The Real Underground

Tommy Keene was dropped by Geffen shortly after the release (and subsequent non-promotion) of Based On Happy Times, but resurfaced a few years later with a new band (Brad Richardson on bass and John Quinn on drums) and put out an EP called Sleeping On A Rollercoaster on Matador Records.

A few months later, Alias put out a Tommy Keene compilation called The Real Underground, which featured a song called "Sleeping on a Rollercoaster", which was apparently an outtake from the EP. It was a heady time to be a Tommy Keene fan, with back to back releases after many years of no activity.

The Rollercoaster ep was pretty good, but I think The Real Underground is one of the best collections ever. It's kind of a hodgepodge of early EPs and later unreleased tracks, without anything from Strange Alliance or the Geffen era. It was similar to Game Theory's Distortion Of Glory that came out around the same time on the same label, and it was the one release that turned me into a dyed in the wool Tommy Keene fan.

Tommy and his new band did a tour to promote The Real Underground, which was my first opportunity to see him live. It was an under-promoted show on a weeknight in front of 20-30 true believers at SF's Bottom of the Hill, but Tommy and his band still rocked the roof off the place -- playing old songs from the 80s, songs from the EP, and new songs that they hadn't released yet. And since they were playing San Francisco, they closed with this song.



That show was my first exposure to "the pop underground", and it was stunning to discover in the pre-net era that there were other people in my own community who knew all the words to "Shake Some Action". I later found global communities of people like me, thanks to the internet.

Based On Happy Times

Tommy Keene's second Geffen album, Based On Happy Times, came out a few years after Songs From The Film, during which he'd fallen off my front page.

In the the pre-internet times of 1989, I'd almost forgotten about Tommy Keene when I found a used promo cassette of Happy Times at the local store. "He's still around? And he's got a new album too!". On my first few listens, I didn't hear any standout tracks, so I filed Happy Times and forgot about it. The album is kind of a "grower" though, because twenty years later, it's my favorite Tommy Keene record.

The title Based On Happy Times is kind of ironic, because the whole album is kind of a downer theme-wise, a bunch of sad songs only offset by a cover of the Beach Boys' "Our Car Club" with Peter Buck on guitar. Buck also plays mandolin on the final song "A Way Out", which sounds like something off of R.E.M.'s Green.

Based On Happy Times was recorded in the same studio as Green (Ardent in Memphis) at the same time, and sounds like all the slow songs from that album without the "Get Up" or "Stand" type songs. It deserved to be just as big a hit too, but it was more or less forgotten on release, and fell out of print almost immediately.

But its reputation has grown of the years (the Goo Goo Dolls covered "Nothing Can Change You" as a b-side, back when they were popular) and Happy Times becake one of Tommy Keene's most sought after albums, especially on CD. Back in the late 80s, major labels didn't press many CDs for second-tier acts like Tommy Keene. I had it on tape and vinyl, but was resigned to never have it on CD until I discovered a few months ago that it had been secretly reissued as a digital download at amazon and iTunes. Happy times indeed!

Run Now

About six months after the release of Songs From The Film, Geffen released an ep called Run Now with a title track featured in the movie "Out Of Bounds" (following up Songs From The Film with a song from a film), a few leftovers from the Dixon/Burnett sessions (including a reissue of "Back Again"), and a live version of Lou Reed's "Kill Your Sons" that I like more than the studio version.

Tommy Keene also made a cameo in "Out of Bounds" (an Anthony Michael Hall movie that I've never seen -- lucky me!) playing "Run Now" for about 20-30 seconds. That appearance isn't on youtube, but here's the song playing over a cover of the soundtrack album.



The rest of the soundtrack features songs by Night Ranger, Sammy Hagar, and the Smiths. Ah.. the 80's movie soundtrack!

Songs From The Film

Shortly after the Back Again ep, Tommy Keene started recording a full length LP with T-Bone Burnett and Don Dixon. They cut a bunch of demos at Reflection studios(some are available here), but before they finished the album, Tommy signed a major label contract with Geffen. This gave him the means and direction to re-record his new songs in a big studio with a big name producer (Geoff Emerick of Beatles, Badfinger, Costello, etc. fame) to make a proper 80s album that could get played on rock radio and MTV.

The resulting album, Songs From The Film is probably the closest Tommy Keene has come to having a hit, but wasn't nearly as successful as he or Geffen had hoped. With all the label shuffles, it didn't come out until 1986 (two years after the Burnett/Dixon sessions) which put the brakes on some of the momentum that Tommy was building up after the acclaim for Places That Are Gone. It didn't help that the first single was a re-recording of "Places" leading many of his old fans to think it was a reissue of the 1984 ep, and it came out at a time (mid-80s) when independent music fans were skeptical of anything associated with a major label.

Songs From The Film was a classic "between the cracks" album (too glossy for the indie crowd but not really in line with the pop mainstream) but was still as close as Tommy Keene ever came to having a hit. "Places That Are Gone" and "Listen To Me" got in semi-regular MTV rotation, which piqued my curiosity enough to pick up the record (tape, actually), but it took awhile for the whole thing to click with me.

Even now, I like most of SFTF, but still think it's a few notches short of classic. For one thing, I've never understood the cover of Lou Reed's "Kill Your Sons", which doesn't really fit in with the rest of the album. "Underworld" is also longer than it should be (even though its lyrics have a new poignancy since TK "came out"), and the re-recorded version of "Places That Are Gone" is also unnecessary once you hear the ep version.

This album wasn't originally issued on CD, but Geffen reissued it in 1998 with eight bonus tracks (mostly from the Run Now ep), but committed the cardinal sin of putting some of them in the middle of the running order. That CD is now long OOP, but there are a bunch of SFTF songs on the new compilation (including an alternate T-Bone Burnett version of "Gold Town") and Tommy will be performing the album in order on his Fall tour. Here's another version of the only Tommy Keene song on youtube.

Back Again (Try..)

Tommy Keene's second 1984 ep (after Places That Are Gone) was the four track, Back Again (Try..), which had two original TK songs produced by T-Bone Burnett and Don Dixon at Reflection Studios in NC, the same place where Dixon and Mitch Easter co-produced the first two R.E.M. albums.

The other two songs on the EP are live covers of Roxy Music's "All I Want Is You" and the Stones' "When The Whip Comes Down" recorded in July 1984 at the Rat in Boston. Tommy Keene's band, with bassist Ted Nicely and drummer Doug Tull, were gaining a live rep along the East coast in the early 80s (whenever Tommy Keene comes up on the internet, someone will mention seeing him open for some Flock of Haircuts flavor of the month at some club in DC in nineteen-eighty-whatever) so it's nice to hear some of his live work, but Tommy's such a distinctive singer and writer that cover songs aren't really his thing. More on that later.

Anyhow, here's a youtube of both original tracks from the EP -- fast forward through the first 30 seconds in for the good stuff!

Back to Zero Now

From the bio

In 1984, a six-song platter of pop perfection titled Places That Are Gone (Dolphin) put Tommy Keene onto the CMJ charts and atop the Village Voice EP of the Year poll. Blatantly romantic, unapologetically melodic, bittersweet but absolutely invigorating, it was the sort of record that you could put on before you went out on a Saturday night, or sit around and mope to if you didn’t feel like facing the world.

It still stands as a powerful statement, not only establishing Tommy as a unique singer-songwriter, but also as a guitarist with a sound as distinctive as Pete Townshend or Johnny Marr.

The title track of PTAG is probably one of the half dozen best power pop songs ever, but I think it might be the second best song on the EP. The best song is "Back to Zero Now" (first song on side two), which was the song that stamped Tommy Keene as a unique talent. It originally came out as a single in 1983 (tacked on to a reissue of Strange Alliance) and is the first song on his career compilation. One of the best songs ever written by anyone, ever, full stop.

There isn't a version of "Back to Zero Now" on youtube (there was one that was removed for "terms of use" violation -- WTF?), so here's the same version of "Places That Are Gone" from Conan I posted earlier.


The best Tommy Keene video on youtube.

Strange Alliance

Now that the World Cup is over, I'm kicking off the half-month of Tommy Keene with a post about Strange Alliance, his 1982 debut,

This record was self-released in a limited run of a few thousand copies 28 years ago, and has never been reissued in any format, so it's extremely rare and hard to find (which does not equate to "good"). Tommy's nw compilation (which came out today!) is listed with a date range of 1983-2009, which leads me to believe that he's trying to sweep SA under the rug.

Not Lame tried to reissue Strange Alliance a few years ago, but ran into rights issues, so it's still a rarity. One friend who lived in D.C. back in the day made me a tape of SA while ago, so I've heard it, and it's pretty good, even though it does sound very much of it's time, heavy on the reverb with a Steve Lillywhite early U2 feel. Kind of the sound of a promising talent before he found his voice.

Obscure records have become easier to find in this internet age, and Strange Alliance is available here as a rapidshare link, for those who are curious about what it sounds like but don't want to pay collector prices. There isn't a lot of TK on youtube, so I might have to resort to "imaginary Tommy" for many of these posts.