Curt Boettcher & Friends - Looking For The Sun

Collection of rare recordings by posthumously-recognised sunshine pop genius.


Any musician or music producer whose name goes on to become synonymous with a particular genre must have been doing something right. In Curt Boettcher's case that genre was sunshine pop. In the latter half of the sixties studio technology was expanding at the same rate as the imaginations of the people who used them. Music entered what scientists like to call “a purple patch”. The most obvious example of this alignment of stars would be the Beatles creating their sonic masterpieces in London's Abbey Road Studios, or Brian Wilson in making “teenage symphonies to God” with the help of his brothers, a cousin, some extremely talented session musicians and the best studio technology Los Angeles had to offer.

There were of course others forging similar paths, doing work that pushed the boundaries of what a three-minute pop song could sound like. Boettcher was one such man. And if anecdotal evidence is correct Boettcher actually influenced Brian Wilson with his uplifting, shimmering pop, helping raise the bar for music production as an art-form.

Boettcher was best known for producing hit records for the Association, and for forming rock bands The Ballroom and The Millennium, but he also made vast amounts of recordings with various groups and singers in the studios of LA. Bad deals and bad luck meant he didn't attain fame and financial success. He died in 1987 at the age of 43, at the time largely unrecognised for the work he'd left behind.

Over time interest has grown however and his reputation is now beginning to match the size of his talent. This collection, expertly put together by Steve Stanley, founder of Now Sounds Records, is not a “best of”, but focuses on the work Boettcher did as a producer rather than a performer. It highlight just what a treasure trove the perpetually busy producer left behind. Not only that, it gives a strong sense of what the Californian music scene was all about. Most of the tracks on this compilation were released as singles and have been unavailable and out of print since their initial release.

I cannot stress enough how enjoyable this collection is. There's not a duffer among the CD's 21 tracks (18 on the vinyl version). My own personal highlights include Cindy Malone's stomper 'You Were Near Me', the gentle psych-pop of 'Milk And Honey' by Summer's Children, and Ray Whitley's 'Lorraine' – a masterclass in melancholic melodrama akin to the works of Scott Walker. For the more psychedelically minded there 's Eddie Hodges' ' Shadows and Reflections' or the Latin-influenced 'Enamorado' by Keith Colley. Novelty and light relief get a look in too with Jonathan Moore's camp pastiche of swinging London, 'London Bridge'.

If you're of the belief that the well of '60s music has been drained and exhausted think again. This well-researched, and lovingly annotated collection can only further enhance Boettcher's growing reputation.


Click here for High Moon Records

Pugwash - Silverlake

Eleven top tunes from Thomas Walsh! FFO The Beach Boys, ELO, McCartney and grown-up tuneful pop!

Regular readers of this here humble blog will know that one thing I particularly like is a song that's genuinely melodically memorable. After all there are lots of records that are sonically pleasing and great enough to listen to, but even after several listens you're hard pushed to actually remember the tunes. That's what makes this latest album from Pugwash such a delight. All eleven of its tracks have such soaring pop melodies, each one strong enough to warrant releasing as a single.

I'm saddened to say I've not had the fortune of stumbling across Pugwash before as this is actually their seventh LP, the band having formed 20 years ago. The man behind the melodies is Thomas Walsh, resident of Drimnagh, South Dublin. For this record he's joined by Jason Falkner of Jellyfish fame. Incredibly Walsh wrote all eleven songs on Silverlake within a week, and recorded them with Falkner producing at the latter's LA studio. If a record as strong as Silverlake doesn't bring Walsh to wider recognition it's difficult to think what would.

At various times recalling and rivalling the pop nouse of Brian Wilson, Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney and Andy Partridge, the cumulative effect of so many earworms makes this one of the best feelgood albums of the year, or any year for that matter! From the opening summery pop of 'The Perfect Summer' onwards, Silverlake is intelligent, tuneful, heartfelt and wrapped in lush production. Very highly recommended!

Click here for more on Pugwash.

Click here for Lojinx Records.

Interview with Emm Smith (Stereo Moon)

(This feature first appeared in issue 62 of Shindig! magazine. For the full unpublished interview with Emm Smith click over the jump at the bottom of this post. Photo by Mat Manser.)

 

Canadian sonic adventurers go back to the future and top up their studio tans with Duncan Fletcher.

“Ultimately I want to trip out like when you're dreaming, which can be the most amazing journey. Jumping from one adventure to another, seeing things appear in multiple places or configurations. Using the recording studio as an instrument. A Jerry Garcia quote says it best - 'mixing it for the hallucinations'” So says Stereo Moon mainman Emm Smith talking about modular recording, the technique pioneered by Brian Wilson on 'Good Vibrations' and SMiLE, and also utilised on Stereo Moon's latest outing, The Shape Of Psych To Come EP. Over its four tracks the band pick up the psych baton that was dropped by mainstream musicians in the late '60s. “I think in a Brian Wilson interview from that time he mentions the future of music being psychedelic and it doesn't happen. That future is a lie to some.”

Aside from the tightly arranged psych-pop of lead track 'Requiem For The Non-Believers', the band get to stretch out with free-form jamming and studio experimentation on the EP's instrumental tracks. They've also been obsessively re-working a debut LP, Smoking Shake By The Riverside, which should be ready for mixing next year. “There's a lyric in one of the songs that says, 'I've been driving myself insane but I wouldn't have it any other fucking way'. There's everything from pedal steel to horns, strings, double bass, organ, piano, banjo. I was laid-off from work in 2015 so production has slowed down. It costs money to rent a vibraphone for example, the next thing to get excited about! All the exotic instrumentation can be hard to find, or even people who can play them!”

Live shows are a less disciplined affair. Says Emm, “Live I’m going for more of a noisy Velvet Underground sound with psychedelic organ. For me the VU and The Beach Boys are the two ends of the spectrum I want to explore.”


Click here for Stereo Moon on Twitter.

Mike Love - Good Vibrations: My Life As A Beach Boy

(This review first appeared in issue 60 of Shindig! magazine)

Faber & Faber

More villain than hero. That's how the world views Mike Love in the pantomime story of The Beach Boys. This book attempts to set the record straight, with Love placing the biggest blame for the band's fractious nature on the Wilson brothers' father Murry, a control freak whose bad management decisions would haunt the band over the ensuing decades.

He's equally candid about his own shortcomings, with evidence of his contradictory personality throughout; the most business-minded Beach Boy, but one with an interest in meditation and astrology; a clean-living, drug-free vegetarian with anger issues; a serial womaniser who won't live with a woman outside of marriage. As self-appointed “road-dog” Love has worked harder than anyone in the band to keep their stock high, a role he claims he was forced to take after missing out on songwriting credits and losing rights to the back catalogue. (Murry Wilson again!).

Aside from the score settling, all the juicy stuff is here – making Pet Sounds and SMiLE, lawsuits, tour punch-ups, Maharishi, Eugene Landy and Charlie Manson. Love may never win a popularity contest when up against Team Brian, but he's good company and disarmingly gracious when it comes to his extended family of bandmates, complimenting all three Wilson brothers, and expressing palpable sadness over Brian's mental decline and the deaths of Dennis and Carl.

As rock's most dysfunctional family band, The Beach Boys' story is one we'll never tire of, and from this angle it's less black and white than some observers would have us believe.

Maston - Shadows

Frank Maston's the man with the studio tan! LA-based baroque-pop classicist releases his debut album.

Studio auteurs, you gotta love 'em! Not least the California based producers who made their mark in the 1960s. They remain a truly fascinating bunch. As the world gets ready to see Al Pacino play Phil Spector in the upcoming TV biopic, and Brian Wilson announces that the recent Beach Boys live outings are unlikely to be repeated, (perhaps indicating that once more he'll retreat into the safe space and sonic possibilities of the studio), the time is right for a new maverick to highlight just what is achievable when sat in the producer's chair.

Enter Frank Maston. His debut album Shadows, on the increasingly excellent Trouble In Mind Records has echoes of the big names mentioned above, along with touches of those other west coast wizards Burt Bacharach, David Axelrod, Arthur Lee and Van Dyke Parks. Though rather than directing a studio full of musicians, Maston plays all the instruments on Shadows, with the exception of the harp on one track. He's effectively a one man Wrecking Crew, Hal Blaine, Glen Campbell and Carol Kaye rolled into one. Seemingly masterful with any instrument, be it brass, woodwind, string, organ or percussion. It's such skill and ability coupled with his taste for inventive melodies that makes this album one of the most arresting so far this year.

Though the album does owe a great deal to the classicist, intellectual studio work of the '60s, in particular the arrangements and instrumentation of Pet Sounds, there are other sounds to be heard. Several instrumentals have a cinematic feel and there are shades of both mariachi and muzak (in a good way), along with an indie sensibility not a million miles away from such bands as Real Estate. The album walks a tightrope between warm comforting jangle and a more edgy, unsettling eeriness.

Maybe it's the air-conditioned retreat from LA's climate that makes the studio such an attractive place out there on the west coast. If that's the case maybe global warming does have some positive side effects. Out of the sun and into the shadows indeed.

Click here for Maston's Bandcamp page.

Click here for the Trouble In Mind website.