BLURT's fave drummer steps out with collection of classic pop-influenced tunes.

By Blurt Staff

"I guess I've been writing songs since I was a kid," says Dennis Diken. "There are melodies and lyric ideas that I just can't get out of my head and some of them have been lodged there since I was five or six years old! But I grew up thinking I was just a self-taught drummer and that was my gig."

Diken, best known for providing the backbeat with New Jersey's Smithereens since 1980, has emerged from behind the drum kit to present the forthcoming album Late Music under the nom du disque Dennis Diken with Bell Sound. The recording, due out on September 29, 2009, will be issued by Cryptovision, distributed by Select-O-Hits.

 
Diken hastens to add, "Please don't call it a 'solo' album. This music was hatched by two musically like-minded guys." Fellow Jerseyan Pete DiBella collaborated with Dennis to bring 13 songs to fruition, reflecting their mutual love of classic pop and rock genres. "DiBella is an inspired musical talent, with a special knack for vocal arranging. I did my first home recordings with him in the '70s and we reconnected in the '90s. His ability to maximize a minimal recording setup is stunning. "Standing in That Line" was cut on a four-track cassette!"

While Late Music was created mostly in East Coast home studios, Diken headed west to complete the project at the famed Bomb Factory in Los Angeles. "Dave Amels (Stepford Husbands, Reigning Sound, Mary Weiss) helmed the sessions, producing and playing a bank of keyboards. We called on friends from the Wondermints (between gigs as Brian Wilson's band) to add vocals and instrumentation." Their sun-splashed spirit is evident, especially on "Let Your Loved One Sleep."

Other guests include multi-instrumentalist Andy Paley (co-producer of Brian Wilson's eponymous debut solo album).  "Andy lived and breathed a good chunk of this record. He literally dreamed parts for "No One's Listening" and dashed to the studio one morning after awakening with some magical ideas." The Honeys, Brian Wilson's most celebrated outside production, sing backup on "Tell All the Fools." "It was a thrill to have Marilyn, Ginger and Diane on board. They sound wonderful as ever." Popmeister Jason Falkner can be heard on bass and lead guitar on "The Bad Merry-Go-Round" and "I've Been Away," respectively. Other vocal contributors include Ben Jaffe of HoneyHoney and Jude Christodal.

 
The finely-wrought sound of Late Music owes much to The Four Freshmen, The Four Seasons, The Bee Gees and The Beach Boys. And Dennis Diken with Bell Sound's hat remains roguishly tipped to The Association, The Who and The Move. Yet Late Music remains their own thing. 

Diken is a founding member of the Smithereens, whose other remaining original members include Pat DiNizio and Jim Babjak, all of whom met in central New Jersey.

 
The release of Late Music also marks the relaunch of Cryptovision Records. During the mid 1980s, New York-based Cryptovision records rated in the top 25 of independent record companies and launched the recording careers of people like Sam Coomes (Elliot Smith, Quasi, Donner Party). Other notable Cryptovision artists are Flying Color, Optic Nerve, Stepford Husbands, and The Mod Fun. Virtually none of the 1980s Cryptovision records have been released on CD.  Dave Amels, former head of A&R, now company chief, states, "The goal of the new Cryptovision Records is to both reissue selections from the 1980s catalog in digital form and to release really great new music . . .music rooted in the deep American pop and rock ‘n' roll traditions."
 

Reflecting on Late Music, Diken adds, "I'm really proud of our work on this album. And I got to sing lead on most tracks. I guess you can say that vocals are my second love . . . next to playing drums."

Demos have been recorded, however.

By Fred Mills

Although there's been plenty of fresh R.E.M. news in the mix of late, from word about a new live digital EP to be followed in the fall by a two-CD concert set, to the recently reissued Deluxe Edition of Reckoning (see our review here), what people REALLY want to know is when will the next studio album arrive.

Not anytime soon, according to band pal and auxiliary member Scott McCaughey, who indicates that he and several of the other musicians, minus Michael Stipe, have done some recording but that there are no formal plans to cut fresh material until the end of the year - and that it would probably be 2011 before something hits the stores.

"We're basically on a year off," McCaughey told BLURT's Jud Cost, in a recent interview. "The tour ended around Thanksgiving. As it happens, we've gotten together to do a little recording, just throwing down instrumental tracks. We got together in Athens for a few days, then Mike and Peter came to Portland and Bill came down and we got a studio for a week and banged out twelve or thirteen instrumental tracks. They sounded really great.

"There are no plans to get into the studio again until the end of this year. I could see by January we might start recording. But the next record won't come out, I'm guessing, until 2011. They were just demos, but the stuff we recorded sounded fantastic, so we'll have to see what Michael comes up with."

You can read the entire McCaughey interview next week at BLURT, where he holds forth on R.E.M. along with his various other projects - the Minus 5, the Venus 3 (w/Robyn Hitchcock), Young Fresh Fellows, etc.

The Dinosaur Jr/Sebadoh/Folk Implosion dude dives into the "unknown"...

By Blurt Staff

On October 6, Merge Records will release Lou Barlow's new album, Goodnight Unknown. In the four years since his career-redefining, mostly acoustic record Emoh, Lou Barlow has reunited with Dinosaur Jr. and reissued three of Sebadoh's classic albums. But as the brilliant new Goodnight Unknown illustrates, he's hardly living in the past. Borrowing the live-band energy of Dinosaur Jr. and the stylistic reach of Sebadoh, Barlow has built on Emoh's full production and written a set of immediate, melodic pop songs that Lou describes as, "a cross between my later work with Folk Implosion and my earlier work with Sebadoh...to my ears, anyway."

From the surging opening track "Sharing" to the surprisingly soulful performances on "The Right," Goodnight Unknown benefits from Barlow's tunefulness and his decision to record the record relatively quickly, with old friends and new. The Melvins' Dale Crover adds inspired drum work throughout, and Goodnight Unknown's urgent sound owes just as much to frequent Barlow collaborator Imaad Wasif (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, alaska!). The record's considerable power also stems from the new talents on board, including producer Andrew Murdock and Lisa Germano.

Lou Barlow + The Missingmen will be on tour throughout the fall opening for Dinosaur Jr. The Missingmen are guitarist Tom Watson and drummer Raul Morales. Lou "stole" them from Mike Watt for this tour, and is excited to be bringing you the full band experience of Goodnight Unknown.

Goodnight Unknown Track Listing: 

1. Sharing 

2. Goodnight Unknown 

3. Too Much Freedom 

4. Faith In Your Heartbeat 

5. The One I Call 

6. The Right 

7. Gravitate 

8. I'm Thinking... 

9. One Machine, One Long Fight 

10. Praise 

11. Take Advantage 

12. Modesty 

13. Don't Apologize 

14. One Note Tone 

Lou Barlow + the Missingmen on Tour:

09-30 Toronto, ON - Phoenix Concert Theatre

10-01 Montreal, QUE - Pop Montreal Festival

10-02 Cambridge, MA - Middle East

10-03 Cambridge, MA - Middle East

10-04 Clifton Park, NY - Northern Lights

10-07 New Haven, CT - Toad's Place

10-08-09 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club

10-09 Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts

10-10 Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall

10-11 Pontiac, MI - The Crofoot

10-13 Madison, WI - The Majestic Theatre

10-14 St. Louis, MO - The Pageant

10-15 Chicago, IL - Vic Theatre

10-16 Louisville, KY - Headliner's Music Hall

10-17 Atlanta, GA - Variety Playhouse

10-26 Kansas City, MO - The Beaumont Club

10-27 Omaha, NE - Slowdown

10-29 Boulder, CO - Boulder Theater

10-30 Fort Collins, CO - Aggie Theatre

11-03 Tempe, AZ - Marquee Theatre

11-04 Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern 

11-06 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore

11-07 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom

Benny and Bjorn wanna be free of emperors and kings, and, oh yeah, they want you to come check out their new musical.

By Blurt Staff

Here at BLURT, we got juice - so much juice, in fact, that the goddam Consulate General of Sweden is in regular communication with us. You know, about which of his fair country's bands (who seem to be invading us with increasing frequency) are hip and which one are drips. Stuff like that. In return, he passes along exclusive news tips to us, such as the one below, reproduced verbatim.

***

A Note From Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus

Dear Friends,

If you wanna be free of emperors and kings!

Leave the kings and emperors behind you

Don't let'em tie you down and clip your wings

Don't let'em shackle and bind you

That's how Karl Oskar and his younger brother Robert saw America. Kristina, Karl Oskar's wife, was more hesitant and inclined to look back:

Voices whisper behind me

They remind me

Every night

Of another existence

Far in the distance

It comes in sight

Now I see them clear

My folks at the crossroads waving

Losing their child forever

I see them cry

It's as if they're here

My people of time gone by

They come to me when night is falling

Twilight images calling

They crossed an ocean and so will we, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, with the musical about these immigrants from Sweden, who are so famous in the country they left. Made immortal by Vilhelm Moberg, on whose novels the musical, "Kristina", is based. Writing it back in the beginning of the nineties, we always saw it as an American story just as much as a Swedish one. And it was always our dream to be able to introduce "Kristina" to an American audience. Now, at last, the time has come. In musical and lyrical form, in two concerts at Carnegie Hall, we will proudly present our musical on the 23rd and the 24th of September.

We are very fortunate to have the original Kristina, Helen Sjöholm, with us and the English tenor Russell Watson will sing Karl Oskar. They will be backed by the American Theatre Orchestra and choir, conducted by Paul Gemignani.

Swedish ancestry or not, we look forward to seeing you there!

Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus

Releases 12-inch EP on July 28.

By Blurt Staff

Hydra Head's heavier than heavy artist Cave In is back after a nearly four-year hiatus. As the label puts it, the metalcore group has "officially un-disbanded." And to mark the occasion, ther's a new limited-edition 12-inch EP en route from the band on July 28.

Titled Planets of Old, the platter is already getting the old hype-a-rooney, with Hydra Head predicting "this one-hundo-eighty gram specimen is guaranteed to enter the endangered rankings upon inception" and become a hot eBay item.

We have no problemo with that!

It's preceded by the "Retina Sees Rewind" digital single, which hit iTunes today.

Track Listing:

1. Cayman Tongue
2. Retina Sees Rewind
3. The Redtrail
4. Air Escapes

Promoting recent Matador album The Eternal.

By Blurt Staff

Sonic Youth, currently featured on the cover of the new Fall issue of BLURT, will be playing live tonight at D.C.'s 9:30 Club, and NPR Music will be webcasting it as it happens. Details below, or go HERE to NPR's Sonic Youth page.

WHAT:           NPR Music's "Live in Concert" series continues with a live performance from influential alternative rock band Sonic Youth.  All Songs Considered's Bob Boilen hosts the show, which will be streamed live and archived at www.NPR.org/music

WHEN:           TONIGHT, July 7 at approximately 10:00PM (ET)

WHERE:        Live at NPR Music.  The concert is being streamed live from Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club.

Heartless Bastards, Sonic Youth, Kinky, Magnolia Electric Company, Miike Snow, Serengeti & Polyphonic, Foreign Born

By Blurt Staff

It's officially New Music Tuesday at BLURT, which means, quite logically, you can hear some new music today (Tuesday, duh) at BLURT.

What, pray tell, is the new music in question? Glad you asked! Glom onto these ace MP3s:

Heartless Bastards and Sonic Youth - If I were a carpenter (Tim Hardin cover)

Kinky - Those Girls (featuring Money Mark)

Magnolia Electric Company - Josephine (off Josephine, Secretly Canadian)

Miike Snow - Animal (off Animal, Rcrd Lbl)

Serengeti and Polyphonic - 2 x 2 (Alias Remix) (off Terradactyl, Anticon)

Foreign Born - Vacationing People (off Person to Person, Secretly Canadian)

Just click on the BLURT Radio icon on the right-hand side of our homepage and wait for the music player to pop up in a separate window. Then enjoy some fine listening!

And check back every week, same BLURT-time, same BLURT-channel, to hear the latest streaming goodies, all personally netted, vetted and hand-selected by our trained staff of highly evolved primates. Why? Because at BLURT, we care.

Referred to by some as "music's biggest bastard".

By Fred Mills

Allen Klein, the tough-talking, cigar-chomping, no-nonsense former manager for both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, died Saturday (July 4) in New York. He'd been suffering from Alzheimer's and was 77.

Klein's career in the music business was as controversial as it was long. As far back as the late ‘50s he was known for extracting, via a mixture of legal wrangling and outright bullying and intimidating, royalties and other moneys owed by record labels to his clients, who included in addition to the Beatles and the pop crooner Bobby Darin, soulman Sam Cooke and British Invasion stars Herman's Hermits and the Dave Clark Five. (A good summary of Klein's travels through the industry can be found at his Wikipedia entry.) His tenure handling the Stones ran from the mid ‘60s through 1970, at which time the band fired him, setting up a lawsuit on Klein's part that resulted in his taking ownership to the rights of the bulk of their pre-1971 back catalog (hence the ABKCO label, which continues to reissue all the early, classic Stones albums and reap enormous annual profits year after year).

The Klein-Beatles years make for a tangled tale marked on the one hand by John Lennon's initial insistence that Klein would be the right man to take over their chaotic financial affairs (e.g. Apple Corps, Apple Records, etc.), and on the other by Paul McCartney's continual mistrust of Klein, thereby setting up - or at least help fuel - the events leading to the Beatles' demise. Over the years Klein has been known to many as the man who broke up the Beatles, which is probably a stretch but not necessarily a badge of dishonor to Klein, either, who in interviews over the years seemed to relish his badguy role. The fact that he worked with both George Harrison and John Lennon & Yoko Ono in various capacities post-breakup would suggest that like him or not, people came to him to get the job done.

According to the BBC, Klein was once quoted as saying, referring to his reputation, "Don't talk to me about ethics. Every man makes his own. It's like a war."

The New York Times once described Klein as "the toughest wheeler-dealer in the pop jungle."

Klein subsequently dabbled in concert promotion and film production while continuing to poke his head into the affairs of the music industry - he bought the rights to Phil Spector's songwriting catalogue in the 1980s, for example. And he refused to go quietly later in life, either. His reputation as a shark-like litigator preceding him, he came down hard on the Verve in the late ‘90s when their song "Bittersweet Symphony" became a worldwide hit; as it also contained a prominent, but unauthorized, sample from the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time," a song owned by ABKCO, Klein successfully sued the Verve to gain 100% of its royalties - then he turned the song into licensing gold via its use in ads by Nike and a British automaker.

Although Klein continues to be reviled in certain quarters even in death (one obituary headline this weekend read "Death Of Music's Biggest Bastard," although a credible case could be made, alternatively, for Suge Knight), arguably the music would have been just a bit less colorful without his maverick presence. Didja know that John Belushi's badass "Ron Decline" character in the Rutles film All You Need is Cash was based on Klein?

It's only rock ‘n' roll, but, hey...

September event will feature national and Portland-region acts.

By Blurt Staff

Willamette Week's Musicfest NW announces this year's festival line-up which will be held at various venues around the Portland, OR metropolitan area on September 16, 17, 18 & 19. Among the notable players already lined up: Sunny Day Real Estate,  Explosions In The Sky, Beach House, Girl Talk, Bad Brains, Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Mudhoney.

Full details can be found at the MFNW official site.

MFNW's ultimate aim is to provide Portland with a unique and special musical experience that features all types of acts including nationally renowned artists while still honoring and supporting the special musical scene of the Northwest. Seattle's KEXP (www.kexp.org) radio will broadcast live from Portland at The Doug Fir Lounge September 17-18 during MFNW, with live performances from artists playing the festival.

Confirmed thus far:

Sunny Day Real Estate

Explosions In Sky

Bad Brains

Girl Talk

The Get Up Kids

Will Sheff (of Okkervil River)

Dirty Three

Monotonix

Mudhoney

Frightened Rabbit

Twilight Sad

Dillinger Four

Swollen Members

Grand Duchy

Beach House

John Vanderslice

The Long Winters

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

Pink Mountaintops

OM

Portugal The Man

Viva Voce

The Builders and The Butchers

Langhorne Slim

Bobby Bare Jr.

Chairlift

Loch Lomond

Team Dresch

Erase Errata

J.D. Twitch (Optimo)

Eluvium

Youth Group

Titus Andronicus

The Zeros

Mount Eerie

Trash Talk

Despise You

Crom

Japanther

Mayer Hawthorne & The County

Grouper

Richard Swift

Austin Lucas

Amazing Baby

Brother Reade

Love Language

Anders Parker

The Morning Benders

The Miniature Tigers

Common Market

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey

We Were Promised Jetpacks

Say Hi

Rocky Votolato

Cymbals Eats Guitars

Copy

Red Fang

Saviours

Norfolk & Western

Nurses

Explode Into Colors

Portland Cello Project

Guidance Counselor

Fences

And much much more....

Groundbreaking Prog album now to include unreleased tracks.

By Blurt Staff

On August 11 Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera's Expression Records will release The 801 Series, comprising 801 Live Collector's Edition, 801 Manchester, 801 Live @ Hull and 801 Latino. All four albums have been digitally remastered and repackaged with extras. The original classic album, 801 Live, is presented in a book form with an extra CD containing previously unheard rehearsal footage from Shepperton Studios as well as new photographs and text.

 
Phil Manzanera explains the origin of the series: "Over the years I've been sent photos from these gigs, which led me to go back to the original concert tapes, and then [fellow band member] Bill MacCormick came across yet more photos and struck gold with the audio of the 801 Shepperton Studios rehearsals.  So that was the impetus for this 801 Live  Collectors  Edition and series."

801 Live was originally released in 1976 to rave critical reviews and an enthusiastic reception by Prog fans and Anglophiles. It boasted material penned by Manzanera and MacCormick as well as songs by Brian Eno (then a member of the group), the Kinks (a Prog-rock take on "You Really Got Me") and the Beatles (likewise, with "Tomorrow Never Knows").

In 1976, while Roxy Music had temporarily disbanded, 801 (also referred to as THE 801) got together as a temporary project and began rehearsing at Island Studios, Hammersmith, about three weeks before their first gig. The name of the band was taken from the Eno song "The True Wheel", which appears on his 1974 solo album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). The refrain of the song -- "We are the 801, we are the central shaft" -- reportedly came to him in a dream.

The original sextet included Manzanera, Brian Eno, Bill MacCormick, Francis Monkman, Simon Phillips and Lloyd Watson, and after a warm up show in Cromer in Norfolk, that line-up played just two gigs - at the Reading Festival (with John Peel acclaiming them 'the musical high point of the weekend') and at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. This memorable concert was subsequently released as '801 Live'.

Appearing at the height of the punk rock revolution in the UK, the LP was not a major commercial success, but it sold well throughout the world, due both for the superb performances by the musicians and for its groundbreaking sound quality.

(Although live albums were by then becoming increasingly sophisticated in their production -- thanks to the advent of portable multi-track recorders and mobile studios -- most were hampered by relatively poor sound quality. Up until this time, the standard procedure for both front-of-house mixing and live recording was to capture the sound of amplified instruments such as guitars by placing microphones in front of the amplifiers. Although many superb performances were captured, the results were still markedly inferior to studio recordings and live recordings often suffered from a range of problems such as distortion, noise, sound "leakage" between instruments, poor separation and intrusive audience sounds.)

As Melody Maker put it at the time, "During the concert, these people collectively reached a point where virtually anything is possible. The music seemed to me to embody all the virtues of the very early Roxy Music, with the freedom to try and the freedom to fail. Except that now they're more confident, more able, more eloquent. Manzanera, Eno, and the rest of the "school" to which they belong have, if they wish, a lengthy and increasingly fascinating creative life ahead of them. As the words of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows' suggest, "801 Live" may well be simply the end of the beginning."

 

Track listing:

CD 1 - Lagrima, T.N.K, East Of Asteroid, Rongwrong, Sombre Reptiles, Golden Hours, The Fat Lady Of Limbourg, Baby's On Fire, Diamond Head, Miss Shapiro, You Really Got Me, Third Uncle.

CD 2 (Recorded at Shepperton Studios during rehearsals Aug 23rd 1976) - Lagrima, T.N.K, East Of Asteroid, Rongwrong, Sombre Reptiles, The Fat Lady Of Limbourg, Baby's On Fire, Diamond Head, Miss Shapiro, You Really Got Me, Third Uncle, Lagrima (Reprise)