The Kelley Deal 6000 - Go To The Sugar Altar... Plus

Happy Birthday to famed musicians and identical twins Kim and Kelley Deal, who were born on this date in Dayton, Ohio sixty years ago today. In honor of this day, I thought I might as well post the rest of Kelley Deal's output I currently have in my possession.

Both of the twins got into music during their teen years in Ohio, working up songs in the home studio they built in their parents' basement, and playing folk- and country-laced originals and covers in and around the Dayton area (with Kim on guitar and Kelley on drums). This went on for a couple of years until the mid-1980s, when Kim got married and moved to Boston; Kelley stayed in Dayton and started working as a technical analyst.  Kim found a job in the Massachusetts biochemical tech industry, and that was her main focus in life until one day in March 1986, she came across an unusual advertisement in the "Musicians Wanted" classified section of the old Boston Phoenix newspaper that read, "Band seeks woman bassist into Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul and Mary..."  On a whim, Kim answered the ad (she later found that she was the only person who did) and met locals Charles Thompson and Joey Santiago, old college roommates who were thinking about forming a band.  The trio began jamming together, and that's how the band The Pixies were formed.

Even with Kim on board, the rudimentary Pixies were still without a drummer. Kim contacted her sister Kelley back in Ohio, and subsequently paid for her to fly out to Boston to audition behind the kit for the band. Although both Thompson (soon to be known as Black Francis) and Santiago approved, Kelley wasn't confident enough in her drumming to join up, and opted to move back to Ohio. Kim then recommended another drumming acquaintance, David Lovering, a friend of her husband's she met at their wedding reception the year before. Lovering signed on, and the group was complete.

In a post I published a decade ago, I briefly provided an overview of the formation of The Breeders in 1989, the result of the dissatisfaction Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly were feeling regarding their roles in their then-current bands (Donelly was a member of Throwing Muses). Kim asked Kelley to join the new group and assist with the recording of their debut album Pod, but Kelley was unable to participate because she couldn't arrange to take enough time off of her analyst job. However, after Donelly left the group, Kelley quit her job and joined her sister's band in 1992, assuming the lead guitarist role (although at the beginning, she had NO IDEA how to play the instrument).

Many moons ago, I related to you all the story of my initial encounters and brief long-distance semi-friendship with Kelley Deal during the mid-to-late 1990s. In that narrative, I related how she and The Breeders were riding on the crest of global commercial and critical success, in the midst of a triumphant world tour capitalizing on their hit album Last Splash.  It seemed to me at the time that everything was going right for the band; little did I know how much turmoil was occurring behind the scenes, and how much things were getting out of hand for Kelley. Demons already long present in her life began to take over, exacerbated by the long hours of life on constant tour. Taken from a 2002 feature article on the group from The Guardian newspaper:

The Breeders spent several months during 1993 and 1994 touring, and it was during this period that Kelley's long-standing addiction to heroin stopped being a secret and started being a problem. When the band returned home, the Deals immediately started work on the follow-up to Last Splash, but in autumn 1994 Kelley was arrested for possession, and by the beginning of 1995 she was in rehab in Minnesota.

As I mentioned in that earlier post, Kelley got busted by the feds when she received a half-pound brick of Black Tar heroin from her dealer at her home address.  The subsequent felony charges could have landed her in jail for an extended period.  But her family pulled together to support her, and saved her from the slammer - not that she appreciated it at the time (also from The Guardian):

Kelley insists that her family drove her to the rehabilitation centre themselves, and that meant that when her case came to court, she wasn't convicted. "I hated my family," she admits. "They were all against me, they didn't understand me. I didn't think I had a problem."

She was ordered to report to the famed Hazelton rehab center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she spent much of 1995 in a structured, isolated environment, getting treatment for her addiction. Kelley's time at the clinic also helped her find a up-to-then untapped wellspring of creativity and inspiration, and for the first time she began penning her own songs. At the completion of her program at Hazelton, Kelley was gradually eased back into society, moving into a halfway house in nearby St. Paul for further observation and treatment. While there, she met and befriended Jesse Colin Roff, a local guitarist and drummer also undergoing drug rehab, and (tentatively, at first) began sharing with him some of the songs that she wrote while at the center. Intrigued and inspired, the two began jamming together and collaborating, and Kelley began plotting a return to active recording.

The duo began gathering like-minded musicians, including David Shouse from The Grifters and Jimmy Flemion of The Frogs, and by early 1996 Kelley was confident enough in the abilities of herself and her band (christened The Kelley Deal 6000) to enter Minneapolis's Terrarium recording studio to work on a debut album. Go To The Sugar Altar was completed in a month, and issued in the late spring of 1996.

Go To The Sugar Altar, to me, is the sound of a band, and a musician, finding their/her feet. The songs (all written either by Kelley herself or in conjunction with various band members) cover a number of genres: straight-ahead rock, some punky thrashing, a dollop of blues and even a dash of country thrown in from time to time. A lot of these songs sound somewhat like glorified demos... but that may be due to the nature of the circumstance, with Kelley producing and funding the project herself from whatever limited funds she had at her disposal. With that being said, most of the songs are winners, and Kelley's voice is a treat; it has the same familiar sound as that of her sister, but unlike Kim, who tends to bury her voice somewhat in her recordings, Kelley's is out front the entire time, and has an appealing tone and growl. Some of my favorite songs off of this album include "Dammit" and "How About Hero":

 

Comparing the Deal sisters' immediate post-Last Splash releases of the time [after The Breeders went on forced hiatus in the wake of Kelley's drug problems, Kim assembled what was originally intended to be a "new Breeders", but instead evolved into The Amps, and released a so-so album (Pacer) in late 1995], I feel that Go To The Sugar Altar is the truer follow-up/continuation of the hit Breeders sound.

The band's debut album met with decent reviews, and the group hit the road that summer for shows all across the U.S., drumming up support for the disc.  I saw The Kelley Deal 6000 a couple of times that year, as I mentioned in my earlier post, and at every show took the opportunity to try to say "hello".  During their tour, the label released the Canyon EP, containing the lead cut from the album along with the non-album track "Get The Writing".  I picked up both over the course of that year.

After their extensive tour, the group returned to Minneapolis in the spring of 1997 to record their sophomore album Boom! Boom! Boom!  During these sessions, Kelley and Jesse Roff took a little time apart from the other band members to record a two-song side project, titled Carnivale, under the moniker Solid State 6000. This single didn't expand upon the sound ideas that ended up on the full band album, but serves as a superb companion piece.

These were the final releases by Kelley on her own. After the Boom! Boom! Boom! tour ended in early 1998, the group went on indefinite hiatus, and Kelley returned to the Breeders' fold, where she remains to this day.

It's been a quarter-century since the band's debut, and while they didn't last very long, The Kelley Deal 6000 and related projects shouldn't be relegated to just a long-ago memory, or regarded as a 'flash in the pan'.  Kelley definitely had some things to say, and it is to her credit that, in the wake of all that was going wrong for her at the time, she was bold enough and adventurous enough to step out on her own and present to the public what was on her mind at the time. I enjoyed this group very much while it lasted, and miss heading out to see them in the small clubs they played around the country during that time. And on a personal note, it was an honor and a privilege to have Kelley as my friend, even for so brief a time.

With that being said, for your listening pleasure, here are:

•  Go To The Sugar Altar, the debut album by The Kelley Deal 6000, released by Nice Records (Kelley's label) on June 4th, 1996; 
• The band's Canyon EP, released later that summer; and
• The Carnivale single, released by Solid State 6000 on the same label in mid-1997.

Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

The Kelley Deal 6000 - Go To The Sugar Altar: Send Email
The Kelley Deal 6000 - Canyon EP: Send Email
Solid State 6000 - Carnivale (single): Send Email

Various Artists - Good Evening, We Are Not The Fall

Today marks the second anniversary of the death of Mark E. Smith, and the end of any of the various and sundry assemblages of his seminal band The Fall. He is still missed and mourned by his legions of fans worldwide, with the Fall Forum "In Memoriam" page still regularly receiving heartfelt remembrances and tributes...

,,,Which is a lot more than can be said for other parts of Fall-world. The Fall Online website, once my go-to source for band news, is almost completely dead - the last update to this site is dated December, 2018. Other group news outlets are also gradually growing quiet as well, although a handful (like Reformation Post TPM) are still fighting the good fight, striving to remain up-to-date and relevant. You might recall that last year this time, I was lamenting the dearth of new/archived Fall music I anticipated being released in the wake of Smith's death; that situation hasn't improved over the past year. The Cog Sinister label put out a series of live sets from the group's many UK appearances over the years - I've already said my piece regarding how much I value these soundboard LPs (to summarize: I don't). And Cherry Red released (1982), a compilation of band music (both studio and live) from that year - but I already owned most of the stuff on it (taken from sources like Hex Enduction Hour, In A Hole, and Room To Live), so I didn't find it worthwhile to acquire.

Brix & The Extricated, fronted by Mark's first wife Brix Smith-Smart backed by various former members of The Fall (including bassist Steve Hanley and his brother Paul on drums) continues lurching forward. In a comment I posted a couple of years ago, I had some disparaging words to say about this band and their first LP, 2017's Part 2, which I likened to sounding like a half-assed Fall karaoke band... an assessment compounded by the fact that the songs the band chose to weakly cover on this disc ("Hotel Bloedel", "Feeling Numb", "L.A.") Brix herself had a hand in writing and performing with the original group. Back at that time, I figured that Brix & The Extricated would be a one-off sort of thing, an opportunity for Brix to perform a couple of numbers in public before returning to her fashion and lifestyle-maven pursuits. But I was wrong.

In the past year and a half, the band released two more albums, 2018's Breaking State and last year's Super Blood Wolf Moon. At least these two LPs have dispensed with the Fall covers... and the musicianship is marginally better. But in my opinion, this band has become little more than a Brix Smith "look at me, world!" outing. Practically EVERY song and lyric uttered on these releases refers in some way to her life and how she views it - how 'nobody believed in her' ("Going Strong", "Vanity", etc.), how 'much she's changed' ("Unrecognisable", "Hustler", etc.), and how 'rough and tough and resilient' she is ("Dinosaur Girl', "Wolves", etc.) - and that kind of crap gets old hella-quick.  The latest album covers are both stylized illustrations of what a "badass" she is now, to wit:

Check out how the heads of the other band members are just tiny appendages/ trophies attached to the fierce, roaring beast that is Brix... I wonder how they reacted to THAT...

...and:

Note that all of her latest albums were released under her own private label, Grit Over Glamour Records (sheesh! REALLY?). If I had to hazard a comment, it would be that Ms. Smith-Smart is trying just a wee bit too hard to reclaim some sort of rock credibility, and in the process it's hurting her music. This band has devolved (as if it had that far to fall in the first place) into a vanity project, and I'll be damned if I fund Brix's public therapy sessions to make her feel good about herself. I know that sounds harsh... but that's the way I see it.

Fortunately, these weren't the only new noises coming from that quarter this year. Members of The Fall's final and most lasting lineup (playing with Smith for the last dozen years of the band's existence) - bassist Dave Spurr, drummer Keiron Melling and guitarist Pete Greenway - reconvened with a new lead singer, Sam Curran, and reinvented themselves as Imperial Wax, named after the first Fall album these three stalwarts appeared on in 2008. Imperial Wax's first release, Gastwerk Saboteurs, came out last May... and it's actually pretty good. While the band retains a lot of the power and drive of the old Fall, they were smart enough to not rest on their laurels, but have created their own sound somewhat removed from that of their former band. It's a breath of fresh air, compared to what Brix and her crew are putting out.

Still, it's sort of sad to see how quickly Mark and his group are being forgotten. Therefore, I continue my endeavors to keep the Fall flame alive and burning! Here's the latest:

Back in the mid-1990s, while I was still in grad school in Virginia, a couple of Arizona-based fans, Jonathan Kandell and Andy Halper, gathered up a number of Fall songs covered by various bands from around the world, and put it up for sale on their website. I think I heard about it through the Fall Forum or some other web page dedicated to the group; either way, I couldn't send them my money fast enough!

The cassette-only comp arrived in my mailbox a couple of weeks later. Below is a copy of the liner notes, with details on each song and the band that covered it:

Kandell provided a few more details on how this compilation came to be in an interview in the ninth issue (August 1997) of The Biggest Library Yet, a fantastic Fall fanzine published quarterly from 1994 to 2000 - here's a link to it. Not a lot of info here, but no matter...  Some of the covers here are fantastic, others are merely interesting... and some really aren't that good. But this collection displays the global reach and influence of The Fall. And all in all, this was a longtime labor of love by dedicated and motivated fans.  Some of my favorites include The Gosh Guys' version of "Paintwork" and Eventide's lo-fi "Terry Waite Sez".

The original site for this compilation has long been inactive, so nowadays these tunes are somewhat hard to find. Fortunately, that's why I'm here!

In memory of the late, great Mark E. Smith, I hereby provide to you Good Evening, We Are Not The Fall, a fan-assembled comp of twenty-five Fall covers from across the globe, released in the fall of 1996. This set is burned off of my own personal cassette copy (sorry - it's currently in .mp3 128; when I get the time, I'll kick it up to 320... not that it'll matter, I think - it IS a tape, after all). Have a listen, spend a moment or two communing with the spirit of Mr. Smith... and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

Send Email

Various Artists - Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Xmas

Another one from the great multi-album Just Can't Get Enough New Wave compilation series put out by Rhino Records in the mid-1990s (I posted New Wave Halloween here a couple of years ago).  This is one of the final entries from that run, a holiday-themed set featuring some real modern classics.  They sort of stretch both the concept of "New Wave" and the specific period covered (ostensibly the Eighties) with this album, which includes a couple of songs from both the 1970s and 1990s, along with "Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth", sung by those two post-punk giants Bing Crosby and David Bowie (heh) . . .  But despite this uncharacteristic drift of Rhino's focus, all in all, it's still an enjoyable disc.

Personal favorites include "Thanks For Christmas" by XTC (disguised here as "The Three Wise Men"), "Santa's Beard" by They Might Be Giants, and one of the greatest holiday-themed songs of the past thirty years, The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York".  Pretty much everything on this album is a winner, or at the very least will make you smile with the various bands' off-kilter thoughts on Christmas.

I meant to post way more Christmas stuff this year . . . but I just got distracted.  Plus, I'm nursing a recent sports injury that's kept me from spending extended periods in front of the computer.  A thousand pardons, please.  I hope that this entry somewhat makes up for my dearth of holiday posts - although I'm well aware that putting out Christmas music on Christmas Eve is a little like trying to sell pumpkins on November 1st . . .  But no matter - at least it will be here for next year!

So, for your holiday pleasure, here's Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Xmas, released by the good people at Rhino Records on October 15, 1996.  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.  And Happy Holidays to you all!

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link ASAP:

Send Email

Trona - Trona

Trona was one of the three bands I saw at that epic (for me) show at TT The Bear's Place in Cambridge, MA during the summer of 1996 (the other two being The Laurels and The Kelley Deal 6000, both of which have had their albums previously posted on this blog - so now you have music by all three bands from that evening). Trona was the opener, a local band fron Boston. A four-piece, with two guys and two girls, they belted out their songs with energy and abandon, with a sound that immediately caught my attention.

For all I knew at the time, Trona was made up of neophytes to Boston's rock landscape. But as I discovered, most of the band members had been kicking around the Hub scene for years. Christian Dyas, the guitarist and one of the lead singers, had been a member of the popular local band Orangutang (they released only one long-player, 1995's Dead Sailor Acid Blues).  Pete Sutton, the bassist, was formerly a member of the indie group The Barnies. Drummer Nick White had also made the rounds with a number of small Boston-area bands. The only music newcomer to the band was Mary Ellen Leahy, who shared guitar and vocal duties with Dyas; she was a former publicist for Taang! Records when it operated out of Boston.

Trona's sound was . . . well, I won't say "generic Boston indie rock" (first, because that's sort of an oxymoron; and second, because such a description sounds like a disparagement of a style of music that I enjoy immensely) . . . but there was definitely more than a small tinge of early Pixies/Throwing Muses/Mass. Ave.-type inflection in their music. Atop this 'indie' foundation, the band had erected a strong Western (in some cases, almost country-Western) sound into many of their songs, usually by juxtaposing Dyas' and Leahy's twangy voices. And this construct seemed to work - In describing this band to a friend later, the best way I could think of to describe them was that "they were what The Pixies would sound like if they were fronted by John Doe and Exene Cervenka [the lead singers of X]". And that was A-OK by me - I thought every song they did that evening was superb. I went to the show that night to see Kelley Deal's band, but of the two openers, Trona was the one that made to biggest impression on me at the time (not to say that The Laurels weren't bad either).

I didn't pick up their self-titled album (Trona, released by Cosmic Records) at the show that night; I waited a day or two, and found it at the Newbury Comics in the basement of the student union at M.I.T., close to where I was living that summer. I was really looking forward to getting into their CD, and once again hearing those great songs they played at T.T.'s earlier that week. But when I played it, I remember feeling VERY disappointed. The songs on the disc didn't seem to approach the quality of the sounds I heard and recalled from their live gig. At the time, it all just seemed sort of . . . blah. Outside of an unexpected and pretty good cover of Stereolab's "Wow And Flutter", there was nothing on the album that really held my attention. I regretfully chalked that purchase up as one of my occasional mistakes, and stuck Trona on the shelf, where it sat unplayed for several years.

As for the band: Trona's second album, Red River (released in 1998 on Cherrydisc/Roadrunner), shifted them more firmly into the countrified roots rock X vein. By then, even the critics were openly comparing them to X and the X countrified side project, The Knitters. Not a good thing, when you're trying to blaze your own musical trail. And it did nothing for band cohesiveness - Trona broke up in August 1998, when Leahy quit the band over the usual reason, "musical differences". Chris Dyas and Pete Sutton moved on to join the Ray Corvair Trio, a 60's lounge/surf revival band, for a time. Dyas now fronts a band called The Lingering Doubts out of New York, recording on L.E.S. Records. Oddly enough, a couple of members of Trona later found themselves involved with, of all things, Blue Man Group. Drummer White played in the Las Vegas version of Blue Man Group for a while during the mid-2000s; Dyas became musical director for the New York BMG immediately after Trona broke up, performing live with them and cowriting thair Grammy-nominated album Audio in 1999.

It's only been within the past year or so that I've revisited Trona's first album. And I have to say that, upon hearing it with ears fifteen years older, I can't understand why I dismissed this disc the first time I heard it. I made a mistake. The entire album - not just "Wow And Flutter", but all of it - is actually pretty doggone good. Sure, Trona probably isn't ever going to be considered for the Pantheon of Great Boston Indie Bands - they really weren't at the level of the aforementioned bands. But Trona had enough chops and execution to at least allow them to look groups like The Pixies square in the eye. Although their time on the scene was short, they have nothing to hang their heads about.

Don't take my word for it - have a listen yourself, and (as always) let me know what you think:

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

Send Email

Luscious Jackson - "Naked Eye" Maxi-Single

If it weren't for Throwing Muses, I might never have gotten to like this song. Let me explain (and don't worry, this isn't a post about the Muses - this will eventually get around to Luscious Jackson; just bear with me):

I've been a fan of Throwing Muses (fronted by Kristen Hersh and Tanya Donnelly, two half-sisters from Newport, RI) ever since 1990, when I first heard their album Hunkpapa. A lot of critics considered that album to be one of their weakest; many songs off of it, like "Dizzy" and "Fall Down", seem like they were crafted to order for alt-rock radio. But I thought the album was great, and from Hunkpapa, I went back and acquired the band's entire back catalogue.

As much as I loved Throwing Muses, I never had the opportunity to see them live. Every time I had the chance, something unavoidable would occur to prevent me from going to the show. For example, they came to town five days after I moved overseas - then when I moved back to the States, they played in the place I lived overseas a couple of weeks later. Or the show I was set on seeing would be cancelled. Stuff like this with this band happened four or five times to me - I used to jokingly refer to it as "The Curse of The Muses".

When I was up in Cambridge, MA in 1996, for my grad school summer internship, it appeared that I would finally get my chance to see a Throwing Muses show. A couple of days before I had to leave for Virginia, at the end of that summer, the Muses were scheduled to play at TT The Bear's Place in Central Square, mere walking distance from where I was living (they were touring on Limbo, their latest album). I had a dinner engagement that same evening up in Manchester, NH, but I knew that I could easily attend that and still have ample time to get back to Cambridge to see the show. I was really looking forward to finally seeing this band.

The dinner up in New Hampshire took a little longer that I anticipated, and I left the function at just about the time I figured I would need to get back to see the show. I zipped my Porsche 928 the highway and got back into the Boston area in a hurry, but not quickly enough to be able to park my car at my temporary home and walk/run the several blocks to TT The Bear's in time for the start of the show. So I drove straight to Central Square and began looking for parking near the club. Parking right on Mass. Avenue was all but impossible, so I started down the side streets near TT's, looking for a space - up Sidney Street; down Brookline Street; up Pearl Street toward Green . . .

I saw the car coming at me out of the corner of my left eye an instant before I was hit, just the flash and glare of headlights barrelling down on me at tremendous speed. There wasn't time enough to think or comprehend what was happening, or what was going to happen, before I heard the loud and violent bang of metal on metal, and felt my left shoulder being thrown up against the driver's side door. There were CDs and other junk in the passenger seat beside me - I distinctly recall my copy of Cocteau Twins' Love's Easy Tears EP sort of floating in the air beside me for a moment, before flying past my head and into the back seat.

In an instant, it was over, and I found myself pointing not up Pearl Street, my original destination, but turned just over 90 degrees to the right, now pointing up Green and looking down the street at the back of the car that just creamed me.

What had happened was these two teenage shitheads (I think they were both no older than 18 or 19) from the North Shore had taken the station wagon (yeah, for real - an actual station wagon) belonging to one of their mothers out for a spin in Boston. Feeling giddy with their newfound sense of freedom (and, perhaps, from the booze bottles they had somehow gotten hold of during their journey to the city), they decided to play Starsky & Hutch through Cambridge, blasting through quiet back streets and crossroads . . . and right through a double-STOP sign at the intersection of Pearl and Green, where I (who had the right-of-way) unfortunately came into their path.

If they had T-boned me, I probably wouldn't have been in too great a shape. But fortunately for me (if there is something fortunate to come out of this event), the dumbasses struck the Porsche in the left front fender, behind the headlight and in front of the tire. The angle of impact spun me around, and left the entire front of my car with a queer, slewed-to-one-side look about it. I gotta say though, that those Porsche 928s are built pretty solid. Those boys were doing 45-55 MPH through those streets when they whacked me, but my car is low to the ground and weighs over a ton and a half. That limited the spinning, and the damage - the wreck didn't break a single piece of glass on the car, not even the headlight. And thankfully, I wasn't hurt at all, just a little shaken up.

Their station wagon, however, was damn near totaled; the front end was completely smushed in, with steam rising up from under the crumpled hood and fluid oozing out all over the road. These boys KNEW they were in the shit - not just with the police (who arrived instantly, and the station was only a block or two away), but also with the car's owner, since they were going to have to explain how they destroyed it and why the owner was now liable for damage to a Porsche as well.

Resolving the accident - getting insurance info, talking to the police, watching my car get towed away - took the rest of the night. Needless to say, I didn't get to the Throwing Muses show. The Curse had struck again! In fact, I never had another opportunity to see them live again - the band went on indefinite hiatus immediately after the Limbo tour ended, never to reform.

Anyway, a couple of days later I left for Virginia, in the rental car provided by the speeder's insurance company, while my car remained in Massachusetts getting worked on, on their dime (I insisted on the fix, rather than compensation - I loved that car, and wanted it back). It took them several weeks to repair my car; when I finally got the word in late October that it was ready, I took the bus from Charlottesville to DC, then the overnight train from DC to Boston to go pick it up.

The repair shop did a beautiful job with the Porsche; it looked good as new. Before I left town, I drove around for a bit, enjoying the feeling of being behind the wheel of my old friend once again, visiting some of my old haunts in the area and listening to WFNX, my favorite Boston alternative music station. And that was when and where I first heard Luscious Jackson's "Naked Eye" - WFNX had it on semi-heavy rotation at the time.

Luscious Jackson was formed in New York City in 1993 by four women, including Kate Schellenbach, the original drummer (and only female member) of The Beastie Boys (she appears on their first two EP releases, Pollywog Stew and Cooky Puss). In its lifetime, the band issued several albums, singles and EPs, all released on Grand Royal Records (the Beastie Boys' private label), and had some success in alt-rock circles. 1996-1997 was their most successful period, with their second album, Fever In/Fever Out (helmed by U2 producer Daniel Lanois), spawning several hits, including "Naked Eye", the band's only Top 40 hit.

During my drive back down the East Coast to Virginia, it seems I heard "Naked Eye" everywhere - not just on alternative stations. Mainstream radio was picking up on it as well. By the time I got back to Charlottesville, the song was ingrained in my brain. Soon after I returned, I went downtown to Plan 9 Records and picked up the CD single. According to Discogs.com, there were no less than ten(!) versions of the "Naked Eye" single issued, all with different mixes of the song on it. My version includes the following:

1 Naked Eye (Radio Edit) 4:10
2 Naked Eye (Totally Nude Mix) 5:12
3 Naked Eye (Suntan Knee-Hi Mix - Instrumental) 4:38

Luscious Jackson put out one more album, the poorly-received Electric Honey in 1999, before calling it quits in 2000. But this song was probably their peak; there was no place else to go but down after this. So here you are - enjoy:

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

Send Email

The Laurels - L

I saw these guys at TT The Bear's Place in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the summer of 1996. In between my grad school years in Virginia, I had a summer internship up in Cambridge with Polaroid Corporation. After a rough few years in the early 1990s, Polaroid was on a temporary financial upswing, so at the time it was a pretty solid place to work and consider for a long-term position after graduation (unfortunately, this feeling was short-lived - a couple of years later, the company began a financial death spiral that ended with bankruptcy and dismantling of most of the firm).

Anyway, like I said, it was a pretty good place to work for the summer, and a great place to live. I sublet an outstanding place from some Mexican guys who were attending MBA grad school at MIT and went home for the summer - it was a three-level townhouse, brand-spanking new with a garage underneath, and only two blocks from work. It was also within walking distance of MIT (a school that was cool enough to let me use their gym facilities for free during the summer - as opposed to Harvard Business School, who completely restricted all grad school facilities from anyone who wasn't an HBS student, including other Harvard students), and Central {thank you, tinpot!] Square, location of some great music clubs (including the aforementioned TT The Bears and the Middle East). I was incredibly lucky to get the place, and felt sorry for some of my fellow classmates who also had internships up in the Boston area, who were living like dogs in dank, dark basement hovels. I was living pretty large.

I saw some great bands in Cambridge and Boston that summer - the Cocteau Twins (on their final tour), the Sex Pistols reunion tour, etc. But the best show I saw that summer was at TT's, where Trona and the Laurels opened for the Kelley Deal 6000. I went there to see Kelley Deal, formerly of the Breeders (who I saw in Christchurch, New Zealand about 18 months earlier). But all three bands turned out to be great; I ended up buying all of their CDs for sale either that evening or shortly thereafter.

The Laurels were out of Rhode Island, and consisted essentially of Jeff Toste on bass (also principal songwriter) and a rotating cast on guitar (Ryan Lesser and Damen Champagna) and drums (Dare Matheson and Joe Propatier). Their lone album, "L", was released in 1996 on Thick Records out of Chicago. It's a shame these guys never made it, but its not for lack of effort. Several songs on this album (including "Cut You Down To Size", "Ruby", and "TV Whore") were produced by the legendary Steve Albini (who also helmed one of my favorite albums of all time, The Pixies' Doolittle). All in all, a pretty good effort - too bad they didn't make it.

Enjoy the link:

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

Send Email