Buckwheat were a British band that eventually became the back up band for Captain Beefheart known as The Tragic Band. This 45 was I believe there first and was released in 1971.  Sounding rather like another Southern Rock combo here.  So break out “The Jack” (no not the Union Jack) and kickback with yer lady for a sweet ride down Carmel Mountain Road.

LISTEN/DOWNLOAD Buckwheat – Carmel Mountain Road

This 45 is available for sale.

Email: sonic.revolutions -at- sympatico dot ca

J.R. Cobb, American musician, guitarist for Atlanta Rhythm Section

Black Robot – Black Robot (2010, Formosa Records/Rocket Science Ventures)

1. “Baddass” … 2:28
2. “Cocaine” … 2:45
3. “Momma Don’t Cry” … 4:07
4. “Girls Kissing Girls” … 3:15
5. “Money” … 2:52
6. “I’m In Love” … 4:46
7. “In My Car” … 3:33
8. “Black Robot” … 2:28
9. “Love on a .45″ … 2:56
10. “Dissatisfaction” … 2:39
11. “23 Days of Night” … 3:11
12. “Stop the World” … 3:45
13. “Nervous Breakdown” … 3:21

Band:
Huck Johns – Vocals
Yogi Lonich – Guitars (Tracks 1-3, 5-10, 12, 13
Andy Andersson – Guitar (Tracks 4 & 11)
Jonathan “JB” Brightman – Bass
Devon Glenn – Drums

Producer: Dave Cobb

Black Robot (a great band name if there was one!) is good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll influenced by acts like Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Crowes and the Rolling Stones and even though the band doesn’t list them as an influence, I even hear a bit of Stone Temple Pilots. Much like The Last Vegas and Charm City Devils, there’s a cool retro vibe going for this band as they display a raw garage rock ‘n’ roll style that borrows from the 1970s and southern rock.

Oh, and one other band you might be able to draw a comparison to is Buckcherry. Which isn’t surprising because  Jonathan Brightman (who, along with Huck Johns, is the driving force behind Black Robot), Yogi Lonich and Devon Glenn all were members of that band up until it dissolved in 2002. Lonich and Glenn have since left Black Robot but gGuitarists Andy Andersson & Staffan Osterlind have stepped in, as has drummer Possum Hill.

To my understanding, this album was actually released in 2009 but the band went back into the studio with guitarist Andy Andersson (Osterlind hadn’t yet joined) and recorded two new tracks for this 2010 re-release.

Knowing the Buckcherry connection, I was immediately interested in hearing this band but somehow, despite the best of intentions, I ended up losing track of when the album was coming out. Luckily, the Gods of Rock had pity on me and the day after I had remembered to check them out, a review copy wound up in my mailbox! Talk about destiny!

“Baddass”, the album’s opener, sees the album off to a running start. It’s a great way to introduce people to the band. Loud rock ‘n’ roll where the singer sings about how bad he is? Who could not love it? Next up is what sounds like AC/DC doing a cover of  “Cocaine” (made famous by Eric Clapton, originally performed by J.J. Cale). Then there’s the jangly “Momma Don’t Cry” which I hear parts of STP and parts of Jimi Hendrix.

My absolute favorite track is the raucous “Girls Kissing Girls” (which has always been a favorite subject of mine) that sees the band back in AC/DC mode. The ballad “I’m In Love” is another album highlight bringing to mind ’70s southern rock and STP again. I think singer Huck Johns is a great voice throughout the whole album. He seems to easily capture Bon Scott and Scott Weiland, depending on what the song calls for.

Anyone who is a fan of the bands I have mentioned will enjoy this album. There are many great rock bands out there today, but there’s not many with as classic of a sound as Black Robot, so support real rock ‘n’ roll!

Highlights: “Baddass”, “Girls Kissing Girls”, “I’m In Love”, “In My Car”, “Black Robot”, “Love on a .45″, “Dissatisfaction”

www.blackrobotmusic.com
www.myspace.com/blackrobot

Just a brief bit of knowledge to lay on you: people say to stir martinis because shaking them bruises the gin. That’s a load of horse dung. What does happen is a shaken martini comes out cloudy for a bit until the bubbles settle out of it. In the nigh on 30 years I have been on this planet, I am still cloudy as to how to describe my tastes in music. I guess today, I am going to take you through how I came to listen to what I do. Who knows, maybe you will find a band or two you like from here. Incidentally, this is not just a random listing, these bands and, sometimes, songs are among my favorites. Without getting into a pedantic argument on how so many can be my favorite, let me say this: It does depend on mood. There is no one music I can listen to in any mood. To me, that is sort of like having the largest herb rack ever and only ever using black pepper. Additionally, it also depends on company. If I am around a group of more rock-oriented people, I pull back on the bluegrass/new age type stuff. Part of the beauty of music is getting together and sharing your love of a song/band/genre. Part of what is awesome about that is we do not all like the same things. This allows us all to be introduced to new music (and experiences in general).

My early life was spent going to various bluegrass festivals where a love of the fiddle, mando, and guitar was built. Groups like the Seldom Scene, Bill Monroe, The Dillards, Flatt and Scruggs, Del McCoury and Quicksilver, Red Clay Ramblers, and a host of smaller, not so popular bands recorded and live, sawing out a seemingly discordant mix of old-timey hymns and songs with as much nihilism, death, brooding emotion, and violence as gansta rap, industrial, emo, and metal can manage (e.g.,Cotton-eyed Joe, The Long Black Veil, The Fields Have Turned Brown, I Only Exist, In Despair, Banks of the Ohio, Knoxville Girl, Little Sadie, Tom Dooley, and many others I cannot call to mind). Something haunting about it — a sort of, “here’s hell, but here’s heaven, too.” This has carried on to my modern music tastes, where I still enjoy listening to these bands and songs. In time, I have added more along with the modern extension of bluegrass: the Jam Band.

I was introduced to the Jam Band with the Grateful Dead. Touch of Gray, was a fun song. It made me decide to give the group a chance. When I did, I was wholly surprised to find that I knew many of the songs already but was intrigued by the use of electric guitars and drums in many of the songs (bluegrass bands tend to not use drums — rhythm is kept by a bass or mandolin in most cases). From there I expanded out to bands like the Dave Matthews Band, The String Cheese Incident, Of A Revolution (OAR), Tony Rice, David Grisman, Wide Spread Panic, Guster, Phish, Bella Fleck, Victor Wooten, Sam Bush, Trey Anastasio, so on and so forth.

So another music style I was exposed to as a wee one was Southern Rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Band (Canadians, I know, but musically Southern), The Allman Brothers, The Doobie Brothers, ZZ Top, Molly Hatchet, .38 Special, are the bands that I do not have to think to hard to conjure up. The blues/boogie influenced sound always brings memories of hanging out on the river, field parties, and just good friends in general. More to the point, this started laying the foundation for my interest in Blues.

As a younger person, I never fully appreciated the blues. Sure my parents divorced, but it was early enough that for me the two of them not together seemed more natural than not. I had not lived through enough heartbreak or tragedy to fully appreciate it. Now, there are some times when cracking a beer a playing some Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Bobby “Blue” Bland, B. B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and others is just what the doctor ordered.

But back to Southern Rock and more modern bands that can be called that: Now I find myself listening a lot to bands like Cowboy Mouth, Seven Mary Three, Our Lady Peace, Better Than Ezra, Buckwheat Zydeco, Shinedown, Black Crowes, Band of Horses, Drive-by Truckers, Gov’t Mule, 3 Doors Down, and probably more.

The next major influence was Led Zeppelin. Notice that I am not saying “classic rock” or some such genre. My father lived and breathed the Zep. I think this is the band that gave me an appreciation for complex music. Yes, some of their songs are mind numbingly simple: Bon-Y-Aur Stomp being a fine example. However, the way their music was structured — layers of different instruments, willingness to put songs like Battle Of Evermore on the same album as Blackdog, I don’t know — there’s just something about them that is more succinctly and eloquently said elsewhere than I could manage. Well, the Zep got me going down a darker road of rock than Southern would lead. From there I got into Aerosmith, the Beatles, Guns and Roses, Deep Purple, Cream, Clapton, Jethro Tull, Hendrix, Frank Zappa.

Now strangely enough, I have managed at some point to really like some New Age stuff as well. I love some Gregorian Chant, Adiemus, and Enya at times. Throw in some showtune/operatic music by including some Charlotte Church, Andrea Bocelli, and Sarah Brightman as well. I have no clue where liking this comes from, but I do.

Now I have seemed to breached the topic of female vocalists. In general, I love female lead rock bands. From Drain STH to Flyleaf and all points in between, I am a fan. Pop-punk like Paramour, rockers In this Moment, Lacuna Coil, Kittie, Evanescence, Hole, Garbage, No Doubt (first three albums), Blondie, Joan Jett, Dresden Dolls, Pat Benetar, Lita Ford, Siouxie and the Banshees. Rasputina, even though they have sublimely ridiculous lyrics. Hell, I even like Fiest. Get over it. Jewel, Janis Joplin, Toni Braxton, Michelle Branch, Leanne Rimes, Natalie Imbruglia, etc.

Wow, this is going on forever and I have not really gotten into my favorite period of music: the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Counting Crows, Collective Soul, Hootie and the Blowfish, Wallflowers, Blues Traveler, Matchbox 20, Bush, Live, The Goo Goo Dolls, Everclear, Train, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Dashboard Confessional, Fuel, Lit, Harvey Danger, Greenday, Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphies, Stroke 9, Beck, Butthole Surfers, Juliana Theory, Jars of Clay, Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies, Temple of the Dog, Local H, The Offspring, Cake, The Verve Pipe **not the Verve**, Placebo, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soul Coughing, REM, Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, Radiohead, Primitive Radio Gods, Oasis, Soundgarden, Blink 182, Wyclef Jean, Weezer, and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

I became a teenager in the 90s. I moved away from home, mixed with some massively different people than I had been around prior to this point and it is because of them that I expanded out this far. There are musics that are very important to me that I have left off because if I keep going it is just going to end up being a list of my cd collection. I had started with this with the intention of showing how my tastes evolved over time from three main sources; however, some of the leaps I have made in tastes make no real sense. I mean, how does one honestly come to like Beck? He almost begs you to dislike it through strange timings, even stranger structure, and bizarre lyrics. Two turntables, imo. I still have not touched on country, R&B, jazz, rap, and classical — along with other random music I enjoy like the Virginia/North Carolina College scene or the Gulf Coast Rock Scene styles. I haven’t much to say that is deep or anything along those lines about this. I do, however, want to express my gratitude to these artists and the many others that make the music I love. I envy your ability and am thankful you decided to share it.

Alkaline Trio/One Man Army Split
(alkaline trio songs only)
Hating Every Minute
Dead and Broken
Sadie
Fine Without You
If You Had A Bad Time
Blackout (The Damned)

myspace

Alkaline Trio/Hot Water Music Split
Queen Of Pain
While You’re Waiting
Rooftops
God Deciding
Russian Roulette
Radio
Bleeder

myspace

Agony and Irony
Burned In The House
Calling All Skeletons
Help Me
Maybe I’ll Catch Fire (Acoustic)
In Vein
Live Young, Die Fast (Acoustic)
Into The Night (Acoustic)
Do You Wanna Know?
Lost & Rendered (Acoustic)
Live Young, Die Fast
Love Love, Kiss Kiss
Lost & Rendered
Ruin It
Into The Night

myspace

The Barrie, Ontario band King Cobra just launched their MySpace on the 18th of January. The Hardcore, southern rock influenced quintet rises out of the ashes of the late McCarthy. Along with the MySpace, they announced the pre-order release of  their self-titled EP, with the official release date still pending. Their song simply entitled “King Cobra” shows similarities to
McCarthys southern rock infused writing but portrays a new direction and a heavier sound.
Check out King Cobra HERE

Mark Trojanowski, American musician (Sister Hazel)