This latest album from Virginia native Dori Freeman has all the ear-markings of a quality release; a warm, embracing voice; melodies and top of the mark accompaniment. And Letters Never Read is just that – quality. From the first notes to the last, Ms. Freeman has crafted an immaculate, attractive album that makes you feel – the emotions here ring as pure.
“If I Could Make You My Own” is a beautiful and touching opener, which harkens back to “classic” country – a sweeping, yearning sound and feel; her voice immediately draws you in and the music itself is instantly touching; the taut, strident yet tempered rhythm and melody of “Lovers On The Run” is a perfect country-pop piece – the dry vocals showcase the pure quality of Ms. Freeman’s voice and the piano line goes along in unison with the singing in a just right fashion and is an early high point of the album. Ms. Freeman’s take on the Richard & Linda Thompson classic “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight” is a knockout as she makes the song her own, with an upbeat, joyful feel and gives this song a fresh perspective; the quiet and sombre tone of “That’s All Right” with its understated pedal steel runs and a simple yet powerful reverbed guitar interlude (not so much a “solo”) is another memorable track and “Over There” is as pure bluegrass, down-home fun as you can get, with just Ms. Freeman’s vocal and I’m guessing banjo strum – unless it’s a dulcimer – but either way, it’s stripped down and right on.
The pure sounds that are come out of this album are a joy; it’s the kind of listen that will diffuse you from tension; make you smile or give you pause to think and reflect. The calming nature of Letters Never Read makes this special. Don’t ask me why; it just is. Listen to it and see if you agree – I think you will.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Letters Never Read will be released on Friday, October 20th, 2017.
Greetings from Bootleg City! It’s been a couple years, and although I’m no longer the mayor here, there’s something even more special about being a private citizen. For example, whenever regular citizens of Bootleg City come up to me on the street and ask for my opinion on local politics, all I have to say is “Respect my privacy” through a megaphone — mine fits on my belt loop, which is convenient — and they’re forced to leave me alone. I also enjoy tweeting “Leave me alone” once every hour just to remind people of my need for privacy.
When I was mayor I’d pretend to want to hear my constituents’ views, but honesty is the best policy. I learned that from Donald Trump during his presidential campaign last year. He tells it like it is, “it” being whatever will earn him cheers in red states that must be populated with a higher percentage of narcissistic trust-funders attracted to eastern European models than I’d originally thought. I used to wonder: don’t they see through this guy? Well, of course they do, and I finally realized why — he’s transparent.
I don’t mean that President Trump believes in transparency — in his defense he probably thought Russian president Vladimir Putin wanted to help him win the election because they both believe that one hand washes the other, or at least the other’s money — but it’s pretty obvious that he hates you, he hates me, and he hates himself. Finally, a president I can recognize every time I look in the bathroom mirror!
I’m transparent too. I ran for mayor of Bootleg City 12 years ago because I wanted to graft my way to Trump-size riches. (It’s not called Charity City, after all.) But that didn’t happen, so next weekend I’m headed to Las Vegas, where I plan to make some real bread. I’ll be participating in an international bread-making competition with a grand prize of $2,500, and if I win I’m betting it all on blackjack, because even though I fundamentally believe that all jacks matter, I want to be on the right side of history.
After a long day of making bread I’d love to be able to see Bread, the band, in concert, but the performance featured below took place in Sin City on July 5, 1997, as part of a four-continent reunion tour the soft-rock heavyweights of the early ’70s had begun the previous year. Do you like Bread? I love Bread. But I have to keep an eye on my intake of Bread or else I get sleepy — David Gates’s voice on hits like “Make It With You,” “If,” and “Baby I’m-a Want You” is a natural stress reliever.
Gates formed Bread in 1968 with songwriting partners and fellow multi-instrumentalists James Griffin and Robb Royer. The trio recorded their self-titled debut the following year with session drummer Jim Gordon before recruiting Mike Botts on drums for the follow-up, On the Waters (1970). Royer dropped out after Bread’s third album, Manna (1971), by which point Griffin and he had won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, with Fred Karlin, for “For All We Know,” from 1970’s Lovers and Other Strangers (the song became a top-five hit for the Carpenters). Royer continued to write songs for Bread with Griffin, but he was replaced in the lineup with veteran session musician Larry Knechtel, who’d recently won a Grammy for his and Paul Simon’s arrangement of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” on which Knechtel plays piano.
With Knechtel, Bread recorded two more albums, Baby I’m-a Want You and Guitar Man, both released in ’72, before calling it quits due to exhaustion — five LPs in just three years, with a tour to promote each album — and trouble finding the inspiration to write new material. Gates and Griffin, the group’s two vocalists, pursued solo careers without much chart success, so when Elektra Records, Bread’s label, asked the band to record a new album to satisfy audience demand — The Best of Bread had gone all the way to number two on Billboard‘s Top LPs & Tape chart in ’73 — they reunited and came up with Lost Without Your Love (1977). Then they broke up again.
Actually, they went on tour to support Lost Without Your Love, but after the second leg Griffin was asked to leave the group, allegedly because of substance-abuse problems, while Gates, Botts, and Knechtel continued on as “David Gates & Bread” until Griffin, who owned the band’s name with Gates, filed a lawsuit forbidding them from using it. More than ten years later tensions were still running high between Griffin and his former bandmates, according to Michael Azerrad in a “Where Are They Now?” piece he wrote for Rolling Stone in ’89: “Griffin would be willing to work with the other members but says, ‘I don’t think the feeling is mutual.’ He’s right — Knechtel won’t even speak to him, and Botts says, ‘We couldn’t forgive and forget that easily.’”
It’s a wonder Bread got back together, but by 1994 Knechtel, Griffin, and Robb Royer were all residents of Nashville and playing together in local clubs as Toast, and with that ironic moniker, a trail of Bread crumbs was left for Gates and Botts to follow. (Royer chose not to rejoin.) Soon Bread was rising again. But a quarter-century later would audiences find Bread fresh or stale? And would Bread need to play in refrigerated venues to prevent mold from becoming an issue?
On the 1997 bootleg I found at Guitars101.com Bread sticks (and olive oil make a fine appetizer, yes indeed) with what works. A point of contention for Griffin during the band’s heyday was that Elektra routinely chose Gates’s immaculately produced ballads as the A-sides for singles over Griffin and Royer’s more up-tempo numbers (“Why Do You Keep Me Waiting,” “Truckin’”), but as Gates once said, “Ultimately, soft rock was what we did best, and you can’t really argue with success.”
In addition to all the easy-listening perennials you’d expect, Gates sings the title track from his 1994 album Love Is Always Seventeen (I can’t say I appreciate him getting in my head with the line “Forty-two has a way of creeping up on you”) and relays a funny joke told to him by Andy Williams, while Griffin performs an original composition titled “Say When” and Botts sings a bar-band-ready song of his own, “The Wait.” He also asks the crowd, “You remember records?” as he introduces an “unplugged” segment of the show with an anecdote about drummer-less folk groups of the ’60s, adding, “I still have some. I do. I don’t have anything to play ’em on,” a dilemma that those of us with considerable CD and cassette collections find ourselves facing 20 years later as records and record players return to prominence. Obsolescence has a way of creeping up on all of us, but everything old is new again. And you never know. And never say never, especially if the bread you’re being offered for a reunion tour adds up to a lot of dough.
Botts and Griffin both died of cancer in 2005, and Knechtel succumbed to a heart attack four years later, making Bread’s ’96-’97 tour its final reunion. David Gates turns 77 in December, but because life-expectancy rates are better than they used to be, and because age ain’t nothing but a number when it comes to being president of this country, I’d like to encourage Mr. Gates to consider throwing his cowboy hat in the ring in 2020. His between-song banter in Las Vegas 20 years ago gives the impression that he’s a gentle man who’s also a gentleman, a guy who can tell a joke without being mean, and a leader (of the band) who puts people (in the paying audience) first.
David, we-a want you. David, we-a need you. We’re-a tired of what we see in the bathroom mirror, and not just because the overhead light casts an incredibly unflattering glow.
Bread at the Flamingo Hilton Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada, July 5, 1997
Make It With You Look What You’ve Done It Don’t Matter to Me Diary Love Is Always Seventeen Fancy Dancer For All We Know/Bridge Over Troubled Water Baby I’m-a Want You Been Too Long on the Road Sweet Surrender Say When Mirror, Mirror Didn’t Even Know Her Name Too Much Love The Wait Aubrey The Guitar Man Goodbye Girl Love & Bide Lost Without Your Love Mother Freedom Everything I Own If
Click here to download the bootleg.
And, courtesy of a bootleg I downloaded from the website BigO in 2014, I’m including the audio from Bread Is Back, a 1977 promotional video featuring performances and backstage chatter from the band’s reunion tour that year, plus a bonus track of Bread performing “Make It With You” on the October 3, 1970, episode of The Andy Williams Show:
Yours for Life Fancy Dancer Baby I’m-a Want You The Guitar Man interlude Been Too Long on the Road Look What You’ve Done Lost Without Your Love Mother Freedom Make It With You
Click here to download the bootleg.
P.S. What’s bigger than a breadbox? Probably not Bread’s The Elektra Years: The Complete Albums Box since they only recorded six studio albums, but it goes on sale October 27 if you’re interested.
I’ve been a fan of A Fragile Tomorrow for several years now. I reviewed their last two albums here on Popdose and had the opportunity to speak with/interview the twin Kelly brothers, Sean and Dominic, a few years ago as they were releasing their heart-stopping Make Me Over album. Sean has anchored the band for well over a decade, along with Dominic (drummer), their younger brother Brendan on lead guitar and Shaun Rhoades handling bass duties, but now he’s about to step out into his own light with his forthcoming debut solo album, Time Bomb, Baby.
In the two years since we last chatted and AFT released their last album, a great deal has happened – both good and bad – and Sean and I catch up as he prepares to unleash a very ambitious and musically-rich collection.
You’ve done a lot of recording, performing and touring over the years. Now you’re branching out with a solo album. What was the inspiration to take you in this new direction? In the preparation for this record, what drove you – musically or otherwise?
It was a combination of things, really. The biggest driving force was the fact that we had just done a band record that I felt encapsulated not just where we were at the time, but where we were trying to end up, musically speaking, for essentially our entire career. Because of this, I legitimately had a hard time picturing where we could go from there. Of course, I knew we’d figure it out eventually. But I think I really needed to step away for a little while and do something new before I knew what the band could do next.
At the same time, I was in an intense love affair with the Roxy Music record Avalon. It was always one of my favorites, but at that particular time I was obsessed with it. It’s everything I love about ’80’s production and somehow avoids all of the cliche aspects of it. For whatever reason, I was simultaneously on a Kate Bush kick and a Peter Gabriel kick at the time. Both of those artists were people I was truly fascinated by for years. I loved their ability to create interesting, groundbreaking compositions and turn them into provocative recordings that to me were sonically ahead of their time. They had that in common with Roxy and Avalon. I was also super into Bryan Ferry’s solo record Boys & Girls and Bowie’s Let’s Dance and really enjoyed how all of these artists approached dance and synth music. When I realized that I was ready to do a solo project, I immediately thought of the common thread among all of this music and knew what direction I needed to go in.
Talk about the balance between being both nervous AND excited about presenting a solo project after so many years as part of a band.
It’s a whole new kind of freedom in some ways, and the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in other ways. I’ve been in this band for almost 14 years. I’ve always played with my brothers and I’ve played with Shaun for over a decade. Since moving from New York to Charleston, I’d started playing with other bands as a bass player, and I’d become the go-to keyboard player at Low Watt, here in Savannah, when bands would come in to record, so I kinda realized early on that I just wanted to do everything myself. I wanted to self-produce and compose and play everything. Just for the sake of having the freedom to control everything myself and not have three other people to consider in the production process.
I was most nervous about being a lead guitar player, and that was certainly a challenge at first. I knew I could write the solos because I’ve written some solos for AFT songs over the years, but it was more or less playing them in a convincing manner that I was concerned with — playing them like a lead guitar player! The whole thing was definitely out of my comfort zone, and it still is in the post-production phase because I’m navigating every aspect of this project myself. But I really am so excited to present this record! I definitely feel like I want to keep making solo records in between band projects and just have two unique creative outlets.
Was the songwriting process for this album different from your usual approach in writing for A Fragile Tomorrow?
In the sense of how the songs were written, it wasn’t much different. Just an extension of the process from the last band record. Everything was written and constructed entirely in the studio with this project, which was the case for 90 percent of the last AFT album. I had maybe one or two little riffs or ideas that I came in with for this record, but the majority of the music came from me sitting in the studio and playing for a little while, finding something cool, working on it for a bit and hitting record. Some of it even came from having one part solidified and hitting record, and kind of improvising what happened next. Then I’d obviously work backwards and flesh out the song from there, but most of these songs were truly rooted in improvisation and spontaneity.
The thing that was way different for me is that I made a conscious decision not to pack in a bunch of chords and instead really simplify the progressions in an effort to be faithful to all of that music the project was influenced by. It was totally against my nature because I personally have an innate desire when I’m writing for the band to explore chord progressions and look for the most interesting and unorthodox left turn. That comes from this mentality I’ve had for the last 5 years or so that for me, songwriting isn’t its own process. The way I work, it’s better to think of it as part of the production/recording process. I still had that mentality with this project, but I had to really go with my gut and try not to go down the rabbit hole of searching for left turns the same way I would normally.
The obvious: with you and your brother Dom having released solo albums, is there still A Fragile Tomorrow? Or is this as a means of exploring other avenues while the band is on hiatus?
There most definitely is still A Fragile Tomorrow. As I mentioned, after the last record I was having a hard time figuring out where we could go from where we were. We’d literally been doing nothing but the band, with the exception of a couple of side projects and more recently the studio work, for over a decade. Every creative project we’d done was as A Fragile Tomorrow. So I think it definitely felt like the time to step back and do some other stuff. To be honest, it wasn’t something we sat down and decided, it just happened. None of us are really fans of being out on the road for long periods of time, so that was never our lifestyle. We love playing live but we like to do it in smaller increments. After our West Coast tour, supporting the last record, we came home and just thought we’d not play for a while and live our lives a bit. We all were in serious relationships and our mom’s health was on the decline, and we just needed to be home. Then our grandfather died that May, and I think we just put the band on the back burner for a while after that. But Dom and I both started thinking about solo records around that time as well; just as outlets for what we were feeling, creatively.
As I was getting towards the end of the solo record, Brendan and I would spend the day recording (he engineered the solo record) and then the rest of the night just sort of playing together. We started putting down ideas and quickly realized that we were composing a band record. We started having conversations immediately and it became clear where we could take the band. Those conversations actually really started after Shaun Rhoades heard a little of what I was working on for the solo record and thought that our next band record should incorporate some of the more rhythmic, groove-based aspects of my solo project. A lightbulb went off and we took it from there. So I’m actually, at the moment, simultaneously navigating the launch of the solo project and the early stages of pre-production on the next AFT record.
There is an enormous amount of pressure for a musician to deliver something viable from a solo album. Did you feel this way or was it natural and “felt just right”? Talk about how it was going into the studio as Sean Kelly, solo musician.
There was certainly a fair amount of pressure in some way, but it wasn’t anything that was too different than what I was used to. As the songwriter in the band, I’ve always questioned the viability and quality of my work. Always. That was no different with this, but there was a difference in that I didn’t have other band members around me to let me know that I was just overthinking it! Having Brendan engineer the project was great, though, because it made it more comfortable. He didn’t play anything on it at all, but he would definitely let me know when I was being too insecure if I needed to hear that.
It honestly was great going into the studio under my own name. I did everything as it was in my head until I brought in my friend Josh Kean to play drums. Josh is by far my favorite drummer on the planet. He’s the most versatile drummer I’ve ever known. We were also in Danielle Howle’s band together for a few years and just clicked as a rhythm section. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, even though I have this huge musical chemistry in my own band. It was different. So I knew he needed to be the guy for this record. It gave me the chance to have someone else interpret the material. I could compose all of the parts and songs myself and have them played exactly how I envisioned, and then have someone else put their rhythmic stamp on top of that. It was wonderful in that way.
I did have some other guests make “cameo” appearances on the record, including the great Gail Ann Dorsey (who played bass on a song and sang on two), plus, my friend Ted Comerford helped with production. The vast majority of the time, though, I was piecing this whole thing together myself.
In that realm of checks and balances, would solo songs of yours (as well as Dom’s) start to find their way into the AFT live show or are these mutually exclusive?
I think they would! I think we’ll probably integrate at least one from each solo record into the AFT show going forward. The exciting thing about taking a year off from the band is that we get to kind of reevaluate things when we finally come back together and assess how we’ve evolved individually as players while we were away. At that point we can sit down and figure out what solo songs fit really well in the realm of the band’s live show. It’ll definitely depend on how the new AFT songs are fleshed out in a live setting, because I can tell you that they’re significantly different from anything we’ve done before in almost every way imaginable. That’s about as far as I’ll go into the new A Fragile Tomorrow project. But yeah, it’ll be cool to figure out what solo songs work for the band!
This is a highly personal question and if you don’t want to answer, I more than understand. Did the recent events in your life become elements that informed and helped shape the lyrical scope of this album?
The interesting thing is that a lot of the more significant events in my life started happening after this record was done. My grandfather died before I started recording, and that influenced the song “Let Me Be The First To Find Out.” He was an atheist, as was I until I more recently evolved into what I’d call a spiritually agnostic Jew. I wrote the song from his point of view about dying and wanting to die before my mother, who was terminally ill while he was on his deathbed. All he wanted was to not have to bury his child, and about a month before he died mom’s health started to improve. At his funeral I kept getting people coming up to me saying, “It’s like he made a deal or something.” I’d like to believe he did.
I did get engaged during the making of the record, and the song “Gold To Me” is about my relationship with my now-wife. We ended up getting married early – right after the record was in the can – so that my mom could be there because she’d started hospice while we were mixing the record. Mom died in July, and it’s been a fucking whirlwind ever since, trying to get my head in the game, so to speak, with this record. But looking back, there was a lot I was writing about that was most certainly informed by the progression of life that was happening as I was making the record. I write a lot about anxiety, so there’s a healthy amount of that being dealt with, lyrically.
All in all, I’m really glad that this didn’t end up being my grieving project or my coping project, ya know? Had mom died or gone into hospice while I was writing and recording this record, I know it would have been much different. Plus, she got to hear the finished record and I think loved the dance-y nature of it, so it all worked out as it was supposed to.
Do you plan on touring this album as a solo performer?
I am touring a bit in the last few months of the year. Doing some CD release shows in South Carolina and Georgia in October, followed by some Midwest stuff and some Florida & Louisiana shows. In December, I’m working on a Northeast run, and that will most likely be it for the solo tour, at least until next year. I’ve always preferred going out in little bursts of time rather than long tours, so it’s all worked out really well in that respect. It’ll be nice to be home with my wife during the week and then go out and promote this thing sporadically.
http://afragiletomorrow.com/
Time Bomb, Baby will be released on Friday, October 13th, 2017
There’s nothing terribly unique or special about this week’s show. It’s like most of the others; I play a bunch of tunes from mostly English acts, and throw in a few songs that don’t make sense on the surface, but make slightly more sense when viewed from space.
Bands making their DH debut this week: The Candy Skins, E, The Avalanches, The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Howard Jones, America, Brenda Russell, The Rembrandts, Hubert Kah, Lindsey Buckingham, and Thomas Dolby. How did I go this long before playing HoJo or Dolby? Fun fact about Dolby: according to Will Harris, thanks to the money he made from inventing polyrhythmic ringtones, Dolby is one of the few people to have enough money to have Oprah killed. Not that he would.
We at Popdose are very fond of Populuxe, Brooklyn’s trio of heavy pop hitters. A band that shows varied influences yet has a thing of their own, which isn’t easy to do in this day and age. Always smart and sharp, sometimes acerbic and abrasive, these guys are simply great.
We premiered the audio track of “Garage Sale” not too long ago, but now, we’re very happy to present to you the video. Have a taster of what’s coming from the band on their next album, Lumiere. It should whet your appetites just so…
Five days ago, David Grubbs released one of the best records of his storied career and a real contender, especially in avant-indie circles, for Record of the Year. The LP in question? Creep Mission, a collection of eerily emotive, eerily intuitive guitar pieces punctuated with careful interjections from drums, trumpet and electronics. The whole record hangs together and displays its treasures in ways at which some of Grubbs’ other best work only hints. Popdose recently got the opportunity to connect with Grubbs after he toured Japan and celebrated a birthday. Here’s the play-by-play.
POPDOSE: So, you have a new record, Creep Mission. And, let me say, I don’t know if you’ve ever sounded better in your solo career. I liked Prismrose a lot but this one just climbed to a whole new level. What do you think contributed to the tone of the record? Why does it hang together so completely?
DAVID GRUBBS: Thank you. I feel like I’ve hit on a rhythm of working where I play guitar most every day—I can’t say that that has always been true—and that I’m more patient about letting a piece develop more naturally over weeks and months, and that playing in the studio has never felt more of a piece with playing live. I also think that I’m damned fortunate to be playing with Eli Keszler (drums), Nate Wooley (trumpet), and Jan St. Werner, and that Creep Mission owes so much to this first-time combination of these extraordinary players and friends. Also: perhaps its wordlessness—no lyrics—made me approach these compositions through the category of “songs without words.”
POPDOSE: The record has an amazing sense of intuition to it. How many of the songs were improvised at time of recording?
GRUBBS: Nearly everything was written in advance; only “Jeremiadaic” is fully improvised. That said, Eli and Nate are tremendous improvisers who never play the same way twice, so any subsequent takes — there weren’t many — tended to be quite different in feel.
POPDOSE: Talk with me about your live performances — I saw you have a record release party in October. When we once talked about Bastro, you said it was difficult to adapt to different spaces. Do your solo performances in galleries differ from those at rock clubs? And, if so, how?
GRUBBS: It will be on October 19, at Outpost in Ridgewood, Queens, as part of Che Chen’s excellent “Fire Over Heaven” series. Following up on that comment that I made to you about how inflexible Bastro were—we kinda did one thing and we did it well, but we weren’t really able to respond to the exigencies of a given venue or even of a given mood—I think that one of the things I’m happiest about playing live today is that as a solo performer I can make it happen anywhere. If I’m on tour in Japan, as I was last month, and audiences are pin-drop quiet and intensely focused on the listening experience, the pacing can be altogether different, where a given tempo correlates to the decay and dissipation of a sound into silence. The dynamic range can be altogether different depending if you’re playing for a microphone in a studio or people sitting in chairs in an acoustically profound space or a rock club where everyone is standing. Playing solo guitar, even with fully composed material, I can’t say that I have the feeling of reciting my lines.
POPDOSE: Talk with me about collaboration and working with Eli Keszler. How do your current collaborations differ from your band experiences — Jim O’Rourke in Gastr del Sol, Brown and McEntire in Bastro, Searcy and McMahan and the rest of the crew in Squirrel Bait?
GRUBBS: Given different obligations at different points in life—for example, I’m a month into a semester of teaching, where I’m a full-time professor at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center—collaborations assume different rhythms. I might dive into working with Eli where we work intensely for a short period of time and then reconvene x number of months later. I feel that I dive headlong into collaborations—a recording, a tour—and then pick up the conversation half a year later. If anything, in my experience this makes for longer ongoing working relationships—especially because you’re able to reflect both on the work and the process through which it emerged during these “off” periods—which are always on periods with other folks.
POPDOSE: When we spoke previously, you talked about friends of yours — especially those from your Louisville youth — still making music. How can you account for the wide variety of music even among Squirrel Bait alums? I mean, listening to Spiderland or The For Carnation is worlds away from Creep Mission or The Thicket, which is worlds away from the new Peter Searcy LP. That says nothing of your other bands and collaborators, which is a pretty storied list. To what do you attribute this?
GRUBBS: I’d say that it’s because we came together to make music in what was stylistically a fairly straitjacketed moment: US hardcore punk c. 1983-84. Squirrel Bait pretty quickly shed those constraints, and I think all of us have been expanding ever since.
POPDOSE: What were your influences on Creep Mission? Following you on Facebook is an education, but I can’t help but feel Loren Mazzacane Connors — with you worked on the wonderful Arborvitae — was factored in somehow.
GRUBBS: Loren is a long-time favorite, and perhaps maybe the single greatest revelation for me around the time that Gastr del Sol made The Serpentine Similar. I seem to catch him live around once a year, and I’m always slayed by his example. I also sense that there was greater continuity from Prismrose into Creep Mission than with other album-to-album junctures: that I wanted to build on the feel of a piece like “How to Hear What’s Less than Meets the Ear” rather than to pivot and strike out in a different direction.
POPDOSE: Will you continue to work with Susan Howe? Plug away!
GRUBBS: Her new book Debths is completely extraordinary, and we’ll be performing WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER at the Yale School of Art in November. And I’m always waiting for the word to start work on a new piece.
POPDOSE: What’s next for Blue Chopsticks? Any daydream releases you wish you could issue/reissue?
GRUBBS: I had such a blast working with Taku Unami this summer on a duo record called Failed Celestial Creatures, which will come out on the Hong Kong label Empty Editions next spring, and I would love to release new music by his trio Hontatedori with Tetuzi Akiyama and Moé Kamura.
POPDOSE: Can we switch gears for a minute? On Twitter, you are an active poster and re-Tweeter of some anti-Trump material. Care to share your two cents about how you think the president is doing in his first year, and what impact that’s having on the larger world?
GRUBBS: I have stopped making predictions about the scale of the disaster that is the Trump presidency — except to say that it could easily rival or exceed the worst disasters of human history. I have real fears of his presidency leading to nuclear war — and at no other point in my life did I ever sense anything like that as even a remote possibility. We only have his sheer incompetence to thank for the ACA not having been repealed. (If I were a Republican who supported the ACA repeal, I’d think Trump the most maddeningly lazy and ineffectual president imaginable.) I’m responding to this question the day after the NFL more or less united against him — and those kinds of comings-together on a mass scale seem the best possible outcome of this nightmare.
Ever since I decided to make “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” the focus of this week’s column I’ve been wracking my brain to think of another instance when the full lineups of two huge groups collaborated on a hit record. Yes, there have been supergroups like Cream and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young made up of former members of various bands, but in this instance, we’re talking about the all the members of two groups who were at the top of their game getting together. If you can think of another example, please let me know in the comments.
“I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” is a Motown record, right? Well yes, but oddly its origins are pure Philly Soul. The song was written by Philadelphia legends Kenny Gamble and Jerry Ross, who was Gamble’s mentor. It has been claimed that Gamble’s partner Leon Huff had a hand in the writing but only Gamble and Ross are credited on the record. But the time the Supremes and the Temptations got around to it the song had been a hit twice already.
The original version of “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” was recorded by Dee Dee Warwick and produced by Ross. In late 1966, the Mercury Records release attained the #13 spot on the R&B chart and crossed over to #88 on the Pop chart. Also of note on the Warwick release were the background vocals which were provided by Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson. Although it was not her biggest hit, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” is the record most associated with Warwick because of the hit it later became for the Supremes and Temptations.
In all, Ross produced a total of ten recordings of “I’m Going to Make You Love Me.” Among the others were a 1967 version by Jerry Butler and a cover by Jay & the Techniques a year later. Aside from Ross, what all the versions had in common was the presence of Ashford and Simpson as background singers.
In 1968, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” was offered to Dusty Springfield who demurred but passed it along to Madeline Bell who was a background vocalist for her. In an interesting turning of the tables, Springfield ended up singing in the background for Bell on the record. When the record became a #26 hit, Bell, originally from Newark, New Jersey, got to come home from the U.K. with a hit record.
“It was great to go back to my hometown with a record in the charts. I was so happy to go home a success,” Bell said later.
And so the stage was set for the song’s greatest moment. The Supremes and the Temptations collaborated on an album called Diana Ross & the Supremes Join the Temptations and in 1968, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” became the lead single, although that wasn’t the plan at the beginning. The version of “The Impossible Dream” that the two groups had collaborated on was supposed to be the lead single, but when advance copies of the album hit radio stations the DJs started to play “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.”
This time the record was produced by Frank Wilson and, wait for it, Nick Ashford. Diana Ross and the Temptations’ Eddie Kendricks shared the lead vocal duties, and Otis Williams of the Tempts contributed the spoken word section. The always-present Funk Brothers provided the backing track which also included the Detroit Symphony.
In case you were wondering, the Supremes and the Temptations never performed “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” together live. When they appeared together on the legendary TCB special in December 1968, they sang “The Impossible Dream,” still scheduled to be the lead single at that point, to close the show. Both groups performed the song live on their own, however, the Temptations on the Ed Sullivan Show, and the Supremes at their farewell performance in Las Vegas.
“I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” was a huge hit for the Supremes and the Temptations, racing up to the #2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1969 and reaching the same lofty perch on the R&B chart.
I’ve said this before, but I tend to enjoy (more often than not) biographies of people I either know little-to-nothing about or people I’ve never been particularly interested in. I was never a “fan” of The New York Dolls or The Heartbreakers; I appreciate both and like several songs but neither group ever made their mark on me or my music. However, I was a big fan of Beat Rodeo, a wonderful band from the mid-’80’s who I saw on several occasions and had records by. That band’s drummer, Curt Weiss (who once went by the splendid moniker of “Lewis King”), has turned author, having penned a comprehensive biography of Jerry Nolan, the incredibly talented but troubled drummer for both the Dolls and the Heartbreakers.
Coming into this reading with a completely open mind, I can say this from the research and writing point of view and style, Mr. Weiss is a damned fine writer. There’s none of the deifications that writers tend to do when writing about a “hero” of theirs; it’s objective, fact-filled – painstakingly researched and simply fascinating – especially since I was able to receive an education on someone who was always just associated with another act/name (the Dolls, the Heartbreakers, Johnny Thunders). It made finding out about this legend (if you will) all the more pleasurable. And more importantly, it wasn’t an easy read – because the central character of the story is so unlikable. Hence, my greater appreciation of Mr. Weiss’ writing style and delivery.
Jerry Nolan, while an immensely gifted drummer (a human metronome, really), was an unflappable junkie; a heartless womanizer; a thief; held petty grudges (like his never-ending anger towards his best childhood friend, Peter Criss); irresponsible to the point of always getting kicked out of whatever band he was in – in short, not someone particularly nice or someone I’d ever want to know/be associated with. Yes, he was a meticulously sharp dresser with style (he fancied himself to be like the hip jazz players or Elvis Presley) and from all reports, a great story teller and “band director” (of sorts) but his lousy human skills made him insufferable.
That’s the beauty of this book – the juxtaposition of the writing and fact-telling while giving a full scope on someone who was (for all intents and purposes) a complete fuck up with seemingly no scruples (turning younger musicians and women on to heroin makes you a real shitheel – and I’m being kind). Mr. Weiss has done a more than commendable job – to be able to be thorough, deliver the facts without sugarcoating the ugliness of the story’s foucs and keeping it interesting. For someone who I’d never given much thought to, Jerry Nolan’s story is a can’t-put-it-down kind of read.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Stranded In The Jungle – Jerry Nolan’s Wild Ride will be released Tuesday, October 17th, 2017
Radio City with Jon Grayson and Rob Ross: Episode Thirty One
Thirty one shows into what began as an experiment and has turned out to be a huge success… Once again Jon and Rob pick up on what’s happening everywhere – and this one is very special. This week’s conversation begins with a very loving and heartfelt tribute to Husker Du’s Grant Hart, which ironically leads into the new “mini-series” of sorts, “1984 – The Rise Of The American Underground”, which starts off with Husker Du’s Zen Arcade. Rob gives a breakdown on the new HBO series, “The Deuce”; the phenomenal and historic winning streak by the Cleveland Indians; another week in Trump’s America and the always-brilliant “In Our Heads”.
When you have a show like this, who needs anything else? Seriously.
Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross: Episode Thirty One
The podcast will be on the site as well as for subscription via iTunes and other podcast aggregators. Subscribe and let people know about Radio City, as well as Popdose’s other great podcasts David Medsker’s Dizzy Heights and In:Sound with Michael Parr and Zack Stiegler.
Tobe Hooper, like George A. Romero, burst onto the scene with one of the most shocking independent horror films ever made. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) practically invented the slasher-film craze of the 1980s. But, also like Romero, he was considered something of a one-trick pony. While Romero fell back into the same series to great success, Hooper was never able to replicate the impact of his debut.
Still, he continued to work. After making Poltergeist (1982) under the watch of producer Steven Spielberg, Hooper signed a contract with Cannon Films to direct three movies. Cannon, for those unfortunate enough not to know, was a studio facsimile — chief executives Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus would release films regardless of things like quality. They’re remembered today with a sense of ironic fondness for making Chuck Norris a star (primarily in the Missing in Action movies) and for turning Sylvester Stallone into a parody of himself (in 1987’s Over the Top).
Still, Cannon allowed filmmakers relatively free rein on their products. Golan and Globus didn’t care about the end result of the film so long as it could be released. Like Roger Corman, Cannon’s business strategy allowed filmmakers to improvise on a tight budget.
Hooper’s films for Cannon provide an interesting glimpse at his goals as a filmmaker. He wanted to be someone who brought the B-films of his youth back to the public consciousness. And Hooper very nearly succeeded with the three he made for Golan-Globus.
Lifeforce (1985)
The first film in Hooper’s contract was the most unusual film he ever made. My first exposure to it was in the documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films. The film includes a clip from Leonard Maltin’s original review of Lifeforce, which he describes as “berserk” for its constant genre shift.
Maltin wasn’t kidding.
But what’s important is that Lifeforce seamlessly blends those genres. Lifeforce isn’t just a collection of horror set pieces with nothing in between them. The fact that Hooper decided to link his narrative using a naked supermodel (Mathilda May) means that it was bound to become a guilty pleasure and the sort of movie that defines Cannon films.
The film is about space vampires. A spaceship called the Churchill finds them trailing behind Halley’s Comet and brings them on board. The vampires proceed to kill almost the entire crew and then make it back to London. The vampires decay into great looking special effects if they do not suck the life force out of people. One of the vampires (the aforementioned naked woman) escapes and causes London to go under quarantine as they try to find her.
That summary does not do the film justice. It’s constantly shifting back and forth between the timelines, so we don’t find out what exactly happened on the Churchill until about an hour into the movie. This is also the sort of film that has Patrick Stewart showing up just so he can speak in a woman’s voice.
Still, the special effects are a definite selling point. Hooper has always been interested in creating a spectacle and Hooper was eager to use his bigger budgets. The opening is grand as we hear a John Williams (actually provided by Henry Mancini) inspired score over a panning meteor shot. And it only gets bigger from there as we see the giant spaceships and the scenes with the vampires draining the life force from people.
Tonally, Lifeforce is similar to a Hammer horror film. This may be due to the London setting, but the film is more slowly paced that I anticipated as well. There are large segments of the film devoted to scientists talking about the aliens and how they can defeat them. It grinds the film to a halt as we go over the exposition about the space vampires. It’s much more fun to see them actually do things then to have people try to explain it. But then, Hammer was always more dependent on the atmosphere of its films than it was on scenes of Dracula biting people.
It’s very difficult to determine what Lifeforce was trying to do. Was it meant to be a serious science fiction/zombie outbreak film that just so happened to have a naked supermodel? Is it a response to the more knowing horror films that were becoming the rage by 1986? Or is it a tribute to the European sexploitation horror films that Hooper was undoubtedly aware of when he signed on to direct the movie?
I think it’s mostly supposed to be a tribute of classic horror rather than a parody. It has this breathless charm of a ten year old trying to describe the awesome thing he saw at school today. You can tell they’re enthusiastic even if they can’t quite put it into words. I knew that Hooper was eager to create Lifeforce. It’s short on ideas but very large in its impact. It’s a blend of every horror trope Hooper could dream up, but it vampires, zombies, aliens, psychic powers, and the Apocalypse. Somehow, Lifeforce keeps itself together despite pulling its characters and the audience in wildly different directions.
Invaders From Mars (1986)
The 1980s were a time for great horror directors to remake ’50s schlock in their own image in order to not only reintroduce people to the films they loved but show they could outdo their predecessors. John Carpenter directed The Thing (1982),David Cronenberg did The Fly (1986),and Chuck Russell remade The Blob (1988).
Hooper’s entry into this trend was Invaders From Mars. I have not seen the original, but it sounds like the sort of thing that a child growing up in the ’50s and ’60s would have loved. A child learns that aliens are secretly taking over the minds of earthlings and fights to stop them. It’s a combination of the paranoia that would later be explored by Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the sort of kid fantasy that Hollywood has been making forever.
Amazingly, Hooper put together an amazing crew to help him, including writer Dan O’Bannon and actors Bud Cort, Louise Fletcher, Karen Black, and Timothy Bottoms. The material was also very appropriate for the ’80s. Like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), Invaders From Mars is ultimately about how Ronald Reagan’s ’50s nostalgia was built on a lie and actually hid sinister things. All we needed was for one of the Martians to sing a Roy Orbison song.
But Hooper never explored that idea in his Invaders. He was seemingly stuck with a kids’ adventure movie that doesn’t explore any of the darker aspects of the material. While the emphasis is on the horror of having aliens invade people’s minds, we never feel that horror. It’s obvious when someone has been taken over by the aliens and dumb when everyone seems to pretend like their friend has not been taken over by an otherworldly intelligence.
What doesn’t help is the fact that the young Hunter Carson gives a terrible performance. I usually don’t enjoy blaming actors for anything that goes wrong with a film, especially child actors. But his David Gardner was supposed to be our emotional center in the film. When he barely acts terrified by the aliens (he describes them to adults like he’s reading a book report), then how can I be expected to be scared?
Still, the aliens look great. Stan Winston created some incredible practical effects that hold up well. But by the time we see the aliens, it’s too late. Any goodwill has been destroyed by the lack of tension the film created. The third act redeems Invaders From Mars somewhat by fully embracing the ’50s military sensibility that underscored many classic B-movies. “Marines aren’t afraid to kill Martians!” a general yells after two of his possessed soldiers try to kill him. But then, we see the that the worst was saved for last, as David wakes up for his Martian nightmare. I don’t know if this is how the original film ended, but there was no possible way for an ’80s audience to accept that ending.
Invaders From Mars is the most tonally similar remake to the original. But the reason Carpenter’s The Thing is so fondly remembered is because it took the original film as a starting point and recreated it with a new sensibility. Hooper didn’t try. Whether he felt his Spielbergian style would be more acceptable to audiences or he wasn’t given enough of a chance by Golan-Globus is debatable. But the end result feels less like a passion project and more like a work-for-hire gig. It was exactly what John Carpenter was trying to avoid.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
Upon its release, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was considered one of the biggest horror disappointments ever made. Even Golan and Globus were said to be disappointed with the results. Audiences complained that, rather than relying on the tension the first film created with its simple plot and its documentary style cinematography, it relied on the gore effects that the first film deliberately avoided. Even weirder was the fact that Massacre 2 was set up as a comedy rather than a horror film. Every scene seems to be an inversion of the preceding film, with dying characters making jokes about how they’re “falling to pieces” and a dueling chainsaw fight between Dennis Hopper and Leatherface.
But Massacre 2 is not meant to be a horror film. It’s meant to be a subversion of slasher sequels — specifically, Halloween II (1981). Taken in that light, Hooper’s follow-up makes far more sense.
At the time the film was released, slasher films were in a contest to outdo each other with special effects and makeup in order to give people memorable “kills.” After a while, they weren’t scary since they weren’t realistic. Encountering a man shooting an arrow at you is one thing. Encountering a superhuman giant capable of crushing your head with his bare hands belongs in the realm of fantasy. Hooper realized this fact when he wrote his follow-up. What made the original Massacre so scary was that it felt so real, like a half-forgotten news story. This was underscored by the text crawl claiming (falsely) that it was based on true events.
Sequels required bigger and better set pieces, but that wouldn’t work for Massacre because that would rob it of its homegrown quality. It was easy to imagine the real case that could have inspired the story as we saw Sally screaming for her life. Massacre 2 eschews that element when we see two college students killed in the most over-the-top manner possible.
When Carpenter was tasked with writing a sequel to Halloween (1978), he created a film that was bigger, bloodier — and nowhere near as good as the first film. Carpenter played his sequel completely straight, as though we would be equally shocked by a monster we’d already seen doing the same things he’d already done.
So Hooper took the opposite approach. He made his film bigger, but didn’t expect it to shock anyone. The ideas are too absurd. The sequel acknowledges the first film, but only as the starting point to a series of gruesome murders that most authorities dismiss as accidents. It’s not until rock DJ Stretch accidentally catches one of the murders on tape does a Texas sheriff named Lefty (Dennis Hopper) go to investigate. The Sawyer brothers, including Leatherface, kidnap Stretch to keep her quiet but Leatherface starts developing a crush on her.
It sounds like a good horror-film setup, but Massacre 2 never takes itself seriously. For example, the Sawyer brothers now live in a dilapidated amusement park rather than a rundown farmhouse. It’s full of corpses and blood. Jim Siedow is back as the cook, but he does nothing but bark about how hard it is for the small business owner to make it in the economy. Even the terrifying Grandpa becomes a figure of fun as he tries in vain to wrap his 130-year-old hand around a hammer to kill Stretch. Hooper was punishing people who insisted that gore and effects are what created horror and did so by including as many gore effects as possible.
Besides, Massacre 2 does have some genuinely terrifying moments. Bill Moseley’s Chop Top is one of the scariest characters in the franchise. He carries around the corpse of his twin brother (the hitchhiker from the first film), rubs a heated coat hanger on a metal plate in his head, and characters openly treat him with fear. His introduction, where he breaks into the radio station after it’s closed to demand Stretch play his “request” and give him a tour of the studio, is disturbing. Stretch is barely able to speak as she tries to get Chop Top to leave. Hooper was still capable of delivering screams even as he subverted horror.
If sequels are supposed to take the original as a starting point and do something different with the material, then The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ranks among the most original sequels ever made. But it was too revolutionary, even for the gore hounds that the ‘80s raised. People turned against it, but can you blame Hooper for trying? He was smart enough to recognize the situation that a sequel placed him in.
When I was mayor I’d pretend to want to hear my constituents’ views, but honesty is the best policy. I learned that from Donald Trump during his presidential campaign last year. He tells it like it is, “it” being whatever will earn him cheers in red states that must be populated with a higher percentage of narcissistic trust-funders attracted to eastern European models than I’d originally thought. I used to wonder: don’t they see through this guy? Well, of course they do, and I finally realized why — he’s transparent.
With Knechtel, Bread recorded two more albums, Baby I’m-a Want You and Guitar Man, both released in ’72, before calling it quits due to exhaustion — five LPs in just three years, with a tour to promote each album — and trouble finding the inspiration to write new material. Gates and Griffin, the group’s two vocalists, pursued solo careers without much chart success, so when Elektra Records, Bread’s label, asked the band to record a new album to satisfy audience demand — The Best of Bread had gone all the way to number two on Billboard‘s Top LPs & Tape chart in ’73 — they reunited and came up with Lost Without Your Love (1977). Then they broke up again.
