Old Shit I like that other people either don't or don't know about...

The Liquor Giants - Every Other Day at a Time CD
- Liquor Giants CD
The main dude from the Liquor Giants is singer/guitar player/songwriter Ward Dotson (hat, below). Ward was part of the early L.A. "punk/Americana" scene as a member of the original Gun Club. He played on the Gun Club's best stuff, namely Fire of Love and Miami (a good album that Blondie-man Chris Stein unfortunately shittily produced). Ward left the band because he was sick of the overly dramatic and humourless goth scene that the Gun Club ended up attracting. Of course, GC front man Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a pretty goth looking dude, and a heavy duty drunk to boot, so maybe that helped, but I've never read any quotes in regard to that.
The next move for Dotson was to play and write for the Pontiac Brothers, with Matt Simon on vocals. The Pontiac Brothers were a pretty cool band, who were, at times very derivative of the Stones and, at other times, the Replacements. I liked Doll Hut a lot at the time, which is the more Stones-ey side, but Fiesta en la Biblioteca had it's fair share of quality tunes. The Pontiac Bros. lasted from about 1984 to 1988, then they re-grouped for a little bit in 1991-1992 to record Fuzzy Little Piece of the World and tour in support. They re-grouped While the Liquor Giants had already been started, I believe.

The first couple Liquor Giants albums are kind of like a continuation of the Pontiac Brothers later material, in that they emulate the Replacements a lot. The Stones influence is not really present anymore, and Dotson seems way more interested in pop songs. There's some good tunes to be found, but the production's not so hot and the song writing's not quite there yet. Here, their third album, is where they start to show some real promise. Ward's definitely into 60's pop (there's a Kinks Cover), and his songs are starting to show their own identity.
Liquor Giants, their next album, and first for Matador Records, is where the band develops into a great, sloppy and enthusiastic pop-rock band. Oddly enough. the "band" on Liquor Giants is pretty much just Ward Dotson, who plays guitar, bass, keyboards and vocals, with Matt Simon on drums. Most pop bands are too mannered and mannered and 'nice' for my blood, but this stuff has goofy, funny lyrics and enough recklessness, (and distortion) to make for a great listen. This ain't like power pop, this kinda pop is closer to 60's rock like the Kinks/Stones, mixed with Raspberries, 60's Motown sound and Beach Boys influence (without the falsetto vox). That combo of influences may mislead you into thinking that the Liquor Giants are just an exercise in nostalgia, but that ain't the case. Their influences are a springboard wherein they launch into raunchy pop tunes, and inject 'em with their own imprint. This album and the following Every Other Day at A Time are amazingly little known, which is a shame, because they're both killer rock/pop albums loaded with catchy, inventive tunes. This band broke up, to the best of my knowledge, but I've never read so. There's no info available online that tells me squat about where Ward Dotson is now, but I'd most certainly like to hear what he's up to, if anything.



Death of Samantha - Where the Women Wear the Glory and the Men Wear the Pants LP

Death of Samantha were a band from Cleveland who put out a couple albums, an EP and a coupla singles in the late 80's. Some folks'll be familiar with the band that they changed their name to in the early 90's, which is Cobra Verde (named after a Werner Herzog movie). Cobra Verde actually toured backing up Robert Pollard, as Guided by Voices. Guitarist Doug Gillard left CV to stay with GBV after Bob Pollard canned the rest of the band in the midst of the tour. Anyway, the name Death of Samantha is taken from a Yoko Ono single of the same name.
Death of Samantha's first 12" EP, Laughing in the Face of a Dead Man, kinda blows. It's really sloppy and unfocused, and although it has some decent moments, it's best left forgotten. It was on a pretty cool label, Homestead Records (All DoS records were), run by Gerard Cosley, who went on to form Matador Records.
So that brings us to the headlined album. This is a goddamn great album in my book. What does it sound like, you ask? Well...it sounds like an aggressive version of Glam Rock from the 70's, with some weird lyrics, that are ambiguous and, at times, pretty funny. It's got songs with long, intertwining guitar leads, and riffs, which might remind you of Mick Ronson's work with bowie. Oh yeah, it's also got a cover of Cleveland legend Peter Laughner's "Silvia Plath". So it's pretty much old school hard rock, with punk aggression. John Petkovic's vocals are either love 'em or hate 'em. He's got a snide and intense that delivery which I think adds something different to the stew, but others might find a bit over the top. I'm not going to go into Where the Women Wear the Glory... track by track, but suffice it to say, if you see it, I'd recommend snapping it up. For those interested, Cobra Verde are still around, and although I don't think they've ever reached the heights scaled with this album, they keep putting interesting stuff out. Copycat Killers, an album of covers, both obscure and not ,is a fun album worth checking out. I don't think they've ever released anything that sucked, and that's saying something (although, for some reason, none of my friends seem to like this band). By the way, Where the Women... was released on CD, but it's very hard to come by, so vinyl is probably the easier way to go on this one.

Starving Weirdos - Eastern Light 2CDR
(Root Strata)

So this 2 CDR deal made the Wire magazine year end list for one of the best "Outer Limits" releases. I was always a Twilight Zone fan myself rather than the latter, but I actually ordered Eastern Light before I read said mag. Considering that this is a microscopic re-release of 150 after an equally minuscule first release, it seems odd to recommend it to the world at large, but, in this case, I agree with 'em. It is a surprisingly "professional" sounding release, and it stands out among probably any other low budget spacey drone outfit out there. As I said, it's droney, but there's some actual musicality to it, which'll keep you interested. I don't know exactly how to describe this, other than to say that there are obviously plenty of real and homemade instruments at work here. It was most likely improvised, and pieced together later, and, if that's the case, it's very nicely edited. If not, the joke's on me. I gotta admit, I was a little bit concerned because of the goofy name, but Eastern Light is the real deal. By the way, the CDR's are packaged in a nice hand-painted gatefold. If I gave stars, this'd be a shiny page indeed.

www.rootstrata.com

The Who - Endless Wire CD/DVD

I usually don't review big-time releases, but I thought I'd put a review up for this one. I've read a few reviews for Endless Wire and I've found that most of the time they are not fair and balanced. For instance, the annoying, trend sniffing Pitchfork said all kinds of nice things about this album, but the reviewer had to refer to the score repeatedly (I think the idiot gave it a 4.7 or something) to remind the indie kids that it's not cool to like music made by unhip old guys. He didn't really have anything bad to say about it, though. The other thing is that Pitchfork, along with most other reviewers had to remind us that this doesn't sound like the Who with John Entwistle and Keith Moon in the lineup. No shit? An album made by a band who's members are 60+ years old doesn't rock as hard as their classic albums from 30 years ago? What a fucking surprise.

Yes, this album is more subdued than the Who's classic albums (Who's Next, Quadrophenia, etc.), and though I was suprised myself, it's a solid album. It's definitely better than the last few Pete Townshend albums, and without question it's a hell of a lot better than the Who's last studio album It's Hard. It's split into two parts, a collection of 9 songs, and then a "mini-opera" called Wire and Glass, which takes up the second half of the album. I figured it was gonna suck because a mini opera sounds like a recipe for disaster, especially considering Townshend's overblown concepts of the past 10-15 years. It's good. It's got some catchy rock tunes ("We Got a Hit" and "It's Not Enough") and some nice introspective songwriting. I think it makes sense for old guys to mellow out a little bit, I mean how stupid does it look to see old guys trying to rock out like 20 year olds?

Some more reviews of shit I've been listening to lately:

The Bummer Road - Deep Space Circuit 2 CDR

Deep Space Circuit is the Bummer Road's tour CDR(s) for their recent European tour. I don't know how many copies are available, it's not really publicised (you can order one from Time-lag.com, in the link column). It's a compilation of live material. Most of the "songs" are previously released, but that doesn't matter a bit, because they're all reinterpreted and way different than the original versions. I generally expect live albums to be a step down from a band's studio material, but that ain't the case here. They actually rock out at times which comes as somewhat of a suprise to me, and, I guess because it's recorded live, the music is a bit more straightforward than their usual gauzy, reverb blown releases. They have released other live stuff before, but this release makes it evident that the Bummer Road are really hitting their stride.