Thanks mucho grande bunches again to everyone who threw in some help getting the album released and out there! Joyce and Chick appreciate you guys all so much! (And I do too!) Thanks!
UPDATE: A PS from Joyce:
Wanted to share some wonderful news. Deadsexy is officially up on itunes! please thank everyone for helping us… It worked!!! I am so stunned…
We cannot thank you enough. Thanks for helping us get back on our feet.
Thanks so very, very much to anyone & everyone who helped with the efforts to get Scarce’s 1995 Deadsexy album released, which I wrote about here a few weeks ago. I just learned from Joyce that UMG has agreed to license it elsewhere and it should be available on iTunes (and presumably the usual other sources) before too very long, so no further correspondence to the record company requesting its release is necessary. The letters worked! Thank you all!
So yay! And I know that Joyce & Chick thank you all and appreciate you all SO very, very much for helping (and I do too)! Ahhh, the Internet is awesome always. Thanks so much!
So, I need the attention of the music junkies, music geeks, music fans - all you people for just a few minutes. You know who you are. All you Pixies and Replacements and White Stripes and R.E.M. and Elvis Costello and Nirvana and Bowie and Stones and Stooges and Hoodoo Gurus and Cheap Trick and Clash and Ramones and… well, you know. Everybody.
Everyone who has ever said, “Lynnster, you really need to check out (Pavement, the Hold Steady, the Bottle Rockets, The White Stripes, and insert hundreds of other band names here).” All you former record store employees from back when there was still vinyl in the bins. And all the music folks I’ve gladly pushed and promoted over the years, I could use a little return of favor right now - y’all too. So again - you know, everyone.
All of you, I just need you to listen up for a few. This’ll just take maybe ten or fifteen minutes of your time, tops. I have something (or rather, someones) very important to bring to your attention, and they could use your help if you could spare a few minutes.
OK, so now that I’ve got your attention, I want you to think back to that whole six or seven or eight year period in the Nineties when you actually didn’t have to stay up until late Sunday night to watch the videos YOU wanted to see, and didn’t have to go searching the radio dial for a college radio station that actually had enough power to pick it up wherever you were - or one that was even on at that hour (unless you were one of the very fortunate few that had a 24 hour station nearby) - to get your fix. You know what I’m talking about.
If you were like me, you were probably seeing bands and artists that used to crash on your apartment floor, or that of your friend’s or brother’s or sister’s, in the Eighties when they came through town, now suddenly making it so big that they were playing stadium shows to thousands of people instead of little dive bars with 20 people tops most nights. For a while there, it seemed like everyone I ever knew, every band I had ever liked, and every band I had even just remotely heard of was making it big, or at least getting heard and by many.
Now come back with me to specifically around 1994, 1995, 1996 for a minute. I know you’re all hearing it in your head right now, but in case you need reminding (and of course, insert any number of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, etc., offerings in between to make it really sound right)… Soundgarden, “Spoonman” and “Black Hole Sun”. Oasis, “Wonderwall”. Weezer, “Buddy Holly”. Hole, “Doll Parts” and “Miss World”. Green Day, “Longview”. Live, “I Alone”, “Lightning Crashes”, “Selling the Drama”. R.E.M., “Bang and Blame” and “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”. The Cranberries, “Zombie”. Better Than Ezra, “Good”. Elastica, “Connection”. Beck, “Loser”. PJ Harvey, “Down By the Water”. Radiohead, “Creep”. Smashing Pumpkins, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”, “1979″, “Zero”, and “Muzzle”. Alanis Morissette, “You Oughta Know”. Foo Fighters, “This is a Call”, “I’ll Stick Around”, “Big Me”. Veruca Salt, “Seether”. Social Distortion, “I Was Wrong”. Stone Temple Pilots, “Vasoline” and “Big Bang Baby”. Scarce, “Freakshadow”.
Huh?
Yeah, I know. Only a handful will know the band Scarce. Mainly a few lucky people from the North Atlantic coast and thereabouts, some more in England maybe, and certainly some folks from Knoxville.
My point is that you SHOULD have known who this band was, and you SHOULD have known this song. You should have known them as well as most of the other bands and artists and songs I listed up there.
It’s a heartbreaking story, it really is.
Scarce came together in 1993, formed by Chick Graning, bass player Joyce Raskin, and drummer Jud Ehrbar (who would be the first of numerous drummers in and out of the band). Chick’s from Knoxville - we share a lot of mutual friends and acquaintances - and had had some success earlier in the Nineties with Boston band Anastasia Screamed. I’m a big fan of the solo stuff he’s put out in recent years too - but for now, let’s get back to Scarce.
Soon after Scarce formed, the trio was soon involved in a major label bidding war. They toured America, Europe, England, and Canada to much acclaim for their live shows. Their Red EP was distributed worldwide and landed in the UK charts, with songs like “All Sideways” and “Days Like This”.
In 1995, following a support tour with Hole in Europe and on the verge of seriously making it big with their debut album, Deadsexy, Chick suffered a brain aneurysm and lapsed into a coma for several weeks. The record company pulled the Red EP from the shelves in the UK. Scarce had been scheduled to play Big Day Out in Australia, which is a big deal for non-Australian bands to score a slot down there - that got canceled too.
When she initially put the “Freakshadow” video up on Scarce’s MySpace profile, Joyce said this:
Just wanted to share the video for “Freakshadow”, which was shot about a month before Chick’s brain hemorrhage. I placed it before the “All Sideways” video thinking how poignant it is to see Chick before his hemorrhage and a few months after when the Sideways video was shot. I remember watching this video while Chick was in a coma and crying because it shows so much of his charm and personality, and at the time he wasn’t moving at all.
Here’s the video for “Freakshadow” - the hit that never was:
Chick eventually recovered & astonishingly, Scarce kept going as a band till 1997, playing two major US tours—even though this meant Chick relearning all his guitar parts and vocals from scratch. But the strain of his illness took its toll on the band, and eventually Chick and Joyce went their separate ways.
Let’s pause again a moment for the video for “All Sideways”:
There are a lot of heartbreaking stories in rock & roll, I know, but this is one of the more heartbreaking I’ve ever known. And especially heartbreaking to me that this band’s music just didn’t get heard like it should have, and that most of you didn’t know this band and these songs like all the others I mentioned above from the same time period.
Fortunately, this tale has a happy ending - or coda, as it were.
Writing a book about the band called Aching To Be (available through Amazon) led to Joyce contacting Chick, and then to Scarce’s re-forming, ending nine years of silence. Songwriting is already under way for a new album, and some of the band’s old material, along with previously unreleased material and pre-A&M demos, are now available. With no expectations but to savor being a real band again, and no one to answer to but themselves, Scarce finally have the happy new beginning they deserved all along.
There’s one problem, though, and here’s where I - and Scarce themselves - could use your help.
At present, Universal Music Group has refused to re-release the band’s debut CD, Deadsexy - not the physical CD itself nor making it available for download/purchase. It’s a fine album and it deserves to be out there and to be heard. Especially by those who have never had a chance to really hear it before.
YOU guys - all you music fans and others - YOU deserve to be able to have an opportunity to hear it, download it, buy it, own it, etc. There are a few used copies of the old release floating around, but not that many, and this record just deserves another chance - and the chance it never really had the first time.
Here’s where you can help. If you can spare a couple of minutes to fire off an email to (email and info removed - see update below!) - requesting UMG release the Deadsexy CD for purchase & download purchase - Joyce, Chick, their manager Teresa, everyone involved would really appreciate it.
And I personally would appreciate it too, as I’m dying to get this CD on my MP3 player, you know.
Those of you who know me (online or off) and frequently talk music with me, you know I wouldn’t steer you wrong. Bottom line is it’s a great record, and it needs and deserves to be out there. Anything you can do to help get it out there, and to spread the word - thank you.
In the meantime, here’s what else you can do Scarce-wise:
You can check out Scarce’s MySpace profile and listen to (and even purchase for download) what music is currently available by clicking HERE. (“Sudden Downtown Polo Club” is a particular favorite of yours truly.)
You can buy Joyce Raskin’s awesome book about the band, Aching to Be, at Amazon by clicking HERE.
Also go to Chick’s MySpace profile by clicking HERE and check out some of his solo work. I love his stuff and Scarce has already been incorporating “Dead Bleux” into their sets, that’s awesome.
All right, that’s enough from me for now but again, if you can spare a minute to (email and info removed - see update below!) - and politely request that UMG release the Deadsexy CD from Scarce, again, it is very much appreciated! Thanks for listening and watching and reading (and hope you enjoyed)!
UPDATE 05/29/2008: Happy to report that I’ve just learned from Joyce that UMG has agreed to let Deadsexy be licensed, so no further correspondence requesting its release is necessary! It will soon be available on iTunes (and I expect the usual other sources). Thanks so very much to everyone that assisted with this effort to get Scarce’s old music out to the masses - Joyce & Chick appreciate you all SO much (and me too)! :)
I noticed the other day when my Last.fm weekly & all-time charts updated that over half (six of ten, actually) of my all-time top played tracks since I joined Last.fm last year are all Tennesseans. I like to give the locals a boost but this occurrence was really completely accidental and unintentional.
Not only that, but they’re all grouped right together right now - #2 through #7. Wild.
The chart below will change (somewhat) again next week and over the weeks to come, but right now they are: Big Star and Alex Chilton from Memphis, and the Rude Street Peters, Chick Graning, Tim Lee, and The Dirty Works from Knoxville.
I’ve no idea where this one came to me from, but after this I’ll be caught up and will institute a temporary moratorium on memes. At least until the day comes I’ve run out of something to say again, which is, like, never. So, here.
Three things:
That scare me: Heights; spiders or basically anything creepy or crawly; and winding up with some illness or condition that leaves me completely awake, alert and oriented but totally without any control of any other functions (and karma is going to bite me in the ass one day and get me for now having documented this fear in black and white for posterity, I just know it).
People who make me laugh: The Young Ones, The Kids in the Hall, Travis L. Harmon (OK, I know technically that’s WAY more than three people but it constitutes as three things/entities, or at least I say so, which is all that counts here).
I love: Music (duh!), cats, working four days a week instead of five (officially anyway, only problem there is I usually end up working on my day off anyhow).
I hate: Any peas except for black-eyed peas, washing dishes, flat land (yeah, I know - so why do I live in Memphis?).
Things on my desk: A bottle of hazelnut liqueur from the Czech Republic, Tim Lee’s Concrete Dog CD, and an orange cat who is sleeping and won’t move his head off the edge of my keyboard.
I’m doing right now: Wondering why I didn’t go to sleep last night AGAIN, dreading having to start work soon for what is going to be a long and painful ten hours, drinking coffee.
I want to do before I die: Visit Australia (at least Sydney and Perth), live in an actual house again and not a duplex or apartment or whatnot, figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
I can do: Waste an incredible amount of time; play guitar; appraise, buy and resell vintage Barbie stuff at a hell of a profit (my “part-time job” for several years).
I can’t do: Wrap presents well at ALL, sew, keep plants alive or garden.
I think you should listen to: Paul Westerberg and The Replacements, the silence when (if) it snows, your heart or instinct instead of your head or what other people tell you most times.
You should NEVER listen to: Telemarketers, only certain music just because it’s what everyone else is listening to or tells you that you should, me when I’m talking in my sleep.
I’d like to learn: How to cook on a grill, to play guitar a little better than I do, how to fix up and repair various things without messing them up in the process like I normally do.
Favorite foods: Mexican, southern BBQ, breakfast.
Beverages: Lipton Citrus Green Tea, coffee, anything alcoholic that tastes like Kool-Aid basically.
Shows I watched as a kid:The Monkees, American Bandstand, Saturday Night Live (well, and cartoons… I was kinda a normal kid, sometimes).
Just random stuff for an about-to-be-rainy Tuesday afternoon in Memphis…
Where do I keep hiding stuff from myself? Recently I lost the really good, really fast battery recharger (as opposed to the not that great, really slow one which I know exactly where it is), just completely misplaced it, one of those things I always put back up in the same place every time but obviously not this time. It was like it just vanished into thin air, no clue where I laid it down, can’t find it anywhere. Really pissed about it too because it worked so wonderfully and fast compared to this other lousy one.
Then this morning I notice I’m about to run out of 39 cent stamps. Now I KNOW good and well there are rolls upon rolls of old 34 cent stamps, probably 33 and 32 cent, who knows what else, in this house. I THOUGHT I knew exactly which drawer they were in. Apparently not, apparently I either used them up and forgot, or they’re there and I’ll find them tonight in which case I’ll be really annoyed, or they’re just not there. I give up.
I’m SO over working today. Unfortunately three more hours to go.
Didn’t get much sleep last night AND didn’t get three-fourths of the stuff I intended to do last night done. Probably because I stayed up too late and too long ripping FOUR THOUSAND MILLION MP3’s for what I’m hoping will be a worthwhile big major project. Not financially, not profitable, just a labor of love as they say…
Tonight will hopefully be a little earlier to bed than usual (like maybe, oh, 2 a.m.) and maybe something decent to have for dinner. I hardly ever eat anymore and I forget (like now) when I last did most of the time and the majority of time I’m just not hungry. I think I might have eaten something Sunday night but I’m not sure. I know that’s not really good for you, but I’m just not hungry most of the time, and an overwhelming majority of stuff I have always liked, I have been progressively losing any appetite for. Down to what amounts to a very small list of things I’m still happy eating. This is nothing new, been like this for months and months really. Don’t worry, I’m probably skinnier than I’ve been in 15 years but I’m not, like, bones or anything. And my hair’s gotten longer than ever and is not falling out from malnutrition or anything so I think I’m probably OK, I’m just plain not hungry, ever.
However, I am a little bit this afternoon so I think if this day EVER gets over with, it might be a night for some good major takeout from somewhere, just haven’t decided where yet. Nope, I don’t cook (I CAN, I just don’t), I don’t clean, I’m pretty much useless when it comes to domestic crap. Hey man, I got better things to do!! Giggle…
So here’s something I’m excited about, Jennifer Finch’s band The Shocker’s new full-length CD comes out on the 15th in the U.S. Jennifer, as many will know, used to be in L7 and I really dig The Shocker’s stuff, they do a really cool cover of “Body Count” (which, as you can see via my Audioscrobbler/LastFM report if you’re reading today on Tuesday, I was listening to the original last night). Yeah, I have kinda developed a bit of a headbanging thing in recent years, probably mainly because we have been lacking in decent radio stations around here for a while and the last several years I’ve been listening to a bit heavier alt-rock stuff on the radio as well as heavier in general. But I always liked L7 a bunch anyway. Anyhoo, you can check out some of the new tracks on The Shocker’s MySpace page or on The Shocker’s website. Pretty cool stuff, especially “Body Count”, woohoo.
On one sorta related note and another totally unrelated note, my last two CD purchases have also been excellentamundo and both Knoxville bands - the new one from Southern white trash rock boys The Dirty Works, Biscuits & Liquor, and the latest CD from the absolutely marvelous Tim Lee, Concrete Dog, which is just terrific and I’ve played it about a million times already. You can also listen to some of the tracks on Tim’s MySpace page.
Looks like I might be heading to NYC in August or September for some something I still don’t really know what it is, but my friend Michelle, who is moving back home to Brooklyn from Florida, says I and our other friends need to come up for it. Haven’t been up there since the summer of 1997 so that should be kinda cool if it all pans out.
Oh well, back to work… happy rainy and tired Tuesday!
Going to see the Tim Lee Band from Knoxville play here in Memphis tonight, hopefully - should be an excellent time!
I’ve been having a little minor (and, of course, in jest) war of words lately online with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Jo Walker. Josie and I were the only two females in the bunch I ran with in college - one of several different groups of folks I hung out with but this gang was the closest and included some of those famous for their appearances throughout my blog over the last nine years such as KC, Greg, Duncan, etc. I wound up part of the group because KC and I had known each other since we were little kids; Jo sort of became osmosed (is that a word?) into it ‘cos she was related to 50% of the guys in the group and everybody, really, but me and a couple of others were related to each other anyway somehow someway, mostly cousins and then a couple of sets of brothers. Jo wasn’t related to KC but was related to Greg (cousins), who was related to KC (cousins again), so in a way it was like everyone was related to everyone else and truthfully at some point I think we all forgot that some of us weren’t related to each other. Well, except for those of us who were dating at the time, of course.
Anyway, Jo eventually wound up marrying Stevie Kane, another of our group (and who I almost got smushed into a pulp with when we almost hit a concrete wall head-on many years ago driving back from lunch hour in Memphis, another momentous event documented here many years ago in this blog). I’m still not quite sure what turned that around where she agreed to marry him since she wouldn’t speak to him for fifteen years after he killed her pet fish and burned her apartment building to the ground (two unrelated incidents), and she used to say things - whenever it was pointed out that Stevie Kane was single and available - like “Over my dead body,” and so on and so forth. But anyway, yeah, they’re married and it’s weird but it’s all good.
Being Jo Walker’s friend, while she may be one of my favorite people on earth, has always been a great big thorn in my side on some levels. Why, you ask? Well, for one thing, we look absolutely ridiculous together. Josie used to model a long time ago (rolling eyes). She’s nearly 6 feet tall with insanely long legs, and even though I don’t think she has a speck of Native American blood in her, we have always referred to her as the “Indian Princess” or “Indian Goddess”. She’s that tall, about as big around as a toothpick even after having now gone through childbirth, legs up to her neck, long flowing black hair that always just looks just so, and naturally dark skinned so she never has to lay out or set foot in a tanning bed, she has a perpetual great tan. Miss Thang is perfect. I, on the other hand, am 5′2″, unforgivingly average, very much a white white girl, and might have a good hair day one day a month. There was never another more tremendously unmatched pair on the planet than dumpy short little old me and Miss Amazon Indian Goddess.
Then there’s the music thing. Way back in the day, I only knew of a couple of other chick drummers in the general vicinity besides Josie. Now, you’d look at her and never think “chick drummer”. She’s a great one though. This makes me sick for two reasons. The reason she is a chick drummer is because she grew up in a house with the very same thing that was in my house, at least part of the time, growing up - a drum kit. Like my dad, hers was a drummer too. Unlike her, I chose to ignore the drum kit and never bothered to learn how to play. Which is the second reason it makes me sick. I coulda made some sweet money over all these years as a chick drummer.
Of course, on the flip side of that, all you have to do is say two words to Jo in order to send her into paroxysms of vitriol and words that bother my virgin ears - MEG WHITE. (I happen to like Meg White just fine, for the record, but you take your life into your hands mentioning her around Josie.)
Anyway, way back in the old days when everybody used to flop at Scott’s old apartment in West End, which was small to begin with, sometimes it was even harder to find sleeping space because not only the twelve or thirteen of us in our little group, as well as any assortment of dates and girlfriends and boyfriends, would be crashing there as well as, sometimes, most of whomever had been at whichever club that night. As well as, sometimes, whatever band from out of town had been playing at whichever club that night. Sometimes it would just be wall to wall people crashed in every available chair (not many) and the couch (only one) and the floor and you’d have to watch where you stepped if you had to make one of those middle of the night sneaks to the bathroom. This was always especially fun if you’d had too much to drink that night and were, indeed, trying to get to the bathroom to throw up or something.
Now I, of course, had girlfriend rights to the one bed in the house, but more often than not I was mad at him anyway, so most nights I usually wound up either sleeping out in the papasan chair that was out on the balcony curled up with Evan, who was always out on the balcony. Or I’d be sharing the couch with Jo, which was actually a pretty big couch and not bad for sleeping on even with two people, as long as you didn’t mind someone’s feet in your face. So, in essence, I am pretty familiar with Josie Walker’s feet.
Which brings me to the point of this entry about the gorgeous and perfect Jo Walker, former model, super chick drummer extraordinaire, almost 6 foot tall Indian Princess/Goddess.
Let it be known that Jo Walker has got some bigass, ugly, size 9 or 10 (?), boatlike feet!
