Patrick Joseph - Antiques

It has been a long wet winter.  The living room windows remain streaked with moisture where rain has infiltrated the double paned glass.  Minerals deposits cling to dried drip lines to mark where droplets made their way between the panes. Looking inside out you get a frosted view of the world.

It has been cold on both sides of the casements. I lost my best friend just before the beginning of Spring after he suffered a long, painful and debilitating series of illnesses, We grew up together in Los Angeles.  He was the drummer in the first working band with which I played.  Although in the day he was great behind the kit, through the date of his death he was an even better person.

One week before the official end of winter I drove to LA for the funeral.  I hurriedly threw together a bag, hung my suit. and grabbed a handful of CD’s for the long road trip.  My emotions swirled and memories flickered through my head.  Moments and places that we had shared.

As I past Patterson, California in the rain I tore open the plastic wrap on Patrick Joseph’s CD “Antiques.”  I had no idea who he was.  It was just one of those Ripple submissions Racer sent to me.  A somber overture swelled the speakers of the Subaru with a precise military snare drum.  It swelled into a song Joseph named “Arsonist Blues.” Joseph practically whispered to me the best pop lyrical hook I had heard in months:

Burning down your bridges,

Burning down your house.

You’re killing yourself more than the law allows.

I turned the music up. I truly could not believe the next track “Don’t Believe It.”  It is a soft tune, but with enough John Lennon “I Am The Walrus” affectation and classical twists and turns to keep me brooding for about 25 miles of southbound I-5.

My demeanor brightened a little but then came “Untangled” - another pop tun that is a bit on the melancholy side with a hook of “and you came out and got me Ontario.”  I perversely thought it was an homage to the Canadian city. 

Joseph drags a song with “Public Diary.”  By that I mean the song, replete with mandolin, harmonica, honky tonk piano, trumpet, organ, guitar, bass and drums, is slowed down until you feel like teeth are being pulled in slow motion. It gives the entire composition a dark feel.  I zipped past semis a touch faster than the music.

The James Blunt in Joseph showed up on his song “Escape Artist.” I listened and I prefer Joseph to Blunt.  Here’s the hook that hooked me -

You’re always coming and going as you please, babe,

You never give me warning and you always got me on my knees, babe,

I’m always chasing after ghosts to get to you, baby blue,

You always leave me hanging and you wear me and tear me down with ease, babe.  

By the end of “Escape Artist” I’m approaching Kettleman City and getting anxious about making time to L.A. Take a break from the music and I recal other road trip from long ago - high school summer days . . . or is that daze? l  I adjust the seat and mirrors, turn up the radar and laser detector, and scan the horizon for bears. Miles down the road I switch back to the CD.

Joseph’s “Sugar and Lies” slowly swells into a great driving song. Its lyrics swirl with imagery -

And so it’s so much better in pretend.

Create amends to justify an end

You can’t always get what you intend

Don’t you think you’d know by now

Well it’s okay

Your face it says, your face it says it all

You wouldn’t understand this painted on your wall 

The beat pushes me all the way to Buttonwillow.

A strange little interlude called “Sun Through The Shade” follows and recedes until Joseph sings softly with a six string “Better Than It Was Before.” It is a mournful, quiet piece of tearful emotion with an odd assortment of accompanying folk instrumentation. As the last stanza sounds  I slowly merged toward the Grapevine.

When I passed the CHP weigh station at the intersection of I-5 and Highway 99 the final song on the album played - a short soft shoe called “Slippery Shadow.”  Here is Joseph vamping a tune with the time honored musical pattern of “Santa Baby.”  It is an add-on, a bit of fun at the end of an impressive brooding pop album effort.

Three days later, after the funeral, I got back in the car and drove I-5 north to the Bay Area.  I again popped “Antiques” in the player just to make sure that its sound was how I remembered it to be during my trip to L.A.  After all, coming down I had been in a rather dark mood. I hit the gas pedal and watched the needle on the speedometer approach 90 mph.  I blasted around a row of eighteen wheelers just about killing myself “more than the law allows.”

- Old School

Marc Robillard - Left London

There is magic in music.  In what other endeavor can you subject people who don’t love you to poetic, emotional and personal thoughts and get them to listen?  Without magic there is no music and without music there is no magic.

The magic starts when a songwriter, singer, instrumentalist scratches out a few songs about life on the back of an envelope.  The songs express an inner-vision from the writer’s experience that shaped the words written and the melody later employed.

Or, the magic may come when a musician strums a progression, plays a memorable lick, beats a compelling rhythm, or finds an intriguing tone or sound.  Some artists fit words to music.  Some  fit music to words. Some do both.

It is not, yet, necessarily “music.” Now, the artist may choose accompaniment - instruments, percussion, and harmonies. Today, technical magic is needed to make songs into music.  The songs must be produced - the tone of the instruments, the recording technique and sound processing all must be planned and executed.  The technical arts are applied.  The result may be mixed, re-mixed, mastered, remastered, scribed, formatted, pressed, compressed, expanded, sparkled, equalized, etc., before we, the public, ever hear the final product.  Music is not only built with many varieties of magic it can become magic itself.

Take, for example, singer, songwriter Marc Robillard and his new CD “Left London,”  scheduled for release on March 29, 2011. Robillard is a Canadian born, Los Angeles-based singer songwriter and this is his second album inspired from his time living in London.  The songs are all Robillard.  The technical magic came from Andrew Bojanic and Liz Hooper of The Wizardz of Oz.   These “wizards” have also worked with Vanessa Hudgens, Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears and Krystal Meyers. Here, they add a “pop sheen” to Robillard, an alternative rock balladeer in the vein of David Gray. The results are phenomenal. 

The words and feelings in the music are introspective.  Just the names of the songs are illustrative - “So Much More,” “Crazy,” ”Fall Away,” “Bleed,” “The Worst Day Of My Life,” “Conclude,” “Okay,” “EverStop,” “Without You,” “Ghost,” “Unfold,” “Love Song,” “Contagious.”  Based solely on the titles, without production, most of this stuff would be considered dark poetry.  (We have got to say Marc your London experience must have been one hellish event!)  No doubt Robillard has a great voice. (You probably heard part of “So Much More” on a recent Sun Chips TV commercial.) Yet, when the wizards get a hold of it, orchestrate it, mix it, produce it, and give it a pop sheen, it becomes accessible alternative rock music and it is transformational.  There is emotion and there is substance to the words and to the music.  

Bojanic and Hooper deserve credit as great magicians.  They apply their craft in a way that makes Robillard’s lyrical songs music.  There is magic in this music and the music itself is magical.  Listen and, if you play your cards right, I think you can even hear the wizards pull a rabbit out of a hat.

- Old School


Buy here mp3: Left London

A Sunday Conversation with Alejandra O'Leary

When I was a kid, growing up in a house with Cat Stevens, Neil Diamond, and Simon and Garfunkel, the first time I ever heard Kiss's "Detroit Rock City," it was a moment of musical epiphany. It was just so vicious, aggressive and mean. It changed the way I listened to music. I've had a few minor epiphany's since then, when you come across a band that just brings something new and revolutionary to your ears.

What have been your musical epiphany moments?

I remember the first time I heard the Beatles "From Me To You" on a falling apart hissy cassette in my Dad's car. When they hit that first high falsetto harmony -- "If there's anything I can do...." I felt like I was going 100 miles an hour down a steep fast scary thrilling roller coaster drop. I had never heard men -- or anybody -- sing like that -- and make such a haunting and unreal sound. There is so much echo and wobbliness on those early Beatles records, which contributes to the strangeness of it all. But the songs are so good, so satisfying and so playful and daring.

Tom Petty once said something about how the early Beatles sounded like aliens singing from another planet. I agree with that statement completely. Their sound is so totally unique, experimental, totally hypnotic. Bob Dylan was on board from the beginning, too, even though in the early 1960s the Beatles were being dismissed as teenybop stuff.

I also remember the first time I really listened closely to certain ABBA songs -- "Lay All Your Love on Me," "Knowing Me Knowing You", "One of Us," "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)" and some others -- and being totally entranced by the high-voltage singing and amazing songwriting and production on those tracks.


Talk to us about the song-writing process for you. What comes first, the idea? A riff? The lyrics? How does it all fall into place?

A musical idea gets into of me first, but only the most basic seed, like the melody for the chorus of my new song "When Will They Learn?". I woke up singing that tune and stumbled over to the piano before I'd even had any coffee and just started banging it out. I must have looked like a crazy person with my hair all tangled, dried spit on my chin, in my little shorts.  After that first moment, music and lyrics have to come together.  They just have to sound good together, you know?

 Where do you look for continuing inspiration? New ideas, new motivation?

There is almost too much inspiration out there! I think that continuing to discover new artists, or "new old artists"  and learning how many different approaches there are to making music helps a lot. I was recently inspired by watching a movie about the history of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and how, for them, from the time they were all teenagers, music was the only thing they wanted to pursue. It wasn't even like a choice for them, especially for Petty himself.

I feel lucky to be always re-discovering awesome stuff in old bands. The Rolling Stones, for example -- their catalog goes so deep, they do so many different things, and most of the time they still rev me up and make me want to smash things or tackle someone in lust. How can a band do that? I'm still trying to figure it out.


Genre's are so misleading and such a way to pigeonhole bands. Without resorting to labels, how would you describe your music?

Songwriter pop, I suppose. Rock n' roll. Music to dance with someone you have a crush on to.


 
What is you musical intention? What are you trying to express or get your audience to feel?

I think beauty and joy are the two things I'm always going for. Deep joy can come out of a sad song, too.

In songwriting, how do you bring the song together? What do you look for in terms of complexity? Simplicity? Time changes?



I don't have a standard. I think the song needs to stick, to be memorable, and that's really the number one criteria. Simple is a great place to start.



The business of music is a brutal place. Changes in technology have made it easier than ever for bands to get their music out, but harder than ever to make a living? What are your plans to move the band forward? How do you stay motivated in this brutal business?

Staying focused on content - on music -- really helps you to keep moving ahead and not get lost in the jungle. Having good concert experiences and connecting with new audiences and super smart music fans  is always encouraging.



 Come on, share with us a couple of your great, Spinal Tap, rock and roll moments?

 I get all kinds of marriage proposals at shows and stuff, but I always turn them down. I guess if I were really in Spinal Tap I would have accepted at least one by now, and made my fan-husband the new drummer.



What makes a great song?

A new angle on an old idea. Conviction. The way instruments contrast with and blend with each other.



Tell us about the first song you ever wrote?

I was 13 or 14. I think it was heavily influence by Oasis and featured lots of Liam Gallagher-like rhymes and delivery "Shiiiiiiiine all the tiiiiime" and lines like that. Oasis was a hard first influence to get away from! Shortly after that one, I wrote "I Don't Want to Go to Your Party," which became a hit for my all-girl college band, The Tourettes.

What piece of your music are particularly proud of?

I like "You Gotta Love Me Sometimes" from my album Nothing Out Loud. I like the lyrics and the production a lot.



Who today, writes great songs? Why?

I have always love Morrissey's songwriting. I thought his last album, "Years of Refusal" was so enthralling and rocked so hard. His lyrics and sometimes even his melodies are so funny and hit you so deep at the same time. And of course, he is an incredible performer of his own songs. 

Come to think of it, I think with "You Gotta Love Me Sometimes" I was going for a very Morrissey song title. Morrissey and the Smiths always had all those great, full-sentence titles: "The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get," "We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful," "Shoplifters of the World Unite" etc.


Vinyl, CD, or digital? What's your format of choice?

Vinyl is the best! I grew up with a record player in my room and all of my Dad's old Beatles and Dylan and Richie Havens records. I think when I was about 12 I tried to play some Beatles record backwards to see if I could hear anything about Paul Is Dead. I love the way records sound, even the pops and scratches excite me. You feel like the musicians are in the room or something. And of course you can lose yourself in the album art. Since moving to Michigan with finite room in the car, I'm now limited to CDs and computers. Not as good.


We, at the Ripple Effect, are constantly looking for new music. When we come to your town, what's the best record store to lose ourselves in?

Wazoo Records in Ann Arbor is the place to go.


Any final comments or thoughts you'd like to share with our readers, the waveriders?

Thanks for listening, and keep rocking all the time. And here's a party tip from Andrew W.K. that I always keep trying to come back to: Be Nicer than Normal.

A Sunday Conversation with PJ Bond

One listen.  That's all it took to infect me with the alt-grungy singer songwriter treat that was PJ Bond's last album, You Didn't Know I was Alphabetical. Riding the crest of some amazing singer-songwriters that we've reviewed here at the Ripple recently like Matt Pond and Cory Case, PJ Bond crafted an album that literally defined the singer/songwriter genre.  At times sassy and poppy, at others melancholic and sparse, You Didn't Know I was Alphabetical never failed to captivate.

When I was a kid, growing up in a house with Cat Stevens, Neil Diamond, and Simon and Garfunkel, the first time I ever heard Kiss's "Detroit Rock City," it was a moment of musical epiphany. It was just so vicious, aggressive and mean. It changed the way I listened to music. I've had a few minor epiphany's since then, when you come across a band that just brings something new and revolutionary to your ears.


What have been your musical epiphany moments?

Beautiful thoughts. Ok, this is a good one. As a young kid Id lay face down in my bedroom drawing comic book characters stopping only to flip cassettes in my little red boombox, soaking in the Beach Boys, Bangels and Bon Jovi. By fifth grade I was fully steeped in Guns n Roses and Metallica but it wasn't until I finally understood Nirvana that I felt musically at home. Music took on a new meaning, moving from obsession to an extension of who I was and how I was made up. Years of absurd amounts of Nirvana led to a love for Smashing Pumpkins, Blind Melon and Janes Addiction. Throughout it all though I couldn't shake this one tape I'd picked up in eighth grade. A local band called the Autopilots who eventually became a band called Penfold. These guys had a sound that seemed to resonate even more deeply than the angst of nirvana. I'd found something darker and sadder but with more hope. This made sense to me.

Penfold gave way to Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, and a slew of what we called "emo" bands and I finally felt found. So, Nirvana when I was 13, Sunny Day and Penfold when I was 16 and eventually Elliott Smith a bit after I finished college. These three movements, along with realizing the genius that is my brother, well a path showed shape and music bloomed and still does.


Talk to us about the song-writing process for you. What comes first, the idea? A riff? The lyrics? How does it all fall into place?

Lately it's been a lot of sitting with a few chords and feeling through them until they start to make sense. A melody slowly shapes in my head and words start to form around those melodies and rhythms. I then hone, reshape, edit, all the while thinking about what the song wants to be about. I sift through the dusty corners of my brain and the scrawlings in journals. I then attempt to write all the lyrics in one sitting and then play it a few times. The next few days find me singing without the aid of the notes and this helps me filter through what works and what doesn't. Hopefully in the end it's something good.

Where do you look for continuing inspiration? New ideas, new motivation?

I don't really need to look when I'm walking around or just living. So many people and things interest me and make me want to write. The hard part is when I'm sitting with a guitar and notebook and trying to figure out how I can possibly create songs anywhere as good as previous ones because it's so easy to forget those ones were hard at first too. So I pull from stories in my life or in the ones of people I love or have met during my travels. Being excited or inspired is not hard. Capturing those feelings, well that's a different story altogether.



Genre's are so misleading and such a way to pigeonhole bands. Without resorting to labels, how would you describe your music?

This is always a fun question, especially when asked by strangers in a truck stop or by someones parents. Also, I've heard everything from folk punk to alt country to emo. Everyone listens with filtered ears and has their own vocabulary so I can't blame them but it's always interesting. Anyway, I sometimes like to describe my music as folk with teeth. it's personal and thoughtful and follows a line, but has some aggressive aspects, darker tones and an ability to be biting. ultimately though, people will hear what they want to hear.


What is you musical intention? What are you trying to express or get your audience to feel?

My musical intention is to create love and capture emotion. It's a pretty simple concept that I think a lot of people miss, at least in the true senses of the words. I want people to feel. it's that simple. I want people to care and experience emotion, to look deeply into their hearts and heads and it the hearts and heads of others. find the tough stuff and work on it. Life will become as beautiful as it already is, but in our eyes as well.


In songwriting, how do you bring the song together? What do you look for in terms of complexity? Simplicity? Time changes?

After I get the basic skeleton together, i will often play the song as many times as I can over the course of a few weeks, and usually it becomes pretty obvious how the song needs to flow. Sometimes I'll change huge sections, other times it'll stay pretty close to the original version. As far as complexity vs. simplicity, I think that depends a great deal on where I am in my life. In the past I preferred complex songs and in the last year or so have been leaning much more towards simple, traditional structures. However, my newest songs are a mix of both, so I guess I just work with what feels right at the time.

The business of music is a brutal place. Changes in technology have made it easier than ever for bands to get their music out, but harder than ever to make a living? What are your plans to move the band forward? How do you stay motivated in this brutal business?

It's probably a bit dangerous, but I pretty much don't consider any of that stuff. I just do what feels right. my hope is to make smart decisions based on being good to the people I love while working really hard. I don't want success based on screwing people over so I'd rather have none than play those games. And some stuff in this business just doesn't make any sense to me. So I try to work in the areas that seem positive and ignore or change the ones that seem negative. If you stick to those paths I think staying motivated is mostly pretty easy. And when it's tough, well, I go have a beer with my brothers and friends. They always help me see the light.


Come on, share with us a couple of your great, Spinal Tap, rock and roll moments?

Spinal tap moments? Man, I don't have any of those. Any time I've played Cleveland it's been a house or someplace small, so I never had any trouble finding the stage or floor or whatever. I do have a lot of "R" rated stories that will hopefully be making their way into the book I'm writing, but I'm sure I can think of something for here. I think a better story to tell is one that is less crazy or weird and more just positive. 24 hours before I was supposed to fly out for my first UK tour I got an email from the artist there who was to tour with and drive me. He decided that for certain reasons he did not want to do the tour anymore and pulled out. Here I was, with a flight and shows booked and now no local support/draw, no ride and no tour mate. After some thinking and talking to friends and family I decided to go anyway. So off I flew to the UK with little but hope to get me by. In the end I played every show we had booked, picked up 3 more shows while over there, made amazing friends and had a blast, all while riding trains and buses and bumming rides. I traveled the UK with a backpack and a guitar and even when it sucked I loved every ridiculous moment of it.


What makes a great song?

Wow. I think a great song is one that makes you feel something, anything, intensely. if it burns in some way, it's great.


Tell us about the first song you ever wrote?

I'm not exactly sure which you would consider my first real song. I wrote a ton of lyrics in middle school and I remember a really particularly bad one called "Turtles in the tTub," that was an attempt to write early Nirvana style lyrics but with zero success. The first full song I remember finishing was with my high school alt-rock band. the tune was called "Grandpa," and was a simple four chord rock/punk song in the verse but had a modulated/chromatic type chorus that probably came from Nirvana as well. The lyrics were completely stupid and I forget most of them, though I do remember the nonsensical chorus, "What's it like in England now? I want to go but I don't know how." Rough style.


What piece of your music are particularly proud of?

I have a song that has yet to be recorded but is on the "pink couch sessions" on ifyoumakeit.com. The song is about my brother and about wanting to be there for someone you love but feeling like you're unable to. I think it's a well written tune and it's stacked with hope and emotion. I'm proud to have written it and to have loved ones in my life that inspire me so much.


Who today, writes great songs? Why?

That's easy, my brother Brian and his band Communipaw. The songs are absolutely beautiful, powerful, incredibly smart, evocative, dark and warm all at the same time. He is my current favorite songwriter and I'm sure will be for some time. Also doing amazing things is Brian Carley of the Waltz. BC is responsible for me hearing amazing music from the time of my youth and has not stopped producing great stuff.


Vinyl, CD, or digital? What's your format of choice?

Currently I am a digital guy, purely because I live out of my car. someday, if I can afford a house of my own, I can't wait to build a huge vinyl collection. I have some choice pieces now to start with, but it's definitely a big goal of mine to someday have the center part of my house be around a record player.


We, at the Ripple Effect, are constantly looking for new music. When we come to your town, what's the best record store to lose ourselves in? 


Since I don't have a town I'd send you to either Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton, NJ or Vintage Vinyl in Fords, NJ. Two amazing stores that keep our record shelves stocked and my friends digging through for gems. have fun, but please don't take all the good stuff.

Any final comments or thoughts you'd like to share with our readers, the waveriders?

I hugely appreciate the support and kindness. please know that while I feel incredibly lucky to be traveling around playing songs and having fun, that it is not because I make loads of money. I am able to do what I do both because I have amazing friends and because I got rid of as much of the bullshit in my life as I could. Anyone can reduce what they have and make their lives better. Give up, let go, open up and have fun. Feel love. Take care of each other. I'll see you out there

Kevin Beadles - You Can't Argue With Water

I receive about two dozen new or pre-release CD’s and a dozen new music downloads every couple weeks.  In addition, I spend three or four hours a week searching out new music.  My deal is that I only write about what I truly like.

I listen to all new releases at least twice. Then, I weed out works that I think are simply dreadful. Unfortunately, that accounts for 50% of what I hear.  Out of the remaining 50% I make a second cull that eliminates songwriters that can’t sing but who insist on doing so; musicians who can’t write lyrics but write their own songs anyway; cocktail lounge singers and acts; and amateur attempts to home record by musicians who cannot competently produce a recording or play their instruments. I never eliminate a work based on musical style or genre.  The music could be jazz, blues, gospel, rock, alternative, indie, folk, country, Americana, roots, reggae, hip hop, metal,  rap even Cajun. The type of music is irrelevant to my culling process.  If music is good it is good regardless of style. I also do not look at the record label until I have decided that the music is worthy of a written review.

The second cull usually leaves me with about ten to fifteen CD’s and downloads that I then listen to a third time. This time I look for two things - music that I believe has hit potential and artists whose musicianship and/or recordings make them potential stars worthy of a larger audience. If the music does not have one or both of these elements it is also placed on the “don’t review” heap. Thus, out of my mountain of new music only two or three releases actually make it to my “must review” pile.

One that made the cut is Kevin Beadles’ “You Can't Argue With Water.”  It is new yet very familiar - a mixed bag of pop, alternative and modern rock, country and folk.  The musicianship is competent, but, the album is not about the musicianship. Like the song’s musical scores, the music just fits nicely.  The vocals are good but not exceptional.  It is the songs that make the album worthy of review. They are well-crafted even if they occasionally sound like they are built on the shoulders of musical legends. This album is a case of the whole exceeding the sum of its parts.

The tracks “Shine,” “High,” and “Where We Came From” are crossover anthems that could  grab airplay on any one of the hundreds of modern pop rock radio stations . “A Love Sublime” contains Dave Clark Five background vocals that make this modern love song connect with the 1960’s. When Beadles sings “Mrs. Jones Cadillac” you can’t help but think of tongue-in-cheek Johnny Cash songs (”My Name Is Sue,” “Cadillac One Piece At A Time”) but, played with the feel of Michael Martin Murphy singing “Wildfire,” even though the lyrics make this a serious tune. The crooned “Sharkskin” rocks somewhere between Timbuk3’s “The Future’s So Bright (I’ve Got To Wear Shades)” and  Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose,” yet  is presented as if it were a Harry Connick, Jr. tune.  “A Prisoner In Chains” sounds awfully similar to the 1991 song “Walk On The Ocean” by Toad The Wet Sprocket. Two melancholy songs, “Caroline” and “Happiness Is Small,” are modern versions of street corner “doo-wop” (without the “wop”) and the final track, “Indian Summer,” is a modern country/pop crossover love song reminiscent of any of a dozen Carpenters tunes.

I finally got around to looking at the liner notes on the CD cover and, low and behold, The Ripple Effect’s own Racer and Pope John are thanked by Beadles.  It appears that Ripple Music in association with Tactile Records released the album.  Good job gentlemen.

- Old School

Buy here: Kevin Beadles