway”.

That song in particular was definitely an attempt to sound like the Beatles from the “Penny Lane” era, at least I saw it that way. I mean, John sings with a British accent, although he doesn’t have one normally! All the songs we did that had a Beatles influence were written by John. “Little Neutrino” or “True Life Hero” do not sound much like the Beatles. But in the early days people preferred to ignore that minor detail.

I think one other big reason we sometimes sounded a lot like the Fab Four was our approach to recording. George Martin and  John Lennon were always experimenting with new ways to record music. They were the first to put the microphone inside the Kick drum, and first to use EQ and compression as effects, or as part of their sound. The engineers at Abbey Lane were appalled when they started turning dials way past were they were meant to be turned.

Klaatu also spent a lot of time experimenting with different recording techniques, and layering many overdubs. After all there were three of us, and most of our songs had a lot more than three parts going on. Brass overdubs, and string quartets were not at all unusual on a Klaatu album, as on a Beatles album.

The song “Around the Universe in 80 Days” has over 100 tracks mixed, and remixed down to stereo. The odd vocal background is a tape loop of me singing a single “A” note, looped between 2 tape recorders with the tape running across the room, and played back through the first hand-wired Eventide Harmonizer prototype which came with an optional keyboard. Since I could only record one note at a time, I built the large chords one track at a time, then mixed that down to stereo, and “flew” the result back in to the master 24 track tape by running two machines at once and pushing play and record at just the right moment.

In Logic Audio the same thing would be a breeze to do with the built in sampler, but this was the first heady days of the digital recording revolution. When we first heard vocals through a harmonizer it was a revelation! Similar to when the Beatles first heard their mixes in stereo. Apparently they were so transfixed by the sound, they listened over and over again in disbelief.

PM: How did the “Klaatu Is Really The Beatles” thing come about?

DEE LONG: It started with an article by Steve Smith written for a Rhode Island newspaper. I spoke to him for the first time a few years ago, and he said it was the one and only time he ever had an article published in a newspaper! He had pulled a copy of our first album from the delete bin (yes it was in the delete bin only 9 months after release) and on listening wondered if this could be the Beatles recording under another name. At the time people were craving a Beatles reunion, there were no names on the album cover, the songs had a Beatles vibe to them (or at least some of them did) and he also thought the face of the Sun on the cover was possibly those of Paul and John merged together. He thought this was a fun conspiracy idea, and revealed quite a few other “clues” in his article. Much to his surprise, the article was picked up by media across North America, and then spread to the rest of the World. Places like Australia, Germany, France and Brazil also decided to believe. The album sold very well for months, and would have done a lot better if Capitol had enough copies to go around. They had to scramble to print more. Klaatu was in Britain at the time recording orchestral overdubs for our second album, “Hope”.

In Australia they even used voice detection to prove conclusively that Paul McCartney was singing “Sub Rosa Subway” on the album. When we found out what was going on, we had no desire to change direction, and reveal our identities. That may have been a mistake, but our only intent was to make music that could stand for itself.

PM: At first, your identities were kept out of the press. Was that a conscious move to neither confirm or deny the rumors? Was it all Frank Davies’ idea?

DEE LONG: It was our idea, not Frank’s. We felt at the time we wanted to record, but not to tour. We wanted to make music but not have to dress like “Rock Stars” and pretend to be someone we were not. We also thought it was kind of cool, to have our music on the radio, and not have to play the big game. Capitol even signed us to a three album deal without knowing our names! We signed through a lawyer acting on our behalf, and all songs were listed as written by pseudonyms, we didn’t have our names linked to the project at any time, except that we had to register those pseudonyms or we couldn’t be paid our royalties. That’s how we were finally exposed, someone looked up the names in the library of records in the US, and found our real names.

In the meantime Capitol continued to tell everyone that we were NOT the Beatles, and that “Klaatu is Klaatu”.

PM: Was the first album helped or hindered by all the publicity?

DEE LONG: That is hard to say for sure, I figure that without the publicity the album would have remained in the delete bin, the second album would have followed it into obscurity, and the third might never have been made.

As it turned out we made it all the way to five albums, with declining sales from one to the next. People were angry and felt they had been made fools of. Same with the DJs and radio people who felt they had been given the run around. In our defense, we never intended to fool anyone, but we were still glad to at least have made an impact of some kind. We probably have more fans today than ever before.

PM: I’ve read that you were working on Hope when the Beatles thing hit. How did it feel to be working on your next album while this “story” broke?  Did it encourage the band to keep the Beatlesque elements or to consciously try and tamp them down? Was it a good thing or a bad thing in terms of how you wrote and recorded your stuff?

DEE LONG: To me it seemed like a great laugh, and acknowledgement that we had created something worthwhile. To be compared to the Beatles even a little was a great honor. When we returned from Britain the secretary at Toronto Sound handed us a stack of photo-copied newspaper articles a few feet high. It was a lot of fun reading what was going on, people were really excited! The basic tracks, and orchestral parts for “Hope” were already recorded, and most certainly contained many Beatle style elements. We did not change direction at all, but rather felt it was encouraging that we were making music people wanted to hear, even if for the wrong reasons.

That album was complete a few months later, and sent to Capitol. They decided to hold if for a few months, since the first album was still selling well. After living with our second album for a few weeks, we all agreed it was not finished yet. In fact it was really boring! We went back into the studio for months, and repaired and replaced and enhanced the tracks. We even went so far as to lift some of the orchestra parts off the tape and drop them back in to repair major timing errors, and sometimes tuning errors. The result was a much more exciting album, and if we had not had the extra time to get it right, it would have been released in it’s original form, and likely never been seen nor heard again.

PM: What was the best thing about the whole controversy?

DEE LONG: Selling a million albums in a few months.
Plus the enjoyable experience of knowing people were getting a kick out of it.

PM: What was the worst thing?

DEE LONG: Not selling a million albums ever again!
And of course never gaining the media’s attention again, at least not to anywhere near the same degree. I think if we had come out early on and announced our identities, it would only have shortened our 15 minutes of fame.

PM: Klaatu made several eclectic and progressive pop records that didn’t sound like The Beatles at all. Why do you think that the Beatles thing has endured in some music fans minds?

DEE LONG: There’s no doubt most people wanted to believe. It’s now far too late for the Beatles ever to return, but I too would have been really happy back then to see them reunite. To all those who were fooled, I humbly apologize that we weren’t the Beatles! I wish we had been.

PM: Could something like the Klaatu / Beatles thing happen today, with the internet and digital underground movements? What advice would you give a new band in terms of incorporating their influences?

DEE LONG: It’s hard to imagine something similar happening today. I suppose in a way Kiss and other bands who hide or obscure there identities for a time, have something in common with us. But they always come forward eventually, and there’s no one in music today iconic enough to cause such a large reaction if they were to return to the music scene. Maybe if Elvis returned, for real, but I don’t see that happening either.

As to advice for new bands, as I say in one of my songs on my most recent solo CD, “Take my advice, ‘cause I’m not using it”.

I find MOST music I hear these days to be derivative of something from earlier, greater bands and artists. So many U2 clones, Nirvana clones, Stones clones, and whatever that thing they call R&B is these days, stop it! It sucks.

If a new artist or band wants to make a real impact, play what you feel, and use all the influences you want from the music you truly love, but first and foremost make it original, and make it your OWN sound. I haven’t purchased music in decades, but the last thing I bought was a Jimi Hendrix CD, one of the most unique sounding artists of all time. As far as I’m concerned if I ever made the mistake of buying a “Nickleback” CD, I would want my nickel back!

©2008 Paul Myers.

(portions of Mr. Long’s answers appear in the Crawdaddy.com article Pastiche Perfect: Klaatu Vs. The Explorer’s Club.)

Conjunction Junction – Andy Partridge Edition

Hey there folks. I’ve been off the blog for a week or so, you know, post-election celebrations, post-Prop-8 commiserations, etc. But mainly, I’ve been writing for a living. And among the projects that I’m working on is a big book about a big music producer. And for one of the chapters in that, I had the pleasure of speaking with all three members of XTC, who had one of their best albums produced by said producer. More on that later.

My conversation with XTC’s Andy Partridge, an early musical hero of mine, was convivial and detailed. I was pleased, and frustrated, to note that he has the same singular lack of focus, and ability to digress in conversation, that I do. Needless to say a splendid time was had by all.

Among these digressions, out of the blue, Andy started telling me how likes to run band names together, to create new hybrid names – a game that those of you he read my blog regularly (and thank you for that) will recognize as Conjunction Junction (see earlier entries in my Archives). In mid-conversation,  Andy grabbed his book and shared a few of his own. “I’m always making these lists,” he told me. So I asked him if I could share a short sampling of his current hybrids.

Here, then, is the Andy Partridge Edition of Conjunction Junction. Our first ever Celebrity Edition!

Andy’s List.
Alanis Morrissey
Bing Crosby Stills Nash & Will Young
Paul Weller-Fitzgerald
Fleet Samantha Foxes
Mahavishnu Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Chaka Can
Richard Claydermantronix
Gwar.E.M.
Randy Neu! Man
“And my new favourite…”

Steely Dana (“Dana was a really anodyne Irish kind of cabaret / folk singer from the seventies.”)

“The idea,” says Andy, “is to put somebody quite reasonable with somebody really awful and you make this kind of musical hybrid that you’d never want to see.”

Thank you for that takeaway Mr. Partridge. Perhaps we’ll be hearing from other musical celebrities in the future.

Another Place To Read My Stuff…Crawdaddy.

Just thought I’d give you a heads up that I’ve been writing stuff for Crawdaddy online, which is related to the great Crawdaddy magazine founded by Paul Williams (not the P. Williams who wrote “You And Me Against The World” FYI).  Their main page is HERE.

A couple of weeks back, I had the cover feature story about SLOAN.

This week, I contributed a piece about an obscure XTC side project called Explode Together for Crawdaddy’s Crate Digger feature, which spotlights under appreciated albums from the past. I have a few more coming in the next month, so check in with them often.

I posted a JPEG teaser of the XTC piece (below)…but here’s a link to read the whole thing.