AMANDA (MANDY) BRIX
As is true of the UARB from a few years back, Hollis Brown, Amanda Jones is a band, not a woman, though the lead singer is named Amanda Brix. Also, like Crystal Mansion, the UARB from last time, the musicians have some experience and are not just starting out.
According to the promotional material by Bomp! Records for the band’s EP, Amanda Jones, Amanda Jones was born in March 1995 as a collaboration of Amanda (Mandy) Brix and Jeff Drake, previously in the punk rock band the Joneses. The combination of her first name and his former band name clearly brought about the band name Amanda Jones, but they were almost certainly mindful of the Rolling Stones connection also: Their sound has the same kind of playful spirit as early mid-period Stones albums like Between the Buttons (released in January 1967); besides “Miss Amanda Jones” and “Ruby Tuesday”, the album also includes the song “Let’s Spend the Night Together” that got the band into so much trouble with The Ed Sullivan Show – Mick Jagger sung the title lyric as “let’s spend some time together” as Ed Sullivan insisted, though he and bassist Bill Wyman were rolling their eyes at the time. A few months back, I discussed the controversial lyrics in their first big hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”; the Rolling Stones were able to sing that number on The Ed Sullivan Show with no censorship.
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Amanda Brix had been in an all-female band called the Lame Flames that was active in the Los Angeles area in the 1980’s. They are described variously on the Internet as a rap trio and a heavy metal act (with Amanda Brix called a “sex goddess”). Though the band has a Facebook page – www.facebook.com/The-Lame-Flames-137156196321030/ – they apparently did not release any records, and I am not sure that there are any YouTube videos out there either. There are oodles of photos and posters on the Facebook site and elsewhere on the Internet though.
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Amanda Brix and Jeff Drake rounded out Amanda Jones by adding the rhythm section from the early LA punk rock band called the Skulls – their first release, “Victims” was on only the third single from What Records? – Keith Michael on bass (who had been a good friend of Jeff Drake from Huntington Beach) and Sean Antillon on drums and percussion.
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Before Amanda Jones was formed, Amanda Brix and fellow Lame Flame Iris Berry started a band called Pink Sabbath. A website called www.theeyeshadows.com says that they are not a Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath cover band; that might be true of another band called Pink Sabbath that is still active. Other bandmembers were James McCrone (guitar), Dawn Laureen (bass), and Eric Blitz (drums). They were one of the performers at the Hollygrove Orphanage Benefit at the Roxy, where they shared the stage with Henry Rollins and with River Phoenix (in his last acoustic performance before his untimely death).
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Mandy Brix of Amanda Jones shows up in a lot of Internet searches because in 1988, she married bass guitarist Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses. She is now happily married to a recording industry executive named Steven Toland; Jeff Drake says that Mandy is “[j]ust being a very glamorous housewife . . . with a couple of kids.”
(December 2015)
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
December 2015 – 1990’s pop/punk band AMANDA JONES; Story of the Month on the early American singles by the Beatles; also, Rochelle Harper, Lisa Loeb, 3 Doors Down, Level with the Ground, Chris Stamey with Yo La Tengo, Meri Wilson, Bobby Brown, the Cruzados / the Plugz, Terence Trent d’Arby, An Emotional Fish, Bruce Hornsby and the Range, Hunters & Collectors, Looters, Shakespear’s Sister, Robert Tepper, Y Kant Tori Read / Tori Amos, Ugly Kid Joe, Paul Young, the Rolling Stones, Mandy Brix, the Joneses.
(Year 7 Review)
