WATCHING THE WEB
12/13/2000 Various Artists Ethiopiques Volumes 1-8 (Buda Musique) By Lawrence Kay One of the strangest things about Ethiopian pop music is how little was ever recorded, and how easy it now is for you -- yes, you -- to hear the best of it. Between 1969 and 1978 only a few hundred songs were recorded on Ethiopia's renegade indie labels; after that, economic decline, governmental repression, and a brewing civil war made pop music a thing of the past. While the window was open, though, a handful of tiny companies produced some of the most beguiling, hippest "world music" ever -- a radical, hypnotic brew of American soul, pop, and jazz mixed in with traditional East African styles. In the 1960s, Ethiopia prided itself on its hip, cosmopolitan clime as well as its leading role as one of the nonaligned nations clinging to neutrality during the Cold War. The capital city of Addis Ababa was a fashionable stopping point for the international jet set, and as the country took on worldly airs, Ethiopians hungrily devoured American and European pop culture. Meanwhile, national releases were limited to party tapes and anniversary albums produced for the political elite by the state-run record monopoly. Maverick entrepreneur Amha Eshete decided to take a gamble and disobey the government, figuring that the leaders might toss him in prison for starting his own label but that he wasn't likely to lose his life. Fortunately, he was right. Although the state label huffed and puffed, it eventually let things slide, opening the way for a musical explosion that captured the sounds of the wild Addis Ababa nightclub scene. Currently up to eight volumes, the Ethiopiques series collects the best records from this golden era. The best-known performer in the series is Mahmoud Ahmed, whose sumptuous 1975 album Ere Mela Mela was reissued in Europe during the late '80s and became a world music holy grail (Volumes 6 and 7 of Ethiopiques document Ahmed's trance-inducing soul/jazz/belly-dancing blend). Other Ethiopian artists had a rougher time of it. Mulatu Astatqe, a classically trained multi-instrumentalist, tried for years to build a jazz scene in Ethiopia. While he made several fascinating albums (compiled on Volume 4), no one else in the resolutely tradition-oriented nation seems interested in picking up on Astatqe's innovative music. African pop fans may be bewildered by the unique sounds in this series. Ethiopian musicians were stubbornly patriotic and culturally distinct from the rest of the continent, and never incorporated the Afro-Cuban rhythms that musicians of other countries favored. But as the latest collection in the series, Swinging Addis, documents, they did get into some seriously heavy soul grooves. The Ethiopiques compilations highlight one of the most unique, challenging, and sensuous styles of dance music ever produced -- a sound that is sly, slippery, and designed for world-class booty shaking.
12/20/2000 Return to Hicksville Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks pick up where they left off more than 20 years ago By Lawrence Kay "How can I miss you when you won't go away?" asks the catchy chorus to one of acoustic prankster Dan Hicks' most sardonic love songs, recorded way back in the early '70s. For folks here in the Bay Area it was never that big of an issue, since Hicks -- a Marin local who'd been big in the early San Francisco rock scene -- never really went anywhere. Those in the know could catch him playing at small clubs in Marin or maybe one of his infrequent Christmas gigs. For the rest of the country, though, Hicks' whereabouts have been a matter of speculation for the better part of two decades -- a mystery that is now solved, thanks to the release of Beatin' the Heat, the first Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks studio album in over 20 years. It's not only one of Hicks' best efforts, it's also one of the best records to hit the acoustic Americana scene in recent years. The album features the patented Hot Licks sound -- a slick mix of acoustic jazz, rock, and old-timey hillbilly riffs, topped off with a hefty dose of Tin Pan Alley pop savvy. The disc is full of high-powered guest stars such as Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Brian Setzer, Bette Midler, and Rickie Lee Jones, all of whom jumped at the chance to record with the man who pioneered the confluence of jazz and pop. Hicks started off his musical career as a humble band geek, drumming in his Santa Rosa high school's flag corps. From there he made the leap into an early '60s folk and jug band scene that also included baby-faced bluegrassers Jerry Garcia and David Grisman. Once the Beatles stormed America's shores, many earnest San Francisco folkies transferred their musical allegiance to rock 'n' roll; Hicks dutifully picked up his sticks and started beating the tom-toms in the Charlatans, one of the first and gnarliest bands in the now-legendary S.F. psychedelic scene. Unlike contemporaries such as Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead, the Charlatans never had much commercial success; they released only one single on Kapp Records, an ailing and terminally un-hip label, then imploded, as bands often do. In terms of style, though, the group made an indelible impression on many of its peers. "We were this heavy rock band," Hicks recalls, "that dressed in this whole turn-of-the-century, Edwardian cowboy style, and we were playing all this old-timey stuff." The band's first major gig was at a Virginia City, Nev., saloon that had an Old West theme. "I was the only guy in the band who didn't wear a starched collar. We didn't consciously set out to be retro, but that's how it came out." Bay Area music historian Alec Palao, who recently compiled a collection of the best Charlatans material, recalls that the band's attitude was also very distinct from its flower-power contemporaries: "The Charlatans were very much a breed apart from what typified San Francisco in the '60s. They weren't into peace and love at all -- actually, they were quite an ornery bunch of fellows, just about the most right-wing bunch of hippies imaginable." The Charlatans' rough-and-ready Butch Cassidy garb suited itself well to Hicks' unsentimental, smart-ass lyrics -- songs like "How Can I Miss You" and "We're Not on the Same Trip" might have seemed mean-spirited if they weren't so darn clever. But as everyone around him turned on, plugged in, and cranked up the reverb, Hicks -- in a typically perverse move -- went retro acoustic. His new band, the Hot Licks, featured a tight rhythm section, a jazzy violinist, and Andrews Sisters-styled vocal arrangements (which eventually inspired other nostalgia-oriented jazz acts such as Midler and the Manhattan Transfer). The act went national in the early '70s, touring often and making TV appearances on The Tonight Show and The Dick Cavett Show. Hicks even graced the cover of Rolling Stone -- twice. Then, at the height of his fame, he decided to call it quits. "At some point," Hicks recalls, "I just got tired of being a band leader. I hadn't planned on doing it forever, and it's hard to judge how successful you're being. It wasn't like we were all figuring out what condos to buy, or how to invest our money. I kept on doing gigs, though -- I just cut it down to two people and tried out different combinations." After disbanding the Hot Licks, Hicks pursued a low-key career, doing a little acting, some on-and-off touring with the scaled-down Acoustic Warriors, and a lot of studio tinkering at home. Record deals came up from time to time, but Hicks was often dissatisfied with his recorded efforts, and some of his best work was left on the shelf. "Sometimes I'll make something at home on my little cassette machine or eight-track, I'll make a little demo and I'll say, "Yeah, this is the sound; this is what I want.' And then by the time the record's made, you don't hear a lot of what I thought of originally. Somehow, other things replaced my original ideas. I can do stuff in my living room, just by myself, that you can't seem to get in the studio." Hicks, though, is no stranger to the sound booth -- his early LPs, Original Recordings, Where's the Money?, Striking It Rich, and Last Train to Hicksville, are all models of sleekness and economy. Live, he's no slouch, either, as his 1994 concert album, Shootin' Straight, demonstrates. Even his early, home recordings are catchy and inventive, as a recent Big Beat Records collection shows. Palao, who compiled the 1967 demos, says the disc came together almost by happenstance. "I had a magazine called Cream Puff War, and we did a large story on the Charlatans and interviewed all the members of the band -- all the surviving members, that is. Later, I was working on another tape archive with the original manager of the Kingston Trio, Frank Werber, who had a studio in San Francisco in the mid-'60s, and I came across all this stuff that Dan had recorded there around the time he was starting to move away from the Charlatans. This was the very early Hot Licks, with David LaFlamme playing violin, and it was very much pure Dan, without the western swing affectations of his later work." While Hicks is often credited as an early pioneer in the swing revival, his work always had a broader, more elusive character that went beyond western swing and '40s big bands. Loose-limbed but tightly timed, the Hot Licks style owed as much to tongue-twisting blues hipsters like Slim Gaillard and Slam Stewart as it did to Bob Wills and Benny Goodman. When critics compare him to present-day swing band/string band acts like Squirrel Nut Zippers or the Hot Club of Cowtown, Hicks seems amused more than anything else. Still, not all the new bands can pass muster. "I didn't really fit into the swing resurgence that happened a couple of years ago," says Hicks. "It was really more of an in-your-face, jump blues thing, whereas my stuff is more acoustic, and more jazzy. I'm not critical of it. What offends me though is when they take a nice old tune, like a Glenn Miller ballad, and then put a rock 'n' roll drummer on it, or a heavy-sounding, relentless bass. They think they're mixing two eras, but they're really just wiping it all out." The new album catches Hicks at his best -- not simply undiminished as a songwriter or singer, but at a new, almost improbable, artistic peak. His vocals are as crafty as ever, shifting gracefully between velvet-toned barfly crooning and sardonic mockery. His lyrics also retain their absurdist edge, ranging from the innuendo-laden doggerel of "My Cello" to the pro-gourmand propaganda of "I Don't Want Love," wherein our hero declares, "Love makes you give up corn dogs and mustard/ Cracker Jacks and tutti-frutti custard/ If love makes you give up onion rings/ I don't want love." Two tunes from his pre-Hot Licks days -- "He Don't Care" and "I've Got a Capo on My Brain" -- resurface on the new album, although in vastly revamped form. Hicks' best-known classic, "I Scare Myself," has also been reworked, with subtle trip-hop filigrees that are more reminiscent of Thomas Dolby's 1984 synth-pop cover version than the original. Hicks isn't sure how comfortable he is with the new mix, calling it his rap song, but he's willing to give anything a try. "On all the rest of the album, I was there for the basics, but for that song I just gave them the chords and the tempo and the guys in L.A. took it from there. They made a track and then we sang over it. It was not my conception, and I wouldn't have even come up with that sound, but I kinda like it." Jazz/folk singer Rickie Lee Jones supplies honeyed vocals on the new version of "I Scare Myself," as well as on "Driftin'," a new tune with a sweet Tin Pan Alley melody worthy of old masters Harold Arlen and George Gershwin. Costello, Waits, and Setzer respectively bark, mutter, and twang their way through their cameos, while Sid Page, an original Hot Licks member, anchors the album with his mellifluous, fat-toned violin playing. One of the album's catchiest tunes, "Strike While It's Hot," features a pleasantly restrained Midler trading mellow scat riffs with Hicks. Whether Hicks plays it cool or hot at his upcoming Christmas gig at the Great American Music Hall, Alec Palao and other Hot Licks fanatics are looking forward to an all-too rare chance to catch Hicks doing what he does best: wow the crowd. "There is no one else who is as unique as he is," Palao says. "There's no one else who sounds like Dan Hicks, who writes like him, who has that dry sense of humor, or has that manner onstage. He's really one of a kind."
01/03/2001 Hear This Deke Dickerson & the Ecco-Fonics By Lawrence Kay One man towers -- literally and figuratively -- over the West Coast retrobilly scene, and that man is Deke Dickerson, the good-natured guitar god from Burbank. After carving out a name for himself as a teenage axeman in the garage-surf outfit Untamed Youth, the flattopped, 6-foot-2-inch titan achieved legendary status for his Joe Maphis/Jimmy Bryant-derived six-string wizardry in the Dave & Deke Combo, a hillbilly-boogie act that toured worldwide and backed up rockabilly old-timers such as the Collins Kids. When the Combo broke up in the mid-1990s, Dickerson signed up with the local HighTone label, and delved deep into oldies rock and doo-wop on a series of solo albums full of the old nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Deke's latest romp, Rhythm, Rhyme and Truth, sidesteps the flashy solos that dominated his last couple of records in favor of solid songwriting. Highlights include "Give Me a Brunette," a chick-watching song written in response to the countless ditties fetishizing redheads and blondes, and the hilariously macabre "Where to Aim," in which Deke ponders whom to shoot -- his ex-girlfriend or himself. As on earlier albums, guest stars abound: The Calvanes, an old-time doo-wop group that shares Dickerson's affinity for the kind of '50s sounds that never made it onto the American Graffiti soundtrack, make a particularly choice appearance. This Friday, Dickerson shares the stage with local Americana act Red Meat, whose new album explores the outer reaches of the country novelty song. Produced by roots-rock guru Dave Alvin of the Blasters, Alameda County Line is the brightest and sleekest Red Meat album to date, capitalizing on the band's pop sensibilities and considerable chops.
01/03/2001 Los Shakers; Various Artists Los Shakers: ÁPor Favor! (Ace/Big Beat); Various Artists: Jovem Guarda -- 21 Grandes Sucessos (Columbia-Brasil) By Lawrence Kay Let's face it: Half the fun of listen-ing to foreign-language rock 'n' roll oldies is hearing how goofy and clumsy the performances were, or finding out what "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" sounds like in Lower Galooshistan. The Beatles were, of course, the band that sparked this worldwide teeny-popper craze, and South Americans were stung as hard as kids up north. At the front of the Fab Four fan club was Uruguay's Los Shakers, a tight, peppy combo that was one of Latin America's biggest rock acts in the mid-'60s. Los Shakers never made it up to the States, but they were a regional smash, touring the southern continent and recording several albums of first-rate originals and Beatles covers. Their bouncy beat tunes have been impossible to find outside of Montevideo flea markets for decades, but now ÁPor Favor! makes it easy to sample the best of their 1965-68 catalog. Longtime fans may be mildly disappointed that this disc concentrates on Los Shakers' English-language originals while omitting such gems as their Spanish version of "Ticket to Ride." Regardless, the music is catchy and charming, performed with a vigor and passion that takes it beyond goofy homage into the realm of real rock genius. Beatlemania hit Brazil differently than the rest of Latin America, spurring Brazilians into a psychedelic frenzy rather than mop-top pop like the Shakers. That was partly because Brazil already had a rock tradition dating back to the late '50s, and had home-grown heroes long before the Brits made their mark. The Brazilian roqueiros clustered around the Jovem Guarda television show, and were inspired as much by Eddie Cochran and Cliff Richards as they were by John, Paul, and George Martin. The Jovem Guarda bands were both hopelessly cutesy and compellingly heartfelt -- girl singers like Wanderlea did their best to sound as hard-core as Lesley Gore, while Jerry Adriani and Roberto Carlos took turns playing Roy Orbison and Pat Boone. Until recently, the original Jovem Guarda recordings had been hard to come by, except for deceptive "best of" discs that were actually rerecordings made in the '80s and '90s. While EMI's new Bis reissue series offers the largest quantity of music from the show, the new collection on Columbia is probably the best place for beginners to start. Anyone looking for something with more bite should check out the vinyl-only bootleg Coracao de Pedras/Hearts of Stone, which features some of the gnarliest garage bands that Brazil had to offer. Any of these albums may make you smile or occasionally groan in horror -- but, hey, that's half the fun!
01/10/2001 Holly Golightly; Ludella Black Holly Golightly: God Don't Like It (Damaged Goods); Ludella Black: She's Out There (Damaged Goods) By Lawrence Kay Since its debut in the early 1990s, British garage rock goddess Holly Golightly's grrl group, Thee Headcoatees, has carried the banner of stylish, finely crafted electric blues as ably as any band imaginable. Still, many people have justifiably seen Thee Headcoatees as yet another front for the madly prolific songwriter Billy Childish, impresario of England's so-called "Medway scene," a group of musicians clustered around his retro-garage stable. The enigmatic poet/songwriter pens most of Thee Headcoatees' original material, and he helped shape their frenzied, joyous sound. Only recently have thee gals -- Golightly, Ludella Black, Kyra LaRubia, and Bongo Debbie -- begun to assert themselves as solo musicians. Golightly is in the middle of a sizzling hot streak, with another first-rate record drenched in the luxuriantly wicked R&B guitar style that bands like the Rolling Stones and the Standells thought they had perfected decades ago. Medway guitarist Bruce Brand does the old masters one better by adding a crackling, sinfully modern mastery to the style originally pioneered by bluesmen such as Ike Turner and Jimmy Reed. While Golightly's lyrics retain the sometimes tiresome soft-core S/M overtones of her work with Thee Headcoatees, her approach is much subtler and more effective. Several tracks on God Don't Like It, including the catchy "Second Chance" and an intriguingly aggressive cover of Bill Withers' "Use Me," rank among the best work she's ever done. Ludella Black's She's Out There has a lot in common with Golightly's albums, although her style is a little less slinky and come-hither and a bit more girl-groupishly femme. Unlike her bandmate, Black hasn't picked up the knack of writing her own material, although her longtime collaborator, guitarist Mickey Hampshire, wrote half of these songs, and his ear for garage blues is suitably on target. Black shines brightly on several well-selected cover tunes -- her version of Brenda Lee's "Is It True?" and an obscure yet addictive Troggs song ("Last Summer") are outstanding. Admittedly, Black doesn't have the greatest voice, but true to the DIY ethos, she doesn't let that prevent her -- or us -- from cutting loose and having fun.
01/17/2001 Hear This The Original Comets By Lawrence Kay Halley's comet passes the Earth only every 76 years, and though their schedule is less infrequent, an appearance by the Original Comets -- Bill Haley's first backup band -- is still pretty rare. This weekend you can check out one of the earliest and most earnest practitioners of greasy '50s rock 'n' roll, as the band shares the stage with SoCal's greatest western swing band, Big Sandy & the Fly-Rite Boys, and local rockabilly ravers the Stillmen. The Comets were a crack group of ex-hicks who got the rhythm and blues bug just as postwar R&B was hitting its frenzied peak. In 1951, several years before Elvis even imagined wiggling his skinny little hips on TV, Bill Haley cut a version of Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88" that followed the original up the charts. Many folks consider it to be the first rock song recorded by a white band; next came Haley's "Rock the Joint," "Crazy, Man, Crazy," and, of course, "Rock Around the Clock," the original rebellious teen anthem. When they first started rocking, though, the Comets were called the Saddlemen, and still wore big cowboy hats -- Haley was a country singer for nearly a decade before he hit the national spotlight as a rock god. The Stetsons and hillbilly moniker weren't the only things that changed over the years. When the big bucks started rolling in, Bill and the Comets got into a tiff over salaries. Haley stiffed the band, and the members walked out, leaving him to replace them with another set of eager, young musicians. This process continued numerous times, until the oldies circuit became cluttered with different gradations of "original" Comets. That said, these five guys are the real deal (and they have a court order to prove it). Old coots they may be, but with over 50 years of show-biz savvy under their belts, they also still know how to slap the bass, rock the joint, and burn the house down.
