As the story goes, Tara Key emerged in 1978 from the University of Louisville’s library, amped up a Gretsch and was electrocuted instantly. Not only was she not fried, but the surge bestowed the gift of steel wire elocution, and she spoke to atoms. It was a gift. A union of atypical neighborhood punx and local academic droppies transforms the local weirds into admirers of the Hampton Grease Band via the Nedelkoff family barn in southern Indiana. By the time Janet Bean shows up in Skull of Glee four years later, there’s egg drop soup, Rick Rizzo’s eyeliner and love, Halifax style. Grease splatters and the 1069 circle is unbroken.
That grease splatter swells in the music of 1069 alum. The palpable distinction between American treasures Antietam and Eleventh Dream Day and contemporary NPR heartland constructions like the Hold Steady and the National and Arcade Fire - who I don't believe actually exist and were only invented by NPR to give Soundcheck's Jon Schaefer something to wrinkle his eyebrows to - is that our heroes are knee deep in the stench of art damage. This lends even their most accessible strumming - stuff you could play your grandmother - an electrifying and moody depth that’s an inch removed from a heart full of napalm. Antietam and Eleventh Dream Day may bear a superficial similarity to indie rock - blech! What an unlovable nom de puke - but the Byrds are not the launch point, no. The pole position for Tara Key and Rick Rizzo is tethered to Ron Asheton, Glen Buxton, Danny Whitten and early Glenn Phillips. Thirty years on from their 1069 launch point, what remains is some reliably combustible rock action.
So I aim my arrows right at you
Tara Key is the premier rock guitarist of her generation. She's a wicked southern rock maestro stitching zen twang into punk demon invocation with élan. How many can pull that off in a tenth life? No slight on Tim Harris or Josh Madell; it’s just natural for a guitar player with TK's gift to garner gapes and awe. But, this is a band after all, so let us praise the explosiveness of the unit. 2007’s Opus Mixtum may be their Music To Eat, but Tenth Life is, well, the great record made after Music To Eat, which Hampton Grease Band never made anyway. Antietam has made that record. Tara, Tim and Josh have been playing together for 20 years, at least, and it seems they can churn out their peculiar paeans to southern desire at will. Tim’s ability to foreground fish wire lines while Tara haunts the space inside, all the while peeling it back, with Josh playing it just right, occasionally leaves me with a chill in the best way possible. It’s a treasure. When "Better Man” hits that first dip – so
I aim my arrows right at you – I catch my breath. Such a rush sometimes comes about while immersed in the first Come record, so do with that what you will.
You think it all starts with you,
begins and ends with what you do
But anthems? Rick Rizzo’s handle on classic antheming causes wonder, as in, “I wonder, have I heard these implausibly great hymns somewhere else?” But no, he’s just tapping the source, the archetypal grit that makes the best rock music so ominously potent and simultaneously jarring - moving, really - ruminating on it, yet pressing forward. The internet tells the story of a man who just plugs away at his guitar behind a desk after work, year after year, compiling these moments of inspirational lift, then a downward turn, a pensive pause and always coupled with glowingly combative chording. I confess, Rizzo's songs speak to the conflicted 45 year old in me, the guy who connects with the drunken potency of daze long ago when Prairie School Freakout ripped asunder; yet I don't care to be absurd either, cuz those times are long gone and I know what's coming. There's resolve in the best bands of this generation, those who've struck that intuitive balance, not forsaking what they do so well while pushing boundaries within their chosen form. It's a righteous operandi, cuz the way the Stones and their cohort unraveled after they hit their forties was pitiful. Riot Now! may be Eleventh Dream Day’s most bracing anthology of anthemic tuneage yet. Each one of these rippers is classic rock wrung anew. Janet Beveridge Bean’s evocative counterpoint haunts all but a few of these beauties and the slow burners, “That’s What’s Coming” and “Away With Words” are exquisite. Rizzo continues to harvest that desperate Crazy Horse squall like nobody's biz.
My own arc takes me away from these two bands around 1993 or so, losing touch after embracing them with a convert’s zeal during their initial runs. Having forsaken Antietam since their residency at the old Knit and the Spiral and other shuttered spots long gone, I was totally unaware they’d continued to issue such vital contributions to the American rock canon. Likewise, Eleventh Dream Day, who seem to’ve enjoyed a somewhat higher profile across the years, despite the usual assortment of disappointments and then some. That’s documented elsewhere though. Blink and you'll miss it, I guess. Apologies to both bands for my van winkle and lack of support when it might have counted.
On the other hand and as penance for my oversight, I now annoy everyone with accounts of how great these bands still are, sounding just like another incipient middle age indie rock dad standing down on Metropolitan and Havermeyer in a Sunn 0))) t-shirt. But forget whatever those guys are talking about. My Antietam/EDD blather is where it's at and may just win over a few hearts, even though I couldn’t tell a Wilco from a Jayhawk and fuck that stuff anyway. Good taste is timeless!
No comments:
Post a Comment