Category Archives: Bands

Bands

Chick Graning

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(Written long time ago for the old site) Chick Graning has one of those bizarre rock’n’roll biographies which make your head spin. He started in Boston and hung out there with all the great underground names in the late eighties. Then he formed his own band Anastasia Screamed that recorded a couple of singles and one lp (Laughing Down The Limehouse) in the season 1991/92. It was the time of grunge, and Anastasia Screamed was one of the best representatives of its softer, more contemplative side, the one that was coming from Boston area.

The band enjoyed a moderate success in Europe and England, but in the USA nobody paid too much attention. Nevertheless, Anastasia’s groves were some of the most interesting and most progressive tunes at the time. The sound was very emotional and the lyrics were clever. Chick Graning even made it to the pages of cheap magazines as husband of the rock’n’roll beauty Tanya Donnelly of The Throwing Muses and Belly.

The marriage was fine initially, but Chick met Joyce Rasin. He artistically got along with her much better than with Tanya so his marriage soon fell apart. He formed a new band with Joyce – Scarce.

Major distributors were very interested in Scarce. Their sound was very much nineties, complex and catchy. After a few singles, A&M signed them and they started working on their first album Deadsexy. Just before they finished it, Graning got a brain hemorrhage which not only postponed and jeopardized the release of Deadsexy, but it also caused amnesia to his memory. He had to relearn everything in life, starting with his own name to how to play guitar. Needless to mention, band stopped its existence.

Recent news are that Chick Graning is back as a solo artist. The new demos are very promising.

Bands

Wanda Jackson And The Rubes

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Wanda JacksonWanda Jackson is one of the legends of rock’n’roll. Possibly the very first woman rocking out in the 50’s when the whole thing was a “man’s game”. With her raspy southern accent and attractive looks she definitely left a mark. Still, after all these years she is recording and touring. She recently put out an album dedicated to Elvis Presley and is on a busy schedule touring United States. She doesn’t have a steady band though. When she booked shows in Denver and Idaho, she sought for a good band to back her up. And she found
the right band in Salt Lake City’s own The Rubes. They could be her grandchildren, or even grand-grandchildren considering they’re from Utah where people have kids at a very young age compared to the rest of the world. I asked them how did the collaboration happen…

“Our manager booked her appearance up at Idaho State. He books lots of shows up in Pocatello [in Idaho]. She didn’t have a touring band in the Mid-west so our guy pitched us as the back up band. Sort of random, really” says Greg, the pianist in the band. Themselves, Rubes seem to be more than great backup for Wanda as they are very young gents who are not afraid to underline their influences playing a medley of 50s rhythm and blues standards on their own live performances.”

Indeed, they seem extremely honored to play with Wanda… “Wanda is a good entertainer and most of the crowd was people who were young when Elvis blew up in 1955. We played mostly her rockabilly hits like ‘Let’s Have a Party’, ‘Rock Your Baby’, ‘I Gotta Know’ and some Elvis Presley Sun records tunes. Of course, Wanda wants to make a witness so we did ‘I Saw the Light’. On the footwear tip Wanda has fresh velcro shoes that cut our Anchor Bays from K-mart.”

The RubesStill, band had to tune down their amps… “Lemmy [from Motorhead] was right when he said that only way to feel the noise is when it’s good and loud. We are used to playing louder and the sound guy [that was engineering the concert with Wanda] was used to Peter Breinholt. I think our amps were on half of
‘One’. So it was kind of challenging to get all shook up. We played in a very extravagant acoustically perfect concert hall; The first 12 foot Steinway I’ve ever played. This was the second time we’d backed her up with about an hour rehearsal. Our first gig (in Denver) was a little shaky; This time it went 10 times smoother.”

The band definitely had a royal treatment in presence of rock’n’roll royalty. Greg says “I think the crowd had a good time. The Rubes most enjoyed the Del Taco delivered gratis to our dressing room. The fans are really cool in Pocatello, they paid for a cab so we could sing karaoke and bar hop after the show. I remember performances of ‘War Pigs’ and ‘Three’s Company Theme’.” And they would like to do it again: “If we can back up Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley next time that would be ideal.” No shit, Greg!!

Peter Breinholt is a family friendly folk musician beloved by the Mormons.

The Rubes profile
Wanda Jackson website

Bands

Rickie Lee Jones

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(Written long time ago for the old site). The story of Rickie Lee Jones starts in the late seventies, when she appeared on the cover of Tom Waits’ Blue Valentine. At the time, she, Tom and saxophonist Chuck E Weiss were unseparable friends sharing everything – talks, music, poetry, booze… One day Waits phoned Rickie saying, “Hey, babe, Chuck E’s in love…”. That was the end of trio’s close friendship, but the start of Rickie’s fruitful career. After Waits hung up, she sat down and wrote Chuck E’s In Love one of the most beautiful anthems of the seventies singer-songwriting scene in Los Angeles. One other Rickie’s song, Easy Money caught attention of the famous slide guitar player Lowell George (ex Little Feat, huge influence on Dixie Chicks). George’s reccomendation assured Rickie a contract with Warner Brothers and her first phenomenal album called simply Rickie Lee Jones was out. It included both Chuck E’s In Love and Easy Money and other 10 excellent songs, each better than the other. Rickie charmes everybody with her songs and her very sensual voice. Her singing includes a unique type of miaowing, wich makes her sound in moments like a little girl, and like a sexy diva at the same time. Rickie Lee Jones had an open road to have career as a popular singer, but she took some other roads

Her second album, Pirates surprised evrybody, as her songwriting technique achieved full maturity. Album included lengthy odes to the bohemian street life, full of wonderful images and great instrumentation by the old wolves of the Los Angeles scene, Nick De Caro, Russ Titelman, Lenny Waronker and Donald Fagen. The result was one of the artiest and most rounded records of Laurel Canyon scene.

After that point, Jones established herself as an respectable artist, and she stopped publishing records regularily. Two years after the Pirates, Rickie published a 10″ record Girl At Her Volcano, mostly filled out with covers, and audience waited one more year for a regular album Magazine. Critics never accepted the album, but I think that they were too harsh. The “A” side of the album contained Rickie in a little more easy listening manner, and “B” side was most complex Rickie’s work up to that time, and those two sides made a nice little contrast on the aestetical canvas of this album.

One of the interesting characters with whom Jones colaborated closely throughout the career was Sal Bernardi, who contributed in some of the structurally most interesting Rickie’s songs Western Slopes from Pirates and song triology Rorschachs out of the Magazine. Strangely, I’m not familiar if Sal worked with anyone else or if he had some solo projetcs, but I’m curious about his work

Five years after Magazine Jones made another master piece Flying Cowboys which reminded many of us on Laura Nyro’s work. This was a great way for Rickie to pay a tribute to one her obvious influences. This time, Jones worked with Walter Becker behind boards, so the goregous sound was guaranteed.

Rickie Lee Jones likes to play other people’s songs, but she pretty much keeps a straight line between her own songs and covers. After the Girl At Her Volcano, she made two more cover only albums Pop pop and the most recent one It’s Like This. It is always a big pleasure hearing her strange performances and unusual sellections.

Jones’ moves are hard to predict. In 1997 she published her last album consisted of her own songs, Ghostyhead, which was a strangest little thing that came out in 1997. Rickie likes exploring music, so after listening to a lot of Bristol based trip hop bands, she made a trip hop album full of great poetic pastiches. I heard people calling her a trip pop beatnick, which was a great characterisation. Rickie also colaborated with Mike Watt on several of her live shows, and I’m very unpatient to hear more from two of them…

Bands

Mark Lanegan

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(Written for the old site.) SST in the eighties was home for every punk-rocker in USA. And they aslo grew their special breed of longhair punkers who drew their influences not only from early punk, but also from hard rock and psychedelia. One of the most notable bands of that breed were the Screaming Trees. Three chubby guys and a babe magnet Mark Lanegan gave us a little bit of fresh air when they in late eighties made great three albums for SST. That part of their career is also wonderfully compiled on Anthology: SST Years.

But then came 1991, Nirvana and grunge… Of course, Screaming Trees were a perfect grunge band already and CBS signed them and they really hit it big with Sweet Oblivion in 1992. Paradoxically, Sweet Oblivion was lyrically their weakest album up to date. Moreover, Lanegan started his deep exploration on more traditional forms like country and blues and decided to start a parallel career as a solo artist.

Actually, in 1990. came out firt Lanegan’s album entitled The Winding Street, but his career really started to overshadow Screaming Trees when he came up with Whiskey for the Holy Ghost in 1994. That was a delicious album full of bluesy bar atmosphere.

Like after a big hungover, his album I’ll Take Care of You came out in 1999. Here we find Lanegan performing his favorite standards like Little Sadie. You can find there many cool songwriters, Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Bobby Blue Blend and Buck Owens. The nicest surprize is a wonderful bluesy cover of Carry Home, which was originally done by a death punk band The Gun Club.

Just now, Lanegan came up with a new album, and a new hairdo and he’s more than welcome. Album is entiled Field Songs, and represents Mark in a new light. It all looks like Lanegan got influenced by gypsy music, and there’s much of that nomadic feel in his new songs. However, the list of guest musicians is quite interesting… Except for his old buddy Mike Johnson (ex Dinosaur JR), also Duffy (ex Guns’n’Roses) delivers some quite impressive drum attacks, Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden also shows she can play some serious guitar. Duffy is also now a part of Mark’s new touring band, so god help us… Anyway, great low key records and a nice bluesy break in usually jolly good atmosphere of The Little Lighthouse.

One Whiskey Website

Bands

Cobra Verde Live @ The Parish

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21st Century Boys

(Written in March 2001)
It was a real pleasure to see Cobra Verde live at the Parish in New Orleans on Sunday March 17th, 2001. This Cleveland band is led by John Petkovic. Wider audience had several chances to hear about them. They never fail to get four stars at The Rolling Stone, and it was a big news in 1997 when Robert Pollard of the Guided By Voices decided to fire all of the original members of the band and hire Cobra Verde to finish his visions on the Mag Earwig album. Cobra Verde had some personnel changes because of that, but they fell on their legs and continued even stronger. Album Nightlife came out in 1999, brought a large variety of sounds and styles. Some bands go through less changes throught their career then Cobra Verde in only one album. In a better world, Nightlife would set completely new standards for rock’n’roll.

All of the Cobra Verde qualities were confirmed live on this concert. Although the problem with sound in The Parish is ongoing and for some reason voice always gets burried behind instruments, one could fully enjoy in the sound they offered. Amazing coordinace between the drummer and the bass player made possible for the guitar player (who looks like a Ron Wood miniature), to play over the rhytm together with the thereminist and keyboardist who was really wild on the stage. Everything was under Petkovic’s supervision and he as
a frontman is something that is not an everyday sight.

Stylistically, Cobra Verde owns a lot to the glam rock of the seventies, but there the sound of the live performance is much more straight forward, the way it really is supposed to be in a rock’n’roll band. Much of the sound is quite original, which really makes these guys the first and the best band of the 21st century. Really! We’re talking about the future of rock’n’roll here…

In the middle of their original songs they played on of the jewels of the past, an extremely important song Treat Her Right written by Roy Head, and performed by hundreds of others throught the history. The song went specially for your lighthouse keeper, which is one of the biggest honors that anyone ever did for me.

Cobra Verde
John Petkovic stuff