THE CRAWDADDYS
The proto-punk side of the Velvet Underground is well known, but their music was experimental throughout and also ran the gamut from garage rock (“I’m Waiting for the Man“) to ballads (“Stephanie Says”) to old-fashioned pop-rock (“There She Goes Again”, which was covered by R.E.M. – I learned about the song from the version of “There She Goes Again” recorded by the Crawdaddys).
(December 2013)
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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”.
(July 2017)
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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.
(June 2017)
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So far, I have included two Under Appreciated Rock Bands with Mike Stax in the line-up: the Crawdaddys a few years back, and the Loons in my last post. The Tell-Tale Hearts, named after one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous stories, is the third and came along between the Crawdaddys and the Loons.
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Another bandmember in the Tell-Tale Hearts, Ray Brandes is also an author. His book on the San Diego underground rock scene, Getting Nowhere Fast came out in December 2015. I had previously borrowed heavily from his history of past UARB the Crawdaddys that I found online a few years ago. The blurb in Amazon says: “1976-1986 was a period of time in which urban tribes staked out and ferociously defended their territories; a time when San Diego began to establish for itself an identity as more than just a Navy town with a great zoo. Getting Nowhere Fast, written by Ray Brandes of the Tell-Tale Hearts, looks at the origins of this period of ‘new’ music in San Diego, and provides an insider’s look at a handful of bands who never quite hit the big time, but who developed cult followings around the world. The histories of the Zeros, the Penetrators, the Unknowns, the Crawdaddys, the Tell-Tale Hearts, and several more groups are presented here for the first time in print.” Remarkably, three of the five bands on this list – the Unknowns, the Crawdaddys, and the Tell-Tale Hearts – are among the UARB’s.
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Although Mike Stax moved to California from England specifically to join the Crawdaddys, their musical vision could be rather doctrinaire and was often at odds with the strains of music that he was trying to bring into the band’s recordings. On his 21st birthday, as I related previously, Mike Stax quit the Crawdaddys on the spot after having his birthday present, a valuable garage rock record, thrown at him from across the room by another bandmember who hated garage rock. While commiserating about the state of the San Diego music scene with several friends who had been in a short-lived though well regarded band called the Mystery Machine, the Tell-Tale Hearts were born in the summer of 1983.
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The Mystery Machine was formed in 1982 by veterans of several other like-minded bands like the Hedgehogs, the Crawdaddys, and Manual Scan. Bandmembers included Ray Brandes (vocals), Carl Rusk (acoustic and electric guitar), Mark Zadarnowski (bass guitar), Bill Calhoun (keyboards, saxophone), and David Klowden (drums). The band stayed together only about one month, but that was long enough to create one of my long-time favorites called “She’s Not Mine” that was included on three different Bomp! Records/Voxx Records compilation albums: Battle of the Garages, Part 2, The Roots of Power Pop, and Destination: Bomp!.
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In April 1986, Eric Bacher left the Tell-Tale Hearts and was replaced by another ex-Crawdaddy, Peter Miesner. After 3½ years, the band was having difficulty keeping it going: “Musically, the band had stuck in a rut for some time. The new songs that were being written did not sound like ‘Tell-Tale Hearts songs’, and we each had difficulty adjusting to and accommodating the changes that were taking place as our individual tastes expanded. . . . And Mike [Stax] put it best to a San Diego Union reporter: ‘We had painted ourselves into a corner musically.’”
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After the Tell-Tale Hearts broke up, their former bandmembers and those from another popular local band, Manual Scan joined forces in creating the Shambles, a power pop band that formed in 1990 and is still active. Kevin Donaker-Ring and Bart Mendoza, both of Manual Scan, started playing with first Ray Brandes and later David Klowden of the Tell-Tale Hearts, plus Mark Z, formerly of the Crawdaddys. Another ex-Heart, keyboard wiz Bill Calhoun was added at a later date. The Shambles have had a revolving membership over the years; from what I can tell, none of the bandmembers from the Tell-Tale Hearts are currently with the Shambles.
(September 2017)
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I think that I have now purchased all four of the albums by past UARB the Loons, one of three UARB’s that number Mike Stax among the bandmembers. While I still do not have the EP 5 x 4 by past UARB the Crawdaddys (which also included Mike Stax), I did pick up the 45 that features “There She Goes Again”. Even more surprisingly, I came across the other two albums by past UARB Crystal Mansion in some record store or other: their 1969 album Crystal Mansion and also their 1979 album Crystal Mansion that is also known as Tickets. (More recently, I did come across a copy of the Crawdaddys EP 5 x 4 on Bomp! mailorder, along with the original 7-inch Jesus Loves the Stooges – but I still don’t have a copy of the green-vinyl Kill City by Iggy Pop and James Williamson that also came out in 1977).
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Over the past few years, I have found the first two albums by Country Dick Montana’s best known band, the Beat Farmers, Tales of the New West and Van Go; under his real name Dan McLain, he was the drummer for the Crawdaddys. The Beat Farmers are known as one of the best country-punk bands, and it is easy to see why. Then I noticed on Amazon.com an even better album by another Country Dick Montana band, the Pleasure Barons, called Live in Las Vegas.
The Pleasure Barons could be described I guess as a super-group, composed of Country Dick Montana, Dave Alvin of the Blasters, and psychobilly legend Mojo Nixon. Besides three Mojo Nixon classics – somewhat toned down from the original recordings and illustrating how well crafted Nixon’s music actually is – the other songs are mostly over-the-top covers of a wide variety of numbers, ranging from Mickey Gilley’s “Closing Time”, to R. B. Greaves’s “Take a Letter, Maria”, to Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?”, to Joe South’s “Games People Play”, to Jerry Reed’s “Amos Moses”, and finally to “The Definitive Tom Jones Medley”: “It’s Not Unusual”, “Delilah” and “What’s New Pussycat?”. That album is more fun than any record that I have bought in a long, long time.
(Year 10 Review)
