#bart bealmear

Bart Bealmear of Squeaselphobes

I’ve been a fan of Bart Bealmear and Gregory Olds’ songwriting since I first heard their music about a decade ago. I’ve covered a number of their songs with my project Rock ‘n’ Roll Monkey & the Robots. Greg collaborated with Bart on an EP he made a few years back [which also featured performances from Troy Gregory (The Witches, The Dirtbombs, Killing Joke), Brandon Moss (Bars of Gold, Bear vs. Shark) and Tim Purrier (The Hentchmen) among others] and  produced a 7″ as The Blind Doctors. 

Bart’s new collection, Greawesome, is a digital only Bandcamp release of 21 very short songs. I asked Bart to talk with me a bit about  Greawesome and touch on his writing career -- Bart is on the staff of Dangerous Minds and has produced dozens of articles on strange and obscure music, film and pop culture. 

I dig your new album. “Change” really floored me – I love it. What gave you the idea to do this project, this way?

Hey, thanks. Greg and I have been playing together off and on since the late ‘80s. In 2009, he started emailing me short pieces of music he’d written and recorded, then I’d put words over the top, create mixes, and then send the files back to him. The Squeaselphobes project has always been a casual thing, but after a while, we had a decent number of tracks and figured they’d be worth releasing.  

Greg & Bart at the Replacements/Tom Petty show at Pine Knob, Clarkston, MI in 1989

Greg was involved with your last EP, credited to the Blind Doctors, why change the name? What is different about this?

It’s just a completely different thing, really. The Blind Doctors has been a rotating collective that revolves around my songs, while the Squeaselphobes is a joint project between the two of us. I’ll still use the Blind Doctors name for my own stuff.

What is a Squeaselphobe?

Ha, that’s a word Greg made up a long time ago. You’d have to ask him to get the full story.

What is the appeal of very short songs/minimalism?

Short songs don’t allow the listener much time to get bored. They don’t overstay their welcome. As far as a minimalistic approach, we just liked the way the tracks turned out and decided to leave them as-is. I suppose it has to do with why people like demo recordings—you can hear mistakes and quirks that are often lost when a song is labored over.

How long have you been writing for Dangerous Minds now?

For about three years. My first post went up in September 2014.

How does it feel to have your work read by such a large audience?

It’s gratifying. I’ve always liked exposing people to interesting things—be it music, movies, stories, or whatever—so it’s cool to be able to do it on a largish scale.

At one point you thinking about extending your tax scam records piece into book, is this still in the cards? [Read this fascinating piece here.] Any other journalistic projects you’ve thought about putting more time into?

Yeah, it’s just finding the time. I sort of chip away at it. I have other ideas—again, it’s just about time. I recently realized that—like a lot of people—I probably have three or four lifetimes worth of interests, so it’s impossible to explore them all. In some ways, it’s a comforting thought.  

Do you look at the comments on your Dangerous Minds post?

Sometimes! When I do, I have to prepare myself for the worst, such is the internet. But, on occasion, people actually say nice things.

Anything else you want to say or plug?

Thanks for the interest. I never imagined I’d be doing an interview about the Squeaselphobes. 

CRITICAL LINKS:

Squeaselphobes on Bandcamp

Blind Doctors on Bandcamp

Bart’s most recent post on Dangerous Minds

Tax Scam Records article on Night Flight

Pandora were a four-piece glam/hard rock outfit from New York City. In 1974, the group traveled to Cleveland and recorded a demo. That session was released on the Space Amazon CD in 1997, yet the identities of the band members were completely mysterious—and continued to be—until now.

The members of Pandora were:

Frank LaRocka, drums (David Johansen, Scandal, Bryan Adams) Martin Butler, guitar (The Demons, The Very Few) John “Buzzy” Verno, bass (Cherry Vanilla, David Johansen) Rick Prince, vocals (Plum Nelly, Black Widow, Twisted Sister)

Pandora’s mind-blowing mix of the New York Dolls, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin and KISS, complete with over-the-top vocals and out-of-this-world lyrics, is so unforgettable it seems unthinkable it would take so long for the group to be identified.

Here's "Hot Rocker" from the Space Amazon CD:

UPDATE – DECEMBER 2016: The new issue of Ugly Things contains Doug Sheppard’s excellent article on Pandora. Doug discovered their long-forgotten demo in 1992, which led to the release of Space Amazon, and in 2014 we worked together to identify the band. He talked to guitarist Martin Butler and I interviewed singer Rick Prince for the piece. Order a copy of the magazine here.

Recently I’ve been in contact with Jeff Clark of the Austin, Texas act Too Smooth, whose self-titled LP was released by the purported tax shelter label Tiger Lily in 1976. Too Smooth recorded an album for Just Sunshine in 1974, but the label was acquired by ABC/Dunhill and their album was subsequently shelved—or so they thought. Jeff and his band-mates didn’t even know about the Tiger Lily LP, one that is now super-rare and highly desired, until a few days ago. There has been some speculation as to where the sessions that comprise the album originated from, but Jeff has confirmed the songs were in fact recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California for Just Sunshine.

Check out a track from the record, "Long Hair Drug Band" (a/k/a "Drug Band," as it's named on the Tiger Lily LP). It's a mighty fine slice of ‘70s southern hard rock.

I was doing some research tonight on a “tax scam” record credited to a group called Hotgun, when I discovered that early lo-fi collaborators R. Stevie Moore and Victor Lovera appear on the LP. As was often the case with these types of records, the label never notified the artists, and Mr. Moore just told me he had never heard of the record (it came out in 1977). Here’s one of the fantastic RSM/VL songs included on the Hotgun LP:

When the uninitiated ponder Iggy Pop, they likely think of his proto-punk band The Stooges, or recall the Motown swing found in the ubiquitous solo number, “Lust For Life.” But not only does the man have a slew of additional material he recorded on his own, much of it doesn’t resemble what most would categorize as typical Iggy Pop. So, with the imminent release of the first Stooges album with James Williamson in forty years, Ready to Die, let’s check out five Iggy tracks that might take you by surprise. And hey, today just happens to be his 66th birthday.

1. “Funtime” (The Idiot, 1977)

Goth is a genre that one doesn’t usually associate with Iggy Pop, but his post-Stooges debut has many of the shadowy markings that would later be associated with it, and “Funtime” could very well be its ground zero. As with the majority of The Idiot, a dark fog permeates this track, but its the lyric “Talkin’ to Dracula and his crew” that helped make the song a touchstone for future Goth groups like Bauhaus, whose first single was an homage to The Count of the silver screen (“Bela Lugosi’s Dead”). Bauhaus front man, Peter Murphy, even covered “Funtime” on his album Love Hysteria.

2. “New Values” (New Values, 1979)

For his third record, Iggy fully embraced the emerging New Wave. This approach is most evident on the title track, where keyboards are featured prominently and a vocoder is used near the song’s conclusion, giving his vocal an inhuman, robot-like tone. As he often does in song, Iggy finds himself in a world lacking principles (“I’m looking for one new value, but nothing comes my way”), but as with most of his work there’s a playfulness here that offsets the bleak worldview, what with its handclaps, driving guitar and occasional smile-inducing lyric (“I’ve got a hard-ass pair of shoulders.”).

3. “Eggs on Plate” (Party, 1981)

If Party was Iggy’s attempt—at his record label’s insistence—to create an album suitable for the Top 40 marketplace, then “Eggs on Plate” is when that plan goes off the rails. Here Iggy is fully rebelling against the idea, calling out the powers that be and their promises of victory, wondering, once success arrives, “Who does my name belong to then?” In fact, he’s perfectly content with his four walls, thank you very much. But those walls often seem like they’re closing in on our hero, and never before had it sounded as if he might be cracking up mid-song (though, like many Iggy numbers, it’s just as silly as it is serious). It’s a wonder this subversive track, which is also profane and not politically correct, even made it on an album that was supposed to be his golden ticket (it wasn’t).

4. “Cry For Love” (Blah Blah Blah, 1986)

As much as Party was his first stab at commercial success, no previous Iggy LP sounded more like the year it was released in than Blah Blah Blah (“Baby, It Can’t Fall” bears a striking resemblance to Huey Lewis and The News, for crying out loud). But on even the weakest of Iggy’s solo records there are gems afoot, and “Cry For Love” is one of them. Co-written by Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, it includes a line that could double as Ig’s raison d’etre (“’Cause imitation’s boring”). The presence of strings—hit-or-miss in rock-n-roll—here only adds to the power of the track.

5. “A Machine For Loving” (Preliminaires, 2009)

Both Preliminaires (2009), and the follow-up Apres (2012), his first solo albums since the Stooges reunited, can be viewed as the yin to that band’s yang, with Iggy going for a sound that doesn’t much resemble rock at all. These records are largely jazzy affairs, with Iggy singing in French on many of the tracks. “A Machine For Loving” is a beautiful, atmospheric ode to dogs. It’s a genuinely touching tribute, paid not just for the unconditional love they offer us, but also for schooling us on the very idea of love.

Fifteen years ago, back when I was co-editing and writing for Rebel Route magazine, there were reports that after the huge success of The Beatles Anthology collections (the multi-disc sets of outtakes released as companions to the massively popular documentary TV series, The Beatles: Anthology), even more unreleased material was going to see the light of day. So, I came up with six songs I wanted included on the next compilation, and we published the article in RR. Unfortunately, no such set ever materialized (ok, I’ll face it—these reports were nothing more than rumors). Still, I would love to see those recordings on an upcoming collection of Beatles outtakes—if such a thing were to actually appear again.

“The Beatles – 6 More From The Vault” was included in the third issue of Rebel Route, dated Summer, 1998. Four of the songs had been bootlegged at the time of writing, but the other two still haven’t slipped through the cracks. Here’s the article:

During 1994 and 1995, EMI-Capital Records released six CDs (nine LPs) worth of unreleased Beatles’ recordings to coincide with the British-produced documentary television special, The Beatles: Anthology. While this more than satisfied the average Beatles fan, it left collectors and diehards wanting more. The audio series, Anthology, did included a horde of previously unavailable outtakes, many of which had, in some circles, grown to legendary status, yet many intriguing tracks have remained in the can. In 1999, The Beatles are expected to relinquish more of this material, so we have compiled a wish list of six tracks we would like to hear in the coming year.

1. “She’s A Woman” (Take 7, EMI Studios, London, October 8, 1964): On this day, The Beatles recorded seven takes of the McCartney rocker “She’s A Woman” (take six was used for release). What at first sounds like a standard run-through, ends with a bit of jamming—Lennon scales his fingers up and down the fret-board, while Harrison squawks it up on slide—and some extremely odd yelling/screeching from McCartney that is truly beyond words (when else has he made those sounds?).

2. “I’m Down” (Shea Stadium, New York, August 15, 1965): The Beatles began their only 1965 U.S. tour by playing, at the time, to the largest crowd ever assembled for a rock concert (attendance exceeded 55,000). In an interview segment for Anthology, a stone-faced Ringo Starr stated that during this show Lennon “Just went mad. Not mentally ill, I mean, just got crazy.” In the clip, John is seen playing the electric piano with his elbows, hitting wrong notes (instrumentally and vocally), and whooping it up in typical Lennon fashion—albeit atypical for the concert stage. John later defended himself by saying that he had never played the piano before during a performance and that “I really didn’t know what to do ‘cause I felt naked without the guitar. You know, I was doing it for a laugh.”

This version of “I’m Down” documents what may be the only time one of The Beatles improvised on stage (their concerts lasted, at most, thirty minutes, and were often lip-synced due to the fact that neither they, nor the crowd, could hear them above the screams) during the hectic and often stressful days of Beatlemania.

3. “Untitled” a/k/a “Carnival Of Light” (Take 1, EMI Studios, London, January 5, 1967): The Beatles were commissioned to record a piece of music for an event christened “Carnival Of Light,” which would take place at the Roadhouse Theater in London later in the month. After recording a vocal for “Penny Lane,” McCartney took charge of the session and The Beatles laid down the basic track—which at thirteen minutes and forty-eight seconds was their longest unbroken track to date.

The recording of many overdubs followed, including distorted guitar, drums and organ, as well as various sound effects and tape echo. John and Paul added vocals, screaming various random phrases. Producer George Martin reportedly called this session “ridiculous,” but the tape for “Carnival Of Light” was The Beatles’ first taste of the avant-garde, and a hint of things to come in the strange, experimental tracks—“Revolution 9,” “What’s The New Mary Jane,” “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)”—they would produce in the future.

4. “Helter Skelter” (Take 3, EMI Studios, London, July 18, 1968): The holy grail of the unreleased, this twenty-seven minute take of McCartney’s bruising “Helter Skelter” is the longest unbroken Beatles recording. The first three takes—basically rehearsals—of “Helter Skelter” were recorded on this day, and all three were extended workouts. No overdubs were ever recorded. Take two was, unfortunately, edited down from over twelve minutes to under five for Anthology 3, but it is take three we are waiting for anyway. On October 9th of that year, Paul raided EMI’s library for his own copy, but otherwise, take three has remained in the vault.

5. “Stand By Me” (Twickenham Film Studios, London, January 8, 1969): During the filming of Let It Be, The Beatles got nostalgic and ended up embracing songs from their youth. Ben E. King’s signature tune “Stand By Me” was one of many oldies The Beatles played during those sessions. What makes this one special is not the band’s performance—which is characteristically sloppy, as they were playing these songs on the spur of the moment—but McCartney’s operatic interpretation. What begins with a few rounds of “Figaro, figaro, figaro” at the end of the first verse, eventually develops into a full-fledged Pavarotti-esque vocal. Hysterical.

6. “I Lost My Little Girl” (Apple Studios, London, January 24, 1969): After two weeks at Twickenham, The Beatles moved to Apple Studios and began recording material that would eventually make up the Let It Be album. “I Lost My Little Girl” is the first song Paul McCartney ever wrote (at age fourteen), but the lead vocal on this version is handled by John Lennon (The Beatles had previously recorded this song in 1962 for their Decca Records audition tape). You can hear McCartney, off-mike, feeding long-forgotten lines to Lennon (“Her hair didn’t always curl,” being one), and later singing a nice harmony vocal. “I Lost My Little Girl” remained unreleased in any form, until McCartney recorded a version of this Buddy Holly-inspired number for MTV’s Unplugged in 1991, nearly thirty-five years after it was written.

And here’s a bonus track of sorts, one that would’ve made the cut, had I been aware of it at the time of the original article.

7. “Bad To Me” (Demo, c. May 1963): With a melody that is simply irresistible, this stands as one of the finest tunes Lennon and McCartney gave away to another artist. “Bad To Me” was made to order for Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas, and their version was released in July 1963 (and made it to #1 in the UK), not long after this intimate John Lennon home demo of the song was recorded.

With David Bowie fans the world over totally psyched for The Next Day—his first album in ten years (and out this week)—CIRCA5 lays out five vintage Bowie recordings you may have missed:

1. “Can’t Help Thinking About Me”

Credited to David Bowie with The Lower Third and released on a 45 in 1966. Written by the future Ziggy, this is the very first song he recorded after changing his last name from Jones to Bowie, and it’s one of the highlights of his pre-“Space Oddity” period. Fantastic title, too.

2. “Let Me Sleep Beside You”

Taped for the BBC in 1969, this was the public debut of another notable early song.

3. “Lightning Frightening”

A bluesy folk tune with hints of R&B and rock, this 1970 recording was included as a bonus track on Ryko’s 1990 reissue of The Man Who Sold The World. That version of the album has long-since been deleted, thus “Lightning Frightening” is long gone.

4. “My Death” (final Ziggy concert, 1973)

Written by Jacques Brel, it was Bowie’s hero Scott Walker who had it translated into English, and it’s Walker’s version he is covering here. Bowie had been performing the song live, but since this is the last time he would appear as Ziggy Stardust, the airing is filled with so much more meaning. Surely emotions were high for such an event, and during his execution of the ending verse of “My Death,” what seems to be a tear turns up on Bowie’s face. Playing off audience members' attempts to fill in the final line, he coyly omits the closing lyric.

5. “Foot Stomping”/I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” (The Dick Cavett Show)

Here’s a covers medley from a 1974 TV appearance. What’s immediately noticeable is the familiar guitar riff, which would soon be used to great effect on one of Bowie’s biggest ‘70s hits, “Fame.” It's often said that his guitarist, Carlos Alomar, stole the phrase, but the riff is nowhere to be heard in the original “Foot Stomping” by The Flames. Duly, Alomar received a share of the writing credit on “Fame.” “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” is a jazz standard with its own controversial history (it was likely based on a Louis Armstrong number, but it wasn’t formerly credited to him). A so-so quality taping of the medley was released (though without Bowie’s consent) on Rarest One Bowie.

Listen to CIRCA5 #2 via the YouTube playlist.