The first time I heard “Billy Pilgrim,” I was convinced that the Sea Monsters were going to make it. I envisioned more shows at Cafe Ambrosia and the Warming House, leading to spots at the Beat Kitchen and Schuba’s, which would in turn garner enough blog hype to propel them into the festival circuit. The Sea Monsters were six wunderkinds from Chicago’s North Shore churning out blood-pumping waves of indie rock. I remember Zack Looman’s muffled warbles, Andrew Heaton and Aaron Ratoff’s shrilly interlocking guitars, Ben Siegfried’s driving bass, Woodie Borre’s kaospads, and Ian Becker’s drums destroying our suburbs one basement show at a time.

The band talked, in their final year, of getting together an Electronic Press Kit to send to Chicago venues after Andrew’s parents paid for studio time at Semaphore (where Sonic Youth recorded[!]) for a graduation gift. Letters were sent, shows were vaguely discussed. But then college scattered the six of them across North America and the Sea Monsters were no more. They had their last show in Woodie’s basement, and in the final moments of the set I realized that a great thing had been lost.
It is in the memory of the Sea Monsters — and so many other incredible bands that have passed all too quickly into and out of existence — that the I Miss That Band project has been conceived. The Sea Monsters left behind them a dozen incredible recordings which, until now, have been stranded in cyberspace and on the computers of the few who were lucky enough to have heard them. IMTB seeks to resurrect dead music everywhere, and to show the music-listening world that bands that burned as brightly — albeit briefly — as the Sea Monsters are worth memorializing.

I MISS THAT BAND is a new compilation project in its fetal stages yet, but with big, big dreams. The idea is simple: capture as much as we can of the great lost music. This refers to all the incredible bands you heard in basements in high school and who played one show eight years ago and then split up with only a couple lo-fi mp3′s to their name. I MISS THAT BAND wants to crystallize the great music that would be otherwise lost through a series of compilations stratified by area and basic time period. Every month or so (depending on YOUR contributions[!]) IMTB will release a new installment, called, say, Kalamazoo, 1998-2003, with maybe ten songs and a liner notes / booklet to boot, of great bands that have been born and died but deserve a proper monument.

So, how to bridge the gap between idea and actual, physical project? That’s where you come in. I MISS THAT BAND is currently (and for the foreseeable future) accepting all submissions!!! Here’s what we need:
- Bands that are for all intents and purposes DEFUNCT. The idea for this format is not to promote current artists but to preserve art for its own sake and blah blah blah. We will, of course, mention any projects the bands/artists have gone on to do in the liner notes, but for the purposes of I MISS THAT BAND send us your old, forgotten bands.
- Any sort of attachment to a recording
- Basic info on the band, such as name, members, years, area, history… anything you can muster. If you don’t know jack about the band, still send it and we’ll try to do some of our research.
- Any leads on worthy music scenes that have flourished and fizzled over the years
- ENTHUSIASM. This project will thrive on people submitting and getting excited about the series.

Hopefully it will evolve into a mail-out service + blog, but that can only happen if people help get it off the ground.

“The words / that you sang / on a track / that you wrote / on a record / that I lost / when I moved two years ago, / Well it all came back loud and clear and made me sad / I miss that band.” – Paul Baribeau

For more info:

I Miss That Band on Facebook

or IMissThatBand@gmail.com

In a brilliant publicity move, The Dead Weather make their live debut on “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” for millions of viewers to see. All four members of the band are uniformly dressed in black leather and dark jeans, like they’re slicked down by an oil spill. As the initial applause dies down, a hiccupping drum beat starts, followed by the drone of a grainy guitar. Alison Mosshart comes out swinging at the mic; she is a combative singer whose lyrics are the taunt before the first punch is thrown in a down-and-out brawl.

But as mesmerizing as Mosshart is as a lead during the performance, it’s the drummer in the back who’s getting an inordinate amount of camera shots. That’s because it’s Jack White who sits behind the drum set and there’s no ignoring him; perhaps it’s how he looks – he’s vampirically white underneath a huge nest of dark hair, or perhaps it’s his unassuming but solid performance, or perhaps it’s the fact that White, named #17 on Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Guitarists of All Time, is not playing the guitar.

The June 2009 cover of Spin magazine features the four members of The Dead Weather. Besides the title, the largest words on the cover are “Jack White,” as in “Jack White’s new new band – The Dead Weather.” Hovering near Jack White’s head is a quotation credited to him.

Undoubtedly, of all four members of The Dead Weather, Jack White has the most recognizable name. This is no fluke – he’s been busy. In the last five years, he’s managed to create a Coca-Cola jingle, write a James Bond theme, front The Raconteurs, open an office in Nashville for his Third Man Records, and take part in “It Might Get Louder,” a documentary following guitar legends from three generations. White toes the line between mainstream and underground; most musicians couldn’t do half of what he’s done without backlash from the music community and its knee-jerk aversion to commercialization.

However, the attention given to him and his band raises two inextricable questions: 1) Is it possible for Jack White to be anything but a frontman? and 2) Will anyone let him? From what can be gleaned from articles about the band, White’s position as a drummer wasn’t a change of pace for dramatic purposes. But it did give fans a heart attack.

For a new group, The Dead Weather is pretty coherent. But then again, the band is a supergroup, the alchemic combination of members from other successful bands. Mosshart is one half of The Kills, guitarist Dean Fertita hails from Queens of the Stone Age, Jack Lawrence the bassist started off in The Greenhornes and later picked up with White in The Raconteurs, and White now finds himself in his third band, after The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. The Dead Weather’s sound is that of the proverbial clash of the titans. Their first single, “Hang You from the Heavens,” is a solid piece to introduce such a sound. The song’s melody is dark, deeply rooted in grunge and blues, while Mosshart tops the song with vocals that harken back to ’60s garage rock.

Alison Mosshart, as the lead in The Dead Weather, holds her own. While part of The Kills, she often was likened to – who else? – Jack White. The comparison holds true: they are powerful leads, with voices dragged raw by cigarettes and hard rock. She even took over White’s vocals for a couple Raconteurs shows during their last tour. But her singing for The Dead Weather takes on a new tone, beyond comparisons to her bandmate: she’s volatile and sensual without apologies.

She and White are the driving creative forces behind The Dead Weather’s songs, of which the general public has only received a tantalizing glimpse. The B-side to the “Hang You from the Heavens” single is a cover of Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” – full of synth (as it should be) and true to the heart of the song. “Treat Me Like Your Mother,” the band’s second single, is a little bit of a letdown. Although it carries the same dark tone as the first single, it’s more erratic, and less enjoyable than the rest. Hopefully, this is the most incoherent the album, Horehound, gets; their other songs seem to be carefully crafted: wild, but not stupid. Critics are, for the most part, very optimistic about the album. If it is a success, it will be a victory not just for Jack White, the eternal frontman, but for the band as a whole.

Horehound, the debut album by The Dead Weather, will be released July 14, 2009. For those in the Detroit area, the band will be performing downtown at The Fillmore on July 24.

A Review of Bob Dylan’s bootleg release Tell-Tale Signs

By Evan Lisull

If Bob Dylan isn’t the Goethe of America, he’s certainly a contender. As is befitting such a figure, who Bob Dylan is — what he stands for, what his songs mean, what his presence means about his country — will never be definitively decided. Dylanophiles will debate his various manifestations long after his death, but from an outsider’s standpoint there are two main Dylans of consideration. The first is Young Dylan, our sleepy-eyed, folk hero of Greenwich Village, protest singer and mellifluous whine of the Hippie Movement. This Dylan died a twin death in 1966– once, on stage in Manchester, with a simple order (”Play it fuckin’ loud!”); again, in a motorcycle accident, outside of Woodstock, New York.

The second Dylan was a bit of surprise, emerging long after Jimi had choked and Joplin had overdosed, an itinerant whose mind was out of his time, a bluesman in an era of Madonna and novus ordo seclorum. Yet this is the Dylan who has lived with us today, and it is the Dylan who is featured in the latest release from the seemingly endless bootleg series.

Tell-Tale Signs is the eighth volume in this series, and, by and large, it is a scam designed to bilk Dylan fans and their IRAs for one last dime. This release is particularly egregious – while the list price for the two-disc set is $18.99, to get the three-disc version (along with a hardcover book) you must pay $129.99. Yet in spite of this, Tell-Tale Signs (the two disc set, anyways) is full of insights into Dylan’s creative process; even better, the CDs are filled with damn good songs. Cliche though it may be, Dylan’s back catalogue is superior to almost everyone else’s singles.

Some of his finer moments emerge in some of the purest blues that the man has ever released. His
original tribute, “High Water (For Charley Patton),” falls somewhere between George Thorogood and late Led Zeppelin; yet the playful voice games the resurrected bluesman plays, teasing falsetto before giving his best Tom Waits, outdo the guitar on this one. Dylan is not above a good cover (nor should he be), and this collection contains a version of Robert Johnson’s classic “32-20 Blues” (although Johnson is still the better guitarist). There is also a rendition of “Cocaine Blues”, which he rasps out all too convincingly; for a man who never (openly) struggled with the drug, he sure plays the part.

We also are allowed to imagine what might have been, as the CDs feature songs cut from the final version of famous albums or versions that were nixed for different takes. The alternative version of “Ain’t Talking”, for example, is a far more structured version than the chosen closer on Modern Times, and would have served far more effectively as a single. However, what it makes up for in cohesiveness it lacks in mysteriousness — by adding the fleeting plucking of an acoustic guitar, and a thirty second instrumental, the closing number becomes that much darker, that much more of a condemnation of, well, modern times. On the other hand, it is incredible that “Red River Shore” did not make the cut for Time Out of Mind — it represents some of the best of the newly lo-fi Dylan, a simple Southern ditty infused with the profound sense of wistfulness that pervades his slower numbers.

But the crux of the release revolves around the song “Mississippi.” A single from the 2001 release “Love and Theft”, the song is perhaps the epitome of the so-called “roots rock” that was used intermittently to describe Dylan’s last few albums. Both CDs lead off with a version of the song, and there can be no doubt that the forces that be have determined this to be perhaps the defining moment in Dylan’s closing epoch.

And it is here that we see the all-to-important transition that Dylan went through. Going back to the Tale of Two Dylans, it becomes apparent that the two-part story is incomplete — for the Young Dylan passed in ‘66, and the old Dylan was born (depending on who you ask) circa 1989. In between is what you might call the “Electric Dylan”, a Dylan full of torment and uncertainty, stuck between the end of utopianism and the wisdom of his old age. And while something can be said for “Hurricane”, there is something to said against the polished shlock of Down in the Groove (1989).

Both versions of “Mississippi” stand against this. The first version is about as low-fi as they come: a simple, piano guitar and a barely noticeable beat are both dwarfed by Dylan’s murmuring growl. He sings the tune in a solemn tone, as one might sing a hymn to oneself. The irony here is rich; for it is only after his “gospel years”, filled with soulless music, that he is able to express a religiosity in his music.

The second version, while not as sharp a contrast, brings out the sheer power of Dylan’s voice. Here, he lets his freak voice fly, and the growl takes on a sinister tone — you can practically see him sneering into the studio microphone, the upbeat backing jangle be damned. And while we have come to take this Dylan for granted, Tell-Tale Signs helps to remind us that it wasn’t always so.

Instead of Tell-Tale Signs, perhaps this volume should instead be entitled Highway 61 Re-Revisited. Yet this is not to imply that Dylan is simply rehashing his former glory; as one line in Mississippi’s last verse goes, “You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.” Dylan may have once gotten off the legendary interstate that serves as the backbone of American music; but as the nation’s muse knocks on Heaven’s door, it is refreshing to see that he has finally found his way back home, and that he is stronger for it.

Tracks from Tell-Tale Signs can be found online at npr.org.