Michael Penn has 'Lost Time' on his mind

(Jan. 30, 2000)

Michael Penn couldn't help but stare at a sign outside the Public Works building in Burbank, Calif., near his recording studio.

The sign read, "Days since a lost time accident." Penn repeated the phrase to himself over and over again, like a loop playing in his head.

No wonder he ended up using it as the title for his fourth album, "MP4 (Days Since a Lost Time Accident)," out Feb. 1 on Fifty Seven Records/Epic.

"On this sign, there were all these sort of titles under it, like sanitation, streets, signs, etc.," Penn said recently. "It was showing how many days these departments of Public Works had go by since they had an accident that cost them time.

"It had a connection with how I was feeling. It had a connection with the songs as I started to think about it. First I started to think about it in terms, 'Well, that's perfect for making a record.' I'm working at the Public Works and I'm doing my best to sort out these things and communicate them. It also sort of made sense in terms of relationships, like 'How long do you go before you get in an accident or a situation that costs you time?' Everybody's just trying to work and get through their life."

"MP4" covers the emotional gamut, from the witty "Lucky One" - "I must be the lucky one/the luckiest in Luckydom; Who reached the moon/but wound up numb; Now that I've had my fun/here comes the millennium" - to the introspective "Don't Let Me Go."

It's his most sure-footed and focused album since his promising 1989 RCA debut, "March."

"The kind of lyrics I like generally sort of straddle that fine line between being very conversational and being very emotional," Penn said. "These songs are a way of getting out all the things you're thinking about and capture some kind of emotion and share a little bit of information. For me, it's like working through my past and ideas about things. That's the fun thing to me about songwriting: make it rhyme and communicate it."

Aside from "Lucky One," which was produced by Fifty Seven Records founder Brendan O'Brien, "MP4" marks Penn's first time producing himself. Along for support are Penn's longtime keyboardist Patrick Warren and drummer Victor Indrizzo and backup vocalists Grant Lee Philips, Buddy Judge and Penn's wife, Aimee Mann.

(Penn and Mann recently opened a three-week tour together, which includes a four-day stint at Joe's Pub in New York in mid-February.)

Penn also lent a hand on The Wallflowers' long-awaited album, which he co-produced with Andrew Slater (Fiona Apple, Macy Gray). A title and release date are pending.

"We're in the mixing stage of that album," Penn said, laughing, "but you know what? I have a gag order on it. I'm not talking about it. I'm not talking about it."

Instead, he's upbeat about "MP4" and its ambitiousness.

"It was really nice to be able to do it myself," he said. "I'm really thankful to Brendan for letting me do it and having the faith in me."

Penn has certainly earned it. The older brother of actors Sean and Christopher Penn, he and Warren toiled in the post-new wave group Doll Congress in the mid-1980s before he landed a solo deal with RCA in 1989. That fall, "March" was released, and much to Penn's surprise, the single "No Myth" peaked at No. 13 on Billboard's pop chart in early 1990.

"No Myth" still has a life of its own, having appeared in several 1990s hits compilations recently. Penn finds it baffling.

"I never imagined it would get on the radio to begin with, and it's really the only one of my songs that ever did," said Penn, forgetting that the follow-up "This & That" reached No. 53, "but that's just the way the business works. It's the only time I ever had a record company really decide to turn the switch on. I've made records since then that I think are every bit as good."

At this point in his career, he's just happy that Epic is distributing "MP4." Whether another hit song is forthcoming is up to the marketing people, he says.

"A single to me is a great song. It's nothing else, and it has never been anything else," he said. "I didn't go in making the first album thinking that 'This song is a single, this one is a single.' At the end of the day, I knew that some of it might have been more attuned to radio than others. But there was nothing on the radio at the time like 'No Myth.'

"It was like somebody decided to put the money behind that song, and people heard it enough because of radio exposure and MTV exposure to be able to have a chance to respond to it. That's true with any good song, that if people hear it enough, they'll have a chance to respond to it. For me, my job is to make every song really good; therefore every song is a potential single, and I don't get in the way of that issue. That's for record companies to think about. I try to do my job, and hopefully they'll do theirs."

THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: "It was some Disney album, probably the soundtrack from 'Snow White' or 'Mary Poppins.' "

THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "David Bowie at the Universal Amphitheatre. I think it was during his 'Diamond Dogs' period. By then, I already knew I was going to be in music. I started playing the guitar when I was 6; I didn't know what I was doing, but I was interested in music and radio, singing songs and learning chords."

THE LAST CD I BOUGHT: "I think it was the last Wilco album. I love Wilco."

BWF (before we forget): There's no myth about it, Michael Penn's on the Web @ www.michaelpenn.com. ... The Michael Penn album discography - "March" (RCA, 1989); "Free-For-All" (1992); "Resigned" (Fifty Seven Records/Epic); "MP4 (Days Since a Lost Time Accident)" (2000).

Ex-4 Non Blonde Linda Perry soars high with 'In Flight'

(Sept. 12, 1996)

Fans and critics have been asking Linda Perry the obvious question: Why did she leave 4 Non Blondes at the peak of the pop-rock band's popularity?

One listen to Perry's absorbing debut solo album, "In Flight" (Interscope), and they will be pondering the more reality-based question: Why was she in 4 Non Blondes in the first place?

That sentiment brings an uproarious laugh from the dauntless singer-songwriter.

"That was the first band I've ever been in," Perry said recently from her San Francisco home. "(Bassist) Christa (Hillhouse) was in 18 bands, (drummer) Dawn (Richardson) was in 15 and (guitarist) Roger (Rocha) was in 12. Before 4 Non Blondes, I just traveled around San Francisco with my guitar and showed up at places and asked if I could play.

"I wrote my own songs at my own convenience, rehearsed in my bedroom or in the bathroom, whenever I wanted. There was no schedule. I was actually very happy and content doing that, and I started getting recognition in the city. Then all of a sudden, this band came and asked if I wanted to be in it, and I thought it seemed fun. So, 'what the hell, why not?' "

It was fun ... while it lasted.

The quartet's debut album, "Bigger, Better, Faster, More!" (produced by David Tickle), stretched rock's boundaries with a fusion of acoustic folk, blues, funk and electric rock. It wasn't embraced immediately; in fact, it sold only 8,000 copies within 12 months after its May 1992 release.

Then a Las Vegas disc jockey latched onto the nervy, slow-burning track "What's Up," highlighted by Perry's powerhouse voice, and it snowballed from there. Before they knew it, they had a gold-plated single, the album sold more than 5 million worldwide and they were playing at the MTV Video Music Awards, with Perry's dreadlocked mane and funky hats at centerstage.

Somewhere along the line, things changed. It became less fun and more of a pain for Perry.

"When I first joined, I didn't play any of my songs; I didn't bring any songs in," she said. "I just sang their songs that they wrote. I was like this punk, a complete freak the whole time. And then they were about to kick me out because I wasn't taking it serious, never showing up to practice, always late to shows."

Perry said she heeded their warning and brought in songs she had been working on during sessions for their follow-up album, but by then it was too late.

"I decided to leave because they wanted to stay with this pop-rock thing," Perry said. "I thought, 'It's time to move on, you guys, we did it already. Let's go do something different.' They were very influenced by the commercialism, safe environment, money in the pocket, people-are- going-to-see-us-play-because-we-write-pop- songs thing. I wasn't like that."

Now on her own, Perry took time off and immersed herself in Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon," listening to it daily. She became obsessed with the legendary album's song-to-song mood swings. Not so surprisingly, she thanks Pink Floyd for "Dark Side" in the liner notes of "In Flight."

"I was completely influenced by that album, and I'm not afraid to admit it," she said. " 'In Flight' isn't a mini-concept album, I call it more of an audio diary, where I'm expressing my feelings. Yes, sometimes I get (screwed) up and sometimes I'm really happy and I get a little depressed. It's about a person going through these emotions, which are very normal and natural."

"In Flight" creates a sonic atmosphere for visualization in the mind, Perry said, and it's apparent from the opening cut, "In My Dreams," and on through to the closing title track. "The last song is saying, 'Hey, everything you've just heard right now, this is what I am, this is what I'm going through, and everything's going to be okay,' " Perry said. "If there's a concept, that's what it is."

In between, tracks such as "Freeway," "Fill Me Up" and Perry's eminent pairing with Grace Slick on "Knock Me Out" form a palatable package.

Just getting Slick on her side was well worth the ride.

"Grace Slick is an overwhelming character," Perry said. "I love her. She has this really powerful presence that you feel like a little mangy dog that runs around her and wags its tail. That's how I felt around her.

"I begged and groveled and pleaded, 'Please come down and just listen to my record and I guarantee you'll like it. I know you will.' I heard she doesn't like any female musicians except for like Chrissie Hynde and Patti Smith. She hates all these newcomers, calls them 'wimpy girl singers.' I called her and I said, 'I'm not a wimpy girl singer.'

"She came down to the studio and I played it to her, and I was sitting right there and I was completely stressed out and nervous. I'm thinking 'What if she hates my record?' She ended up loving it and said, 'What do you want me to do?' I said, 'This is the song I want you to sing on,' and she kind of wrote her own lyrics and went for it.

"She's so cool. I think it's more of a deal to me than I think people might get. I don't know how to explain it. I just feel like I got a pat on the back from a peer, that I must be doing something right."

BWF (before we forget): Check out Perry on the Web @ www.rockstarrecords.com.

The sound of Pet: They were made for these times

(Oct. 10, 1996)

Demo tapes of Los Angeles-based singer Lisa Papineau's band, Pet, somehow made the rounds of the labels even before she and guitarist Tyler Bates and drummer Alex LoCascio played their first gig.

If only it were this easy for bands to get discovered.

"The very rough demo tapes that Tyler and I were making," Papineau said recently, "someone was circulating them around. Then we played our first show and it was filled with A&R (artist and repertoire) people.

"It was really kind of frightening. It was way too serious for that to be happening, because we didn't have a chance as a live band to, you know, suck. We didn't have a chance to be horrible and stinky and sound bad. Which is really too bad, because I think it set us back a little bit. People were expecting it to be great. The music needs to develop organically. You can write the songs and work on them and record them, but there's a whole different element when you play them live for a whole bunch of times. That needed to happen."

Pet still won over Tori Amos' manager, Arthur Spivak, who convinced Amos to hear them out (one listen to Papineau's bellowing vocals is all it took). From there, Amos and Spivak formed their own label, Igloo Records (distributed by TAG/Atlantic), with the direct intent of offering Pet sounds to the rest of the world. The band's self-titled debut album was released Sept. 3.

"I know she didn't want to babysit anybody," Papineau said of Amos. "She doesn't have time, she has her own thing going on. Apart from the music, I think she and Arthur also saw that we could get the job done. They didn't need to hold our hands.

"That was really what we were looking for, because people sometimes treat musicians like stupid idiots. To have them say 'You know you're job, just do it' was a huge, huge thing. It gave us so much confidence."

Much of Pet's first sessions took place last winter at Amos' studio in Ireland.

"It was amazing," Papineau said. "I'm kind of a bumpkin. I was out of the country maybe once before that. It was in the middle of nowhere in a house. There was no sterile walls or really strange-looking carpeting. It was a real home with real ghosts and real kitchen smells. We wanted to make this as live-sounding as possible, and everything just clicked."

Peter, Paul & Mary trace 'LifeLines'

(April 6, 1995)

As he did 28 years ago with "I Dig Rock and Roll Music," Noel (Paul) Stookey pokes fun at the music industry and, in a way, himself on "Old Enough (Ode to an Aging Rocker)."

The track off Peter, Paul & Mary's faithful-to-folk album, "PP M& (LifeLines)," out April 11 on Warner Bros., puts it all in perspective with clinchers like, "My generation has rediscovered me/Now I'm on the cover of Modern Maturity" and "I'm picking up strange vibrations/I hear my songs now on oldies stations."

Stookey said it's not uncommon for artists, even those with the stature of Peter, Paul & Mary, to deal with a fading image as they move out of the limelight.

"But then I came to grips with the fact that folk music really doesn't die," he said recently from his Massachusetts home. "I think we were popularizers more than innovators, frankly, and I wonder if we really still aren't.

"We certainly bring an earnest desire on our parts to communicate the music, and perhaps after 35 years we've gotten good at that."

Since forming in New York in 1960, PP&M have been one of the best-selling folk acts: Eight albums have sold 1 million or more copies each; their self-titled debut spent seven weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's album chart; they've had six Top 10 singles, including "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" and "Blowin' in the Wind," and their last chart hit, "Leaving On a Jet Plane," went No. 1 in 1969.

On "PP M& (LifeLines)," it all comes full circle for the trio, Stookey said. With Phil Ramone at the helm (he produced their heralded "Album 1700" in 1967), they bend but don't break the folk rules in teaming with such legends as B.B. King, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, Emmylou Harris, Richie Havens, and most amazing of all, the remaining members of The Weavers (Pete Seeger, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert).

After a few relatively successful albums since reuniting in 1978, they never had doubts they had this kind of album still in them, Stookey said.

"So much of it is the material," he said. "We knew we could perform, but the fact that all of this material should end up on the same album, that's the surprise. I don't think we knew what a terrific album we had until we finished it."

The three have been touring, off and on, since late February. Of the upcoming dates, the most intriguing comes May 4 at Kent State University on the 25th anniversary of the National Guard shootings.

BWF (before we forget): The Peter, Paul & Mary album discography - "Peter, Paul & Mary" (Warner, 1962); "Moving" (1963); "In the Wind" (1963); "In Concert" (1965); "A Song Will Rise" (1965); "See What Tomorrow Brings" (1965); "Album" (1966); "Album 1700" (1967); "Late Again" (1968); "Peter, Paul & Mommy" (1969); "10 Years Together" (1970); "Reunion" (1978); "No Easy Walk to Freedom" (Gold Castle, 1986); "Holiday Concert" (1988); "Flowers and Stones" (1990); "Peter, Paul and Mommy, Too" (Warner, 1993); "PP M& (LifeLines)" (1995); "LifeLines Live" (1996).

Reborn Mike Peters rises to the occasion

(Oct. 11, 1998)

Life today is good for Mike Peters. He's in two bands, his third solo album is due this week, he has plenty more albums in him, and he's living like there's no tomorrow.

He has incentive: Three years ago, his doctor told the former Alarm leader that he had lymphoma. Part of him was in denial, another was preparing himself to die.

His spiritual side won.

"At first, I found it very hard to accept what the doctor was telling me," Peters said recently. "I thought, 'I'm not ill. No way. I don't feel ill.' There's no cure for cancer, but there is a greater plan out there, and you have to find it."

Because he had a busy touring and recording schedule ahead of him, Peters convinced doctors to hold off on radiation treatments for three months. It bought him time, allowing him to study up on the disease and alternative healing methods.

"I read all these books about self-healing," he said. "I went to a faith healer, and she told me green was a powerful color. I dressed in combat fatigues, because she told me I was in a 'psychological combat zone.' At that point, I was ready to accept anything. I thought I was the crazy one for turning down the treatments, but you just have to follow your instincts."

Peters kept his illness to himself and his circle of family and friends. Fans of the affable singer-songwriter, who fronted the popular Welsh rock quartet The Alarm from 1981 to 1991, were kept in the dark. For his own good, he wanted everything and everyone to be positive.

"I was lucky, one of my friends that I did confide in was a guy named Chris Anderson," Peters said. "He was great when I was going through my personal situation. But within weeks of me being given the all-clear by the doctors, he was diagnosed with cancer himself and he only survived another six months. He went from looking fantastic, then - wham - it took him so quick. He left a wife and a lovely kid behind. That was another reminder for me, doubly emphasizing what could've happened to me. There by the grace of God go I. It put everything into even more perspective."

Peters returned to the studio in 1996, finishing his second solo LP, "Feel Free." While "Feel Free" was understandably introspective, considering the circumstances, Peters says his EagleRock/Velvel debut album, "Rise" (due Oct. 13), is "truly the new me."

"Here I was pretty much preparing myself for the end of my life," he said, "then I had a huge turnabout and was given an all-clear. When you go through an experience like that, it does focus your mind. It made me sort the wheat from the chaff. There was a creative destruction I went through musically, mentally and physically, the way I live and the way I conduct my life.

"If a lot of things weren't working, I figured, 'Well, let's move on to something else.' I've done that at various times in my life, like when I started The Alarm. There was a song we did called 'Unsafe Building' about burning the bridges and leaving your past life behind and moving forward and not being afraid to take chances. There's definitely an element of that in this new record. There's a line in (the new track) 'Ground Zero' about 'from new destruction comes new creation,' and I've definitely been through that with this album. That's why a lot of people are attracted to this record; it's rooted in stuff that you know about me and it's rooted in similar foundations to what began The Alarm."

The Alarm scored 14 U.K. Top 40 hits and a slew of successful albums, eight of which charted in the United States. But after 10 years, even though the friendships were intact, the magic was gone. The band broke up in 1991, and Peters went in search of himself.

"I felt that since I had left The Alarm, I've been trying too hard to make music and trying too hard to justify myself and trying to fit way too much into the records," he says. "It's natural when you're on the rebound from a band, and I've tended to be on the rebound for quite some time."

Peters flourishes with "Rise." Sandwiched between the scorching, electronic-tinged opening and closing tracks "White Noise Part II" and "White Noise Part III" are songs of faith, hope and clarity. The U.S. release contains three bonus tracks, including a raw, snarling version of Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five's "The Message."

"I first heard it performed by Grand Master Flash when he was supporting The Clash on tour," Peters said. "It was sort of verbal punk rock; I heard a lot of similarities between that and (Bob Dylan's) 'Subterranean Homesick Blues.'

"Some DJs in Wales heard my acoustical version of it and asked me if I could send them the vocals, because they wanted to do a track based on sounds they were importing into their computer. I sent them the vocal and they sent me the track back and I thought it was amazing. When I went in to make the record, I took them into the studio with me and I had them set up in a studio next to mine.

"We would have these kind of musical editorial meetings in the morning and I'd play them what I had been creating with my band and they would say, 'Can I have a sample of the drums and a bit of the vocals?' Then they would disappear into their labyrinth of technology and we'd reconvene again in the evenings and I would say, 'Well, I would like that back for my track. I'm going to take that passage to link me from this track to that one.' I used them probably in a way, say, the Beatles would use the sitar on 'Sgt. Pepper' and go off on tangents for a few seconds in the midst of their beautiful rock music. I took some of the science of that from what the Beatles applied in the '60s but in a different form in the '90s, using electronic music as a setting for these songs I had written."

The first single, "Transcendental," in fact, melodically owes a great deal to John Lennon, circa "Mind Games."

"I'm a massive Beatles fan, and I always have been," Peters said, "but it's only been with this record that I've really allowed for that to influence and color the songs in an obvious sense. Up to this point, it wasn't obvious that Mike Peters was a Beatles fan in the music from The Alarm or since. Again, with this record, with all I've been through, I wanted to make a very open Mike Peters record, which reflects the love of music that I have, and that's rooted in the Beatles. I don't live that far from Liverpool so that's a natural influence that I've allowed to come out by being a bit more open to who I am and something I'm not."

Former Cult guitarist Billy Duffy performs on "In Circles," which he co-wrote with Peters, and the fierce "Burnt Out Syndrome." They enjoyed their collaboration so much they have teamed for the side project Colour Sound; a limited, four-song EP is available on Peters' Web site. They hope to release a full-length album next year.

As for "Rise," Peters says he's expecting nothing but hoping for everything.

"I find that people are sort of suspicious of records these days," he said, "because they get so overhyped and they've only got one song on them that sounds good. Bands are having huge careers on one song now; their whole career lasts five minutes. I'm not competing on that level with those kinds of bands. I feel I made a record that's as good as anybody has made in a long time, I really believe that. I know it's a great record, I've made enough bad ones to know a good one."

BWF (before we forget): For more on Mike Peters on the Web, visit www.demon.co.uk/alarmpo.

Pet Shop Boys still rule the dance floor but not the airwaves

(Sept. 19, 1996)

Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys has just received a fax from the pop duo's new record company, Atlantic Records. It is filled with good news.

Their new album, "Bilingual," like the others that have preceded it, is a true international smash. It's No. 1 in Indonesia, Israel, Hong Kong, Poland and many points between.

The jury is still out in the United States, where Tennant and bandmate Chris Lowe now enjoy critical and industry praise they sorely lacked 10 years ago when they debuted with the No. 1 hit, "West End Girls," while radio airplay today is non-existent.

Their last studio album, "Very," sold a respectable 600,000 copies stateside in 1993 and they illuminated the dance charts with such pop-pumped hits as "Can You Forgive Her?," "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing" and a rousing cover of Village People's "Go West."

American radio has stayed out of the Pet Shop Boys' global village, and Tennant expects more of the same with "Bilingual," in spite of radio-friendly cuts like "Se a vida e (That's the way life is)," "Before" and "Discoteca."

"This is one of the great inponderables," Tennant said recently from his London home. "I just think (radio) thinks we don't fit in with what's happening now, and who's to say they're wrong in that.

"The great thing about the 600,000 people who bought the last record, they bought it because they liked it, because they heard it was good. It got no radio airplay at all in America, and the sense of achievement you have in selling 600,000 albums is pretty amazing."

What's more astonishing is that the Boys' main champion now is the media.

"Yeah, because in the '80s the critics used to slag us off," Tennant said. "In the early '90s, when the album 'Behaviour' came out, I remember Rolling Stone (magazine) made a major turnaround and decided that the Pet Shop Boys were okay. And the reason is because we don't have hits anymore.

"We became a kind of alternative. Of course, in America, alternative is now mainstream. We are a part of the real alternative, and I quite like that. It would be great if we were No. 1, but what we have at the moment is a lot of respect from people for what we do. It's really great."

Tennant says they even feel out of place in their native Britain, where "Se a vida e," one of the group's most instantly accessible songs ever, is climbing the Top 10.

"Recently, music in Britain has been very parochial, very British," he said. "It's the Brit pop thing with Blur and Pulp and Oasis, but it's about Britain a lot of the times. The Britain they sing about really doesn't exist anymore; it's kind of nostalgic music to me.

"At the same time, we're part of the European pop community, and I like to think of myself as European, rather than just British. I also like to think of us as part of the world as well."

In their travels around the world, Tennant and Lowe became exposed to other musical styles, awed mostly by Brazilian dance music.

"Latin music is really the foundation of much dance music and disco in the '70s," Tennant said, "and we decided to bring some of that into our music. We've always liked very energetic music, up records, and Brazilian music is so energetic."

It's particularly apparent on the album's opening track, the jolting "Discoteca," which is amplified by a phalanx of drums that segue into the contagious "Single." Interestingly enough, it's not Brazilians playing drums - it's a Scottish female group called SheBoom.

"These women make their own drums and there's about 70 of them," Tennant said. "We got 20 of them to play on the record. Really, it's a great noise, a great, loud, exciting noise. We could've gone to Brazil and made the record there, but we didn't want to make a Brazilian record. We wanted to take and add that in our own Pet Shop Boys, English kind of way. It's a different approach and an exciting sound."

It also negates a perception that Pet Shop Boys music is synthesizer-based and unorganic.

"People in the United States think we're still one of those '80s synth duos," Tennant said. "We've never had any purest approach to synthesizers. We've always, since our first record, used guitarists and sax players and live percussionists, singers. Chris and I play keyboards live. We've always brought in outside musical sounds, also because it gives you a better sound quality."

Tennant has just one piece of advice for American consumers: "Listen to 'Bilingual,' because I think it's a better album than 'Very,' and I'm famous for being the Pet Shop Boys' biggest fan. I think we've written some of the best songs we've ever done."

BWF (before we forget): The Pet Shop Boys album discography - "Please" (EMI America, 1986); "Disco" (1986); "Pet Shop Boys, actually" (EMI-Manhattan, 1987); "Introspective" (1988); "Behaviour" (EMI, 1990); "Pet Shop Boys Discography - The Complete Singles Collection" (1991); "Very" (1993); "Disco 2" (1995); "Alternative" (1995); "Bilingual" (Atlantic, 1996).