The Boogie

Published, as a news item, in March issue of Rolling Stone.

Endless Boogie

In 1997, somewhere within the labyrinthine expanse of New York City, four guys with a love of rock ‘n’ roll started a band.  There was no agenda, just a need and want to piece together toweringly heavy grooves, recreating those sounds of old, just for their own ears, in a jam space on a Tuesday evening – a bit of fun for four guys with a collective age of 169.

Four years later, Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus invited them to open for him and his then band, The Jicks, at the Bowery Ballroom – quite the first gig – and the world was, finally, introduced to Endless Boogie.  “Well that’s how it started… we never pictured, at first, Endless Boogie being a band, except for jamming and making up riffs,” explains guitarist Paul ‘Top Dollar’ Major.  “But people started twisting our arms saying, ‘You’ve gotta play, you’ve gotta play’, and so eventually we said yeah.”

Part of the Boogie’s appeal then, is that they only play gigs when invited – an Endless Boogie show isn’t something you’ll see every day.  “We figured that rather than calculate or pursue what we’re doing… we’d just go with whatever connection we’d make with people.”  This seems like the antithesis of the modern day band, to actively not pursue fame and fortune.  “Yeah, absolutely, and you can tell when watching a band whether they’re there in the moment, living it, or just putting on a presentation,” notes Major.

The Boogie will make their first foray to Australia in March, riding high on the back of 2010’s epic Full House Head (their second full-length release).  “Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, and being on the same festival bill as Roky Erickson, one of my childhood heroes, that’s exciting for me,” Major smiles, referencing the band’s upcoming appearance at Golden Plains, before revealing that the plan, the Endless Boogie plan, remains unchanged.

“We’ll be doing some familiar songs, but they’ll jam out into places spontaneously,” he promises.  “We use the songs as a diving board to leap off… we’ll keep it pure and just rock.”

Samuel J. Fell

http://noquarter.net/bands/eb.php

Out Of The Shadow

Published in January issue of Rhythms magazine.  (Alternate version to be published in Inpress).

ADAM COHEN

Expectation can be a cruel mistress, and she can take many forms.  Whether it be expectation to carry off a nigh-on impossible task, the expectation that something you do this time will be better than last time, the expectation that you’ll live up to, perhaps, the Family Name.  None more so than the latter then, has defined a large period of the life of Adam Cohen.  For what could be crueller, what could possibly be more demanding (and indeed, almost futile) than the expectation that your musical career will in any way live up to that of your father, the one and only Leonard Cohen?

Cohen junior however, has come to a realisation.  The realisation that whilst expectation will always flirt with you (sometimes from afar, sometimes right in front of your wife and children), there’s a way out, a way to tell her to stop – there’s a way to operate where expectation means nothing.  “That’s very much true,” muses Cohen, sleepily, for it’s early morning in Prague where he’s currently located, five weeks into a two month European tour.  “There were three [moments where I came to this realisation], ingredients to change.

“The first was disillusionment with my own career.  The second was my father’s triumphant return to the stage.  And the third one was fatherhood, my own, becoming a father myself, that feeling and connection,” he goes on slowly.  “[Now] I walk to work with a sense of pride and a hop in my step, as they say.  I used to have a lower ranking position in the family business, and now my office is on the upper floors.  And if my music is in dialogue with my father’s, then I have something noteworthy and interesting to say, finally.”

Cohen’s musical career has been varied.  He released a couple of solo records a number of years ago (Adam Cohen in 1998 and Melancolista in 2004), as well as Ex-Girlfriends (also in 2004) with rock band Low Millions, with whom he had moderate success.  Since then however, despite the fact he’s “been busy”, he effectively withdrew from the music world, citing disillusionment as he mentioned earlier.  We talk briefly about how it is to have Leonard Cohen as a father, and he’s sage about it, accepting it (you certainly can’t change these things), and calls it more of a help than a hindrance.  But there was always that expectation.  Until now.

I mentioned earlier that Cohen junior had come to a realisation.  He outlined the reasons why and how.  But the main booster?  The recent release of his third solo record, Like A Man.  This is a record, one that’s been a long time coming, that lowers that expectation (almost kills it stone dead in fact) because it’s the album he’s been ‘expected’ to make, for years now.  Like A Man sees Adam Cohen come to the realisation, it sees him gather himself up, and it sees him walk out of the shadow, into the light of his own making.  It sees him as a musician in his own right, not just the son of a legend.

“I’m not sure I can answer that without reiterating the word ‘pride’,” he says simply when I ask why he’s called it his “proudest artistic achievement yet”.  “I’m proud of it because it’s work that dignifies and honours a tradition from which I come.  It’s a record that has the honesty and a signature that is altogether my own at the same time.  It’s very much celebrating my father’s work, which has had a deep influence on me, and it’s also my proudest work because it’s so unexpected to me, that I would have ever made this record, and ever made it so well.”

I ask how long this record has been germinating, how old are these songs?  “This is an old collection of songs, dating back… some of the songs are really old, the first song on the record is 20 years old,” he reveals.  “What links all the songs together, is that one after the other, they were discarded or hidden away when I found them to bare to close a resemblance to my father’s work.”  This is interesting then – do they no longer feel similar to Cohen senior’s work?  Or does that not matter?

“Like I was saying earlier, they pay homage to a tradition from which I come in a way that I’m very satisfied with,” is the simple answer, and perhaps that’s the key.  The reason why Adam Cohen no longer feels the heavy weight of expectation to be like his father, is because he’s (finally, perhaps) released an album that is similar to his father’s work.  Not the same, but similar.  It’s something that he feels has set him free, it’s something fans and media are agreeing with.  It’s interesting – in order to get out of the shadow, Adam Cohen has gone back to it.

At the end of the day though, Like A Man, as Cohen junior mentioned, has his own signature, and that’s important.  It’s almost like a fresh start for him, a springboard, one that could hurl him in any direction he chooses.  Far away, it would seem, from that cruel mistress that is expectation.  “At this point I’m happy to say the record is being released in Australia and Canada and dozens of countries in Europe and the US, and so it’s taking me on a… giant sized adventure,” he sums up, and at this point, that’s all that matters.

Samuel J. Fell

Like A Man is available now through Cooking Vinyl / Shock.

http://www.adamcohen.com/

Record Review - Ani Difranco

Published in January issue of Rolling Stone.

Ani Difranco

¿Which Side Are You On?

Righteous Babe / Shock

More than three years after last record Red Letter Year, acclaimed songstress Ani Difranco returns with another in Which Side Are You On?, a rootsy, full-figured crusader of a record tackling rabid consumerism, flaccid government and a crumbling planet, not to mention getting older and “being totally OK with the process”, as Difranco herself obviously is.

The Pete Seeger-penned titled track, on which he appears here, is the cornerstone, a funky finger-snapper, bookended by a mixture of folkish whisps and rootsy grooves, all showing you don’t have to be Rage Against The Machine to get a poignant point across, as Difranco has always done.

Samuel J. Fell

NO AID NEEDED FOR THIS 'GATOR

Last month, I conducted an email interview (never as satisfying as a face-to-face interview, or even a phoner) with Alligator Records boss, Bruce Iglauer for the label's 40th anniversary.  Alligator, based out of Chicago, is one of my favourite labels; they've been releasing high-quality blues for four decades now, never compromising on quality, always keeping ahead of the times.  For an independent label to still be active, and indeed competitive, is something special in this day and age of digital downloads and major label demise.

The first half of the interview was quite serious, the second half more light-hearted.  The latter was published in the December issue of Rhythms as a 'quick-grab', but the first half remains unpublished.  I've posted it here in full, along with the short intro from the published piece.

Alligator Records - Bruce Iglauer

Bruce Iglauer.  Pic by Chris Monaghan.

Four decades ago this year, a young Bruce Iglauer (disenchanted with the fact Delmark Records, where he worked, wouldn’t release an album by his favourite blues artist, Hound Dog Taylor) struck out on his own and made that record himself.  Taylor became the first artist signed to Iglauer’s new label, Alligator, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Over the years, acts like Koko Taylor, Albert Collins and Johnny Winter have called Alligator home, as have countless others, and it’s been Iglauer’s effort and persistence that has seen a lot of these acts reintroduced to fans all over the world.  This passion, dedication and pure love of the blues is why Alligator is here today, celebrating 40 years of genuine house rockin’ music, and why it always will be.  Iglauer himself waxes lyrical on 40 years of blues.

Firstly, this year obviously marks 40 years since you first began Alligator – given all you’ve been through since then, how does that makes you feel today?

I’m constantly amazed that Alligator has survived (and sometimes even thrived) for all these years. However, I spend very little time thinking about the past or glorying in what we’ve done. My focus is always on the present and the future. Right now we’re preparing new releases by Joe Louis Walker, Janiva Magness, Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials (I’m producing that one), Curtis Salgado and Michael 'Iron Man' Burks (I’m producing that one too). So my focus is planning for next year, as well as dealing with the ever-more-difficult task of running a label in this ever-changing music business world.  I never wanted to be a businessman, but it’s how I am able to record music I love and share it with the world.

Yr first project, the one which got the label off and running, was yr recording of Hound Dog Taylor back in 1971 – I believe the album was recorded in two days, straight to tape, mastered as you went.  You then pressed 1000 copies and began distributing them from the trunk of yr car – tell me how you felt firstly, as you pulled out of Chicago with a boot full of those tapes, and secondly, how you felt when that record was first played on air, after you’d given it to a DJ.

In those days, I was making everything up as I went along, and spending every penny I had (a whopping $2500, which was the startup money for the label) to alert the world to Hound Dog Taylor. So we definitely mixed his album as we went, because that’s all I could afford! I remember the very first radio spin, at WGLD-FM in Chicago. It gave me a huge sense of fulfilment but also started my ‘addiction'. My music was on the radio! 

Iglauer and Albert Collins.

Now I want more…more…more. So I drove to Detroit and got airplay on WABX and WRIF, and then on to Cleveland, and so on. I realised very quickly that Hound Dog’s music had something that spoke to others as it spoke to me. He knew how to put all that joy and raw energy and blues feeling into his music in a way that others could feel. I thought, 'Maybe I’ll be able to sell enough of this record to continue to record music I love'. And that’s pretty much been the story of my life since then; record music I love, and try to sell enough of it to continue recording even more music I love.  By the way, I’m still in touch with those DJs who gave us our first spins.

You had some notable early successes – reintroducing the world to Koko Taylor, taking Albert Collins to the top, signing Johnny Winter… those must have been tremendously exciting times.

It’s always exciting both to help the recordings be created and to grow the audience for the artists. I only record artists whose music moves me, so every time an Alligator record gets a good review, is played on radio, or someone buys our music, it’s like a personal affirmation. But between 1971 and the late 1980s, I was producing or co-producing the vast majority of Alligator releases. I got to work with Hound Dog Taylor, Son Seals, Lonnie Brooks, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter, Roy Buchanan, Lonnie Mack, Koko Taylor, Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, Professor Longhair, The Kinsey Report and many more. 

I was often producing seven or eight albums a year. Because the market for blues was much bigger then, it seemed like almost every Alligator release was able to pay for itself and make a decent profit. So I was able to spend many, many days (and nights) in the studio. But as the years passed, we signed more artists who either came to us with their own finished master, or with their own producers, or were simply not appropriate for my producing skills. I’m a blues producer; I can help an artist make a great blues record. But my musical knowledge is limited, and I wouldn’t be much help in the studio with artists like Marcia Ball, JJ Grey & Mofro or Anders Osborne who are more 'roots' than blues artists.

Another thrill, then and now, is to be in the audience when my artists get an overwhelming audience response. I get caught up in the excitement — after all, I’m first and foremost a fan. I remember being in great audiences in Australia, seeing Hound Dog Taylor, Albert Collins and Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials. You guys know how to let it all hang out!

Iglauer with Professor Longhair.

It seems one of the reasons Alligator has survived, and prospered, for so long, it that it’s more of a ‘family’ as opposed to a ‘business’ – whether it’s the artists or the staff, it seems yr very close knit – how important has that been to you over the years?

I like to refer to all of us — myself, the artists, the staff — as 'The Alligator Family'. When I signed Joe Louis Walker recently, I sent an email welcoming him to the family. We tend to make long term commitments to our artists. If we believe in their talent and their professionalism, we will work hard to develop their careers, even if it takes a long time. Because we do more aggressive and concerted promotion and publicity than any other label in the blues or roots music world (and perhaps than any other label, period), we have become sort of the Rolls-Royce of labels for touring blues and roots artists.

We never stop working to make their careers more visible and their gigs more successful, even when they don’t have a new release. All the artists have my cell phone number, and before cell phones, they had my home number. And they know how to use it — if the van breaks down, the bass player quits, the club isn’t paying the amount on the contract or their girlfriend or boyfriend dumps them, they call Bruce, and Bruce answers and tries to help. To take it to an extreme, I had one artist live at my home for a month because he was trying to get away from his druggie friends and get clean. Others crashed at my house while on tour to save hotel costs. I’m never off duty. As a result, we often have earned intense loyalty from our artists. For example, Koko Taylor stayed with us for decades on a handshake. She said, “Bless the bridge that carried you across,” and she considered Alligator and me to be that bridge.

As far as the staff, I have the opposite attitude of a lot of businesses. I don’t think people are easily replaceable. When I have an employee who does his or her job well and is dedicated to Alligator and the artists, I’ll do everything I can to keep that person on staff. Alligator can’t pay as much as some other businesses, but we provide good health insurance, a retirement account, and if there is any significant profit at the end of the year, I’ll write bonus checks to the entire staff.

The result is that I have valuable people who have been with the company between 15 and 30 years. These are people I can trust to give 110% even when I’m not looking over their shoulders. Many of them have played a great role in Alligator’s success over the years (and rarely gotten credit). And I’m proud to say that in the 12 years since the worldwide implosion of music sales began (primarily because of illegal downloading), I’ve only laid off one person, and I gave him six months to find another job.

Obviously there would have been some highlights from the past 40 years – give me a few that really stand out in yr memory.

There are so many it’s hard to pick just a couple. Of course my first big thrill was making that very first Hound Dog Taylor record. Taking my favourite band into the studio, producing my first album, directing the mix (which, as I said, we did live; no chance to fix later) and realising that their music would translate from the live show onto record… it was literally a dream come true.

I’ve had huge thrills in the studio since, like when I brought Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland and the ‘new kid on the block’, Robert Cray, together for the Showdown! album and saw the record just about make itself, as each of these three very close friends inspired each other to greater and greater musical heights. 

Iglauer and Lonnie Mack.

Then there was cutting the first album by Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials in three hours, when they had come into the studio to cut just two songs for an anthology and I enjoyed the music so much that I asked them to do, “a few more” (which turned into 30 recorded songs and a debut album). I had a great time making Lone Star Shootout album, another multi-artist session, this one with Lonnie Brooks, Long John Hunter and Phillip Walker. They had all been friendly competitors on the Beaumont/Port Arthur scene in Texas in the mid-1950s. 

We cut some songs by their mutual heroes, like T-Bone Walker, Gatemouth Brown and Clarence 'Bon Ton' Garlow that brought back great memories for them. And when we had one more track to do late at night and everyone was tired, I woke up their senses of humour by mooning them through the glass of the control room. And I had no greater thrill than recording Crawfish Fiesta by another of my heroes, Professor Longhair, the Bach of Rock, in New Orleans. Dr. John was a huge help on that album. 'Fess declared it his favourite album ever, because he had never been given that level of artistic control. On the day we released it, he died suddenly at the age of 59. I guess he felt he had made his artistic statement. I was blessed to have worked with him. That’s the way I feel about most of my career. I’ve been blessed.

Of course I’ve also had great moments being in the audience and just watching my artists reach straight to the souls of the people around me. Seeing Albert Collins with his 150 foot cord walk through a line of Greek police (who were expecting a riot) and into a wildly appreciative audience, for example. Or seeing Shemekia Copeland’s super successful debut at the Chicago Blues Festival right after we released her debut album. And then there was my honeymoon party at Buddy Guy’s Legends club in Chicago, where musicians from all over the country flew in to play for my wife and me (and about 400 of our closest personal friends). That night, Luther Allison and Koko Taylor performed together; I think it was the only time they ever did. And now they are both part of the Great Blues Band in the Sky.

And no doubt some low-lights – hit me with a couple of those.

As you can imagine, having started at 23 with my first artist being 55, I spent the first part of my career dealing with a lot of death. Since I began, I’ve lost good friends who were also key artists — Son Seals, Koko Taylor, Hound Dog Taylor, William Clarke and so many more.  Being a professional blues musician is very hard, and blues men and women tend to die younger than they should. Many of them come from very hard backgrounds — poverty, poor health care, physical labor jobs, and of course my black artists have had to deal with racism. These things age people prematurely. So I’ve buried a lot of people I cared about.

I’ve had great frustration with some artists whom I thought were great and the public never totally embraced. like Fenton Robinson, C.J. Chenier,  Michael Hill’s Blues Mob, Rusty Zinn, Long John Hunter and more.

"I’ve also managed to not sign artists whom I should have signed, like a guy I dismissed as, “the loudest Albert King imitator I ever heard”, named Stevie Ray Vaughan. And that’s not my only mis-step!"

And also some possible hair-raising moments – the bio on the label website mentions you’ve gotten more than a few of yr artists “out of some rather sticky situations”… care to elaborate?

I can think of a lot of them. The most obvious one was when I was in a train wreck in Norway in 1978 with the entire Son Seals Band. Because we had derailed and skidded down a steep embankment and part way into a fjord, no one could get to our train car. The band and I had to rescue all the passengers before the train car slid further into the water. During the wreck the drummer, Tony Gooden, was injured so badly that he never played again. It was the most harrowing night of my life. That night the artists and I got each other out of a very sticky situation.

Iglauer with Mavis Staples

One time I was on the way to a gig in the suburbs with Hound Dog Taylor. We were caravanning two cars and he was pulled over by the police. I stopped of course. In the process of ‘negotiating’ with the cops, I ended up being arrested, spending one night in jail on the South Side of Chicago followed by two years on probation for, “interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty,” and couldn’t leave the county without permission of my probation officer.

On my 60^th birthday, I celebrated by spending 14 hours at Cook County Jail trying to bail out a musician member of the family who was arrested on a bogus charge. It took from 9am to 11pm to get him out.

On a couple of occasions, it was the artists who got me out of sticky situations. Brewer Phillips, who played with Hound Dog Taylor, twice helped me deal with people who were coming at me with knives. One was a discontented musician whom I had recorded for an anthology but didn’t sign for a full album. The other was a concert promoter who was refusing to pay the band and the discussion became somewhat, um, heated. In both cases, I was unscathed thanks to quick action by Brewer.

40 years in, and Alligator is still going strong; in fact, you’d have to be the premier indie blues label in the world.  Can you ever see an end to this?  What are yr plans for the future?  Another 40 years?

An end to this? Well, I suppose I’ll die someday, but I intend to keep doing this as long as I can. I’d like to die at either a great gig or in the studio listening to one of my favourite artists cut a terrific performance. But I can sure imagine doing this for another 40 years.

Alligator Records 40th Anniversary Collection is available now through Alligator Records / Only Blues Music.

http://www.alligator.com/

HEY JOE

Published in the January issue of Australian Guitar (feature) - excerpt below...


Joe Robinson

Pic by Ethan James

Since winning Australia’s Got Talent back in 2008, Joe Robinson has come a long way.  So far in fact, it’s almost not worth mentioning this talent show triumph (with its connotation as a crass and questionable way of entering the industry), and indeed, he was a consummate guitarist long before he ventured forth to strut his stuff on prime time television.  Joe Robinson, who celebrated his 20^th birthday this May just gone, has become known for his six-string prowess, his technical ability and his almost unmatched drive and ambition; a welcome boost that win was, but it’s been on talent and desire alone that he’s progressed since.

Today sees him based in Nashville, that true bastion of country music, where he’s spent the past nine months toiling within the confines of a studio – an environment more than a little alien to him given his obvious penchant for touring – putting together his third record, Let Me Introduce You.  It’s an apt title for Robinson’s third effort in that it serves as a true introduction to Robinson the artist.  Where his debut, Birdseed (’07) and second record Time Jumpin’ (’09), were the public’s first taste of the young man – both rollicking, fast-paced acoustic instrumental releases – Let Me Introduce You sees Robinson finding his feet, his style and, most importantly, his vocal prowess, the latter being something he’s not before captured on disc.  This is his first record, his first introduction then, of himself as a rounded artist – a musician, not just a guy with a guitar.

“I felt like I got to a certain point, and that I needed to push myself in a new direction,” Robinson explains on why now was the time to introduce vocals into the mix, particularly given thus far, his guitar has had a voice of its own.  “Turning 18 and moving to the States was a fresh start in a lot of ways, and I always wanted to sing and make an album like this.  To me, the solo guitar thing was always a stepping-stone to bigger and better things, so I felt like this was the best time in my life to make this transition.

“And it has been a challenge, particularly getting used to the experience of performing live as a singer and a songwriter, because that’s something that doesn’t develop overnight, it needs to manifest,” he adds, and he’s right.  Let Me Introduce You is a starting point for Robinson, it’s his first attempt at displaying his singing, his songwriting, and while the results aren’t stunning, it’s a solid indication that there’s room to move and grow, and that this isn’t just about his guitar.

...

Samuel J. Fell

http://joerobinson.com/

SWITCHBLADE ROCK 'N' ROLL

Published in December issue of Rhythms Magazine

Hanni El Khatib

I remember reading The Outsiders at school – Ponyboy, Soda and Darry, slicked back greaser hair and switchblades, Mustangs and girls in skirts with hair just so.  Elvis was ‘tuff’ and the Beatles weren’t, there were rumbles and packets of Kools and the kids would sneak into the Drive-In and find off-tack ways to get their kicks.  Looking back at the scenes described within those pages now, I can hear a soundtrack to it all, one I wasn’t really aware of at the time, but one which now fuels a lot of what I do on a day to day basis, and I’m quite obviously not alone.  If  I were to pick up a pack of Kools and look to share ‘em with someone today, it’d probably be Hanni El Khatib.

Khatib, an American of Palestinian heritage, channels these scenes through his current music.  It’s a mish-mash of ‘50s-era blues and rock ‘n’ roll and it brings to mind images of knife fights, rumbling trains a-la mid-century America, huge old cars and an attitude one doesn’t really associate with current times.  Khatib brings this all together in a wonderfully left-of-centre way (it’s not neat, by any stretch) and it reeks of authenticity and downright Because I Have To.  And he does have to, a few years ago leaving a (no doubt) well-paid job as Creative Director for a skate fashion label to pursue his musical dream.

“I dunno man, music is something that I've always done as a hobby and when I got the opportunity to go for it full time, I was like, ‘Fuck it’,” Khatib relates on this unorthodox (but wholly understandable) move.  “I knew if I didn't jump on it that I would regret it for the rest of my life.”  Regret is obviously something Khatib didn’t want to live with and so off he went, a couple of short years later releasing his full-length debut, Will The Guns Come Out, dropping earlier this year.  It’s interesting listening to it too (full as it is of the aforementioned ‘50s sounds), when you realise what Khatib grew up listening to.

“Well (and this is when I was young, it all changed as I got older), but let's just say it was Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Ozzy Osbourne, Neil Young and Snoop Dogg,” he smiles when asked who, when he was younger, he wanted to be like, musically, when he grew older.  This has indeed changed, but it seems a fair jump from Snoop Dogg to the likes of Elvis and Buddy Guy.  “Growing up in America, music from the ‘50s is pretty much a part of the culture here,” he explains on how he came to find such an affinity with these sounds from times gone by.  “It's pretty much been ingrained in the fabric of our society since that time. Furthermore, me being a child of the ‘80s, I experienced one of the many resurgent periods of that era. So for me it's quite familiar and as I got older I really started to appreciate the recordings and innovation of the time as well as the simplicity and purity of the music.

“I think the simplicity and iconic nature of the era [too] is the main thing that attracts me to it. Such easy and classic style,” he adds.  Easy, classic style is what is printed all over Will The Guns Come Out.  Yes, it is messy and yes, perhaps Khatib should have waited more than just a couple of years before he released it (hone those chops a little, fully grasp the basics so you’re able to then move them outside of the box), but as mentioned, it’s authentic and real and channels not just sounds of old, but some newer ones too, the three groups of more modern times that come to mind being The White Stripes, The Black Keys and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

“In a sense I guess those bands have paved the way for all bands like myself that make stripped down rock and blues music,” Khatib muses when I ask how influential these newer bands have been.  “I don't necessarily think they influence my song writing directly, but I do feel maybe we all pull from a similar bag of references and are inspired by music of the past.”  No doubt, although this now poses a tricky question – how is Khatib going about adding his own brand of originality to this music?  How is he not just rehashing a rehash?

“I feel like what I do is just pull inspiration from old sounds and music,” he counters.  “I don't think I'm necessarily even attempting to make authentic revivalist music. I'm not trying to replicate that sound to the tee. For me, it's about making music that feels natural and it just happens that I'm influenced by all that type of music.”  Make no mistake about it, Hanni El Khatib is doing this because he has to.  He left his ‘real job’, he relishes the sounds from times gone by, he lives in the now.  A heady bunch of ingredients which are informing a musician with a plan.  As Khatib has been quoted as saying before, “These songs were written for anyone who’s ever been shot or hit by a train.  Knife fight music.”  I ask him if those things have ever happened to him, to which he replies, “No comment.”  Just what Ponyboy would have said.

Samuel J. Fell

Will The Guns Come Out is available now through Innovative Leisure / Inertia.  

http://www.hannielkhatib.com/

Record Review - Huxton Creepers

Huxton Creepers
12 Days To Paris
Fuse (Re-release)

There’s no denying the unbridled free feeling you get whilst listening to well executed power pop; equal parts The Breakfast Club (that wind-in-your-hair irresponsibility of a teen playing by their own rules back in the 1980s), equal parts The Pixies (dark clothes and shoegazing rubbed in the dirt and the fuzz), it’s something that grabs you just right and has you flipping your middle finger to the man all whilst kicking up your heels with reckless abandon.

In Melbourne, back in the early ‘80s, this was a common occurrence, as any regular attendee at places like The Seaview Ballroom and the Prince Of Wales will tell you.  Bands like Corpse Grinders and Olympic Sideburns, kicking out the jams, drawing heavily on ‘60s garage rock ‘n’ roll, punk and rockabilly, twisting it just so, give it a bit of sugar and it’s power pop (or is it?) at its Australian best.  Then of course, came Huxton Creepers, and stages, eardrums and the world at large were never the same again.

These cats cut their chops live, that’s where they belonged, on a stage.  Nothing they ever recorded adequately captured what that live set was like – the theatrics of frontman and main songwriter Rob Craw, the rock solid rhythm section of Matthew Eddy on bass and Arch Law thumping tubs, Paul Thomas’ guitar wrapping it all up – the power and the passion these four exuded had ‘em jumping in the isles and they lived the life and became part of the furniture.

When they did come to record, whilst the results lacked the power so evident in the live setting, it was never by half.  Debut 12 Days To Paris, originally released in 1986, was perhaps where they were firing best; re-released today through Fuse (the full record, plus four bonus tracks), you do get that feeling of almost, of a caged beast perhaps – the idea that a full-on live band is indeed in there, lurking just beneath the surface. 

Still, this is where this particular re-release tops all others – the bonus disc.  Live versions of crowd favourites ‘Shake Some Action’ and ‘Ramble Tamble’ (albeit live on 3LO’s Sunday Night Live, as opposed to at a venue) as well as ‘Iceman’ and ‘Wishing Well’ (both recorded at The Ballroom in St. Kilda in late 1984) are there to remind you of those heady days when it was all you could do to keep the Creepers off a stage.

12 Days To Paris, the album proper (here, remastered) remains to this day a cult classic.  That unmistakable guitar intro courtesy of Thomas as he leads into ‘My Cherie Amour’ makes your arm hair stand on end; it epitomises a time and place for many, and the passing of said time has done little to dull that.  The record continues to pulse from there – the chugging rock ‘n’ roll of ‘Autumn Leaves’, the freewheeling ‘Guilty’, the punkish (with a rockabilly twist) ‘King Of The Road’ – it’s all here in its remastered glory, as strong and catchy as it ever was.

Back to the bonus disc: along with the aforementioned live tracks, you’ve got demo versions of a number of the 12 Days… tracks, a couple of unreleased demos and a couple of tracks which featured on various compilations circa 1984 (including ‘King Of The Road’, which featured on Au Go Go compilation, Asleep At The Wheel).  All told, this is as powerful and full a picture of a seminal underground band as you’ll find around.  Huxton Creepers were at the top of their respective pile during the mid-‘80s, and this set shows exactly why.

Samuel J. Fell

Originally published on Mess+Noise - click here to read edited version.