Lupine's Lament Liner Notes #1
Dazy, Tanya Morgan, Plain Cheese Pizza | Rachel Sweet, Cherry Vanilla, Tommy Keene
Hello, welcome. I’m new, you’re new. Here’s the pitch: This sub-newsletter is the landing spot for the occasional non-metal things I want to write about so I don’t punish Plague Rages subscribers more than I normally would.
This particular post is the liner notes to my playlist of non-metal tracks. Here’s the playlist on Spotify. I’ll whip up one of these playlist posts every month or so. The playlist will be split into two sections, new(er) stuff and old stuff. Notes on the new stuff will be brief, more of a “Hey, I heard this and it was good, passing it along,” like the annoying coworker who dutifully leaves a CD-R on your desk after you talked to them about music one time. For the second part, considering I’m a has-been obsessed with small-world connections, I’ll naturally go deeper on the old stuff, eventually expanding some of them into standalone posts. Cool? Cool.
NEW:
Dazy - “Invisible Thing”
From: MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD: The First 24 Songs
Notes: Pandemic power pop. More info here.
Tanya Morgan - “So Good (ft. Kooley High)”
From: Don and Von
Notes: Fits perfectly into the Pharcyde pocket for me. Wish I could place the sample. Anyone? Check out Kooley High here.
My Idea - “Stay Away Still”
From: That’s My Idea
Notes: Lily Konigsberg from Palberta with Nate Amos from Water From Your Eyes. Palberta is great.
Plain Cheese Pizza - “Wing Dang Doodle”
From: Plain Cheese Pizza
Notes: Plain Cheese Pizza is a septet from Vancouver unifying noise rock, RIO, and Gentle Giant's Rabelais-inspired kitchen-sinkness in a way you didn't think you needed from a band with a many-toothed mutant dollar slice on the album cover. At its best, it's like if Henry Cow heard US Maple. King Crimson is also a touchstone, but this is pretty bonkers, more Yezda Urfa bugfuckery than something I'd associate with Fripp even if guitarists Wylie Ferguson and Thomas Hoeller have a spiky Fripperness to their playing. The star to me is Kria Wall whose vocals give this a jazzy sensibility that helps ground the more gonzo moments, not unlike the similarly out-there Birthday Ass. Real cool.
Jorge Elbrecht - “Brittle Vines Break”
From: Presentable Corpse - 002
Notes: Might know Elbrecht from his work with Tamaryn, No Joy, Ariel Pink pre-Capitol meltdown, etc. Maybe Coral Cross, even. Solo work is equally varied and neat. This one is chamber psych, think Zombies caught in that Vietnam flashback meme.
Surfbort - “Saturday Night”
From: You Don’t Exist
Notes: I don’t even remember how I found this. Doesn’t matter. It goes.
Lips - “Sometimes I’m Afraid”
From: I Don’t Know Why I Do Anything
Notes: Really inventive. Rest of the album bounces between pure pop and nervier stuff that’s like Soulwax taking a stab at Tusk.
пуща - “I Left My Home”
From: headlights / I left my home
Notes: Previous recordings were kinda like Daitro in that it was skramzy and sung in French. This single reminds me of the great Cavern record from last year that not enough people cared about.
如梦 - “开场曲”
From: 开场曲
Notes: Maybe Mars, out of Beijing, is the best label that I’ve stumbled upon this year. You’ll see its wares again soon. As for this powerful post-punk band, apparently, per the translated Bandcamp notes, 如梦 puts on a killer live show. Hoping to see it sometime.
Stream it here: https://downloads.maybemars.org/track/--118
Koeosaeme - “12520219:05”
From: Annulus
Notes: Whatever Ryu Yoshizawa does feels like someone doing it for the first time.
Vinyl Williams - “Beaming”
From: Beaming / Precious Star
Notes: Likewise, no one can do the psyched-out, spacey woosh like Vinyl Williams. Williams has been getting progressively proggier and power-poppier over the past few records. Can’t wait for what’s next.
Ichiko Aoba - “Dawn in the Adan”
From: Windswept Adan
Notes: I haven’t spent enough time with the album, but “Dawn” has been stuck in my head since I heard it. Baroque, beautiful. If you like this, I highly recommend muffin who resurfaced recently after nearly a decade.
Intetskjønn - “Ta på meg”
From: Bög Life
Notes: Like Surfbort, can’t recall how this crossed my path. Glad it did. Like if LiLiPUT turned into Black Flag.
Bootlicker - “Hunting”
From: Bootlicker
Notes: Cool that this Vancouver d-beat steamroller has broken out. Deserved, has the hooks to make it. Its 2018 EP, Who Do You Serve?, made my year-end list back when I thought putting punk in a metal list was a good idea. The EP before that one was released on Slow Death Records, a label currently riding a long-ass hot streak. Check it out.
Anytime Cowboy - “Serotonin Dreams”
From: Bug Bite
Notes: Not previously familiar with Reuben Sawyer, but I’d bet on this collection of weirdo bedroom rock with a country tinge eventually making the rounds. Just seems ripe for the music critic picking. The leads, more often than not, remind me of a post-punk version of the Grateful Dead if it hung out with Zoogz Rift. Weird comp? Listen to it.
Sexual Jeremy - “The Creep”
From: Sex Tape
Notes: This post has been in the works for a lonnnnnnng time, so here’s another one from the ‘I forget’ bin. This is from Sexual Jeremy’s last release, a 2018 split with COQ. I hope it’s not done? Anyway, some real good scuzzy Shorty vibes.
Mini Skirt - “Pressure”
From: Casino
Notes: I follow the “egg punk” tag on Bandcamp. It’s hilarious that this has become a genre. I don’t know when I made the switch from chain punk, but I’m here now and I love it.
Bitter Branches - “Along Came a Bastard”
From: Along Came a Bastard
Notes: Tim Singer, of Deadguy and Kiss it Goodbye. If you know, you know. There are few finer punk pleasures than listening to Singer slowly, ragefully, piecing a phrase together. An 8th Wonder of the Punk World. Release an LP, Bitter Branches! I promise the band won’t break up this time, Tim!
Colonial Wound - “II”
From: Degradation
Notes: Possibly the best of the newer noise rock bands.
Nitkowski - “Careers in Cartography”
From: Effortless Charm
Notes: From the Bandcamp comments: “Nice work, fellas. Please don't break up.” Always the kiss of death.
Stugots - “Malnourished Man”
From: Soupy Sales
Notes: Jack Carillo’s other band is Cronies, which I’m surprised SKiN GRAFT hasn’t signed yet.
Eremo - “L’Ego in Un Pagliaio”
From: L’Ego in Un Pagliaio
Notes: The skramz renaissance continues. Eremo is from Italy and reminds me of Off Minor. Fittingly, Eremo released this on roughly 18,000 different labels. The members also sent me a very nice email after I bought it.
No Note - “Scar Tissue”
From: If This is the Future Then I’m in the Dark
Notes: The gag is that all of the song titles are taken from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This does not sound like that. Think a less widdly Kidcrash.
OLD:
Rachel Sweet - “Spellbound”
From: Protect the Innocent
Notes: While many stars of today have multimedia ambitions, I don’t think we’ll ever see a bio quite like Rachel Sweet’s. Working backwards, Sweet has found enduring success as a TV producer, landing credits on, among other productions, Broke, The Goldbergs, 2 Broke Girls, Hot in Cleveland, Dharma & Greg, and Sports Night. Acting? Checked that box, too. She appeared as George Costanza’s cousin in the Larry David-penned “The Contest,” one of the all-time Seinfeld episodes. Hosting? Sure. She was out front on The Sweet Life, which had Steve Young, Michael Patrick King, Tim Burns (Freaked appreciators, hello), Becky Hartman Edwards, and someone named Jon Stewart in the writing room. Soundtracks? You bet. Sweet adapted her The Sweet Life theme for the opening credits to Clarissa Explains it All. Heck of a career. Not even half of it.
Akron, Ohio’s Rachel Sweet got jumped into show business as a tot, winning “an electric garage door opener” in a singing contest. That led to commercial work when she was still in her single digits. By 12, she was opening up for…oh no…Bill Cosby in Las Vegas. Next up, country music.
“I got interested in a field that would accept me,” Sweet told the Lewiston Daily Sun, “Country Tanya Tucker was doing it. I didn’t see any rock ‘n’ roll that were 12 or 13.” Her country singles didn’t go far, but she did cut demos with Liam Sternberg. Sternberg took those to Stiff Records. Stiff signed Sweet and dropped her label debut on The Akron Compilation which, additionally, features two songs from fellow Ohioans The Waitresses.
Stiff packaged Sweet as, in the words of All Music Guide, “jailbait” on 1978’s Fool Around. She was 16. Can’t-do-that-today PR gambit aside, it was undeniable that Sweet had real pipes and talent all the way down. Her take on Carla Thomas’s “B-A-B-Y” is on-the-money. It landed in the UK Top 40. Her backing band on that record? The Rumour, as in Graham Parker & the Rumour. One more small-world note before we move on: TIL, Brinsley Schwarz was in the Rumour?
Anyway, the Martin Rushent-produced Protect the Innocent, released in 1980, features…Sweet on the cover…kidnapping a child??? Stiff, man. While it didn’t have a hit, I think it’s a more interesting record than its predecessor. It’s cover-heavy but check out those covers. “Baby, Let’s Play House,” made famous by Elvis, is there. But so are songs by Moon Martin (“I’ve Got a Reason”), Velvet Underground (“New Age”), and The Damned(!) (“New Rose”). “Spellbound,” written by Jimme O’Neill of The Silencers, is off of that one. It was a minor hit in the states, reaching #107.
Sweet jumped in Capitol for 1981’s …And Then He Kissed Me. “Everlasting Love” is the song people remember, a duet with forgotten pin-up prince Rex Smith. The video is pure normcore insanity, like everyone took GLeeMONEX in the height of Reagan’s America and then Tracy Ullman skewered it. Kind of love it? While not a smash, it got to #32, Sweet’s biggest song. Elsewhere, there’s some passable fake Phil Spector and Sweet’s crack at “Shadows of the Night” a year before Pat Benatar turned up the bombast. Overall, not really my thing. I think everyone who has written about …And Then He Kissed Me has written this about it, but, man, if there was ever a record that needed Jim Steinman’s extra oompf, it’s probably this one.
1982’s Blame It On Love, though, sits far closer to what I dig. “Voo Doo” was Sweet’s final charting single and it’s a stunner, a moody midnight burner caught somewhere between Heart and Fleetwood Mac. I love it. The rest of the record doesn’t quite match its smolder, but it does have that early ‘80s studio rock cool that I’m a sucker for. It should be the start of something. Instead, it’s her final full-length.
Rachel Sweet would return to music here and there, mostly in movies. She cut “Hairspray” for the John Waters’ flick and a ton of tracks for Cry-Baby. No matter, a few other entire careers were waiting for her.
Black Moon - “I Got Cha Opin (Remix)”
From: Diggin’ in Dah Vaults
Notes: From the great Da Beatminerz, working off of Barry White’s “Playing Your Game, Baby.”
Buffalo Tom - “Sodajerk”
From: Big Red Letter Day
Notes: This is one of those songs you forget about, but, thanks to its radio airplay back in the day, immediately brings you back to a time/place. Fairgrounds. A cold wind blowing across a grass field parking lot.
Cherry Vanilla - “Liverpool”
From: Bad Girl
Notes: I haven’t read Cherry Vanilla’s autobiography, Lick Me: How I Became Cherry Vanilla, but, oh, the stories that must be in there. Synopses of Vanilla’s early career read like someone picked Trivial Pursuit cards at random: Warhol girl, David Bowie’s publicist (per Wikipedia: “She became known for her outrageous marketing strategies, which included an open offer to perform oral sex on any DJ who would play Bowie's records….”), and spots on Radio Hanoi. Vanilla then branched out into her own music, forming Cherry Vanilla & her Staten Island Band, landing “Shake Your Ashes” (which I don’t think is a Claude Hopkins cover) on Max's Kansas City alongside Pere Ubu and Suicide. Vanilla would soon end up across the Atlantic at the other punk hotbed. Her early London band featured members of the Henry Padovani-era The Police who played for cash and a support slot on the Cherry Vanilla tour. Vanilla’s first single? “The Punk,” of course, released in September 1977. (Different lineup, I guess Vanilla defunded the Police early.) Bad Girl, her full-length debut, was released by RCA in 1978. One more album followed, 1979’s Venus d'Vinyl. The band broke up, Vanilla moved back to the US. Some rando gigs followed — she’s on Roger Waters’ truly batshit The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking that we’ll talk about sometime — before hooking up with Man Parrish(!!!) for 1993’s Blue Roses. Oh yeah, I’m picking the book up.
Mint Condition - “Are You Free”
From: Meant To Be Mint
Notes: Top to bottom, some of the best Minneapolis music of the ‘90s. Jellybean Johnson from the Time on the boards. Fellow Time alums Jam & Lewis as executive producers. Mint Condition would get better than this, but this Stokley Williams track is still such a breath of fresh air. Right up there with Ralph Tresvant’s “Money Can't Buy You Love” as one of my favorite things in the extended Jam & Lewis discography.
Jo Jo Gunne - “Roll Over Me”
From: Bite Down Hard
Notes: Capping off our crazy-career trilogy is Jay Ferguson, who you have 1000 percent heard even if you don’t yet know the name.
Ferguson is featured here in Jo Jo Gunne, the band he formed with Mark Andes after the two bailed from pioneering LA rock band Spirit. If you only know one thing about Spirit, it’s that Jimmy Page allegedly nicked Randy California’s riff in “Taurus” for “Stairway to Heaven.” (At the time I’m writing this, the courts have gone back and forth but currently say “nope.”) Of course, Spirit’s history is pretty dang rich and will get a spotlight once I do an expanded Jay Ferguson post. To whet your appetite, here’s this fun fact from Wikipedia take from Scott Bernarde’s Stars of David: Rock 'n' Roll's Jewish Stories:
Before returning to his native state, [Randy] California previously played with Jimi Hendrix as a member of Jimmy James and the Blue Flames in New York City's Greenwich Village in 1966. Hendrix gave Randy Wolfe the nickname "Randy California" to distinguish him from Randy Palmer, whom Hendrix named "Randy Texas".
That is some primo defensive-coordinator-for-a-community-college nickname bestowing, Jimi.
Anyway, Jo Jo Gunne, named after the low-charting Chuck Berry song, has been described by Ferguson as Little Feat meets Sly and the Family Stone, and boy does that ever nail it. The quartet signed to David Geffen’s Asylum Records, supposedly between Jackson Browne and The Eagles. “Run Run Run,” Gunne’s first single, became a hit, launching its 1972 self-titled debut onto the album charts. That song and album cut “Shake that Fat” absolutely rule.
“Roll Over Me” comes from the band’s second album, 1973’s Bite Down Hard. While it didn’t produce a “Run Run Run,” the album did okay numbers, breaking into the top half of the Billboard Top 200. If you hear that glorious synth intro by Ferguson and think, Huh, proto-yacht rock? Well, hang on.
After Jo Jo Gunne split, Ferguson embarked on a solo career. The first single from his second album is the all-timer “Thunder Island,” which features Joe Walsh on session guitar. (This is a pro-Walsh Substack, James Gang rules.) That track peaked at #9 and anchored Ferguson’s 1977 full-length of the same name. Ferguson would hit again with “Shakedown Cruise” in 1979, cracking the top 40.
After interest cooled, Ferguson broke into soundtrack work. His song “Pictures of You” is on The Terminator soundtrack. He also scored A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child.
Cool stuff, but didn’t I promise that you know Jay Ferguson? Yeah, you do. That’s because he’s the composer of the theme song to the American The Office. I shit you not. There you go, Jimi Hendrix to Steve Carrell.
Lush - “Superblast!”
From: Spooky
Notes: It’s Lush.
Enuff Z’Nuff - “Backstreet Kids”
From: Clowns Lounge
Notes: Willfully Obscure, which is still active and still uncovering unheard jangle and power pop gems, used to make the case that, underneath the hair, Enuff Z’Nuff was a good power pop band. This ancient demo tape that was cleaned up for the archival Clowns Lounge proves it.
Tommy Keene - “Run Now”
From: Run Now
Notes: Packed onto the reissue of Songs From the Film is this killer, pulled from the 1986 EP of the same name. Godhead jangle.
Instant Funk - “Slap, Slap, Lickedy Lap (Alternate Version)”
From: Slap, Slap, Lickedy Lap
Notes: This is one of those songs that I’ve been trying to find forever that popped up on YouTube one day. Oh sure, people have uploaded this 7” before, but in a horrendous mono mix that sucked out all of the bass-y booty shaking. I thought for years that this superior alt version (no offense to the Bunny Sigler-produced original) came courtesy of legit legend Larry Levan, much like the remix of Instant Funk’s smash “I Got My Mind Made Up (You Can Get It Girl).” Incorrect. I’m probably confusing it with the 12” mix that appears on Levan’s seriously good (and seriously pricey) The Definitive Salsoul Mixes '78-'83. Still, any reader want to chime in here? Anyway, we’ll have to dig into Instant Funk at some point. The John Morales M & M Mix of “Crying” is one of my favorite Philly soul/disco tracks of all time.
20 Fingers, Gillette - “Short Dick Man (Bass Mix)”
From: Short Dick Man
Notes: What better way to follow-up the horniness of Instant Funk. It amazes me this song hasn’t found a second life as a TikTok meme. The bass mix has that extra bit of Miami that turns it into a party destroyer. The official video for the edited single version, which aged way better than expected, is below.
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