Two members of Portland dream-pop group Blouse contributed to today’s edition of the Captured Tracks spotlight. Patrick Adams remembers his first record, and Charlie Hilton doesn’t remember her father’s band’s records. Their own debut self-titled LP will be released via Captured Tracks on November 1st.
When I was seven years old, my mom went to see the movie La Bamba starring Lou Diamond Phillips as the late Ritchie Valens. She came home that same night with the soundtrack to the movie on vinyl. Said the movie was amazing and she hadn’t cried like that in years.
I spun that record over and over for the next couple years. I would daydream about standing in front of my classroom singing “We Belong Together” and “Donna” to the girl I had a crush on. I would run around my living room jumping all over the furniture listening to “Who Do You Love” by Bo Diddly.
The strangest part is the songs weren’t actually the recordings of Ritchie Valens, but instead they were performed by Los Lobos. I still know all the words to “La Bamba” (or at least my broken spanish/nonsense version), and apparently I am a huge Los Lobos fan. I eventually saw the movie when it aired on TV, and I totally cried.
—Patrick Adams
My dad doesn’t talk about the past. I didn’t know, when I would play his old scratched-up guitar, that it used to be Donovan’s. I didn’t find out my dad’s band Jiva had toured with Fleetwood Mac until I was fifteen—and one of my girlfriends told me.
You would think that since Jiva had been signed to George Harrison’s Dark Horse label, that a record or two would be lying around the house or hanging on a wall somewhere. But no. Aside from a few 8-tracks in the garage, there was no sign of Jiva in my childhood home.
With our first record coming out soon, I’ve been thinking a lot about my father. I’ve been wondering what it felt like for him, putting out his first record. A few weeks ago, I did a google search and found that Jiva’s LPs are not only out there, but they’re not cheap! I bought two for my collection, one from Polydor called Still Life (still wrapped!) and their self-titled debut on Dark Horse (the promotional copy with silver liner notes).
My dad laughed when I told him, but I know that it must have meant more. Now I don’t have to wonder as much; all I have to do is hold them and listen. They are beautiful family relics, and they couldn’t have come to me at a more appropriate time.
As I look at the Dark Horse record now, my shirtless dad, standing proudly in the 1975 desert, his tan bell-bottoms almost covering his bare feet, his hair frozen in the breeze, a full moon above his shoulder—he looks right back as if there were no decades between us. To me, his expression is like a gentle dare.
—Charlie Hilton
