FREE DOWNLOAD: LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES’ “CENTREVILLE”

01. Ain’t No Stranger

02. Centreville

03. Reba

04. Choctaw Summer

05. Magic City Stomp!

06. Everything You Took

07. Righteous, Ragged Songs

08. The Red, Red Dirt of Home

09. Roebuck Parkway

10. Opelika

11. There Is A Bomb In Gilead

Later next month Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires will be heading out on the road for a highly anticipated tour with their friends and musical brethen Alabama Shakes. “We just like each other’s bands from having played together in Tuscaloosa,” Bains explained about their relationship. “The funny thing is that, several months ago, before things started going really crazy for the Shakes, I asked them if they’d want to do a co-headline tour in April, since both of our albums were supposed to come out around that time. When I asked back then, they had said that a couple members couldn’t get off work for that long, so they’d have to pass. Now, here it is, six or seven or eight months later, and we’re opening for them on a tour of much bigger venues than we could’ve ever expected.”

Bains further elaborated, “We have both definitely come out of the Alabama rock’n'roll scene. Heath and Zac [from Alabama Shakes] were both frequenting Egan’s in Tuscaloosa before the Shakes played there, and I’d seen Zac at our Dexateens shows. There’s definitely a tradition of dirty Alabama rock’n'roll that takes pride in being from Alabama. I guess I’d point to the Quadrajets, Immortal Lee County Killers, Drive-By Truckers, Model Citizen and Dexateens as being a few of those bands. In those bands and others, I see a definite sense of Southern heritage, mostly in their influences (Muscle Shoals and Memphis soul, ’70s Southern rock, Big Star and Memphis garage stuff, gospel music, classic country and blues), but also a conscious effort to question and subvert what it means to be Southern. With really loud damn guitars.”

If Pete Townshend’s “Lifehouse” project never actually comes to a full realization, he’s at least prepared to watch it grow through various stages in his lifetime. What exactly is “Lifehouse” and how does it relate to Lawrence Ball and this supposed Method Music? If you are a big fan of the Who and are already familiar with Pete Townshend’s various aborted musical narratives, then you can probably skip the following paragraph.

“Lifehouse” is a grand-scale concept that Townshend has been cooking on his back burner for about forty years. The story goes something like this: it’s either a future or parallel society where, pollution being so bad, everyone needs government-issued “experience suits,” something that makes life more quaint and pleasant but the government convinces everyone they actually need them to live. These experience suits give people access to food, shelter and entertainment (it’s a bit like the internet). One family decides they don’t need all of this and consequently live off the grid. A young man named Bobby, a composer, no less, manages to hack into this vast system. He invites all inhabitants of this society, including the aforementioned family, to a liberating concert where Bobby’s computer program gives all listeners a special human touch: custom-made music for each individual, composed purely from data. Each concert-goer hands over a little bit of information about themselves, and—Presto! They have their very own song. The “Lifehouse” narrative follows both Bobby and the rogue family in search of this groovy concert. Rather than making “Lifehouse” this big, fully realized project, Townshend has dolled its contents out gradually over the years in the forms of some very notable Who songs found on Who’s Next and Who Are You.

Time and again, Townshend has abandoned the big picture of “Lifehouse” because, among other reasons, the technology to mimic Bobby’s “method music” was not available. But fast-forward to the present day and it’s a whole new ball game. Townshend approached mathematician and minimalist composer Lawrence Ball to create some software that would do the very thing Bobby’s character wanted to do in the story: taking bits of people’s personal information, plugging them into a program, and getting their own unique piece of music. Ball pulled it off and fiction became reality in the form of a now-defunct website called the Lifehouse Method. I somehow missed it, but some 10,000 people logged onto the site after its 2007 launched and each one walked away with a five-minute song—and no two were alike.

Method Music is a double album of the software’s test runs, so many of them have the dummy name “Sitter” in the title. The first song though will sound familiar for two reasons. First of all, it’s the “Meher Baba Piece,” a vignette constructed from the data of one Meher Baba, Townshend’s former spiritual guru and main inspiration for the 1971 hit “Baba O’Riley.” Secondly, this computer-generated sound is what kicked off the Who’s last album Endless Wire. If any of you were startled by the similarities between “Baba O’Riley” and “Fragments,” it was no accident. But aside from that, the first half of Method Music is about as mechanical as it can get. Each track hovers around the five minute mark and every note is sounded with perfect precision. And as cold and diffuse as that may seem, there’s a meditative quality to the sounds that can’t easily be pinpointed. Call is minimalist hypnosis if you will, but there is something oddly musical about this grand machine churning out music like it’s a series of logarithms.

The second disc is where things get theoretically more interesting. It’s built of three slow tracks, a simple matter of division applied to the “sitter” pieces, redubbed “Galaxy” and orchestrated for strings. And sure enough, they all run the same approximate length: around twenty minutes. Each one is dedicated to a musician recently passed. And I assume, since there is no mention of this in either the liner notes or the press release, that the compositions are based on their subject’s input data. I wouldn’t know how else to explain that “Galaxy 01” is dedicated to Syd Barrett, that “Galaxy 02” is dedicated to Hugh Hopper and that “Galaxy 03” is dedicated to György Liegti. There’s no early Floyd, Soft Machine or monolith anywhere in sight. Perhaps an absence of parenthetical references would help the listener process these for what they are rather than what they are not. But that wouldn’t change anything if you are the kind of person who is driven crazy by minimalism. These pieces, especially the second and third installment, go through agonizingly little change over the course of twenty minutes.

When someone goes to the trouble to boil music down to its mathematical elements, it becomes immune to criticism (great, so what am I supposed to be doing here?). Think about it; scientists of other disciplines often dismiss math as a science because you can never disprove it. To paraphrase Dennis Hopper from Apocalypse Now!, “you can’t criticize a fraction, man!” It’s a bold thing for me to give this collection any kind of grade, but the 7 comes from my own experiences of horsing around with a program called Music In Numbers with some college friends. It was developed by a man who felt that computer-generated music was the only pure music out there—that of the spheres. Based on the digits you entered, it picked tones, key signatures, tempos, instruments, and anything else you could think of. The results were more amusing than musical, but what got me was the wide field of numbers this thing could process. Lawrence Ball’s software understandably feels far more developed and capable of spinning melodies that have more than just novelty value. Pete Townshend had (and maybe still does) a specific vision and Ball has the logically deep know-how. Put them together and you get Method Music—an album that will no doubt sound like any other ever again. And that alone is admission price.
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/153516-lawrence-ball-method-music/

Although recorded a mere 12 months before Peter Case dissolved the Plimsouls and went solo, Beach Town Confidential presents a band at their peak, not one close to imploding. This set at Huntington Beach’s Golden Bear in 1983 is a melodic white-hot power-pop ball of energy that blows away any previous Plimsouls live recording you may have heard, including One Night In America or even 1981’s “close-fisted power-pop tour-de-force” at the Whisky-A-Go-Go on All Hallows Eve. As well as audience favorites “Zero Hour” and “A Million Miles Away”, the album offers six unreleased numbers, including cover versions of the Everlys’ “Price of Love” that has guests the Williams Brothers on lead vocals and Willie Dixon’s “You Can’t Judge A Book”, plus the only live recordings of original songs “Magic Touch” and the spooky surf-meets-power-pop instrumental “Hobo”. Recommended! http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/154488-the-plimsouls-beach-town-confidential/

LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS – Positive 4 star album review
CD review: The Plimsouls, ‘Beach Town Confidential’ — 4 stars
By Sam Gnerre
This live recording taken from an August 1983 show at Huntington Beach’s now-demolished Golden Bear is the latest in a series of the Alive label’s fine reissues chronicling singer/songwriter Peter Case’s early pre-solo career, from the Nerves to the short-lived Breakaways and finally the Plimsouls.

It’s hard to imagine the Plimsouls ever sounding better live than the band sounds on this recording, which is superior to the band’s two earlier live albums. The mix is remarkable, a crystal-clear blend of rippling, crackling guitars and pounding drums behind Case’s sure-footed and crisply rendered vocals. Factor in the band’s ability to create an exhilarating hybrid of rock ‘n’ roll, power pop and blue-eyed soul drawn from its own originals and astutely chosen covers, an enthusiastic club crowd and a nonstop pace, and “Beach Town Confidential” becomes essential.

The band’s hit “A Million Miles Away” is here with guitars blazing, but some lesser-known tracks may also set your hair on fire, most notably a wild version of East L.A. legends Thee Midniters’ classic 1966 raver “Jump, Jive and Harmonize.”

Among the other covers are rip-snorting takes on the Flamin’ Groovies’ “Jumping in the Night” and the Creation’s mod classic “Makin’ Time.” Several of the band’s own songs also punch through the speakers more strongly than did the original studio versions, including a dynamic “Now” that balances melodic verses with its jet-propelled chorus, and a stunning “How Long Will It Take” that puts together everything the Plimsouls were capable of in a single 2 1/2-minute blitz. “Beach Town Confidential” is a rarity, a live recording that captures a band at the peak of its powers and demonstrates clearly to the listener why it was special. And the Plimsouls at its peak was special indeed.

Case and former Nerves bandmate and power-pop master Paul Collins will be touring together this spring, including a March 7 date at The Echo in Echo Park.
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_19945682?source=rss

BLURT MAGAZINE (national music monthly and online site) – Positive 8/10 album preview
Plimsouls
Live at the Golden Bear 1983
(Alive)
www.alivenergy.com

With Live at the Golden Bear 1983, the Plimsouls catalog now contains as many live albums as studio LPs. This entry takes place in the months prior to the release of the L.A. quartet’s final (in its original incarnation) record Everywhere at Once, and includes material from that LP – “Oldest Story in the World,” “How Long Will It Take?,” “Magic Touch,” the instrumental “Hobo.” (EAO cuts “Shaky City” and “A Million Miles Away” had been set staples since 1981.) Of course, the band’s prior classics still stand tall, including “Now,” “In This Town” and, of course, “Zero Hour.” The album also includes “Who’s Gonna Break the Ice?,” an otherwise unrecorded, and quite excellent, new song.

The band also adds a passel of new covers to its repertoire, hitting on the Creation (“Making Time”), the Everly Brothers (“Price of Love,” sung by guests the Williams Brothers), the Flamin Groovies (“Jumpin’ in the Night,” with Fleshtones guitarist Keith Streng) and Bo Diddley (“You Can’t Judge a Book”). The group’s raucous version of Thee Midniters’ “Jump Jive and Harmonize” remains as well. The presence of that many covers might cause one to wonder about the band’s confidence in its own material, but give that singer Peter Case digs into other people’s songs with the same eagerness as his own, they might as well all be Plimsouls songs anyhow.

So the question is: what makes this live record a necessary purchase, given the release of Live! Beg Borrow & Steal and One Night in America? No real reason, except that it’s just an ass-kicking performance. [Boy howdy to that: speaking as one who saw the Plimsouls and interviewed them on this same '83 tour, this was a band to be reckoned with. - Archival Ed.]

Throughout, the band blazes away with all the fire and fervor of a group of dudes who looooove their job, and with first-rate material and an energy level nearly off the charts, Live at the Golden Bear 1983 is as essential as any other item in the Plimsouls’ catalog.

DOWNLOAD: “Jumpin’ in the Night,” “Who’s Gonna Break the Ice?,” “Now” MICHAEL TOLAND
http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/3633/

SOUND + VISION MAGAZINE  (national music monthly) – Positive album preview
This Week in Music, Feb. 7, 2012
By Brett Milano
The Plimsouls: Beach Town Confidential
Reissue (Alive)

Lovers of first-class power pop should welcome all the Plimsouls they can get, and this newly released 1983 show beats their studio releases for sweat and swagger. Along with their sole hit “A Million Miles Away” and the shoulda-been-a-hit “Zero Hour,”  there are ace covers from Everly Brothers to Flamin’ Groovies.
https://www.soundandvisionmag.com/photogallery/week-music-feb-7-2012?image=6

HYPERBOLIUM  (online music site) – Positive album review with album art and related links
The Plimsouls: Beach Town Confidential – Live at the Golden Bear 1983

The Plimsouls touring “Everywhere at Once” live in 1983

Fan’s of Peter Case’s early work with the Nerves and Plimsouls have been richly rewarded over the past few years. The Nerves’ original EP was issued in enhanced CD form as One Way Ticket, a rare 1977 Nerves live set was released as Live at the Pirate’s Cove, a transitional project with Paul Collins as The Breakaways was released as Walking Out on Love, and a blistering 1981 Plimsouls live set was released as Live! Beg, Borrow & Steal. The latter fleshed out the Plimsouls early ‘80s live set that was first essayed in 1988 on One Night in America. The group’s posthumous release catalog is now further expanded with this punchy stereo mix (from the original 24-track recording) of a 1983 show at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California.

By ‘83, the Plimsouls were a band with a catalog that included an EP and two full albums, all of which are drawn upon for a set list that reaches back to the EP’s “Zero Hour” and “How Long Will it Take?,” and “Now” and “In This Town” from their self-titled debut album. The core of the set draws from their then-current 1983 release for Geffen, Everywhere at Once, including the only released live recordings of “Hobo,” “Oldest Story in the World” and “Magic Touch.” Even more intriguing is the only known Plimsouls recording of the Peter Case original “Who’s Gonna Break the Ice,” a tune that was likely to have been the band’s next single. The set is filled out with a delectable selection of covers that includes The Creation’s “Making Time,” Moby Grape’s “Fall on You,” Thee Midniters “Jump, Jive and Harmonize” the Flamin’ Groovies’ “Jumpin’ in the Night,” Bo Diddley’s “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” and the Everly Brothers’ “Price of Love,” the latter with the Williams Brothers on lead vocals.

Case was in great voice and seems particularly enthused about the cover songs. But who wouldn’t be jazzed by the opportunity to sing favorite songs in front of this band? The Plimsouls had long since honed themselves into a superb live unit, transcending the major label gloss of their then-current album with hard-charging rhythms equally powered by David Pahoa’s bass lines, Lou Ramirez’s hard-pounded drums and cymbals, and the buzz of dual electric guitars. This set hasn’t the unbridled enthusiasm of their earlier live albums, but it more than makes up for it in energy and craft. Alive delivers the CD in a digipack with a six-panel booklet that includes vintage pictures, credits and an historical quote from Greg Shaw. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]
http://www.hyperbolium.com/2012/02/08/the-plimsouls-beach-town-confidential-live-at-the-golden-bear-1983/

TIME OUT CHICAGO  (Chicago Weekly) – Positive album review with album art and related link
Albums of the week:
The Plimsouls Beach Town Confidential

Peter Case is a king of power-pop. The Nerves are legend thanks to two perfect songs. They flamed out fast. His next band, the Plimsouls, built a rep on live shows. But unless you’re nearing 50, there was no evidence of this power until Alive Records started digging up live tapes for reissue. This full gig comes from 1983. On albums, the Plims sounded plastic, but here the band rips and roars like the Replacements (Case even looks like Westerberg on the cover). Well, with more sugar and less alcohol.
http://timeoutchicago.com/music-nightlife/audio-file-blog/15112413/albums-of-the-week-new-records-from-air-dr-dog-van-halen-an

WHEN YOU MOTOR AWAY (online music blog) – Positive album review and three related videos.
Review: The Plimsouls “Beach Town Confidential”
I’m generally not the world’s biggest fan of live records. But this recently uncovered live recording of The Plimsouls from 1983, being released Tuesday, Feb 7, documents a great band at the top of its game. In fact, it now stands for me as their definitive work, an amazingly perfect recording.

Beach Town Confidential takes you right there to The Golden Bear music club in the surfer party town of Huntington Beach in LA, to see local heroes the Plimsouls. I’m sure the weather was perfect, the girls beautiful, the beer cold and free flowing. You can feel the energy surging as the set progresses, palpable excitement in the air, temperature rising.

Here is some footage from a live performance in Pasadena also in 1983, of the Plimsouls performing “Inch by Inch” and their big hit “A Million Miles Away”:

Many of you may only know the Plimsouls from “A Million Miles Away”, a perfect power pop song, but they had plenty of arguably equally great songs, many captured on Beach Town Confidential – “Magic Touch”, “Zero Hour”, “Oldest Story in the World”, “Shaky City”, “In This Town”, and my personal favorite “How Long Will It Take?”.

The Plimsouls, and their gifted songwriter and leader Peter Case, came out of the fertile LA punk scene. They brought that spirit and energy to a much broader range, drawing from the very best of the preceding 25 years of music – The Beatles, The Byrds, 60s garage, surf rock, and R&B. Their reach is reflected in the covers here: Bo Diddley (“You Can’t Judge a Book”), Moby Grape (“Fall on You”), and one of my all times faves The Flamin Groovies’ “Jumpin in the Night”.

This release is so fresh and alive, hard to imagine it was nearly 30 years ago. It fits in remarkably well with a lot of the new stuff by very young bands that we write about here. If you don’t know the Plimsouls but love power pop, you must check this out. And this is an absolute must have for even the casual Plimsouls fan.

Here’s a second live clip of the Plimsouls from 1983, this time doing “Shaky City”, a song included on this new live disc, and “I’ll Get Lucky”:

Peter Case and Paul Collins (Case’s former partner in The Nerves, his band before the Plimsouls), are touring the country with a full rock band starting in March, playing songs from the Plimsouls, Nerves, The Beat and others. Not to be missed.

I’ll leave you with two more from that same 1983 Pasadena show, “Oldest Story in the World” and “Everywhere at Once”:
More info about Beach Town Confidential and the upcoming Peter Case tour dates here: http://www.ymlp.com/zWCSL2.http://whenyoumotoraway.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-plimsouls-beach-town.html

BLOG CRITICS (online music blog) – Positive album review and album art
Music Review: The Plimsouls – Beach Town Confidential

I love the introduction to this live album: “Introducing the hardest working band in show-business, The Plimsouls!” Their newly-released CD is titled Beach Town Confidential, and documents a performance at a venue called the Golden Bear in 1983. If there was ever a time to see this legendary band live, it would have been in ‘83. The performance smokes — and it just makes me sad that I was not there, because this is an album of straight-ahead rock ‘n roll that is just about perfect.

The Plimsouls were critical darlings from the start, which can sometimes be the kiss of death. But why they never caught on with the public at large still baffles me. They had the classic four-piece lineup; Peter Case (vocals, guitar, and some fine harmonica), David Pahoe (bass), Eddie Munoz (guitar), and Lou Ramirez (drums). They wrote what (to me at least) were timeless songs as well. The Plimsouls are best-known for “A Million Miles Away,” but they wrote so many other killer tracks that (for whatever reason) did not get the same exposure.

“Who’s Gonna Break The Ice?” is one example. On one hand, it is a basic 4/4 rock song about how to “get a chick.” On the other hand, though, there are all kinds of really cool rock references, especially towards surf music. I hear a tune like this and the first thing I want to do is play it for my friends. It’s like, “Can you believe that we never heard this before?”

The surf influence becomes even stronger during the guitar solo of “Fall On You.” They had many other touchstones going as well though. Although The Plimsouls were a much “poppier” band than their contemporaries The Replacements, both shared an obvious love of the music of Big Star. To this day I cannot figure out why that type of music never really caught on, but nearly 30 years later, I guess it is a bit of a moot point.

One ingredient of The Plimsouls’ music that makes it so special is the harmonica of Peter Case. He used it sparingly, so that it never became a gimmick. When he did bring it out, though, it always added a wonderful element to the music. I cannot even think of anyone besides ’60s-era Brits who wanted to emulate old blues guys, who ever included harmonica solos in their music (besides Dylan, of course). My point is that on the couple of occasions that Case does give us a “harp” solo, they are not mere affectations.

A very telling point of where this band was at in 1983 is the placement of “A Million Miles Away.” It is the tenth tune, played about three-quarters of the way through their set — and the audience’s reaction is as if it is just another great song. Today, that song would be what everybody plunked down their hard-earned cash to hear, and most likely would have been the closer.

While that little point may seem moot, it actually says a lot about the band, and its fans in 1983. The Plimsouls should have gone further than the dreaded “college-rock” genre they wound up in. Their recognition as a truly great American group happened long after they had split up.

Beach Town Confidential captures The Plimsouls in their prime. Listen to a song like “Now” and tell me that this was a band that wasn’t criminally ignored. This is a fantastic performance by a group who never really got their due. I’m preaching to the choir by telling Plimsouls and Peter Case fans that this is a “must.” But for fans of Alex Chilton, Rockpile, and even early (first two albums) Joe Jackson, Beach Town Confidential is an album you need to hear.

Beach Town Confidential is set for release February 7, 2012.
http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-the-plimsouls-beach-town/

MIDNIGHT TO SIX (online music blog) – Positive album review and album art.
The Plimsouls – Beach Town Confidential (Alive Records)
This is the second archival live Plimsouls set from Alive Records, following 2010 2s Live! Beg, Borrow & Steal. If you’re worried that having two live albums from the same band might be redundant, rest assured that both albums are worth owning, with just five songs in common from the setlist. Beach Town Confidential has the better sound of the two, with a thick and meaty bottom end that might even make you forget that it’s a live recording. It comes from a 1983 date in Huntington Beach’s Golden Bear club, and you can hear just how good the band had become at working a crowd into a frenzy with their hard-driving rock ‘n’roll. They play their big hit  A Million Miles Away , which is a great song, but I’m just as enthralled with  Who’s Gonna Break The Ice? , which sounds like Cheap Trick trading in stadiums for small clubs, and their thumping covers of The Creation’s  Making Time  and  Price Of Love , originally by The Everly Brothers (a big influence). This is fun and catchy music, made with classic pop song-craft and live-wire energy. Perhaps the best compliment I can give the album is that it makes me wish I was there, beer in hand, to see it in person.
http://midnighttosix.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/the-plimsouls-beach-town-confidential-alive-records/

THE SPACELAB TV (online music site) – Positive album review and tour news.
The Plimsouls – Modern Rock Since 1978, New Release Beach Town Confidential and Tour
By: Christopher Levine, author of “Eclectiblogs-Weekly Meanderings for Music Head Consumption” available on paperback at Lulu.com
February 4, 2012

The Plimsouls have been around the block.  With the chart topper “A Million Miles Away” they became a household name in the 1980′s, and the core members are still going strong.  Not only are they releasing a live album with never-before heard live tracks, but Peter Case and Paul Collins are taking the show on the road.

First, the album.  Beach Town Confidential, which was recorded at The Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, CA on August 13, 1983, will be out February 7th.  (And yes, fellow vinylheads there will be a version on wax too.)  16 tracks are included, and while it screams 1983-in a good way- it by no means sounds dated. Case and Collins are melding their various projects into a tour as well, including not just Plimsouls material- but stuff by The Nerves and The Breakaways, as well as material by The Beat.
http://www.thespacelab.tv/spaceLAB/2012/02February/MusicNews-013-Plimsouls

Singer/songwriter Martha Berner’s new year is off to a sterling start. With her new album, Fool’s Fantasy, and upcoming shows in Chicago venues, the out frontwoman of Martha Berner and the Significant Others is primed to take 2012 by storm.

Windy City Times had the pleasure of meeting this honey-voiced rocker on the rise.

Windy City Times: I love the album. I’ve been listening to it over and over, and wanted to say congratulations.

Martha Berner: Thank you. I’m really happy with it.

WCT: How did life in the Windy City affect Fool’s Fantasy’s creation? Do you see yourself as a Chicago artist?

MB: I do see myself as a Chicago artist. I’ve lived here for about eight years now. I moved here for music. I think this album is what it is because of the exact combination of the players involved in producing it. Every single member, each part that they brought, is so important and integral.

WCT: This album was mastered by Gavin Lurssen! This is a guy who’s worked with Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. What was that like for you?

MB: It was really, really exciting. It was kind of my long shot wish list: “Wouldn’t it be great to have this mastered by Gavin Lurssen?” So I called a good friend of mine out in LA—a fellow artist—and she’s friends with Gavin, and I said “What are the odds that I can get Gavin to master this for me?” She said, “Well, let me drop him a line.” And he agreed.

We flew out there and sat in the room; he had his three Grammys lined up on the wall and it was awesome. It felt like: “I’m giving the record the best shot I could possibly give this.”

WCT: Are there any queer artists whom you feel a particular affinity towards?

MB: There are so many great ones—certainly the folksier lesbian scene, the smaller artists. Probably more of the queer men. You know, stuff like The Smiths and Morrissey. And, obviously, women like Melissa Ferrick and Catie Curtis, some of the more indie folk rockers.

I don’t know: Where would music be without the queers? The entertainment business, creative anything? A day without queers is what the U.S. should experience at least one time. In protest to some of these human rights issues in our country we should have a day without the queers and see how everyone gets along.

WCT: Exactly!

MB: [ Laughs ] The day without gays! I mean the restaurants would close down, the flower shops—I mean what would everybody do?

WCT: Perfect. [ Laughs ] How has your identity as a queer woman influenced your songwriting?

MB: Specifically, there’s a song on the record called “Brave,” which is basically written about being gay, young and afraid, and trying to figure out how to come into my own and stand for who I was, and all of that going against who I was raised to be. I came from a very Christian family. So it was a really frightening experience for me growing up to realize that I was gay because… There’s one thing that my family was asking of me and that was to love God and love Jesus and not be gay. If you could accomplish those two things you were pretty alright.

Had I not experienced that discomfort… You have to sort of leave where you’re from, right? To give yourself the space and the room to explore who you are and who you want to be and shape your own vision of yourself. That was the impetus for the get-up-and-go that took over the next 10 years of my life. And exploring and moving and letting myself grow into the woman that I wanted to be.

WCT: The track “People Are Crazy” has such killer attitude. What was the impetus for that song?

MB: That was politically inspired. I started writing that song while Bush was still in office and just—you know—the jaw on the floor. [ Laughs ] His getting reelected was shocking and just the state of our country… Now, I think it still applies today to politics.

Your mind’s for the taking,

Your savior is waiting,

Try to take a sucker down with you-

It’s degrading.

That line is about the influence of religion in politics and the non-separation of church and state that drives me absolutely nuts in this country. People are crazy!

WCT: What aspect of your album is particularly accessible to the LGBTQ community?

MB: Certainly the song “Irene.” That’s just a very blatant song from a woman to a woman. The song “Brave” has been mentioned, specifically about my journey. [ Pauses ] The whole thing [ laughs ] the whole thing’s just so gay because I’m gay!

For some reason I was listening to a lot of Johnny Cash when I was writing that song. It’s my little folksy ballad, sorta like Ring of Fire. It’s about loving someone you’re not supposed to love.

WCT: The track “Some Stay Awhile” had such a personal pain to it, but also a sense recovery—of getting back on the horse. Many songs harbored a lovely, reflective quality. What journeys were you traveling as you wrote this album?

MB: What I was going through a lot of during that time was feeling a bit lost in my journey as a young adult trying to achieve all the things I wanted. So the song “Some Stay Awhile” is that no matter what happens, you get back up and you get back on your horse.

But what’s as important as getting back up on your horse is that you never lose the ability to laugh and enjoy also, because it is the journey and not the destination. The destination is important and you need to have a destination.

I think you also need to know that destination may change as your life evolves in different ways. But more importantly, are you enjoying yourself? That was my resolve. I know the things that I’m giving my attention and my time and my life to are worthy. That at the end of the day, it’s not about being rich or being famous. It’s about: Was it worth it, those things I sacrificed for? Did I live well? Did I love well? Did I laugh?

Berner is performing Saturday, Feb. 4, at Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln Ave., at 8 p.m.; and on Sunday, Feb. 12, at T’s Bar and Restaurant, 5025 N. Clark St., at 3 p.m. See www.marthaberner.com for more information.

The CD is available at Women and Children First, 5233 N. Clark St., Berner’s website or iTunes.
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Martha-Berner-The-journey-transcends-Fantasy/36027.html

When the late great Jerry Lee Lewis sang about “Great Balls of Fire,” he may have been alluding to a sound that a group of fine tuned enthusiastic musicians from LA named the Plimsouls would emulate in stereo form some 30 years down the road of rock n’ roll history. White hot blazin’ fire can best describe the sound of this largely influential Power Pop group that not only played in a style that borrowed from the licks and hooks of the Mersey Beat, but also put forth the soul and passion that harkened back to the classic sounds of Stax and Motown records, and even adding the kind of introspective tendencies of American folk rock. All this and more can be heard on Beach Town Confidential, a live record that will be released on Alive Records on Feb. 7th. Beach Town Confidential was recorded back in 1983 at the height of the Plimsouls’ popularity and just might be one of the best live records I’ve heard in quite some time. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to talk to lead singer and founding member Peter Case about the release of Beach Town and much, much more.. enjoy!

Hello Peter! I must say, I’m a huge fan of all your work and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to ask you some questions. Let’s start with the latest – On February 7th, The Plimsouls, along with ALIVE records will be releasing Beach Town Confidential, a live recording extracted from the vaults. Can you take us back to that night in 1983 when you guys recorded this record? What was going through your mind as you guys tracked this blazing performance? Was this just another normal Plimsouls gig or was it special in anyway?

Great to be talking to you! Look, the night we cut Beach Town Confidential we knew there was a 24 track recording being made, and that it would be broadcast across the country on the radio. We’d been on tour across the nation for our second album Everywhere At Once and this was the wrap up for that tour, sort of a homecoming party, and also a chance to make a great recording of our live show at the time, which everybody wanted us to get down on tape.

We’d played that club, The Golden Bear, a number of times, and it was always a blast: it was right across from Huntington Beach and Pier, so a lot of surfers and their girlfriends would come to the shows there… they rocked hard, and there was always a lot of drinking going on throughout the club, so that added to the atmosphere in a way.

We were road-tuned, wide awake, well rested, some new songs had been rehearsed, and the show was sold out way in advance, so we were really up.

Judging by the audience participation and the truly energetic performances on tracks like “Jump Jive and Harmonize”, the show featured on Beach Town Confidential must have been a whole lot of fun to not only play, but to watch from the audience. You guys even brought up some good friends from The Fleshtones and more.. How do you compare the live recordings and band performance of Beach Town to other Plimsouls live recordings like One Night In America or Beg, Borrow and Steal which was recorded a couple years prior at the legendary Whiskey A Go-Go?

Beach Town Confidential is the third in a series of live recordings of the band. I dig them, and they’re all different. Chronologically: One Night In America was the band on stage in Cleveland on our first national tour, early 1981. We were explosive, held nothing back, gave our all even though the place was less than half filled. People out there (it was Cleveland) hadn’t heard of us much yet, and we had a lot to prove. I love the covers on that one: The Outsiders “Time Won’t Let Me” done with punk intensity, Marvin Gaye’s “One More Heartache” played like a Howlin’ Wolf, and Jimmy Reed’s “Help Yourself,” a blues song I’d learned when I was a teenager.

The next one, the first released on Alive Records, is Live! Beg, Borrow, and Steal. It’s recorded at a gig sent out as a radio show from the Whisky A Go Go from late ’81. Every year back then seemed like ages… the five years the band was together seems like an epoch of time. Late ’81 we were really sailing into the high period of “A Million Miles Away” and all that. It was right before that one came out. Hometown crowd at our home club, Halloween, people screaming, over the top energy!

Beach Town shows the band at one of their peaks, ready for their close up, or prime time moment, whatever. It never really happened, for various reasons, business screw jobs etc… the career didn’t go down like we wanted, exactly, but we were ready…for absolutely anything!

While listening to Beach Town I was so excited to hear the band bust through an incredible version of the Creation’s “Making Time”! Obviously, the sounds of British Invasion were highly influential to your songwriting, but what initially drew you to the sounds of those 60’s pop groups? What other acts do you list has a big influence on your writing in the late 70’s and early 80’s?

The Plimsouls always showed our big influences, wearing what we loved on our sleeves. When I was growing up in Buffalo, most of the music I dug was getting played on the radio: Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, and the Animals, loved all of them… Bob Dylan was on top 40 radio with the hit songs “Like A Rolling Stone’ and “I Want You.” I was crazy about Stax, especially Sam & Dave, and Motown, including early Little Stevie Wonder, and the Temptations. James Brown was a hero. Aretha Franklin was in the mix every day on your transistor radio! And let’s not forget the great American bands like the Byrds, and Paul Revere and The Raiders (both produced by the great Terry Melcher) (The Raiders should be in the R+R Hall Of Fame!) and of course the Beach Boys. It was all on the radio, ALL THE TIME, and everybody was diggin’ it. I was already familiar and loved the greatest of ’50s rock and roll, my big sisters had been blasting it in the house my whole life: Chuck Berry, Link Wray and the Wraymen, Little Richard, Elvis pre-army when he was totally rockin’, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, the Everly Brothers. A little Hank Williams was in the air. I loved folk stuff like Joan Baez, and The Kingston Trio at a really tender young age. Those murder ballads broke my heart, and blew my mind. And later, blues, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jimmy Reed, all of which I got into ’cause of Elvis, the Stones and Dylan.

So that’s where I was coming from. My songwriting heroes were John and Paul, Mick and Keith, and Bob Dylan. The Stones were so great, they had great songs. Dylan pointed out a whole world to discover. And the Stax and Motown writers, like Issac Hayes, and Smoky Robinson. By the time of the Nerves we were digging Burt Bacharach’s more garage-y stuff (Little Red Book, the Manfred Mann version) and great garage songs like “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by the 13th Floor Elevators, and “Dark Side” by the Shadows Of Night. (the B side of “Gloria,” check it out).

One of the greatest things to happen in the ’70s was Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets collection, of American Garage -Punk hits. A huge record for me, and for most people getting in bands.. I already new about half the songs, they killed me. The songs were so great. It wasn’t the obscurity I loved, it was the greatness of the songs.

Let’s talk about the scene in Hollywood during the late 70’s.. Power Pop became a huge phenomenon and you were smack dab in the middle of it. What factors can you contribute to the fact that this music became so hot? Who were some of your favorite groups to share the stage with back in those days?

The LA scene was exciting in the late 70′s/ early 80′s. The bands that made it to the top of the local scene were all happening, you had to be good: The Blasters, the Plimsouls, X, and The Go-Go’s, were all pretty much at the top of the scene there. Tom Petty’d already gone national. The Nerves got there in the infancy of the whole scene, we put on a lot of the first punk shows with bands like The Zeros, the Germs, and the Weirdo’s on the bill… that was before Doug Fieger’s band, but we broke up before the whole thing totally took off. We were ahead of our time!

I wasn’t so into allegiance genres: I liked the best of punk, power pop, rockabilly, blues bands: all that stuff. I was into the artists, the bands: whatever was dynamic and great. All those bands I mentioned above crossed genre lines.

Do you feel that the culture of Los Angles had a big impact on the Plimsouls’ style, sonically and aesthetically?

LA was a great home then, though. The Nerves were so excited when we pulled in, January 1, 1977. We got off the freeway at Vine Street, after driving all night. “It’s the Capital Records Tower!” There was such a rock and roll legacy there, history everywhere: Gold Star Studios were all the great Phil Spector singles were cut, United Western Recorders was still going strong, home of Brian Wilson’s great Beach Boys sessions. When we got to town we went to Tiny Naylors Drive-In, where cute waitresses brought shakes and burgers out to your car. We couldn’t believe it. We knew that Brian had written hits there in that parking lot, with Roger Christian and others, 12 years or so previously. The clubs were still there, a lot of the people were still there. We met Kim Fowley and Rodney Bingenheimer just walking down the street on Sunset, and talked to ‘em, gave ‘em our record. And it wasn’t too long ’til The Plimsouls cut their first LP record at RCA Studios on Sunset, in the same room where the Stones had cut “Satisfaction,” “Last Time,” “19th Nervous Breakdown,” and “Paint It, Black.” The week we got there, Tom Waits was in studio C and Frank Sinatra was in studio A! Wow…

And Louie and Davido had grown up in the LA area, down in Paramount… a lot of aspects of our style and outlook were a result of what was in the air then. It was a rock and roll world city. It was so much fun to be in a band there and then. We ‘d helped to rebuild the scene there ourselves and then we got to enjoy it. The fans were great, we loved the other bands, we had so many friends, it was one of the best times ever, while it lasted…

Predating the Plimsouls you, along with Paul Collins and Jack Lee, formed the seminal power pop punk act the Nerves. What lead to the dissolution of the band and what promoted Paul and yourself to “Breakaway” and form the Breakaways?

The Nerves began in a different period: the scene was dead. In SF, in the Seventies, the hippie bands had still ruled, and no one wanted to hear rock and roll out of young guys like us, it was a lost art. I used to wonder “where is my generation?’ This was back in 1975, when we really got going. There was no one around to make a scene with. We started with our own ideas, and built everything from scratch. This was before punk, before the Ramones first came west. When Patti Smith came out we were already going, had cut our first record on our own label, the “Hanging On The Telephone” EP. I remember the day a truck delivered tour records from the factory, 5000 of them, stacked up boxes in our cellar on Folsom and Third… “how are we ever gonna get rid of these things?” It was very slow going at first.

Wish I had a few of them now, they’re worth a hundred dollars apiece!

We had a vision, based on pure teenage rock and roll, without all the extra phoney jive that was weighing it down then. It was ‘sposed to be like a hot-rodded, stripped-down super-version of everything we loved. We shared that, the three of us, great songs without the fake gimmicks, just the excitement, please! And that’s what we stood for, but after a while, Jack got scared and wanted to water down the concept, and I wouldn’t go for it. That’s the short version. He wanted to start chain-sawing the amps, and writing down to the audience, and I had to buck it, the original idea was too great.

So after trying to work it out for a while me and Paul started the Breakaways without Jack. It was basically the Nerves with a new guitarist. Paul and I had always worked well together. I was into making the band sound good, I loved coming up with parts that made the other guy’s songs work, like that bass line and harmony on “Working Too Hard.” That’s what a band member does; he’s always trying to make everybody else in the group look good. That what it means to be in a band, everybody moving in the same direction.

I’m extremely interested in the songwriting dynamic between yourself and Paul Collins. How did you guys collaborate in songwriting back in the early days? While the Beats’ first album features many tunes that the Breakaways originally recorded, the Plimsouls’ debut was chock full of new material. Had you been working on this record by yourself for a while, or was it a group effort to make the album when you joined up with Eddie Muñoz, Dave Pahoa and Louie Ramirez?

It was fun writing together, never difficult, the ideas just came. I don’t remember ever beating our heads against the wall or anything like that. ‘Tho I know we both worked hard on our own, long hours sometimes coming up and fleshing out ideas. For a while we lived in the same building, and I’d be in my pad working, and when I’d stop, I’d hear Paul up the well, in his pad one floor up, pounding away on an acoustic guitar, wailing, working on one of his. And then Paul & I started the Beat together, but I quit as they got signed to Columbia, for various reasons, you know, the old ‘musical differences.’ I felt like we needed to go our separate ways.

So Paul made the CBS record and I painted houses in Hollywood for a year and worked on songs, auditioned players, hung out with my girlfriend, and made friends with people, like the guys in 20/20, and Carla from the Textones. And eventually, I got my band together, and by January 1 1979 the Plimsouls were playing their first shows: five sets a night daily in El Monte California at a dive bar called The Place. And the songs came out of that period. I tailored the songs to what was going on with the band, so most of the older material was left behind then. I probably should’ve taken better care of it. But back then I was mostly just into the latest thing I was doing. I was always looking forward, wasn’t into looking back in any way.

You guys self-financed the original release of a “Million Miles Away,” a single that eventually got you signed to Geffen with “Everywhere at Once,” the Plimsouls’ second release. The album features some of my favorite Plimsouls tracks like “I’ll Get Lucky” and “Shaky City.” This, however, would be your last release as the Plimsouls til reforming in 1998 for Kool Trash. What happened to the Plimsouls after the release of this record and what eventually lead to your reformation?

And the Plimsouls were a great team… everybody contributed, and we were all on the same wave there, all through that time. Eddie, Louie, Davido and me… The Plimsouls could project rock and roll, it was very natural and believable with us, and that’s just the way it was. The whole was more than the parts, and when we were good, it was ’cause we were playing over our heads! That’s the way I always felt about it. It was like the ’69 Mets, if you know about baseball. We would play and play and play, gigs and more gigs, and then… it heated up, we’d get on a roll, and then: watch out! We could rock the place. That’s the way it was.

We continued through one more wild period after Beach Town… the 1984 tour. It was an explosive sound and show by then, but we were just getting no support in the business. The shows were packed, but we never got ahead, there were just so many problems, we were buried in trouble. We were all a little crazed by then, maybe me more than anybody. And other musical ideas were calling me. It became clear that the band wasn’t gonna go on the musical trip with me, we were kind of played out. At least it seemed that way. The songs I was writing were telling stories in a different way, it was a return to a thread I’d been on even before the Nerves. So I split… and some of the fans went with me and some didn’t. Now I’ve got a whole world of people who dig my solo music and don’t even know the Plimsouls. Maybe the band shouldn’t have broken up, nowadays people have side projects, but back then it wasn’t really done. I felt I had to make a choice, so I did. The end of one thing and the start of something else, that was late 1983, and then 1984, when all that went down.

Ten years later we got back together for a benefit, a tribute show to the Kinks, in Santa Monica. Clem Burke was on drums. Dave Davies (of the Kinks) was at the gig, and he said “wow, you guys sound just like my old band out there!’ And we kept playing after that, and still play whenever we feel like it: no sense in breaking up a perfectly good rock and roll band twice!

I’ve heard a rare demo of Phil Seymour covering your tune “Now,” a classic song on the Plimsouls’ debut album. For those readers who don’t know Phil Seymour, he was a contemporary of you during the early 80’s LA power pop boom, and a talented singer and session drummer. Did you ever share the stage with Phil, or have any anecdotes about him?

Okay, one detail: when the Plimsouls started, I wanted to be like the Who… guitar, bass, and drums, with a lead singer, and I wanted that singer to be… Phil Seymour. I didn’t want to front it, I just wanted to write the songs and play guitar, ‘make-show’ with the guitar, maybe sing some harmonies. It seemed like a great way to go. We were friends with Phil and asked him, and he thought about it for a while. During that time I wrote “Now” with my pals Joey Alkes and Chris Fradkin, and we had Phil in mind. We demo’d it at the Shelter Records studio, with the Plimsouls backing up Phil, and I thought it was great. I wish I had a copy of that! Phil liked it too, but wanted top billing: “Phil Seymour and the Plimsouls,” And I wouldn’t go for it. And he wasn’t gonna work under another band name after getting kinda left high and dry in the Dwight Twilley Band breakup. (People didn’t know he was the lead singer on so much of the DTB material.) So it didn’t happen, and I had to get off my ass and front the ‘Souls. It all worked out. But it would have been cool. I always loved Phil’s voice, he was a great rock and roll singer, no doubt about it.

After the Plimsouls split you went on to release a solo record in 1986, which would lead to a successful career and a slew of other records.. but the sound was much different than your work in the Plimsouls, opting for more roots oriented folk/blues sound. What lead you to develop this new sound? In performance, do you enjoy the intimacy of performing your songs solo acoustically and how do you compare it rockin’ out with a full band?

People wondered what was up when I went solo, but that music was in my head, and had been brewing there for years. My heroes when I was a kid were rock and rollers, but also the Beats, and deep blues singers, the super intense solo ones, like Lightnin’ Hopkins. When I was 16 I hitched rides from Buffalo to Boston in a blizzard to see Lightnin’ play… and it was a big part of my scene when I was street-singing in SF before the Nerves. I fell in with Mike Wilhelm from The (SF) Charlatans about 15 minutes after I got to San Francisco in 1973. He taught me about fingerpicking the guitar, about Robert Johnson, Reverend Gary Davis, and Mance Lipscomb: the pantheon of the great blues musicians, and all that stuff just killed me. It still does. Mike went on to join the Flamin’ Groovies, and he was always their mentor. And he was mine too. Now there’s a seminal musician: Mike Wilhelm. And my solo music is still rooted in that. It’s like that stuff, mixed with the rock and roll I dig, and it’s my own style of it. And the words are influenced by Ginsberg, Corso, Kerouac, Burroughs, all those guys, the really far-out-tellers-of-truth: the Beats. I’m into it like crazy, and audiences seem to be really into it, too. It’s intense as the Plimsouls, but in another way: it’s different, and it’s the same… when it’s happening it transcends all normal considerations. I dig the communication I get with audiences. And I like the life of playing solo, seeing the world, travelling with whoever I want to travel with, singing for people, getting it across to them. It’s kind of a dream come true. And I keep writing… I’m always most into the next thing, whatever it is.

At the beginning of March, you’ll be heading out on the road for an extensive US tour with Paul Collins to perform all the classic songs from the past. How did this tour come about and are you excited to play these songs again with your old band mate?

And now I get to rock out with my pal Paul Collins, and the band, and well, it’s going to be great, ’cause all those songs, they’re so fun to play. We rock because we can! We’re gonna play everywhere! And there you go…

Thank you so much Peter!

All the best.

http://www.ampmagazine.com/26393/its-gotta-be-pop-the-plimsouls-a-blog-by-kurt-baker/

Long before the Simon Cowell era, the members of the alternative rock band Camper Van Beethoven were the Santa Cruz musicians who had “made it.” Adorning their lively, all-over-the-map sound with an endearing sense of wit, they wooed the populace with a charmingly nonsensical ditty called “Take the Skinheads Bowling” (after all, isn’t it the angriest people who need a little constructive fun?) and a cover of Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” from their most commercially successful album, 1989’s Key Lime Pie.

With CVB’s 30th anniversary coming up next year, the band is playing a short run of smaller gigs—including two shows at The Crepe Place on Saturday, Feb. 11—to get warmed up for the release of its forthcoming record. The group recently began mixing down this as-yet-untitled album, the first we’ve heard from CVB since 2004’s New Roman Times. According to guitarist Greg Lisher, the band tried out a new approach to writing this time: “Back in the day, [vocalist/guitarist] David [Lowery] would bring his songs to us at rehearsal, and we would write our respective parts. So it was always pretty democratic in that sense, but it was all based on what David was bringing to the table.” For the new album, the band simply got together and came up with ideas on the fly: “Someone would throw something out, someone else would respond and someone else would play off of that.”

Lisher notes, however, that the new material “really sounds like Camper Van Beethoven.” As such, it’s just as eclectic as ever: Among other styles, there’s psychedelic music, prog-rock, surf and alt-country. “So, in a weird way, I know we’re really being true to ourselves when our music sounds like that, because that’s how we sound when we’re all working properly. It’s kind of a mess, but in a good way.”

The band’s Crepe Place appearances, which will also feature sets by the talented local indie-pop act Fainting Goats, are CVB’s first Santa Cruz gigs in several years. The band’s long absence can largely be chalked up to the various members’ distance from one another: Bassist Victor Krummenacher does layout for Wired magazine in San Francisco, violinist Jonathan Segel works for Pandora in Oakland, and Lowery teaches a music business class at the University of Georgia. Lisher, who’s preparing to release an instrumental solo, has lived in Santa Cruz since 1976.

Lisher’s involvement with various bands frequently leads him far outside the Santa Cruz bubble, though. One memorable example is a journey he took to the Middle East in November 2009 as a sub for Johnny Hickman, guitarist for Lowery’s alt-rock group, Cracker. “That was one of the weirdest, most incredible experiences I’ve had,” Lisher offers. He explains that during a two-week USO tour of Kuwait and Iraq, the group traveled “straight through all the roads where all the IEDs and improv explosives are—where all the shit is. We were just right there.” Lisher, who was and still is opposed to the war, says the experience was eye-opening. “It’s such a different landscape over there,” he offers. “I don’t know that us going there and imposing democracy really works, you know what I mean?” The guitarist adds that he was surprised by the vast number of contractors he saw in the Middle East. “You just realize that these bases are like infrastructures—they’re just like towns. And just like you would build a town here, to build a town there, you need all these people to do that.”

And what of the warring among CVB’s own ranks, which led the group to disband for the better part of the ’90s? Lisher claims that all the members of the group seem to be getting along at the moment: “For now it works … and that’s all you have really, is for now, you know what I mean?”

Camper Van Beethoven plays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11 at The Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. Tickets for the first show are $20; the 9 p.m. show is sold out.  For more information, call 429-6994.
http://goodtimessantacruz.com/index.php/santa-cruz-area-music/music-features-reviews-interviews/3483-camper-van-beethoven-review.html

SAC MUSIC BLOG (Sacramento music blog) – Brief show preview with band photo and related links
Camper Van Beethoven Lands In Sacramento
Pioneering indie rock band Camper Van Beethoven will be at Harlow’s on Fri. Feb. 10th. CVB will be unveiling brand new material from their forthcoming studio album – their first in eight years! (to be released this summer).
The details:
Fri. Feb 10 CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN 10pm
Harlow’s, 2708 J Street, Sacramento, CA
916-441-4693  – $20
In other related news, CVB’s frontman David Lowery recently posted his own amusing take about online music theft on his 300 Songs music blog, entitled “No more bullsh*t. The top 10 lamest excuses for stealing artists music.” You can read this enlightening post here.

 THE SACRAMENTO BEE (Sacramento daily) – Brief show preview
The Lineup
By Cathie Anderson
TONIGHT
California roots
Camper van Beethoven and Tempest
What: If you wanna play Harlow’s tonight, you’d better bring some California cred. The club plays host to Celtic rockers Tempest, who have their roots in the Bay Area, and alt-rock band Camper Van Beethoven (Redlands-Santa Cruz) in separate shows on the same evening.
When: 7 p.m. Tempest, 10 p.m. CVB
Where: Harlow’s, 2708 J St., Sacramento
Cost: $15 Tempest, $20 CVB
Contact: (877) 435-9849, http://harlows.com
http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/02/09/2716344/camper-van-beethoven-to-play-visalia.html

SACRAMENTO  365 (Sacramento A&E site) – Brief show preview with band photo
Camper Van Beethoven
Camper Van Beethoven is an alternative rock band that was founded in 1983 in Redlands, California, though the band soon moved to Santa Cruz, California. Camper Van Beethoven mixed elements of pop, ska, punk rock, folk, country, and acid rock into an eclectic, catchy and sometimes mysterious ensemble, years before the so-called alternative rock moniker came to mainstream attention.
February 10, 2012
Harlow’s
2708 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95816
http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/02/09/2716344/camper-van-beethoven-to-play-visalia.html

SANTA CRUZ.COM & SAN JOSE.COM (online A&E sites) – Show preview with band photo
Camper Van Beethoven
Sat Feb 11
The Crepe Place
6pm; 9pm
$20
With their aggressive musical pluralism and do-it-yourself attitude, Camper Van Beethoven has left an indelible mark on the face of indie rock. The band recently celebrated its deep local roots with the release of a three-CD box set titled The Santa Cruz Years, which features material recorded while they were students at UCSC. The band recently announced plans to record a follow-up to 2004′s New Roman Times. – Juan Guzman sanjose.com
http://www.santacruz.com/camper-van-beethoven-e1494881

SF GATE (San Francisco Chronicle’s website) –  Show preview withband photo
http://events.sfgate.com/performers/show/10234-camper-van-beethoven

THE FRESNO BEE (Fresno, CA daily) – Visalia show preview with band photo.
Camper Van Beethoven to play Visalia Feb. 12
By Mike Osegueda – The Fresno Bee
9:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 12 / The Cellar Door, 101 W. Main St., Visalia / $10 / ticketweb.com, (559) 636-9463

Pioneering indie rock band Camper Van Beethoven is reunited, working on a new album and making a tour stop in Visalia on Sunday.

The band was popular in the indie rock and college rock ranks in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Songs such as “Take the Skinheads Bowling” and “All Her Favorite Fruits” are favorites. The music is a mixture of pop, ska, punk, folk and more.

Camper Van Beethoven singer David Lowery also started another alt-rock band: Cracker. Lowery is back with this installment of Camper Van Beethoven as the band prepares to release its first album in eight years.

Also on the bill is Modesto alt-country band Not an Airplane, whose new album, “It Could Just Be This Place” earned a glowing 4.5-star review from Rolling Stone magazine in January.

http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/02/09/2716344/camper-van-beethoven-to-play-visalia.html

VISALIA TIMES -DELTA (Visalia daily) – “Best Bets” Visalia show preview with band photo.
1980s redux

Here’s a blast from the indie past. Camper Van Beethoven — the influential 1980s indie-rock band that played an eclectic mix of pop, ska, punk, rock and folk — will perform Sunday at The Cellar Door.

The band was inactive from 1990-1999, as frontman Dave Lowery hit the mainstream with his band Cracker. But soon, thanks to the Internet, his old Camper Van Beethoven songs were being covered by bands all over the world.

Luckily for their original fans and new fans alike, Lowery re-formed the band in late 1999. Though they are still performing songs from their legendary albums, such as “Key Lime Pie,” they’ve since recorded new music. This performance will mix the old with the new.

Details: Camper van Beethoven and Not An Airplane will perform at 9:30 p.m. Sunday at The Cellar Door, 101 W. Main St., Visalia. Cover: $10, 21 and older. Tickets: Ticketweb.com.
http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/article/20120211/LIFESTYLE/202110312

Most of the songs were written in the Swedish countryside where he and his (Swedish) wife have been staying with her family every summer. Although one would expect a pastoral tone, the music ends up as some rocking electric guitar-based tunes, evoking the big ’70s rock bands of the past, along with some more contemporary features thrown in.

The record was started by Jonathan working with fellow Camper Van Beethoven bandmate Victor Krummenacher on bass and guitar, and their SF Bay Area cohorts former King Missile/Moth Wranglers’ Chris Xefos playing some bass and doing the recording and mixing, and John Hanes on drums. As the project progressed, he got some backing vocal help from the Counting Crows’ David Immergluck, Baby Flamehead’s Eden Daniels and Espers’ Helena Espvall (who also contributed some cello). Built To Spill’s Brett Netson also delivers a show-stealing guitar lead on the track “I Know You Know Me (Hey You).”

At the end of the recording process, Jonathan used Kickstarter to fund the mixing, mastering and manufacturing of the CDs.

As part of this project Jonathan will not only be releasing the full-length All Attractions studio album, but also a seven-track bonus instrumental EP entitled Apricot Jam, an organic collection of improvised jamming between him (guitar), John Hanes (drums), fellow CVB alum Victor Krummenacher (bass) and Graham Connah (Hammond organ). The title is an obvious nod to George Harrison’s third LP in the All Things Must Pass set.

Jonathan Segel will be performing material from All Attractions as part of Camper Van Beethoven & Cracker’s CAMP-IN Music Festival at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA on March 1-3 2012.

All Attractions (vocal) Tracklisting:
1) (Ever and) Always
2) Hey You (I Know You Know Me) [acoustic version]
3) She’s A Peach
4) Listen
5) Singularity
6) What Goes Around
7) The Dark Torch
The Good One
9) Winter
10) I Know You Know Me (Hey You) [electric version]

Apricot Jam (instrumental) Tracklisting:
1) Apricot
2) Sunset
3) I Heart My Doghead
4) It’s Pretty Out There
5) Cloud, Heavy with Rain
6) Danger Machinery Starts Immediately
7) All Attractions

FOR MORE INFO ON JONATHAN SEGEL :
http://www.magneticmotorworks.com/
http://www.reverbnation.com/jonathansegel
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jonathan-Segel/118261062377

CDS AVAILABLE AT:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jonathansegel2
http://www.amazon.com/All-Attractions-Jonathan-Segel/dp/B006Z9434O/

DOWNLOADS AVAILABLE AT:
http://jsegel.bandcamp.com/

FOR MORE INFO ON CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN:
http://www.campervanbeethoven.com

FOR MEDIA AND INTERVIEW REQUESTS:
Tony Bonyata
Pavement PR
p: 262.903.7775
e: bonyata@wi.rr.com
http://www.pavementpr.com

Just because Martha Berner’s just closed a six-year gap between full-length studio outings, it doesn’t mean the singer/songwriter was inactive. In fact, she’s used the half decade and change to practically start from scratch, reinventing her already alluring folk flavorings under the umbrella of everything from insurgent country to organic rock and even some good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll and Stax soul. Much of the evolution comes from slogging it out on the local circuit and beyond, but another key element in the formula was the cementing of her supporting band, The Significant Others, with whom Berner shares co-billing throughout the new Fool’s Fantasy (Poprock).

“I never expected it to be six years since I put out my last full-length, and I actually had plans to make the next one shortly after [debut album] . . . this side of yesterday!” exclaims the troubadour by phone from her Windy City home. “In the end, what probably took an additional three years [more than I wanted] was just a shift in who I was working with and really wanting to differ this record from the others. [It's] not that one way was right and the other was wrong, but [I preferred] just to have a very cohesive and intimate band feel with musicians who knew the songs for awhile and experienced them live for a long time before going into the studio. Basically the timing isn’t always what we think it’s going to be as artists, and even though I’m kicking myself a little bit, I feel really great having it come out now and I’m excited for where the band is at.”

Berner’s idea for The Significant Others began with a call to longtime friend and collaborator Scott Fritz, who didn’t just produce Fool’s Fantasy but also played a slew of instruments (from guitar on down) and helped recruit the other musicians. Keyboardist Will Sprawls and drummer Tyson Ellert round out the group, contributing to the thicker, full-band feel and extra aggression when compared to past projects.

“The new music has a little bit more grit and edge that my other albums didn’t have, and it’s a little more rock ‘n’ roll,” confirms Berner. “I wrote all the songs, but the guys wrote their own parts and we all sort of co-produced it together. It’s still billed as Martha Berner & The Significant Others, but it definitely is a band effort. I see them as the special sauce, and I couldn’t achieve this sound without them.”

As for those specific sounds on Fool’s Fantasy, they range from the 10,000 Maniacs-styled title track to the smoky soul of “Some Stay A While” and the alternative country grit of “Cry.” On the other hand, “Where Does The Day Go” could easily fit alongside the easygoing indie pop of Feist, while “Irene” and “Burning Candles” recall recent collaborations of Robert Plant with Alison Krauss. (Because this collection features four-time Grammy-winning mastering engineer Gavin Lurssen, perhaps that last comparison is no coincidence.)

“I met Gavin through a good friend and fellow artist Erika Rose, and I flew out to L.A. [to work with him],” she explains. “It was super fun sitting there seeing his Grammys, and it was a real honor to watch whatever it is that he does. He seemed to really hang on to the textures, warmth, and depth, and not lose it in the compression process.”

Another area of depth comes on the songwriting side of the coin, which Berner culls from a composite of everyone from Leonard Cohen to Sinead O’Connor, The Sundays, Wilco, Bon Iver, and Rogue Wave. Lyrically, many of her tunes take a storytelling approach, and even though they’re coming from the perspective of a burgeoning artist hoping to make a mark on the world at large, Berner makes a point to relate to listeners from any walk of life.

“‘Fool’s Fantasy’ as a song and the record as a whole are my examination of life, not just for me, but people in general on a journey to achieve what they want in life,” she says. “It’s the song that kind of questions how do you know when to draw the line in your pursuit, whether that be a music career or relationships. How do you know when you should work harder or just walk away? [In my case], whether I’m foolish or not, I’ll carry on this [musical] path.”

Even if Berner’s yet to become a household name, she’s been making a push through multiple appearances at Austin’s gem-uncovering South By Southwest conference and Milwaukee Summerfest, plus an aggressive campaign to be heard on television programs, most notably MTV’s “The Real World.” Add in some WXRT radio airplay, mounds of positive press, plus a continual presence on the road, and the tunesmith is certainly popping up in all the right places.

“I think there’s a natural desire to push [my career] forward and achieve through that, even with the state of the music industry right now,” she considers. “There’s some great stuff going on and some tougher stuff, too, but I just want to strike a balance between being very driven and also really wanting to preserve my love for it. I always have something I’m working on, and at the end of the day, I want to love performing and writing and being in a band. It all ebbs and flows as it would for anyone, especially in today’s economy, but I’m going to keep on doing it.”

Despite having to weather the music industry’s uncertainty, Berner’s thankful for Chicago’s support over the past eight years she’s lived here, which follows a provincial Wisconsin upbringing, through spending time in cosmopolitan San Francisco, through more exotic locales like the Virgin Islands and Thailand. She attributes the frequent moves to wanderlust, though one has to question the tendency away from paradise and toward the wintry Great Lakes.

“Chicago is a very inviting and warm city and I love the Midwest strategy of picking yourself up by your bootstraps and cracking a good joke while you’re doing it,” she explains. “I love the drive and humor and, music-wise, I just continue to have great relationships with musicians in the city. Chicago has the big city opportunity, sophistication, and talent, but still the small-town hospitality. We back each other up, we’re all in this together and we have a good time above all.”

It’s all part of her fantasy.

Andy Argyrakis

http://illinoisentertainer.com/2012/01/interview-martha-berner/

Who guitarist Pete Townshend had a concept.

That statement on its own is not surprising. The British songwriter has penned some of the most ambitious music in rock history, such as the concept albums/rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia. But what might be his boldest concept was the never-completed Lifehouse project.

Lifehouse was to be the album that followed Tommy. Set in the future, the story involved a world that was falling apart, and rock music didn’t exist. While Lifehouse never came to fruition – though it spawned such classics as “Baba O’Riley,” “Behind Blue Eyes” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” – an outgrowth from the project was the Lifehouse Method. Townsend envisioned a future where people could input personal data into a machine to create an individual musical portrait. The intro to “Baba O’Riley” is an example of what this might sound like.

Sound far fetched?

Enter Lawrence Ball.

In 2007, Ball, an English composer, math tutor and founder of the Planet Tree Music Festival, along with Townshend and programmer Dave Snowdown, created a website called The Lifehouse Method. Active for 15 months, more than 10,000 unique works were created on-line by users having their data translated into music.

From this experiment came Ball’s own two-disc album Method Music (in stores this week), which he composed and recorded in parallel to the Lifehouse Method website, though he didn’t tap any of the users’ creations. The first disc – Imaginary Sitters – is a collection of 11, five-minute long tracks using the Lifehouse Method. The second disc, Imaginary Galaxies, expands on this concept with three meditative, ambient 20-minute songs.

BLURT recently spoke by phone with Ball, who was on holiday in Santa Fe. He helped clear up exactly what Method Music and the Lifehouse Method are and what it was like to work with Pete Townsend. And he shared one of his favorite jokes.

BLURT: What exactly is the Lifehouse Method?
LAWRENCE BALL: Pete had an idea 40 years ago now, that there could be a way for someone’s music to be created. You’d basically create the music of the person. There was no Internet then. Everyone thought he was nuts, as often happens to people with foresight. About eight years ago, he asked me, could I do it. So I said yes. It took awhile, but we got the system up on the web that would take a photograph, two sound files and a tapping of a rhythm.

When you say a person’s personal data is translated, what do you mean?
We had different ways we could have made these portraits. In the end we settled with something that’s more like an oracle than a psychological test with a questionnaire. We decided simply to ask people to input some things that were meaningful to them that would act as a personal interface to them, so that the program created a piece of music in a way that was connected to them.

When did you first meet Pete?
Pete and I have a common interest in wonderful California composer Terry Riley. He’s one of the most important composers of the last century. He turned contemporary classical music into something much more approachable. Pete and I both love his music, and I brought Terry over to my music festival in 1998, and approached Pete about sponsoring my festival that year, and he was delighted to do that. After that, Pete and I got to talking, and after five years of talking and discussing various things, he proposed I do this project for him.

Were you a Who fan or a Pete Townshend fan before all this?
Oh yeah. I grew up with the Who, and Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine, and all kinds of other things.

This might be a better question for Pete, but is what resulted what he envisioned?
Yes, he’s very happy with it. There was an email we got back when we first got it online, and we were able to input data and get pieces of music out. After 30 years of waiting, he was just enthralled.

Pete produced Method Music?
He co-produced it. I did some of the production, and his chief engineer Myles Clarke, who’s a brilliant engineer. It’s hard to know where engineering stops and production starts.

What was it like to work with Pete?
Well, he’s very intense. The meetings we had were really long and very exciting. He was very enthusiastic about the whole thing. He’s got a lot of energy. He doesn’t always agree with one. He’s quite tenacious. The experience as a whole was quite wonderful.

What was the role of Dave Snowdon?
He’s a brilliant programmer and computer systems guy, and he knows a lot about how to do things on the Internet. The Lifehouse Method was created with my musical design and his implementation skills. But he also made some very creative suggestions about how we should decide on certain things.

How long did it take to get the album put together?
The album was running in parallel with the portrait system. It took me about 20 months to create the music, and after that another 20 months was spent making the sound quality really, really good. It’s basically the same quality for my album [Pete] expects for the Who of his own music. It’s one of the most ambitious recordings ever made, actually.

On Galaxies, why did you choose to dedicate the songs to Syd Barrett, Hugh Hopper and Gyorgy Ligeti?
They’re people who have been hugely inspirational to me. Ironically, they all passed away during the time I was working on those pieces. As they passed away, I felt I needed to do something to mark my gratitude to them, and that seemed the best way to do it. For me, they all have a very important contribution to contemporary music.

Why was the site taken down? Why not leave it up in perpetuity?
One is cost. The way we had it set up was actually very expensive to run. Another one was Pete felt that it had had a good run and it was time to take it down. It wasn’t new any more. We’re hoping that at some point in the future the site will go up again and Pete will do what he’s been talking about on and off – what we call  a Method Concert, which is where people who’ve had their portrait done come along to a large concert and they hear their own piece made into a song.

Is what you’ve created here something that you can take on the road? Can you perform this? Do you plan to tour?
I have actually performed it. I performed in Austin this summer, and Santa Fe. They’re rather difficult to replicate with musicians or even with backing tracks. What I did was to perform with the album track itself, but to put new layers over it, which were improvised. That was extremely well received. I wasn’t initially convinced   that it could be performed live, but now I’m becoming convinced that it can be. But nothing’s arranged yet. It’s all up in the air at the moment.

Would you like to see this project continue? Would you do another Method Music?
That probably depends on Pete. It wouldn’t have tuned out the way it did were it not for his input, artistic and financial. It was a very ambitious recording, expansive recording. I expect maybe the possibility of doing another Method Music, particularly if this one sells well.

The reception and also to help finance another go at it.
I’ve calculated the relatively small percentage of Who fans that are willing to get as excited about what I do as they are about what Pete and the Who do is probably around 5 or 10 percent. But that’s still a large number of people.

Five to 10 percent of Who fans is a lot of people.
These days they’re getting more Google searches than the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

One last question. You have a number of jokes on your website. Do you have a favorite?
There are two goats on a rubbish tip, and they’re chewing through pieces of old rubbish, like tires and boots, just old junk, soft junk. One of them comes across a cannister of film, and he gets the plastic strip of the film out of the metal case and starts chewing through the plastic strip, having a great time. The other goat calls across to him and says, “Are you enjoying that film?” And he says, “It’s pretty good, but I really preferred the book.”

http://blurt-online.com/features/view/1073