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[Cellars]
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Garageland
The Charms and the Downbeat 5
BY BRETT MILANO

There was more than one garage revival going on last year. The big national news was the emergence of a couple of well-hyped bands from Sweden and Australia. But 2002 was also one of those years where the Boston scene rediscovered some of the great basic rock and roll that’s been sitting right under its nose.

The revival has been an inclusive, multi-generational thing: dozens of club shows over the past year have seen warhorses like the Lyres and Real Kids sharing bills with lately established bands (Mr. Airplane Man, Muck & the Mires) and relative upstarts (Coffin Lids, Triple Thick). But there are two bands in particular who’ve been at damn near every gig, either to play or to shout encouragement: the Downbeat 5 and the Charms. Both make their CD debuts this month: the Charms with Charmed, I’m Sure (Red Car), the Downbeat 5 with their homonymous disc on Sympathy for the Record Industry. Both bands can be caught February 22 at the Abbey Lounge, when the Charms guest at the Downbeat 5’s CD-release show.

The Charms’ disc is the kind of thing that hasn’t been heard in far too long: a thoroughly convincing disc about being young, free, sexed-up, and in love with rock and roll. The first minute of "Top Down" will tell you where they’re coming from: Joe Wizda kicks it off with a riff that Ron Wood could’ve played in the Faces, and then frontwoman Ellie Vee sings about smoking cigarettes and cruising in a ’57 convertible. And as if that weren’t enough, the chorus features a shout of "Radio on!" — a conscious echo of the Modern Lovers’ battle cry in "Roadrunner."

Elsewhere they sneak the riff from "Louie Louie" into "Saturday" and drop a lyric reference that power-pop diehards will surely recognize ("It’s tragic baby, that I’m your September girl"). Vee also writes about discovering secrets about boyfriends on men’s-room walls and stealing someone else’s date over a night of ’70s videos ("Watching T. Rex’s movie again/Elton John was kinda cool back then/Cooler back then!"). The garage sound is in there — it has to be, since organist Katrina Kina took Farfisa lessons from the Lyres’ Jeff Conolly — but given the bubblegum leanings and the overall exuberance, it winds up closer to the first Blondie album.

"We’re the backlash against emo and angst rock — we shock people with our happiness," Vee notes over dinner with her bandmates. Wizda mans the house CD player, shifting among T. Rex, the Small Faces, and the Ohio Express as Vee continues: "Writing angst-free songs isn’t as easy as people think. But I have a built-in creepy meter; I feel creepy when I write certain things. I’m not real good at writing intensely personal, confessional things — I have a lot of those songs, but I wouldn’t play them. Because I’m friends with a lot of ballbusters, some of whom are in this band." Adds bassist Pete Stone, "I’m so sick of that crap anyway — losers from the suburbs whining about their lives. What I love about this band is that it’s so simple and straightforward — you don’t have to be a fuckin’ Pavement fan to like us."

Although most of them are still in their 20s, the individual Charms have been around the block a couple of times. Vee was in the poppier Flexie, drummer Dennis Burke was in a couple of rockabilly bands, and Wizda worked at the Kenmore Square club Narcissus long enough to carry Ace Frehley’s amp. But Kina has the most colorful background: she grew up in Russia and studied to be a concert pianist before getting her hands on a vintage Farfisa organ. "It makes me feel powerful," she says. "It’s like my personality comes out when I play a Farfisa, like I can start screaming. My parents were dissidents who had a band in the ’70s, so they’re very proud of me." Summing up her bandmate’s style, Vee recalls watching her add a piano part to "Roses Are Red," the disc’s one ballad: "I walk into the studio and she’s playing this beautiful part on a Rhodes while she’s chewing gum, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, and looking generally nonplussed."

Which brings up the Charms’ considerable degree of on-stage sex appeal. "It’s all because of me," notes resident wise-ass Stone. Vee brushes that off: "I was a total dork in high school, so it’s news to me. With Kat and me, it’s something we’ve gotten used to — ‘Yeah, maybe we should wear something sexy on stage.’ But this band has never planned anything. It’s been more like, ‘We have a Farfisa? Okay, great. We have a Russian in the band? Sure.’ " Still, the Charms have been commuting regularly to New York to build a fan base, so they’re serious about looking for a breakthrough. At the very least, they plan to last until their third album, so they can use the title Third Time’s the Charm.

THIRD TIME has also been the charm for JJ Rassler, who’s had three long-term bands over three-plus decades. In the late ’70s, he founded the highly combustible DMZ with future Lyres leader Jeff Conolly; that outfit surprised everybody by launching a recent string of still-fiery reunion shows. Next came the Odds, who played a zillion club gigs, mostly in Worcester and the suburbs, through the ’80s and ’90s but never quite caught on in town. He also dropped in and out of the Queers a few times, as guitarist and producer.

So when Rassler started feeling the bug again two years ago, he needed to be seen as part of a new, up-to-date band and not a veteran making a comeback. To that end, he hooked up with a bunch of enthused young guns — bassist Mike Yocco, drummer Dan McCarthy, and his wife Jen on vocals and guitars. They took every gig they could: the Downbeat 5 (who are in fact a quartet, JJ explaining that "five sounds better than four") have averaged a show every weekend for the past two years. And they’ve generated a buzz, more because of the music — a punked-up mix of soul strut, Dolls/Ramones guitars, and Brill Building pop — than because of Rassler’s history.

And JJ? He’s having the time of his life. "I feel like an 18-year old," he says as he hands over a promo copy of the CD during a lunch break from his day job at Rounder Records. "And I can tell that I sound like a geek, but I’m way excited. I’m afraid to say anything that would jinx it, but this is the most fun I’ve had in years. If there’s a garage revival going on, cool. And if people are coming to see us because of it, cool. But this is just coming out naturally; all we’re doing is playing the music we like." Staying true to their school, they gave the CD a cover photo of the band on stage at the Abbey.

If anything proves that the gods of rock are with the Downbeat 5, it’s the way they got signed: they were playing a gig at the Middle East when a record-label owner caught their set and gave them a contract on the spot. True, the label was a hip indie instead of a big conglomerate — Sympathy’s owner, known as Long Gone John, was in town to catch another of his signings, Mr. Airplane Man — but it sure took the band by surprise. "He comes up to me after the show and says, ‘Hey, you guys wanna make a record?’ And I thought it was a rhetorical question, so I just said, ‘Yeah, sure we do’. I’m used to things happening a little more formally than that." As it happened, they’d also been in touch with an old friend, former Raunch Hands member Mike Mariconda, who was running a studio in Austin. They spent a week down there just before Christmas, laying down tracks between runs for barbecue.

It’s a considerably different album from the one the Downbeat 5 might have made 12 months earlier. For one thing, the Rasslers’ originals have caught up with their stash of cover tunes. Of the 14 tracks, only three are covers; one of those — "Radiates That Charm," by Arthur Alexander — is especially killer, but so is "I’m Not Waiting," an original in the same neo-Mod style. The band have also found themselves a tougher sound in recent months, toning down the girl-group influence and jacking up the soul backbeat. The CD brings out two elements that aren’t always apparent at live shows: Jen’s sexy growls and JJ’s love of fuzztone, the latter bearing out his admiration for Billy Childish and Thee Headcoats.

"We wanted to sound like the records we really dig — open room, big live sound," he explains. "We didn’t go for that lo-fi sound, since that’s gotten a little predictable. And we didn’t want it to sound too slick, ’cause we ain’t that. As close as possible to the way we sound at the Abbey, except you can hear the vocals better." As for the change in style, "We were afraid of getting pigeonholed. The girl-group thing was a pretty obvious introduction to a band with a female singer, but it wasn’t the only thing we were going for. We love things like the Dolls and the Stooges too, but that’s so obvious that we play it down. If we’re anything, it’s what it says on our business card — Rock and Roll Quartet."

Issue Date: January 30 - February 6, 2003
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