Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Independent Project Records was started in 1980 by Bruce Licher of the bands Savage Republic and Scenic. The records of both figure prominently in the label’s discography, a body of work that’s additionally noted for attractive letterpress packaging designed in partnership with Independent Project Press. Having explored a distinctive post-punk niche from the ’80s into the early 2000s, IPR returned to activity last year. Source, a freshly available 79-minute compact disc, features various artists spanning the label’s past, present and future and rounds up rare and unreleased material in the bargain. Its contents are considered below.

I suppose I’m not alone in getting introduced to Independent Project Records through Camper Van Beethoven, as their debut album Telephone Free Landslide Victory, came out on IPR in 1985, while three years later, Independent Project Press designed the cover of Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, the band’s fourth album, which was released by Virgin in 1988.

But if IPR can be said to have a particular sound, it’s surely in the vicinity of Savage Republic and Scenic, the two highest-profile bands of the label’s founder Bruce Licher, with Savage Republic extant, amid stops and starts, from 1982-’90 and producing four studio LPs through that period. As bands are known to do, Savage Republic reformed in the 2000s, adding three more albums to the oeuvre, although I don’t think Licher plays on them (he did design their cover art).

Scenic emerged in the mid-’90s, releasing three full-lengths that can be synopsized as instrumental-atmospheric expansions upon ideas Licher first articulated in Savage Republic and in numerous other outfits prior to that band, none included on Source. First there was Neef (releasing a cassette and a 7-inch in 1979, pre-IPR but reissued by the label in ’84). Next; Project 197 (recording a 7-inch, IPR’s first release, in 1980) and Bridge (also cutting a 45, IPR’s second release, the same year). Nearest to Savage Republic’s formation was Them Rhythm Ants (putting out one 7-inch EP, IPR’s third release, in 1981).

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Remembering Peter Laughner, born on August 22 in 1952. —Ed.

In the annals of punk rock, Peter Laughner has really been more of a mythic figure than a prime musical influence. While he was a member of two crucial Cleveland punk bands (Rocket from the Tombs and Pere Ubu), his recorded output has been somewhat slight. The key word in that last sentence is output. Smog Veil’s eponymous 5LP/5CD box set makes plain what heavy-duty Laughner heads have long known; he recorded a whole lot, but just had very little commercially released, even posthumously. This enlightening and highly digestible labor of love from a diligently Ohio-focused label expands his output in both size and range. 

Ten years is a long time. Certainly not in the grand sweep of history, but the statement still rings true; we denote blocks of ten years as decades, and a decade is how long Smog Veil has been working on Peter Laughner. Ten years can build up a whole lot of anticipation, and by extension, unsurmountable expectations, but that’s not how it transpired here.

Up to the eve of its release, there seemed to be hardly any hubbub attached to this project, which fits with Laughner’s essentially underground stature. If you know and care about the man’s work, you likely know a lot about early punk, and there’s a good chance you knew this set was in production. Anticipation likely resulted, but in keeping with the circumstances of Laughner’s life, it was probably best to not get too optimistic.

24 years is 14 more than ten, but in demarking the span of a lifetime, it’s not very long at all, at least in modern terms. And 24 years is how long Peter Laughner lived. A big part of his mythic stature stems from his death from acute pancreatitis, a condition that indicates that he drank (and yes indeed, drugged) himself to death. Since then, many have surely romanticized his demise, but he’s just as often simply one more entry in rock ‘n’ roll’s long list of casualties.

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Boston trio GA-20 have made a name for themselves as purveyors of prime blues-R&B-R&R rawness, with a studio debut and a live follow-up EP under their belts. Now here comes GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor: Try It…You Might Like It!, a tribute to one of the true kingpins of electrified slide guitar scorch and unbridled dive bar mayhem. For the uninitiated, this might read as smooth sailing executed through the reliable gesture of paying tribute, but please understand that doing right by the Hound Dog is much tougher than it might seem. That GA-20 pull it off is a kickass circumstance. The record is out August 20 on vinyl in a handful of variations, plus compact disc and digital through Colemine Records and Alligator Records.

The blues is often celebrated and sometimes denigrated for its stylistic directness and lack of frills, but in reality, it’s a far more complex and diverse form of musical expression than many acknowledge. On the wild and distorted end of spectrum sits the 1971 debut album by Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers, secure in its placement as one of the very greatest full-length electric blues records.

It is in fact my favorite blues LP that’s not a compilation of singles, and in the 50 years since its emergence as Alligator Records’ first release, I don’t think its level of quality has been surpassed. Now, some folks might be thinking that my identification of guitarist Taylor, second guitarist Brewer Phillips, and drummer Ted Harvey as the half-century reigning champs of booze joint blues sizzle doesn’t reflect well on the general health of the style, but I will add that a few LPs have gotten into the same ballpark since.

But let’s set those examples aside for another time, as the matter here is how GA-20, an act comprised of guitarist Matt Stubbs, guitarist-vocalist Pat Faherty, and drummer Tim Carman, have delivered a wholly worthy tip of the hat to such an iconic blues band. The reasons are numerous, with just for starters GA-20’s instrumental configuration of two guitars (no bass), drums and vocals mirroring, and very possibly deliberately adopting, the Houserockers’ same setup.

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Celebrating Colin Moulding, born on this day in 1955. —Ed.

In their early days XTC released a copious amount of singles, with this output appropriately corralled onto a handful of compilations situating the band as one of the more interesting acts produced in the late-‘70s UK. Amongst these songs were the three cuts that comprise their debut, ‘77’s “3D EP.” Many consider it as a strong but minor first effort in a scenario of future greatness, but investigating them apart from the group’s initial prolific tide provided this writer with the key that unlocked XTC’s substantial value.

By the time I became acquainted with them in the mid-‘80s, XTC was essentially a critics’ fave and one that was largely functioning as an album band. This was the era of Skylarking, and while “Dear God,” the b-side of that LP’s first single “Grass,” kicked up quite a bit of dust via MTV and even replaced “Mermaid Smiled” on the US version of the disc, in the US it only managed to land on a now defunct barometer of radio play named the Billboard Album Rock Chart, where it found modest success.

And on their home turf it barely even entered the Singles Chart, peaking at the severe back end at #99. This really is no surprise, since “Dear God” is a truly eloquent dispatch of religious disbelief, a song that likely would’ve caused their countryman Bertrand Russell to stand up and cheer had he only lived to hear it.

“Dear God” was so cogent (while simultaneously manifesting a well-harnessed anger) that more than a few believers in my personal circle considered it a legitimate expression of doubt and questioning rather than quickly dismissing it as merely sacrilegious. The tune’s that good. But even though ‘86’s Skylarking and its follow up Oranges & Lemons were both strong sellers and the group was very popular on college radio, the rise of their singles during this period seemed mainly tied to video play.

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British Jazz Explosion: Originals Re-Cut is a new series from the Decca label that’s focused on noteworthy but hard to come by (and therefore, wholly deserving of reissue) albums, all from the UK and in the titular style. Journeys in Modern Jazz: Britain (1965-1972), a compilation detailing the series’ objectives into 2022, along with the Don Rendell Quintet’s Space Walk, came out on July 16, followed by Ken Wheeler and the John Dankworth Orchestra’s Windmill Tilter (The Story Of Don Quixote) on August 13, and with The New Jazz Orchestra’s Le Dejeuner Sur l’Herbe set for release on September 10. Everything’s available on vinyl and digital, with the compilation also out on 2CD. All four are considered below.

Some of the higher profile names associated with British jazz include trad clarinet stylist Acker Bilk, bop saxophonists Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott (he of the famed club), and guitarist John McLaughlin. Although both were born in Jamaica, trumpeter Dizzy Reece and saxophonist Joe Harriott are both noted as residents of the UK (Reece later moved to the US, as did McLaughlin, later).

British Jazz Explosion provides a deeper dive into the scene the players named above helped to define. Journeys in Modern Jazz: Britain (1965-1972) establishes the timeframe and the series’ contributors, opening with “Don the Dreamer” from Windmill Tilter (The Story Of Don Quixote), the 1969 album that served as trumpeter-flugelhornist-composer Kenny Wheeler’s debut as leader.

More accurately, Wheeler’s co-billed with saxophonist and bandleader Johnny Dankworth, with whom he’d recorded often, beginning in 1959 on Bundle From Britain, which documented a live performance by Dankworth’s orchestra from that year’s Newport Jazz Festival (it does appear that Wheeler’s first recording dates from 1956 as part of Tommy Whittle’s Orchestra, the 10-inch album Spotlighting).

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Remembering Adam Yauch, born on this day in 1964. —Ed.

With the Love American Style EP, The Beastie Boys gave the public a small taste of their new and improved direction. Some ears were ready and many were not, but this twelve-inch contained a tidy morsel of a true hip-hop classic.

In retrospect, Licensed to Ill came on like a ton of bricks. Out of the blue the group just seemed to suddenly be everywhere; on stereos and television naturally, but also in magazines, in car tape decks, as the soundtrack to parties, in the parking lot at school. This level of saturation wasn’t all that unusual, for the same sort of situation happened with Purple Rain, Thriller, Madonna’s debut and Born in the USA. Unless you were a hermit, it was ultimately all music the ears couldn’t escape, particularly in a suburban existence. What made Licensed to Ill feel like such a haymaker was its heightened sense of immaturity and its use (some said hijacking) of a musical form that many observers were still coming to terms with.

The Beastie Boys were generation gap music in its purest form. As expected, parents were indignant; Who raised these ingrates, What has happened to the youth of America, Where are the values, When I was your age we thought Pat Boone was risqué, Why I oughta lock you in your room without your stereo for playing that noise in the house, and in front of your sweet, impressionable little sister at that. How does it feel to feel old?

And while these days it seems that every child of the ‘80s got and dug what the Boys’ were laying down right off the bat, of course that’s not a bit true. Tons of kids were horrified or at least highly perturbed that three unruly youths were besmirching the rep of their peers through constant airtime on MTV. And it’s important to understand that The Beastie Boys were many ears’ first prolonged exposure to rap music, especially in the areas of the country not served by cable TV. And to be accurate, before Licensed to Ill MTV played very little rap music, just like before Thriller this supposedly progressive, groundbreaking entity aired almost no black music at all.

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Last year, the New York-based Dot Time label issued The Duo Sessions, which featured privately made tapes of groundbreaking jazz pianist Lennie Tristano in dialogue with fellow pianist Connie Crothers, saxophonist Lenny Popkin, and drummer Roger Mancuso. An enlightening spotlight on an artist who’d effectively disappeared from recording studios and bandstands later in his life, its format was CD only; by extension, the praise the set received in the pages of this website was substantial, but fairly brief. In a sweet development, Dot Time’s vinyl edition, with an accompanying download, is freshly available, its arrival spurring a deeper evaluation of Tristano’s work and his tight but intense sphere of influence.

Born on March 19, 1919, Leonard Joseph Tristano made a strong entrance onto the jazz scene during the bebop era, playing in bands with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie for radio broadcasts and then getting his own group together, first with saxophonist Lee Konitz and a little later adding another saxophonist in Warne Marsh, both horn players inseparable from any worthwhile consideration of the pianist’s life and work (they figure prominently in this review).

Tristano began teaching piano in the 1940s and seems to have never quit, this practice eventually overtaking his interest in studio recording and gigs, though the biggest hunk of his discography is sourced from live performances. By 1978, the year of his death, his body of work was amongst the slimmest of any major jazz figure.

There was side one of Crosscurrents, cut in ’49 for Capitol but unreleased until ’72 (alongside unrelated recordings by Buddy DeFranco and Bill Harris), Tristano and The New Tristano, both for Atlantic, from ’56 and ’61 respectively, and the fairly obscure but fascinating Descent Into the Maelstrom, first released in Japan by East Wind in 1976 and in the US two years later by Inner City. Without a bunch of live recordings dating from ’49-’65 (and it’s worthy of note that Tristano and Maelstrom are partly comprised of performances), the man’s shelf would be meager, indeed.

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For decades, the prime fount of Afrobeat has been Nigeria. However, turning retrospective attention southward to the landlocked nation of Zambia reveals a distinct strain of ’70s African rocking; Now-Again Records’ two Welcome to Zamrock! compilations spotlight this movement with appropriate depth. The CD editions come with a 104-page hardcover book co-authored by Now-Again’s Eothen “Egon” Alapatt and Zambian music historian Leonard Koloko, while the 2LPs are accompanied with an edited booklet and a WAV download card. Together, they offer 34 tracks recorded from ’72-’76 that in the label’s words represent every important Zamrock band.

The music blog wave has long ebbed and without much in the way of commiseration, but it’s worth noting that an occasional curatorial gem did shine amidst the sea of digitized record collections. For example, music blogs are where this writer first heard a pair of Zamrock’s most prolific acts, specifically the Ngozi Family and WITCH; in a positive turn, Now-Again has licensed full-length reissues of both (amongst others) and awarded them prominent positions on these two overviews of the style.

In terms of groove, Zamrock is certainly related to the sounds that emanated from Nigeria during the same period, but overall, the Zambian approach is distinguished by a larger ratio of rock in the mix, a circumstance that can be attributed to the impact of colonial rule. Having broken free from Britain less than a decade prior to the start of Welcome to Zamrock’s timeframe, the country’s reality is succinctly expressed in Now-Again’s choice of subtitle: How Zambia’s Liberation Led to a Rock Revolution.

The Ngozi Family’s “Hi Babe” is illustrative of the Zambian recipe, and it smartly opens side one of Vol. 1. The cut’s most striking element is a distortion-soaked guitar riff that registers far beyond fuzzy to the point of being downright serrated, the garage-like production bringing it a slightly muffled quality as the sharp crack of the drums strengthens the hard rock foundation.

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Stumbling onto the indie-pop stylings of The Umbrellas could easily lead to assumptions that they reside in Merry Old England, but no; the map to their digs leads west to San Francisco, USA. Flush with chiming and distorted strings, urgent rhythms, sweet harmonies, and alternating guy-gal lead vocals, the band’s full-length debut is out August 6 on limited edition Coke bottle green vinyl, compact disc, and digital download. Dishing a dozen songs in 38 minutes, the album hits all the marks, and is another treat in a long string of delights from the ever-reliable Slumberland label.

The Umbrellas are Morgan Stanley on vocals and guitar, Matt Ferrara on vocals, guitar and keyboards, Keith Frerichs on 12-string acoustic guitar, drums, and vocals, and Nick Oka on bass. Their sole prior release is the “Maritime E.P.,” which came out just a smidge over one year ago on 33 1/3 rpm 7-inch vinyl and cassette.

Three of the four songs on the 7-inch are also featured on the LP, but in distinctively different versions, with the EP recorded in Ferrara’s apartment and the album at Cidra Studios. Additionally, the rhythms heard on the EP were solely sourced from (or at least only credited to) a drum machine. While said apparatus hasn’t exited The Umbrellas’ scene, the sound of an honest-to-goodness drum kit can’t help but deepen the band’s indie-pop bona fides.

While on the subject of the legit, the cassette version of the “Maritime E.P.” offers an extra track, a nifty cover of “Dance” by the ’80s UK outfit Strawberry Switchblade. If you dig that band but don’t know that song, that’s likely because its only recording was a David Jensen radio session in October of ’82. “Dance” did morph into Strawberry Switchblade’s “Since Yesterday,” the opening track and first single from their eponymous debut album in ’84, but the revamping denoted a stylistic move toward synth-pop and new wave.

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Tobacco City is the handle used by at least a couple of shops dedicated to the sale of all things legally smokable, but it’s also the name of a band form Chicago, and don’tcha just know it, their country-infused sound harkens back to the days when the air in bars was thick with secondhand carcinogens. Not that the five-piece’s debut is a mere retro trip. No, it plants its shovel deep in the fertile soil of lightly psych-kissed country-rock and pulls up eight mineral-rich tunes, many with sweet guy-gal harmonies that should warm the cockles of anybody with an unquenchable thirst for the brilliance of Gram and Emmylou. Tobacco City, USA is out July 30 on LP and digital via Scissor Tail Records.

Tobacco City consists of vocalist-guitarists Lexi Goddard and Chris Coleslaw, bassist-vocalist Eliza Weber, drummer Josh Condon, and pedal steel specialist Nick Usalis. Across the eight songs that tidily comprise Tobacco City, USA, the members click together with impressive proficiency for a first album. Although they have been together for a few years, it hasn’t been with this exact lineup, as the initial impetus was to play a Halloween gig as a Neil Young cover band.

That’s a fine platform from which to emerge, but Tobacco City has far surpassed that modest objective with growth that’s apparent straight away through the album’s opener and digital single “Blue Raspberry,” the band hitting a relaxed zone that connects as perfectly suited for recuperation after a late night’s early sunshiny morning.

Goddard and Coleslaw’s voices blend together with vibrant echo and then further intermingle with the siren swells of pedal steel, but the real kicker is how the bedrock of strummed guitar and drums expands the cut’s usefulness beyond simple accompaniment for extended couch lazing, meaning “Blue Raspberry” is as appropriate for preparing to ramp it up as it is for gently coming down.

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Olivia Newton-John remains well-known for a string of ’70s-’80s hits and for her starring roles in Grease, a box office smash, and the roller-disco musical Xanadu, a commercial and critical disappointment in its day that has subsequently acquired cult status. But before all that, young Olivia was part of Toomorrow, a group assembled by Harry Saltzman and Don Kirshner to star in a sci-fi R&R musical film of the same name. That the movie persists as essentially a footnote in the career of Newton-John is reflective of its quality. As for the soundtrack, which is coming out on vinyl July 30 through Real Gone, it also falls far short of a classic, but with numerous points of interest, which we’ll consider below.

Let’s begin with Don Kirshner, the music publisher, songwriter, producer, manager, and talent coordinator whose biggest credit is as a guiding hand in the formation of The Monkees, though he was also responsible for cartoon pop group The Archies. Swinging over to rock seriousness, Kirshner’s eponymous record label featured lite-progsters Kansas, who, in a startling conflict of interest, once performed on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.

In attempting to extend his good fortune with The Archies (a rebound after being jettisoned from involvement with The Monkees) by reaching into the realms of motion pictures, Kirshner’s partnership with Harry Saltzman was a savvy move. This is specifically due to Saltzman co-producing (along with Albert “Cubby” Broccoli) the first nine James Bond films, a string that was still in progress as Toomorrow was taking shape.

Although some will harrumph at the notion, putting together a group not just to make records but to star as that group in films (yes, plural, as a series was apparently the objective) is an idea with potential for positive returns. But conversely, things could go horribly awry. That didn’t really happen in this case, as the music of Toomorrow is underwhelming but largely listenable. As the album is a soundtrack, a handful of instrumental middle-or-the-road-isms bring a wild unevenness to the affair; those approaching the record with Newton-John as primary point of interest will likely get the fidgets.

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