Timing is hell. The Joneses just released their debut album, Revolution Blues, and just as quickly as that, everything changed. They didn’t sign to Sony or win the lottery—nothing that good, but they added guitarist George Ortolano, which changed their sound. That means the Clash/Police sound that they captured on their brand new album isn’t representative anymore. The change that has the Joneses thinking is the discovery that “there’s a glam Joneses out of L.A.,” singer Will Jones said, “and there’s an R&B Joneses.” That means the band not only has a new disc that doesn’t sound like them anymore, but before long, the band won’t go by the name it used when recording the record.
The changes have been in the offing since last June when the band went to Los Angeles to record at Frank Black’s studio. While there, they saw Fu Manchu “and it was a big eye opener,” drummer Scott Thompson said. Ortolano’s production of Revolution Blues captures what the band had been, but the Joneses had been thinking about a more physical, edgier sound, “and I asked myself,” Ortolano recalled, “‘Can they rock these people like Fu Manchu?’” Coinciding with show was a writing jag for Jones that resulted in “three or four songs I liked that didn’t feel compatible with much of the set.” As a result, the poppier and more Police-like songs have been dropped.
The talk of Fu Manchu shouldn’t scare the band’s fans though; the current sound is more of a progression than a sea change. The songs are the same, but they’re not as self-consciously British, which always felt like an affectation. With Ortolano’s addition, there is a garage rawness, but it’s a fleshed-out, Technicolor rawness. It’s a change that wasn’t commercially necessary; at their first Carrollton Station gig, they had people lined up to get in, and since then, they’ve been drawing large crowds more consistently than most rock bands, and they’ve managed to draw a college audience, which is no small feat. The change also represents real growth for a band that started just 18 months ago when Thompson and Jones were jamming in their apartment. “We’d turn the lights out and call it The Cave,” Jones said. “I thought that was the coolest thing,” Thompson laughed.
SKINNY TIES AND ALL
Opening for the Joneses at the Rendon Inn was the New Way, who have the clipped chords, siren guitar lines and tight songs of bands associated with British New Wave power pop. They could use stronger choruses, but that aside, bands like them and the Joneses have plugged into something. A recent New York Times article talked about a new New Wave in New York, appropriately locating the Strokes in that lot, and at Voodoo, New Wave’s aesthetics were similarly in evidence. New York’s Mindless Self-Indugence bore a resemblance to rap metal, but the emphasis on surface—silly, “outrageous” look, hi-tech sound, clever for clever’s sake lyrics—told the real story. At the rave tent (if the sponsor wants its name in the magazine, it can buy an ad), the biggest response I saw was to Felix da Housecat playing New Order’s “Blue Monday.” That doesn’t fit together neatly (New Order isn’t much like Mindless Self-Indulgence, which isn’t much like the New Way, which isn’t much like the Strokes), but all these things collected say something’s going on.
What does this mean? Well, the cynical answer is that our imaginations have been so limited by media that we can’t conceive of anything to do that hasn’t already happened, and since New Wave followed Punk before, it seems like the natural next step. A less pessimistic take is that everyone wants to feel important and revolutionary, and this music allows its audience to feel that way. A survey of the cars parked around the Rendon revealed a disturbing number of SUVs, BMWs, and sundry other cars of the children of wealth, so the irony here is deep. Those celebrating revolution are the sons and daughters of the first people who’ll be dragged behind cars when class war comes, but they’re not thinking that far. They just want to feel revolutionary; they don’t actually want to be it.
A recent DVD, Punk: The Early Years, contains a couple of bits of footage that clarify the distinctions. There’s live footage of the Slits, a British all-girl punk band, and they seem to be playing in a basement and the scene is mayhem. The music is difficult and primitive and they weren’t buying anybody else’s aesthetics. In short, the band, the music and the attitude is punk. Later in the film, Eddie and the Hot Rods perform “Get Out of Denver,” and the version is fast as hell, the band members have their bangs cut straight across, but the show might as well have been Rod Stewart, Humble Pie, Savoy Brown, or any number of limey crowd pleasers of the day. There was just enough energy and aggression for the music to feel like a revolution, but in every meaningful way, it was a capitulation to the status quo. It’s a sound that was easy for the children of privilege to sign on to then, and it’s a sound they can claim now. That doesn’t mean it’s bad—pop and rock ‘n’ roll are built on foundations of traditional aesthetics—but it isn’t a revolution.
MORE VOODOO NOTES
The two most memorable lines: Iggy Pop telling a bored fan, “You suck like the bands you like,” and Parker Hutchinson from World Leader Pretend introducing “Fit For Faded,” “This song’s a little sad and overdramatic, but so are all these festivals.” Runner-up: Keith Ferguson of World Leader Pretend using “fuck off” and “autumnal” in the same sentence . . . If you missed Metallica, contemporary commercial music must be a bewildering thing . . . Despite all the Chronic hype on Merch Row, there was a startling lack of recreational drugs at Voodoo; to paraphrase Prince, “This is what it smells like / When virgins party”. . . Fans waiting for A Perfect Circle sat with their backs to Supagroup steadfastly shunning all fun until a properly serious band showed up. Watching them, I remembered how much work it was to be cool, and seeing them shunning the band, I wondered how much fun I refused to have because I was working on my ennui.
KRAMER VS. KRAMER
Looking like an Art Bell-class conspiracy theorist, Wayne Kramer was more audacious than anyone at Voodoo when he opened for Cheap Trick at House of Blues. In front of an audience ready to “part-tay” down, he opened with “Running That Dope for Democracy,” and later asked, “Where’s Lee Harvey Oswald when we need him?”
ANNE MURRAY: SEXPOT
In Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste, the recent anthology of Lester Bangs’ writing, he does in fact assert that the mom-ish Canadian singer was a hottie in a review of her album, Danny’s Song, and it’s impossible to imagine that review running today. It’s hard to believe he was being genuine, but he never let on that he was joking either. Today, most musical journalism has become puffery and consumer guides, but Bangs’ writing will remind readers just how vital writing about music can be. I’m not sure Bangs was a great writer, but he was certainly a great music writer because his writing reflects genuine thought and a desire to understand the art, not the artist. In a piece on Black Sabbath, for example, he does interview Ozzy, but much of the piece contemplates Sabbath’s moralistic tone and the similarities between Dylan’s “Masters of War” and Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” Editor John Morthland selects pieces that show Bangs as a working writer, dealing with whatever crossed his desk (as opposed to Greil Marcus’ more agenda-driven Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung), and we need more working writers like that these days.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Rocket From the Tombs December 10 at the Parish: Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys rose from the ashes of Cleveland’s Rocket From the Tombs. Now, David Thomas, Cheetah Chrome and Craig Bell of the original Rocket From the Tombs have reformed with Richard Lloyd of Television for a new album, which will feature “Sonic Reducer” and “30 Seconds Over Tokyo,” both originally Rocket From the Tombs songs. Part of me wants legends to stay legendary, but punk was always as much avant-garde as rock, and this promises to galumph gleefully at intersection of those two musical streets.
