Moldy Oldies: Ransacking My Archives

Camaro Hair: Rye Coalition's 2003 magnum opus

I just unearthed a pile of record reviews I had written for the metal magazine Revolver back in the early 2000s. You know the magazine, the one whose covers regularly depict a motley crew of metal marauders scowling menacingly at you from the grocery aisle. It's all pretty silly. But who am I to judge? I actually wrote for the magazine for a few minutes, thanks to my old friend and colleague Nina, who was an editor there and who kindly gave me an opportunity to earn a few bucks writing reviews (and by few bucks, I mean a few; the pay was meager). As for my reviews, they're pretty short and they generally survey forgettable records by equally forgettable and now forgotten bands. 

So here are a couple of them, starting with Jersey Girls from Rye Coalition, a band that previous to this record, I had actually liked. They made some wonderful noisy post-hardcore in the 1990s, even teaming up with the almighty Karp for a split EP, before going full butt rock for the 21st century. I guess Dave Grohl produced one of their final recordings. Never heard it; can't say I was interested after subjecting my ears to Jersey Girls. 

The second review covers an album by the New Zealand neo-garage rock band D4. Who, you ask? Yeah, I don't remember either. 

Rye Coalition Jersey Girls (Tiger Style CD-EP) Two Stars
Modern, retro-minded bands typically celebrate and revisit banner rock years like 1977 or 1967, but not, say, 1981. Until now. On its new EP, New York’s Rye Coalition erects a rousing, albeit cheeky, tribute to the year of feathered mullets, combs in back pockets, and white Pony high-tops. From the CD’s cover art—an airbrushed mural of a cherry-red Camaro caressed by a bikini-clad vixen—to the sleazy anthems that bookend it, “Jersey Girls” is Rye Coalition’s campaign to put the cock back into rock. Some songs show Rye Coalition toying with a volatile mixture AC/DC and Jesus Lizard, but mostly this EP serves as a tribute to guilty pleasures and self-parody. –Joe Ehrbar

The D4 6Twenty (Flying Nun/Infectious) Two Stars

Were it not for the Swedish Invasion or America’s so-called rock revival, the D4 wouldn’t arouse much interest outside the dingy bars of its native New Zealand. But garage rock is this week’s flavor, and as such second-rate bands like the D4 are getting first-rate hype. To be fair, the D4 is a solid combo; its live show as intoxicating as a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. And while the quartet’s 6Twenty wields righteous rumblers in the lusty “Ladies Man” and the barn-storming “Invader Ace,” too often it sounds derivative and cliché. Stacked next to albums by the Hives or White Stripe, 6Twenty lacks the spark, charisma, imagination, or even balls to get the job done. Is it any wonder the album’s fifth track is titled “Running on Empty”? –Joe Ehrbar

Journey Through the Past

The following interview originally appeared in The Rocket 11 years ago. Lately, I've been rummaging through my archives in an effort to rehabilitate old stories in need of a good edit. It's been an interesting, if sometimes painful exercise: revisiting the past, seeing the flaws you were once blind to, and then attempting to correct them. The writings that can be salvaged will be salvaged. The ones that can't will be chucked. In the end, I hope to self-publish a collection of my music writing—it would just be a small run, maybe 20 copies. I'm not sure the piece you're about to read makes the grade; it's at least in better shape than the original. The other reason you're reading it: relevance. Soundgarden has reconvened after a 13-year hiatus, and The Rocket page on Facebook has attracted a decent following.


Conspiracy Revealed!
Inside the Mysterious World of the Wellwater Conspiracy

Music journalists love to shine some light on new or previously obscure bands. Their paltry paychecks depend on it. After all, it’s a trend-driven business and if music writers are to stay ahead of the curve, they must constantly seek out ripening talent.

But what if the band isn’t so eager for the exposure?

Such could be said for Seattle’s modern psych-healers Wellwater Conspiracy, who have long been among the Northwest’s most promising bands, but have also been one of its most invisible. Since forming in 1992, the troupe's movements have been more covert than that of an intelligence spook. Very little evidence of their existence can be traced: Wellwater Conspiracy’s public performances can be literally counted on one hand; their early 7-inches are out of print (though they sometimes surface on eBay), and their 1997 debut album, Declaration of Conformity (Third Gear/Super Electro), is nearly impossible to find. And until just recently, with release of their latest album, Brotherhood of Electric: Operational Directives (released two months ago), the band's members had concealed their identities.

Well Water Conspiracy had just cause for staying underground. Co-conspirators Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd constituted the rhythm section of Soundgarden and guitarist John McBain was an alumnus of Monster Magnet. Lest they be marginalized as a side-project curiosity or over-hyped as a “super group,” WWC wanted people to focus on the music—not the personnel. There was also a legal reason to stay low-key: until 1997 Cameron and Shepherd were under contract with Soundgarden’s label A&M. The fact that none of the band's initial recordings appeared on A&M could have caused legal complications.

But now, in 1999, having struck a deal with the major label-distributed Time Bomb Records, Wellwater Conspiracy, presently a duo of Cameron (vocals, guitars, drums) and McBain (guitars), appear more willing to reveal themselves to a wider audience. And so should they. Their sophomore album, Brotherhood of Electric, is an involving, at times magnificent, work.

By comparison, Wellwater Conspiracy share little with Soundgarden or Monster Magnet, or even Pearl Jam, for whom Cameron now plays drums, beyond a taste for guitar-based songs and classic rock. Wellwater sources its inspiration from low-fidelity basement musings, 4-track experiments and obscure psychedelic voyagers of the 1960s. If all this sounds like a fruitless exercise in self-indulgence it’s not. The proof is in the new record.

Like the great psych records of the cosmic past, Brotherhood of Electric is an absorbing experience, a fantastic voyage of sound and song that navigates the scorched earth of terra firma and the hazy, dusk-shaded heavens above. And it’s Cameron and McBain’s brotherhood, their sonic union, that makes the record such fun. Cameron, who sings most of the albums songs, alternates his vocals between the evocative and dreamy, his drumming both grounding and propulsive, while McBain rewrites the laws of physics with his guitar work—he floats atmospheric melodies that drift like lost cosmonauts in space, or strike the surface with meteoric force. Together, and with the help of some friends like Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and Cameron’s wife, April on violin, they offer a sprawling, somewhat disjointed, but ultimately satisfying collection of songs (highlights being “Compellor,” “Born with a Tail,” and “Red Light Green Light”) augmented by all kinds of hallucinatory surprises, synthetic weirdness, disorienting sojourns and curious discoveries.

Brotherhood of Electric is an album worth celebrating, and on the eve of its release, The Rocket managed to talk Cameron and McBain out of hiding and sit down for an interview, and some drinks, at a now-defunct Belltown café and night spot.

How did Wellwater Conspiracy start?
John McBain: I met Matt on the road when [Monster Magnet] toured with Soundgarden in 1992.
Matt Cameron: We started 4-tracking together at my house in ’92. We’d write things, record them, just mess around. Lo and behold, we amassed a collection of songs that sounded like something that resembled a record.
McBain: It was after I had moved from New Jersey. It actually started with a single. I gave a tape to Steve Turner [of Mudhoney and Super Electro Records] and I must have pressured him in some way to put it out because he was kind of wary about it. But it did well.

The resulting Declaration of Conformity just kind of turned up with no fanfare. Did anyone even know about it, much less buy it?
Cameron: Yeah, it did all right. It sold between 4,000 and 5,000 copies.

Was releasing your first album independently a much more inviting proposition than shopping it to big labels?
Cameron: It’s not a shop-able record at all. It’s got tons of 4-track cassette noise. It sounds really bad.
McBain: The fact that it came out sounding so bad made it authentic in a way.

It sounds like a lo-fi garage/psychedelic record. It sounds the way it ought to.
McBain: We did it in what, a half-hour in your [Cameron’s] basement?
Cameron: Pretty much. I didn’t know how to work my soundboard [at the time], so the mixes ended up being in mono.

Who was involved in the making of Declaration?
Cameron: John pretty much recorded everything. I sang on some of the stuff. And then we gave Ben some cassettes so that he could do it on his 4-track. That was pretty much it. It was just the three of us.

Matt, could you always sing?
Cameron: Yeah, I guess so. I never sang lead in a band other than like cover bands when I lived in San Diego. I guess I’ve always sang, just for the hell of it. I sang “The Sound of Silence” in high school. It was a duet with this girl I had a crush on. And then she saw me at a party later on and I was really stoned, and she had nothing to do with me after that. Yeah, I guess I’ve always kind of crooned.
McBain: Someone’s got to. Lord knows I won’t.

When you started this band, was it your M.O. to have this loose, pseudo-experimental nature about the band?
McBain: Yeah, totally.
Cameron: We got wider tape now to use—we just got a 24-track machine. We try to record fast to get the essence of the songs on tape. A lot of times, when you make records … like, over there [Cameron points across the street to the vacant building that once housed Bad Animals studio, where Soundgarden recorded their breakout 1994 album Superunknown], you gotta have a producer, you have to do demos, you have to work the songs to where there’s no life left in the recordings.

So is Well Water Conspiracy your reaction to that process?
Cameron: No, it’s not a reaction, it’s just a different way of approaching it.
McBain: It’s not wanting to do it the usual way. I think the secret goal is to avoid getting caught in that hamster wheel and going through that process.
Cameron: When we did Superunknown over there, it was that whole process of like a big-time producer. We did rehearsals. We did demos. We went through all this rigmarole. For some bands, you gotta do that. For me and John, we know how to play our instruments, we know how to write and arrange. We can forgo that whole process.
McBain: I remember when I used to visit you guys [at Bad Animals]—it seemed like there was nothing being done. Everybody was sitting around playing video games.
Cameron: And our engineer would be sitting on the couch, belching. And I was like, “So this is how a record’s done.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars later…

In contrast, how much did the first Wellwater Conspiracy album cost?
Cameron: My 4-track cost about $1,000.
McBain: It cost us about the price of half-inch tape and a DAT—a couple hundred dollars.

With Wellwater Conspiracy, are you able to express yourselves in ways you couldn’t in other/previous music endeavors? And who’s the garage rock fan?
McBain: I’m the garage geek. So I kind of brought that to the band. All my songs have that kind of feel to it.
Cameron: And I’ve just always 4-tracked, since 1984. I do it because it’s fun. I like to write songs. I’m able to play guitar. It seemed like a good pairing of songwriting and recording styles. That’s a big part of it. We like to record it ourselves.
McBain: There’s no egos. There’s no frontman. It’s the way to go.

But you are the lead singer, Matt.
Cameron: Sort of. I don’t really look at it that way.
McBain: If you listen to the way we mix the vocals, they’re [mixed into the music so that they’re] just another part of the song. I like that approach.
Cameron: Most of the time they’re in the music—as opposed to being all you hear and then there’s this background music. But on Brotherhood of Electric, we also have Josh [Homme] singing and my friend, Luke [St. Kimble], sang on one song. It’s kind of the same approach as the last one—we had two singers. But Josh’s vocals and my vocals are a little more similar than Ben and myself. Ben just has this unique, singular style that I haven’t heard in a long time.

Why wasn’t Ben part of Brotherhood?
Cameron: I don’t think it was the kind of project that he was really into. He likes to have control of the whole environment. He’s got a lot of his own songs and a lot of talent. We just kind of started out on our own and we had no problems doing it ourselves.

Will Wellwater Conspiracy ever play live?
Cameron: We’re working on that right now. We’ve had some offers for summer and fall to play Europe, so we’re trying to get a band together.
McBain: We just want to be careful about not getting into that overkill situation. It seems like bands who come out of Seattle or the area plaster themselves everywhere. We don’t want that.

So you prefer to remain anonymous?
McBain: Exactly. That’s what we want.

Even if no one pays attention? The first album wasn’t on anyone’s radar.
Cameron: We had a lot of interest in Detroit, Chicago, New York and the U.K. But here, if you don’t play live, people don’t really connect with you.
McBain: Not that it’s bad, but it;s the baggage that we brought with the band. We don;t want people to look at it and go, “Oh, those guys and that guy—whatever.” I’m sure that’s why people brushed aside that first record, because they had other ideas of what it would be like. That’s why leaving it anonymous has really helped.

Your record company prefers that you not be anonymous. The bio explicitly says “Matt Cameron formerly of Soundgarden” and “John McBain formerly of Monster Magnet.” The label makes it a selling point.
McBain: Well, it’s not a sticker on the CD.
Cameron: We definitely want this one to get noticed a little bit more, and that’s a way to get people to take notice.

How did you link up with Time Bomb?
Cameron: It was through knowing Jim Guerinot, who is head of Time Bomb. He was with A&M and worked with Soundgarden. We sort of shopped [Brotherhood] to a couple different labels and no one was really interested. We had a few people telling us, “You should try shopping it at a major, man.” And I’m glad we didn’t, because it would have been lost. A&M passed on it anyway.
McBain: At one point, before we signed to Time Bomb, we realized that no one wanted this record.... When [Guerinot] first got it, he didn’t really know what to do with it. I don’t think he really understood. But I think as it started to get around, they got a little more excited about it.
Cameron: We like that fact that there’s a good Internet buzz about it.
McBain: We get a lot of messages.

So Wellwater Conspiracy has some fanatics?
Cameron: All 19 of them, to be exact.

Originally published in The Rocket, May 12, 1999.

Why Won’t Bob Seger Die?

Recently, some friends of mine and I were reflecting on the music of Bob Seger. (I know, it was a productive use of time.) The consensus was that Bob's soulful voice had been pretty much wasted. Seger has a mighty, whiskey-soured voice. If he only had a decent song, you know he would have brought it — and in turn brought us to our knees. Instead, he opened up his asshole and let things like “Rock ’n’ roll never forgets,” “I’m goin’ to Katmandu,” “Today’s music ain’t got the same soul” come roaring out. “Just take those old records off the shelf…,” he once insisted. I’d like to take those old records off the shelf... and chuck them by the box load at ol’ Silver Bullet Bob. Only then might the lessons of those “old records” actually penetrate his hairy skull. (And by “old records,” I assume Seger isn’t talking about Andy Williams, Mitch Miller or all those mildewy records you find mixed in with Bob’s old records at the thrift store). Yeah, bearded Bob has such a good voice. Why the hell did anyone let him sing such crap? Why did he prostitute it to sell a junky brand of American truck? (I guess that makes sense, though, as both Bob and Chevy are worthy representatives of the post-industrial wasteland that is Detroit.) “Like a rock.” Bullshit. I wish I had a rock for every time I heard that song selling crappy pickup trucks — I’d stone Seger... and fuck up his Chevy truck, too. Short of dying the only good thing Bob Seger did was disappear into retirement, which, had he had any decency he never would come out of. I can't blame him for returning to music, though. How can one resist the riches and glamor of the casino circuit?

As I was saying, my friends and I were talking about Bob Seger — and his crimes against humanity. Why? Because we had just seen this video for the first time. You hear that? Bob could sing. And his old band could rock. You didn't know that, did you? So much for Bob’s “Rock ’n’ Roll Never Forgets” theory.

After watching Bob Seger and the Last Heard uncork some blistering garage rock in black-and-white, my friend Steve remarked, “He should have died immediately after the taping of that video.”

White Light, White Heat, White Trash

I’ve been trying to clean up my archives lately. No easy feat considering I’ve published well north of a thousand articles in my career as a journalist, less than three per cent of which are actually worth keeping. I wrote the following article eight years ago, at a time when I was wrestling with my deflated ego, trying to figure out what I should do with my life since that earning a living as a music writer and editor was not only losing its appeal but also becoming less realistic. Frankly, I was burned out, and everything felt like work.

I don’t think aforementioned “following article” is terrible. It’s merely serviceable pre-show hype, significant only for its subject matter, the White Stripes. This story was published on the eve of the duo’s emergence from the garage rock underground to pop music showroom.

During my stint at the P-I, I did very few interviews—not that musicians didn’t want to talk to me; I just didn’t want to talk to them. Part of it was my own shyness; the other part was my not wanting to transcribe the same stock answers musicians would tell every other interview. I was a fan of the White Stripes, however, and so when I was offered a chance to chat with drummer and vocalist Meg White, I seized it. As for the interview, well, it wasn’t all that revelatory or interesting. Meg seemed almost bored to be talking on the phone—and perhaps she was. Don’t get me wrong; she was perfectly cordial and warm. Maybe she was just a bit reticent to talk about herself and the band she shared with “brother” Jack White.

Another reason I’m sharing this with you is simple relevance: The White Stripes are back in the news. They’re issuing a new record of outtakes from their 1998 debut on Jack White’s Third Man Records, and the band’s documentary of their 2007 Canadian tour, Under Great White Northern Lights, is making the rounds on the film festival circuit. As for the band’s future? Who knows—Jack is presently busying himself with the Dead Weather and his Third Man Records label and stores. With that, I give you the short concert preview from all those years ago.

The White Stripes: Fame comes rapping

By Joe Ehrbar

Special to the P-I

Meg White had no idea the garage-rock duo she and her so-called brother, Jack, formed a couple years ago—the White Stripes—would cause such a fuss.

“We never expected to go anywhere,” says Meg White, speaking by phone from Jack’s home in Detroit one recent afternoon in June.

As it stands, no other American indie band is generating a bigger buzz.

Based in Detroit, the White Stripes, who play Seattle’s Crocodile Café on Wednesday, July 11, have ignited both rabid fans and ecstatic critics with their unabashed blend of raucous R&B, deep-fried country blues and folk and howling garage punk. Virtually overnight, the band has escalated from an anachronistic phenomenon to a burgeoning movement.

Everywhere you turn, it seems, the penetrating eyes of guitarist/vocalist Jack and drummer Meg are staring back. They’ve been the subject of intense media frenzy and have been heralded as “the next big thing” on the pages Rolling Stone, Spin and Mojo, garnering the kind of coverage usually reserved for big-time acts, not ones on the cusp.

Naturally, Meg White, who prior to becoming a White Stripe had never played drums, is surprised by the sudden interest. “It’s a little overwhelming,” she says. “I never expected things to go this well,” she continues with a nervous chuckle. “We were sticking to music because we wanted to.”

With the band’s much-anticipated third album Red Blood Cells just hitting stores, a cross-country tour in full swing, and the major labels circling, White Stripes mania appears moments away.

Not long ago, life was much simpler for the White Stripes. After getting tossed from the high-octane Detroit combo The Go in 1998, Jack White decided to form his own band, using a stripped-down vehicle to remodel his favorite music: folk and blues, particularly the strains the emerged from the cotton fields of the Mississippi delta.

Initially, the White Stripes recorded a couple 7-inch singles, released in small runs by tiny labels, and played few shows outside Michigan. Word gradually spread on the pages of fanzines and internet chat rooms that by the time the band’s second full-length De Stijl was released in 2000 by Sympathy for the Record Industry, the White Stripes had infiltrated the indie music press. Now they’ve got a major indie rock PR agency, Girlie Action, evangelizing their cause.

What the White Stripes play isn’t new, just a scruffy new take on the scratchy old blues. At times, they strut with the stripped down R&B swagger of early Stones or the Kinks; at others, they recall bittersweet country blues of Blind Willie McTell and the provoked garage punk of the Seeds. Make no mistake, though: the White Stripes have a fiery personality all their own. And in Jack White, rock ’n’ roll has its first convincing and evocative blues interpreter in years.

With knuckle-dragging rap-metal and pre-fab pop maintaining its chokehold on pop music, the White Stripes’ back-to-the-basics revival seems like the right intervention.

But their appeal extends beyond the music. First, there’s the Meg and Jack’s curious relationship: They insist their siblings (and they certainly play up that angle), but in reality they’re ex-husband and wife. Then there’s their look—red and white and mod all over, with no detail spared from their post-Cubist, candy-cane psychedelia—from Meg’s kick-drum cover to Jack’s boots. Finally, there’s their size: a two-piece band—no bass, just guitar, drums and vocals. Taken together, these could be read as gimmicks—a sophisticated primitivism, if you will. But gimmickry doesn’t account for the raw power and sincerity of the White Stripes’ mighty din.

Yet despite their contrivances and the realities of current situation, the White Stripes are not interested in going mainstream and have thus far resisted major-label overtures, letting the diminutive indie Sympathy release Red Blood Cells instead. Or maybe they’re just holding out for the right deal.

“We’re pretty wary of major labels,” says Meg. “Their focus seems to be not on the music but the business end of things—making money. So you know they’re gonna have control over you, and their ideas are not necessarily going to meld with yours.

“Plus, we’ve heard all the horror stories. And for the most part we’re doing just fine without them.”

An abridged version of this story was originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 6, 2001

Meet Your Makers II

This Makers cover shot comes from the defunct Seattle music magazine I edited, The Rocket. Design by Rocket art director Stewart A. Williams, the photo of Mike and Don snapped by Robin Laananen. This particular article, written by Seattle writer Kevan Roberts, appeared in the spring of 2000, a few months before The Rocket went defunct. At the time, the Makers had just released their Sub Pop debut Rock Star God, their most ambitious recording to date and a concept album, no less. Despite drawing a four-star review from Rolling Stone's David Fricke, the album failed to excite the indie landscape and further alienated the band's original garage rock fanbase. Their loss.... But what a cover!