At The Helm

Deciding The Direction Of A Band Is Much Easier When It Is Your Band

School as a youth is designed to prepare you for adult life and how it truly does so is not always initially apparent. There are covert lessons, broadcast on a hidden frequency, that don't become clear until logic steps in later in life. School time spent learning about democracy is perhaps the pupil's greatest delayed eye opener. Teachers speak with great pride about how we live in a nation that gives a voice and vote to everyone and exercising this gift is important and imperative. This immediately seems odd to me since I was not given a choice to what we would be discussing in class and when it was discussed. If we truly lived in a democracy, my vote would have been for a forum on underage drinking, and how to increase it. I am confident that I would be able to lobby enough votes to ratify...

It is not until later in life we realize the problem with a democracy and giving everyone a voice is that no one ever shuts up. High school, national government or anywhere else in life, if you open up the floor, some axewound is going to fuck it up by wasting everyone's time about dog sweaters. Since it is illegal to stab people like this in the throat (so in addition to watching them die, you don't have to listen to them anymore), you eliminate shit like this by having one person in charge. What you are truly voting for, is not for what you believe should be policy, it is to appoint a person that will have the power to tell someone to cram it, and where the crammed item should go. Nowhere is this more necessary than in rock music. Bands need leaders to focus on the business of being a band and to avoid conversations about what colors smell like. Most successful bands have the one person who refused to listen the nonsense about finishing school, instead just tuning into the noise they heard inside their head. The noise became vision, the vision became something called "my band", and "my band" became a carnival ride that went through musicians like disposable lighters. In order to successfully navigate this road, your bandleader needs to have direction, and this direction often starts with the instrument the band catalyst plays. You should quickly realize that Ted Nugent's band would sound different than Scott Weiland's because Nugent plays guitar and Weiland shoots heroin.

ICEHOUSE

Iva Davies is not just the leader and catalyst for the band Icehouse, he also may be the most successful oboe player on the planet. By Davies starting his musical education by learning the oboe in his youth, then parlaying this into a viable rock band, he became the dream example of every middle school music teacher. In hopes of getting people excited about woodwind instruments, a teacher might use this example to inspire; much in the same way singing waiters are reminded the Tony Curtis started his career in that shit job. The truth is that the quota for these rags-to-riches senerios is one and it has been filled-so press on with a different dream. The best an oboe player or singing waiter can hope for is to not get beat up every day on the way home.

The oboe did serve as part of the sonic template for Icehouse, a band with Davies as the centerpiece and only constant member. He used the atmospheric elements of the woodwind section to build layers and texture in his music. The band lived in the aural world between upbeat and melancholy, creating songs that mirrored both the open country and vibrant cities of Davies native Australia. Icehouse's 1983 EP "Fresco" was a 5 song display that attempted to raise the level of exposure in the U.S. "Street Cafe" was a spacious affair that paradoxically attempted to seek a personal connection. The song is a musical document of those ethereal moments, stamped in our minds, that took place somewhere real and tangible enough to cause us to return to the location time and again in order to relive and re-encounter what occurred. Fittingly, Street cafe appeared not only on "Fresco", but

The full album "Primitive Man" as well.

Listen to "Street Cafe"

The Golden Palominos

If you ever wondered why the drum machine never fully replaced the human drummer, you just need to remember that the drummer has weapons. Stationed behind the drum kit you will find a quiver of drumsticks, an arms length away to fire at anyone who dares to disagree. All it takes is 3 or 4 "OUCH! FUCK!" reactions before the drum machine vote get shelved. It also makes sense that a drummer led band would resist an electronic delivery in favor of a more traditional direction. Drummer Anton Fier formed his Golden Palominos to avoid the enchantment with technology, instead focusing on an intertwined emotional premise for each album that featured a rotating set of unique musical members. 1986's "Blast Of Silence" sauntered away from the stadium rock, new wave and hair metal records of the time that seemed to come with their own hair dryer, creating it own space, which eventually became alt-country and Americana music. The Peter Holsapple penned tune "Diamond" emerged as an anti-single drenched in back forty glamour featuring the painfully lush vocals of Syd Straw. "Diamond" moves along sadly, but briskly, carried by a simple depth brought about by a talented group (including T-Bone Burnett and Matthew Sweet) of players. The result is a timeless piece of haunting beauty and synergy.

Listen to "Diamond"

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Bail! Bail! Rock And Roll!

Checking Out The Last Records Of 2 Bands That Checked Out.

Artful Dodger

The marathon. A race in tribute to a guy that ran 26+ miles then dropped dead. Why would you sign up for this? I would drop out right after the 1st wheelchair contestant passed me by or when they told me what that liquid you drink during the race actually is. Life is a enough of a marathon on its own. Anyone that tells you life is short has cancer-because life is the LONGEST thing you will ever do. Brushing your teeth? I have heard you should brush them for 2 minutes. 2 MINUTES?! Do you really expect me to be away from my cell phone for that long? Don't dictate to me when I'm done. No matter if it's a marathon or I'm brushing my teeth, I am finished when I get bored or when I see some blood... All of us have that timer inside that tells us when it's time to go. The "time to go" timer for the band Artful Dodger, however, had a snooze alarm.

Artful Dodger was a national band that unfortunately only had a regional following. Pockets of fervor in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic were not enough to carry the band further than small clubs and sporadic radio airplay. After 3 albums on Columbia that did not sell (even though they contained perfect Power Pop masterpieces such as "Wayside" and Think Think"), the label told them to hit the bricks and they were left out on the street to fend for themselves, eventually signing with the obscure Ariola label, thus buying the band an extra 9 minutes of sleep. The biggest problem keeping the band from breaking through on a larger level is what they refer to in the film industry as their "high concept pitch" (meaning you can not describe the idea in one short sentence). So instead of attempting to describe Artful Dodger as "Yearning guitars and smokey yet powerful vocals about love lost or never had. A band with a smart pop sensibility with the edge of desperation that crystallizes the sound of your breaking heart though a Marshall amp.", the sell was "They sound like the Faces if Rod Stewart didn't want to be on the cover of People Magazine," and no one wanted to buy that album....

Small record deal or not, 1980's Rave On was a beautiful album showcasing all that made this band special to a select few. Clear and focused in the way you would be when you decide to swallow the whole bottle of pills, the band might have known this was the last mile and created this record as a headstone to 1970's Power Pop sound that they helped create. "A Girl (La La La)" was the rock radio single that might have been too vulnerable to be a hit, although the sing-along outro on the song showed that they still wanted to give it a try. Artful Dodger came to an end in 1982 when Billy Paliselli, the band's lead singer, appropriately broke some hearts when he resigned.

Listen to "A Girl (La La La)

Let's Active 

It seemed everyone knew about Let's Active yet no one owned any of their records. The band's highest charting album went to #111 and they had only one single that charted, and that was #17 on the Modern Rock Tracks, a chart compiled from stations that at the time had slightly more listeners and slightly less signal strength than Ecuadorian CB Radio. Those that tuned in were in for a treat. Band founder/leader and producer, Mitch Easter, coaxed lush but angular sounds out terrestrial equipment creating a manifest for the moody jangle rock of the mid 1980's. There were several lineups (that somehow included Easter's girlfriend or wife...) from '81 to '88 ,with the only constant being Easter and his alchemic production ability. Late in the decade, Easter surveyed the scene, and felt he was older than everyone else that was in a band. Getting that rush of blood to the head similar to when you realize you are most senior person at the neighborhood Arby's, Easter more or less dissolved the band that had been named after a bad English to Japanese translation of "Let's Get Physical."

Our last glimpse of Let's Active is a maturation from the quirkiness and sparseness of their initial album, through the texture and layers of the middle releases, to the stadium ready powerful alternative rock that was 7 years too early to the party. In an attempt to bring some mainstream success, an outside producer was used on "Every Dog Has It's Day" instead of Easter, however, these are his songs, his style and his voice-a slight southern drawl trying to reach for the note above the cookie jar. The title track was the song that eventually climbed the Modern Rock Chart mentioned earlier. Possibly the loudest Let's Active song, its charm rests in the spacing between the guitar notes. Perhaps realizing that it might take a minute to wrap your ahead around the fact that this is indeed Let's Active, the band gives you a second to catch up before blasting away again. 

Listen to "Every Dog Has It's Day"


Buy Let's Active Music

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