I would love to gather all of the music directors of so-called Classic Rock radio stations in the Roman Coliseum and turn the lions loose. I was around long before the term Classic Rock was even phrased and as big a fan of rock radio as there was and I learned to hate everything radio tried to do after big money came in with all of their ideas to make radio “better.” I suffered through a number of formats from the time of “Boss” radio to the present, the only one being worth a shit (to my mind) being Underground. Ah, the days of underground. I remember returning from the Army to Eugene and radio station KZEL and being floored with evening sets by The Wasted Potato (I think his name was Gary Parmentier) like War/Four Cornered Room, The Temptations/Masterpiece, and Funkadelic/Maggot Brain, back-to-back-to-back.
Before we get into the meat of this column, let’s talk Winterpills. I have been a fan since hearing their 2010 EP Tuxedo of Ashes and have followed them since. Their one album of covers, Echolalia, was good enough to make me toss aside my disdain of this current trend, their arrangements making up for the usual lack of creativity on most bands parts. No such problem here. Love Songs is an all-original triumph, Philip Price writing his best songs since Tuxedo, and the band is in A-1 shape.
Lots going on in music these days— Apple announcing their foray into streaming (I love the headlines such as “Apple May Save the Recording Industry”— I mean, what idiot thought that one up?) and the Brian Wilson biopic (My buddy Stan Twist says that if you are either a Brian Wilson or a Beach Boys fan, you won’t want to miss it) and there are lots of new albums to go over. And, as always, old ones too. But…
Joseph LeMay‘s album Seventeen Acres has been out how long? Three months? I wrote about it in an earlier DBAWIS column and have barely mentioned it since. I have to wonder why. I love some of the songs on that album and like everything about it. It is beautifully recorded, masterfully produced and mastered and, even more important, made up of outstanding songs. And yet I push it into the past. So I started thinking— how does that happen?
The Corona School of Writing, Weinhard’s Private Reserve, record labels (major and independent) and just about everyone I have ever really known. So I sit here quaffing the ice cold Weinhard, waiting for that writing buzz and wondering where I will go with this because I have no real idea where I am going, only where I have been. I have been lucky, lucky like I cannot believe, but not lucky of my own making. I have been surrounded by good people— no, people more than good— and it is time I pay tribute to those and those things which have made me who I am.
This is important. Please read carefully.
It’s coming! It’s almost here and you probably don’t even know it. Like that stealthy Sequestering thing the good ol’ boys slipped into the budget bill without anyone noticing, Sweet Relief is readying their third compilation album— on the sly, as it were. Don’t know anything about it? I’m not surprised. Producer/Engineer (and sometimes musician) Sheldon Gomberg has held the information close to his vest and the people at Sweet Relief (and Vanguard Records) are only on the cusp of letting the dogs out. But it’s coming. July 9th.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 