Although they never attained major popularity, hits or even a US release, the Count Bishops played a small but important role in the development of British punk. First, they provided a stylistic and chronological link between the raw R&B revivalism of Dr. Feelgood and early demi-punk flailings by Eddie and the Hot Rods. Second, the…
Following several different lineups during 1977 and 1978, Dalek I Love You’s name was shortened to Dalek I and the band reduced to a duo by the time their first album was recorded. Alan Gill and Dave Hughes (the former was subsequently guitarist in The Teardrop Explodes, the latter drummer on OMD’s first album) play…
With Private Revolution, one-man-pop-orchestra Karl Wallinger proved that his post-Waterboys soirée was a place to be. He recorded the album at home, singing playing guitar and using samples to create a refreshingly unique musical backdrop that probably owes more to the psychedelic-era Beatles than any one other source, yet never actually sounds like them. The…
A guitar band from the English Midlands, the Wild Flowers mate the Ramones’ breakneck speed and Television’s guitar interplay with Echo & the Bunnymen’s intensity and attack on The Joy of It All. Poorly recorded for a tiny label, the album disappeared quickly as, so it seemed, did the band when founding guitarist-songwriter Dave Newton…
Lloyd Cole is a pretentious twit — in the nicest possible sense. Which is to say the English (Buxton, in the north) singer/songwriter is highly literate and ultra-sensitive. Always has been, ever since he first turned up, after forming a band while attending college in Glasgow, with 1984’s Rattlesnakes. Coming on like a typical new…
Although they neither dressed the part nor were tied down by its musical clichés, Coventry’s Flys (not to be confused with a subsequent Boston outfit) used the feel of mod-era bands like the Who and Creation as a jumping-off point for the highly individual songs of guitarist/singer Neil O’Connor, perhaps best exemplified by the single…
Listeners who acknowledge Marc Almond only as the voice behind Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” do the English singer a great disservice. Since that electro-pop landmark in 1981, Almond has steadfastly devoted his career to exploring the art of the song. As an interpreter, he has successfully taken on Jacques Brel (on Jacques), ’60s obscurities (on…
This seminal pub-rock outfit is more of interest for what the individuals did after the group split than for the band’s own recordings. Drummer Will Birch went on to found the Records (with guitarist John Wicks, briefly a Kursaal at the end of the band’s first go-round) and produce records for various people. Graeme Douglas,…
The Dambuilders’ records chronicle the progress of a band that, for better or worse, finally seems to have found an identifiable sonic niche in the mid-’90s. Singer/bassist Dave Derby and guitarist Eric Masunaga evolved the group from the Exactones, the name under which they released several homemade cassettes in their native Hawaii. A Young Person’s…
A founding member of Metallica, Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine hails from a generation of headbangers unafraid to list the Sex Pistols and the Dead Boys as influences alongside Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. When he was booted out of Metallica — over power struggles and a growing (but since overcome) drug problem — the singer/guitarist…
Why do I write about music? Why does anyone? I’ve given that question a lot of thought and I have discerned subliminal motives that are less than flattering. On one hand, it’s the desire to share what moves me, to offer the benefit of serious consideration and historical knowledge to the young and curious. On a deeper level, however, it springs from a desire to be accepted and appreciated, to establish standing in the world that I hungered for as a child.
One of Boston’s leading local bands of the mid-’70s, Reddy Teddy preceded, by a couple of years, most of the groups that would coalesce into a scene around the Rat, the club that served as Boston’s first indie-rock epicenter. Their sole album, released by a Cambridge indie, is well-produced, aggressive pre-punk rock’n’roll that sounds at…
Best known now as the host of a long-running music show on British television, the flamboyant pianist — a cigar-chomping hustler able to energize even the most blasé audience — provided much of the zest on Squeeze’s first three albums. For his solo debut, Jools adopted a less contemporary stance, playing old-fashioned bar-room romps with…
Keyboardist Andrews was Joe Jackson’s bandmate in Arms & Legs during the latter’s formative years in Portsmouth, England. Funnily enough, shortly after Jackson’s initial success, Andrews wound up on the same label, playing a not terribly dissimilar style of music; unfortunately for him, he’s not Jackson’s equal as a singer or songwriter. Some may find…
The Cavedogs know their psyche-power-pop and, on Joyrides for Shut-Ins, they turn up with multi-tracked Rickenbackers blazing. Producer Ed Stasium (and others who worked on the previously released singles included here) gives the trio a BIG sound; while quotes from summer-of-love sources (Move, Floyd, Beatles and Monkees to name but a few) abound you’ll also…
These expatriate South Africans managed to come up with a unique sound on their album, despite having borrowed an awful lot of it from African and Caribbean pop. Characterized by tight, choppy ultra-rhythmic interplay between two guitarists and a female lead singer’s initially charming (but ultimately monotonous) voice, the group’s perky ethnic dance music lacks…
Brothers Garry and Russell Christian (formerly an a cappella soul trio with Roger, another sibling) and ex-Yachts helmsman Henry Priestman (who left It’s Immaterial to join them) comprise the core of this Liverpool group. (Roger Christian appeared on the group’s earliest singles, but quit prior to the first Christians album and eventually surfaced as a…
The guitarist aging art-rockers turn to for a sublime and stirring mixture of solid chops and wild-eyed invention, Adrian Belew (born in Kentucky, raised in Ohio) has played a crucial long-term role in the careers of David Bowie and King Crimson, while also making important contributions to Frank Zappa (who gave him his first break),…
First emerging as a witty, self-aware West Coast delegate to the mid-’80s fast folk movement, Cindy Lee Berryhill always bore a broader agenda than what could be achieved with a single guitar. Not that she wasn’t perfectly able to put over clever original songs with simple apparatus (as she did on her first two albums),…
The creative leap that brought House of Freaks to life in Richmond, Virginia as a duo of guitar/vocals (Bryan Harvey) and drums (Johnny Hott) has become an article of faith for the group. Intelligence, urgency and creative use of guest musicians far outweigh any structural doubt about what properly constitutes a rock combo. (So much…
