I first became aware of Lannie Flowers on a single called “Summer Blue.” It's not about the season, but Summer as a woman he wished he could be with. His new album, Flavor Of the Month, includes that single, which I am very glad about, and the album backs it up, as every song is as good as that. It's worth picking up.

Lannie was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.

Andrea Weiss: Your last album, Home, was something of a concept album on home being a state of mind. This album seems to be more about relationships. Is that a concept too?

Lannie Flowers: No, not really. It’s an easy thing for me to write about. I spent a lot of my young life dealing with them.

AW: Who are your influences?

LF: It started with the Beatles, like a lot of people. There were a lot of English bands like the Who, the Kinks, Mott the Hoople, David Bowie, and Elvis Costello really had a big influence on me. From America, bands like the Stooges and the Velvet Underground had a big impact on me too. Also, just being from Texas, you can’t help but soak up a lot of country music, whether it’s intentional or not. There were plenty more along the way, but too many to go into.

AW: What would you say you learned between your last album and this one?

LF: Actually, both were being done at the same time. I have learned a lot about life and pandemics since the last album.

AW: How did Spyderpop Records come into the picture?

LF: I used to play in a band with Alan Petsche called the Pengwins and remained friends after he left. Years later he started the label in Arlington, Texas called Aaron Avenue Records. He asked me to put out my first record, Same Old Story. So it just basically started from that. It just all sort of morphed into SpyderPop.

AW: Do you have any plans to tour?

LF: I would love to. Just waiting to see if things are going to get back to some sort of normalcy.

AW: All the songs on here that were previous singles, like “Summer Blue,” are great. Were you happy or more than happy about how well they did?

LF: Yeah, I was happy with them. I just had time on my hands. So I decided to redo a few things and remix the songs.

AW: What would you tell someone first starting out in music?

LF: Above all, be true to yourself. Sounds corny, but time is too short to pretend being something you aren’t. All the best songs come from people who have a little something different to offer. Blaze a new trail!

 Lannie Flowers

Flavor Of The Month

Big Stir Records

What’s striking about this excellent power pop album is how easy it is to connect with the emotions of the songs. While the romantic feelings are mostly confusion, frustration, and everything in between, you never get the sense that all is lost with any of the women he’s dating, that everything, in the end, will be okay.

It’s not all bad, either. “Good” means life is good. The title song is about knowing the time, while you’re spending time on top of the world. “My Street (Front Porch Version),” a new version of the song that appeared in a “Nashville Version” on his last album, Home, also fits into this general mood.

Home was a concept album about going home, being home, and home as a state of mind. While concepts aren’t the case on Flavor Of The Month, many of these songs have a theme, about maybe being just that, but in a good way. Life is enjoyable this way, and eventually this phase will end and everyone will go on to someone else, leaving you alone to be whatever you want to be.

“Summer Blue,” an earlier single, is one of the best songs on an album filled with great songs. It’s about being in love with a woman called Summer, and wishing you could be with her. It sums up this wonderful album nicely, so what are you waiting for. Get it!

Andrea Weiss

 Jim Basnight

Opportunity Knocks/Still a Part of Me

Power Popaholic Records

The newest single from Jim’s upcoming album Pop Top is this double A-Side. Both songs are good, and very different types of power pop. “Opportunity Knocks” is a bluesy, rolling piano romp with a lyric explained by the title. It's a lot of fun to listen to. “Still A Part Of Me” is more serious and more pop. It’s an anthemic relationship song with a rousing chorus, the song going by in a rush. These songs are a good introduction to Pop Top. If you like what you hear here, you’ll want to get the album.

Andrea Weiss

 Here is my 2021 Top Un-Ten. Why is mine different? Because tolerance, diversity, and inclusiveness should extend to music, everyone should be included, and because it’s damn hard to be successful at music, or any type of art. This is what I listened to this year. Some I liked better than others, but it’s all good. All of it. Some of the albums in the #1’s, like Dar, Liz, Sleater-Kinney, and Tune-Yards I didn't review, but just bought for my own fun. My list is mostly top albums, with a favorite song listed for each, but Vista Blue, Rich Arithmetic, The Big Believe, and The Airport 77's songs are just singles.

Enjoy! I look forward to what 2022 has in store musically, as well.

#1

Dar Williams - I’ll Meet You Here - "Sullivan Lane"

Sleater-Kinney - Path Of Wellness - "Worry With You"

Liz Phair - Soberish - "Spanish Doors"

Neil Young - Barn - "Heading West"

New Sincerity Works - Heirloom Qualities - "Person Of Interest"

Chris Church - Game Dirt - "Trying"

Tune-Yards - Sketchy -"Hold Yourself"

The Speed Of Sound - Museum OF Tomorrow - "The Day The Earth Caught Fire"

The Brothers Steve - Dose - "Better Get Ready"

Vista Blue - "Back to the Summer Olympics"

The Airport 77s - "Losers Win" 

The Big Believe - "Doin' My Utmost"

Rich Arithmetic - "You Are Always Right"

The Forty Nineteens - New Roaring Twenties - "I’m Always Questioning Days"

Sorrows - Love Too Late... the real album - "What I Used To Know"

Petrified Max - Year Gone By - "Contracupid"

Dolph Chaney - This Is Dolph Chaney - "My Good Twin"

Nick Frater - Earworms - "Buggin' Out"

2#

The Grip Weeds - DiG - "Little Black Egg"

The Stan Laurels - There Is No Light Without The Dark - "Red-Handed Puppet"

Spygenius - Blow Their Covers - "Queen Of Eyes"

Jim Basnight with The Rockinghams - Makin' Bacon - "Hello Mary Jane"

John Hiatt with the Jerry Douglas Band - Leftover Feelings - "All the Lilacs in Ohio"

Johnathan Pushkar - Compositions - "Junior’s Farm"

Danny Wilkerson - Wilkerson - "Let It Go Tonight"

Rich Arithmetic - "Saving Sunset (Last Surf of the Day)" b/w "Boards on the Rocks"

The Lunar Laugh - Nighthawks! - "Welcome To The World"

#3

Lannie Flowers - Home - "My Street"

The Bablers - Psychadilly Circus - "I Hope It Wouldn’t Rain Tomorrow"

 Game Dirt was my introduction to Chris Church, and a good one.  I like the quiet noise, the rawness, and the grit. Darling Please, his new one, is much the same. While I do hear Neil Young here, he has other influences we talked about. Church was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.  

Andrea Weiss: What is the history of this album?

 

Chris Church: I recorded the album in 2011 as a sort of tribute to my late, great brother Mike Church, my drummer for most of my music up to that point, who had recently passed. It was mostly done in my basement studio but finished in an actual studio. I was unhappy with the mix at the time, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I gave away a few CD copies after I’d printed up a small amount but didn’t have the heart to keep trying to push it. After failing to decide what to do to fix it, I just let it go. It pretty much just sat on the shelf for ten years. After considering whether to re-do the whole thing, take a song or two from it for other projects, or just leave it alone altogether, I decided to try and reclaim it last year. I was fortunate enough to have Lindsay Murray of Gretchen’s Wheel sing some added backing vocals, and with the added help of Nick Bertling remastering it, the album sounds and feels a lot better to me now. I asked Rex and Christina at Big Stir if they’d be interested in releasing it, and they agreed. I’m very happy to have this project out in the world.

 

AW: I know Neil Young is the primary influence here. Who are some others?

 

CC: I guess so. For this album, I remember being interested in combining the loud and raggedy guitar rock of what Neil and Crazy Horse do sometimes, and actually more directly, early Teenage Fanclub with the dreamy shoegaze noise of My Bloody Valentine to see what I could come up with. It sounds a million miles away, but there’s still some guts to it. I wanted to try to make it sound somehow simultaneously big, and yet intimate enough to put the messages of the songs across. The remastering helped reclaim a lot of the sonic aspects of what I was going for. As I told Rex Broome and Christina Bulbenko of Big Stir regarding one of the songs, I had an all encompassing desire to create something where ”…the hugeness is empty, and vice versa.”

 

AW: What would you say you took from Neil?

 

CC: Not really sure about that. I love him, and I take it as a big compliment to be compared to Neil Young, but I don’t want to say he’s my biggest influence on this or any album I’ve made. Maybe I end up sounding a little like him when I’m channeling Teenage Fanclub? You decide, I’m just me.

 

AW: What did everyone who helped make it bring to the album?

 

CC: Lindsay Murray’s lovely backing vocals and Nick Bertling’s great mastering job, both done in 2021 – ten years after I recorded the album - are the only aspects of the recording that weren’t done by me, other than the small amount of production and engineering that was done by the people at the other studio towards the end of the original project. No need to credit or discredit there. So yeah, there’s pretty much ultimately no one to blame but me for this.

 

AW: What would you like to tell us about the lyrics?

 

CC: I’m not really going to explain what I write. In this case in particular, it’s a lot to unpack. I was at a raw point emotionally, and then when the sonic plot got lost and the mix disappointed me, I pretty much closed the door on this chapter of my musical life for awhile. I don’t ever really know, but I would like to think that people would pay attention to the lyrics, because I certainly do when I write them. Though most of my lyrics tend to playfully obfuscate, there are actually a few songs on Darling Please that aren’t that hard to figure out.

 

AW: Will you be touring for this album?

 

CC: I don’t have any plans to tour.

 

AW: If you could go back 11 years to when this album was first made, what would you say to everyone that you’ve learned about it since?

 

CC: If you have a vision and you’re going to do something artistic yourself, do the whole thing. Finish it completely, and don’t let anything anyone says take you off your path. In my humble opinion, one of the biggest rewards an artist can have is knowing you did it your own way.

 Darling Please

Chris Church

Big Stir Records

Neil Young’s music has been put into a college rock context many times, but as far as I know, not power pop, much less combining the two. That is one of the great things about Chris Church’s new album.

Recorded 11 years ago, and out in a newly remastered version by producer Nick Bertling, the quiet noise of this album shines through every time Church pays his guitar or sings about life and love. There is a lot of grit, but Neil Young is known for that. Church should be too. 

Darling Please is every bit as good as Youngs’s latest, Barn, a record also worth picking up. Play the two back to back and realize that Church and Young could be equals, even as their music is in different contexts.  But good ones, and I would say to start with Church, and then play Neil. 

Andrea Weiss

 Jim Basnight has been around for a long time, and has always made music I really like, these three new singles – "Genius of Love," "Ugly Side," and "Lose Me" – being the latest. If you’re new to him, start here. You will have a good time listening.

Jim was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.

Andrea Weiss: Tell us more about Seattle-NY-LA, which features these songs?

Jim Basnight: It's the best recordings and songs by the band known as Jim Basnight and the Moberlys or the Moberlys, which featured the late Dave Drewry on drums. It was the version of the band, after the original band, but it lasted much longer. Dave and I started playing together in 1981 and parted ways in 1989. The other players were mainly Glenn Oyabe on guitar and harmony vocals and Toby Keil on bass and harmonies, but there were others. The late Ben Rabinowitz played lead guitar on “I Need Your Love" and “I Wanna Be Yours." Roger Burg played keyboards on “Your Fool" and keyboards and backing vocals on “Genius of Love.” Jeremy Bar-illan played guitar and sang backups on “You Came and You Conquered” and “Love So True." Roger Moutenot played organ on “You Came and You Conquered." Harlan Hollander sang backups on “Summertime Again." Al Bloch played bass and sang backups on “You Came and You Conquered” and “Love So True." Jay Work played saxes on “Ain't It Funny." The album was produced by a variety of producers, including Peter Buck of REM, Moutenot, Hollander, Dave Ogilvie, Lindsay Kidd, J.B. Bauerlien, Ron Woods, Ian Gardiner, Edwin DeShazo and Dean Chamberlain. It was recorded in LA mostly, but “You Came and You Conquered” and “Love So True" were recorded in NY. The band was based in NY from 1980 to 1984, but those were the only tracks which made this collection. The band was based in Seattle from 1984-85, but all of the tracks included here were recorded in Vancouver, BC. Those tracks included, “I Wanna Be Yours," "I Love You So," "Alone with Her," and “I Need Your Love." To summarize, the band lived in three places, which all made important impressions on the music. Some might say that our sound had a common thread, but our environment influenced the sound to me. We were all Seattle guys, so that influence of bands like the Sonics, the Raiders, the Heats, and the Modernettes followed us. So did NYC influences such as Lou Reed, the Heartbreakers, Blondie, the Dolls, the Shangri-Las, and the Ramones. LA brought its influences too, such as the Plimsouls and the classic LA power pop sound of the late 70's, and more twangy guitar acts such as the Byrds or Buffalo Springfield. In general, the band had it all, but also had a common thread of  a certain recognizable strain of two guitars and harmonies Beatles/Stones, but definitely on the pure pop side of all of the above.

AW: These songs have a mid 60s British Invasion feel to them, which I like, and they also sound 70s punk. Which of these styles is a greater inspiration for you, or are you after an equally melded sound?

JB: I'd say they're equal. Definitely not 90s or, for the most part, 80s, unless you want to include some of the bands I've already mentioned, or others such as The Hoodoo Gurus and the Replacements. The big musical movements which influenced me in life were:

The golden age of rock and roll, especially Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Link Wray, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard. The folk era of Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Pete Seeger. The British Invasion, especially the Kinks, but also the Who, the Small Faces, and a number of others, including those I've already mentioned. The garage acts of the 60s, especially the NW acts, but also the Standells and the type of acts spotlighted by Lenny Kaye's Nuggets album. The psychedelic era, notably Hendrix, the Airplane, and others I've mentioned. 60s pop, such as the Buckinghams, the Grass Roots, The Classics IV and others I've mentioned.Glam rock, such as T-Rex, Bowie, Mott, and others I've mentioned. Early Power Pop, such as Badfinger, Flaming Groovies, and the Raspberries. Punk Rock, the 1977-78 edition, such as Generation X, the Dead Boys, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and others I've mentioned. Finally the late 70s and early 80s NW sound and LA sound of the Cowboys, the Last, and other bands I've mentioned.

The psychedelic and folk stuff didn't play into our sound much, despite the way it influenced my writing. Most of the tunes from that vein which surfaced were not what Dave was into, so I did them solo, or occasionally as a duo with Glenn.

AW: All are about love gone wrong. Is that an easy topic to write about?

JB: If you're talking about the latest set of tunes I've sent out as recommended airplay tracks, basically a second EP of tunes from the album after the first I sent out ("Summertime Again," "Tonight," "Rest Up," and "She Don't Rock"), two of them arguably are about love gone wrong. Those are "Genius of Love" and "Ugly Side." "Lose Me" is a very positive love song about how full and rich one feels to be in the arms of the one they love. "Genius" is about losing, by being tricked into believing there was reciprocal love, but who cares because the ride was so darn fun. "Ugly Side" is dark, but uplifting in the sense that it's an admission to oneself that mere lust is not good enough and that is not a choice, though I've been there, that I am looking to make. I think there are a lot of songs which could be interpreted as love gone wrong on this album (though there are a few which are just plain fun and others like "Lose Me," such as "What I Wouldn't Do" which are clearly songs about romantic fulfillment), but I see the hopefulness behind the feelings of loss or disappointment. I think the band's sound and mood are one of eternal hope and optimism in the search for love and the respect for love, despite the obstacles.

AW: Where can Seattle-NY-LA be found?

JB: It's available to stream or download nearly everywhere you can do that. The place to go for the best price is here, where it was first released in early 2021:

https://powerpopaholicproductions.bandcamp.com/album/seattle-new-york-los-angeles

It hasn't been made available on CD or LP yet. That may happen in the near future, as might also the Makin' Bacon album I released later in 2021.