Shannon Mier
Not Too Late

It sure is easy to piss people off.

My off-handed comment two weeks back about Shannon Mier's new disc Not Too Late being too amateur to warrant my review, followed by the conjecture that I was "pretty sure I wrote all these tunes in junior high myself" inspired no fewer than ten e-mails of protest-- almost three times as many as the entire "Grammy/mammy" debacle (see last week's column). Says something about the pride versus social welfare dynamic around here, doesn't it?

Shannon's letter in particular was a scathing assault on my worth and a challenge to my songsmithy (which he's clearly never heard-- I'm sure he'd love it). I thought it was hilarious. A song duel. Good thinking. Maybe we can go head-to-head on pay-per-view.

Not. But in an effort to avoid neglecting Not Too Late its moment on the table, I've been listening to it. After all, the guy sent it over here with a request that I review it-- he'll want the truth, won't he? Welp, here goes:

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First, Mier's several defenders are right, this doesn't totally suck. These friendly and familiar garage-scapes littered with leftover hippy-band two, three and four chord lean-to tunes appointed with absorbently simple melodies, make pretty fun listening once you get over the slack-and-sleepy vibe. I'd even wager that if it were a fair bit wierder, some of the alternative rock staff at WTJU might enjoy its lo-fi earnestness.

But unfortunately, it's straight outta white bread city: an audibly freshman foray into underprocessed puffed pastry product. Spicy like mayonnaise with stock high-school-journal-scrawl lyrics exploiting every single predictable rhyme scheme to its grating fullest. Add to this Mier's voice which needs serious work and aging, and you've got a disc that verges on coolish for a moment or two but mostly sounds like the churn of stock suburban cheap studios. Twenty bucks an hour in every minor metropolis. God bless 'em. God curse 'em.

There are some decent ideas about song structure and space, but they're wastefully buttressing a lack of experimentation in chord structure and lyrical content. Sonic quality is weak and quiet and the record, while enjoyable enough, manages to throw almost no punches and comes off kinda tired-- trying to go pop in a hippy-kid kind of way and ending up sleepy/silly.

I believe this is a one-off project at a tiny downtown studio (tell me you didn't print a thousand of these, please), but someone's going to have to raise the bar if this is to go somewhere. There's a band making this music, not just in every town, but on every block in most of suburban America. Literally.

I certainly wouldn't recommend giving up. There may be some quirky cool things brewing in Shannon's rash young heart yet, but Not Too Late isn't fully finnessing them. A nice momento for friends, fans and relatives, but a real piece of art? Barely.

+++

On the other hand, some people take blows like champs and keep coming back smiling. A local film-maker recently asked me to review his new movie, explaining, "I don't care if you hate it-- just review it." Any press, it appears, is good press.

Plan 9's sister company, Richmond-based Planetary records, has been gratuitously decked twice in this column (for literally no good reason) and the discs keep rolling in. Now that's eminent sportsmanship. So here's the latest:

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L'il Ronnie and the Grand Dukes
Young & Evil --Planetary Records

A hearty hell ya to a real-feel rock n' roll, boogie-woogie, swingin' blues and soul combo still strikin' a hard chord for the sock hops of tomorrow and doing so with full force-- not soft like so many varieties of retro cheesiness.

On Young & Evil (yes!), their second release for Planetary, the Grand Dukes sound big, nasty, gritty and soulful. Led by the vocals of harmonica huffer Ronnie Evans, the classically understated combo cruises like a vintage ride still under warranty. Check out the super-swingin' minimalist two-beat drum parts Bobby Olive dedicatedly delivers and the walking bottom Steve Riggs drops on top of 'em-- like Chicago in the fifties. Get a good tone and keep it simple, stupid.

L'il Ronnie himself is a decent vocalist in the drunk-with-the-blues tradition, sounding eerily like early Grateful Dead keyboard/vocalist Pigpen McKernan on the slow soul ballad "I've Been Your Good Thing." But he spends most of the record rockin' and blowing his washed-out blues harp like a timeless tea kettle turned black.

Anson Funderburgh guests on several tunes, sharing the fiery center and tossing the twang around with the band's regular shredder, guitarist Mike Dutton. Also bonus is the keyboard work of Steve Utt (faithfully comping on piano and organ) and the textural horn arrangements and tight on-the-spot solos of Terry Hummer.

One thing I don't like to hear is middle-age guys gone soft in historically tough-and-rumblin' mediums, and the Grand Dukes handily avoid it by staying up with the jump and generating the authentic strolling tones of real old-school barroom rock n' blues bands. Maybe it's the years of Harley enthusiasm (L'il Ronnie thanks his mechanics in the liner notes), but something's keeping this band running like a low-rider on premium, and any listener who thinks a modern blues record should sound something like an antique blues record will definitely want to boogey out and bring home this sweet party platter.

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