This
past Friday I was pleasantly reminded of a lot of my listening habits
of the 90s. It can be difficult to remember where your head was at
any given moment in your life, or why the music that spoke to you did
so. I came into the 90s riding a wave of alternative music, listening
to The Pixies, and The Replacements, and Nick Cave, and bunch of
other stuff I had discovered in the late 80s. For the most part I
ignored the Grunge movement. I could hear their influences in the
stuff I had already been listening to and while I didn’t exactly
hate Grunge none it spoke to me very much either. I liked Nirvana,
but didn’t own their albums until many years later, partly due to
everyone I knew already having a copy. I didn’t have to work very
hard to be able to hear it.
I did
discover a lot of music though. I went through a brief Alt-Country
phase, though my tastes there tended toward the weird extremes of the
genre. Most of these have long fallen by the wayside for me since
then. I continued to follow the careers of many of the 80s artists I
was into. Lloyd Cole and the Jazz Butcher continued to release new
material though it seemed less and less people cared (not that many
did in the first place, I guess). I tried out a lot of bands that I
first saw on MTV’s 120 Minutes. I went to a few big festivals and
saw a lot of bands I would never have gone to see if they played
solo.
One of
these festivals I went to, twice, was Lilith Fair. There seemed to be
an explosion of new female vocalists/singer-songwriters at the time
and I was drawn to a lot of them. I saw Dar Williams live several
times. I picked up albums by Tori Amos and Bjork. I did a phone
interview with Jewel when she was eighteen years old, about six
months before she broke huge. Listening to women rock stars was
nothing completely new for me. I owned a lot of Fleetwood Mac, and
Blondie, and The Runaways, and The Eurythmics, and Missing Persons,
among others. But in the 90s, like what I said about Alt-Country, my
tastes in women vocalists tended toward the weird end of things.
One of
them was Christina Martinez and her band, Boss Hog. Christina is
married to Jon Spencer of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Jon plays
guitar and shares vocals with Christina in Boss Hog, but it is
definitely her band. I wrote about them twice for local newsweeklies
in the 90s and saw them once at the now-defunct Grafitti (Cibo Mato was the opening act). They only released two very short full albums and a handful
of EPs, so their output was pretty small. Whatever, I listened to
them a lot.
This features Jon Spencer more than most of their songs.
After
almost two decades of nothing, this spring Boss Hog released a new
album and went on tour. I went to see them at Cattivo, a small local
venue here in Pittsburgh last Friday. The lineup includes both
Martinez and Spencer, as well as Hollis Queens and Jens Jurgenson,
their original drummer and bassist. Mickey Finn, who was not with
them originally, rounded out the band on keyboards. It was a much
more intimate show than when I saw them before. Spencer himself was
working the merchandise table and was very accessible. The other band
members hung out in the crowd watching the opening acts (including my
friends in The Homisides from down Charleroi way).
Their
performance was remarkable. First of all, it was obvious that they
were really having fun up there. The love and enthusiasm for what
they were doing brought everyone into the show. Christina left the
stage to sing from the midst of the crowd. At one point she leaned on
my shoulder and sang directly into my face, about six inches away.
Queens and Jurgenson were tight and powerful, a thundering rhythm
section. I don’t play drums, and as much as I listen to music I
admit it is the piece of bands I notice least, at least overtly.
Drums underlie all of the parts I’m paying more attention to. I
recognize this as a lack on my part, but other than a great drum solo
I find myself not paying much attention to drummers. Hollis Queens
was the exception. She was simply fierce on drums and it was
difficult to take my eyes off of her. She also adds vocals to one of my favorite Boss Hog songs, Whiteout. The show ended with the song Texas, possibly my favorite Boss Hog track.
A little naughty...
Boss Hog
never really completely fell out of my listening rotation,
like a lot of artists have. But, since Friday I’ve listened to all
of their albums (the new one is great!) and EPs, and watched a lot of
YouTube videos, reclaiming my fandom. This has reminded me of a few
other women vocalists/performers I was into at the same time, all but
one of which are relatively unknown. While I can’t describe exactly
what it is, I can hear some kind of similarity among them, a reason I
got into all of them. In every case their vocals feel earthier to me,
more grounded. Many of the women singers of that era tended toward
the more ethereal in their vocalizations. It’s not that I don’t
like that, but it seems I’m drawn to something more visceral. In
every case the music veers away from mostly traditional rock songs or
ballads as well, though there are exceptions. Slower, but driving, if
that’s a thing. Spaces in the music for the ear to rest, but
underpinned with heavy bass and drums. More than a little distortion.
There is a sparseness, but lots of emotion.
In my
novel This Creature Fair I write about a rock star named
Morrigan Blue. She and the band I create for her are the archetype
for this type of sound. I can hear it in my head even if I can never completely describe it.
I’m
not summing it up very well. Let me give you my examples.
I saw
the video for Dragon Lady by the Geraldine Fibbers on 120 Minutes and
was immediately a fan. I bought the album without having heard
another song and it was a desert island album for me for years (it
might still be). They fell into the weirder end of the Alt-Country
thing I mentioned. In the first article I wrote about them for In
Pittsburgh Newsweekly I described them as the offspring of
Hank Williams and Sonic Youth. I still think that’s a pretty good
descriptor. Carla Bozelich has a deep, raspy voice that just oozes
emotion for me. I did a phone interview with her that formed the
basis of a major article I had published in No Depression Magazine,
the national music mag for Alt-Country (there was some editing of
what I wrote that Carla wasn’t happy about, but we talked it
through). I saw them once in Pittsburgh and twice in Washington DC.
By that time guitarist Nels Cline, who is currently in Wilco, had
joined the band.
As much as I love this I understand how they're an acquired taste. My friend Lee nearly jumped out of our car into the desert at 90 miles an hour when I put this on.
Before
the Geraldine Fibbers, Carla had been with Ethyl Meatplow, who you
might know about from the song Devil’s Johnson which was featured
in an episode of Beavis and Butthead. Since then she has been
involved in a number of projects, both solo and as part of other
bands, including a song-for-song cover of Willie Nelson’s Redheaded
Stranger album, which Willie gave his blessing to by joining her on a
couple of tracks. While I still love her voice she has moved into
realms of experimental music that has left me behind.
At that
same time I discovered Congo Norvell. Kid Congo Powers is a guitarist
who has one of the best alternative resumes in music, having played
with the Gun Club, the Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Kid
is a very idiosyncratic guitarist who, by his own admission, never
really learned to play guitar the ‟right” way. He uses lots of
alternative tunings and is much more interested in finding
interesting sounds to make with his guitar than in traditional
playing. To my ears his instincts are good. Vocalist Sally Norvell
has a voice that simply makes me melt. I called it a ‟mix of honey
and sand” when I wrote about them.
I had
been given the go-ahead to write an article or do an interview by my
editor at Kulture Deluxe magazine, a short-lived and long defunct
national music mag I wrote for a long time ago. I had tracked down
their agent to ask for an interview, but in the meantime I went to
see them in DC and was lucky enough to meet them after the show. When
I inquired about setting something up Sally wrote her home number on a
napkin and told me to call anytime. I did and they were fantastic.
They sent me an advance copy of their new album, The Dope, The
Lies, The Vaseline, which was never officially released. I’m
among a very small population of people who own a copy of this. This
ended up being the biggest feature article I ever had published.
I can’t
really say that Sally and I are friends in any way other than the
Facebook kind, but we stayed in touch over the years. When she
released her solo album Choking Victim I was probably one of
the few music journalists lining up to review it.
The last
of these 90s female performers I want to talk about is the most
well-known. PJ Harvey is well into her third decade as a respected
musician. 120 Minutes was my first introduction to her through the video for Dry. I heard her first three albums
through a friend of mine who was much more into her at the time than
I was. But then she released To Bring You My Love and I fell
in love. This still ranks as one of my all time favorite albums, just
hitting me in the sweet spot of right time, right place in my life.
After that I become a completist for her music, tracking down obscure
b-sides and unreleased tracks and bootleg live shows... there are a
lot of them. Part of what I have loved about PJ is that she has
continued to grow and change as an artist, every album moving in a
new direction. I fully admit that I have not been as into her recent
work as I once was. I think she’s still doing important work and
following her specific muse, but it doesn’t speak to me in the same
way. Still, she is an artist that I will always be interested to see
where she goes next.
Unlike
the others, I’ve never met PJ, though I have seen her live many
times. Two of those shows stand out. In December of 2000 she was
breaking in a new band in anticipation of being the opening act for
U2. She played a small number of unannounced secret shows that I was
lucky enough to hear about and get tickets to. I saw her at the Black
Cat in DC, the same venue where I had seen the Geraldine Fibbers and
Congo Norvell. The Black Cat is essentially a small bar and I stood
about three feet from her during the performance. Even then she was a
big enough star that this kind of intimate show was a once in a
lifetime opportunity. The next fall, after the U2 tour, I saw
her headlining again with the same band at the 9:30 Club. This show
stands out because of the date. It was 9/10/2001. The next morning,
while I was driving out of DC, the World Trade Centers fell and the
Pentagon was hit by a plane.
Unfortunately
I didn't see the To Bring You My Love tour in 1995.
This is
what passed for PJ's Glam period.
I can
hear the similarities in these performers, at least in my world of
aural pleasure. I can understand why they all appealed to me in some
of the same ways. I’m sure there are others who fall in this
category but I haven’t discovered a lot of them that speak to me in
the same way. I’m sure some of that is simply where I am in life as
well. Not too many years ago I got into The Kills, fully aware that
they were hitting me in the same place as the bands I’ve just
talked about. There is an overall sound to the band I like and
vocalist Alison Mossheart fits squarely in the realm I’ve been
discussing. I really like the work she has done with Jack White in
The Dead Weather as well.
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I’m
not sure of the purpose of this, other than finally gathering all of
these together in one place. Hopefully some of you will explore these
artists and discover something you love. In the meantime, I’m
enjoying a nostalgic indulgence.
*The title is taken from a Congo Norvell song.
