The Fighting Cocks in Kingston hosts a three band extravaganza on February 10th, the three bands gracing the stage are The Legendary Groove Men, The Past Tense and Pope.
Check the Fighting Cocks web page for times and venue location THE FIGHTING COCKS
Helium Angel are a young mod band from San Francisco, so correctly mod in fact, that they thank their local Vespa Club and their scooter suppliers in the liner notes. The influences are all right too—The Jam, The Who, The Small Faces. But like the Small Faces before them, Helium Angel clearly dig psychedelia too, though theirs seem to come mainly from the Byrd’s “Eight Miles High” school.
As the album wears on, you realize there’s not a lot of fury here, but then Helium Angel aren’t playing in the shadow of Thatcherism and the Sex Pistols either. There is plenty of self-assured, catchy and crunchy power pop (yes, crunchy can be good), played with the confidence and ability only earned through generous amounts of practice, live playing and, dammit, heart. The punkiest song on the block is “When the Plane Touched Down,” about equal parts Who and Buzzcocks. Here and there, Keith Moon-style drums surface, but then so do Beatlesque harmonies, and a slashing Pete Townshend-ish rhythm guitar. I bet these guys have done a few windmills on their guitars—at least in front of their mirrors. It all adds up to an exciting debut, that while it could use a bit more variety, clearly sets them up for a killer effort next
time.
By PopMatters
Sometimes a band or musician seems to fly just below the radar and therefore get missed by the masses, one such band, who after 7 albums and EP,s of finely crafted power pop gems, should be flying so high above that are Baby Scream. Listening to the musical output of this band, you may be left wondering why they are not picked up by satellite radars and beamed into every house across the globe!
Baby Scream is a project lead by Argentinian, Juan Pablo Mazzola, who crafts his songs in a similar vein to Jason Falkner, Bryan Estepa, Matthew Sweet and even early John Lennon solo material. All of Baby Screams songs are sung in English and it is very easy to forget that this is not the bands first language, the lyrics are so well written and delivered on each and every track the band have released.
The most recent album by the band, Secret Place, their 8th, has a very retro feel about it, in as much as it is awash with great melodies reminiscent of The Stones, The Beatles even T-Rex, in fact the B-side of the "Hit and Run" single from the album is a version of "20th Century Baby" a song written by Marc Bolan and only released as a demo after his death.
Secret Place is a typical Baby Scream album: it shares a vision equally desolated and hopeful of a world that combines innocence, evil, stupidity, youth culture, classic rock and roll, the escapism and the ravages of drugs, the different cities and places you visit when you're on the road, love, treason, rage, fear of the unknown, all of this expressed with an almost immaculate point of view that could belong to a child that observes the world without any kind of prejudice. It is maybe because of this that the album cover and the pictures inside the CD booklet, (taken by Marcia Hill) depict a somehow childish universe: the sweet grandma that offers us a tea in a suburban afternoon, the furry cuddly toys in the park, the toy windmill forgotten in the garden after playtime…
There is a secret place, seems to say Baby Scream, in which we are still children and we see things as they are: as an eternal dream passing in front of our eyes, always changing, always surprising, sometimes depressing, sometimes thrilling, in which we don't actually know our place or our role, but we still try to enjoy ourselves as much as we can.
During the 15 minutes that Detroit became the center of the garage rock universe in the wake of the White Stripes' breakthrough, the Singles received a bit of international acclaim for their debut album, 2003's Better Than Before, but like a number of other Motor City bands, the hype machine didn't turn over for them, and four years later, leader Vince Frederick is fronting a new lineup of Singles for the pointedly titled Start Again. However, Frederick thankfully is still in firm command of the gifts that made the earlier version of the band memorable -- British Invasion style melodies, pop hooks galore, and plenty of energy, with the results sounding a good bit more like the Flamin' Groovies than, say, fellow Detroiters the Dirtbombs. Frederick wrote a dozen solid pop songs for this set, and he sings them with commendable spirit and force, and his new rhythm section (John Hale on bass and Brian Thunders on drums) are entirely simpatico, knowing when to push hard on a rocker like "I Want You Back Now" or "Start Again" and when to ease back on the more measured "Better Days" and the heart-broken "I Don't Wanna Be the Last to Know." Jim Diamond, who produced Better Than Before, is back behind the board for this set, and he gives the Singles a full-bodied sound that's equally friendly to the crunchy guitars and the precise harmonies. If you ever wondered what happened to power pop, it's alive and well and living in the Singles' rehearsal space, and with any luck, Start Again will earn this band the recognition they so richly deserve.
The decline in the Young Fresh Fellows' wackiness factor (and the growth of their relatively serious side) that began on This One's for the Ladies following the departure of Chuck Carroll continued on Electric Bird Digest. Musically, the band sounded harder and more aggressive than ever before, with Kurt Bloch and Scott McCaughey's guitars sounding much better integrated than on their previous go-round, though the pop sensibilities of primary songwriter McCaughey were still very much in evidence. And while there are glimmers of the band's trademark sense of humor (most obviously on the goofy snippet "The Teen Thing" and in titles like "Tomorrow's Gone (And So Are You)" and "Swiftly But Gently"), for the most part Electric Bird Digest is witty rather than laugh-out-loud funny, and there's a thin but audible undercurrent of angst running through much of the album (especially on Kurt Bloch's songs, which suggest the Fastbacks without their undertow of gleeful sloppiness) -- not particularly surprising from a band still trying to struggle by on a cult reputation after close to a decade on the boards. But as a rock band, the Young Fresh Fellows rarely sounded tighter or more emphatic than they do here, and, as on This One's for the Ladies, the best songs on Electric Bird Digest prove that the band could get serious and still have plenty to say, both musically and lyrically. And the production by Butch Vig gives the band's sound a muscle it rarely had in the past, without losing their melodic sense along the way. It's not one of the Fellows most fun albums, but, from a musical standpoint, it captures them at the top of their game.
The International Pop Overthrow festival is back in San Diego for the fourth straight year! IPO San Diego will feature 26 of the best pop and rock bands from San Diego and beyond, with all shows to be held at the groovy venue, Eleven!
Here are the lineups:
Friday, February 17 (Cover: $10)
7:30 Eugene Edwards Band
8:15 Phil Vandermost and Telesound
9:00 Plane Without A Pilot
9:45 King Washington
10:30 Yoya
11:15 The New Kinetics
12:00 Dave Rave
Saturday afternoon, February 18 (Cover: $8)
1:00 Veronica May
1:45 Sue Hedges
2:30 The Bigfellas
3:15 The Secret Seven
4:00 Math & Science Pretend Band (Trio)
4:45 Suite 100
Saturday evening, February 18 (Cover: $10)
7:30 Subsurfer
8:15 The Shambles
9:00 The Cherry Bluestorms
9:45 Cannoneers
10:30 Trenchtown
11:15 City Of Blue
12:00 Lexington Field
Sunday afternoon, February 19 (Cover: $8)
1:00 Spud Davenport
1:45 The Condors
2:30 The Midwinters
3:15 The Very
4:00 The Swarm
4:45 My Revenge
Splitsville's fourth album is a complete departure from anything the band had previously done. Originally recorded as a four-song EP to be given away as a sort of party favor at the first International Pop Overthrow festival in Los Angeles, the much-expanded The Complete Pet Soul is, as the title implies, a dual tribute to both Pet Sounds and Rubber Soul. On the original EP, the Pet Sounds influence came through more strongly, thanks to the heavily orchestrated feel, but on this full-length version, the orchestral tracks are nicely balanced with several new songs that recall the low-voltage, almost folk-rock sound that predominated on the original U.S. edition of Rubber Soul. Still, the Pet Sounds pastiche tracks are the real standouts simply for being done with such obvious affection and good humor, especially the swooning "Caroline Knows" and the almost Smile-like multi-part mini-operetta "The Love Songs of B. Douglas Wilson," which is the album's high point. Musically, it should have been the album's closing track, but instead, a cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" recorded for the soundtrack of the cheerleading film Bring It On is tacked on at the end. It doesn't quite match the mood of the rest of the album, and it's certainly not a patch on Dionne Warwick's version, so it's an odd, equivocal ending to an otherwise superb album.-AMG
