UNDER-APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH FOR DECEMBER 2012: THE INVISIBLE EYES
Where, oh where to begin with this band? I always face the same problem when I start one of these posts: How can I interest someone in a band that almost no one has ever heard – that I myself usually know practically nothing about, except that I really love their music? Over the years, what I have generally done is to talk about other rock musicians – some that everyone knows, and others that are under-appreciated though not really all that unknown – and then gradually work up to the Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month itself.
Normally, I find a narrative thread of some kind. One that came to me pretty quickly was for Tina and the Total Babes, the UARB for May 2012. That album and my Trashwomen album were among the first several dozen that I cleaned up from Katrina; I don't remember how I discovered that Tina Lucchesi had been a member of both bands, but that was a definite connection that I could talk about. The Trashwomen led obviously to the Trashmen, who had a big hit song in 1963 called "Surfin' Bird". But that's all most people know about the Trashmen, who are unfairly labeled as a "one-hit wonder" band – worse yet, a "one-novelty-hit wonder". Well, IMHO, not only is "Surfin' Bird" not at all a novelty song in my book, the Trashmen are actually a top-notch band that have a pretty extensive body of work – they even have a four-CD box set to their credit, and there are a host of well-known rock bands that can't make that boast. Thus, once I started riffing on one-hit wonders, the article just came together very quickly.
I have toyed with several narrative threads for this band, but none really has seemed to work out too well. Since I am already running so late, I had better take a tapestry approach this time.
* * *
At one point, I was planning to insert a biographical sketch of musical historian and Bomp! Records founder Greg Shaw, but I decided against that, since the connection to Shaw really isn't all that strong. Bomp! Records is now billed as the oldest independent record label in the U. S. and has been around since 1974. But here is a picture at least; I have probably mentioned him in at least a fourth of these UARB and UARA posts, so you ought to know what he looks like anyway.
The reason I was considering that is that THE INVISIBLE EYES is the last band that Greg Shaw signed to Bomp Records before his untimely death in 2004 from complications of diabetes. But to quote Shaw himself after he once noted that the Mockingbirds included two future bandmembers of 10cc: "But they deserve to be known for more than just that."
* * *
Back when MTV and VH1 used to play music videos, and when I wasn't watching anything else, I would often have one of those channels on, with my videocassette recorder at the ready, in case a video came on of a song that I really liked. Particularly when there was a song in "heavy rotation" that I really wanted, I would often have the VCR already cued up, on "hold", so that I would miss as little of the video as possible. Sometimes I would get lucky, and I would already be recording a song when another one came on that I wanted as well.
That happened one time with "No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age. The time was back in the garage-rock revival period of the early 2000's, when the White Stripes, the Hives, the Strokes, and several other great retro bands were really getting established. I hadn't heard the song before, but the beat sounded good, so I left the recorder running. That song got to be a real favorite of mine, and I was particularly thrilled when I later recognized Dave Grohl – former drummer for Nirvana and front man for Foo Fighters – on drums in the video (that's a video cap from the video above).
My wife Peggy Winfree and I were just starting to date back then, and I had already picked up a copy of the album having the odd name, Songs for the Deaf. Her son Ernie Guyton and his wife Priscilla Dodds were visiting, and I had the CD with me, so I thought, what the hell: Let me see what they think of it. I already knew that Peggy had good musical taste, even though she is a few years older than I am (okay, more than a few). I had already gotten Dido's first album, I'm No Angel with her in mind, and she loved it.
Well, they started bopping along to "No One Knows", and I wound up playing the whole CD for them. I quickly learned that the Queens (she also called them the Stones sometimes) were going to be appearing at the House of Blues in New Orleans, but that the show was already sold out. She and I went over to New Orleans anyway to see if there were some tickets for sale at the door that we could get. I was a little shy myself, but not her; and I will never forget the sight of my future wife walking down an alley nearby talking to people to see if anyone had any tix for sale. She did find a couple, so we waited outside a while longer. I overheard someone asking about the opening act, Turbonegro, and had anyone ever heard of them? I piped up, "Yeah, they are a good band; I have one of their albums". Turbonegro is from Norway and has or had a big guy as the front man who used to twirl around on stage. The opening track on the album I have, Apocalypse Dudes has the pompous title of "The Age of Pamparius", but the lyrics are anything but: "So you think you had a real good pizza / Well not like this ... / So you think you had a pepperoni / So you think you had a calzone / Well not like this".
We definitely got some funny looks here and there, and I bet there are still people talking about the older woman on the balcony section sitting on the only stool in the place (there were a whole bunch of us trying to get Peggy a place to sit down up there), sitting there with a big smile on her face as we enjoyed that concert together.
I thought the Invisible Eyes would be another one to play for her that she would like just as well, and she surely did! I was giving her play-by-play commentary as the album went along (and as I was trying to get a little appraisal work done at the same time). As "Tired Night" came on, I told her: "Just when you think that the album couldn't possibly get any better . . ."
* * *
Like any record company, Bomp! Records doesn't always sell a lot of copies of every album they release. On their mailorder website and on the emails that I get periodically from them (three or four a week at least), they often have sales. Sometimes it is 10% or 15% off your whole order, or a special price if you get all of the LP's or CD's by one of their artists, or package prices on groups of related CD's, or book/magazine combinations – you get the idea. They also have "punk" or "power pop" or "garage" albums in groups of 5 or 10 that you can buy for a low price – sometimes it is their choice of the albums for a really cheap price, and sometimes you can pick out any 5 that you want from, say, the Alive label for an attractive but not all that cheap price. Over the years, I have ordered a lot of music from them that way – basically I am a sucker for a sale anyway, in a supermarket or a department store or a shoe store, you name it.
Not all that long ago, Bomp started a promotion called "Come Fail with Us", where they had special prices on CD's and LP's that "stiffed", as they say in the record biz. It was apparently real popular – because the sets are still available. Later on, they started pricing CD's you could choose from a really long list that were priced at $2 or $3 each. (The Invisible Eyes is still listed for sale on the $3 list). I ordered a whole lot of them, but because I had been in an LP-playing mode pretty much all year and most of the previous year, there they sat on my shelf, still sealed up in plastic.
* * *
A couple of months ago, the Jensen turntable that I was bragging on a couple of posts back started running just a tiny bit slow. I had an inkling that this had been going on for a while, but it was pretty subtle. Well, one day, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band rose to the top of the rescued LP stack; and when I started playing it, there was no question at all that it didn't sound right. I took it to our local TV/audio repair store (Pass Road Tee Vee Service in Biloxi, for you locals – highly recommended; they really know their stuff, and their prices are very reasonable), and it seemed like they fixed it right up for me – Sgt. Pepper played just fine, and I went through several more LP's.
Well, several weeks later, I put on a Bob Dylan album – yes, I had a bunch of Beatles albums and Dylan albums come up for cleaning at about the same time, and that was pretty cool – and again, I had an inkling that it was running a tiny bit slow. But it was an intermittent problem, and I just played another record instead that sounded okay; eventually I put the Dylan album back on, and it sounded fine that second time. Finally, I put on the first Violent Femmes album – that was a record that I literally bought right off the turntable when it was playing at the time that I was shopping in a record store years ago – and it didn't play right two times in a row, so I was resigned to having to get it fixed again. I called the repairman up, and he said that the type of variable-speed motor that they use in turntables can sometimes need adjusting. He told me just to bring it in anytime, and they would fix it up for me at no charge. I hate having to do things twice, and I have been so busy at work as well, so I have been putting off taking it back to the shop.
* * *
Meanwhile, I have a 3-CD player in the same unit, so I started playing CD's again, including several that had been sitting around unopened for so many months. One trio of CD's that I put on started off with Laugh in the Dark, the first album by the Invisible Eyes; followed by Iggy and the Stooges' Open Up and Bleed, billed as "The Great Lost Stooges Album?" and the eponymous CD by Les Hell on Heels. That turned out to be an absolutely thunderous combination of albums that occurred quite by accident; I have played that set of CD's (usually in the same order) a half dozen times at least in the week and a half ever since; I have put them on right now.
For people who, unlike me, don't like really these particular styles of music, every punk-psychedelic band like the Invisible Eyes, every primitive proto-punk band like the Stooges, and every snotty all-girl rock band like Les Hell on Heels is going to sound pretty much the same I suppose. But it wasn't like that for me at all for these three albums. The Invisible Eyes became an instant favorite; the Stooges album is the first one in the Iguana Chronicles that really tore my head off; and, for my money, Les Hell on Heels beats the Donnas and the Pandoras at their own game – and I love both of those bands.
For me, most heavy metal bands sound pretty much the same; I say that not with any sort of snooty, snobby air at all but instead with a wistful sort of desire – had I been 13 or 14 years old when heavy metal was at its peak, I would have lapped it up like manna. As it is, I was well into high school when the earliest heavy metal albums like the first albums by Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple came out; and I had already graduated from college when the first KISS album was released. I like a lot of the best heavy metal – Led Zep is so good that I hardly even think of them as a heavy metal band. I played that first KISS live album a lot when it first came out for instance, and Shades of Deep Purple has been a long-time favorite. I might have had a completely different sensibility about me had I grown up a few years later.
Even though I had already started a post for December on a different UARB that was going well, about halfway through the second song on the Invisible Eyes CD, I knew that they had to be my choice for the Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for December 2012 – even though it was just a couple of days before the first, and I knew I would be running late this time.
* * *
Basically dropping everything and pushing a band to the top of the heap on the UARA/UARB stack has happened only one other time among these posts, and it was quite awhile ago: the UARB for April 2010, the Breakaways. I had ordered a power-pop package from Bomp: a retrospective album of the Nerves, a brand-new CD of a killer live show by the Plimsouls, and then a CD by the Breakaways. After Jack Lee left the Nerves, the other two members of the band, Paul Collins and Peter Case started playing with a variety of other musicians. They used the name the Breakaways, but it arguably never was really a band: These guys just wanted to keep making music together. They were only around for a little over a year, and they are actually the third of three bands by that name that are listed in allmusic. The Breakaways did make one bonafide studio recording of "Walking out on Love", a wonderful song that had been part of the Nerves live set for years, though they had never gotten around to making a studio recording of it. Otherwise, just about everything they did was rehearsals and live shows, and no one ever thought that any of that material had survived. Pretty soon, those two parted ways also, with Peter Case forming the Plimsouls and Paul Collins starting the Beat.
Then someone found a tape of a lot of their rehearsals that they had forgotten had even been made, and this was turned into a CD called the Lost Sessions. Ostensibly, the UARB article was about the Breakaways, though I was really most excited about the Nerves.
Since that time, I have purchased several albums by Paul Collins and one by Peter Case, and they never disappoint. Jack Lee retired from the music scene after he only made one album; I haven't gotten it yet, but it is definitely on my want list. I keep hoping to hear about a reunion of the Nerves though; that would be worth getting on a plane to see!
* * *
It has been a long time since a record grabbed me the way the Invisible Eyes did. I was reminded of the first time that I heard "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down (the most successful rock band from the Mississippi Gulf Coast region) on the local alternative-rock radio station WCPR: I cranked the radio up full blast after I heard the first four or five notes, and I bet I hadn't done that for at least 20 years. This was long before they got their national label contract, when they were just a local band. It is a quite a success story actually: The song was the #1 request at the radio station for 15 weeks. Word was passed around, and they were flown up for a concert at the legendary CBGB club in New York, and they were signed by Republic Records on the spot. Their debut album, The Better Life (also the name of a foundation that the band established not long after) was released in 2000 and was the 11th best selling album that year, with worldwide sales of more than 6 million copies. "Kryptonite" was released nationally and also became a big hit, peaking at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 single charts. It was exciting to follow the progress of the single and the album; the local paper, the Sun Herald would show the 3 Doors Down music on the national charts in bold print.
A year or more before all that happened, someone told me that they had recorded a CD; and I went all over the Coast looking for it, only to be told that they hadn't gotten it in, or they had sold out, or whatever. Finally – I believe it was in the Sound Shop at the mall in Gautier – I found a copy; and it was every bit as good as I thought it would be. It is one of the true treasures of my record collection; it is not mentioned in the Wikipedia or allmusic article on the band, and I have never seen it listed on eBay. About half of the tracks on this CD are on their debut album; I still hear the original version of "Kryptonite" on local radio once in a while.
* * *
Anyway, I might like a song here and there right away; but normally, I have to play an album several times before I really start to love it. But every song on the Invisible Eyes album sounded great from the first play – just when I thought that the album couldn't possibly get any better, it did. The last song on the CD turned out to be my favorite, and that is a rarity in itself: Typically the good songs are toward the front of the album.
Bandmembers in the Invisible Eyes are Aubrey Nehring (guitar and vocals), Janet Hurt (keyboards), Adam Svenson (drums), and Ian Barnett (bass). Aubrey is a guy actually, but as you can see from the photo above, Janet is a striking brunette. On that great final cut, "That Old Song . . .", Donnie Hilsted plays maracas. I still have not figured out how they create that rollicking beat that goes on and on for more than 6 minutes, but it certainly isn't because they added a maracas player!
I looked up the band on allmusic right away, and there is a description of their sound that is about as delicious as any that I have ever heard for someone with my musical tastes: "Generating savage garage punk fueled by switchblade guitars and howling organs, the Invisible Eyes thrive in the musical no-man's-land where psychedelic rock gets spooky and garage rock goes beyond mere petulance into genuine menace."
* * *
Speaking of allmusic and maracas, let me add another great quote about blues and rock pioneer Bo Diddley that I picked up from that site. Bo Diddley had numerous R&B hits and wrote dozens of songs, like "Bo Diddley", "Who Do You Love?", "Oh Yeah", "Mona", and "Bring it to Jerome". Bo Diddley of course is a stage name; in his writing credits, his name usually appears as Elias B. McDaniel or sometimes Elias Bates. Many of his songs were hits for others, notably "I'm a Man" by the Yardbirds; there was even a completely ridiculous rumor that Bo Diddley specifically wrote "I'm a Man" for the Yardbirds, even though "I'm a Man" was actually the "B" side of his very first single back in 1955.
Bo Diddley is rightfully renowned as one of the founding fathers of rock and roll, but he actually only made the Top 40 pop charts once with a novelty number called "Say Man". Atop a pounding, infectious beat, Bo Diddley trades hilarious comic insults with his maracas player Jerome Green (actually I have seen Green credited lately with having written "Bring it to Jerome", though it was originally shown as written by Bo). Green's crazy laugh and shrill drawl is a perfect counterpoint to Diddley's baritone, and it is amazing how well "Say Man" holds up to multiple plays. The insults are inventive and offbeat: "You so ugly, the stork that brought you into the world oughta be arrested!", "You that thing I throw peanuts at!", "[Your girlfriend] was so ugly she had to sneak up on a glass to get her a drink of water", etc.
Anyway, in the article on "Say Man", allmusic has this parenthetical note of praise for Bo Diddley: "let's pause to mention no other artist would be so obsessed with rhythm and such a visionary that they would hire a guy just to play maracas".
* * *
The linchpin for the sound of the Invisible Eyes is the Farfisa Organ, a quintessential 1960's rock instrument; the Hammond Organ and the Vox Organ were also popular back then, but the Farfisa is the one that people think of it seems. It's probably that odd name (the company is Italian). Bomp's Greg Shaw named one of his record labels, Voxx after the Vox Organ; that was the label for 1960's reissues and the true 1960's revivalists.
According to Wikipedia, the Farfisa Organ first showed up in the music of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, who had a big hit in 1965 with "Wooly Bully". The song is about lead singer Domingo Samudio's cat; I was 14 when the song came out, and there was a rumor among the kids I hung out with that a "wooly bully" was a vagina. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs were one of the early "Tex-Mex" bands that brought Latin rhythms to rock and roll. I don't remember where exactly (or why I still remember it so well after all this time, for that matter) – there really weren't a lot of news outlets for rock news and trivia in the mid-1960's – but I have never forgotten something that I read once about this band: "Sam the Sham has been changing Pharaohs [bandmembers] the way other people change their shirts". They had one more big hit, a really clever novelty song called "Li'l Red Riding Hood"; I have been hearing that one on a TV commercial lately.
In 1966, the Farfisa Organ was even more prominent in the hit song "Double Shot (of My Baby's Love)" by the Swingin' Medallions (who were from South Carolina). That lovely organ that you hear in Percy Sledge's immortal 1966 hit "When a Man Loves a Woman" is a Farfisa, and Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone was playing one at his landmark Woodstock performance in 1969. Richard Wright's Farfisa Organ was a key element on many of the early Pink Floyd albums, particularly The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Ummagumma, but also including The Dark Side of the Moon. Elton John was able to get a different sound entirely from a Farfisa Organ on his hit "Crocodile Rock".
* * *
But that's not what the Farfisa Organ sounds like the way that Janet Hurt plays it as a member of the Invisible Eyes. A Farfisa in her hands doesn't have a sweet innocent sound at all; it is much more in-your-face and intimidating. She also has some fine moments on a piano – or at least what sounds like a piano; that could still be the Farfisa for all I know. The rhythm section – drummer Adam Svenson and bassist Ian Barnett – never lets up for a second; and there is some fine guitar work on the album by Aubrey Nehring. Nehring is also the band's vocalist; he reminds me of Jack White on some of the tracks on the first White Stripes album, such as "The Big Three Killed My Baby" and his cover of "St. James Infirmary Blues".
Highlights from the album? Laugh in the Dark is nothing but highlights as far as I am concerned. "All killer, no filler" as the saying goes. The album starts with a searing note from the organ (a variety of organ blasts are pretty much omnipresent throughout the album actually), followed by a shriek from the guitar; and then a potent garage-rock beat takes off with the opening track "Revelation". The second song, "Can't Wake Up" is the one that convinced me that these folks were for real.
Most of the songs are fast and loud; the Invisible Eyes must be amazing in concert. There are a couple of slower songs (not slow, but slower) on the CD also that are really nice, particularly "Don't Wanna Go" and "Luanne".
There are three very short instrumental passages, "YMA", "Trapezoid Stomp" and "Whiskey Vampire"; the latter track barely runs 30 seconds, but the world would definitely be a sadder place if it did not exist, let me tell you. "Trapezoid Stomp" sounds a little like a first draft of the last and best song, "That Old Song . . ."; there is that same "Dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-da-dum-dum" beat. "Monster Beat" starts with a smear of sound that could have been a defect on the CD, but I guess it is supposed to be like that.
* * *
One song is really special, "Mother of Mystery". After the first few spins, I was convinced that the reference is to the Blessed Mother Mary; and my wife Peggy Winfree (a cradle Catholic) agrees. The lyrics talk of "send me away with your burning wine" (which could refer to Communion); and there is something about "your love is a stormy ocean". There is also a Catholic term that Peggy picked up in the lyrics, though I am not sure what it is. The mood of the song is different from the rest; there is a more respectful tone to this song for sure. To me, it sounds like someone who grew up as a Catholic and who knows that there is something there that is very real but elusive – thus, she remains the "Mother of Mystery". I might be completely misinterpreting the song, but I don't think so – I haven't been able to find the lyrics on line, and it is hard to understand them in the song itself.
Rock songs with religious themes have always been fascinating to me. By now, Christian contemporary music has become an industry, but it wasn't always like that. One long-time favorite is "Signs" by Five Man Electrical Band; as familiar as the song is to me now, the singer who has been complaining about hypocrisy all through the earlier part of the song winds up in church in the final verse, and that is still jarring and unexpected. The band grew out of a Canadian band called the Staccatos, and I recently picked up a two-CD retrospective of their music. I was a bit perturbed originally that this set includes none of the Five Man Electrical Band material, but it is amazingly good music nonetheless.
Ugly Kid Joe did a remake of this song not so long ago on an album they called Five Man Acoustical Band; and as far as I am concerned, they kind of missed the point: The instrumental introduction to the song that I sometimes hear on the local oldies radio station is as free-wheeling an electrical jam as I have ever heard. Unfortunately, that jam didn't make it onto the single that I own, and I have never found the album.
I am reminded once again of the late, great Peter Ivers and the crazed interviews he used to do with punk rock musicians on the New Wave Theatre show. When someone was starting to act like a smartass, Peter would get them to turn to the camera and give the answer again; and invariably, they would change their tune. In almost every case, no matter what anti-religious screed a rock musician is trying to perform, the idea that they are sending their bare ideas out into the universe gives them pause; and they back off from showing a completely disrespectful attitude – that is true I think even of XTC's notorious "Dear God", for example.
What more can I say? Some of the critics have said that they are a young band still learning their craft, and that they repeat themselves a lot, but I don't get that at all. This is as good a debut album as I have ever heard, period.
* * *
Flashback: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for December 2010 – THE POPPEES
What I said about this band after a few introductory remarks is this: "But you won't be thinking about any of that when you hear the band; what will be going through your mind is 'Beatles!'" Even in the punk rock era, when unfashionable seemed to be the watchword of the day, these guys never really fit in.
There are a few YouTube clips out there though. "Love of the Loved" is a classic Beatles-style Poppees performance; see it (audio only) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trjeGWsuAAk . This is actually a John Lennon/Paul McCartney composition, but most of their songs were not. "Jealousy" is their first single for Bomp! Records and opens their long-overdue 2010 retrospective, Pop Goes the Anthology; this one is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06WjNpHo1Tc&list=PL4FFEEE560A1D4123&index=7 . Finally, "If She Cries" is another winner that is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl82xyAMY_8&list=PL4FFEEE560A1D4123&index=6 . Unfortunately, I couldn't find any live recordings.
* * *
Picture Gallery: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for December 2009 – BEAST
Also known as the Incredible Beast (and if you are trying to find them on the Internet, that's a much easier search), there isn't much out there other than what is available on a website managed by Bob Yeazel, http://www.bobyeazel.com/Beast.htm . This band set the standard for what I was trying to accomplish in all of my posts: showcasing unknown bands that didn't sound like anybody else.
Anyway, here goes; these are the albums that I have; I found the second one first as it happens.
This is the back of the second album that shows a few photos:
Here is a promo poster that does the same:
