Just when you think rock’n’roll is ready to be sent into history as a past musical expression that has nothing to offer to a new generation of listeners, a band like Faux Killas shows up to prove us wrong. Rock’n’roll is not dead, it just smells funny.
So here they are, four young boys from Memphis, blasting their instruments real loud, producing the catchiest new album of the season without a label, in the best tradition of Memphis rock with their eye view set for future.
The sound is heartfelt and comes straight from garage. It’s a little less wild than Oblivians, but owing equally to the underground and above the ground traditions of Memphis sound. There’s a good sense of humor (song entitled The Boogie is only minute and a half long), hard rocking blues in Leaving You will leave rock puritans full of satisfaction and let’s face it, When You Get Wild is a new generational anthem, only nobody told that yet to the generation.
The band is at the beginning of their discographic activity. The album was recorded in Summer of 2015 and available on the Faux Killas bandcamp page. It’s only available as a CD as of December 2015. They boys are doing it all on their own. I can only hope that they have enough strength and enthusiasm to continue surprising us in the years to come. Rock’n’roll is not dead, this years it smells like Gravy.
Warm Soda are lead by Matthew Melton from Austin TX. Symbolic Dream is their third album already, although somehow I missed the previous two records. That shouldn’t be too surprising, after the initial local success with Someone For You in 2012, the second album Young Reckless Hearts did not sound the way Melton really wanted, so it received an abysmal support. This year, Warm Soda returned with Symbolic Dream and certainly won my heart with an incredibly catchy collection of 12 songs engraved into a 12″ 45 RPM vinyl clocking barely over the 26 minute time mark.
Tav Falco’s book on Memphis Ghosts Behind Sun: Splendour Enigma and Death begins as a story narrated by the city itself, continues with a detailed and informed description of the city’s rock scene and throughout it’s never clear if it’s the city itself telling the story, Tav Falco or his alter ego Eugene Baffle. That’s what Tav Falco really is – uncatchable non-stop art concept.
Soldiers of Fortune – Early Risers
Rock improvisation hasn’t started with Endless Boogie though. Their fellow New Yorkers, Suicide, employed this type of songwriting since their inception in the late sixties. Kim Fowley, wrote some of his songs in a stream of consciousness fashion since day one. Ben Vaughn had separate albums with Alan Vega and Kim Fowley in the nineties bringing their approach to songwriting to new levels of greatness with the Cubist Blues and King of Saturday Night projects.
Koja from Belgrade’s band Disciplin A Kitchme (also known as Disciplina KiÄme) has been writing simple rock songs with seemingly endless arsenal of improvised riffs for years. His lyrics are usually one short observation or an impression that often repeats until the song is over. The rest of the tune is his heavy bass riffage, one or two drum sets and horns that are added with a great deal of improvisation and feel for rocking.
Today we continue our traditional review of the best records at the Little Lighthouse in the past year. The top 10 is here. We have double number one position, so two albums share the title of the best records this year. I thought about a lot which one to pick and decided to split the title between Andy Gabbard’s Fluff and Faux Killas Gravy. Gabbard’s Fluff is a well rounded, carefully thought-out record (although you may think the opposite from the title) and Faux Killas are a young new force from Memphis that blasted their debut as if they have rock’n’roll in their fingertips. The rest of the list follows bellow and then, check out the playlist for the top 10 if you have time. Oh, yeah… happy new year to everyone!!!
Today we begin our traditional review of the best records at the Little Lighthouse in the past year. Although “the best” should be understood in a very limited way. These records is basically just a very personal selection of new music that stuck with me this year. It may not be the best, but it somehow resonated in my mind. The time will tell whether these records will last longer than one season, but I definitely tend to go back to the stuff that I liked.
In some way, this show is the part two of the jam show we heard last time. Only two new albums today. Both of them are not so new, but I didn’t get to play them yet in the show. Motörhead has a relatively fresh album called Bad Magic which surprised me with the high quality that it brings. Also, Ghost, Swedish Satanists, had a cool album this year called Meloria. Again something, not something that I would normally go for, but really cool album nevertheless. Tune in next year for the new episode with the year-end retrospective of best albums.
It’s a jammy show today. We have entirely improvized band called Soldiers of Fortune, consisting of many established musicians from New York (Oneida, Chavez, Interpol). Jesper Eklow from Endless Boogie seems to play a very important role forming the sound on the new Soldiers of Fortune record Early Risers. Next, we have the legendary (ex) Yugoslav band Disciplin A Kitchme, who are back with yet another great sounding record entitled Opet.. Ethan Johns is also back with the new album and we introduce a new name: Greek band 7-Odds. Dom Mariani’s DM3 has a nice new compilation record.
We bring you some cool new stuff. Daughter of Howe Gelb and Paula Jean Brown (of the original Giant Sand line up), has a great band called Patsy’s Rats. Impulsive Hearts from Chicago are also fronted by a lady: Danielle Sines. Miriam Linna of Norton Records has made another new album this year Down Today. We also introduce Green Hornet from Netherlands and Sloming Moops from Zagreb, Croatia. Also from there, Thee Melomen have a new single. Peter Buck of REM is back with a nice solo record. An interesting tribute came out recently in Tucson AZ for Rainer Ptacek.
Vinyl Junkyard instalment #15 is here! In special episodes like this one I play almost entire LPs that I found dirt cheap somewhere laying in some bargain bin at a record store. Today’s pick are two volumes of Jin Records compilations of Swamp Pop hits Golden Dozen that came out some time in the 70s. Jin Records was a home to some great Swamp Pop hits, Opelousas Sostan by Rufus Jangneaux most notably. Swamp Pop was a special brand of Louisiana rock music that was probably the main genre in that state locally and it rarely got out. The music was a blend of rock’n’roll and cajun melancholy. We will go through twenty two of the 24 tunes on these two albums and we will provide some dry info on most of the bands that found their place on these records.