October 1999 Parasol Newsletter

Issue #24

In the next few days Parasol will be receiving the latest CD from Chapel Hill's Doleful Lions. They had an abbreviated stay at CMJ due to Hurricane Floyd's threat to wash away the members' respective North Carolina residences. Apparently nothing was lost. Jonathan Scott's wonderful pop voice stands out front on new songs like "Airline Histories," "Driller Killer," and the hotel ice machine inspired "Hoshizaki Cubestar Soldier." Awesome stuff.

Arriving concurrently with the Doleful Lions CD will be "Morning Wood" from three 15 year-old Urbana, Illinois, girls that record under the band name Feaze. The album was produced by Poster Kids' Rick and Rose and sounds like what Sarge might have recorded as 14 year olds, two albums prior to Charcoal. Raw and vulnerable.

SPOTLIGHT!

Life On Mars-Life On Mars CD
(PAR-CD-052) $10.00

It's amazing that it's taken this long for Brian Leach and John Ross to join forces on a collaborative, commercially available recording. Friends since their pre-high school days near Chicago, they've both spent years, individually, making bedroom studio 4-track tapes for themselves and their friends. I personally have a full drawer to prove it. Leach's songs made it into the public domain through his leadership of Last Gentlemen (Zoo Entertainment) and Sugarbuzz (Parasol), while Ross self-released CDs with the Chicago-based bands Monica's Interval and Vivian Section. Leach even included two co-writes on his "The Sunrise Nearly Killed Me" solo CD from 1994, and one co-write on the first Sugarbuzz album. Maybe it took the introduction of drummer Tom Curless in Life On Mars' formative stages of development to finally join Leach and Ross at the hip. And the hip isn't the only place they're joined. The duo trade off lead vocals, and the trio partakes in spot-on three part harmonies, gossamer guitar crescendos, slinky keyboard melodies, and some sophisticated anthemic pop atmospheres, augmented with cello, violin, viola, and trumpet. Resurrecting some of Sweet's singalong 70s AM radio magic, super-orchestrated 80s new wave (be it of British or American manufacture), the same era's penchant for sci-fi-power pop brilliance, and the merest hint of scooter-mod and paisley psychedelia, Life On Mars' dirigible guitar-pop finds favor w/fans of Prefab Sprout, The Housemartins, and The Jam, but this rocks harder… and could cause head-spinning orgasmic seizures without warning. "Idiot's Delight" headmaster Vin Scelsa recently played Life On Mars' cover of The Mamas and Papas "Twelve-Thirty" on his New York City radio program, and we hear WXRT in Chicago is giving LOM some spins.

Toothpaste 2000-Bachelorette! CD
(Mud-CD-053) $10.00

Before heading to New York City for Toothpaste 2000's second consecutive CMJ performance, band member Frank Bednash assessed Bachelorette!:

Originally, this was going to be a "concept" record, like the Film Star CD. I wrote a lot of songs about teenage school-days kind of stuff, but we couldn't really make a coherent story out of it, when we realized that all the songs seemed to be about girls we actually knew (or used to know), quite colorful girls, at that, so this is the loose, "Bachelorette" theme. We could have just called it Slut or Trollop!, you know? Anyway, cooler heads prevailed, a definite TP2K first! So, it's almost a concept record, really, MY "concept" was to make a CD that actually SOUNDED GOOD, technically, of course. I think all our previous CDs are good except that I cannot listen to them because they sound like "they were recorded on duct tape" as Geoff (Parasol owner) so succinctly put it, and mixed, I might add, by a big drunk guy. Originally, I also wanted to make a real raunchy "Band CD", I'd just seen Backbeat for the first time and I wondered why nobody wrote great rock and roll tunes like "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Twist & Shout" anymore, so that's where "Baby, Let's Rock!" and "Yeah, Yeah" came from as a tribute to the early Beatles and the tail end of actual "Rock 'n' Roll". Anyway, our "band" quit the day before recording started because THEY wanted to record a bunch of THEIR songs that they'd written about their respective dogs! I'm not making this up! Now THERE'S a fucking CONCEPT! So, Donna and I ended up doing it all ourselves again with the expert help of Mr.Duff Drew, the best drummer in Seattle.

Look for a feature on T2000 in an upcoming issue of Seattle's Rocket magazine.

COMING SOON

June & the Exit Wounds-"a little more Haven Hamilton, please" LP w/ bonus 7" of 2 new songs! Due in October

Feaze-Morning Wood CD due in October

Doleful Lions-The Rats Are Coming!… CD due in October

Starlet-"Diary & Herself" b/w exclusive B-side 7" single due in October

Starlet-Stay On My Side CD due in November Bikeride-Dogs EP 10" with 7 unreleased songs due in November

Busytoby-It's Good To Be Alive CD due in November

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…

…Parasol's favorite non-nudie "men's magazine," GEAR, offered reviews in the September issue of two Parasol releases. Comparing the Signalmen debut to Smithereens and the Posies GEAR writes, "Languid guitar that washes in like a surf, a singer who sounds like he has bouts of narcolepsy and an elevator-muzak vibe add up to an album whose sum is greater than its parts. …Signalmen comes off as odd, unique and intelligent." And, under the "Best Easy Listening" designation GEAR's Renee Kaplan describes June & the Exit Wounds as "…mellow California crooners, latter-day Beach Boys jamming at the Tiki-ti with occasional falsetto harmonizing and some piano-man sentiment. It's easy listening, old school lounge music. 'Let's shack up together baby/Make all the neighbors talk,' and 'Cathy I really love you/I want to touch you' they say with earnest, Beatles-style candor…this debut album keeps you groovy and amused." Other articles this issue: Tantric Sex, Diary of a Nymphomaniac, Surfing's Fatboy, Secrets of Voyeur Dorm…

SOME PARASOL RELATED ARTIST ANSWERS SOME QUESTIONS

June and the Exit Wounds' Todd Fletcher

1. Mixing session you wish you could have attended-"One where I didn't screw the song up."

2. Songs you think you probably shouldn't like but just can't help yourself-"Songs with just a few simple piano chords and without the fun and sun ."

3. Favorite record that you can't find on CD- "The Charlie Dold catalog."

4. First Concert- "Farm Aid."

5. Favorite Bass Player-"Alejandro Palao, who thanks to me will now get the widespread recognition he deserves."

Those of you not frightened off by the misleading band name have discovered a soft pop gem in "a little more Haven Hamilton, please." Parasol will be releasing a vinyl LP version in October that will contain a 7" single with two non-LP tracks, and we have recently licensed this CD to Marina Records in Germany. We're a big fan of Marina Records and are excited that they will be telling their European brethren about "Haven Hamilton." The German CD version, available in early 2000, will contain the two bonus songs from the LP's 7". Confused? Here's more…the Japanese magazine Bloody Dolphins will have one of the bonus two songs on a CD that is coming with their next issue. Finally, Todd Fletcher is about to begin recording his follow up album. We can't wait.

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