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.

In this episode, we heard one song from the new album by Chuck Prophet where he covers Waylons Jennings’ Dreaming My Dreams song by song. It’s a very interesting project in which Prophet not only celebrates Waylon’s songwriting talent, but also twists musical genres and brings out surprising arrangements in each and every song. We quickly flip through the Manchild 3, graphic novel by Brian Walsby and hear songs by his band Double Negative and from the Melvins CD that comes free with Brian’s new book. We also have a brand new album out of Cleveland area, Introducing… by Living Stereo. Today’s show is dedicated to Jim Jones, Cleveland musician who was responsible for the mid-eighties sound of Pere Ubu. Jones died on February 25 in his home after a cardiac failure.
The new Little Lighthouse (Flashlite) announces a brand new cd for Scott Reynolds, former vocalist of All. This time Scott is accompanied with members of Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips in a new band called The Steaming Beast. We also have a brand new recording from our Utah favorites, The Rubes. Another cool CD for this week is a gorgeous compilation record of Rijeka rock scene, one of the most consistent and most productive rock scenes in 80s Yugoslavia. In this episode, we sample some obvious and some not so obvious choices from that CD.
Today’s Flashlite edition of The Little Lighthouse brings several new albums: brand new Fleshtones rocking like they never did before, new North Mississippi Allstars and new Paul Kelly’s album. Paul will play live in Cleveland on March 1st at the House of Blues, so it’s a great opportunity for me to finally see a guy who wrote some really important albums when I was a teen. We also present a brand new demo of the My Buddy Moose member V(atroslav)! Also, checkout a beautiful Eckman, Race and Brokaw song with some important Baton Rouge toponyms!
The second Flashlite brings you a brand new band from Australia, Mona Lisa Overdrive, new songs by Mad Dukes, James Luther Dickinson and Willy DeVille. Also, checkout our “lecture series” on Blackburn and Snow. Today’s show is dedicated to John Stewart who passed away in January.