The Band that Played California Lady began as a duet featuring the vocal and acoustic guitar stylings of The Fish-Lipped Guy and The Eskimo. The Band that Played California Lady achieved little commercial success, playing numerous dive bars in America’s southwest. However, all that changed when they added a female backup singer known as The Friendly-Looking Backup Singer. Suddenly, their signature tune “California Lady” was everywhere, including a bad B-movie like Track of the Moonbeast, and they rocketed to sudden fame. They went from playing dusty bars found along state highways to huge venues, including Watkins Glen in New York. There they shared top billing with such bands as Wet Willy and Toots and The Maytals.

Like the moon, fame is also a harsh mistress. The Fish-Lipped Guy, uncomfortable with the creative genius role his adoring public thrust upon him, took to drinking and a circle of fast friends. The Eskimo, previously an equal partner in this musical concern, found himself left in the shadow, given names like “The Quiet One” and, of course, “The Eskimo”. He took to drugs to escape the pain of this public emasculation.

The Fish-Lipped Guy, no longer tethered by the support and friendship offered by The Eskimo during the band’s early days, took to heavier drinking and womanizing. This of course lead The Eskimo into a faster downward spiral using more drugs.

The Band that Played California Lady might have ended there but they managed to drag themselves into a studio to record a follow up album. In contrast to their upbeat, and dare I say peppy California Lady, they recorded a more somber, serious, introspective work called Rhode Island Lady. Fans were unwilling to accept The Band that Played California Lady’s exploration of new territory, wanting more peppy tunes about ladies in California, or at least Oregon. Their sophomore album failed to crack the charts.

The Fish-Lipped Guy and The Eskimo, bitten by the fickle bug that is fame, retreated further into their addictions. Their agent felt some regrouping was in order, like having them play some smaller fan-friendly venues instead of the massive stadiums they played during the heyday of the California Lady sound. He signed them to a deal where they’d open for Brewer and Shipley. However tragedy struck when The Eskimo overdosed and fell into a drug-induced coma for several months. The Fish-Lipped Guy added gambling to his growing list of destructive vices (drinking, womanizing) after The Eskimo’s overdose. The Band that Played California Lady was no more.

However, they did enjoy a small resurgence in the late ’90s after a small reunion tour and a new generation of fans discovered the joy of “California Lady” and The Band that Played California Lady.

– Michael T. Nelson

California Lady (from “Track of the MoonBeast”)

The Young Gods (TYG) is a Swiss Industrial music band. The band’s lineup has generally consisted of a vocalist, a sampler operator and a drummer. Their instrumentation often includes sampled electric guitars, drums, keyboards, and other samples. The lyrics are a mix of English, French and a bit of German...Read More

Thanks to Boz Wretch Falafel for the “heads up.”

Check out the YG 14-minute set on Rockpalast TV

The Young Gods – Longue Route

Black Cat Music is a punk rock band from San Francisco Bay Area, California. They were formed in the summer of 1998 by former members of bands such as The Criminals and the Receivers. The music combined elements of punk & rock and roll with dark, poetic lyrics. After its formation, Black Cat Music released an EP & first full length record on Cheetah’s records. Soon thereafter, Black Cat Music signed to Lookout! Records. The band played live shows up and down the west coast, and on several national tours. In 2004, the band released a video for the song “the Jet Trash”, directed by Vincent Haycock.

Black Cat Music – “The Jet Trash” (Promo Video)

“Oh, death, how you’re treatin’ me / You’ve closed my eyes so I can’t see / Well you’re hurtin’ my body / You make me cold / You run my life right outta my soul.”

Those words, most famously crooned a cappella by bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley on the song “O’Death”, begged a creeping Grim Reaper to spare him another year. The song is haunting, bare, remarkably soulful, and a guiding light for five musicians who met in the early part of the decade while attending SUNY-Purchase, a state school in the suburbs of New York City. With a hankering for Gothic roots music, the band snatched the song title as its moniker and formed in 2003. READ MORE

O’Death is:
greg jamie – vocals, guitar
gabe darling – backing vocals, ukulele, guitar, banjo, piano
davd rb – drums, whoop
bob pycior – fiddle, guitar, piano
othar the tooth collector – bass
dan sager – trombone, euphonium, keys

O’ Death @ Whelans, Dublin, 24.06.07

The Crucifucks were a Lansing, Michigan-based punk rock band formed in 1981. Throughout their career, the band had a revolving-door line-up, the only constant member being lyricist and frontman Doc Corbin Dart. Other members of the original line up included Dart’s cousin Joe on guitar, Scott Begerston on bass, and drummer Steve Shelley, who went on to play with Sonic Youth. Read More…

Reviews

MySpace site

Crucifucks, Mountain Song

The Men They Couldn’t Hang are a British rock band whose mixture of folk and punk is not dissimilar to that of The Pogues (in fact founder member Shanne Bradley was an original female punk artist and founder of Shane MacGowan’s first band, The Nipple Erectors).

The original group consisted of Stefan Cush (Vocals, Guitar), Paul Simmonds (Guitar, Bouzouki, Mandolin, Keyboards), Philip “Swill” Odgers (Vocals, Guitar, Tin Whistle, Melodica), Jon Odgers (Drums, Percussion) and Shanne Bradley (Bass).

TMTCH MySpace Page

The Men They Couldn’t Hang – The Crest

Formed in 1981, Paranoid Visions quickly allied themselves to the anarcho punk fraternity of the second wave of punk rock in the early 80’s. Heavily influenced by the crass ethic of diy music, the band fomed their own F.O.A.D label and licenced their records to all the madmen records, home of the Mob, Thatcher on Acid, Blyth Power and the Astronauts. Paranoid Visons played gigs and toured with the likes of Poison Girls, DIRT, Blyth Power, the Subhumans and the Instigators. Throughout the 90’s Paranoid Visions became the biggest punk band Ireland had ever produced, featuring on several TV shows, newspapers and being offered numerous record deals from major labels (all of which were ignored). Read More

REVIEW: Beware of God  Album Release March 7, 2009

Paranoid Visions – treasure of the wasteland

Future of the Left is an alternative rock band from Cardiff, Wales. It consists of singer/guitarist Andy “Falco” Falkous and drummer Jack Egglestone, both previously of Cardiff band McLusky, alongside singer/bassist Kelson Mathias, formerly of the Ammanford-based group Jarcrew. The band previously featured Hywel Evans, who has since gone on to start one of Cardiff’s only notable math-rock bands, Truckers of Husk – he was also a former member of Jarcrew towards the end of Jarcrew’s tenure (Evans is also credited as a writer on Fingers Become Thumbs’ B-side, The Fibre Provider). The band formed in mid-2005 after both Mclusky and Jarcrew split up.

The band’s Web Site and their MySpace page

Future Of The Left – ‘adeadenemyalwayssmellsgood’

Perhaps no band was more emblematic of the true spirit of American indie rock during the 1990s than Superchunk, the pride of Chapel Hill, NC. Following the D.I.Y. ethic to the letter, the group operated solely by their own rules, ignoring all passing trends by sticking to their trademark sound — typified by the buzzing guitars and high, impassioned vocals of frontman Mac McCaughan — and rejecting all major-label advances in favor of the unlimited freedom afforded by owning their own company, the highly successful Merge Records. Although Superchunk’s resistance to the overtures of the music industry may have deprived them of the wider audience their work clearly deserved, perhaps their greatest legacy remains their unwavering dedication to the indie tradition, a model which all up-and-coming bands should strive to emulate.

Superchunk was formed in the college town of Chapel Hill in 1989 by singer/guitarist McCaughan, bassist Laura Ballance, drummer Chuck Garrison, and guitarist Jack McCook. Initially dubbed merely Chunk…more

Suoerchunk’s MySpace Page

Superchunk – Precision Auto (live)

Neutral Milk Hotel was an American indie folk band. The band’s chief songwriter, Jeff Mangum, played with a number of other musicians on the band’s two full-length albums. Notable contributors to the band’s oeuvre include Jeremy Barnes (drums), Scott Spillane (horns), Julian Koster (banjo/bass guitar/saw), and producer-instrumentalist Robert Schneider. Neutral Milk Hotel is a part of The Elephant 6 Recording Company, based in Athens, Georgia. They are most famous for their album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

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Neutral Milk Hotel “Ghost” 4/4/98