Monthly Archives: April 2016

“I grew up on vinyl. The first record I remember loving was in 1968 when I was 5. The song “Tequila” by The Champs sent me and my little sister into a naked dancing frenzy, jumping up and down on the furniture. We played it over and over until we collapsed.”

“My step-dad bought me a used little record player with built-in speakers that came with stacks of 7” singles. My favorites were “Tip Toe Through The Tulips” by Tiny Tim, “I Feel The Earth Move” by Carol King, and “Those Were The Days” by Mary Hopkin.

My parents didn’t live together, but they both owned a lot of albums. Neither of them were into pop or rock music. I considered my mom’s records mine as well. She was really into folk and had all the early Dylan records, Simon & Garfunkel, Judy Collins. She also loved Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf and Ray Charles, Bo Diddley and Billie Holiday. And I loved all of these records with her.

My dad was into classical and jazz but he knew the Beatles were good and gave me all of their albums. My favorite was Abbey Road. Later, my dad was the musical directer of Jesus Christ Superstar on broadway and I loved the cast album along with Hair and Godspell.

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A guitar picker extraordinaire and redneck comedian whose songs could almost be called funky, the late Jerry “Alabama Wild Man” Reed is one of my favorite country artists. Me, I’d love him if he’d never cut anything but “East Bound and Down” (the theme song of Smokey and the Bandit!), “Amos Moses,” and “The Preacher and the Bear,” a hilarious tale of an unfortunate meeting in the woods between a preacher hunting on the Sabbath and a grizzly bear that ends with the preacher up a tree and praying to his Lord, “I mean/Look at how he’s lookin’ at me/Does the word ‘fast food’ mean anything to you, Lord?/Oh, he’s hairy/And he’s still thinkin’/And he’s lookin’ at me like I… smell good!”

The man’s usual mode was high-spirited, and he had a knack for what you could call novelty tunes, but he was also capable of singing about the more lugubrious aspects of life; you know, broken hearts and all that. But I much preferred him at his wildest and woolliest, as did Robert Christgau, who called him “a great crazy,” and said apropos his more saccharine tunes, “He couldn’t sell soap to a hippie’s mother” and “RCA should ban the ballad.” Me, I hadn’t listened to him for years when my girlfriend gave me a truly terrible ‘70s compilation CD redeemed only by R. Dean Taylor’s great “Indiana Wants Me” and Reed’s fantastic swamp tall tale, “Amos Moses,” which is one of the songs on the 2000 best-of compilation, Jerry Reed Visits Hit Row.

Fiddle-driven opener “East Bound and Down” is a bootlegger’s anthem and smooth as Jim Beam Single Barrel bourbon, and includes a great solo by Reed. It speeds along like an 18-wheeler on the run from Smokey, and if you think it’s a bit slick, well, all I can say is all those thirsty boys in Atlanta don’t agree. “Amos Moses” is a funky tune about a Cajun alligator poacher, mean as a snake on account of his old man, who used the young Moses as alligator bait. He’s got one arm on account of a hungry gator, most likely killed a sheriff trying to track him down in the bayou, and the only thing cooler than his biography are Reed’s righteous guitar picking and distinctive voice, which are as good old boy as you can get.

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Surf rock has found its way far from the west coast. Barcelona based five-piece, Holy Bouncer recently released their single “Anticipation,” a groove that takes the staples of the genre and fuses them with surprising new accents.

So far, Holy Bouncer has released four official tracks and a few covers online, like the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” Although their catalog may be slim, every track seems wholly composed, traversing through different tones—from ripping solos to more mellow interludes—underscoring the group’s sound as one full of startling twists.

Take “Anticipation.” It starts slow, ambling through a catchy riff. A few bends on the guitar signal an energetic break—the only place the song’s going is up. The wait for this melodic explosion lingers through the first verse, then suddenly, the track evolves into a full-on crescendo of howling vocals and bright guitar solos. A kid’s choir enters later singing the chorus, showcasing the band’s penchant for bringing the unexpected. The video is simple, splicing studio shots with live recordings, presenting fun in its most elementary form—playing good music.

Recent unexpected deaths remind us not only of our ultimate shared mortality, but our general inability at such times to express loss. And that’s where music comes in.

“Birdhouse,” the latest video from the Cleveland band Seafair that we’re proud to premiere today at TVD, uses the band’s strengths to pledge love and continued devotion to those departed, in a most tuneful way.

Like many of the band’s songs, it’s built on the snap of Ryan Kelly’s drums, over which the acoustic guitar and bass of Michael Flaherty and Joshua Riehl are deepened and colored by the tastefully done violin and cello of Andrea Belding-Elson and Tara Hanish. Atop all of that are the warm and rich vocals of Chayla Hope, who also provides keyboard touches.

Visually, the clip for Seafair’s “Birdhouse” is as lyrical as the sound, with its indication of memory marked by a stack of shared favorite vinyl, the flipping pages of a book, or especially the flocks of birds coming in to land. Throughout, the visual constant that’s front and center is its chief symbol of remembrance—not some mournful shroud or stone marker, but that most hopeful sentinel of spring and flight, the birdhouse.

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