Because we were invited to be a part of this Alex Chilton tribute night, we will be making our live debut as a 5-piece on Friday, September 24th at Off Broadway.

Details about the show from KDHX.

The official Facebook RSVP.

Of special interest is that our bassist Steve Scariano will be playing in THREE bands this night: us, Jans Project and with Edward Burch. But he will NOT be playing a single Big Star song. So you need to come out to find out how this is even possible!

$10 to get in and all the money goes to KDHX 88.1 FM, the best radio station on the planet.

I’ve been playing drums since I was 9 years old. I took my first lessons at Baton Music in the U City Loop with a rental snare and a Beatle haircut. A year so later I received my first drum kit, a cheap, used Apollo with blue sparkles, the kind of thing teenagers probably got for Christmas in the 60’s.

I eventually studied with Tom Stubbs of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and learned marimba and xylophone and tympani.  I actually considered being a professional musician until I had to decide where to go to college and I just knew I was better at visual art then I was at music.  I did not have that obsessive drive to practice ALL of the time. Though, my parents were always supportive; they bought me the kit I still use to this day: a set of Pearl drums with fiberglass shells and a chrome finish.

Brian onstage with Octave (or Periodic Drip!). That's future Love Expert Tom Fulton on guitar.

I started my own rock band in junior year.  We never did come up with a decent name.  Mostly we were Octave, but briefly we were Periodic Drip (don’t ask). I’m still tight with the bass player Larry, and the guitar player was Tom Fulton, who later became an original member of the Love Experts.  We did all covers by obvious bands Beatles, Stones, Who, Pink Floyd, The Cars, and even pulled off a good version of “Yours is No Disgrace” by Yes.

I am a Who freak and even though I don’t try to play like Keith Moon he still is my favorite. All the great bands have had great drummers.  They made the bands great.  Period.  Starting with Ringo. Other drummers I admire are Al Jackson Jr., Simon Kirke, Steve Gadd and Bernard Purdie.

Brian at Abbey Road in 1983.

After college I kind of retired from playing because I was establishing my career as an artist and eventually a college professor.  No drumming until 1999 when I started jamming with a bunch of Webster Groves folks who got together most Fridays, drank martinis and beer and did mostly blues and 70’s covers.  In 2001 I joined City Heat a band formed by a guitar playing lawyer who was trying to change careers. We rehearsed every Tuesday in a huge house in the CWE for about a year.

When my wife Debbie and I finally bought a house in 2005 I was able to play again because I finally had my own basement! And I decided I was actually gonna get good at drumming and started taking lessons once a week with Steve Lord at The Drum Headquarters.  We have never had a bad lesson and I have become a better teacher by becoming a student again. Improving my skills and gaining the confidence and admiration of other musicians has been tremendously gratifying and has led me to being in the Remodels.  I really have John Ellis to thank because we have worked together so much for the past 18 months and it has led to this project.

Brian playing with Lisa Warner and John Ellis

Surprised he left this out, but we won’t! Brian is also an accomplished painter. See his work here.

Summer 2010, and The Remodels have resurfaced as an actual band with an actual show or two to get good for. For now, we’re live from a basement in Webster Groves with new members. Like  John “Professor” Ellis on guitar (above left) joining original Remodel Toby Weiss (above right).

Above is Brian Smith, drummer extraordinaire, who opens up his basement and libations to us while their dog Jasper keeps running commentary upstairs.

And while Steve Scariano (above) used to be The Remodels’ Andrew Loog Oldham, he is now our bass player!

And Steve “S3″ Staicoff (above) is back on board for one night, guaranteed! What night is that, you ask?

We’ll make our debut as a full band on Friday, September 24th, 2010 at Off Broadway, proud to be a part of  September Gurls & Boys: A Tribute to Alex Chilton & Big Star.

If you’re on Facebook, here’s the invite and details about the show. We’ll have more details as it draws near.

And we’ll have more details about The New Guys in the very near future, as well as updates on future plans as we figure them out.

Oh, and look to the top right of this blog page. There’s free mp3 downloads of the original Remodels tracks from about a year ago. Take one down and pass it around.

MP3: This Is Love - The Remodels

George Harrison is the coolest Beatle, OK?

Jeff Lynne is completely responsible for keeping George musically productive in the 1980s, and his signature sound is marvelous, within proper context. In the case of some of the material on Cloud Nine, his production had a tendency to suck the life right out of the song.

“This Is Love” was just such a victim.
So, what did this song originally sound like, when George sat under a tree in his garden, strumming on a ukulele?

We stripped the song down to its (surely) simple origins, found the magic, and rebuilt it using classic All Things Must Pass sounds. And it goes like this:

MP3:  Girl Don’t Come - The Remodels

A cover of the Sandie Shaw song, remodeled with this starting inspiration:

What if Plastic Letters-era Blondie were to do this song?

And here’s what we came up with:

MP3: Johnny & Mary - The Remodels

“Johnny & Mary,” despite the video, is a great single from Robert Palmer’s 1980 album Clues.

Robert Palmer…. le sigh. He was always an adventurous, sophisticated songwriter and musician who changed his look every time he changed his sound. Because he was so debonair and such a musical shape shifter, it feels like he never got the serious respect that he didn’t require from us. His sudden death in 2003 was a genuine shock, and a tragic end because he left too soon.

The song is a dialogue by 3 people: Johnny, his wife Mary, and a narrator in the chorus. Johnny is red, frantic and high strung. Mary is sardonic, resigned and blue.

Robert Palmer used incessant confinement as the key to his tale, and the Gary Numan-esque (it was the heart of the new wave era) electronic tone underscored the emotional detachment. But there was a sad humanity in the story needing to be pulled out.

The song is energetically colorful, like a Kandinsky painting: Johnny red, Mary blue, narrator green. Here’s what we put onto a new canvas:

]]> http://www.theremodels.com/johnny-mary-9/feed/ http://www.theremodels.com/love-is-alright-tonite-8/ http://www.theremodels.com/love-is-alright-tonite-8/#comments Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:55:00 +0000 admin http://www.theremodels.com/2009/01/love-is-alright-tonite.html .

MP3: Love Is Alright - The Remodels

Once upon a time, Rick Springfield was a right good power-popper. Hitting soap opera, teeny bopper mega-success at the same time diminished his musical accomplishments in some eyes.

Working Class Dog still holds up as solid and exuberant professional power pop record. It’s got the songs, it’s got Neil Gerlado playing guitar and bringing along his wife’s producer, Keith Olsen, for the big radio hits.

“Love Is Alright Tonight” is classic power pop, but how would it hold up if given a country swing arrangement? We tried it that way, and it was good, but too frantic. The arrangement changed to an Eagle’s “Heartache Tonight” feel, and this is how it plays out:

MP3: What Makes You Think You’re The One - The Remodels

Do you remember the packaging for the vinyl version of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk? It was the most perplexing thing. Blessed was the day it came out on CD because it was now - finally - easy to access.

Did you ever make a cassette compilation of just Lindsey’s song from Tusk? We did, too. It’s been stated best in 3 More Reasons Why Lindsey Buckingham is a Genius when he writes:

“In 1979, while the rest of the band were clinging to the 1970s like grim death, he cut off his hippy locks and put on make-up and women’s suits and played his version of punk songs.”

Family drama was a key component of the Fleetwood Mac magic, and there were several “Stevie, piss off!” songs on Tusk. Here’s a less manic take on one of them:

MP3: When You Walk in the Room - The Remodels

Jackie DeShannon was a peer of Carole King, Ellie Greenwhich, and the other women songwriters who cranked out major hits for other artists. Even though she was not a shadow character in the film Grace of my Heart, some of her fabulous wardrobe seemed to have made the cut!

This lady dated Jimmy Page before the Zeppelin debauchery, wrote many amazing songs and sang so well that Burt Bacharach recruited her to sing some of their best material (hear a “Lifetime of Loneliness”). She is an all-arounder, in the best sense.

Uptempo and ready to kick unrequited love to the curb is how most people know “When You Walk in the Room,” but change a few things and it becomes a sad song of love lost that goes something like this: