Nineteen Ninety Five

Back to the years for the month of August. I was working my way through the fives, so next up in 1995. This month marks the 15th anniversary of the O.J. verdict, the Blur/Oasis Britpop feud, and the death of Jerry Garcia. Not one of my favorite years, but there were some good songs in '95. And this was one of them.



"Empire Records" may be one of the worst movies ever, but it had a really good soundtrack.

In The Late Bright

Wrapping up this (half) month of Tommy Keene with a discussion of his most recent offering In The Late Bright. This came out early last year, and was probably my most-played album of 2009. He's still got it, in case there was any doubt.

Here's a solo live performance of one of the better songs from the album, "Save This Harmony".



I made it through two weeks of Tommy Keene posts without ever typing the words "power" and "pop" next to each other. Not even once! What do I win?

Crashing The Ether

Listening to these albums in order, it's amazing how little Tommy Keene's sound has changed over the years. His recording career has spanned three decades, but the albums have very few trappings of the times. The quality ebbs and flows a little, but everything sounds like a Tommy Keene album.

With that, I thought Crashing The Ether was a welcome return to form after the semi lull of Tommy's two previous albums. He recorded it at his home studio, playing everything except drums himself, but it sounds just as fully realized as his best full band recordings. He might need an editor, because a few of the songs are a bit overlong, but the playing and songwriting is all top notch.

Tommy put out a collaboration with Robert Pollard called Blues And Boogie Shoes a few months after the release of Crashing The Ether that sounds like the Robert Pollard singing new lyrics over CTE backing tracks. As a listening experience, it's kind of up and down, but "Death Of The Party" may be one of the best RP or TK songs of the last decade.



Could that backing track be anyone but Tommy Keene?

The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down

2002's The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down is the only Tommy Keene album that doesn't have its own wiki page. It's another one I don't find myself playing very much, mostly because I've only got it as a super low quality 128kbps download from the early days of emusic.

Merry-Go-Round was one of the first albums I downloaded from emusic, back when they were all you can eat, and I liked a few of the songs (the opener "Begin Where We End", "Blue Sky", "Circumstance"), but found the rest of the album kind of unmemorable, and don't think I made it through all 16 minutes of "The Final Hour" more than once (if that!).

Listening to Merry-Go-Round now, I'd like to hear it in higher quality, but it came out on a record label that doesn't exist anymore (Spin-Art), so it's completely out of print in all forms, even digital. I could probably find a copy under "Misc. K Used" in one of those old-fangled record shoppes, but haven't been motivated to look for it over the last eight years. Make of that what you will.

Here are Emitt Rhodes & the Merry Go Round playing Hollywood Palace (introduced by Don Knotts!)

Isolation Party

Tommy Keene's second Matador album Isolation Party has always sounded to me like a triple-A followup to Ten Years After. Listening to these albums in order shows that Tommy's career has been fairly consistent over the years, without many peaks or troughs, but there are certain albums I come back to and others that I don't. And Isolation Party is one of the ones that I don't.

The opening track, "Long Time Missing" starts things off with one of the best guitar riffs ever, and the cover of Mission of Burma's "Einstein's Day" may be better than the original (heresy!) but the second half of the album runs out of steam. It was recorded in Arizona with a cast of many (Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett from Wilco, Jeff Murphy from Shoes, Jesse Valenzuela from the Gin Blossoms) which makes things sound mainstream, and not in a good way. Not my least favorite Tommy Keene album, but not in the top five either.

Here's a live version of another song from Ten Years After.



I saw Tommy Keene live for the second time on Isolation Party tour, at the Peacock Lounge in SF, a tiny little bar in the Lower Haight were I've never seen any other shows. He put out a live album from the 1998 tour that sounded like the same show he put on that night, but was probably a different show on the same tour, with the same setlist. Good setlist though. If you encore with "Back To Zero Now" and "Places That Are Gone", everyone is guaranteed to go home happy!

Ten Years After

With time running out in the month of July, I'll be going over Tommy Keene's five most recent studio albums over the next five weekdays. The last fifteen years of his career have been at least as productive as the first fifteen.



Ten Years After was Tommy's first album with his new band, and his first album of the 90s. The title is either a reference to his major label debut (ten years after SFTF) or the band of the same name.

Ten Years After the album rocks as hard as Ten Years After the band, but still sounds like a Tommy Keene album. Thirteen songs (including an unlisted Who cover at the end) that I played frequently and loudly during the first half of 1996. The opening 1-2 punch of "Going Out Again" and "Turning On Blue" demand to be played at full volume, neighbors and ears be damned.

Here's the video for "Turning On Blue".



From Tommy's Matador bio:

In 1996, Tommy toured the UK with Oasis as lead guitarist for support act, Velvet Crush. Noel Gallagher asked a British journalist.. "Who's the clever fucker with the Telecaster?" The journalist noticed, "Don't you think he looks a bit like you Noel" to which his reply was "Bollocks, but e's not half bad...Bastard!"

Quite independent, never caring

Here's one of those between album things that Tommy Keene did, a collaboration with the Gin Blossoms doing "Carrie-Anne" on the brillant Sing Hollies.. tribute.



The 1995 Hollies tribute really is one of the best albums of its kind. I said back in the day that the first five tracks are by artists from whom I'd buy almost anything -- The Posies, Tommy Keene, The Loud Family, Steve Wynn, and Mitch Easter. Only two bad songs on the entire record.

I was a little surprised to see Tommy working with the Gin Blossoms, but it seemed to help his career, and I've always suspected that he had a hand in writing some of their later songs (like "Til I Hear It From You"). I liked this exchange in a recent popmatters interview.

Q. If you had a choice, would you rather be known strictly for one or two singles or do it the way you’ve done it?

A. Well, take the Gin Blossoms, who used to be friends of mine, kind of. The guy who wrote the three songs that got them a deal, they fired him and he ended up killing himself. But they’re still out there making lots of money playing his three songs. I don’t think they are critically acclaimed or ever were, but it’s a career. I don’t know ... you can’t choose.

"used to be friends of mind, kind of." Burn!!