Dom Mariani: An Appreciation

Trying to get your head around Dom Mariani’s long and wide-ranging musical career can be both a confusing and an exhilarating adventure. Every time you get a handle on one of the great bands he’s been in, you find that there is another one to learn about. As you sort though all of this, two things become very clear: (1) Mariani has a deft touch and keen musical instincts, allowing him to approach each of his projects with command (2) You should never expect one Mariani band or project to sound like the one that came before it.

Mariani formed ‘60’s garage revivalists the Stems in Perth, Australia in the early 80s. The band released a smattering of singles and an album, At First Sight Violets are Blue (1987), that stand up to the best of all the fuzz psych releases circulating the indie markets at that time (think Fleshtones/Telltale Hearts/ Lyres/Chesterfield Kings/Vipers, et al). Their sublime track “She’s Fine” was included on Rhino’s The Children of Nuggets, a box set of songs by ‘80’s bands influenced by ‘60’s psychedelia and garage. But just as the Stems were promoting their first long player, and as they were enjoying both critical acclaim and success on the Independent charts in Australia and other parts of the world, they broke up.

“I was always into ‘60’s music, but originally maybe just the more well known bands, like the Beatles, Stones, and Kinks,” Mariani told me over the phone recently, by way of describing his personal musical evolution leading up to the formation of the Stems. “But then I discovered the Nuggets double album, and the Electric Prunes Underground record, so I saw there was this other kind of thing from the ‘60’s, which was more like garage rock, and I got totally into that.”

Mariani cites pressure from the band’s management and the label to relentlessly promote At First Sight, and the resultant exhaustion, as causes of the Stems’ untimely implosion. Also, he soon had another project cooking. While in the Stems Mariani met Darryl Mather, then with Sydney’s the Lime Spiders (another Children of Nuggets band) and later with the Orange Humble Band. The two discovered a mutual affinity for ‘60’s and ‘70’s radio pop and decided to get together and make music that would sound more like the Raspberries than the Stooges. The resulting LP, 1990’s Don’t Talk About Us, is now widely considered to be a power pop masterpiece.

“My musical background is very much steeped in Top 40 radio from the ‘60’s, things like the Monkees and girl groups and all,” Dom says when I ask him about the poppy departure the Someolves were from the Stems. “And even during the Stems, although we had kind of a hard rock sound, we were listening to things like the dBs and the Plimsouls, which were more pop.”

Don’t Talk About Us was recorded with Mitch Easter at his famed Drive-In studio in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (Easter has continued to mix, and sometimes play on, Mariani’s recordings throughout Dom’s career). A great meeting of musical minds, an album made at one of the coolest studios in the world at the time, two songwriters with no apparent lack of inspiration . . . the future held no barriers for The Someloves, right? Wrong. Their label, Mushroom, would only agree to a second album if the band committed to tour to promote the first, something Mather – a studio animal not interested in playing live – refused to do.

Someone with less fortitude or creative drive might have given up after seeing his first two bands split up just when they seemed to be going on the rise. But Mariani was only getting started. After an enforced recording hiatus which was part of the contractual baggage from The Someloves/Mushroom situation, he exploded back onto the scene in glorious fashion a few years later with his new band, DM3.

To this listener’s ears, DM3 is where Mariani fully hit his stride, combining the adrenaline rush of the Stems with the pop craftsmanship of the Someloves. DM3s albums One Times Two Times Red Light (1993), Road to Rome (96) and Rippled Soul (98) are power pop gems (the first two are, anyway; Rippled Soul has some stellar songs but doesn’t quite match up in overall quality level with the others) with a little garage energy to them, and are where Mariani pulled off tracks that stand comfortably alongside records made by the likes of Dwight Twilley, Big Star, Badfinger, et al.

“We were trying to make records with a rock & roll edge to them, but also with great melodies,” is how Dom sees DM3, a project he clearly put a lot of himself into and feels passionate about.

Some of DM3s best songs weren’t on the three main albums, but can be found on the odds-and-ends collections Garage Sale Vols 1 & 2 (as well as a Mariani retrospective covered below). One of these oddities, “Hold On,” is something I have listened to at dangerous volume levels no less than eight times in a row on more than one occasion recently – an absolute dream of a power pop song. Another Garage Sale track, “Just Like Nancy,” is both one of the finest moments in DM3s recorded history and their swan song. This single, with its splendidly catchy chorus, chugging guitar riff, and sly, vaguely naughty lyrics (a “girl in boots” with “the power to overthrow ya”), was the last record made by DM3.

Always looking to explore new terrain, after the demise of DM3 Mariani showed yet another side of his wide musical range. In 2003 he and his new act The Majestic Kelp released an album of instrumental tracks, Underwater Casino. The sound here is something like a meeting between Dick Dale, Ennio Morricone, and Martin Denny – a Spaghetti Western on the beach in Hawaii.

Dom: “What started out as just kind of a quick surf guitar record became something more than that. The songs started to take on some additional character, kind of a soundtrack feel. It’s quite an interesting group and we’re exploring a lot of different things you can do with instrumental music.”

I ask Dom if he feels any difficulty in connecting to the audience when the Majestic Kelp perform live, without the benefit of vocal parts like catchy choruses people can latch onto:

“It has been a learning curve for me. It kind of divides the audience. Some of the people who have been listening to my bands over the years get into it, just like they would the Stems or DM3. But other people are kind of standing there saying, ‘So when is he going to start singing?’ Some have said, ‘I think Dom’s gone off the planet with this one.’ But other people will just dig it for what it is. “

The Majestic Kelp released a second collection of instrumentals, Music to Chase Cars By, in 2006. Here they continued to explore some of the same musical themes approached on the first record, but also added some horns, one track filled with Byrdsian jangle, and a bit of a tougher guitar sound on the surf tracks.

In 2004 Mariani put out his first solo album, Homespun Blues and Greens. A much more personal collection of songs than any of his other projects offered, the 11 tracks here sound like they could be open letters to a close friend or lover, saying things that are difficult but necessary to communicate. The gentle psychedelia on some of the backing tracks cements the sense of contemplative emotion.

“I toyed around with the idea of making a solo album for quite some time, but initially was uncomfortable putting something out with just my name on it. For a while I thought of calling it a DM3 record, but that didn’t seem right, because there really wasn’t a band there to drive it. So I thought, instead of coming up with another band name to add to the list, I’ll just put my name to it. And the songs are kind of reflective, anyway, so it makes sense for it be labeled as a solo record.”

If all the great music wasn’t reward enough in itself to Mariani for sticking with things through all the band breakups, he was honored with a career-affirming retrospective put out by Citadel Records in 2005. Popsided Guitar (Anthology 1984-2004), a 2-CD, 38-track collection compiles highlights of Dom’s varied career, including songs by all of the aforementioned acts as well as a few from his solo album, and it also throws in one song each from one-offs Mariani did with bands The Stonefish and The Stoneage Hearts. There could have been a few more Stems tracks, but really there is little to complain about on the comp. The selections are well chosen and bring to magnificent life a career that has not received its due attention and appreciation.

One Mariani project not covered in the Popsided Guitar comp. is the reformed Stems. After having excellent compilations of their stuff put out by both Citadel (Mushroom Soup, 2003) and Get Hip (Terminal Cool, 2005), as well as seeing a 2-CD reissue of the At First Sight record (2003, Warners Australia), the band released a set of newly recorded material in 2007. Listening to Headsup, you’d think The Stems had never gone away. The 10 tracks further the band’s legacy as psych garage masters, especially the riff-heavy “Liar” and the assured rocker “Hellbound Train.” Listening to this record, you can easily see why Little Steven once invited the Stems to perform at his Underground Garage festival in New York.

So are the Stems fully reformed now, can we expect another release from them sometime sooner than the 20 years which separated their first two LPs?

“We are talking about doing another recording, although I’m not sure when that will be. We’re thinking about doing something like the Flamin’ Groovies Jumpin’ in the Night record, where it’d be some favorite covers alongside some originals.”

And what might some of those covers be?

“Well, we’re talking about doing all Australian songs. ‘Friday on My Mind’ by the Easybeats is one we’re thinking of. ‘Come On,’ by the Atlantics. We’re also looking at some of the very early Bee Gees stuff, looking for something there that might be appropriate.”

Dom is also at work on a third Majestic Kelp record, one with vocals, including some Beach Boys-style harmonies. He looks to finish the album by the end of this year and hopes for an early 2009 release. And while he is taking some down-time now after a recent Stems tour, he seems never too far away from the next gig, whether it be in Australia, Europe, or at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, where the Stems performed this year and where Mariani expects to be again next Spring, either with the Stems or on his own. Prolific and diverse as he is with his music, no one should be surprised if by that time he has a totally new band trying for a sound and feel different from all his other projects.

Several weeks ago, a random gathering of some of the best musicians from Canada’s greatest musical berg (that’s Hamilton, Ontario, by the way) threw themselves onstage as part of the city’s annual Locke Street Festival. Spearheaded by the one and only Tom Wilson, said ad-hoc combo was busy rocking and rolling things all the way up that street as the sun slid down when suddenly, a most familiar figure was spotted nearby. The lead singer of the one, the only, Teenage Head.

As would later be reported in the press, "I asked Frankie, 'Frankie, fuck man, you've got to come up here and sing,'" Wilson says. "He said, 'You got to give me a hundred bucks.' So I reached into my pocket and I only had fifty, so I asked Dave Rave for the other half. I said, 'Dave, fifty bucks for Frankie.'

"And this was the kind of love they had for Frankie. Dave didn't ask me, 'What for? What does Frankie need fifty bucks for?' He was just pulling it out of his pocket. And Frankie got up and did ‘Let's Shake’."

It turned out to be the last-ever public appearance of Frank Kerr, much better known – and most rightfully so – as Frankie Venom, who along with his high school pals about thirty-three years ago decided to form a band in between spins of Dolls, Stooges and, yes, Flamin’ Groovies records. Remarkably, that little band that could went on to garner two gold and one platinum twelve-inchers of their very own; in fact, their latest, now available from the fine folk over at Sonic Unyon Recordings, actually features Marky Ramone on the drums. Terrifically high praise indeed.

In a scar-studded career that admittedly held more bumps than most bands’, Teenage Head never turned (or toned) things down, never towed anyone’s line, and never ever made a bad record or gave a bad show that I, or anyone else for that matter, should care to recall. And whether slithering across the heat pipes of Toronto’s legendary Crash and Burn club, opening for the Pretenders, Talking Heads and Elvis Costello in front of fifty-thousand at Canada’s Heatwave festival – or belting ‘Let’s Shake’ for and with some old friends on Locke Street on a warm late eve – Frankie Venom was every single inch the Head above all others.

He succumbed to throat cancer on October 15, 2008, aged fifty-two. Your record collection will never be the same.

Don't know much about this band yet, and almost don't want to, just to keep the mystery intact. Excellent, odd psychedelia from Mexico. Got hipped to them via their track, "Changing the Colors of Life," on the Nuggets II box set. Took me a few years after hearing that to follow up and dig deeper, and now that I have I am a better person for it. Their late 60s album El Esquimal is cool and weird and mind-bending. The title track is a rollicking, Spanish-language version of Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn." Another cover, and perhaps the most trippy moment on the record, is their take on The Zombies's "I Love You," read as, of course, "Te Quiero" - the opening to that track is grand psychedelia and when the melody kicks in it's all trips and hooks. Several originals surround these covers, including the Spanish version of "Changing the Colors" (English language version appears on Nuggets II) and others, some of which are throwaway but a few of them gems. I know I'll eventually go in and try to find out more about this great and strange band, but for now I'm going to keep rocking El Esquimal and just ride with the enigma and with the groove.

Blue Ash Special Bonus CD's!

There will be a special limited free bonus CD when ordering Blue Ash's "No More, No Less" from Not Lame or Kool Kat Musik. The Not Lame bonus CD will feature unreleased songs from 1973 that were done "live" in Peppermint Studios.

http://www.notlame.com/BLUE_ASH/Page_1/CDBLUEASH1.html

The tracks are:
Hippy, Hippy Shake
(Chan Romero)
Baby You Lied
(Secich- Bartolin)
Now All You've Got Is You
(Kendzor)
She Cried For 15 years
(Secich-Bartolin)
One After 909
(Lennon-McCartney)
I Thought I Knew You
(Secich-Bartolin)
Say Goodbye
(Secich-Bartolin)
Give Me Love
(Secich-Bartolin)
Walls
(Secich-Bartolin)
Paper Bag Blues
(Secich-Bartolin-Kendzor-Evans)
Be My Girl
(Secich-Bartolin)
When I Get You
(Secich-Bartolin)
Make It Easy
(Secich-Bartolin)

The bonus CD album with Kool Kat Musik will feature a "live" performance
of 12 songs recorded on January 31, 1974 at the Packard Music Hall in Warren, Ohio! The band was opening for the Raspberries at this show - and, as you'll hear, they definitely had
their "game face" on as they rock through these covers and originals:

Hippy Hippy Shake
One After 909
Do You Love Me
Anytime At All
Start All Over Again
Plain To See
What Can I Do For You
She's So Nice
Baby Baby Come On
All I Want
Twist and Shout
My Generation

It must be noted that this is an audience recording (the
only type that exists according to the band) that, while not
of the highest audio quality, captures
the band at a magical moment in their career, and serves as
an archival testament to the power they exhibited as a live
band! You'll still be awfully
glad you snagged this little piece o' Power Pop
history!

orders@koolkatmusik.com

856-468-2442

http://www.koolkatmusik.com/showproduct.aspx?Productid=4920&Sectionid=1
.. type=text/javascript> hasEML = false; ..>

Blue Ash's 1973 debut album "No More, No Less" has been issued for the first time ever by the good folks at Collectors' Choice. Here's the link: http://www.ccmusic.com/item.cfm?itemid=CCM0963

Whilst continuing to faithfully remain
Lost In The Groove
all summer long,

your resident Pig has consented
to scribble monthly,
right over there at
Medleyville Dot US
as well.

so then,
If you’re ever wondering

why Bob was Judas,

when Simply Saucer turned Half Human,

who That Lucky Old Sun is still shining upon,

where you should buy Your First Punk Rock Record,

and even How much those Rolling Stones just got out of
the Universal Music Group,

(plus Pat Boone to boot),

feel more than free to get Lost
in that Medleyville Groove,
as autumn falls all around us

(…making sure to tell ‘em
Gary Pig Gold sentcha,
of course !! )

WHAT: Hammer Presents: 3 from 33 1/3 with Hayden Childs, Kim Cooper and Scott Plagenhoef
WHERE: Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., LA 90024, 310.443.7000
WHEN: Weds October 29, 7pm
INFO: http://www.hammer.ucla.edu/calendar_full_Oct_2008.htm#day29

33 1/3 is a series of books about a wide variety of seminal rock and pop albums. Join three of the authors for readings and special multimedia presentations. Hayden Childs’s "Shoot Out the Lights" puts into context Richard and Linda Thompson’s album—from the personal history driving the songs, to the recording difficulties they encountered and the subsequent fall-out. He has appeared in "Lost in the Grooves: Scram’s Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed." Kim Cooper’s "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" sheds light on the underground classic album by Neutral Milk Hotel. Cooper is the editor of "Scram," and co-editor of the anthologies "Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth" and "Lost in the Grooves: Scram’s Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed." Scott Plagenhoef’s "If You’re Feeling Sinister" provides perspective on how Belle & Sebastian transformed from a cult secret into a polished, highly entertaining, mainstream pop group. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Pitchfork.

Sacramento pop band Knock Knock was recently awarded a Sammie to honor their second CD Girls on the Run (2008), but as superb as that release is, I feel their debut was even more deserving of recognition. Warm Fronts, Cold Shoulders (2004) is comprised of such an abundant range of intriguing textures and indelible melodies that it would inevitably be a tough act to follow. It's remarkable that punchy uptempo tunes like "I've Been a Drag" and "Dan Can You Stand" can occupy the same space with the languid beauty of "Oceanography" and "Levee," but Knock Knock seems to have a knack for mixing things up without having to struggle to do so. "Eye of the Storm" finds a nice balance between the two extremes and is perhaps the best representation of their work as a whole, but you certainly wouldn't want to miss out on other catchy numbers like "Jorge" and "Rotten Dogs." Think of a poppier version of Yo La Tengo and you might have an idea of what to expect. Frontman Allen Maxwell's feathery-but-urgent vocals compare favorably to Ira Kaplan's while Heather Conway adds an even lighter touch to a pair of songs a la Georgia Hubley.  Tasty stuff indeed, and when you're finished with this one, you should be more than ready to take in the gorgeous harmonies and sugar-rush momentum of Girls on the Run.

----------------------------------------------

You can find Knock Knock's Warm Fronts, Cold Shoulders for sale here.

Just a quick entry to tell you about my Band of the Week, or month maybe. I don't how or why I've gone this long without hearing about the Greenberry Woods, but I got tipped on to them because of something else I was looking at or bought on-line, and now I have their two albums and cherish both. They formed in Maryland in the late 80s and between then and 1995 recorded two long players, Rapple Dapple and Big Money Item. Both are power pop gems, with vocal hooks around every corner and some nice distorted guitar work. Each album has filler material on it, but each also has three songs which are power pop hall-of-famers. Like just about every power pop band that has ever existed, the 'Woods owe much to Alex Chilton and Big Star, whose sound they quite clearly emulate. If you are into power pop, if you like the Posies, Guided by Voices, New Pornographers, dB's, Dwight Twilley Band, etc, etc, do what you need to do to buy the two Greenberry Woods records. After the two albums the band split up, apparently because there were too many creative forces under one roof (heard that before). Some core members went on to form Splitsville, who seem to be somethning of a camp/novelty act and who I have not yet explored. Could be a future blog.

This is a big week for Beach Boys freaks, with the release of the ginormous US Singles Collection Box collection (1962-65), a 16-CD limited edition set of early A & B sides, live and alternate takes, with a 48-page hardbound book of photos, all wrapped in a hotrod inspired box with wood, foam and foil inlay.

Two early, deeply weird Alice Cooper Band albums see the light of day anew with Rhino Encore's reissues of Pretties for You and Easy Action. This is the Alice we like to talk about on the Esotouric Where the Action Was rock history tour, hanging out at the Landmark Hotel getting his eyes did by Miss Christine of the GTOs. Also new from Rhino Encore, Warren Zevon's Mr. Bad Example, from 1991.

Collector's Choice issues a couple of mid-period albums from Arthur Lee's Love, Out Here (with the remake of "Signed D.C.") and False Start (with a Lee-Hendrix collaboration).

Then there's the Lydia Lunch video compedium Hysterie - 1978-2006, just the thing to celebrate this week's Teenage Jesus & the Jerks reunion in NYC.