Lannie Flowers

Flavor of the Month Remixes

Big Stir Records

This bonus CD comes with the vinyl version of the album, and this review is for the remixes only as they aren't available commercially, just with the LP. My review of the original version still stands. If anything, these songs are even more emotional now, and “Summer Blue” is just wonderful.

I have an untrained ear for remixes; I'm not an audiophile. While I hear many more instruments, like guitars, higher in the mix than before, what comes through the most is how loud it sounds now, mixed for the radio and other media services.

And it all sounds fine. It's a good reason to revisit this album, and no matter what version you have, I’d pick this up. You can't ever go wrong with great pop, no matter how it’s mixed or remixed.

Andrea Weiss

 Nick Frater

Stuck In My Ways/God Save Miss America

Big Stir Records

The A-Side, from his current album Aerodrome Motel, is about adult male mental health, with a melody that makes the song zip right along, and rather bittersweet lyrics. The music is rollicking and it’s easy to empathize with the protagonist here, and even get some insight into your own mental health.

The B-Side, however, isn’t just a preview of his upcoming album, it’s a gem about an outsider. Nick is from the UK, looking at the US and wondering WTF is going on politically. You’ll find yourself nodding and thinking ”you and me both, Nick, and I’m American,” while the music rolls along very purposefully.

With two great songs--the B-Side a must-hear if you are progressive politically--it's another single that hits the target.

Andrea Weiss

 Michael Simmons

Happy Traum EP

Big Stir

Happy Traum is a 60s folk singer who, along with his brother Artie, came out of the same Greenwich Village folk scene as Bob Dylan, but this EP isn’t a tribute to him. This is an EP by a 90s Dutch power pop band named Daryll-Ann. Simmons has covered the entire EP.

While the Daryll-Ann originals are very good, reminiscent of Aimee Mann’s 90s collaborations with Jon Brion, I prefer Michael’s covers; they're a little tougher, more contemporary, and I like his singing a bit better too. I would start with this EP, then go to the originals, which are on various streaming services and on CD. They deserve to be heard, as well as the cover EP, to hear Simmons having fun and paying tribute to a band he loves.

Andrea Weiss

 I first heard this debut band Crossword Smiles on the single “Parallel Lines” and was intrigued by all the combinations. It's very smart to link college rock, early REM, Steely Dan, and Fountains of Wayne.  The album is just as intriguing and good--a wonderful debut that is very memorable.

The band was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.

Andrea Weiss: How did the band form?

Tom Curless: It really started as a casual conversation that Chip and I had about forming a side project. We play in other bands together but we both had songs that would fit better in another type of environment, so we decided then and there to form a new band! Crossword Smiles was born.

Chip Saam: The band formed out of a shared love for the sound of several bands we felt wasn’t necessarily present in the independent music we were hearing: The Go-Betweens, Freedy Johnston, and The Cars among others. We’re both huge music nerds. Tom and I play in several different bands together and at some point I suggested we try writing some stuff together. We each brought a handful of songs to the songwriting sessions and by the time we were done we had formed Crossword Smiles, as the songs didn’t fit with any of our other projects.

AW: Who are your influences?

TC: Initial influences for this record: The Go Betweens, Grant McLennan solo, Freedy Johnston, Joe Jackson, The Cars, and Chris Stamey.

CS: I’d say The Go-Betweens, Freedy Johnston, Del Amitri, Crowded House, and a little bit of the Pernice Brothers thrown in there.

AW: I hear a lot of Steely Dan, REM, and Fountains of Wayne in your sound, which is great. Are they influences too?

TC: Those bands are all fair game, definitely a bit of early REM in there, and we have always admired Fountains of Wayne. The Steely Dan comparisons are a surprise (and we have heard this more than once). It was not our intent but we will take it all day long! A happy accident perhaps?

CS: I absolutely love the Steely Dan reference. I always thought Tom’s guitar solo on “Parallel Lines” could have come from an Aja outtake. But I’m a big fan of sophisti-pop--bands like Prefab Sprout, China Crisis, Danny Wilson, Swan Dive, etc.--and a lot of the bands in that genre pray at the altar of Steely Dan. Maybe some of that rubbed off on how we approached the songs. REM I think has probably influenced every band of our generation, both in attitude and sound. The Fountains of Wayne influence is a badge of honor too--one of our favorite bands. I know that, especially with lyrics, both Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collinwood have had an impact on my songwriting.

AW: Most of your songs are bittersweet, which I like. What is it about that contrast that you like?

TC: I think Chip and I both appreciate the mixing of the dark and the light. I tend to start with a cynical point of view or idea, but then try to find something positive in the situation, so it ends up as a bittersweet vibe.

CS: I think the mixture of happiness and sadness makes for a better lyric than a pure notion of either. I love to read books with a bittersweet storyline as well. The reality is that that is more representative of how life goes--most good things have some kind of cost.

AW: Songs like “Take It On The Chin” and “Girl With the Penchant For Yellow” are happy, though, which is also good. Did you want a balance of happy and sad?

TC: Both of those songs are Chip's ideas, so he just must be a happier guy than me! Ha! Some of his songs are stories, à la "Eleanor Rigby," maybe partly inspired by true events, but also partly made up. But maybe I am way off. I will let him answer this one! Ha! I don't know that we planned any balance of happy and sad but it ended up this way.

CS: Both of those lyrics were definitely intended to be encouraging to the underdog in everyone. The story of persevering is one most of us can relate to. Typically, when you’re putting songs together for a project, I think there is an attempt to balance both emotions and tempos of songs but honestly these songs all just kind of felt right from the get go.

AW: Jangle pop seems to be a big part of your sound, as well as 80s college rock. Why did you choose that era?

TC: Jangle pop in the mid to late 80's was a really cool time in music. It was really quite a scene for a few years, led by REM when they were on IRS. Bands like Let's Active and the DB's. I also include the Replacements in the college rock category; they were a breath of fresh air in the mid to late 80's.

CS: I don’t think that we chose it so much as it was a natural extension of our influences. Jangle pop bands like The Windbreakers, The Reivers, The Bats, and The Chills from the 80’s were really some of the first bands I fell in love with. The bands that influenced them--The Byrds, Big Star, The Beatles--all had a jangle component. The Rickenbacker guitar became this magnet to my ears, and where you find a Ric you’re gonna find jangle. Same goes for college rock. Bands like The dB’s, Let’s Active, REM, The Smiths, The Bangles, The Church, Game Theory, The Replacements, Wire Train, Romeo Void--that’s when I really fell in love with music.

AW: Did your band name come from the Cars song “Dangerous Type?”

TC: Yes, nice spot! We are both huge Cars fans and it seemed appropriate!

CS: What Tom said!

AW: Do you have plans to tour?

TC: We would love to tour behind the record, but unfortunately it's just not feasible at this point. We are planning on playing some shows to promote the record, and we are willing to travel out of town to play, but it has to be the right opportunity. Thanks, and I am glad you are enjoying the record!

CS: We have just started to talk about a record release show here in Michigan. We’d both love to do shows is some select markets if they made sense. We’ve played in other bands in Detroit, New York, Chicago, and Indianapolis, so who knows? Thanks so much for taking an interest in the record!

 Crossword Smiles

Pressed and Ironed

Big Stir Records

You wouldn’t think an amalgam of Fountains Of Wayne, Steely Dan, and early REM and other jangle pop bands would work, until you hear Pressed and Ironed and find that it does. And very well, too.

The lyrics are about relationships, and and while they’re a lot more serious than FoW, the band also has a knack for satire, like on “This Little Town,” which is also reminiscent of the Go-Betweens' “Stress of This Town.” But mostly they’re Dan-like: friendly but curt, wry but sensible, pointed but gentle. All are a joy to hear, as the Dan’s lyrics are punchier than most people realized, but now everyone will.

While the lyrics on the jangle pop/college rock songs are sometimes Michael Stipe-like, I also hear the Connells, which makes for a unique blend. This style of music should be explored more by today’s bands. It’s too good not to.

If the combinations make you shy away, don’t. This is a great debut of a band fully formed. They know what they want and how to play it, and as someone who’s been waiting too long to hear something like this, I welcome it. It’s likely that you will too.

Andrea Weiss

 Lannie Flowers

Lost In A Daydream single

Spyderpop Records

Flowers’ album Flavor Of The Month, released earlier this year, is getting reissued on vinyl and includes a CD’s worth of alternate mixes. With this single, the new version is the A-side and the original album version is the B-side.

Full disclosure: I am no audiophile, and have a slight hearing loss in my right ear, but my hearing is fine in the main and what I hear here is loud mixes for radio, the new one louder than the original. That isn’t to say the mix is bad, it’s actually pretty good, just turn the volume way down on your media player of choice.

The song is a good one, about wandering around in a daze, to music that is the poppier end of power pop. So get this and have fun doing your own comparison.

Andrea Weiss

 The Flashcubes

Get Up And Go

Big Stir

The original is by the band Pilot. David Paton from that band makes an appearance here. The cover by the Flashcubes is smooth, faithful to the original, and very good. If all you ever heard from Pilot was their hit “Magic,” listen to “Get Up and Go” the original, then hear how the Flashcubes have made it sound rougher, and why I kind of prefer it to the original. You might too, and hear some good music in the process. 

Andrea Weiss

 Vista Blue

Stay Gold

Outloud! Records/Radiant Radish

The album is only 18 minutes long, but there is a lot in those 18 minutes. It’s the plot and characters of SE Hinton’s book The Outsiders, a book that I read years ago and still remember, as it’s that good. If you’ve never read it, listen to this album of killer punk rock, then get the book. It’s worth it.

Both the book and album include themes of class warfare, star-crossed lovers, and being young. The band embodies the characters, and details the plot very well. If you want something a bit different, just want to rock out, or both, get both. You will also be contributing to anti-censorship efforts, as the book is one of the most challenged in the US for high school English curricula. So strike a blow for artistic freedom and have a blast.

Andrea Weiss

 This is yet another fine, new single from Jim, showing all his sides. It's more evidence for me that he’s one of the best.

He was kind enough to answer some questions for me, and also include a scoop.

Andrea Weiss: Houston Street is real New York City street. Tell us a little about it and how it relates to the song.

Jim Basnight: I lived there for a month or so in 1977, when the late Lizzie Mercier (Descloux) and Michele Estaban, two rock and roll kids from France who were in NY to do journalism and generally hang out with folks from the exciting CBGB's, Max's, downtown music scene, in that neighborhood. Their loft was on Houston and Broadway. That was my first exposure to that street. When I came back to NYC in 1980, Houston had become a bit dicier, with lots of bums, hookers, and various hustlers. For a good while I lived on 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd  Avenues during that second stay in NYC as an adult, from late 1980 until early 1984, about half a mile north. I wrote the song years later in the early 90's, based on recollections from the latter time frame.

Even though there were tons of streets and neighborhoods at that time, which were similarly yoked, including the addition of lots of clinically insane folks living in refrigerator boxes and the like after the Reagan administration emptied out the mental hospitals, I chose "Houston Street" for two reasons: It was the demarcations line on the east side of Lower Manhattan between the East Village, which east of Avenue A was rather dangerous, and the Lower East Side, which was even more so. It was sort of a tightrope, where your demeanor and resolve had better be convincing, to avoid being perceived as prey or a threat to the desperately poor, criminally insane, the addicted and the enforcers of the underworld. The other reason is because it sounded good with the melody. Songwriter tricks...LOL

AW: It’s a really gritty punk rock song, which I like. Is that how the street was when the song was written?

JB: We do it more like a funk rock song now. We'll likely do a live album someday, to showcase some of the better reworked songs of mine and uniquely interpreted covers. It's likely it'll be included. It was how NYC was then and when I was there in 1977, just different, as new conditions came and went. The crack epidemic also brought a lot of insanity and street danger. I saw that in its glory as well in 1982-84. If Houston Street was the only NYC street like that, the place would have been paradise. It was also incredibly wonderful. The best and the worst, living together in the dissonant harmony that great NY rock and roll artists like Lou Reed, Johnny Thunders, the Ramones, and Alan Vega have captured in their musical beings. I can only pretend to own that power, though I will say I've been closer to it than most.

AW: "Blue Moon Heart" is a bluesy rocker. What’s it about?

JB: It’s a song I co-wrote with Joey Alkes, who also co-wrote "Million Miles Away" and a few other gems by the Plimsouls, as well as tunes with Paul Collins and, coincidentally, British Blues pioneer Alexis Corner (I wish I'd had a chance to talk to him for my "Sonny Boy Williamson" research, before he passed). It was Joey's idea, but it struck a chord in me, because of my dad. In my early years in Seattle in the early 60's, my dad would go to the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle's U-District. I was not able to join him at age 6-18 (when he got sober), but he brought that culture home with him. My dad, who kicked me out of the house at 18, was an alcoholic, but he also always was there and willing to answer questions. Millions of questions. It probably caused me a lot of problems in life, but it was also a blessing in retrospect. My dad was smart. He had over 400 college credits and spoke multiple languages. He hung out with a colorful cast of characters, who could best be described as a wide-ranging collection of freaks, from the generation just older than the hippies. My mom enabled him, but like the family band of Merle Haggard's 1971 epic "Daddy Frank," they stood together. So, the song means something different to me, which I didn't focus on in a literal sense, as I did in "Houston Street." For me the song means, I may be blue, but in my heart, by the light of the moon, that inner commitment my family showed me will help me live in the present and maintain hope for the future. I hope that makes sense. Additionally, the Blue Moon is known in Seattle history as the center of the Beatniks in Seattle and the early hippies. It maintained some of that personality into the punk era too. I hope this answers your question.

AW: It does. Thank you.

So many of your songs are a little bit blues and a little bit punk. Do you like to emphasize both equally?

JB: My stuff is rock and roll, which is amplified blues, with a few other flavors mixed onto that basic canvas, or blueprint if you will. Punk is just rock and roll. It's hard for me to claim that a subgenre like punk, alternative (the ultimate attempt to differentiate from rock unsuccessfully), psychedelic, metal, rockabilly, power pop, surf, or what have you, is legitimately anything other than rock and roll, which at its core is built from building blocks straight from blues.

Electric Blues was incredibly punk, if your definition of punk is rebellious, irreverent and outrageous. In 1941, the most punk thing around was King Biscuit Time, where "Sonny Boy" led a blues band with an electric guitar and kit drums (both brand new to American Roots Music), while singing the blues and leading the band with his harmonica on the radio airwaves. Broadcast media itself was something above the perceived realm of the 20th Century Mississippi Delta field slaves who performed blues while maintaining their profile as farm laborers, or risking chain gangs, torture, or worse. That took more guts than the unruliest punk of the modern era.

AW: What comes after this album?

JB: I’m going to break some news for your 'zine. My next release is going to be mastered this coming week. It's a combination of tracks from my earliest output of tunes and tracks with the first version of the Moberlys and other early works.

Here's the track listing (with songwriting credits), which to now hasn't been published:

“Last Night” (Basnight)

“Leave the Past Behind” (Basnight)

“Blow Your Life Away” (Basnight)

"I Return” (Basnight/Neil Berman)

“You Know I Know” (Basnight)

“Sexteen” (Basnight)

“Live in the Sun” (Basnight)

“Country Fair” (Basnight/Dan Fisher)

“Give Me Peace” (Basnight)

“She Got Fxxxed” (Basnight)

“I Trust You” (Basnight) 

“We'll Always be in Love” (Basnight/Greg Carriere)

“Bebe Gonna Let You Down” (Basnight)

“Show Who You Are” (Basnight) 

“Lonesome Crying Sigh” (Basnight)

"In Love with You” (Basnight) 

“Don't Fall into Darkness” (Basnight)

“Love Is Beautiful” (Basnight)

“Make a Baby” (Basnight/Dan Fisher)

“I Want You” (Basnight)

 Jim Basnight

Houston Street/Blue Moon Heart single

Power Popaholic Records

The A-side to the latest single from Pop Top is hard, gritty punk rock about a street in New York City that really does exist. It talks about what it’s like to live on the street, how hard it is, and how tough.

The B-side is a blues rocker, alternately about a real bar, his dad, and how everything to do with the bar made him feel. While smoother than the A-side, it’s just as tough in the end. To read what he has to say about that part of his life and how it inspired the song, read my new interview with him.

So if you’re a fan like I am, you’ll welcome this new single, and if you’re new to him,  it serves as a good introduction to his work.

Andrea Weiss