Monthly Archives: September 2015

“It was Friday night and all my friends were all partying. For some reason I was feeling kind of bad, couldn’t get myself to go out, and decided to write a song instead. It was especially cold for a summer night and kind of felt like I was buried on a mountain. That feeling was the inspiration for the video as well: shutting out the world and creating something new.”
—Alex Gruenburg

Well, this is good—a driving garage rock beat, a jangly surf rock guitar, a catchy melody in echoey harmony. You’d hardly think the Brooklyn band Best Behavior is bummed out at all.

We’re pleased to premiere the video from the band’s debut album Good Luck Bad Karma already garnering raves since its release last month. And as great a ride that “Buried at a Mountain” gives, it pauses in a bridge to wonder, “Why am I so low?” No worries, they get out of their own funk by speeding up the inquiry until they’re slamming into the delirious chorus again.

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1989 was an outstanding year for hip-hop. Classics in the rapidly developing genre included EPMD’s Unfinished Business, the Jungle Brothers’ Done by the Forces of Nature, and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique. In fact the list is so deep that worthy items are bound to be overlooked. The recent reissue of Special Ed’s Youngest in Charge will certainly keep the Brooklynite’s enduringly striking wordplay in the discussion, with the LP housed in a gatefold sleeve sporting notes by estimable hip-hop scribe Brian Coleman. It’s currently bundled at Get On Down’s webstore with a red vinyl big-hole 45 of breakout single “I Got It Made.” Both are also available separately.

Of Jamaican descent, Edward Archer is the youngest of five brothers and the only one born on US soil. As a rap obsessed teen from the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, he quickly became a battle rhyme specialist, employing a variety of handles before settling upon Special Ed. The initial chapters in his story are approximate to the beginnings of numerous local legends; the difference is Ed’s realization that breaking on a larger level required a key collaborator.

Enter Howard Thompson; English-born and also of Jamaican descent, he’s better known as Hitman Howie Tee. Ed was 14 when he first met the older and more experienced Howie, his future cohort having been a member of CDIII, an electro-rap trio who cut a pair of singles on the Prelude label in ’83-‘84. And while uncredited, in ’84 he contributed production to UTFO’s rap smash “Roxanne, Roxanne.” The next year he worked on Whistle’s “(Nothing Serious) Just Buggin’.”

Suffice it to say Ed and Howie knew each other from the neighborhood. Once properly introduced, the producer was struck by the rapper’s sidestepping of the Jamaican angle for what can be described as a New York-based approach. He was furthermore impressed by the maturity in his execution; Youngest in Charge’s title references Ed’s age, 16 at the point of the album’s making, but the LP is in no way the prototype for Kris Kross or Lil Bow Wow.

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I return to the place again and again, in my imagination: a pink house in the secluded woods of West Saugerties in the haunted Catskill Mountains, where in 1967 Bob Dylan and the Band retreated to the basement to create what I consider to be the greatest music, or shit, art period, of the 20th Century. I have seen Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Suitors, Even, and I have never felt the need to see it again. The same goes for reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. But I return to the Basement Tapes over and over, in awe of their offhand and shambolic brilliance, their sprung quality and their perpetual ability to amaze, inspire, and amuse. They’re mythical, the result of a musical collaboration that was nothing short of alchemical, and I’m forever on the lookout for bands that embody the same impish but at the same time profound spirit that Bob and the boys captured in their rustic pink hideaway in the woods.

So it was with great pleasure that I recently discovered The Strange Boys, a band that formed in the Dallas/Austin area in 2004 and is—like the great Felice Brothers—keeping the spirit of Big Pink alive. The band (which as of 2010 included Ryan Sambol on guitar, vocals, organ, piano, and harmonica; his brother Philip on bass; Greg Enlow on guitar, glockenspiel, organ, piano, and vocals; and Scott Densham on drums; with Jenna E. Thornhill DeWitt—of Mika Miko—contributing vocals and sax and Tim Presley—of White Fence and Ty Segall—providing bass, percussion, and vocals) really hit their stride on 2010’s rough and ready Be Brave, on which they play it raw but with tons of spirit and in so doing come closer to approximating the wild and wooly wonder of The Basement Tapes than almost any music I’ve ever heard.

The band is anchored by Ryan Sambol’s indescribable vocals; one of a kind, he sounds like he’s whining, or has a head cold, and constitutes the missing link between the tuneless Neil Young a la Tonight’s the Night and a punk accustomed to failure. As for the band, they’re garage meets alt-country meets The Fugs. They’re loose as a goose and sound like they’re just jamming in their garage, and Sambol’s vocals ride roughshod over the band’s always intriguing yet simple songs. True, Sambol’s lyrics can’t compete with Dylan’s, and there are few memorably surrealistic phrases (“Pull that drummer out from behind that bottle/Hit him with a pie that smells”) of the sort that fill The Basement Tapes on The Strange Boys’ Be Brave. But Sambol’s vocals and the band’s scruffy and carefree spirit have The Basement Tapes written all over them.

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“I love sitting in a living room with friends and listening to a good jam on vinyl. The sound quality is more rich (cheesy, I know). I also love perusing antique shop collections. That being said, I’m planning on pressing my upcoming album on vinyl (hopefully get it in stock in all the stores throughout Ontario).”
—Jennifer Budd

Helping to fill the void left by more than four years without a new Adele album, here’s the debut of another big voiced soul-pop singer tinged with a similar kind of bluesy regret and ennui.

Jennifer Budd, who hails from the wintery climes of Hamilton, Ontario and went to college in Nashville, adds a little jazz shadings to her track “Don’t Even,” which we are delighted to be premiering. Styled for this video to within an inch of Colbie Caillat, Budd sits idly by as a couple breaks things up backwards.

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Garage rock is a largely straightforward endeavor that’s easy to champion mainly because the byproduct frequently resonates so splendidly. In an excellent turn of events Windian Records has just reissued two 7-inch platters from the label’s neck of the woods, specifically by Washington, DC’s The Hangmen and Baltimore’s Ebenezer and the Bludgeons; the former oozes mid-‘60s teen-scene gusto and the latter grapples with the disreputable essence of ‘70s punk. Both are welcome additions to any shelf devoted to rock in its pure, short form.

In the guts of the 20th century many youngsters in the US were impacted so heavily by the rock ‘n’ roll impulse that they diligently sought out likeminded individuals and formed bands of their own, and once amassed they found shelter in buildings where they could practice and hopefully perfect a few tunes. The true heyday of this phenomenon is the mid-‘60s, an economically healthy period with roughly a decade’s worth of accumulated R&R moves ready for the swiping.

Just as importantly the music had yet to find widespread acceptance as Art; it was, in an aged phrase, still greasy kid stuff. This is the territory where The Hangmen thrived. Theirs is a tale of shows truncated by the fuzz due to rabid fandom, the playing of private parties at the digs of Robert Kennedy, traveling to and from gigs in a hearse, and displacing “We Can Work it Out” b/w “Day Tripper” from the DC chart’s top spot.

Their ’65 single actually derives from Hangmen guitarist Tom Guernsey and drummer Bob Berberich’s prior outfit The Reekers. As a Link Wray-styled instrumental group they dished a 45 for Ru-Jac (the swell Dick Tracy-inspired “Don’t Call Me Flyface” is found on numerous comps including Strummin Mental Vol. 2 and Signed DC) but soon brought Joe Triplet’s vocals to the fore on “What a Girl Can’t Do” and “The Girl Who Faded Away.”

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“Alright, so here is our story with vinyl…”

“Being born in 1998, I grew up with CDs all around me. My parents had sold their turntables and records and replaced them with CDs. The iPod came out in 2001, and that was quickly integrated into our listening process (mainly in the car). I spent the first 10 years of my life with zero vinyl around me.

Then one day, my father brought a record player home from a garage sale that was down the street. After that we started acquiring vinyl!!! Ever since it has been a huge part of my life and the music listening dynamic in my home! There is almost never a moment where music is not playing in our house, and 99.9% of it is vinyl. Through playing shows and trading records with the other bands, and discovering amazing record stores, our record collection is an ever-growing amoeba.

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