Post-Last-Minute News

Since posting this issue, Number 19, of our newsletter, many of the artists reported on below have been in the news again. (It is now October 3, 2004.)  For instance, we ran a later item in connection with Maybe Baby's announcement that Jennifer Kimball was pregnant. It seems to me that Kimball would have been due sometime this summer (summer of 2004), but we haven't heard any further word.

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Also since this issue came out, Deb Talan's group, The Weepies, has released a debut recording, Happiness (CD, www.theweepies.com, 2003), and is presently on an ambitious national tour. To see our review of the Weepies disc, just follow this link:

www.reocities.com/nemsnewz/news/0084.htm#tw

Or scroll down this page for an item about Deb Talan's solo release.

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Since sending this issue, Derrick Semler has won a Bob Dylan look-alike/sound-alike contest sponsored by Riverwalk Records of Montpelier, Vermont. For a bit more information, visit the Brief Items section toward the bottom of the Web page at the end of the following link:

www.reocities.com/nemsnewz/news/0083.htm

Post-Last-Minute News Compiled by Alan Lewis

In 1965, John Cooke of the Charles River Valley Boys went to California; and Jim Field, who was doing some schooling in Cambridge, took his place. Along with Field came the Beatles' "I've Just Seen a Face" from the far superior American version of Rubber Soul. The success of that number was immediate, and the recording of Beatle Country soon followed.

"I've Just Seen a Face" leads off this amazing disc. Bluegrass traditionalist Joe Val sounds as though he was born to play the Beatles. Some cuts are wonderfully puzzling. For instance, why do early passages of "Paperback Writer" come across like a classic country train song? And who chose the sound effects for "Yeller Submarine"  -  an early automobile horn and a rifle shot, as well as a Caribbean band? But it's all great fun.

It can be eerie listening to the mandolin and banjo carry these familiar melodies or echo famous George Harrison guitar leads, and Siggins banjo picking on "I Feel Fine" is essential listening. "Help!" features great instrumental breaks, including a smooth guest fiddle solo and playful fills by Buddy Spicher, while Craig Wingfield's dobro marvelously colors "I Saw Her Standing There." "Ticket To Ride" is barely mid-tempo until it kicks into a kind of "Ticket To Ride Breakdown." On the slightly melancholy performance of "Norwegian Wood," these musicians sound like a throwback to some Victorian stringband.

Highlights are everywhere; but the best track is an instrumental performance of "She's a Woman," which is nailed by Val and Siggins and is powered by Everett A. Lilly's jitterbugging bass.

Beatle Country by the Charles River Valley Boys is hillbilly magic.

Alan Lewis

Copyright © 2003 by Alan Lewis.

All rights reserved.

Used with permission.

Rounder Records Beatle Country catalog entry

Two Reviews of One Classic Album

The Barbarians

by Nancy Neon and Alan Lewis

The Barbarians Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl Sundazed Records The album opens with the novelty nugget Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl?. This is a garage anthem and it's totally catchy. The song lyrically could be a double edged sword. Yet instead of being self effacing, it makes fun of squares who would ask the gender question. The Barbarians do crowd pleasers that are evidently favorites of their own because it has gotta be a labor of love to tackle Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man" and "House Of The Rising Sun" made famous by The Animals. The combo has to be confident because these songs will automatically be measured against Dylan and The Animals. The Don Ho Fan Club no doubt appreciated "Marie Elena" which sounds more influenced by Paradise Hawaiian Style than by South Of The Border. The Barbarians pick up the pace with "Bo Diddley". They are revved up and punked out. Whereas as Bo Diddley, the man himself, delivers the deliberate beat, creating his own trademark groove, the Barbarians are manic like Bo tanked up on espresso. Chuck Berry's "Memphis", which became a trademark to Johnny Rivers, chugs along at a cool pace. "What The New Breed Say" is a great stomper. "Take It Or Leave It" sounds like "Hang On Sloppy". The song is a combination of raw, primal garage punk and melodic, harmonic romanticism. "I'll Keep On Seeing You" carries on the swoon appeal of "Take It Or Leave It". "Linguica" is fast paced with a Latin feel. This one is a love song to sausage. On "Susie Q.", the band puts their primal Barbarian stamp on this classic. It is primordial punk with clean, low amplified guitars high in the mix. The Ray Charles' number, "I've Got A Woman" comes across fast and raw, but very white bread compared to the original. With a more soulful vocal and ballsier guitars, this would have had more impact. "Moulty" tells the story of how Moulty lost his hand and how he found the strength to carry on. It is a pep talk backed by The Hawks who later became The Band. My favorite is the Rolling Stones' flavored "Hey Little Bird" which is written by Tommy Kaye. Moulty's singing is pure snotty punk. There's a natural fuzz bass, created by overamplification and speaker distortion. "You've Got To Understand" sounds like "Hey Little Bird", quality wise. The band sounds more confident. The vocals are stronger and pushed more to the forefront as is Moulty's understated drumming which blends well in this mix. Strangely enough, these last two cuts which I feel are greatly superior to the rest were recorded first. Nothing in the liner notes accounts for why the band lost impact over the next year. If you want more Moulty, he has two cuts on Varulven's Rock and Roll Anthology #20--"Rock 'N' Roll Man" and "Only In My World". Check www.varulven.com to contact label mogul, Joe Vig. Nancy Neon Copyright © 2003 by Nancy Neon. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

The Barbarians Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl (CD,  Sundazed Music SC-6153,  2000) The Barbarians started performing at Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1964 and in October played the T.A.M.I. Show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The 1965 feature film of that event was a rock milestone. On record, the group had its greatest success with a nasty little single, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl." One beauty of this disc is that the band left the recording studio with an album that's not so very far removed from its garage-rock origins. You can take the boy out of the garage, but apparently you can't take the garage out of the Barbarians. "Marie Elena" and "Linguica" may not fit; but on "Susie Q," the gritty enthusiasm that powered '60s insurgent rockers comes through. The echo-ie "Take It or Leave It," with its "Hang on Sloopy" chords, could have been recorded at a sound-check before a dance (the going venue of the day). The Barbarians' "I've Got a Woman" is more rockabilly than rhythm and blues, while "House of the Rising Sun" draws inspiration from the Animals' hit, without quite being a faithful copy. The percussive "What the New Breed Say" represents the generation-gap genre aped by the "Monkee's Theme." The jangly "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl," a garage-punk classic, is as strange as the day it was recorded. This CD's secret weapon, though, is one of three bonus tracks: "Hey Little Bird" alternately snarls and wails. The old LP jacket said, "One of the most colorful groups ever to appear on the American Record Scene." They'll get no argument here. Alan Lewis Copyright © 2003 by Alan Lewis. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Dave Madeloni

Northampton, Mass. -- One of my favorite scenes in the 1982 film Diner involves an argument among buddies who are evenly divided about which singer has the best "make-out" records  -  Sinatra or Mathis. The cocky Mickey Rourke character waltzes into the diner and settles the score  -  by declaring, "Presley."

I got pulled in not because I sided with the Mathis faction, but because I find the notion of "make-out" music intriguing  -  an important but overlooked genre that is rarely discussed these days.

Lisa McCormick's fourth, and brand-new, record Mystery Girl is the quintessential "make-out" album  -  one that in a perfect world, would be the talk of the town.

The Putney resident, who until now has made her name as an intelligent and clever folksinger, has made an intelligent and clever . . . make-out record  -  sexy songs for smart folks.

In a recent e-mail exchange, I asked McCormick if that was part of her intention.

"I wanted to make a record that strikes a mood, creates an ambiance and sticks with it, without being redundant," answered McCormick. "And I wanted the mood to be one of sensuality and celebration  -  a little mystique, a little sexiness, something you would want to hear while sipping an exotic beverage across the table from a captivating campanion in a candlelit cafe. I wanted to make a record that would act as a suitable soundtrack to life's simplest yet most delightful offerings: love and intrigue, joy and passion."

McCormick succeeds on all counts. Her sultry delivery, amorous-yet-spiritual lyrics and warm torch-jazz accompaniment make for a sensuous, sometimes steamy, listening experience. The vibe may be old-fashioned but some of the songs have a post-modern twist. "Well, the song 'Mystery Girl' is actually inspired by the new-to-human-history phenomenon of Internet romance," explained McCormick. "The sociologist in me was asking, 'What is new in the world of love and romance?' The lyrics to 'Mystery Girl' are meant to be an e-mail from one secret cyber-lover to another."

The languid "All in Good Time"

And slow is fine You don't rush the divine

which features local hero T-Bone Wolk on upright bass; and John Isley's tender sax, has that vaguely familiar, timeless quality. "I felt as though I was channeling my own personal Tony Bennett angel," said McCormick. "I found myself drawn to singing some smooth feel-good loungy jazz, and being me and being from Putney, had to toss in the spiritual stuff. . . . People who know my work well accuse me of always working in references to God and to sex. The songs on Mystery Girl make no apologies or obscure references to either:  it is all right out there!"

Recent trips to Central America inspired McCormick to include a touch of Latin spice to the proceedings.

"When I decided to travel to Guatemala to study Spanish, I asked a Guatemalan friend who lived in Brattleboro at the time if he could recommend a couple of Spanish songs I could learn that would be familiar to folks in Guatemala," explained McCormick. "He handed me a Jose Feliciano record and pointed out 'Toda Una Vida' and 'Odiame,' which I set about learning to play and sing. And as it turned out, it was great to have those two under my belt when traveling with my guitar in Latin America. I had so much fun singing them that I decided to put them on Mystery Girl. The third Spanish song is the only song I ever wrote in Spanish  -  and it is about my experience of living in Antigua, studying a foreign language and trying to find my way to my daily dose of Diet Coke!"

One would think that McCormick struggled to record in an unfamiliar language. Not so.

"Singing in a foreign tongue is easier than speaking, because you say the same thing every time! No need to worry about vocabulary and conjugations!"

McCormick will present a CD Release Celebration concert to benefit AIDS Services for the Monadnock Region and the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont on Friday, June 13, at 8 p.m., at the Hooker-Dunham Theater, Brattleboro. Tickets are $20, which includes a post-show reception.

Parts of this column by Dave Madeloni were first published in our local newspaper, Vermont's Brattleboro Reformer, on Thursday, June 12, 2003.

Copyright © 2003 by Dave Madeloni.

All rights reserved.

Used with permission.

www.lisamccormick.com/default.htm

Anything Goes is a Southern rock and roots cover band. Perry, the founder and leader, is a club-circuit veteran who was once in a one-hit-wonder outfit. A couple years back, Anything Goes' lead guitarist Chris was romancing vocalist Melissa. Things got weird, Perry started in with his sharp-tongued lectures, Melissa quit the band, and bookings began to dry up.

The young bass player, Jesse, is the narrator. As a child, he knew domestic violence at the hands of his alcoholic father. In fact, Jesse's schoolyard friend Allston  -  the Anything Goes drummer  -  once taught Jesse basic martial arts skills so he could dodge his father's punches. Jesse never knew his mother, who he's told he strongly resembles. He and she were Melungeons, an apparently obscure dark-skinned ethnic or racial group. Jesse didn't really know what it meant to be a Melungeon. He is, though highly likeable, in many ways a Perceval-like lost soul. Later in the book, he told Allston, "I don't know what I'm doing here, don't know how I got here, don't even know what breed I am. . . . " Jesse left his father, maybe by his mid-teens, and quickly found a new father-figure in Perry.

Perry always needed to be hustling something  -  anything. His past days as a traveling preacher were much the same as his recent roadhouse tours. It's all show biz.

Perry called every club the Black Cat. "He said you didn't have to remember the name as long as you knew how to find the place." Perry had a plan he'd been using for years. Tours followed a regular route so that it was always summer, but never too hot, all the way. Perry had concrete ideas about which drugs hurt musicianship versus which may help. He was sober on the road but stoned in the off-season. He knew which songs to cover and why. And while other acts would do a lot to get a recording contract, Perry didn't even want a record deal. There was a certain order and discipline in Perry's ways, and Jesse may have taken comfort in the structure. But it allowed him not to think for himself. "One great advantage of living with Perry," said Jesse, "was that I never had to bother polishing my own opinions. It was just as easy to use his."

Then along came Daddy. Jesse's father gave him a spiffy reconditioned vintage Mustang and took him to a Black Cat to hear Estelle Cheatham, a hick but also an amazing vocalist who was then singing to the beat of a druggie rhythm section. Just before Anything Goes started a winter tour leading to the Florida Keys (natch), Estelle joined as the band's new singer.

Chris was an aspiring songwriter and wanted to perform his material in shows; but Perry understood that a bar crowd came to hear songs they already knew they liked. Chris' frustration exploded, and he quit. He was replaced by Willard, a con artist who nonetheless could coax amazing music out of a beat-up electric guitar. Anything Goes, which had started to fade, quickly became a hot ticket again with the addition of Willard and Estelle.

A situation, which was actually in Willard's experience, got Jesse writing a song. (It became "On 8 Mile.")  Early in the story, Jesse spent nearly all the money he had on a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. And now Jesse's life was getting reworked around that instrument and his covert songwriting sessions.

Jesse's, uh, unfocused romantic life made him part of a love triangle, and the triangle's third party was in an angry gang. Jesse's early days as a victim of child abuse, being abandoned by his mother, his murky understanding of his status as a Melungeon, his crush on Estelle, the death of Kurt Cobain, the urge to write songs, and a recent beating that Willard took all swirled around inside him. Then gang violence was directed at Jesse's hands. He wouldn't be "playing no more slick guitar," the voices said.

Anything Goes is about rock 'n' roll, the life of a band, music fanatics, friendship, one really disfunctional family, and much more. The interactions between the personalities are remarkably complex. Bell has done a masterful job of weaving many strands together to create a smooth, enjoyable reading experience. Anything Goes has wonderful and quite believable characters. Here's bettin' we've all known a 24/7 showman like Perry.

Many of our readers will take no small interest in the band's later engagements in Vermont, particularly Vergennes. This tour then turned south by way of the Black Cat here in Brattleboro and on to Northampton, Massachusetts. From our point of view, the New England dates make for a really nice touch. Anyone who reads this newsletter and reads fiction is going to want to experience Anything Goes. Don't wait for a film.

Jesse's encounter with Kurt Cobain leads off Anything Goes, and the ending smells like sequel spirit. We can only hope.

Alan Lewis

Copyright © 2003 by Alan Lewis.

All rights reserved.

Used with permission.

Forty Words for Fear  -  record review by Alan Lewis

faculty.goucher.edu/mbell/
(Madison Smartt Bell)

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Many Items in the New England Music Scrapbook newsletter are time-limited by nature or may be of time-limited interest to readers. Announcements, links to short-lived news articles or temporary Web sites, and a lot of show listings are typical examples. We do not post all of those bits and pieces on these pages. If those things interest you, you may want to subscribe to the e-mail version of this newsletter via our Subscription Page; or you could request a sample copy, following a similar route, to get an idea of what you're missing.