Natural Child is a trio from Nashville TN. When you hear Nashville, the immediate association is country music. These three guys though, sound like they could be from Atlanta or Memphis. What we have here is a garage rock dealing. And it’s a lucky draw.
They’ve been playing together for a few years. Wes and Murph were long time friends, discovering music together, united in their love for The Rolling Stones and Neil Young and they decided to form a band together. Marv on drums joined later. After some singles, the first record appropriately entitled 1971 came out in 2011. Indeed, it sounded like music that was brought over to us after a time machine trip from 40 years before us.
This year sees the group extremely busy. In breaks of their constant touring arrangement, they recorded the new album For The Love Of The Game in their practice barn, so it has that immediate live feel to it as you’d think it should.
The sound of the band is a typical power trio. All three instruments are playfully arranged together and every instrument is up in front of the mix. Singing is often in a duet between the bassist Wes and guitarist Murph.
The songs are carefully crafted and there’s a lot of dynamical range to them. Third song Baby sounds like it could be a great single outside of the record, and other songs build up an atmosphere of a developing record and it rolls down the grooves like a snowball down the hill. This is something that really makes this record great and something that we miss from the old classic rock lps. This sort of atmosphere is only interrupted a few times, once with a drunken sing-along No One Writes Sad Songs Anymore which shows a great competence of the band as classical songwriters. Well, you can’t live in Nashville and not learn how to write good songs. And then there’s Paradise Heights, reggae tinted tune that wouldn’t be out of place in Joe Strummer’s repertoire. Finally, there’s a cover of Tom T. Hall’s That’s How I Got To Memphis, which is not only a direct proof that the bands knows the history of rock and country extremely well, but also that they have excellent musical tastes.
The fun-packed record clocks out at the 37-th minute. The vinyl print sounds very good, but I could not identify what record plant mastered and printed the record. And just as I type this review, I’m finding out that there’s a brand new Natural Child record out already, barely half a year after For The Love Of The Game, and it’s called Hard In Heaven. Meet the hardest working band in the business!
First published on rockxs.com.
In the past decade or so, we witnessed a surge of reunions, particularly of bands that meant something in the seventies and the eighties. Some of the bands just tour, perhaps make a live album and try to relive the past without changing much. Others make new records. Often times the motive is to draw larger crowds to the gigs than each band member would individually, or perhaps these bands simply want to go back to the youthful years. In any case, reunions are typically in shadows of the famous past. Exceptions to the rules are scarce. I can only think of Mission of Burma and their reunion album On Off On which is as great as anything they did before, if not better, more mature and stronger piece. Now we have a new example in Redd Kross.
Eamon McGrath comes from Canada. He grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canadian Western province, North of the US state of Montana, with lots of prairies. This is where he started to come up with his first songs, recording them in his house and distributing them around on cd-rs to friends and fans. There is about 15 to 20 of those proto albums that he made in very small amount of copies and it is unclear what exactly is contained in those releases. Perhaps some songs repeated in multiple versions, but what we can tell for sure, they were all recorded relatively cheaply in lo-fi technology.
When the story of Husker Du ended in 1988, Grant Hart briefly started a solo career, only to put together a new band in 1990 called Nova Mob with two of his Minneapolis friends: Tom Merkl on bass and Michael Crego on drums. The group’s first album was something nobody wanted from Grant Hart in 1991. It was a rock opera with a seemingly bizarre libretto. It was a make believe story with real life characters about the engineer of the Nazi V8 bomb and one of the leaders of the US space program, Wernher Von Braun. In the opera, Von Braun finds himself towards the end of the World War Two on a losing side with a desire to escape. In a prayer to Germanic god Woton, Von Braun asks for an ability to travel in time, which Woton grants through a gateway. Von Braun first travels in future, he learns out about all the space achievements which he would end up contributing in the 50s and 60s. In his adventures, Von Braun runs into the Roman lawyer Pliny.
Today’s episode has a completely different format than the other episodes of The Little Lighthouse. The entire show is a bit longer today and it’s fully dedicated to one book. The book is called Early ’70s Radio, The American Format Revolution and it’s written by the good friend of our show Kim Simpson from Austin TX. Some of you may remember him as a solo artist and as a band leader of The Mad Dukes. He was a guest on our show a few years ago in Salt Lake City. Today he and I chat about his book about the early ’70s radio in USA, what led to it and how it influenced the world around it and the radio of today. The book is a result of Kim’s several years of research and it’s based on his doctoral dissertation in media studies. Although it’s an informative and detailed academic work, it is also full with trivia and stories about forgotten moments in history of pop music that it feels as if shopping in a fun thrift shop. We also had Kim playing on his guitar five ’70s medleys which parallel the chapters of the book. So, we hope this is will be fun for you all and perhaps you will also consider getting Kim’s book as well. All info about the book can be found on Kim’s blog 
Today’s show is dedicated to the 80s new wave scene from Georgia and the South of the USA. Everything is peculiar in the South, so is the new wave scene. The direct inspiration for today’s show is the LP called Jericho Go, a compilation record that was put together jointly by The DB Records in the US and the Stiff Records in UK. Now, it can only be found in rare used records bins in these two countries, and it’s probably not an easy task. Still, it’s an obscure, but a cherished item in my record collection. This show brings every single song from that LP and the rest of the time is filled with some other related tunes either by other Southern new wave bands or related acts from a different era. I hope you will enjoy the second installment of the Vinyl Junkyard.
Sweet Apple is a side band for John Petkovic of Cobra Verde, J Mascis of Dinosaur JR and Dave Sweetapple of Witch. It happened in a bitter moment when the trio of these rock’n’roll greats desperately needed a break not only from the music that they worked on in their original bands, but also a break from the situations in life that at the time seemed to choke them. Sometimes the best cure is to run away which a pack of friends, experience something new and return as a richer person. This is exactly what this pack did. A weaker person would cut his wrists, but these three people poored their hearts into a rocker that bursts with energy and desire for life. Casual atmosphere in the record creation allowed J to switch over to drums, totaling only three solos on the entire record. Still, there’s plenty of brilliant guitar work on the record courtesy of Tim Parnin of Cobra Verde and John on his purple Gretch (which he used in the songwriting process). Nothing is forced here, songs are charged with energy, crispy riffs are everywhere only to slow down on Dead Moon which stands out as a dark reminder that a man needs light to live, even if that light comes from a stage light show.
In four years, Eamon McGrath changed two cities – he moved from Edmonton Alberta to Toronto and produced over 20 “albums” that he recorded in his bedroom and distributed on his gigs around the town. Legend of McGrath slowly started to happen – people started to talk about his incredibly strong songwriting skills with influences anywhere from Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Warren Zevon to Darby Crash and Greg Ginn. The way out of his bedroom into the ears of thirsty rock’n’roll enthusiasts all over the world happened last year when he put out a compilation of his best work from the bedroom years on Canadian White Whale label. This is precisely what 13 Songs of Whiskey and Light is. The story reached The Little Lighthouse only in 2010, when he also published a new record Peace Maker. Although this is also a wonderful record, it falls a bit short from the compilation which we’re discussing here. Absolutely every song on it is a perfection. We will definitely keep an eye on this guy in the years to come.
Harlan T Bobo hails from Memphis and in the past several years, he established himself as the most consistent songwriter on the rock scene, with only his Memphis buddy Greg Cartwright to rival that crowning position. But, while Greg has a strong pop streak, Harlan T Bobo takes things more seriously it seems. I guess, what I’m trying to say here, it’s hard to imagine Harlan writing songs for anyone or anything else besides his albums. The approach is hundred percent personal and we can only be grateful to be in it for the ride. His first album recorded back in 2003 was a painful breakup story. Harlan T Bobo is now a married man and blissful intro Life is Sweet accounts to his new found peace in family life. First half of this short record (only 30 minutes), is mostly folk oriented, interrupted only with the perfectly twisted pop tune Hamster in a Cage, which indeed sounds written in the key of Greg Cartwright. But things get twisted later on with two uncompromising rockers back to back Bad Boyfriends and Energy. And then we have an epic Drunk which is by far the longest on the record and key that creates a perfect contrast with the disarmingly beautiful opening song. And then, at the very end, as if demonstrating once for all that Bobo is equally talented in multiple musical genres, the record officially ends with francophone chancone Mille Chatte. Yes, Bobo is definitely the strongest songwriter today.
Dirtiest record in 2010 is this one. It reminds us that one of the duties of rock’n’roll is to shock and embarrass. It sounds as an outtake from early 1970’s glam rock scene in New York – The Dolls with Wayne County on vocals, but it is 2010 and it is the San Francisco scene. Snotty lyrics paired with serious riffs and great melodies will make you want more. Strong rhythms will make it hard for you to sit down. My great hopes are that some of the Cleveland music promoters will bring this band to the city so we can check how it all sounds live, as it seems that this is the best setting for this motley crowd. Party on with the Apache!