From Under The Passenger Seat (Vol. I)
[Editorial note: Please welcome the newest contributing author to N2Notes.com, Jerry. His bio is available on the Authors page and you can visit his personal website at www.immunopressed.com.]
I’ll be writing the column “From Under The Passenger Seat” to pay homage to cassette tapes that were forever lost under the passenger seat of my 1973 Red Mercury Capri which I inherited at age 16 from my sister in 1986. When I crashed the car in 1988 and it was towed to the wrecking yard, so were the dozens (maybe hundreds) of cassettes of the artists who wrote the soundtrack for my teen years. You’re not likely to find a review of [tag]Bryan Adams[/tag] or [tag]Kajagoogoo[/tag] here, but with enough beers and a couple of requests accompanied by pictures of your bare breasts, I just might review those, too.
The Three O’Clock - “Sixteen Tambourines”
Long before the days of listening stations in music stores and iTunes preview buttons, the only way to find cool original music was to discover it on your favorite college radio station at four in the morning. Alternatively you could buy a random record or cassette tape at a second-hand record store without knowing what it was and mostly because you liked the cover art, only to find out when you got home if it was actually good or not.
The Record Exchange was my local record shop and since it doubled as a head shop, you might be able to guess the owner probably made more money selling “things” other than records and tapes. While I certainly found enough good music at the Record Exchange, I did actually hear the Three O’Clock on the radio before I bought the tape. There is a chance I may have purchased some other “things” at the Record Exchange to enhance my listening experience, but let that take nothing away from how good I think this album is.
The Three O’Clock formed in 1981 as The Salvation Army and later lost the rights to the original band name for obvious reasons. The band was part of a Los Angeles-based music movement in the early eighties called “[tag]The Paisley Underground[/tag].” The movement was an eighties style-revival of 1960’s folk/rock/pop music groups such as [tag]The Byrds, The Mamas & The Papas, The Doors[/tag], and the [tag]Beach Boys[/tag]. The most famous acts developed out of the Paisley Underground movement are [tag]The Dream Syndicate, The Bangles,[/tag] and [tag]The Church[/tag], but the term Paisley Underground itself is credited to the lead singer and bassist of The Three O’Clock, Michael Querico.
“Sixteen Tambourines” is very representative of the Paisley Underground style and you shouldn’t be surprised at all to hear tracks that remind you of all the bands mentioned above (the ones from the sixties and the ones from the eighties). Though they are all solid players there is no one stand out musician the band relies on for their sound. The songs are simple melodies and counter melodies, good harmonies, well organized and deliberate, and despite leaning on a specific style of music, still original.
This is an album I listened to about two thousand times before it was rotated, like most tapes I owned as a teenager, from the top of the passenger seat (where things were actually listened to) to under the passenger seat, where good music is often lost forever (depending on how often you clean out your car). I recently rediscovered the album on iTunes and it seems to have stood up to time and still remains one of my favorite albums. Now, the only way it can be lost again is if I misplace my iPod on the same day I accidentally erase my hard drive.
The band later went on to put out subsequent records on IRS and [tag]Prince[/tag]’s label [tag]Paisley Park[/tag], of which I owned neither. Apparently the group broke up in 1988 after their “Vermillion” album on Paisley Park flopped. During its existence, the band had several member changes, but most significantly for me is that one of the later members of the band was Jason Falkner. Falkner later helped form another one of my favorite bands, the now defunct nineties band, [tag]The Jellyfish[/tag]. Faulkner is currently a solo artist and his more recent releases are getting regular play on my iPod rotation (if nowhere else).
Key Tracks:
[audio:01 Jet Fighter.mp3]
“Jet Fighter” - the only track I ever heard on the radio and the one that inspired me to buy the album
[audio:02 In My Own Time.mp3]
“In My Own Time” - My favorite and one that conjures visions of Go-Go dancers shaking their asses in a huge bird cage.
