Sunny Day Roses / Marathon RecordsJuly, 1995 Newsletter
Sunny Day Roses / Marathon Records"as you travel along life's way, don't forget to stop and hear the Roses!"
Post-holiday greetings to you all! It was great to see many of you at the Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, IL, over the July 4th weekend. The fest was a blast, and way too short, in my opinion.
The big thrill for me was being joined onstage by my favorite saxophone player, Dan Michaels of the Choir. Dan played during "Me," "Bean," and "Blue." I couldn't hear everything he was doing, but what bits that did filter over to stage right were inspiring. Besides, it's just cool to have a guy onstage with dark shades and a giant Jesus watch playing the sax like he means it.
Most of us got back to Los Angeles on the 4th. Everyone made it back just fine, and just in time for our Saturday night show at the Coconut Teaszer in Hollywood. We played downstairs in the Crooked Bar; we're slotted to play the Main Room on August 20th. The soundman at the Crooked Bar did a really good job; that's something we're not accustomed to at club shows! The room was full, and we ran through a short set (50 min.), dragging out one of our favorite covers - "Driven to Tears" by the Police. I happily discovered that I did rememb er the solo...
Lewis' solos sound good whether he remembers them or not.
The next night, we played for a ton of kids at Coast Hills Community in Aliso Viejo. They gave us free Snapple. We were happy.
Sunny Day Roses has released an Ep cassette to hold us over until we
can finish our CD. The cassette has 8 songs, plus a few other surprises.
We had our tapes duplicated direct from the DAT master to Nakamichi MR2
decks in real-time, so the quality is quite good.
The cassette is called the "bLOOMsHINe!" Ep. It's 38 min., 37 sec. long.
Chris Scott from the Metro One act Precious Death guests on one song, the earthy "Dig." He sounds great. He ought to; his band was nominate d for two Doves this year, and he's been consistently placed at the upper end of various reader's poll lists for favorite vocalist over the past couple of years.
Our CD will be made once we have another 7 or so songs recorded. If we're
going to pay for this thing, we want it to be nice and long. I'm not
sure when we'll have a chance to record and produce another 30+ minutes
of material, but hopefully it will happen this fall. In the meantime, if
you pick up the tape from us for $5, you'll have a $2 off coupon for the CD,
once it arrives.
The cassette is also available through True Tunes (1-800-669-TRUE).
In the good news department, a small Sony-distributed label named Magna Carta has expressed interest in one of my favorite bands - Animator! The guys are back together working on 75 minutes of new material, which blows their first album's worth of material out of the water, in my humble opinion. And I like that record ("Gallery"). The new material that I have heard is a little less old-school art rock, and incorporates some of the more modern progressive styles of Dream Theatre, King's X, etc.
The Electric Revival is keeping busy in Europe, having just headlined at the Cross Rhythms festival in England. They'll be playing the Flevo Totaal festival in Holland later this year.
Able Cain is doing a lot of regional shows in the Northwest. They're playing the legendary Warehouse in Sacramento this month. Matt is quite pleased that Robert Fripp put out a new King Crimson record ("Thrak").
I dig "Thrak," (hey, Adrian Belew's on it), but I think that ten years was too long to wait after "Three of a Perfect Pair."
Jars of Clay put out an indie CD, and Belew produced two songs for them. I'm jealous. :)
Soulstice has a new cassette Ep, too. It's called "Bill's Toasty." I don't care what anyone says, these guys are way better than Hootie and the Blowfish, and the comparison is off anyhow. Soulstice needs a deal.
Love Coma did get a deal, with R.E.X. Their record is due out this fall. Mike Roe produced, and did some minimal playing on the album. I stage teched for Mike during the 77s Main Stage show at Cornerstone, and arranged for Love Coma drummer Chris Dodds to come out on stage during the show in order to take up Roe's dare to moon him during the set. Roe was off somewhere in Electric Ladyland, and didn't even notice Dodds' shiny hiney from 18 inches away.
Some of you know that I'm a Michael Hedges fanatic. Well, recently I've learned of another guitar whiz, Bill White Acre, who has been described as something like "Michael Hedges on 10." I still love Hedges, of course, but White Acre can do the business. He's about to get signed, and will be playing in Hollywood at the Downbeat on July 21 at 10 p.m. See him now, if you can.
Gene Eugene just put out a new Adam Again album, "Perfecta." The lyrics are so intensely personal they hurt. The band's Cornerstone set was a blast.
Mike Knott's record with his band Aunt Betty's Ford should be out on Elektra Records soon, probably in September, from what I understand. Serious cow-punk attitude gut level angst-driven rock and roll, with a killer hook in every song. ABF will have a single on the upcoming "Mall Rats" soundtrack. I'm still hoping to snag Andrew Carter for a solo on the Sunny Day Roses CD. :) He's a busy guy these days...
The details are sketchy, but there's a label that is considering a re-release of the Farewell to Juliet CD, "Echoes of Laughter!" Wow! The original line-up would probably get together to record a few new tracks, if this all works out. Otherwise, we plan to do another record late in '96 anyhow.
If you would prefer to be removed from this mailing list, just send me an e-mail and let me know. If you know someone who'd like to be added to the list, have them send their e-mail address.
To contact us through the regular mail or by phone, check the info below. Be sure to check out our Website, if you've got access to Mosaic or Netscape. Miles O'Neal at Net Ads did an amazing job. The URL is listed below.
------------------------------------------------------------ | http://www.netads.com/music/marathon | ------------------------------------------------------------ | Jeff Elbel | SunnyRoses@aol.com | w (310) 525-5518 | | | | h (310) 355-0533 | ------------------------------------------------------------ Marathon Records * PO Box 1222 * El Segundo, CA * 90245-6222 ------------------------------------------------------------"If all the trees were bread and cheese, there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living." - GK Chesterton