 UNDER APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH FOR JUNE 2017: THE LOONS  One Friday recently, we had Good Morning America on as we usually do. They have their Friday Summer Concert Series each year; this May, Green Day was the inaugural act, and did that bring back some great memories. It was fun seeing them in their element so many years after their founding. Their performance of “Basket Case” was as good as I have ever heard it; also broadcast were “Know Your Enemy” and “Still Breathing”. Green Day was the lead punk revival band of the early 1990’s and actually have had much greater success than any of the original punk rock bands, and most of the new wave bands as well. Their first major-label release (and third album), Dookie (1994) was an immediate worldwide smash, peaking at #2 on the Billboard Hot 200 Albums chart, and sold well throughout the 1990’s, with total sales of 20 million albums. Their 2004 rock-opera album American Idiot was the basis of a hit Broadway show a few years later. In all, Green Day has sold more than 85 million albums and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, their first year of eligibility. * * *  The celebration of the 10th anniversary this year of the introduction by Apple Computers of their earthshaking personal device, the iPhone let me know that Steve Jobs referenced Green Day in his original announcement about the iPhone. While demonstrating its features on January 9, 2007, he flashed the album art for American Idiot to the audience and played a brief excerpt from “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”. * * *  Like most, I was introduced to Green Day with Dookie. I imagine that I found out about them through their music videos on MTV and/or VH1, as the rock-video era was winding down. As Wikipedia notes: “Dookie produced five hit singles for the band: ‘Longview’, ‘When I Come Around’, ‘Basket Case’, a re-recorded version of ‘Welcome to Paradise’, and the radio-only single ‘She’.” The whole album rocks though, not just the hits. I identified Green Day with the burgeoning alternative rock scene of that era; Nirvana’s landmark album Nevermind had come out about 2½ years earlier, but there were plenty of bands and artists that I had been digging from well back in the 1980’s, many that I found out about via the late-night MTV program 120 Minutes. * * *  But it wasn’t until I saw footage of Green Day’s live performance at Woodstock ’94 that I tuned into their punk roots. I had recently moved from New York to San Francisco and admitted as much to some of my work buddies, who assured me that this Bay Area rock band was very much a punk rock band from the beginning. Green Day’s set at Woodstock ’94 was one of the most memorable of this revival of the original Woodstock festival 25 years earlier, though not necessarily because of the music. At one point during their performance, bandleader Billie Joe Armstrong started a “mud fight” with audience members, leading to a new nickname for the rock festival of Mudstock. * * *  Childhood friends Billie Joe Armstrong (lead vocals and guitar) and Mike Dirnt (bass) are from Oakland (across the San Francisco Bay from San Francisco) and formed a band called Sweet Children when they were just 14. Their first live show was on October 17, 1987, at Rod’s Hickory Pit in Vallejo, California. Drummer John Kiffmeyer joined the line-up in 1988; he was previously in Isocracy. By the time their first EP, 1,000 Hours came out on Lookout! Records in 1989, they had dropped the name Sweet Children, since it was similar to that of another local band, Sweet Baby. Their new name, Green Day was selected because of their fondness for marijuana. * * *  In early 1990, the label released Green Day’s first full album, 39/Smooth, with two other EP’s following later in the year, Slappy and Sweet Children; the latter disc features early recordings by Sweet Children for another label, Skene! Records. The following year, Lookout! Records combined the band’s previous releases (except Sweet Children) as 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. Later that year saw the release of Green Day’s second album, Kerplunk, which sold 50,000 copies. In late 1990, John Kiffmeyer left Green Day to attend college, with Tré Cool – formerly with the Lookouts; Lookout! Records founder Larry Livermore was their guitarist – filling in on drums and eventually joining the band permanently. The lineup of Green Day has been stable ever since, although Jason White joined the band on stage as a second guitarist beginning in 1999 and was an official bandmember between 2012 and 2016. * * *  Twenty-three years after the release of the punk-rock concept album Only Lovers Left Alive by past UARB the Wanderers, Green Day released their classic rock-opera album, American Idiot. From Wikipedia: “American Idiot (2004) marked a career comeback for Green Day following a period of decreased success. It charted in 27 countries, peaking at number one in 19, and eventually sold 16 million copies worldwide. The album spawned five successful singles: ‘American Idiot’, ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, ‘Holiday’, ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’, and ‘Jesus of Suburbia’.” At the 2005 Grammy Awards, Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino introduced Green Day’s live performance of “American Idiot” by saying: “Instead of fading away, they’ve grown up and released a concept album with a novel concept: All the songs are good.” * * *  The name “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” has a long history in music and elsewhere. According to Wikipedia, there have been six previous uses of the phrase as a song or album name by everyone from David Cassidy to Smokie to Hanoi Rocks, beginning with a 1930’s standard called “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” – in all, there are 14 items listed on the phrase’s “disambiguation” page. Green Day created a combined rock video for “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Holiday”; as mentioned in Wikipedia: “MTV’s Green Day Makes a Video described ‘Holiday’ as a party, and ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ as the subsequent hangover.” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is Green Day’s biggest hit single to date, with 2 million copies sold. Wikipedia notes: “As of 2017, ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ remains the only song in history to win both the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and the MTV Music Video Award for Video of the Year.” “Wake Me Up When September Ends” is Billie Joe Armstrong’s tribute to his father, who died in September 1982. Later, as reported in Wikipedia: “In the United States, the song became symbolic after Hurricane Katrina [in August-September 2005], where it was dedicated to victims of the disaster and also regarded as a dedication to the victims of the September 11 attacks that occurred in 2001.” * * *  While I was living in New York City, the rock opera Tommy (1969) by the Who, under the name The Who’s Tommy had an acclaimed run on Broadway from 1993 to 1995. It was a great show, and the critics had fun imagining that the album’s original fans were finally getting to listen to the songs, since they were so stoned when the album first came out. I figured that the Who would not be the only rock band to make it to Broadway; after all, even the Warner Bros. cartoons gang landed there in a show that I also saw when I was living in New York, Bugs Bunny on Broadway, with a limited run in October 1990. Turns out, under the name Bugs Bunny at the Symphony (including a 2010 sequel, Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II), the concert musical has been touring regularly ever since. In the performance that I saw, classic cartoons were projected on a large screen, sometimes accompanied by a full symphony orchestra. The first time I heard the Merrie Melodies theme song performed live at the opening of that show, I just about lost it. * * *  But nothing prepared me for Green Day’s rock opera to become a hit Broadway show called American Idiot; the musical ran for a full year beginning in April 2010 and since then has had regular performances worldwide. The musical American Idiot featured all of the songs from the original American Idiot album, plus several from their second rock opera, 21st Century Breakdown (2009) and one previously unreleased song, “When it’s Time”. Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the book for the musical with director Michael Mayer; while Green Day never performed during the show, Armstrong occasionally played the role of “St. Jimmy” during the Broadway run. Needless to say, the 2010 Tony Awards were fantastic, with Green Day’s live performance of “American Idiot” pulling no punches. American Idiot was nominated for Best Musical and won two Tonys that night for Best Scenic Design of a Musical and Best Lighting Design of a Musical. The cast album, American Idiot: The Original Broadway Cast Recording “debuted at #43 on the Billboard 200, becoming one of the highest-charting musical soundtracks” (according to Wikipedia). * * *  But Green Day is easy; everybody knows about them. When I tried to come up with other punk revival bands to talk about in this post, I started coming up short. The Wikipedia article mentions: “Green Day was widely credited, alongside fellow California punk bands Sublime, Bad Religion, the Offspring, and Rancid, with popularizing and reviving mainstream interest in punk rock in the United States.” I really don’t know much about those four bands other than a few stray tracks, like the Offspring song “Self Esteem”. * * *  I was a subscriber to The Village Voice long before I moved to the city in 1990, and that was one way that I stayed in touch with the musical scene. Lead rock critic Robert Christgau spearheaded an annual poll of hundreds of music critics, with the results published as Pazz & Jop (a rather corny takeoff on “jazz & pop”, though they never really talked much about jazz). I looked forward to it each year, but in 1993, so many of the albums on the list were completely unknown to me, starting with the #1 pick, Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville. Next year, that will be 25 years ago – a long time of not being “with it”. But I am bearing up and still find a lot of albums by new bands, even though I mostly listen to oldies radio (when I’m not listening to National Public Radio). I usually check out at least part of the major musical awards shows each year and typically find that I had somehow already heard many if not most of the biggest hit songs by pop singers and country musicians alike. * * *  I was in Virgin Records in New Orleans not long after I moved to the Coast and heard Fever to Tell (2003) by Yeah Yeah Yeahs playing live in the store and immediately snapped it up. The two opening tracks, “Rich” and “Date with the Night” are favorites of mine, as are “Maps” and “Y Control”. Karen O (lead vocals, piano) met Nick Zinner (guitar, keyboards) at a bar in New York and made an instant connection. As the band evolved, Brian Chase (drums) joined the lineup; he and Karen O had known each other as students at Oberlin College, where they were heavily influenced by the “avant-punk” bands in Ohio during that time period. Yeah Yeah Yeahs became the opening act for hot bands of the period like Sleater-Kinney, the Strokes, and the White Stripes. Fever to Tell was the band’s first full album, after releasing an EP called Yeah Yeah Yeahs in late 2001. The album has an amazing variety of songs, with several snarling, noisy tracks interspersed with quieter numbers. There is an interesting reason for this; as reported in the review of the album by Heather Phares for Allmusic: “Interestingly, the moody, romantic songs on Fever to Tell are the most genuine; before its release, Karen O hinted that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ new material would reflect the fact that she fell in love prior to making the album. ‘Pin’ and ‘Y Control’ have great guitar lines and a unique, bittersweet bounciness; while the unabashedly gorgeous, sentimental ‘Maps’ is not only among the band’s finest work but one of the best indie/punk love songs in a long, long time.” * * *  In another move out of left field, Karen O wrote or co-wrote all but one of the songs for the soundtrack of the Spike Jonze film, Where the Wild Things Are that is based on the beloved 1963 children’s book by Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are. Her work is identified on the soundtrack as “Karen O and the Kids”; my sister Julie W. Kovasckitz is a fan and had no idea that Karen O’s band Yeah Yeah Yeahs was responsible for those snarling songs on Fever to Tell. “All Is Love” from this soundtrack (co-written by Karen O and Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs) was nominated for a Grammy. Karen O also collaborated with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” that was included on the soundtrack of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011). * * *  Even as the traditional outlets for getting music out to the general public have waned, such as radio (first AM, and then FM) and MTV, the universe of musical groups has exploded into a tsunami of musicians that I probably could not keep up with even if I tried. Music videos have gotten so scarce on MTV that I have frequently seen “world premiere” broadcasts of new videos by major artists on Entertainment Tonight. Allmusic sends out a weekly email called “New Release Newsletter” listing dozens of new albums, which I have gotten for years; in nearly every one, there are bands and artists represented that I know something about. In the most recent one (dated June 30, 2017), there are new albums or re-releases by the Beach Boys, TLC, Stone Sour, Jesse Malin, and Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires. Nor are these the only ones; Allmusic states in the emails: “Here are our editors’ picks for this week’s most noteworthy new releases.” Other novel platforms have been discovered for new musicians to get the word out. Tiffany had a major hit song in 1987 with “I Think We’re Alone Now” (off her debut album Tiffany), a cover of the Tommy James and the Shondells hit “I Think We’re Alone Now” from 20 years earlier. Tiffany promoted the single by performing live in regional shopping centers throughout the country during what she called “The Beautiful You: Celebrating The Good Life Shopping Mall Tour ’87”. * * *  In the post-MTV era, YouTube has become an important venue for new artists, although the blizzard of posted videos makes this a daunting task to say the least. Barely a decade old, YouTube – the second most popular website on earth (after Google) – has ballooned to the point that 400 hours of new videos are being uploaded every minute (as of February 2017). According to Wikipedia: “It is estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.” Justin Bieber is the most successful musician to get his start on this video hosting service; a talent scout with So So Def Records clicked onto one of his videos on YouTube by accident in 2008, and he began singing for Usher shortly thereafter when he was just 13. Besides selling more than 100 million records, Wikipedia reports: “[Justin] Bieber also became the first artist to surpass 10 billion total video views on Vevo.” Other YouTube stars include Carly Rae Jepsen (whose song “Call Me Maybe” became the best-selling single of 2012), the innovative a cappella group Pentatonix, James Bay, and Ed Sheeran. * * *  While I sometimes stumble onto them in record stores, mostly I order albums by new bands through the Bomp! mailorder service; and more often than not, they were released by Bomp! Records, Alive Records, or one of their other affiliates. When I discovered the Pebbles Series of 1960’s garage rock and psychedelic rock in the late 1970’s, I began buying other compilation albums of this kind of music; but I quickly found that I enjoy Pebbles albums more than almost all of the others. In short, I figured out that Bomp! mastermind Greg Shaw has basically the same taste in music that I have. One notable exception is my recent purchase of the Psychedelic States: Mississippi in the 60s CD; this album is also topnotch throughout. A few of these bands I was already familiar with, notably Ravin’ Blue, but most of this music was new to me. I have since ordered Psychedelic States: Alabama in the 60s. * * *  Before long, I began locating albums by newer Bomp! artists, and I have nearly all of the compilation albums that have been released by Bomp! Records over the years: Destination: Bomp!, Straight Outta Burbank, Best of Bomp, Volume One, etc. Numerous UARB’s over the years have been Bomp! artists, and my post for May 2013 talked in some detail about this. Greg Shaw and the Bomp! Records crew even came up with a cool term for the kind of music that they like: “Bomp-Worthy”. Sadly, in the 12+ years since Shaw’s untimely death in 2004, this term has largely dropped out of sight on the Internet. I remember one “thread” (in the pre-blog era) talking about Linda Ronstadt’s Bomp-Worthy music that was still findable not so long ago, and I wish I could remember more about it. It was one of the references for the Wikipedia article that I wrote on the Stone Poneys. Now, there are only 20 results on Google for “Bomp-Worthy”. * * *  Bomp! Records would qualify as a mostly underground record label in their early decades; but with the May 2002 release on Alive Records of The Big Come-Up, the debut album by the Black Keys, their artists have a higher profile these days. Not surprisingly, Alive Records has made several special reissues of their hit album, such as the above copy that was released on gorgeous hand-mixed colored vinyl. Each album by the Black Keys seemed to be more popular than the one before, with 2010’s Brothers (and its top single “Tighten Up”) winning three Grammys and a #2 spot on Rolling Stone’s list of the best albums of 2011; El Camino (2012) leading to the band’s first arena tour; and their eighth and most recent album (and third collaboration with Danger Mouse), Turn Blue (2014) reaching the top of the album charts in the US, Canada, and Australia. Among the rock bands that have arisen since the Garage Rock Revival began in the early 2000’s, the Black Keys has attained a prominence in the American consciousness that Queens of the Stone Age, the Hives, the Strokes, and even the White Stripes never quite managed. As an example, I have noticed the band mentioned in our local paper twice in the past two or three months. Suzy Shaw of Bomp! Records told me that she was eating lunch in Los Angeles once and overheard several suit-clad businessmen talking about the Black Keys a few tables over. I have previously noted that the Black Keys were profiled on CBS Sunday Morning several years ago. During their interview, they mentioned that they frequently allow their music to be used for commercials and other similar purposes. They kept expecting to hear cries of “sellout!”, but they never came. Wikipedia mentioned: “The band continued to gain exposure through continued song licensing, so much so that they were Warner Bros. Records’ most-licensed band of the year [2010].” * * *  Dan Auerbach (guitar, vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums) both grew up in the Akron, Ohio area and met when they were 8 or 9 years old, becoming friends in high school. Auerbach was beginning to make a name for himself in local clubs and asked Carney to help him with a demo so that he could branch out into other communities. None of the other musicians that had been invited showed up for the recording session, so the two jammed together instead, eventually forming a duo called the Black Keys in mid-2001. In an interview on the National Public Radio radio program Fresh Air, as reported in Wikipedia: “The group’s name ‘the Black Keys’ came from an artist diagnosed with schizophrenia, Alfred McMoore, that the pair knew; he would leave incoherent messages on their answering machines referring to their fathers as ‘black [piano] keys’ such as ‘D flat’ when he was upset with them.” * * *  After making a six-song demo and sending it to a dozen or so record labels, the Black Keys signed with Alive Records, since they were “the only label that would sign [them] without having to see [them] first” (according to Wikipedia). Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded the entirety of The Big Come-Up on an 8-track tape recorder in Carney’s basement, accentuating their raw blues rock sound. They released one single from the album on Isota Records, the blues standard “Leavin’ Trunk” backed with their cover of the Beatles song, “She Said, She Said”. At a later date, another track from their debut album, “I’ll Be Your Man” was used as the theme song for the HBO series Hung. * * *  The Black Keys signed with Fat Possum Records for their next two albums, Thickfreakness and Rubber Factory (I picked up a copy of the latter album on vinyl in Atlanta a few years back). Continuing their lo-fi ways, Thickfreakness was recorded in a single 14-hour recording session and again in Patrick Carney’s basement. Wikipedia notes: “Time later named Thickfreakness the third-best album of 2003.” For their third album, the Black Keys set up a recording studio in a former tire-manufacturing plant in Akron (hence the name, Rubber Factory). Even with the resources of a major record label available to them (Nonesuch Records – associated with Warner Bros. Records and originally founded as a budget classical music label), the Black Keys returned to Patrick Carney’s basement for their fourth album, Magic Potion (2006). * * *  The cover of their breakthrough album, Brothers has a plain appearance and simply states: “This is an album by the Black Keys. The name of this album is Brothers.” The cover of their hit single “Tighten Up” has similar packaging. (This is not the same song as the 1968 hit by Archie Bell and the Drells also called “Tighten Up”). According to Wikipedia: “Inside the package, the album’s disc was coated with a thermal film that changes colors (black and white) at different temperatures.” Remarkably, Patrick Carney’s brother Michael Carney, who has designed the album art for all of their records, won a Grammy in 2011 for Best Recording Package for Brothers. * * *  Besides his work with the Black Keys, Dan Auerbach has had several side projects and has released two solo albums. He handled the production duties for the three albums by past UARB Hacienda. From Wikipedia: “In addition to winning several Grammy Awards as a member of the Black Keys, Auerbach received the 2013 Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for co-producing his band’s 2011 album, El Camino, and for producing records by Dr. John (Locked Down) and Hacienda.” Dan Auerbach toured with a band called Fast Five in 2009 that included the four bandmembers from Hacienda plus percussionist Patrick Hallahan from the band My Morning Jacket. * * *  The terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 included a shooting by three men armed with assault rifles inside the Bataclan Theatre during a concert performance by Eagles of Death Metal, claiming 89 lives. Dan Auerbach and his band the Arcs had a concert in Paris on the same night at another nearby venue, Le Trianon. About this experience, Dan Auerbach said: “I know people that were there last night. I know people who are like, ‘What am I gonna do – see the Arcs or the Eagles of Death Metal?’ And I’ve woken up feeling very out of sorts. What do you call it, survivor’s remorse? Why the hell did it happen there and not where we were playing? I’m just so brokenhearted about all those people.” * * *  The Under Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for June 2017 is THE LOONS, a self-described “psychotic beat music” band founded by Mike Stax – editor of Ugly Things magazine and a former member of past UARB the Crawdaddys. They have been around more than 20 years – a lot longer than I had thought – and arose from the ashes of two other San Diego bands that Mike Stax helped start, the Tell-Tale Hearts and the Hoods. I anticipate naming the Tell-Tale Hearts as a UARB within the next couple of posts; that would give me an Under Appreciated “hat trick”. * * *  Mike Stax founded Ugly Things magazine in 1982 when he was just 21 years old in order to cover, as he put it, “Wild Sounds from Past Dimensions”. Whereas “fanzines” tended to be thin mimeographed or cheaply printed affairs, Ugly Things is published more or less annually as a slick package with high production values that looks a lot more like a book than a magazine. As an example, Ugly Things #34 that includes my article on Milan has 184 pages. From Wikipedia: “The Lama Workshop editor Patrick Lundborg has stated about [Ugly Things] and editor Mike Stax: ‘The 1980s (music) zines have retired into the great recycling container in the sky (it’s down to UT, Shindig!, and Misty Lane now). Mike Stax has managed not only to keep it alive, but expand his trip in various directions, and in the process become one of the very best – perhaps THE very best – 1960s-oriented writer out there.’” * * *  AARP The Magazine had a neat article in their June/July 2016 issue recently about a virtually unknown garage rock band called the Sloths that were putting together an album 50 years after the 1965 release of their crude single “Makin’ Love”. The article was about as long as a companion piece in the same issue about the Rolling Stones. (I believe that this is the article where Mick Jagger expressed his wonderment about how it must feel for most people who live in a world where the Stones have always been there). AARP The Magazine has gotten to be a great musical resource in recent years; when Bob Dylan released his first album of standards a few years back, Shadows in the Night (2015), the only interview he granted was with this magazine. The reporter had previously worked at Rolling Stone magazine. From Wikipedia: “The album has received universal acclaim from critics for its unexpected and strong song selection and for the strength of Dylan and his band’s performance and arrangements. The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, making Dylan the oldest male solo artist to chart at number one in the UK.” * * *  While the other members of the Sloths moved on after the band broke up, Mike Rummans stuck with it. As reported in the AARP The Magazine article: “His musical résumé is a kind of pocket history of American pop. There he is on bass in the bubblegummy Yellow Payges [I just ordered an album, finally, by this band], the glam-tastic Hollywood Stars, the neo-rockabilly Kingbees. His Beatle bangs blossomed into a magnificent ’70s shag, then retreated as the ’80s arrived. Often, his bands flirted with success — the Stars were hyped as the West Coast’s New York Dolls, and the Kingbees charted two singles.” * * *  The AARP The Magazine article mentions Mike Stax a couple of times: “Unbeknownst to any Sloths, ‘Makin’ Love’ had become an object of fascination after it landed on an influential LP compilation [Back from the Grave, Volume 4] in the early 1980s. ‘The Sloths were something special,’ says Mike Stax, a San Diego musician and garage-rock superfan who publishes the rock zine Ugly Things. ‘“Makin’ Love” was the standout track on that album. So primal, so elemental. It had that caveman primitivism about it.’” The same “unbeknownst” thing happened with Milan the Leather Boy. After I wrote up my Wikipedia article on him, I was contacted by his sister Dara Rodell Gould, who along with her husband Ricky Gould had been trying to interest people in Milan’s music for years. They had no idea that Milan had attained a cult status in the garage-rock community, or probably that there was even such a thing as the garage-rock community. * * *  After interviewing the bandmembers and writing them up for Ugly Things, a few years later the Sloths started making noises about “putting the band back together”, and Mike Stax gave them a shot by hiring them as the opening act for a concert by the Loons. As reported in AARP The Magazine: “They sounded rough, but kids turned out in droves to see a real-live 1965 band in the flesh. Tommy [McLaughlin] recalls the exuberant reaction at one early show in East L.A.: ‘We were like the Stones up there for them. I was like, We gotta do this.’” In 2015, the Sloths put out their first album, Back from the Grave, named after the garage-rock compilation album, Back from the Grave, Volume 4 that brought the band back from obscurity. * * *  Besides the Loons, and according to Discogs, Mike Stax (real name: Michael Dixson) has been in several other rock bands over the years: past UARB the Crawdaddys, future UARB the Tell-Tale Hearts, the Hoods, Evil Eyes, and the Barons. These bands were active in the 1990’s except for the first two. * * *  Mike Stax’s wife Anja Stax, who has been with the Loons for their last three albums, has also recorded under several other names – Anja Diabolik, Anja Dixson, and Anja Bungert. Her first band was evidently Thee Cherylinas, an all-female 1960’s-style Beat band from Germany. She has also played with the Diaboliks and, more recently, the Rosalyns. * * *  Mike Stax (vocals) evidently first formed the Loons with Eric Bacher (guitar, organ) – who was lead guitarist for the Tell-Tale Hearts from 1983 to 1986 – and John Chilson (drums) of the Hoods, plus Andy Rasmussen (bass guitar); or at least, that is the earliest line-up that I have been able to find on-line. These four men made five 7-inch releases in the late 1990’s, all on different labels: “Paradise” b/w “I Drain the Dregs” on Time Bomb Recordings, and “Unwind” b/w “Slow Knife” on 360 Twist! Records, both in late 1996; “In the Past” and “Face out of Phase” b/w “Knock Knock” on Thermionic Records, and “16 Story Reflection” b/w “Future Tense” on Screaming Apple Records, both in 1997; and “Stumble and Fall” b/w “Strange” in November 1998 on Max Picou Records. * * *  The Loons then lined up an album deal with Get Hip Records called Love’s Dead Leaves that came out in 1999, with Gary Strickland as the new bass guitarist. Just 3 of the 11 songs released in the 5 earlier singles are on the album: “Paradise”, “Face out of Phase”, and “16 Story Reflection”. The songs are all originals, though one song, “Thursday’s Child” has the same name as a David Bowie song (“Thursday’s Child”), and two others, “Silver Threads” and “Paint it Gold” are similar in name to well-known 1960’s hit songs (“Silver Threads and Golden Needles” and “Paint it Black”). I have the album on order, but it hasn’t arrived as yet. * * *  Mike Stax went in-house but with new musicians for the band’s second album, Paraphernalia (2004) on Ugly Things Records. I haven’t found this album yet, but I am still hunting. Anja Stax is credited for the album design and is also the bass guitarist for the Loons on the album, but under the name Anja Diabolik. Other bandmembers are Mark Schroeder and Chris Marsteller, both on guitar, and Iain Andrew on drums. * * *  The album that I have, Inside Out Your Mind (2015) I mistakenly thought of as their first album, but the band had been around two decades at this point. It wasn’t even the Loons’ first album on Bomp! Records; that was Red Dissolving Rays of Light five years earlier (also on order). After writing this post, I came across an interview with Suzy Shaw who said that they revived Bomp! Records specifically for the Loons; Mike Stax had always wanted to have an album on that label. The band’s new drummer on both of these albums was Mike Kamoo, who had been the drummer for the Shambles; while the line-up of the Loons was otherwise the same as on Paraphernalia. Bass guitar and album design are by Anja Dixson on Red Dissolving Rays of Light, while the name Anja Stax is shown for both on Inside Out Your Mind. The only other change between the two Bomp! albums is that Chris Marsteller is also shown as playing keyboards on Inside Out Your Mind. The Loons’ original drummer, John Chilson had also previously played with the Shambles. * * *  An overview of the Loons was published in the San Diego Reader in 2015 upon the release of Inside Out Your Mind; eight other articles about the band had been published previously by this alternative weekly. The article lists the “genre” for the Loons as noise/experimental and punk and describes the “full scope of their sound” as “Beatlesque vibes reincarnated in the form of post-punk fervency”. Influences are listed in the article as the Pretty Things, the Seeds, the Yardbirds, the Monks, the 13th Floor Elevators, MC5, the Misunderstood, and the Dutch band the Outsiders. Bass guitarist and vocalist Anja Diabolik is quoted as saying about the Loons: “We play psychotic beat music, tapping into the most exciting elements of mid-to-late ’60s rock and roll and channel it into new, intense, original songs of our own. We find it a lot more interesting than opting to be a mere ’60s garage-band jukebox.” That “jukebox” orientation can be a problem with some of the 1960’s revival bands that I have heard. Covering obscure garage-rock and psychedelic-rock songs taken, for example, from the Highs in the Mid-Sixties Series and later albums in the Pebbles Series is fine for people who are not familiar with them; but for people like me who already know all of those songs, I am often reminded about how much fresher the original versions were. * * *  All or nearly all of the songs by the Loons are written by the bandmembers, with Mike Stax and Eric Bacher shown as the songwriters on most of their early material, and all bandmembers or the band as a whole credited more recently. Mike Stax’s encyclopedic knowledge of garage rock, psychedelic rock, raw R&B, freakbeat, Nederbeat, and the many other varied forms of 1960’s rock music provides a solid foundation for the band’s host of moods on their songs. Refreshingly, all of the bandmembers in the Loons are professional musicians, not youngsters who are still finding their way (not that there is anything wrong with that). Rather than just staying within the well-trod garage-rock path that was laid out a half-century ago, the Loons take their music in unexpected directions and slip in 1960’s-style flourishes and riffs throughout their songs. Inside Out Your Mind was a thoroughgoing treat to these ears from beginning to end from the first spin, and I expect without even hearing them that their other albums will be the same way. As with most of my favorite albums, all of the music sounds great, and my attempts to pick out favorite tracks often approaches the full roster of songs. * * *  The straight garage rock thrust of the opening track on Inside Out Your Mind, “Siren City” leads into the psychedelic delicacy that is “Moon and Tide”, one of my favorite songs on the album. The title song, “Inside Out Your Mind” has such an authentic 1960’s sound that it is hard to believe it is newly written. Just when you think the Loons might have run out of tricks, the Side 1 closer “Silence” serves up a psychedelic mood that is quite a bit different from “Moon and Tide”; the song ends with a lovely, understated instrumental passage that is so rare these days, when nearly all bands keep the vocals going pretty much nonstop. Side 2 of the Loons’ album Inside Out Your Mind continues the kaleidoscope with the angsty “My Desolation” and the more wistful “I Don’t Live There Anymore”. The rocking “Transparent Eyes” is another treasure, with the recurring “nothin’” call recalling one of my favorite songs by the Canadian garage-rock band the Ugly Ducklings, the kiss-off masterpiece “Nothin’”: “Baby . . . you know what I need? / Nothin’ / I need nothin’”. This is 1960’s revival music at its most fulfilling. I look forward to working my way through their other albums. * * * Story of the Month: “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” (from January 2015)  Kim Fowley’s follow-up single to “The Trip” was a cover of the bizarre novelty song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” that made the charts. The original version of “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” was recorded in 1966 by Napoleon XIV, the pseudonym of Jerry Samuels. The lyrics include just about every pejorative and urban legend ever applied to the mentally ill: berserk, flip my lid, funny farm, men in white coats, basket weavers, maniacal laughter, etc. The song climbed to #3 on the charts but then plummeted almost out of the Top 40 just two weeks later after radio stations quit playing the record because of its offensive lyrics. The flip side, “!Aaah-Ah ,Yawa Em Ekat Ot Gnimoc Er’yeht” is simply the record played backwards – the simple structure and gleeful singing with echo effects make that much more listenable than might be imagined – and almost everything on the label was printed in mirror-image, including the song name, artist’s name and even the Warner Bros. Records logo. The album They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! does not include the backward track (despite song listings to the contrary), but there is a sort of answer song called “I’m Happy They Took You Away, Ha-Haaa!” that was credited to Josephine XV, who is presumably the girlfriend who left him and caused his torment. (Joséphine was the name of Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife). |
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