Everyone’s familiar with the all-purpose old saying, “I was _____ before _____ was cool.” My own true-to-life variant of that is this: I was in an 80s cover band…in the 80s. And it was pretty cool. For the year and a half apex of our collective career, we gigged regularly and made decent money (by that day’s standards as well as modern ones). And as is typical of any such band, we all came away from the experience with many stories to tell. Some of them were harrowing, some funny, some a bit of both.

Some of those old stories, clouded in the mists of memory, have found their details fuzzy. When I’m in touch with some of my old bandmates (the band broke up twenty-six years ago this month), we don’t always agree on the finer details of those anecdotes. But viewed from a safe distance through the rear-view mirror of time, they are all good memories. Some rate only a punch line or two, and some still make for a pretty good story. This one – due to its relative brevity – falls somewhere between those two poles.

I don’t have any specific recollection of dealing with the manager of the suburban roller skating rink, but it must have been me who booked the gig on the band’s behalf; I still have a copy of the contract (a straightforward performance document with no “M&M riders”). So what exactly I was thinking when I booked a five-piece rock band to play an afternoon gig at a roller skating rink, I cannot tell you. Most of our gigs were at apartment complex clubhouses, frat parties, bars, and local outdoor festivals.

But book I did. The money was good, and the requirements placed upon the band weren’t onerous. So on the appointed day, we showed up and entered the building a couple of hours before showtime. The manager greeted us, and after some brief pleasantries, we asked to be shown to the stage. In response, he mumbled something I didn’t hear, and motioned for us to follow him.

On his way to our performance location, he stopped over by the wall and picked up three orange cones, the sort you might see when a janitor is mopping up a spill of beer, vomit or other festivities-related liquid. I remember thinking, “That’s odd.” We continued our short walk and ended up standing on the skating rink itself, specifically at the far end of its oval-shaped surface.

The manager plopped the stack of traffic cones onto the floor, pointed at the wall and said, “An electrical outlet is right there.” We stood collectively stunned as the realization hit us: there was no stage, and we were to set up on the skating rink floor. The only protection we would have from skaters running into us or our equipment was to be provided by these three orange cones.

Now, if my memory were better, I feel certain I’d have a recollection of the rest of the band being extremely upset with me. After all, I had booked the damn gig, and signed a contract and all. So it was my fault for not having sorted out such a basic piece of information as is-there-a-fucking-stage. But happily for 21st century me, I have no such memory.

Truth be told, we set up and played our sets generally without incident. Occasionally a clumsy skater would skid past the cones and over Lenny’s guitar lead, but no damage was done. I had a very sturdy three-tier keyboard rack in those days, and it probably could have withstood the impact of a roller skating young teen anyway.

Which isn’t to say we went over well musically. As we learned by the selections the deejay/manager played from his booth (equipped with a plexiglas window, by the way), the girls in the crowd most enjoyed insipid pop piffle such as Madonna and Tiffany. The boys favored…well, I don’t remember what they favored. But it certainly wasn’t us. Contemporary memories differ here: Lenny remembers deafening silence when the deejay introduced us as we returned for our second of two sets. Here’s how I recall it: After the deejay’s mock-enthusiastic intro of, “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, once again let’s hear it for…Remote Control!” there was a brief silent pause, followed by a loud, boisterous and long “Booooo!”

We looked at each other, laughed, figured, “They don’t seem to like any of the songs in our official set,” and decided to play Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold,” a song that (a) didn’t fit into the style of our set and (b) we didn’t really know how to play. It did move us ten minutes closer to the end of our set, though.

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Lots else going on at Musoscribe World Headquarters today; this is (or would have been) my first business day without a new blog post in, well, years. So here’s just a quick rundown of what’s in the hopper:

• An interview with Gordon Anderson, head of reissue/archival label Real Gone Music
• An interview with Bill Spooner, founding guitarist with the legendary Tubes
• Archival/reissue releases from Pink Floyd, Bill Evans, Little Willie John, and Merrell Fankhauser
• New music from The dB’s, Branden Daniel and the Chics, OFF!, Penelope Houston and many more.
• And other stuff I’m working on but can’t announce just yet…oh, okay, if you insist: interviews with Jorma Kaukonen, Ian Anderson (my second with him), Don Preston and Napoleon Murphy Brock of the Grandmothers of Invention, and Van Dyke Parks (my second with him as well).
• And so, so, so much more.

 Stay tuned. And thanks – as always – for reading. To paraphrase The Tubes, “I’m here because you’re there.”

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The band Sweet has a tortured, somewhat complicated history, one fraught with dizzying highs and devastating lows. The band formed in England in the late 1960s and were taken under the creative (or commercial, depending on ones viewpoint) wing of the Chinnicap organization (songwriting team Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman). The duo groomed Sweet for success, but of a very specific type: bubblegum. With hits like “Little Willy” and “Funny Funny,” the band’s sound had more in common with Saturday morning cartoon music than the heavier sounds dominating the FM airwaves.

But they were good clean (well, not so clean…) fun, and despite what critics might have thought of them, they put on a good show, and the tunes were infectiously catchy. Their breakthrough really came with the 1975 release (in the USA) of Desolation Angels Desolation Boulevard*, a compilation of the best tracks off their recent UK long players. With now-immortal (if occasionally guilty pleasure) tracks like “Ballroom Blitz” and “Fox on the Run,” Desolation Boulevard showed a more rocking (if still bubblegummy) side to the band.

Subsequent releases found the group bristling under the heavy hand of Chinnichap; Level Headed showed Sweet aiming for a more serious approach, and they were rewarded with a massive hit in “Love is Like Oxygen,” a rare successful synthesis of bubblegum, hard rock and progressive rock. But hits on that level were not to follow, and the band’s subsequent material often had the unmistakeable whiff of bandwagon-jumping. That, coupled with lead singer Brian Connolly’s alcoholism – a late-period Sweet interview in my unofficial DVD collection shows a badly wrecked Connolly barely able to operate; he makes Ace Frehley look like a straight arrow), all but guaranteed the group’s failure to thrive.

Various attempts at post-breakup reformations occurred over the ensuing years, but none was especially successful. Connolly died of liver failure in the late 90s, and drummer Mick Tucker passed away from leukemia in 2002. The group left behind an undeniably catchy body of work that has aged remarkably well; while singles like “Co-Co” are undeniably lightweight, harder-rocking glam anthems like “The Six Teens,” “Hell Raiser” and Blockbuster” (all on the American Desolation Boulevard, as it happens) rank among the best pop-oriented music of the era. A 2CD collection on Shout!Factory brought together the best of Sweet’s music - -the singles – and is an engaging listen start to (near) finish.

And Sweet influenced a long line of bands: not merely in their sartorial style (for that we have Sweet to blame for the look of many hair-metal bands of the 80s and 90s) but in their musical style; though both bands existed during the same period, it’s hard to imagine Queen having existed as it did without Sweet there to break some musical barriers.

But the Sweet saga hasn’t ended. The complicated story remained complicated: both guitarist Andy Scott and bassist Steve Priest have, in recent years, each led their own band called Sweet. And in 2012, Andy Scott’s version of the band released New York Connection, the first real album of studio material from a band using the Sweet name in thirty years.

While the old Sweet tracks – the songs not written by Chinn and Chapman – were often credited to all four members, neither Scott nor Priest were generally thought of as the band’s front men; that was Connolly. And on New York Connection, guitarist Scott takes the lead vocal on but one track, a cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.” Most other cuts feature the lead vocals of bassist Pete Lincoln, and while he’s not a Connolly tribute singer type, his vocal mannerisms are from the same school, and he possesses a similar range.

In fact all of the eleven cuts on New York Connection are covers; that’s the concept here. Clearly the idea was to take the Sweet aesthetic — poppy arrangements; rocking guitar textures; thumping, insistent beats; out-front lead vocals and backing vocals on helium – that worked so well in the 70s and then apply it to classic songs.

In general, the approach is successful. A cover of the aforementioned KISS guitarist’s solo turn – while not radically different than the original – breathes new life into the oft-forgotten number. The Yardbirds‘ “Shapes of Things” (mis-titled on the CD sleeve) is slightly less successful, but that may own more to the song’s ubiquity as a bar band number than any deficiency in the Sweet version. Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” is as thunderous and anthemic as the original, and a somewhat unexpected cover of Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round” casts the song in a harder rocking format than the original. The Ramones‘ “Blitzkrieg Bop” holds up surprisingly well under the (relatively) more ornate arrangement Sweet gives it, and a reading of the chestnut “On Broadway” owes more to the Eric Carmen version than any other.

All in all, it’s a successful outing that reminds modern-day listeners why Sweet was successful in the first place. Whether the band can – or will – produce self-penned material to equal the songs on New York Connection is an open question. But in the meantime, this disc is a lot of fun.

* Of course. It was reeeeally late when I wrote the first draft. Thanks to a reader for pointing out my error.

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I heart Hollyhocks. There: I’ve said it. But I realize that I have a responsibility to provide a bit more detail for you, gentle reader. So, here goes.

The Hollyhocks are a four-piece – two women, two men – from Oakland. Their singular sound can best be described as a kind of cross between A Camp and Television. The similarity to the former – Nina Persson’s “other group” besides The Cardigans – is found in the honey-voiced but ever-so-slightly knowing vibe put forth by Kristin Sobditch (guitar) and Yuri Jewett (bass), but the elegantly-wasted junkie vibe that crops up in some of the Swedish group’s material is not a part of the Hollyhocks approach. The Television connection comes in the snaky guitar lines of Dan Jewett. And the precise yet loose-feeling drum work of Jason Silverio adds the right ambience to their windy, evocative songs.

The lion’s share of songs on The Hollyhocks’ debut album Understories are mid-tempo, dreamy concoctions that wrap their way around a hook in a manner that seems (but almost certainly isn’t) effortless. The creamy vocal harmonies of “Sugar” contrast nicely with the song’s grungy, distorted guitar solo. Fans of The Church would find much to like in the Hollyhocks’ arrangements. There’s some lovely guitar jangle on “Iowa” that is pleasantly reminiscent of some of the sounds coming out of Athens in the early 80s (REM, Pylon), and that number’s vocal crosstalk is dizzyingly effective.

But nothing can prepare listeners for the fourth track on Understories. An emotion-laden song about a photo of a loved one, the song unfolds slowly, allowing the listener to savor its charms. Plucky acoustic instruments set the scene. But then the curtains open wider to reveal a lovely string section backing the band; it’s some of the tastiest classical instrumentation on a record since Oranges and Lemons-era XTC. But wait: the song sounds oddly – but not overly — familiar. And then it hits you: it’s a cover of Def Leppard’s “Photograph.” But The Hollyhocks’ version stands the original completely on its head, creating something completely new and wonderful in the process. It’s easily among the most inspired cover versions – by anyone, ever – I’ve heard in my life so far. And the instrumental break (featuring the Magik*Magik Orchestra) actually brought a tear to my eye with its power and grace.

It’s not at all reasonable to expect an album to have anything else to offer after something as wonderful as “Photograph.” But Understories continues to impress and entertain all the way through to its finish. Those whose tastes lean toward smooth female vocal harmony (in a rock idiom) will dig the songs, and anyone who requires some tasty lead guitar work will find it – judiciously applied, employing a quality-over-quantity approach – on nearly every song. An oboe solo (courtesy of guest musician Amber Lambrecht) on the softly swaying “Marco’s Last Waltz” is heartbreakingly beautiful.

And just when you think you’ve got The Hollyhocks’ number, they take a musical left turn with “Everyone’s Here.” It’s a sunny, sentimental homespun country-flavored romp, populated with characters familiar to anyone who’s ever had a family or a neighbor. Guest player Myles Boisen’s lap steel is note-perfect and will bring a smile even to those who don’t think they like that kind of thing. The track never takes itself too seriously, and splashes of warm humor are applied throughout the song. A brief but endearingly charming whistling solo finishes it off in style.

A hypnotic surf-style guitar figure forms the basis of the brief and low-key “Before Your Birthday,” a track that straddles alterna-rock and the chiming pop of groups like The Orange Peels. Speaking of whom…I’ve saved until now another two reasons you can be sure that The Hollyhocks’ Understories is a winning album start to finish: the album was produced by Allen Clapp, and is released on Mystery Lawn Music, as blue-chip a trademark of quality as you’re likely to find in music today.

I heart Hollyhocks, and you may well, too.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that this is a feature written by my daughter Annelise Kopp, based on her 2007 interview with Tom Gabel. The feature originally appeared in the now-long-defunct Skope Magazine. With Gabel finding himself back in the news, I figured now was the time to pull this one from the archives over at musoscribe.com — bk

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Inspiration for Tom Gabel is “kind of a magical thing.” The guitarist, songwriter, and lead vocalist of Against Me! says that “It just comes when it comes, and it’s not there when it’s not there.” Creativity is one thing, but forced inspiration isn’t inspiration at all. Gabel uses a new songwriting approach each time, and claims that “there’s no science to it.” He goes on to say that the order in which the songs are written varies. Sometimes it’s music first, lyrics second; other times the reverse.When Tom Gabel started playing solo, his music had a folk-punk sound. While this sound resonates in the Gainesville FL-based group music even today, the band has certainly taken more of a rock approach. Why do people love this band? It probably has something to do with the “oomph” and power of the music, the catchy melodies, and the compelling lyrics.

On past albums, they have had one or two slower songs to offset the discs’ pervading breakneck pace. Songs like “Baby, I’m an Anarchist,” “Joy,” and “Cavalier Eternal” give even this high-energy band an opportunity to be recognized as folk-punk. The song “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong” blends these elements with more of a rock sound that calls to mind the work of Flogging Molly.

Tom Gabel admires any musician that “just keeps going.” He says that he finds work ethic to be one of the most admirable traits in a musician.

Although I asked no questions about Gabel’s thoughts on pirated music, many of the song names from this band’s albums are too long to ever want to write out on the back of your own CD case. For example, there’s “Unsubstantiated Rumors Are Good Enough For Me (To Base My Life Upon).”

In 2006, the band was involved in a Replacements tribute album. Gabel says the Replacements are one of his all-time favorite bands. Under the name Against Me!, the guys have only covered two songs. Other than on this tribute, they cover “Money Changes Everything” by The Brains (popularized by Cyndi Lauper). With these interesting choices, it’s indisputable that Gabel has eclectic taste in music. He claims to like everything but new country. He’ll listen to anything from Nelly Furtado to Nirvana, but says “I hate new country. [It’s] horrible.”

Against Me! has changed record labels a few times in the past, but recently made the switch to Sire Records. Some fans were discouraged, fearing a change to a major record label was a musical sacrilege, an abandonment of what Against Me! is really about. Gabel counters, saying that he believes the record label will not push for a more commercial product. “I think that Sire knew what kind of band they were getting when they signed us.” This is good news for the fans that already love their sound.

As a lyricist, Gabel is drawn to the words in songs just as much, if not more, than the melody. “If it’s not got good lyrics [but] it is good music, I’m not going to listen to it. But if it has great lyrics and so-so music, I’ll still probably listen to it,” he says. “There are only so many chords out there. Every musician is just recycling the same chord progression. I think the lyrics are a really important part of it.”

Against Me!’s new studio album, New Wave, is produced by Butch Vig. In the past, Vig produced albums by Sonic Youth and Nirvana, and even remixed a Beck song. What is New Wave like? “It’s rock and roll,” says Gabel. “I really wanted–with this new record–to do something that energized you when you listened to it.” Often what captivates listeners is the initial punch of this music. Once pulled in, you can appreciate the lyrics of the songs.

Because of the band’s provocative and political lyrics, inquiring about Gabel’s thought’s on November [2007]’s poll results was essential. He quotes The Who to say that with the continuous switching between Democrats and Republicans, each new election is a case of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

It is the fast-paced and raw powerful sound of the music paired with insightful lyrics that give Against Me! Their signature sound. That is the party we came for.

– Annelise Kopp

I’ve just returned from the 5^th annual Music Video Asheville event, held at Cinebarre. The organizers – music publicist and event planner Erin Scholze (a nine-year veteran organizer of Asheville’s renowned LAAFF Festival) plus Kelly Denson and Jason Guadagnino – did a stellar job of promoting and executing the gala event.

Bringing together video music shorts from a wide array of locally-based musical artists, the MVA was exceptionally successful at presenting a cross-section of contemporary music. Pretty much every hip-and-happening genre was proudly represented by at least one entrant. There was Americana (the Dixie Chicks aesthetic of Underhill Rose), trip-hop/downtempo (Two People Playing Music), a piss-take of 80s-styled montage-video (Kipper Schauer), and highly appealing blues-rock with an organic flavor (“Down to the River” from Caleb Johnson, one of a handful of my personal favorites from the evening’s thirty videos).

Kovacs and the Polar Bear’s “Speckled Hen” suggested Fleet Foxes in a poorly-lit room. The Critters looked like Velvet Underground at a hootenanny. And the clip for The Night Lights‘ “Building” made effective use of local Asheville landmarks shot in artistic ways.

There was humor, to be sure. The intentional sort of yuks were brought through a clever, skillfully edited and generally entertaining “Shamble” from Agent 23. When the video won an award (the presenter mumbled and rushed a bit so I missed the what-for part of the award), the trophy was accepted by a trio of “drop-dead lovely” ladies in full zombie attire (if you see the video, it makes sense; trust me). Another video – sort of a Spinal Tap-at-the-Renaissance-Fest sort of affair – elicited repeated howls of laughter throughout the near-capacity audience, but as best as I could discern, the video wasn’t designed as a comedy. A few entries — including one fronted by a singer who’s a vocal dead ringer for the (also dead) Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon — made visual use of puppets. But puppets (like clowns) generally creep me out, so my personal bias prevents me from rendering anything approaching objective judgment on those.

PHOTO L-R: Music promoter/local legend Don Talley; The lovely Erin Scholze of Dreamspider Publicity and Events; Your humble host. Photo © KMG*Photography

Asheville-based jazz-pop-noir act stephaniesĭd had two entries (one of only a handful of acts to earn multiple spots on the program), and both ranked among the most professional and compelling offerings of the night. There were some weak entries, to be sure. A few acts provided quality music, only to have their visuals thrown together in the most haphazard and offhand manner possible (I won’t name names, but suffice to say there were a [very] few with low production values, whooshy MP3-ized audio and a paucity of visual ideas).

Since the whole concept of music videos really took off with the launch of MTV in the very early 1980s (Michael Nesmith’s earlier efforts notwithstanding), one would expect at least a token offering of rock music. But in fact there was more than that on offer. Indeed, there was some straight-ahead rock to be found at the evening’s affair: Total War’s “You’re Over It” reminded at least a couple attendees of mid-80s music of The Fixx, and Mad Tea brought some welcome homespun jangle with “Rain Remember.”

A number of rap videos were included in this year’s MVA. One offered up a rote menu of Benzes-n-bitches; another was standard-issue tux-and-limos hip-hop, a third boasted rappers in Desert Storm-styled fatigues plus a ballet dancer(!) and yet another would best be described as a sort of puking hillbilly hip-hop. Still another took a hoodies-and-handclaps approach, and another employed the groundbreaking visual device of showing white rappers with their ball caps on backwards. But the people’s choice award and the decision of the blue-ribbon judges’ panel (including longtime WNC patron of the arts and go-to guy for all things creative, Don Talley) chose Chachillie’s clip for “5150″ (a track with no discernible connection with the Van Halen album of the same name) as the night’s winner.

Me, I don’t get it at all. One of my criteria for a successful music video is: Does it involve me? Does it make me care? On that score, both of Chachille’s videos left me cold and unmoved. But many people with whom I spoke picked the act’s videos as a clear favorite, and did so using essentially the same metric as did I. So I’ll agree to disagree and respect the decision of the judges (and the audience).

For me the finest video was a monochromatic and relatively static video that somehow still managed to be quite visually arresting. Hypnotic, one might even say. Jonathan Scales Fourchestra’s “Longest December” was a black-and-white video showcasing the band members as they ran through a prog-jazz-downtempo number that placed Scales’ steel drums out front. Musically amazing stuff indeed, and a video to match.

Even the weakest videos had their charms, and there were very few how-did-this-get-on-the-program moments. At a mere $8 a ticket (VIP tickets were available for those inclined to avail themselves of a full-scale awards night experience, complete with red carpet, velvet ropes and paparazzi) there’s no way anyone could have come away feeling they didn’t get a full evening’s entertainment.

This was the fifth year for the event, one that has grown steadily each year. It was my first MVA, but there’s little doubt I’ll be back next year.

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As more-than-occasional readers of this blog may have noticed, I have written pretty extensively about matters related to Paul Revere and the Raiders. For those interested, here’s a quick summary with links to the highest-profile of these.

• The Paul Revere and the Raiders Story, as appeared in Shindig! Magazine; based on interviews with vocalist Mark Lindsay; bassist Phil “Fang” Volk; guitarists Jim “Harpo” Valley and Keith Allison; and Raiders manager Roger Hart.

• Review of the 2010 Collectors Choice Music 3CD set The Complete Columbia Singles
• Essay based on my visit to Branson MO and meeting Paul Revere himself in late 2010
• Interview/feature with Mark Lindsay, covering his solo career on Columbia
• Definitive history of Brotherhood, the band formed in 1967 by ex-Raiders Phil Volk, Drake Levin and Mike Smith, as appeared in Ugly Things Magazine

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Continued from Part One…

Around the time of Mark Lindsay’s solo LPs, there were rumors that he started a solo career because he was going to leave Paul Revere and the Raiders, or had already left the Raiders. “It wasn’t true; I was always with the Raiders,” Lindsay insists. “But the start of all that just coincided with a lull in the Raiders’ career. One, there was time to do it. And two, the Raiders weren’t front-and-center out in the public eye, and I was more. So I can understand why people might think that I had gone off on my own. But it just happened to work out that way.”

During a break in the Raiders’ schedule – by 1970 they were not the in-demand act they had once been – Lindsay fronted a band called Instant Joy. “That was a group put together by [guitarist] Tony Peluso,” Lindsay says. “We were pretty rockin’, and we opened on tour for the Carpenters. It lasted a very short time; I think we were on the tour two or three weeks, and I started getting standing ovations before the Carpenters came on. And,” Mark chuckles at the recollection, “Richard Carpenter didn’t like that! So they booted me off the tour and got Mac Davis; he came out with just an acoustic guitar.”

Instant Joy did perform Lindsay’s hit singles “Silverbird” and Arizona,” but stayed away from most of the more ballad-oriented material. “We were playing hard, kick-ass rock’n'roll,” Lindsay says, noting that they even played “some of the songs that ended up on Collage [1970]. We left ‘em panting.”

When the heavier, rocking Collage came out, Raiders fans didn’t know what to think of it: it wasn’t bubblegum, and it wasn’t a collection of ballads like Lindsay’s solo work. Plus, “Revere hated it. And he didn’t help by telling people he hated it. So it died, and my heart died with it.” In retrospect Lindsay believes that he should have stayed the course and cut two more albums following the direction laid out on Collage, bit instead he more or less gave up. As a recording entity, the Raiders would limp toward the end of their contract, though some tracks on their final two LPs are worthwhile.

After 1971’s You’ve Got a Friend, there would be no further new solo albums from Mark Lindsay on Columbia. “We didn’t have any single hits that Columbia deemed strong enough to build an album around,” says Mark. “At least that was my understanding.”

One solo project of Mark’s was indeed strong enough to support an album, and it provided a major shot in the arm to the Raiders’ flagging career. Though originally planned as a Mark Lindsay solo single, “Indian Reservation” (#1 Billboard in 1970) would instead become the biggest hit Paul Revere and the Raiders ever had.

“There were several reasons why it was a hit,” Mark observes. “It was timely: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was #1 on the New York Times best seller list, and the whole way we had shabbily treated Native Americans was also front and center. Everybody was wearing fringe jackets and Indian beads. But part of the success of that tune was that Paul Revere and his friend Mike Allen jumped on their motorcycles, and did a trip across the United States. They went to all the little five-hundred-watt teapot stations and said, ‘Here’s my record. Play it!’ And they did.”

But the strength of those stations wasn’t going to get the single over the top. “What it did,” Lindsay continues, “was galvanize the Columbia sales force. They gave it another look. You know that when you sell a product to a thousand people, the way to get it out there is to get those thousand people to really believe in it, to push it. And Paul Revere’s ride did that.”

So in retrospect, would the vocalist rather have “Indian Reservation” as a Mark Lindsay single than a Paul Revere and the Raiders single? He pauses to think, and answers noncommittally. “Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, there were no Raiders on it,” he laughs. “It was a Mark Lindsay single, and I produced it. But I don’t think it would have been nearly as big a hit if Revere hadn’t done that promo thing. So in retrospect, I’d probably leave it like it was. Otherwise it might have ended up like The Pretty Things: great music that nobody knows.”

The Complete Columbia Singles, featuring 24 Mark Lindsay solo tracks, is available from Real Gone Music.

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In 2012 Real Gone Music released The Complete Columbia Singles, a 24-track collection of all the a- and b-sides of Mark Lindsay’s solo records. Spanning the recording era 1969 to the early-mid 1970s, many of these are non-album tracks that show a side of the singer not often heard on his singles and albums with his group, Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Mark Lindsay joined Idaho-based band The Downbeats in 1958; by 1960 the band had shrewdly changed its name to capitalize on the first and middle name of its bandleader/keyboardist; they became Paul Revere and the Raiders. On lead vocals and saxophone, Lindsay quickly became the front man and focal point for what was then and always a very visual band; with their Revolutionary War-inspired costuming and tightly choreographed dance moves, the Raiders left an indelible impression.

The music was strong enough not to be overshadowed by the visual appeal, even on television: the Raiders became embedded – along with the Monkees and Beatles – as the face of rock’n'roll for a generation of TV viewers, owing in large part to their ubiquity. Dick Clark’s daily Where the Action Is exposed the band’s visual style and music to teens and pre-teens, and Lindsay’s heartthrob status was established forever.

Early on, it became clear that Lindsay’s creative impulses demanded more than simply standing out front, singing, dancing, taking sax solos and receiving copious amounts of female adulation. By 1966, with a number of hits in the band’s catalog, Lindsay – working closely with producer Terry Melcher – began to assert greater control over the creative direction of the group. Revere (the nominal bandleader) was a boogie-woogie piano player and rarely sang. “Paul and I were partners in the Raiders,” Mark recalls. “At a very early time, he kind of let me handle the music, and I let him handle the business.”

Whether via his own originals (often co-written with Melcher) or songs he selected, the musical vision of the Raiders soon came to reflect Lindsay’s tastes. While earlier albums consisted mostly of covers, on Midnight Ride, all but two of the tracks were Raiders originals, and more than half of those included a Lindsay credit.

But even with that level of creative latitude, Mark Lindsay’s creative ambitions weren’t fully exercised. Once the most celebrated core group of players (Phil Volk on bass, Drake Levin on guitar, Mike Smith on drums) departed in March 1967, the band became even more a Lindsay vehicle. Late that year Lindsay and Melcher crafted one of the odder artifacts of the era, A Christmas Past…and Present. To put it mildly, it was not a typical holiday-themed record. His next project took him even farther afield, but in some ways unknowingly tipped his hand toward the future: the Raiders-in-name-only release Goin’ to Memphis was in many ways a Mark Lindsay solo project, a collection of covers with Lindsay backed by Chips Moman’s studio cats. “Even though I was the only Raider in Memphis,” Lindsay says, “it was cut under the auspices of Paul Revere and the Raiders. So I don’t think anybody involved ever thought of it as a Mark Lindsay solo album.” In any event, whether he planned it or even knew it it at the time, by 1968 Mark Lindsay’s solo career had begun.

“I wish I had had enough foresight to see that everything follows a bell-shaped curve,” says Mark Lindsay. “That’s true no matter who you are, where you are or what you are. At the time I thought Where the Action Is would go on forever; I thought the Raiders would go on forever.” But he points to the efforts and influence of Columbia Records A&R head Jack Gold as the impetus for his official solo career. “He came by one day when we were cutting “Let Me” [Billboard #20 in 1969] and heard me while we setting recording levels. The engineer had said, ‘Sing something hard,’ so I sang the song’s chorus. Then he said, “Sing something soft.’ So I did a verse or two of Johnny Mathis‘ ‘Chances Are.’ The net day, Jack called me into his office: ‘Lindsay! I didn’t know you could sing like Mathis!’ I said, ‘I can’t.’ He said, ‘I want you cut a whole album of ballads.’ At the time, Andy Williams and Johnny Mathis were doing covers of all the lush hits of the day. But I said, ‘No, if I’m going to do an album, I don’t want to do covers; I want to do originals.’ So [producer] Jerry Fuller started looking for material.”

Lindsay’s first two solo records — Arizona and Silverbird – came out on Columbia in 1970. Both showed that softer, more contemplative side of Lindsay’s persona. The arrangements on the solo sides are very tasteful, and they have worn well. “My tastes in music had always been eclectic,” Mark says. “When I was a kid, I grew up listening to Spike Jones and my grandmother’s classical collection, plus everything that was on the radio. And of course in the 50s, they were still playing music from the 40s. I had liked ‘Slow Boat to China’ and Cab Calloway and everybody. I always admired the guys and gals who could really sing. And those tunes had such depth, such lasting qualities.”

While certainly sounding “of their time,” the arrangements on Arizona and Silverbird are lush and emotion-packed. And despite the advent of multi-track capabilities (used to often thrilling effect by Lindsay himself on albums like the Raiders’ 1968 release Something Happening), for his solo records Lindsay cut a lot of the tracks live with the musicians. “Jerry Fuller wanted me to do it that way,” he says. “Playing with the musicians live, there’s a kind of ‘breathing’ that goes on. Even though I was in a booth and couldn’t see everybody – Jerry or Al Capp was conducting – the whole orchestra would rise and fall together, and the voice helped that. [On those recordings] they’re following me, and I’m following them. [If we had cut separately] the interpretation might have been entirely different. If you’re going to have strings and horns and cut the way Frank Sinatra or Doris Day or Ella Fitzgerald did, I think that’s the way to go.”

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Beginning in the 1990s, a mixtape was a collection of music designed as a background for a rapper. Said rapper would collect his or her favorite beats, and then do their thing live over the sounds of the boombox. Essentially, it was rap karaoke without the TelePrompTer (and usually without music by Journey).

Of course back when I was growing up, a mixtape was a mixtape. Making and giving one was a tidy way of letting someone know you had a crush on them. (Yeah, I made a few.) You took the time to carefully compile just the right songs – often with a thematic thread – and you presented the results in hope of some sort of positive notice. In 2012 the same goals can (if one is lucky and/or deserving) be achieved by the sharing of a Spotify playlist. Remember that tip.

Over the last few years, UK-based label Fantastic Voyage has established itself as a master of the thematic compilation. The list of excellent comps from the label is long, and I’ve covered more than dozen of them here. One of the latest leans more than usual in the direction of the venerable mixtape, and its title telegraphs the punch: A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On. If that doesn’t tell you nearly everything you need to know, the subtitle fills in most of the remaining blanks: “50 Red Hot Oscillations Guaranteed to Make Your Heart Pound and You Liver Quiver.”

Yep, it’s a collection of early rock, blues, r&b (and a tiny bit of country) all brought together under the thematic rubric of…shakin‘. And it’s done so in the most literal manner imaginable, featuring titles like “Shake it Lucy Baby” (Johnny Otis), “(Make With) the Shake” (The Mark IV), “Knees Shakin’” (Frank Starr) and “Shake for Me” (Howlin’ Wolf). You get the idea. In fact, of the fifty tracks across two CDs, every damn song has a variant of the verb shake in its title (shake, shakin’, shaky, shook, etc.). Grammaticists note: only Amos Milburn’s “Ain’t Nothing Shaking” includes the letter g at the end of the word (but the “ain’t” nicely balances things out, don’t you think?)

But even beyond the hopeless gimmicky approach of the set, this is a collection of fine music. Clearly designed for dancing (or, I should say, dancin’), these sides do a splendid job of capturing the zeitgeist of an era when music was the soundtrack to wild partying and setting one’s spirit free. (Or, a prelude to getting laid. Or both.) The names on the set are a who’s-who of important and influential artists of the day; in addition to the recognizable names above, listeners will find tracks by the famous and legendary (Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and His Comets, Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, The Coasters) alongside lesser known but equally well-represented names such as Little Willie John, King Curtis and Dorsey Burnette.

As is typical of Fantastic Voyage compilations, excellent liner notes (here by Stuart Colman) provide discographical information and a bit of useful historical contextualization, all of which only makes the set better. So next time you’re havin’ a party, consider spinnin’ A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On. Now…get shakin’.

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