The Counterforce No. 58

Damien Youth, The Elevator Drops, Replaced By Robots

Life is unfair. Not any more so for artists than anyone else, but with my huge love of music and knowing of so much criminally uncelebrated, heck even unheard, talent, it’s over this field I’m often venting heavy sighs. Looking at my Bandcamp purchase history, it was January 12th I first heard and immediately bought the David J-compiled Damien Youth collection Secret Doors Inside The Rain, just released by Glass Records. Since then I’ve bought 25 of his releases as I make my way through the 58 on his Bandcamp and still have 20 to listen to. I’m thrilled about this. Especially as you get older, it’s harder and harder to find artists with a vast back catalog to get into. The last time I remember this happening was in 2013 when I realized I really needed to explore The Church and Steve Kilbey’s discography. And as I listen to Damien Youth, picking a couple albums/EPs and going on a long walk in the wonderful winter weather - I’ve come to love this time of year, the scent of chill in the air - well, I’m continually blown away by Damien’s vast talent, and inexhaustible reservoir of melody, not to mention brilliant lyrics. I don’t know why this guy isn’t a superstar, or at least more widely known. I’ve been messaging most of my friends, and even the ones with the most obscure record collections haven’t heard him. I keep thinking too about who the world considers ‘great songwriters’ - people like Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Billy Joel… - and yeah, I like a couple songs by each of those guys, but even putting all those tunes together they don’t add up to anywhere near the number of Damien Youth songs I love. Or Mikey Georgeon songs. Or Goolkasian’s (more on him later). Watching part of the Grammys the other night reinforced this. Chappell Roan and Doechii were awesome and deserve the praise but the rest of the music started to sound very samey very quickly to me, even more apparent than usual that most of this stuff is manufactured to manipulate the ears and heartstrings. As time goes on they’re getting better at that too, more of a concerted effort to push out any real artistry. I’m not saying anything new here. Secret Doors Inside The Rain is the only one of Damien Youth’s albums on the subscription streaming services. Which makes me happy in a way, recalling the days of yore when you had to seek stuff out. Wish I had known about him in the 90s, that would’ve made good quests. Like I said there’s 58 releases on Bandcamp plus some secret stuff, and more on Discogs that people aren’t selling. I’ll highlight a few here.

The Throne, another of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard

The Fortune Teller. Great melody, great lyrics. This whole EP is fantastic

Thinking of covering these last two. If you follow me on my socials, you might have seen I did some acoustic renditions of Venus Kissing Mars and Lovers Of Today last weekend

I mentioned the even harder to find stuff. I came across the wonderful Mr. Jewel Went Away credited to Damien’s Julian Starr alias

I love this tune, and got the skinny on it from Mick Capewell:

“Damien and I used to be members of an old Psychedelic forum years ago, before Facebook and Twitter and all of that stuff. I posted something about a spoof 'privately pressed' album, by 'The Devil May Cares', complete with band personnel (all names from England's 1966 World Cup winning team). One of the 'song' lyrics I posted was Mr Jewell (I happened to see a headline about football manager Paul Jewell being sacked). Damien saw it and told me he would record it as a psychedelic epic. As it turned out he did it acoustically. There it would have ended, except that another friend, Mark Frumento (Sunshine Pop expert) insisted that the song be included in the Toytown Pop selection we did on Marmalade Skies - The Home Of British Psychedelia, so more people heard it than I ever thought would.”

Check out Mick’s radio shows here, and he’s also at Radio Free Marseille

I’ve really been enjoying doing The Counterforce podcast again, hopefully bringing attention to some of these artists - musicians, writers… - who I feel really deserve a wider audience. Much appreciated if you wanna check it out, even more if you wanna rate/review/subscribe. I’m starting to put some of the interviews on YouTube and here’s last week’s with Ali Smith, whose The Ballad Of Speedball Baby is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read

And before we get to this week’s guests, I’ll take this opportunity to tell one of my favourite stories.

When I moved to Boston in 1994 to go to school, my very first weekend there I went to see Sonic Boom’s E.A.R. - Experimental Audio Research - at The Middle East Downstairs and little did I know how much of an impact this was going to have on my life. Back in those days even moreso I wanted to hear absolutely everything so I made sure to get there for all the opening acts. And the one this evening was pretty much everything I was looking for in a band – they had incredibly catchy new wave-y type songs but with really spaced-out and noisy awesome guitars. And they looked bizarre. The singer slash bassist had dreadlocks down to his knees, the drummer wore an orange jump suit, and the guitarist had this rad orange-polka dot shirt with an ascot and green and white striped trousers. And they all wore face paint like a demented version of KISS.

They were called The Elevator Drops. A cool name too. I bought both their 7”s and even a t-shirt that night. And would follow them around whenever they played in Boston. The following March I even went to Tower Records at midnight to buy their debut album the day it came out. I think I was the only one. But I freaking loved it.

And when my sister moved to Boston two years later, I took her to see them at Bill’s Bar and she was into it too. The band would move to LA and tour with Pulp, Garbage, and Echo & the Bunnymen, but I guess they were just a little too weird to actually break big, despite this being the music I always wanted to hear. It didn’t help that they were a band of merry pranksters as well. When local Boston label, Cherry Disc, were putting out a Van Halen tribute cd, the Drops sent in a cover of The Police’s “Invisible Sun” labeled “Van Halen – Hot For Teacher”. The cd was mastered before anyone spotted the joke. And they were thrown off Blur’s The Great Escape US tour after only two dates, allegedly for the Oasis sticker on their kick drum.

Their second album People Mover is in my Top 25 Albums Of All-Time. Starlight still one of the best songs I’ve ever heard

Though it should be this album cover

The band broke up shortly after this record and through mutual friends I got to know them all. When I was moving back to London in January 2005, their drummer came to my goodbye party and spent the whole evening talking to my sister in the corner. At the end of the night he came up to me and said ‘Aug, would it be cool if I asked your sister out sometime?’ Now he didn’t need to ask my permission of course but I really did appreciate the gesture because since high school most of my friends were head over heels for my sis and they always made it very weird. So I replied ‘that would be awesome’. And I’m pleased to report they’ve been married for 17 years now and have two awesome kids. So yeah, this always reminds just how amazing being a part of music is, that stuff like this happens.

I would play in singer/bassist Goolkasian’s solo band The Texas Governor for a couple years, which was fun, and he did the vocals for one of my favourite songs of mine, Boulevards In Blume

It’s funny how messages are conveyed sometimes as last week Goolkasian commented on an Instagram story of mine about a particularly potent-smelling batch of kimchi that he and his wife Heather have a new band going with Adam Wade - Replaced By Robots. Being a huge fan of Goolkasian’s many projects, I immediately checked the mini-album and am loving it. It kicks off with a surf-rock freakout psychobilly cheerleader chant, this heralding three killer new wave tunes that take you to that special place music does - dancing on a summer evening under fireworks

My current favourite is Are We Falling In Love Or Am I Just Losing My Mind?

So I asked them to be on the podcast and we had a great conversation. Full episode at that link but here’s a clip below. Stick around to end to hear a very funny story from Goolkasian about meeting Ric Ocasek when he wanted to produce the first Elevator Drops record

Who’s going to AWP this year? I’ll be attending for the first time and am stoked as I’ve heard so many great things from authors the past couple years. I’d love to read at some off-site events if anyone has a spot for me.

I’m also looking to record a lot of new music this year. If you like this newsletter and the podcast and would like to help me raise some funds for that, you can buy my books and music here