Anna Never L-R: Daniele Papale, Federica Garenna, Alex Giuliani + Frank Marrelli
We first caught wind of Les Longs Adieux; the Roman band with the French name who earned my avid interest with their excellent 2024 album, “Vertigo.” Their latest single, “La Luna” added a bass player to the duo core of Federica Garenna and Frank Marrelli, to come closer to rocking out. Singer Federica had roots in the Italian Metal scene; a natural for for her powerful voice, so their latest move was a further nod to Rock by adding drums [Alex Gilliani] and a different bass player [Daniele Papele] to make Anna Never. Whose debut album “Serpi In Seno,” was released yesterday. It’s sung in Italian, but don’t let that scare you! Let’s see what’s it’s like.
Anna Never | IT | DL | 2025
Anna Never: Serpi In Seno – IT – DL [2025]
Mi Prendo l’Eternità 3:54
Amore e Morte a Versailles 4:19
Vanità 5:30
Icaro 4:03
Domani 4:54
Rumore 3:33
Serpi in Seno 4:30
Anna 5:05
The album jumped out of the starting blocks with the urgency of “Mi Prendo l’Eternità” as the rhythm section built a tempo for speed while guitarist Morrelli got to indulge in a little tasteful shredding. As ever, the potent voice of Ms. Garenna rode the torrent of the song like a champion. It’s over before we almost got time to catch our breaths with the ringing sustain of Frank’s guitar.
Just from the title alone [surely the best of the year so far] I could not wait to hear “Amore E Morte A Versailles” and the song paid my advance interest in spades. This song was definitely exploring a 1979 space, with the vibe and effects on Morrelli’s guitar harking back to the first Banshees album when John McGeoch really started taking that band places. The foreboding air was abetted by the melodrama of the string synths of Ms. Garenna and as we reached for the song’s climax, Morrelli added a touch of shredding to speed the rush of the song.
“Vanita” added an anthemic touch to the program as the expansive sound this quartet could generate filled the horizon with sound. Matching perfectly with the vigor and fire of Ms. Garenna’s vocals. The touch of sax in the middle eight from Carlo Monaco brought a welcome hint of The Psychedelic Furs to the sound. The next song, “Icaro” also benefited from his sax. The dialogue between the synths and guitar made for a compelling, ringing sound here.
The headstrong double time rhythms that kicked off “Domani” were a different callback to 1979! This time the band were moving in a Judas Priest direction with tightly coiled riffology lending the track plenty of velocity courtesy of Mr. Morrelli. A touch of twangy Morricone guitar on overdub only made the song that much more powerful; and that was before Ms. Garenna brought her formidable pipes to the song! The darkly fatal number took no prisoners as it stormed through the middle of the album. The rhythm section kept the speedpunk of the track afloat. Anything moving this fast couldn’t ever sink. As Morrelli shred his way across the song’s finish line he ceded the win to one last burst of Morricone twang.
The pace stayed sharp for “Rumore,” and Mr. Papale’s bass got some spotlight this time as he anchored the deft number. The storm broke for the surprisingly jaunty title track, where the swing of the song’s beat made this penultimate track a gentle breather for what had been an often relentless pace to the album. Morrelli dialed down the guitar commensurately to come as close as I’d ever heard him come to Jazz as the gentle cascades of notes eddied and swirled around the song.
The album finished off with the Post-Punk of “Anna” with another fast tempo and the sort of deep atmospherics we enjoy from The Chameleons. But the song indulged in some unexpected tempo shifts as Reggae skank vacillated with near headbanging as it wasn’t done with undermining our expectations in the best way possible. Morrelli’s guitar provided a lovely tone here as the expression vocals of Ms. Garenna took us to the song’s climax.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
This album made perfect sense along the spectrum of music that had begun last year with “Vertigo” and through the “La Luna” single, sought to move from a 1983 space to a 1979 space. This time incorporating elements of Metal into the Post-Punk mix for spiky, zesty fun. It’s obvious that Garenna and Morrelli want to play in the whole sandbox of Rock and with their talent, why should they settle for anything less? Especially with results this potent? The DL is only £5.00 at Bandcamp and I’m of a mind that maybe I should hit their entire discography for £18.29 since I am enjoying everything I’m hearing from their quarter. DJ hit that button!
Claudia Brücken: Night Mirror DLX – UK 2xCD [2025]
Disc 1: Album
My Life Started Today 3:28
Rosebud 4:09
All That We Ever Have 3:37
Sound And The Fury 2:36
The Only Ones 3:28
Funny The Things 3:53
Sincerely 3:17
Shadow Dancer 3:34
To Be Loved 7:18
Dancing Shadow 4:26
Disc 2: The Nighttime Mixes
Sound And The Fury (After Midnight Mix) 5:02
Shadow Dancer (Moonlight Mix) 4:40
Sincerely (Stars At Night Mix) 4:11
To Be Loved (Early Hours Mix) 4:12
Claudia Brücken immediately lent the music a sense of hushed drama with her recitation of the lyric “my life started today” as her voice, the elegant synth strings and subtle piano of Charlie Williams magically set the tone for the album. In a world where you have to put the “banger” right up front so the streamers will not hit the “next>” button within seconds, Ms. Brücken had decided that her audience had plenty of room for adults. The overwhelming sense when I heard her sing the refrain “You’d better change, you’d better change” I fully expected to hear her counter with “soon it’ll be filled with parking cars.” A strong hint of the melody to “Satellite Of Love” was impregnating the music that strongly, but the sweetly distorted guitar of David Rainger and the drum programming that kicked in pushed the musical boat off the launch ramp into the unknown.
Then the song dared us to expect more as she continued to recite the lyric, apart from the repetition of the “you’d better change” refrain, which got strong support from the guitar throughout the song. It was daring to begin an album with a song so essentially static; with a quality of stillness instead of propulsion, yet the music bed still filled it with a winning dynamism that suited the lyric. Let’s watch and listen.
The pre-release song, “Rosebud” featured not one but two different bassists! Ben Reed and Mike Allen each enhanced the motorik beat with their guitars. And the organ, piano and crystalline synths formed a Krautrock vibe of the warmest, most analog variety. The twin bassists would also figure on the next song, “All That We Ever Have” but the bent notes on the guitar almost make me wish that someone had said “we need a pedal steel here.” This was music that existed in the no-man’s land between Synthpop and Country Music. The trilling synth arpeggios in the middle eight and the sequencers throughout insured that it landed on the Synthpop side of the line. Just barely.
“The Sound + The Fury” was perhaps the first song here that we would have expected from a Claudia Brücken album. But even the synth patch that opened the song had a hint of guitar twang to it. But the martial drum machine fills were from the New Order playbook, as if they were excised from the middle eight of “Blue Monday.” They built up relentless pressure that the lazy swoop of the guitars managed to partially defuse. The cold ending that jumped out at less than the three minute mark was a shocker. They had built a groove here that was good for four to five minutes but as I would learn, there would be no fat on the bones of this album.
“The Only Ones” opened with the cogent couplet of “the more I see the less I know.” The delicate little number was touched with synths occupying a pedal steel position in the music and the touch of pizzicato strings where a bass guitar would have normally sat was an inspired touch. It was another flirtation with Country music from Ms. Brücken, and a successful one at that.
One of my favorite songs here was “Funny The Things.” Not only did I love the conceit of the lyrics regarding the way that memories work [or not] but the playing and arrangement was simply superb. John Williams guitar was long on the deep sustain that gave every economical lick maximum value, but his banjo playing added what might have been a sequencer in another life of Claudia’s in a whole new light. The graceful flute of Simon Elliston was another unexpected delight here. But the song was really a triumph in every light…and the furthest thing from club music of any stripe…as we can hear below.
“Sincerely” took a leftfield step towards a West Coast Jazz sound with the acoustic guitar of Williams and the percussion of Ray Moody. Mr. Elliston’s flute was icing on the Jazz cake. The only fault I can find with the sing was that just as it was firing on all cylinders it was almost over at the three minute mark. All we got after that was a fade.
The clockwork drum programming of “Shadow Dancer” was a case of Claudia moving in a traditional [for her] direction with the synths predominating this time. Jason Mayo was adding Knobula Eurorack sounds and the swooping synths were making a bold statement here. The delicate guitar lick that David Rainger added with great economy was a deliciously subtle hook among these machines syncopating.
“To Be Loved” was a climactic ballad for this album. It could have been a completely acoustic arrangement, though it certainly heeded “the call of the machine.” But it was the piano, “string” and flute that set the pace here. The distorted guitar that manifested halfway in was complete surprise, but by that point in the song, Ms. Brücken was at a point of simply repeating the refrain. It felt like it was done at the five minute mark, which would have been clearly the longest song here, but it was there that Claudia stopped singing, to allow the song an extended instrumental coda that lasted for another two and a quarter minutes. It really should have stood as the last song of the album, but there was one more track here.
The rubbery sequencer and handclaps of “Dancing Shadow” were a surprising move to a dance music aesthetic on this album which had paid precious little heed to such things thus far. It felt like a “bonus track” for the album. With a dance dub mix of “Shadow Dancer” letting the syncopated sounds act as a bridge to the second disc here.
This edition of the album contained the Nighttime Mixes of four tracks on a bonus CD EP as remixed by Jason Mayo, who figured on a few of the album tracks. Up front, I wondered how this material from an album that was generally far from club music would fare in this regard, since only “Shadow Dancer” and “Sound + The Fury” had that sort of DNA in it.
As it turned out, the EP had both. Squelchy bass synth creeping up on Acid with delicate synth arpeggios further illuminated “Sound + The Fury” with shards of discoball lighting. I liked the percussive syncopated synth line cutting through the song. and Ms. Brücken was fully present with her vocal, so this wasn’t a case of discomix overkill. Until it was. The mix felt over at the 3:30 point. There’s nothing wrong with a succinct remix, but the last 90 seconds of this felt labored and perfunctory.
“Shadow Dancer” was touched with choral patches for a spacier vibe but the strong syncopation of the track was leaned into heavily for an enhanced heft of the song. With a slight drop added early on for an emphatic boost. I also enjoyed how Ms. Brücken’s vocal was multiplexed throughout for a slightly psychedelic touch. Recasting the song in a hall of mirrors setting that suited it well. I had to smile at the touch of the distinctive “Blue Monday” drum pattern in the fade! Maybe the choral patches were an early hint!
The “Sincerely [Stars At Night Mix]” surprisingly kept some of the Jazz vibe of the original, and resisted dancefloor overkill for a touch of Dub with the added light percussion and the pulsating reverb added to the track. The Early Hours mix of “To Be Loved” took what was clearly an album finale in its original incarnation and turned it into a Pop song; giving it a focus where it was first content to wander. It still featured Claudia singing the refrain past the halfway point, so it followed the path of the original. Only tightening it up in the remix.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Claudia Brücken is definitely exploring new areas on her latest album. In a year where we’ve lost Marianne Faithfull, the vibe here suggests that she can take us to a similar place with her songwriting. The success of the xPropaganda project offers her a choice and with that bucket to explore the traditional electronica of her heritage, this album moved in a more acoustic direction. Like Marianne, there would be synthesizers employed, but the sonic palette was widened to take in anything that she and her partner John Williams felt appropriate to the vibe with traditional and even acoustic instrumentation framing these songs.
And the vibe here was tightly focused. These songs definitely cohered into a personal, late night space in keeping with the very on target title of the album. As if in John Williams she had found her own version of Angelo Badalamenti to add musical chiaroscuro to the already introspective songs. The fascinating thing is that she has hinted at many of the directions she explored here in her two cover albums; “Another Language” and “The Lost Are Found.” The stabs at acoustic and folk music on those albums manifested more largely here with original material that didn’t shy away from approaching Country adjacent styles of music we don’t normally associate with Ms. Brücken. But maybe we should.
I often get on my high horse about Post-Punk favorites of mine slumming at “busking” as I call it with their tedious acoustic performances. Though many of the songs here touch on Country music and feature traditional instrumentation as much if not more than electronics, there’s a sense of integrity in these songs and performances that don’t sound like recordings I could name by other favorite performers who set my teeth on edge when I hear them.
My great enjoyment of this album has certainly lit a fire under me to obtain the last two Brücken albums which have been difficult to obtain CDs of in America. Particularly the “Where Else…” album which was the first pairing of Ms. Brücken and John Williams. This has been a pairing that has worked wonders for me as I liked the album on first play, only to quickly grow to loving it with revisiting. And the brevity of the album certainly lends itself to replay as none of these songs come close to wearing out their welcome. With “Night Mirror,” Claudia Brücken has proven that her taste and talent has never let her down and it certainly doesn’t seem like that is ever going to happen. The limited CD as reviewed here is still available, as are other formats. DJ hit that button!
JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, 40 years and one day ago
It’s hard to believe that the Live Aid phenomenon happened 40 decades ago. I was 21 years old and a music fanatic when it occurred, and I’m 61 years old now. More than a few of the artists playing at either Wembley Stadium in the UK or JFK Stadium in Philadelphia have departed from this mortal coil. But the event was not really all that and more to my young eyes. It seemed to mark the point where the artists who had previously dominated Rock and by extension, had necessitated the Punk Uprising through their art and actions, came back into the limelight where they have largely retained their grip on it for subsequent generations now.
To be honest, the wind was definitely ebbing from the sails of what was left of New Wave and Post-Punk after the peak year [for me, anyway] of 1981. 1982 seemed to be fine, but I noticed the different vibe by 1983. Where New Wave [under the new branding of New Music] was finally making inroads to the US pop charts via the MTV back door, which with little in the way of music videos to play 24 hours a day, leaned heavily on the music of arty outsiders in lieu of established superstars. At first it was a charge to hear what I thought were cult bands like Duran Duran become huge stars in the new environment.
But truth be told, that level of success started a feedback loop that saw adventure get tossed aside as the new rules became more established. MTV had their own rotational playlists as tightly formatted as anything on the US airwaves. The reliance on visuals to push music was, in hindsight, more than a little odd on the face of it to me now. But the wave of Post-Punk and/or New Wave; so strong in 1979, was losing its vitality. The energies were ebbing. By 1983 this was apparent to me. In 1984 music seemed to be adrift. Like we were waiting for the next thing to manifest. Little did anyone expect that by the following summer, famine in Africa would be the fulcrum that helped the old Boomer regime of musicians to reassert control of the musical narrative.
The irony was that the impetus for Live Aid could not have been more “New Wave.” Bob Geldof of New Wave faves The Boomtown Rats saw a harrowing BBC documentary on African Famine and resolved to do something about it on a personal level. Was there ever a more D.I.Y. response to a political and humanitarian disaster ever mounted than that of Band Aid?
He called up Midge Ure of Ultravox and they cooked up a benefit project called Band Aid which saw all of the top British charts acts of the time to do what they could to get food into the mouths of starving people. The modest charity record that they hoped would have a little impact raised over 24 million dollars and was a shot heard ’round the world.
Here is the roster of talent that took part in the single. We’ll sort the artists according to these three groupings: New Wave, Boomer Rock, and Pop/Soul.
New Wave
Boomer Rock
Pop/Soul
Bono
Phil Collins
Robert “Kool” Bell
Boy George
Rick Parfitt
George Michael
Pete Briquette
Francis Rossi
James “J.T.” Taylor
Adam Clayton
Sting
Dennis Thomas
Chris Cross
Jody Watley
Simon Crowe
Paul Young
Sara Dallin
Siobhan Fahey
Johnnie Fingers
Bob Geldof
Glenn Gregory
Tony Hadley
John Keeble
Gary Kemp
Martin Kemp
Simon Le Bon
Marilyn
Jon Moss
Steve Norman
Nick Rhodes
John Taylor
Roger Taylor
Midge Ure
Martyn Ware
Paul Weller
Keren Woodward
This sorting is arbitrary, and the lines are blurred, I’ll admit. Some of the “New Wave” acts here would mature into Boomer icons in short time. But for the most part, these were British bands of the moment with under a decade of history to their names, and most of them were forged in the flames of New Wave or Post-Punk. I would maintain that the list of talent is overwhelmingly so. There were a few older performers there, but I could argue that members of Status Quo, and Phil Collins were hardly actual Boomer icons like Robert Plant or Paul McCartney. It’s interesting that US R+B acts like Shalamar and Kool + The Gang were represented there! Possibly by virtue of their chart success and proximity at the time. In retrospect, it’s was very cool that black Americans were invited to the event but I feel that speaks to the inclusionary values of the people in charge.
All of these aspects tied the Band Aid record to the Post-Boomer generation of talent. Ironically, it was Boy George, who had the Culture Club stage at Wembley in the Christmas season of 1984 crashed by a few other singers who had also sang on the Band Aid record join him for an impromptu rendition of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and was so moved by it that he suggested to Bob Geldof that they should have a concert.
The logistics would be big. By now the world was aware of Band Aid and what they had achieved. With that notion the plans were begun for Live Aid, and every modesty that gave the Band Aid notion charm was jettisoned for grandiosity. With Live Aid, the music decided it was time to grow big or go home. One stadium was not enough. One continent was not enough. The event would test the engineering mettle of those tasked to dare to coordinate and sequence a transatlantic concert event on two stages with a combined live audience of over 160,000 and a television audience of over a billion.
It was all driven by the urgency of raising the most money possible to feed starving people. A noble goal. But in the rush to embrace values of size, I don’t think anyone realized what the implication was for music. Which had been reacting against the values of size that had led to Punk Rock a decade earlier. One the decision to “go as big as humanly possible” inhumanity is knocking on the front door, trying to enter.
“The show should be as big as is humanly possible.”
Bob Geldof [Melody Maker 1985]
When the day of Live Aid rolled around, I had already watched Oz For Africa, which MTV had broadcast highlights of in the wee hours of July 12th. By the time that Live Aid started in Wembley Stadium at 7 a.m. EDT I had MTV back on and was marginally interested in seeing Ultravox, one of my favorite bands, playing live at this event. A few other bands I liked were on the roster as well. I started watching but by the time Elvis Costello had his one song, two hours into it, I had enough of this dreadful event. MTV was showing maybe half of the band’s sets. I could not foresee wanting to subject myself to any more of this. And it must be said, in going big, the people in charge asserted that actual honest-to-goodness Boomer Icons would be given the climactic pedestal of the day’s schedule after almost a decade in the cultural wilderness. Here is the roster of Live Aid as it happened in London and Philadelphia that day, given the same sort of sorting.
New Wave
Boomer Rock
Pop/Soul
The Style Council
Status Quo
Nik Kershaw
The Boomtown Rats
Sting
Paul Young
Adam Ant
Phil Collins
The Hooters
Ultravox
Bryan Ferry
Four Tops
Spandau Ballet
Dire Straits
Billy Ocean
Elvis Costello
Queen
Run-D.M.C.
Sade
David Bowie
Rick Springfield
Howard Jones
The Who
Bryan Adams
U2
Elton John
Ashford & Simpson
Simple Minds
Freddie Mercury/Brian May
Madonna
Pretenders
Paul McCartney
Patti Labelle
The Cars
Joan Baez
Hall & Oates
The Power Station
Black Sabbath
Thompson Twins
REO Speedwagon
Duran Duran
Crosby, Stills & Nash
The Beach Boys
George Thorogood + the Destroyers
Santana
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Kenny Loggins
Neil Young
Eric Clapton
Led Zeppelin
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Mick Jagger
Tina Turner
Bob Dylan
Keith Richards
Ronnie Wood
And Judas Priest!
That’s almost a reversal of the values that had informed Band Aid with Boomers far outnumbering the young upstarts. Sure, sure. Apart from Status Quo [!] the “opening acts” of Like Aid UK were all the artists that I had any interest at all in seeing. The bands who had surfed the New Wave to chart success. And even so, the presentation in a huge stadium, was at odds with how I feel that Music is best enjoyed. On a more human scale. This was the necessary evil that boosted the event’s chances at making a life-or-death difference and the positive association of that fact seemed to end up in giving CPR to a lot of Rock corpses; left for dead on the slab.
Until today I had no earthly clue that both Crosby, Stills & Nash AND Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had separate sets at JFK Stadium! Observe the megadeath firepower of Boomer Rock writ large. Live Aid managed to completely re-route the rivers of Rock Music in ways that re-established the Boomer Rock Hegemony waiting for one more chance to lord it over the rest of us with their presence. Which they are doing to their very graves with the complicity of an even more consolidated media structured that has a very small number of companies controlling the entire cultural storyline today.
Now that I think of it, Naomi Klein could have posited her Disaster Capitalism theorem by extrapolating the famine events in Africa that led to Baby Boomer Rock icons becoming more entrenched than ever following a temporary dalliance by Punk with an attempt to bring rock music back down to a more immediate social level as something closer to an exchange between peers rather than the transmissions from a remote and exclusive ruling class of Rock to the rabble. As David Rimmer has cogently put it, “Like Punk Never Happened.”
We are back to the seemingly endless tour shirt culling thread. Yes. I guess after not wearing t-shirts for a decade, I went a little off the rails. buying tour shirts for almost every show. Often in multiple designs if I really loved the band, or saw them a lot. Sometimes, both of those criteria were in play! We are reminiscing about them in this thread, supplanted by the actual images I posted on eBay to sell them, nearly 20 years ago.
Cocteau Twins weren’t the only 4AD band to finally play the Southeast United Stated where I lived 30+ years ago. Lush were a band that we liked during their arrival on these shores. The “Gala” compilation of their UK EPs was a must buy and I was right on the full album that followed; “Spooky.” After that I lost track.
Much of this was down to the Spring of 1993, when I stopped watching any television. With no videotapings of MTV’s “120 Minutes” I really lost all connection to whatever music was currently being pushed by the majors. But soon, I would meet my loved one and we’d be going to shows three to four times per week as that’s just how we rolled back then.
As much as looking to the music that I had missed a decade earlier re-directed my attentions, these other factors also came into play. Until the early noughts, I really had no idea what had happened to Lush. But this had been a great show. The band were great but as my friend Wendy put it afterward, “the light show was drugs!” She wasn’t kidding. The light show to accompany this performance was maybe the most stunning example of such that I’d seen at that time. It wasn’t just Varilite® porn, but a super solid example of a lighting director who really knew what they were doing.
Wow! Did I love me some Swing Out Sister in the throes of the stultifying Mid-80s Malaise®! The band were at the peak of the beloved NWOBJP trend and I thought I might never see them live for a few years. Stuck in Central Florida, I entered the Night Tracks contest to win a night on the Town in NYC with Swing Out Sister in 1987…and I won…second place. What that meant was I didn’t get to meet and see the band live in NYC, but I won a new CD player.
It took a few more years, but on their actually somewhat uninspiring fourth album, they came to Atlanta and I flew into town to catch the show at the Variety Playhouse…not the so-called “Varsity Theatre” as both the t-shirt and the setlist.fm page would have you believe! It was not the first show I’d see at the Variety Playhouse; that would have been Donovan on his “Sutras” tour. Nor was it the last – Sparks in 2013.
I’d bought my tickets prior to the band booking a gig, ironically, at the Disney Pleasure Island complex on Orlando’s doorstep. But trips to Atlanta were always worth the effort. And the Variety Playhouse had was more soul than any Disney Venue. I recall that my friends Beverly and [I think] chasinvictoria drove up and I got a taxi from the airport straight to the show where I met them. The crowd waiting to enter the venue were way into it. I was not the only one there with the Japanese live CD!
The band were wonderful and I bought a pair of shirts, but one of them is not going anywhere. I await fall and winter to wear that shirt to this day. The more colorful shirt here was easy to cut free as it was not their strongest album or cover design.
Yet another Duran Duran shirt that I think I might have bought on the first show of the “Dilate Your Mind Tour” that I saw at the USF Scumdome in July of 1993. But there’s every possibility that this might have been bought at the third leg of the tour at the Orlando Arena where we got 2nd row seats in the pre-TicketBot days where it was possible to do this by being dedicated and diligent. I’m not sure that my Durannie friend Sandra didn’t buy a block of these seats for all of her friends.
Anyway, I’m pretty certain that the second Duran Duran show I saw in Jacksonville in the summer of 1994, which was a free show at a city venue [with opening act The Cranberries] did not have any merch table at all. In any case, this was a XXL shirt with a metallic gold frame on the band showing their mid-90s quartet formation with Warren Cucurullo on guitar. I know lots of Durannies whio pine for Andy Taylor, but for me, Warren was the DD guitarist. I always thought his tone complemented Nick Rhodes synths better.
This was the second Cocteau Twins shirt I bought at the “Four Calendar Cafe” tour show that I saw in Tampa at The Ritz theater. This was a heather number with a monochrome version of the cover art that sort of worked a lot better for me than the full color images used on other shirts or the album itself. Every time I think about this I wish that I’d saved this one Cocteau Twins shirt simply because it was so beautiful. But let me testify that the ink coverage on the front made it a bear to wear in the heat!
But as Fernando sez’, “sometimes it is better to look good than to feel good, dahlings!”
I sat out Chris Isaak’s 1999 tour. He played the House Of Blues at Downtown Disney; never a must-see venue. Now when it was The Cramps, or Link Wray, we’d go! Actually, by that time I had sat out Chris Isaak’s career. In 1999, the last album I’d bought was “Forever Blue.” It took me decades to move past that point in his canon.
So how did I get the t-shirt? It was a gift from my friend Sandra. These days? I only need the first three Chris Isaak albums with James Calvin Wilsey on Guitar. The Phase Two Silvertone with Johnny Reno and Hershel Yatovitz never convinced me. Wvwn Wilsey’s swan song, “San Francisco Days” is currently on my cull pile.
Here’s a real Monsastic outlier! I never paid too much attention to Bonnie Raitt, but in 1992, she had finally gotten to a position of stardom with her not bad [Don Was produced] breakthrough album, “Nick of Time” and I thought that her consolidating follow-up, “Luck Of The Draw” was even better. But that’s not why I trucked up to Atlanta to see the gig.
The real reason was that on that tourdate, the opening act was Chris Isaak! So I bought the tickets for the Atlanta show in spite of more localized gigs in Tampa or Gainesville, sans Isaak on the bill. And then Isaak went and pulled out of the tour entirely. It would have only been my second shot at seeing him and the first show was incredible. Leaving me with Asheville Saint John Prine* as the opener. A player who frankly, does nothing for me. But …a trip to Atlanta! So I went anyway. The perils of having too much money [at the time].
* No kidding. John Prine could do no wrong in Asheville. Prine worship in this town is like nothing I’d ever seen outside of R.E.M. in ’82-’83 in Orlando.
The Woggles are Garage Rock royalty out of Athens, Georgia. I first encountered them when local Garage Rockers The Hate Bombs were thrilled to be on the same bill as them at the 40 Watt Club in Athens. We drove to Athens to see the Beefstock Festival, as it was called, and The Woggles certainly made believers of us all! They had a vicious, go for the throat vibe that was seriously visceral!
We saw The Woggles about every three months after that as they hit The Circuit, usually with The Hate Bombs in some configuration. This was the only shirt of theirs I ever got, for some reason. I tended to buy their indie 7″ singles instead at the merch table. The art on this one was the Canadian “Third Rail” single sleeve art. I not that the Estrus logo appears on the back even though that single was not an Estrus release! But the two albums that followed it were on Estrus, so they probably got some promotional credit on the shirt costs from Estrus.
The last time I saw The Woggles was the one time in Asheville, where we moved to in 2001. They played the Stella Blue in 2003 and shortly afterward, lead guitarist Montague died and I never saw the band again. But they are still going strong. They’ve been linked with Little Steven’s Garage Rock Empire for a long time now.
The typical sumptuous letterpress package with extras from Independent Project Records
I’ve been intrigued to hear much of what Independent Project Records has been releasing of late. The US Post-Punk scene of the that they document was primarily a West Coast scene that flew totally underneath my radar at the time. But recent issues have, yes, piqued my interest! I’d never heard of Jefferey Running’s combo For Against, but they originated far from the California shores; positing a Post-Punk that sprang from Nebraska!
When recording this second solo album [the first was 2016’s “Primitives + Smalls“] Mr. Runnings had two big influences on the way it sounds. The first was technical; he used an 8-track cassette home studio to record the album on. Finding fresh bricks of the sacred Maxell UD-XLII C-90s tapes at his local Goodwill! The second was the news that in late October of 2024, Jeffrey was diagnosed with late stage cancer. “Piqued” would then become his musical epitaph as he died in March 3rd of this year. We are all fortunate in that he was able to complete the album which will be released on Friday, July 11th. And then some.
Independent Project Records | US | CD | 2025 | IP092SECD
Jeffrey Runnings: Piqued – US – CD [2025]
Batman Forever 3:55
Just Before Nothing 2:55
Threadbare 3:50
Mayfair 2:06
Bloom 1:05
The Courage of Voluntary Trees 3:44
Heretofore 3:33
Failed Rescue Attempt 2:43
Glorious Grey 3:57
Value 2:41
Elegy 4:38
Follow 5:10
Light of My Life 3:33
Watch 3:17
Demolition Blast 4:59
The album began with “Batman Forever;” an ironically named duet between a percussion block and piano. But as I imagined, and the liner notes verify, “Batman” was Mr. Running’s nickname for his husband. So the song was not at all about Val Kilmer’s time under the cowl. Heavily treated guitar added cascades of DreamPop filigree. When Jeffrey made his vocal debut in the song, the line “you’re the one I want to be there” was almost the full lyrical content. More mantra than lyric, but when he slipped in “when the very last light goes out” it stated all he needed to in the most effective way possible.
The placid tempo and the overall mix on the 8-track tape machine made for a sound drenched in warmth. The significant bleed between the instruments and tracks, all using a heavy arsenal of phasers, flangers, and reverb, made for a vibe that had been marbleized from its individual components into an amorphous Rococo swirl. Were those treated guitars or cellos? Synths or flutes? Tellingly, this album sounded like it could have been made with just a Mellotron and a lot of determination. The sonics were 4AD by way of the late 60s.
A rhythm section returned with a vengeance on “Just Before Nothing.” Motorik drum machine vied with deep bass guitar pulls. Sustained chords of synth loops contrasted with the slightly twangy guitar; played closer to conventional this time. The song was generous with harmonic overloads that breezed through the soundscape like doppler shifting big rigs on the highway of the song.
I knew this album was for me once I heard “Threadbare,” which was steeped in the same vintage effects as much of the sound of the Henry Badowski “Life’s A Grand…” album that I reviewed earlier this year. Synths were run through phasers to attain a gloriously smeared vibe redolent of early Tubeway Army. The motorik drum machine upped the Krautrock potential of the song even as the string synths laughed off such accoutrements. The result was a glorious, writhing bolus of energy that circled back onto itself again and again.
“Mayfair” is another instrumental that has gotten stuck in my mind for hours at a time of late. Spectoresque drum machine grounded a sound where acoustic guitars could be harps and cellos, and I still can’t tell if that was a flute in the mix or heavily treated synth. It proffered a tentative, bucolic delicacy that was like a summertime’s rapture. With the brief “Bloom” acting like a faster paced coda, sweeping us along from our reverie.
This was primarily an instrumental album, but “Heretofore” stood out for its inclusion of a singing performance from Runnings with closer to a typical pop structure. Chiming guitars set against what sounded like urgent cellos in the mix tipped their hand towards the classic Echo + The Bunnymen sound. But Runnings let the song settle into a propulsive instrumental groove by halfway through to let the ambience have the final word.
The darkly hued “Failed Rescue Attempt” was a foreboding instrumental That took some of the Mellotron vibe of the great OMD B-side “Navigation” and pushed it into “The Killing Moon” territory with the string synths speaking to hope but getting overruled by the flanged bass dragging us down as the bass drone overload blotted out the sun. One can imagine that this was the height of intimacy for this album, with a title that obliquely spoke to the realities of stage IV cancer.
“Glorious Grey” seemed to throw back to the Numan outlier vibe once more with a call-back to “I Nearly Married A Human;” with clockwork percussion and synths and piano in a delicate interplay. Jeffrey was concerned with paring the music back to let the music move toward simpler states; a not unrealistic concern when recording to eight tracks, but the sophistication of the arrangement here seemed to give lie to that stated goal.
The flanged guitars and overloaded synth drone of “Value” was, with “Just Before Nothing,” the closest this album came to a headlong rush of energy. It was more content to play its cards close to its vest in a reserved manner. And the final track on Jeffrey Runnings final album; what else could it be called but “Elegy?” I loved the sense of beauty in the chiming guitars juxtaposed with the melancholy synths. Suggesting a crystalline delicacy in the tenderness it afforded. With a glorious extended coda reaching for transcendence.
The CD and the LP of “Piqued” also comes with four bonus tracks. This was material recorded in the late 80s by Jeffrey that he rediscovered the master tape for, remixed the tracks, and hoped to include with the album in some form. “Follow” had a Factory Records vibe with gossamer harmonics competing with a curious, loping beat. Once Jeffrey gave voice in the song his singing was just another drone in the mix with endless reverb. “Light Of My Life” had a prominent vocal against the motorik beat and dissonant chords. The tarpit bass was the anchor to the song. The strummed acoustics of “Watch” were the strongest example of Robin Guthrie influence here. “Demolition Blast” was driven by nearly frantic Klaus Dinger drum machine while Running’s voice was so liberally dosed with reverb that he ended up getting lost with the guitars in a haze of sound.
The sound of these recordings are starkly different from those in “Piqued” in that they are bolted into their late 80s milieu. Whereas the overarching sound of the main album looks to the techniques of recording that were from the late 70s but through the low-fi on the means of recording, attained a vibe strongly redolent of the late 60s. Shoegaze as Post-Psychedelia. While Running’s intention was to include them, they stand apart from the integrity of “Piqued” as nothing more than a sidebar.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
How can we not be fascinated when an artist approaches their end and seeks to interpret their emotions in their art for all of us to share in? There’s an undercurrent of melancholy here but the feeling is dignified. From the evidence of this album, ironically my first exposure to Jeffrey Runnings, I don’t think that he was capable of wallowing, and if he did, he’d probably think the better of sharing it publicly. There are allusions here to his journey that resist maudlin overstatement. Indeed, his aesthetic here of paring down the music to its base essence; trimming vocals and lyrics down to a keenly honed presence was as much of a design decision as it was to record it on an analog 8-track home studio.
Perhaps that last gambit was the creative decision that resonates the strongest here. This made for a recording that sounded out of any one time, but was strongly suggestive of several at once. I love the sound of musical elements swirled together as here in a mix where everything is intrinsic and nothing sounds apart from the gestalt of it all. Where instruments were treated to flow and mutate together so that nothing could be outside of context.
The album will be released on Friday in DL/2xLP/CD. The DL is $11.99 and it will get you the music, but one of the delights of Independent Project Records is their packaging finesse. CD folio’s in letterpress with metallic and fluorescent inks must be in hand to delight. I strongly suggest the physical issues here. The CD is $15.00 with two LP packages also available. One in black vinyl with the album and the four track EP on a separate disc for $35.00. And the colored vinyl option for $40.00 with transparent magenta for the LP and clear silver for the EP.
As I said, this was the first time that I’ve heard Jeffrey Running, But I hope that it will not be my last. If this sounds good to you too, then DJ hit that button!
MWH Modern[e] [L-R]: Sahara Sloan, Ivan Doroschuk, Adrian White, Sho Murray
Yow! I just got an email from Fluid Japan‘s Todd Lewis hipping me to the fact that Canada’s mighty, mighty Men Without Hats, who thoroughly rocked our world last summer, had a new single out! After a pause of about ten seconds as I processed that fact, I went to iTunes and immediately bought the track. It’s wonderfully more than $0.99 worth of technopop goodness!
MWH Entertainment | CAN | DL | 2025
Men Without Hats: I ♥ The 80s – CAN – DL [2025]
I Love The 80s 3:42
It surprisingly had a slightly hesitant intro that was less than immediate as the synth lead seemed to be invoking the intro to Van Halen’s if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em synthpop smash, “Jump!” With a melody re-arranged from that of “Safety Dance” and the same sturdy tempo, this song immediately played out like a sequel to that earlier hit. It could have gone either way but as soon as I heard Ivan Doroschuk intone “I remember so much fun, back in 1981” I was putty in his hands. This song immediately gave me endless goodwill with that couplet and there was much more to come. Thankfully, the band were indulging in knowing winks instead of desperate rehashes here.
“Tell you what I’m going to do, Party like it’s ’82 Dancing safely ‘cross the floor, Like we did in ’84 Brand new record by The Fixx, Sounds like 1986 Get your Walkman®, grab a tape, Mark it 1988
“I Love The 80s”
The second verse leading into the chorus had some welcome vocoder touches and by the time that the third verse invoked The Fixx I was cracking my face with a smile. One more shameless bit of self reference with the melodic hook from “Pop Goes The World” doubling as the middle eight and this was definitely a song that took me to a happy place. And Gott Im Himmel… they made a video for it. A real one with the band actually in it and no AI vis-u-crud! It looks like they had a lot of fun.
This lights a fire under me to try to grab their last album, “Again [Part 2]” which featured the same lineup here [sans drummer Adrian White] and was released in 2022. I was so disappointed that no CDs of this were at the merch table last summer when I saw the band. But now that I’ve looked, I see that MWH have also released a new live LP that plays very similar to the show that they rocked for us last year.
MWH Entertainment | CAN | LP | 2024
Men Without Hats: Live – Can – LP [2024]
Safety Dance [single version]
Moonbeam
Where Do The Boys Go?
Antarctica
I Like
Pop Goes The World
Safety Dance [Extended mix]
This was released in November of this year as an LP and it’s still out there in the band’s website for $40.00. If that were forty Canadian dollars, it might not be so bad, but I don’t think that’s the case. Still, that’s practically free next to the three figures the LP is trading hands for on Discogs! Thankfully, the band released it as a DL on iTunes for a mere $6.93. So that is calling out to me strongly.
The band’s web store has this to say about the album. “Whether you’re a longtime fan or just discovering their music, this live album is the perfect way to experience the raw energy and magic that Men Without Hats bring to the stage.” Before last year, I would have thought that hyperbole, but I’m here to tell you that raw energy is exactly what MWH traffic in live! And I’m happy that their summer shed set [as recorded in The Great White North in March of last year] was all of that and more. The only caveat here was that fave song “I Got The Message” as we saw/heard is replaced with the slightly lesser single “I Like.” If you’ve got the budget for that wax slab straight from the band, then DJ hit that button!
Another day, another handful of tour shirts that I once owned, but now have only photos of. These photos were the actual files used to sell them off to new homes in the “wild west” days of eBay. When all the platform hosted was your code and no images.
As I was seeing Cocteau Twins after six years of fervent fandom, I went a little hog wild at the merch table on tour shirts. The clear winner was the blue shirt in part 3 of this thread, but I also got this black shirt with an abstract framing of the colored lights that were part of the album artwork.
Not in evidence here was the third such shirt I bought; a black number with the Cocteau Twins logo on it. I remember the colors as green and red, but that short went to the great merch table in the sky as it was worn to rag status. Or I seem to recall that a washing machine mishap shredded the shirt as I can’t recall wearing it that often!
It was either the second or third Webb Wilder gig at Orlando’s Sapphire Suffer Club where I got this little number. WW was touring on the godlike “Town + Country” covers album. The idea was he’d pick his favorite Country and Rock + Roll songs on it; hence the title.
Cover albums were a disease in the 90s, and most of them, even from my favorites at the time, were pure toxic musical waste! For the most part. But not this one! This is my possibly favorite Webb Wilder album since it’s a mission statement of sorts. Hearing Webb’s baritone on those Country songs covered here was just shy of Hillbilly Heaven. And the man can rock it, for sure. Almost the best part of the album were Webb’s little extemporized raps, possibly done late at night after a few beers. “Hissy Fit” is exceptionally hilarious.
You know how it is when seeing a band. The opening act can be a spin of the roulette wheel. There’s often the time that I attend a gig [sometimes at great cost] to just see the opening act! Other times, the opening act manages to ace the headliner that brought you there in the first place. I liked Velocity Girl, but I ended up liking ZuZu’s Petals even more. I bought their 7″ of “Star Baby” and their fabbo tour shirt with the colorful atom age graphics.
Now this was a t-shirt that I [and my wife] wore until it was relegated to rag status. And when in the bowels of Amoeba Records that first time in 2014, my wife saw the one ZuZu’s Petals CD we have in the Record Cell and put it in my stack to buy.
Here was another all-time great opening act! We bought those first Cocteau Twins tickets without knowing the opening act. Fortunately for us, it was Mazzy Star; a band we were previously unaware of. They put on a riveting set! Hope Sandoval said maybe three words all night, apart from singing. But by the end of it we had to buy the t-shirt!
The very next day we went to Tower Atlanta [r.i.p.] and bought their album, “She Hangs Brightly.” I played the hell out of that album as it had a organic, Bluesy, late night vibe that would not quit. I was thrilled to see the band a second time in 1993 in Tampa at The Ritz, opening up for Jesus + Mary Chain. I was so primed to buy another tour shirt, but when I got to the merch table I was flabbergasted to see that they were selling the exact same shirt design for “So Tonight That I Might See,” album number two!
I had already seen Frank Sinatra once before, in 1987 as he played a benefit at the USF ScumDome for the USF School of Nursing. I went with my parents and my friend Jayne. That was as perfunctory a music event as any concert that I saw at that misbegotten venue! At least Funnyman Jan Murray® was the opening act!
Round two with Frank Sinatra was a far more enjoyable event. My friend Jayne and I went with her mother this time. We bought primo seats and the show was night and day [pun intended] superior; a classic program of “saloon songs” with the only false note being the de riguer closer of “New York, New York.” Frank was in top form and since it was the 90s, we hit the merch table for this tour shirt and the program book.
THE SELECTER: Pressure ’92 – 1994
This one is a ringer! I didn’t actually ever see The Selector! I don’t think I ever had the opportunity; even during the surprising early 90s Third Wave of Ska. So why? How? This was down to the night I saw Man Or AstroMan? at The Covered Dish in Gainesville. I drove the 150 minutes to see the gig and after it was over, didn’t feel like driving home to arrive at my apartment around 2 a.m., so I found a hotel room.
The next day I went to Schoolkids Records and wanted a fresh shirt to wear since I had not packed for an overnighter. This was the shirt in the store that won my hard-earned dollars. Since if I had the chance to see The Selecter, I would have bought the shirt anyway!
This was another of the many Double Duran shirts I bought while seeing the first of three legs of the seemingly endless “Ordinary World Tour” that lasted at least 18 months. This one featured more of the photo booth band shots in a multi-color layout. I liked the earlier, similar shirt in black and white with full coverage a lot more. But at that time I was all about the Duran Duran phase, and the band were re-peaking commercially, so we leaned into it.
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Post-Punk Monk 