Tam Johnstone is a FOB (Friend of Bullz-Eye) dating way back to 2002, when he released his first album under the name The General Store. His father is Davey Johnstone, who has served as Elton John’s guitarist since Madman Across the Water, and naturally, son was interested in music, but didn’t want to be a daddy clone. The General Store’s first album, Local Honey, is pure West Coast pop, with gentle slide guitar and breezy harmonies, as well as a countrified cover of the Thompson Twins’ “Hold Me Now.” The band’s second album, Mountain Rescue, was much more in the Neil Young vein.
And then there’s this.
Now recording under his own name, Johnstone is unveiling a completely different side of his musical personality. The lead track from his new album Fantastic Animals (this one just under Tam’s name), “We Are Animals” is a spot-on Adam Ant tribute – which makes sense, considering he’s spent the last two years in a cover band – and in fact bests everything Ant’s released since “Friend or Foe.” Tribal drums, check. Plucky acoustic guitar backed by heavy bar chords, check. High-pitched vocal, checkmate. Curiously, Ant himself is doing his first US tour in ages. He’d probably get a standing ovation if he played this.
Some of you may remember that this is the song we ran for last year’s pre-New Year’s Eve Friday Video column. What can we say: it speaks to us.
It’s sad that good time rock and roll music has been out of style for nearly a decade. Call it a generational thing, but all of these bands that whine about their feelings…they really did ruin rock music. We miss fun. Please come back, fun.
Happy New Year, everyone. Make sure you live to see the dawn of 2012. Of course, the Mayans say that we’re all dying at year’s end, but don’t you want to be there to see it happen?
We couldn’t have picked a better label boss for glam princess Kate Crash if we had tried (and we are using the word ‘princess’ very liberally here) – she’s signed to Joan Jett’s label, Blackheart Records. Two seconds into “Walk My Own Way,” and the comparisons are crystal clear. Crunchy guitars, giant dance-friendly drum riffs, and attitude by the truckload. Heck, just look at her.
We would totally hit that. The catch, of course, is that she’d probably hit us back, hard.
This clip is a fun old school-type guerilla video. We’d let Kate walk any way she wants, as long as it was in our direction. Happy holidays, everyone.
Over the last decade, we’ve seen some curious new pathways to success or, at the very least, fame. (They are not always one and the same, you know.) The most notorious one, of course, is the sex tape. Kim Kardashian may have a gigantic empire now, but it wasn’t long ago that she was just the daughter of a defense attorney and BFF of tabloid staple Paris Hilton. Then, one day, she had a thought: “I could make a videotape of myself having sex with a guy, then leverage my friendship with Paris for maximum exposure. What’s that, honey? You want to pee on me? Yeah, whatever, as long as it makes me famous.”
Then there is the path forged by one Brian Joseph Burton, whose debut album didn’t contain a lick of original production or content. Instead, he took the rhymes from Jay-Z’s The Black Album, and put them to the instrumental tracks from the Beatles’ The Beatles (aka The White Album), and poof, The Grey Album was born. And really, once you heard about this project, was there any question which song Danger Mouse would use to back up “99 Problems”? Hell to the naw. Of course it would be “Helter Skelter,” which is still one of the most hard-rocking songs ever recorded.
Have a good pre-Christmas weekend, everyone. May your problems be fewer than 99.
Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth” rocks on a number of levels, but here is our favorite level: while singer Courtney Taylor is clearly unhappy about the song’s subject turning to hard drugs, it’s the reason for them turning to hard drugs that has him so annoyed – he got into drugs because he thought it was the hip, trendy thing to do. “Shouldn’t you have got a couple piercings and decided, maybe, that you were gay?” Taylor pleads in the second verse. It’s a double-edged insult: his friend is both weak-willed and a trend-hopper. Actually, it’s a three-pronged zinger, because the friend is also out of touch with what’s cool. And heroin is definitely not cool. This song is, though. Love those tweaked out dancers, not to mention all of the prizes that await the “winner” of the game show. Puking! Flaming car! Death! Man, what’s not to love?
Oh, right, the puking, the flaming car, and the death. We’ll just listen to this instead.
For the record, the second level we love about this song is the backward snare drum hit in the breaks. That little bit is the biggest hook in the song.
