UNDER APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH FOR JUNE 2017: THE LOONS
The Under Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for June 2017 is THE LOONS, a self-described “psychotic beat music” band founded by Mike Stax – editor of Ugly Things magazine and a former member of past UARB the Crawdaddys. They have been around more than 20 years – a lot longer than I had thought – and arose from the ashes of two other San Diego bands that Mike Stax helped start, the Tell-Tale Hearts and the Hoods. I anticipate naming the Tell-Tale Hearts as a UARB within the next couple of posts; that would give me an Under Appreciated “hat trick”.
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Mike Stax founded Ugly Things magazine in 1982 when he was just 21 years old in order to cover, as he put it, “Wild Sounds from Past Dimensions”. Whereas “fanzines” tended to be thin mimeographed or cheaply printed affairs, Ugly Things is published more or less annually as a slick package with high production values that looks a lot more like a book than a magazine. As an example, Ugly Things #34 that includes my article on Milan has 184 pages.
From Wikipedia: “The Lama Workshop editor Patrick Lundborg has stated about [Ugly Things] and editor Mike Stax: ‘The 1980s (music) zines have retired into the great recycling container in the sky (it’s down to UT, Shindig!, and Misty Lane now). Mike Stax has managed not only to keep it alive, but expand his trip in various directions, and in the process become one of the very best – perhaps THE very best – 1960s-oriented writer out there.’”
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AARP The Magazine had a neat article in their June/July 2016 issue recently about a virtually unknown garage rock band called the Sloths that were putting together an album 50 years after the 1965 release of their crude single “Makin’ Love”. The article was about as long as a companion piece in the same issue about the Rolling Stones. (I believe that this is the article where Mick Jagger expressed his wonderment about how it must feel for most people who live in a world where the Stones have always been there).
AARP The Magazine has gotten to be a great musical resource in recent years; when Bob Dylan released his first album of standards a few years back, Shadows in the Night (2015), the only interview he granted was with this magazine. The reporter had previously worked at Rolling Stone magazine. From Wikipedia: “The album has received universal acclaim from critics for its unexpected and strong song selection and for the strength of Dylan and his band’s performance and arrangements. The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, making Dylan the oldest male solo artist to chart at number one in the UK.”
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While the other members of the Sloths moved on after the band broke up, Mike Rummans stuck with it. As reported in the AARP The Magazine article: “His musical résumé is a kind of pocket history of American pop. There he is on bass in the bubblegummy Yellow Payges [I just ordered an album, finally, by this band], the glam-tastic Hollywood Stars, the neo-rockabilly Kingbees. His Beatle bangs blossomed into a magnificent ’70s shag, then retreated as the ’80s arrived. Often, his bands flirted with success — the Stars were hyped as the West Coast’s New York Dolls, and the Kingbees charted two singles.”
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The AARP The Magazine article mentions Mike Stax a couple of times: “Unbeknownst to any Sloths, ‘Makin’ Love’ had become an object of fascination after it landed on an influential LP compilation [Back from the Grave, Volume 4] in the early 1980s. ‘The Sloths were something special,’ says Mike Stax, a San Diego musician and garage-rock superfan who publishes the rock zine Ugly Things. ‘“Makin’ Love” was the standout track on that album. So primal, so elemental. It had that caveman primitivism about it.’”
The same “unbeknownst” thing happened with Milan the Leather Boy. After I wrote up my Wikipedia article on him, I was contacted by his sister Dara Rodell Gould, who along with her husband Ricky Gould had been trying to interest people in Milan’s music for years. They had no idea that Milan had attained a cult status in the garage-rock community, or probably that there was even such a thing as the garage-rock community.
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After interviewing the bandmembers and writing them up for Ugly Things, a few years later the Sloths started making noises about “putting the band back together”, and Mike Stax gave them a shot by hiring them as the opening act for a concert by the Loons. As reported in AARP The Magazine: “They sounded rough, but kids turned out in droves to see a real-live 1965 band in the flesh. Tommy [McLaughlin] recalls the exuberant reaction at one early show in East L.A.: ‘We were like the Stones up there for them. I was like, We gotta do this.’”
In 2015, the Sloths put out their first album, Back from the Grave, named after the garage-rock compilation album, Back from the Grave, Volume 4 that brought the band back from obscurity, and with similar album art.
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Besides the Loons, and according to Discogs, Mike Stax (real name: Michael Dixson) has been in several other rock bands over the years: past UARB the Crawdaddys, future UARB the Tell-Tale Hearts, the Hoods, Evil Eyes, and the Barons. These bands were active in the 1990’s except for the first two.
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Mike Stax’s wife Anja Stax, who has been with the Loons for their last three albums, has also recorded under several other names – Anja Diabolik, Anja Dixson, and Anja Bungert. Her first band was evidently Thee Cherylinas, an all-female 1960’s-style Beat band from Germany. She has also played with the Diaboliks and, more recently, the Rosalyns.
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Mike Stax (vocals) evidently first formed the Loons with Eric Bacher (guitar, organ) – who was lead guitarist for the Tell-Tale Hearts from 1983 to 1986 – and John Chilson (drums) of the Hoods, plus Andy Rasmussen (bass guitar); or at least, that is the earliest line-up that I have been able to find on-line. These four men made five 7-inch releases in the late 1990’s, all on different labels: “Paradise” b/w “I Drain the Dregs” on Time Bomb Recordings, and “Unwind” b/w “Slow Knife” on 360 Twist! Records, both in late 1996; “In the Past” and “Face out of Phase” b/w “Knock Knock” on Thermionic Records, and “16 Story Reflection” b/w “Future Tense” on Screaming Apple Records, both in 1997; and “Stumble and Fall” b/w “Strange” in November 1998 on Max Picou Records.
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The Loons then lined up an album deal with Get Hip Records called Love’s Dead Leaves that came out in 1999, with Gary Strickland as the new bass guitarist. Just 3 of the 11 songs released in the 5 earlier singles are on the album: “Paradise”, “Face out of Phase”, and “16 Story Reflection”. The songs are all originals, though one song, “Thursday’s Child” has the same name as a David Bowie song (“Thursday’s Child”), and two others, “Silver Threads” and “Paint it Gold” are similar in name to well-known 1960’s hit songs (“Silver Threads and Golden Needles” and "Paint it Black"). I have the album on order, but it hasn’t arrived as yet.
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Mike Stax went in-house but with new musicians for the band’s second album, Paraphernalia (2004) on Ugly Things Records. I haven’t found this album yet, but I am still hunting. Anja Stax is credited for the album design and is also the bass guitarist for the Loons on the album, but under the name Anja Diabolik. Other bandmembers are Mark Schroeder and Chris Marsteller, both on guitar, and Iain Andrew on drums.
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The album that I have, Inside Out Your Mind (2015) I mistakenly thought of as their first album, but the band had been around two decades at this point. It wasn’t even the Loons’ first album on Bomp! Records; that was Red Dissolving Rays of Light five years earlier (also on order). After writing this post, I came across an interview with Suzy Shaw who said that they revived Bomp! Records specifically for the Loons; Mike Stax had always wanted to have an album on that label. The band’s new drummer on both of these albums was Mike Kamoo, who had been the drummer for the Shambles; while the line-up of the Loons was otherwise the same as on Paraphernalia. Bass guitar and album design are by Anja Dixson on Red Dissolving Rays Of Light, while the name Anja Stax is shown for both on Inside Out Your Mind. The only other change between the two Bomp! albums is that Chris Marsteller is also shown as playing keyboards on Inside Out Your Mind. The Loons’ original drummer, John Chilson had also previously played with the Shambles.
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An overview of the Loons was published in the San Diego Reader in 2015 upon the release of Inside Out Your Mind; eight other articles about the band had been published previously by this alternative weekly. The article lists the “genre” for the Loons as noise/experimental and punk and describes the “full scope of their sound” as “Beatlesque vibes reincarnated in the form of post-punk fervency”. Influences are listed in the article as the Pretty Things, the Seeds, the Yardbirds, the Monks, the 13th Floor Elevators, MC5, the Misunderstood, and the Dutch band the Outsiders.
Bass guitarist and vocalist Anja Diabolik is quoted as saying about the Loons: “We play psychotic beat music, tapping into the most exciting elements of mid-to-late ’60s rock and roll and channel it into new, intense, original songs of our own. We find it a lot more interesting than opting to be a mere ’60s garage-band jukebox.”
That “jukebox” orientation can be a problem with some of the 1960’s revival bands that I have heard. Covering obscure garage-rock and psychedelic-rock songs taken, for example, from the Highs in the Mid-Sixties Series and later albums in the Pebbles Series is fine for people who are not familiar with them; but for people like me who already know all of those songs, I am often reminded about how much fresher the original versions were.
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All or nearly all of the songs by the Loons are written by the bandmembers, with Mike Stax and Eric Bacher shown as the songwriters on most of their early material, and all bandmembers or the band as a whole credited more recently. Mike Stax’s encyclopedic knowledge of garage rock, psychedelic rock, raw R&B, freakbeat, Nederbeat, and the many other varied forms of 1960’s rock music provides a solid foundation for the band’s host of moods on their songs. Refreshingly, all of the bandmembers in the Loons are professional musicians, not youngsters who are still finding their way (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Rather than just staying within the well-trod garage-rock path that was laid out a half-century ago, the Loons take their music in unexpected directions and slip in 1960’s-style flourishes and riffs throughout their songs. Inside Out Your Mind was a thoroughgoing treat to these ears from beginning to end from the first spin, and I expect without even hearing them that their other albums will be the same way. As with most of my favorite albums, all of the music sounds great, and my attempts to pick out favorite tracks often approaches the full roster of songs.
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The straight garage rock thrust of the opening track on Inside Out Your Mind, “Siren City” leads into the psychedelic delicacy that is “Moon and Tide”, one of my favorite songs on the album. The title song, “Inside Out Your Mind” has such an authentic 1960’s sound that it is hard to believe it is newly written. Just when you think the Loons might have run out of tricks, the Side 1 closer “Silence” serves up a psychedelic mood that is quite a bit different from “Moon and Tide”; the song ends with a lovely, understated instrumental passage that is so rare these days, when nearly all bands keep the vocals going pretty much nonstop.
Side 2 of the Loons’ album Inside Out Your Mind continues the kaleidoscope with the angsty “My Desolation” and the more wistful “I Don’t Live There Anymore”. The rocking “Transparent Eyes” is another treasure, with the recurring “nothin’” call recalling one of my favorite songs by the Canadian garage-rock band the Ugly Ducklings, the kiss-off masterpiece “Nothin’”: “Baby . . . you know what I need? / Nothin’ / I need nothin’”. This is 1960’s revival music at its most fulfilling. I look forward to working my way through their other albums.
(June 2017)
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Items: The Loons
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Anyway, here is what and who I talked about last year:
June 2017 – 1990’s-2010’s Sixties revival band THE LOONS; Story of the Month on “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”; also, Green Day, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Karen O, Bomp! Records, the Black Keys, the Sloths.
(Year 8 Review)
