The Earlies - These Were The Earlies (2004)

"Wayward Song" by The Earlies


When John Mark Lapham shopped around Micah P. Hinson's demos in the US and England, he'd also shop around the work of his own band The Earlies.

The Earlies started recording songs together in the late 90s and eventually released their debut album, a collection of early EPs, These Were The Earlies in 2004. 2004 also marked the first time the band could say they were all together in the same room. The strange case of The Earlies had two of its members, JM Lapham (drums, effects, loops) and Brandon Carr (guitar, vocals), living in Texas and the other two members, Giles Hatton (sequencer, effects) and Christian Madden (multi-instrumentalist) living in England. They met through their previous independent projects; Lapham's Autio and Giles Hatton's Atomic Clock both released work on the short-lived Beatnik Records. This small connection was enough to foster an Atlantic-bridging relationship that would spawn music, basically, via pen-palling.

The Earlies found a UK record deal with 679 Recordings and moved the outfit to England. They'd get a US record deal in 2006 with Secretly Canadian (label for previous artist David Vandervelde). The Earlies music on their debut is when electronic music meets progressive rock. They record the instruments drunk, or at least slightly tipsy, in order to give the performances a looser feel. Sober, they work on the production, layering all of the different musical elements. The lyrics are simple and delivered in a half-singing voice by Brandon Carr. When the group brings harmonies into the mix, the vocals take on a mantric quality. The Earlies, however, are at their best when the vocals, and music in general, are at their most minimal. Like in the beautiful "Slow Man's Dream" and "Wayward Song", the use of only a slowly building, ambient electronic composition and a woodwind or two shows that The Earlies make beautiful and ambitious music even on a limited palette.

Here is the discography surrounding The Earlies's debut album:

King (1999 single by Autio)
Bullgoose Loony (1999 single by Atomic Clock)
25 Easy Pieces (2002 single)
Song for #3 (2002 single)
The First Sound of The Earlies - A Recollection of Early Tracks (2003 download)
Wayward Song (2003 EP)
These Were The Earlies
Morning Wonder (2004 single)
The Earlies in The Devil's Country (2004 EP)
Bring It Back Again (2005 single)
I've Been Waiting (2005 single by Sara Lowes and The Earlies)

"Morning Wonder" by The Earlies


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Micah P. Hinson - Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress (2004)

"I Still Remember" by Micah P. Hinson


Daniel Johnston had trouble staying in school. He attended both Kent State and Abilene Christian for short periods of time before returning home with his inability to stay in school rooted in his psychological health. Micah P. Hinson is another member of the Abilene Christian Dropouts Who Would Go On to Have Relatively Successful Music Careers Contingency though his reasons for dropping out are due in part to drug abuse and the misguidance of "shady women".

Micah learned to play the guitar at the age of 11, taking after his older brother. Playing music became one of his methods for coping with living in a small community along with skateboarding and drug use. In 2000 while Hinson's life was still unfocused, he recorded a demo and handed it off to musician, record label owner, and friend JP Lapham. Convinced of his talent, Lapham took on the management of Micah's career and began shopping him around to record labels. Sketchbook Records in the UK eventually took interest and signed Hinson in 2003.

Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress saw release in 2004 along with two singles. The Gospel of Progress (a possible reference to Micah's backing band during these sessions) is a break up album. Each song is lyrically minimal, usually only consisting of one verse, one cry of the heart. The thoughts are anguished, depressed and morbid. They are all searching through different emotional lenses for a love that isn't reciprocated. Musically, all the songs start out just as minimally, just Micah, his baritone, and his guitar, but they all grow new and different layers swelling and filling the songs out with orchestration and overlayed vocals (sometimes his own breaking tenor or the soft, dismissive voice of Sarah Lowes). Micah would quickly follow up his debut album by rerecording his demo and releasing it as an EP The Baby & the Satellite in 2005.

Here is the discography surrounding Micah P. Hinson's debut album:

The Cranes (2003 compilation appearance)
The Day Texas Sank to the Bottom of the Sea (2004 single)
Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress
Beneath the Rose (2004 single)
The Baby & the Satellite (2005 EP)
Yard of Blonde Girls (2006 single/compilation appearance)

"Beneath the Rose" by Micah P. Hinson


"The Day Texas Sank to the Bottom of the Sea" by Micah P. Hinson


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Daniel Johnston - Songs of Pain (1981)

"I Save Cigarette Butts" by Daniel Johnston


Beck's loosest demo Beck and Dava recorded in 1990 is an extremely informal session where Beck and Dava simply enjoy the process of recording together. The demo has no real song ideas that'll grow up to be hit singles and everything they do record is off-the-cuff. Mixed in between the songs and half-songs is the banter that leads from one to another. On one particular recording, Beck goes on at length on one of his influences Daniel Johnston. According to Beck, Johnston is a born-again Christian who at one point played with the Butthole Surfers. That's not necessarily true, but he and members of the Surfers did collaborate (with the band holding Johnston in high regard), and Johnston's songs are awash with Christian influence. Whether the songs reflect a faithful or cynical approach to Christianity is another conversation altogether...

Daniel Johnston learned to play the piano and wanted to be just like The Beatles. A few things stood in his way: he couldn't sing and he suffered from manic depression and schizophrenia, but he continued to play. He took classes at a couple of universities but, for reasons most likely rooted in his mental illnesses, he would always wind back down in his parents basement. It's in the basement where Johnston recorded his work on an old boombox. He'd then take the tapes he had made and go down to local record stores, universities, and clubs in Austin to give them out by hand. He gained a certain local notoriety for both his music and his odd behavior.

His first recording titled Songs of Pain and consisted of songs he recorded in 1980 and '81. The recordings are naturally poor in quality and consist of Daniel banging away frenetically on his piano singing his personal songs in his broken voice. Mixed in between the songs are sound bites of field recordings usually of friends and family. The most notable and saddening is a fight between he and his mother on how he'll never amount to anything. She criticizes him for his laziness while he retorts with sarcastic agreement and self-defeatism. The fight is one they've had many times before. The songs, as such, are very difficult to separate from their source material. Most of the Songs of Pain are in reference to a girl he loved who would eventually marry an undertaker. As such, whenever there is a reference to a funeral, a girl he loves, or a girl on whom he wishes ill, you begin to imagine Daniel's state of mind. His songwriting on its own is raw. His piano riffs are heavily embellished and his lyrics take turns of stream-of-consciousness. Still, the riffs are accomplished and the lyrics are deeply honest and find their way to natural conclusions whose notes and thoughts will resonate in the hearts of listeners.

Here is the discography surrounding Daniel Johnston's debut album:

Songs of Pain

"Urge" by Daniel Johnston


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Beck - Golden Feelings (1993)

As mentioned in the previous entry, Forest for the Trees had a constantly evolving cast of musicians playing alongside Karl Stephenson. One of these members was a harmonica player, Beck, for whom Karl would eventually produce his major label debut and landmark album Mellow Gold. This album, however, was not Beck's first.

Beck is the son of artists. His father is composer David Campbell (previously used as a Tour link between Macy Gray and David Vandervelde) and his mother is ex-David Warhol Factory Worker Bibbe Hansen. He dropped out of high school and began busking around Europe while staying with his grandfather in Germany. After earning his wings, he moved to New York where he became part of the anti-folk movement. He continued his anti-folkie routine in Los Angeles where he also dabbled in a metal band (Loser with Peter Hanft) and started experimenting with recording techniques.

The most common attribute of Anti-Folk is a fervent desire to subvert the ideals of folk music (the voice of the common man, the call for change). Every anti-folkie has a different means of subversion. In Beck's case, he created a ne're-do-well, slacker persona that sang songs about going to moon cars, do drugs, and the possibility of getting out of bed. While folk music portrayed the common man as earnest, hardworking, simple, and wise of the land, Beck sang about the common pariahs of society: uneducated, lazy, and ignorant boys who refuse to grow up and take responsibility for themselves and others. As Beck was originally interested in folk music (he had as healthy an interest in Woody Guthrie as the next guy), his anti-folk music shared the same earnest sounds of the guitar and harmonica. His sound evolved quickly to match his lyrics. His recording process became increasingly lo-fi, his songwriting was more in minor key coupled with purposeful poor playing, and his voice became disturbingly distorted.

All of these elements, after a slew of home demos and experiments, reached a point with his debut album Golden Feelings released in 1993 by the very small label Sonic Enemy. At this point in Beck's musical career, he was still stuck in dead-end jobs and left largely ignored at the clubs and coffee houses he performed at. But with his prolific demo output and "experimentation" as "his only gimmick", it's no wonder such an earnest love of music would produce one of the most respected and critically acclaimed artists of the nineties and aughts.

"Gettin' Home" by Beck


Here is the discography surrounding Beck's debut album:

Banjo Story (1988 demo)
Beck and Dava (1990 demo)
R-Marcel (1992 demo)
Are U Positive (1992 demo)
Beck, Like the Beer (1992 demo)
Don't Get Bent Out of Shape (1992 demo)
1992 Demo (1992 demo)
Metal Demos (1992 demo as Loser)
Fresh Meat and Old Slabs (1993 demo)
Golden Feelings
Golden Leftovers (1993 outtakes album)

"Totally Confused" by Beck


"Desire (Hollow Log)" by Beck


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Forest for the Trees - Forest for the Trees (1997)

"Planet Unknown" by Forest for the Trees


Bob Ludwig is one of the most sought after mastering engineers in the business. He's skilled and prolific and chances are he's mastered or remastered one of your favorite albums. Ludwig was recruited to remaster the entirety of Queen's album catalog for their recent deluxe edition re-releases. Ludwig has mastered everything from classical to classic rock from indie to the most mainstream pop. On the extremities of his mastering work lies a strange album by the collaborative project Forest for the Trees.

The membership of the band Forest for the Trees is difficult to pin down. The band was malleable and made common use of that quality. The only cornerstone the band had was hip hop and alternative rock producer Karl Stephenson. I imagine that the makeup of the band was Stephenson (who wrote, arranged, and played most of the music) alongside any friends who wanted to bang around and record with him.

Stephenson began pulling together the band's debut in the early nineties with an aim at releasing it around 1994 (about the same time he produced Beck's Mellow Gold). However, his obsessing over the intricacies of the compositions led Stephenson to a mental breakdown, leaving Forest for the Trees unreleased until 1997.

The eponymous album is an odd hybridization of styles very similar to his approach in producing Mellow Gold (without the novelty). The album is lightly psychedelic more jarring for its juxtaposition of genres (hip hop next to grunge next to celtic music next field recordings) than the minutia of the production Stephenson labored over. The content of the album explores textbook transcendentalism and carries with it fleeting visions of a global community.

The delayed release of Forest for the Trees's debut from Dreamworks Records failed to find an audience. 1999 held the last release from the band: The Sound of Wet Paint EP, loose tracks left over from previous sessions. Surprisingly, b-side "Primordial Soup", the "Dream" dance remix, and especially "The Sound of Music" would turn out to be some of the Forest's most notable songs. Dreaworks dropped Stephenson form their label and, now defunct, are believed to still hold one unreleased Forest for the Trees album.

Here is Forest for the Trees's complete discography:

Dream (1997 single)
Forest for the Trees
Planet Unknown (1997 single)
The Sound of Wet Paint (1999 EP)

"Dream" by Forest for the Trees


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Queen - Queen (1973)

"Keep Yourself Alive" by Queen


It is very important that listeners not confuse Duran Duran's drummer Roger Taylor with Queen's drummer Roger Taylor.

The origins of Queen start with guitarist Brian May and bassist Tim Staffell. Both were members of the band 1984 in the late sixties that drew some success by recording a demo and opening for legendary acts Jimi Hendrix, Traffic, Tyrannosaurus and Pink Floyd. The two dropped from the band in order to pursue further education at Imperial College and Ealing Art College respectively, but decided to form there own band while there. They recruited drummer Roger Taylor (not to be confused with the drumming Roger Taylor of Duran Duran) to round out the trio. Together, they formed Smile in 1968 and earned a record deal with Mercury Records a year later. Their single "Earth" reached no chart positions and Smile was promptly dropped from the label. At the same time, the band Humpy Bong recruited Tim Staffell as their bassist spelling the end of Smile. The band had a big fan, however. Farrokh "Freddie" Bulsara, an immigrant from British Zanzibar who went to boarding school in India, was a pianist and vocalist in and out of bands. He was a friend of Staffell's at Ealing and formed a close relationship with the band. After Staffell's departure, he, May, and Taylor recruited bassist John Deacon to reform as Queen.

Bulsara led the band with an air of the theatrical as Freddie Mercury, a last name he derived from one of his own songs. His influence extended over both their stage performances and songs as he'd provide a bulk of their material in the early years. Queen quickly caught the attention of Trident Studios producers Roy Thomas Baker and John Anthony (who had previously produced Smile's work). The studio connected, with some difficulty, the band with EMI Records and a strong record deal signed with the bad label experience they had with Mercury Records.

Their debut record Queen was recorded during the downtime hours of Trident when the studios were not in use. They already had a solid backlog of live songs to record and did the bulk of recording in mid to late 1972. Their first single "Keep Yourself Alive" was released by July 1973 with the delay due to the search for a record label. The album featured several songs that dated back to the pre-Queen Smile-era ("Keep Yourself Alive", Staffell's "Doing Alright") and Mercury's eccentric fantasy-laden epics ("My Fairy Queen", "Great King Rat"). The band's sound had a strong taste of the contemporary progressive rock and heavy metal movements (with traces of the popular glam and fledgling punk movements). The songs stood apart at the time because of the caliber of the musicianship amongst the members, Mercury's powerful vocals and unique arrangements, and the band's harmonies. The album was well-received by critics and noted for its Led Zeppelin-influenced rock and roll and Brian May's incredible riffs throughout. Certified gold, the album was a promising debut.

Here is the discography surrounding Queen's debut album:

Thames Television Studios Demo Tape (1967 demo by 1984)

Live at the Liverpool Sink Club (1967 live recording by Ibex)
Earth (1969 demo as Smile)
Gettin' Smile (compilation as Smile)
Ghost of a Smile (compilation as Smile)
In the Beginning (1971 demo)
I Can Hear Music (1973 single by Larry Lurex)
Keep Yourself Alive (1973 single)

Liar (1973 single)
Queen
Queen Will Be Crowned (1973 live recording)
At the Beeb (1973 live recording)
BBC Sessions (1973-74 sessions)

"Liar" by Queen


"Doing Alright" by Queen


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Duran Duran - Duran Duran (1981)

"Careless Memories" by Duran Duran


The Nice's album, despite not selling well, did have a recognizable album cover where the band were without clothes and wrapped in cellophane. Gered Mankowitz is responsible for that picture and many others. He is one of the most prolific and prominent rock photographers today. Although it might be one of his less recognizable pieces, Mankowitz also took the cover photo for Duran Duran's breakout single "Girls on Film".

Nick Rhodes and John Taylor formed Duran Duran in 1978 in Birmingham. Starting work for the Rum Runner night club, they eventually became the house band while they were also busting tables and doing dishes. The group went through several lineup changes (foregoing two vocalists, a bassist, and a drum machine) before coming together: Nick Rhodes (keyboards), John Taylor (bass), Andy Taylor (guitar), Roger Taylor (drums), and Simon Le Bon (vocals). Despite the same last names, none of the Taylors are related. By the turn of the decade, Duran Duran began receiving press as one of the leading New Romantic bands (a branch of late '70s New Wave). The band's connection with Rum Runner proved to be a good one as the owners became Duran Duran's original management and booked the group's first demo recordings. While touring in the late eighties, their marketability was noticed by several record companies resulting in a bidding war. Duran Duran would sign with EMI in patriotic reverence to The Beatles's original label (despite getting an unfair deal).

Their debut album Duran Duran came out in June of 1981 and was produced by Colin Thurston, a man largely credited with developing the classic "eighties sound". The album was accompanied by three singles "Planet Earth", "Careless Memories", and "Girls on Film". Of the three, "Girls on Film" hit highest on the UK charts at #5. It also gained a certain notoriety for its music video that portrayed sexual fetishes and was intended only to be played on pay TV channels. A heavily edited version brought the band to prominence in the United States as it breached the rotation of music videos on the burgeoning MTV.

Duran Duran quickly became the "prettiest boys in rock" around the time when exposure was at an all time high. MTV had recently gotten off the ground and Duran Duran were one of the first bands to take advantage of the new outlet to American audiences. All five members had photogenic features and worked with stylists to develop their own unique look. Musically, they also remixed their own songs, creating "night versions" in the studio that were more instrumental and dance friendly. In a quickly changing musical landscape and industry, Duran Duran were one of the first bands to exemplify the change and reap a surreal global popularity that would only keep growing.

Here is the discography surrounding Duran Duran's debut album:

Planet Earth (1981 single)
Careless Memories (1981 single)
Duran Duran
Girls on Film (1981 single)
Nite Romantics (1981 Japanese Remix EP)
Live at Club Paradise (1981 live bootleg)

"Girls on Film" by Duran Duran


"Tel Aviv" by Duran Duran


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!