Opal - Rimini, Italy 1988-03-26 (concert)

I uncovered this gem just yesterday, almost 30 years to the day from when it was recorded.  I already reviewed "Happy Nightmare Baby", where I briefly mentioned that Opal continued for a while with Hope Sandoval in place of Kendra Smith before transitioning to Mazzy Star.  I had found a handful of mp3s online from the Hope/Opal era, but this is the first full concert video had I found. The video quality is not great, but considering this was an underground band in a small club 30 years ago, well you just have to be happy that you have something at all.

As mentioned in my "HNB" review, while Opal is similar in style to Mazzy Star they still had not developed the more lazy, acoustic sound that would become more prevalent in the Mazzy Star catalog.  That plus the fact that it is a live recording, the sound is heavy and sometimes harsh and thus casual Mazzy Star fans will not particularly enjoy it.  I had previously mentioned that Opal's sound could be "triangulated between The Doors, The Velvet Underground, and Black Sabbath".  Here, they make those influences explicit with  consecutive covers of "Indian Summer" by the Doors (which appeared on "Early Recordings") and "Heroin" by VU.

The set list is interesting in that it includes many songs from "HNB", including my favorites "Rocket Machine", "Magick Power", "Happy Nightmare Baby", and the indomitable "Soul Giver".  I think "Indian Summer" is the only song from "Early Recordings" or the bootleg "Early Recordings Vol. 2".  Other songs include: "Ghost Highway" and "Blue Flower" would show up on "She Hangs Brightly", a cover of "Killing Moon" (Echo and the Bunnymen), a cover of "Soon Be Home" (The Who), and a couple of other songs I can't place.  At least one song, "Where did you run to", is from Hope's high school band, Going Home, with Sylvia Gomez.

And since it's still Women's History Month, I should acknowledge not only Hope Sandoval, but also Suki Ewers (playing keyboards in the screenshot above), who has been a multi-instrumentalist in Opal, Mazzy Star, and the Warm Inventions (in addition to a solo career).  With the death of drummer Keith Mitchell last year, Suki is the only member, outside of the core of David Roback & Hope Sandoval, who can trace her involvement back to Opal and the late 80s.

Opal, live in Italy, 1988-03-26

Tanya Donnelly - "Heart of Gold" (the song remains the same)

One of my favorite LPs is the 2008 Neil Young tribute LP "Cinnamon Girl", which consists entirely of covers of Neil Young songs by female artists.  I'll eventually get around to reviewing the entire LP, but for the moment we'll continue Women's History Month with the advance single from the LP: Tanya Donnelly covering "Heart of Gold" on the A-side, and LUFF covering "Tell Me Why" on the B-side.

Tanya Donelly is on the A-side because she is an alt-rock icon, having been in Throwing Muses, The Breeders, and Belly, in addition to her solo career.  That's quite a resume, and she deserves to be the featured artist.  She turns in a really good version of one Neil Young's most popular -- and one of my favorite -- songs.

But the real surprise of this single (and indeed, the entire LP) is LUFF's cover of "Tell Me Why".  Whereas Tanya and most of the other artists on the LP stay pretty close in style to the originals, LUFF gives a mesmerizing, shoegazing version of a more obscure song.  I did not know of LUFF prior to this LP and I'm not 100% sure they're still active, but I intend to explore more of their (limited) discography.

Tanya Donelly - "Heart of Gold"
LUFF - "Tell Me Why"

Neil Young - "Heart of Gold", "Tell Me Why"
CSNY - "Tell Me Why"

Sonic Youth - "Kool Thing" (forgotten song)

I realized recently that so far my discussion of Kim Gordon and Sonic Youth here were mostly in the context of the Kim / Thurston split ("Diamond Sea", "Girl in a Band").  Women's History Month is a good excuse to fix that and to remind everyone why Kim is the Lemmy of alt/college rock.

I certainly knew about Sonic Youth prior to "Goo", their 1990 major label release, but just through coincidence of timing this was the first LP of theirs that I bought and really embraced.  "Kool Thing" was the first single off the LP and is certainly more accessible than their previous work.  At the time I enjoyed it as a great song, but it wasn't until much later that I learned the back story that it is about a 1989 article in Spin Magazine where Kim interviewed LL Cool J and the resulting cultural chasm between them, part of which is attributable to not finding space for feminism in the machismo of LL's style of hip-hop (e.g., "The guy has to have control over his woman").

Of course, the video and song are filled with many clever LL "Kool" J references (e.g., "walking like a panther", "I don't think so", "let me play with your radio"), and even briefly features Chuck D  (I always felt he was significantly underutilized in this song, but to be fair the story goes theirs was an unplanned, serendipitous collaboration resulting from Public Enemy being in a nearby studio).

Enough about the back story -- there's a good "official" video and many live versions available, but this 1993 live version is a good reminder of when and why Kim (and Thurston) were the queen (and king) of the scene...

"Fear of a female planet"
Sonic Youth - "Kool Thing": live 1993, official video

LL Cool J - "Going Back to Cali" (from which the official "Kool Thing" video borrows)

Joan Jett - "Bad Reputation" (forgotten song)

In my previous post I mentioned Pat Benatar being the most prominent female AOR rock stars of the late 70s / early 80s, and while that's probably true, I would be remiss to not mention Joan Jett as well.  Her big breakthrough came in 1982 with the single "I love Rock-n-Roll", from the LP of the same name.  Despite a lengthy and successful career, that song is still probably her most popular.   And while I can't say I dislike it, I never really liked it that much either.  I get the whole feminist reclamation of a cock rock song (the original version was released in 1976 by Arrows, and it's kinda stupid*, even for a boom-boom-chop song), but I can't get past "meh". 

The song that should be her most popular is her auto-biographical, pop-punk anthem "Bad Reputation".  The story behind this song and video is a little bit complicated: she released a self-funded, self-titled LP in 1980.  In 1981, the same LP was reissued by Boardwalk Records, but this time the title was changed to "Bad Reputation", with the same cover art and only mild reshuffling of tracks.  The song "Bad Reputation" was first the b-side to the "Jezebel" single from the LP "Joan Jett", and then it was later released as an a-side single from "Bad Reputation".

After the success of "I Love Rock-n-Roll", she made a video for "Bad Reputation" in 1982 and the subject of the video is her ultimate triumph over the record labels that had nothing to do with her first LP, due in part because of her "bad reputation" as a former member of the Runaways.  I remember Bill Glidden had both "Bad Reputation" and "I Love Rock-n-Roll", and presumably I still have a copy of both on a cassette somewhere.

Anyway, much respect for Joan Jett and her setting the template for riot grrrls to follow.  She did not  soften her sound like Pat Benatar, nor did she tart it up like fellow former-Runaway Lita Ford, instead opting for a timeless "Joan Ramone" look.  For someone that made her career on smart choices for cover songs, this original should be the canonical Joan Jett song -- it's still awesome some 37+ years later...

Joan Jett - "Bad Reputation"




* Perhaps I can't get over its self-referential nature; I harbor a special distaste for rock-n-roll songs that are "about" rock-n-roll, but that's a topic for another time...

Pat Benatar - "Precious Time" (forgotten song)

For my next post in recognition of Women's History Month, let's go back to 1981 and the title track from Pat Benatar's third LP, "Precious Time".  It was not released as a single and as such, I don't recall it getting radio airplay at the time.  But it did have a video that was played on MTV a good bit at the time, and at 5:29 for the video (6:03 on the LP) it might have been a bit too long for a typical radio single.

I always liked Pat Benatar, but she was particularly important for Danette while growing up.  Pat Benatar certainly wasn't the first female rocker but she arguably was the most prominent in the US during the late 70s / early 80s, and as such served as a role model for Danette in an otherwise male-dominated genre.  Unfortunately, this is the last Pat Benatar LP that rawks...  starting in 1982 she married her guitarist, Neil Giraldo, swapped her second guitarist for a keyboardist, and shortly afterwards started a family; the sum total of which might have been good for her personally but it took a toll on her music.  I liked a lot of her songs that followed, but they no longer rawked.

We saw Pat Benatar at the NorVa (was it really 10 years ago?) and she gave a great show, and we'd definitely see her again if given the chance.  In the meantime, enjoy the slow heaviness of "Precious Time", the last heavy song she released before happiness, children, and keyboards arrived at the Benatar / Giraldo household.

Pat Benatar - "Precious Time"

False Sacrament - "That One" (forgotten song)

For reasons I can't quite remember earlier this week I started thinking about False Sacrament, a local band from the late 80s -- early 90s.  Perhaps it was because my previous review was about jazz fusionist Allan Holdsworth giving a slight nod to metal, and you could say that False Sacrament was a metal band giving a hat tip to jazz.  There's not a lot of information about them online, but after texting with Gregg, Scott, Terry and others, plus some Internet sleuthing, I was able to piece together a little bit of history about this band.

They featured Wendy Niles on vocals & clarinet (!), Danny Frazier on drums, Steve DiFazio on bass (who Gregg says he's still in contact with), and Thel Dominici on guitar.  Wendy, Danny, and Steve were all from Denbigh High School, class of 88 (none of whom I knew, but see my previous post on Tone Deaf and other DHS alumni), and Thel went to high school in Va Beach.  I thought I saw False Sacrament at the Denbigh Jam, but Terry assures me that never happened.  I did see them with Terry at in Norfolk, ca. 1990 or 1991, and it was probably at the (in)famous and now defunct Kings Head Inn but I'm not 100% sure about the location.  Some time around 1992 False Sacrament had moved out to San Francisco to further their career, though they toured all over.  One of the places they toured was Terry's house on Old South High at JMU (previously mentioned in my House of Freaks post), as evidenced by this cool concert flyer that I lifted from Terry's page (and his Corn Rocket video might be from the same show; Terry says Thel went to HS with the guitarist from Corn Rocket).

Why am I featuring their song "That One"?  Well, I found a video of them playing that song (or at least I'm pretty sure that's the song) at what looks to be a record store in California on 1992-07-26 (the source of the screen grab at the top).  I could only find one more concert video from them (at "Photon" in Va Beach from 90 or 91, where I'm sure I played laser tag but I don't recall seeing bands there), but the quality of that video is not great.  Audience/amateur recordings from ~30 years ago are rare (video recorders were $$$), so we're lucky to have the two we have...

Terry says he has their split 10" EP with Schlong, and Scott said he received their 1991 demo tape for his radio show at Elon.  The demo tape in particular holds up well -- heavy, intricate, challenging... and clearly not commercially viable.  Unfortunately, False Sacrament sounds nothing like the Seattle Sound that was about to steamroll the alternative music scene.  If forced to make a reference, maybe a funk-less 24-7 Spyz?  To which you say "who?" and I say "exactly." Or perhaps pre-Rollins Black Flag. 

On the two live recordings, Wendy isn't playing clarinet but you'll find it in the demo tape and other studio materials.  And since Wendy and her clarinet were a big part of their sound, I'm using this post to kick off Women's History Month, where I feature artists / bands with females in prominent roles.

That's the best I can do to reconstruct the history of False Sacrament.  Thanks to Terry, Scott, and Gregg for helping me pull this together, and if anyone else can help fill in the blanks please let me know.

False Sacrament - "That One" (live 1992-07-26), "Cosmic Enchantment" (90/91), 1991 Demo Tape, 10" Split EP,  "Paradigm" 7".  The only entry in discogs that I could not find was their 1993 self-titled LP.


Bonus link: I found the video "Baby Farm - False Sacrament Party 1991", but as far as I can tell it only features Baby Farm (another Hampton Roads band from the same time frame).