I'll Be Out Here If You Need To Find Me

Evan Dando's musical career- sole ever- present member of Lemonheads and a solo album too- has been a very stop- start affair. In the early 90s he crashed into the popular culture with It's A Shame About Ray and Come On Feel The Lemonheads after some under the radar albums as a three piece- their third, Lick in 1989, got some music press attention in the UK partly due to their cover of Suzanne Vega's Luka but they were just another American indie band, a little bit punk, a little bit country, ragged guitars, ripped jeans and Converse. After grunge exploded and their cover of Mrs Robinson gave them a hit they started selling records and Evan hit a rich vein of form. 

Exhibit A) My Drug Buddy from 1992's It's A Shame About Ray

My Drug Buddy

Exhibit B) Into Your Arms from 1993's Come On Feel The Lemonheads (a cover of a 1989 song by Australian band Love Positions)

Into Your Arms

Evan also developed some serious problems with crack cocaine and Lemonheads went on hiatus after 1996's Car Button Cloth. In 2003 he put out a solo album, Baby I'm Bored and a Lemonheads re- union followed in 2005 with a couple of albums and some appearances and disappearances. I've very much dipped in and out but am often curious to hear what he'd been up to. Evan's a talented writer and singer. 

Now living in Brazil Evan has got things back together and an album Love Chant is due in October. In Maya new song, Deep End, came out, three minutes thirty seven seconds of riffing and growly vocals, a song that recalls former glories but also sounds like a new Evan Dando. Julianna Hatfield is back and J Mascis turns up for the guitar solos.

And then two weeks ago another one, In The Margin, short and sweet and on fire, more riffs, more guitars, more choruses and Evan sounding great. 

I Know All This And More

There's some thing about the sound and feel of thirty year old, American alt- rock which is doing it for me at the moment. Apropos of nothing I was struck by the desire to hear Belly's 1993 hit Feed The Tree recently and it became an earworm for days...

Feed The Tree

Belly were Tanya Donelly's band, a breakaway from both Throwing Muses and The Breeders for Tanya (the former with step- sister Kristen Hersh, the latter with Pixie Kim Deal, Kim's twin sister Kelley and Josephine Wiggs). She formed Belly with Chris and Thomas Gorman and Fred Abong in 1991 and released Star in 1993. Feed The Tree is a beaut, with churning indie rock/ folk rock guitars and Tanya's honeyed but slightly weary vocals, chiming into the chorus, 'Take your hat off boy when you're talking to me/ And be there when I feed the tree'. 

The album Star also featured this song,  Gepetto, which was also released as a single. Geppetto, despite the sweetly sung/ chiming guitars sound, is a bit darker, a song about control and losing your soul. 

Gepetto

From Belly it's a short hop back to 1992 and The Lemonheads, a single from the It's A Shame About Ray album and a sparkling showcase for the songwriting talents of Evan Dando. 

Confetti (Remix)

Perfect Day

This is not a New Order post- Stephen's t-shirt is the only link. Bernard looks like someone's pissed him off though (or he's suffering from gastric after-effects of that curry at lunchtime).

I've been listening to some Lou Reed recently- yes, because he died. I played New York all the way through, an album I don't think I've listened to in twenty years. I was surprised by how much of it was familiar which shows how much i must have listened to it in 1988-9. I saw him when he played London in the summer of '89, at Wembley Arena I think. The university year had just finished and I went straight down to stay with my friend Mr AN of Ealing and we trooped off to see Lou. He was good (which is surprising as I get the feeling he was pretty hit and miss live depending on his mood and level of contempt for the audience). He played New York in the first half and then some greatest hits in the second- I don't remember which greatest hits other than Sweet Jane and Rock And Roll, and he played them as they should be played rather than the butchered versions I've seen on TV at times. At one point he muttered something about all the sounds being played by 'real musicians no synthesisers or samplers' which narked me a bit because I was quite into both as you might have gathered by now, but other than that, a good gig and night out.

I found my cd re-issue of Transformer as well recently, an album I also know inside out but haven't listened to for ages. Bowie and Mick Ronson's work on it is superb and the songs sound great, in terms of arrangements and production. The lyrics are top stuff too, putting that gay, 70s New York vibe right out in front. Tacked on the end of the cd are two extras. This is the demo of Perfect Day, just Lou and acoustic guitar, slightly different lyrics and phrasing but interesting to hear. After a few seconds silence there is then a radio advert forTransformer. Worth a d/l I think. And miles better than that BBC ad which got irritating quite quickly.

Perfect Day (Demo)

And I found this too- Kirsty MacColl and Evan Dando's cover of the same song

Perfect Day

Confetti

I've not followed the career of Lemonhead Evan Dando very closely. In the late 80s I had Lick on vinyl (one ace song that starts 'Here I am outside your house at 8 am', don't remember the name of it now and no longer have the record). I quite liked some of the early 90s stuff but never bought any apart from the odd single. He lost it publicly several times, claiming he had written a song called Purple Parallelogram with Noel Gallagher and a dalliance with Courtney Love. He probably needs some kind of award for surviving both. This song, Confetti, is a perfectly serviceable piece of early 90s indie-rock. It says it's a remix but I'm guessing this means it was mixed again for the single release rather than remixed as many other records were at that time.

Confetti (Remix)