Redd Kross should have been the band that brought alt-rock to middle America.
This phone video might be unwatchable to you, but I was there last Friday and the show was epic. Jeff, Steve, Robert andRoy (the best Kross lineup) all survived the 90s, got healthy and got back together. They still aren’t playing any new songs but they did throw in their cover of “Citadel.”
If you can’t handle the video quality above, check out the proper music video of “Jimmy’s Fantasy,” starring a young Earl Hickey.
Before I get into this, I want to be clear: Tom Petty is the Man. For most of the 70s & 80s, Tom was the only guy on mainstream radio you could be sure still listened to his copy of Nuggets.
Runnin’ Down a Dream looks amazing, if only because a four-hour DVD cut will allow them to use as much vintage footage of the band as they can find.
But here what Tom says at about 2:50 in to the trailer:
“There’s something special about this group of people. I treasure it now, because one link in the chain gone could make it all go away.”
What the hell?
Is that comment highlighted because the kid who edited the trailer thought it sounded uplifting or is it a cheap shot at ex-drummer Stan Lynch?
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers managed to alternate between Ron Blair & the late Howie Epstein on bass, but things haven’t been the same since Stan quit in 1994. Steve Ferrone may be a more technically accomplished player, but Stan meshed better with the band.
Maybe it’s out of context and there will be half an hour’s worth of serious Stan love in the completed film.
Or maybe I just have an overdeveloped ear for band politics. I thought the Bruce Springsteen Wings for Wheels documentary was most notable for how everyone went out of his way to make amends and give credit to Mike Appel. And all I can remember about Michael Stipe’s speech at R.E.M.’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction is how he pointedly left Jefferson Holt off a thank-you list of what seemed like a hundred people.
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers = still worth seeing any night you can get a ticket. But it was better when Stan was in the band.
High-speed culture has a lot of advantages: you can watch English Premier League football live on TV in Los Angeles, you can listen to Kenny “The Snake” Stabler offer color commentary for the Alabama Crimson Tide every Saturday on Sirius Radio and eBay users all over the world will pay ridiculous amounts of money for your Counting Crows vinyl.
Unfortunately, the modern world has really screwed things up for rock bands.
VHS Or Beta are getting hammered for doing what the best bands always do. After releasing an instrumental debut EP in 2003, they went on the road, played a lot of shows and found out what they really wanted to sound like.
Their new album Bring on the Comets accomplished two things: the band sounds relaxed and confident plus there are at least five songs that should be all over the radio. I wouldn’t tell you this is better than LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver, but you’d do well to have both records in the same collection.
What’s the problem here?
“First.”
High-speed culture not only demands instant evaluation of every record (before) the day it’s released, it insists that every band arrive with its shtick/creative vision (take your pick) intact.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s first album showed up with creative intact and the internet went wild. Except they hadn’t really played any shows and the second album suffered from pressure to recreate the moment. The record’s not terrible (if you like the first one) but the pack got bored and moved on to something else.
VHS Or Beta got punished for changing their sound. Never mind that the changes made them a better band, the cultural gatekeepers decided the band had betrayed the Daft-Punk-goes-rock sound that got them attention in the first place.
I think Google’s the real problem here. Everyone reads what everyone else wrote before they hear a record and almost no one wants to be the dissenting opinion. Disagree too many times and people stop linking to your site.
That’s why reading about new music online is a waste of time. If all the people bitching about the new album heard “Can’t Believe a Single Word” on the radio or on the jukebox down at the bar, they’d wonder what that cool song was.
I’d like to read a music magazine that only wrote about records that came out at least six months ago. No matter how smart your editors or critics might be, you’re writing in a vacuum before the music actually gets out into the world and real people have a chance to respond. An editor who dared add a little context and perspective to music writing would be incredibly disruptive.
Fortunately, there’s real radio play on the single and the band are on tour. All those wrongheaded reviews will still be searchable, but most people who buy tickets & t-shirts don’t pay attention to the internet anyway.
UK bands that really put the work into touring the USA gather crucial momentum that helps them survive the inevitable backlash from the UK media. Many go on to long and storied careers: Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones & U2 can start the list.
Back in the day, pretty much any UK rock band with a profile in the NME or Melody Maker was assured a US album release, just so long as they’d commit to six weeks of touring. The 80s were a particularly good time for this. Not everyone worked as hard as U2, but we got The Smiths, The Cure & The Jam over here because they agreed to show up.
That system started to break down in the late 90s. Few UK bands got that automatic release in the US, partly because American companies no longer thought a band that sold “only” 300,000 copies on the first album was worth the trouble.
Nowadays, there aren’t many commercial alternative radio stations in middle America and the kids won’t touch the kind of major label alt-rock that dominated the college radio charts back in the 80s. More and more rock bands on the UK charts never see a US release.
Which brings us to Milburn.
Milburn’s first two Mercury UK singles charted last year, but their album didn’t get a US release. No album release, no American tour.
Maybe Universal’s US companies heard Milburn’s Yorkshire accents and compared them to the Arctic Monkeys, whose first album hardly reached Maroon 5 heights over here.
Now Milburn has a new album and “What Will You Do?” is the first single.
I went to Sheffield in 2005 and produced their first Mercury single (watch the “Send in the Boys” video here), so I know the guys (Joe, Louis, Tom & Greeny) and how amazingly well they play.
“What Will You Do?” is deceptive; the melody sounds very English, like something John Barry would write for a James Bond theme, but Milburn hammers the track with a purposeful brutality few UK bands could pull off.
I don’t know which American radio format works for them; there’s a lyrical intelligence here that seems to rule out near-term rock or pop radio play. But put them on the road here and let them tour regularly for a couple of years and Milburn will deliver.
They’ve got the talent, they’ve already shown their commitment by touring endlessly since the day they signed to Mercury and they’re entertaining as hell when you meet them in person. This album will connect in Europe. If Universal’s paying attention, you’ll get a chance to hear it in America.
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