Joe Satriani does Hendrix proud

(March 29, 1998)

Joe Satriani, arguably the premier rock guitarist of the past decade, isn't afraid to celebrate his roots. For him, all roads still lead back to Jimi Hendrix.

Before setting the rock world ablaze with the platinum-selling "Surfing With the Alien" album in 1987 and treading where few instrumentalists have gone since, Satriani taught guitar for 10 years. Among his students were Steve Vai, Metallica's Kirk Hammett, Counting Crows' David Bryson and Larry LaLonde of Primus.

Satriani considers himself a student, too, and the greatest lessons he learned, he says, came from Hendrix's mesmerizing talent and tragic life. "Hendrix still managed to be the greatest electric guitar player of the century," Satriani said recently, "but at the same time he just battled with a completely screwed up lifestyle and a completely screwed up support group that led him to an early grave. Regardless, he's still my favorite guitarist of all time."

The electric guitar has changed little since Hendrix came along, Satriani said.

"He did so many things so differently," he said. "He changed the way people accepted the electric guitar in popular music and everybody, including myself all the way to every guitar player you've ever heard - you might argue that Eddie Van Halen is probably the most widely recognized, household-name electric guitar player since Jimi Hendrix and that (U2's) The Edge has made his mark - but everyone has elements of Jimi Hendrix deeply rooted in their playing.

"They themselves have not contributed that much to all the other players. Eddie Van Halen hasn't contributed as much as Jimi Hendrix, nor has The Edge, but obviously Jimi Hendrix is all over their playing. So it always leads back to him."

Satriani will even own up to having a lot of Hendrix in himself.

"Hey, I aspire to assimilate as much as possible because he's my hero," he said, laughing. "I play to experience music first, that's my first goal, to enjoy the experience and make it as deep as possible. After that, if somebody says to me, 'I hear a little bit of him,' I would go, 'Yeah, I admit it.' But I wouldn't play in a way where I wouldn't enjoy it but just so I wouldn't sound like someone else. I don't see the point in that. It would mean not enjoying life or something. It would have to be a great musical experience for me."

Writing and recording "Crystal Planet," Satriani's first studio album for Epic Records, was perhaps the greatest experience of his career. It debuted last week at No. 50 on Billboard's pop chart.

To enjoy that experience, Satriani wanted to keep the atmosphere loose and the songs more upbeat, with a touch of ingenuity.

"I made the point of not making demos," Satriani said. "I wrote the music on tape or in a casual musical form and showed the band - (drummer) Jeff (Campitelli) and (bassist) Stu (Hamm) - the music in a very natural setting. I just sat down and played it for them and they made their own notes, came up with their own parts.

"Then we rehearsed it as a live band, so by the time we went into the studio, we were proficient at playing the music live. ... I also wanted the album to have an electronic, produced sound, so we made sure that it didn't sound like the last album ('Joe Satriani'), where we purposely made it unelectronic and unproduced. Mainly, I wanted to introduce the element of fantasy. If you want to be able to change where the listener thinks the music is being created, then you need to use the control room to create a different atmosphere and put the musicians in different places. That allows people to fantasize more about where these musicians are or where the guitar is coming from.

"The opposite of that would be listening to 'Down, Down, Down' or something like that, where you can hear that every musician is in the same small room playing real close to each other. That adds a vibe to it. This time, we wanted to create different vibes per song, so we used the control room to create the atmosphere."

Satriani also used a compositional technique, applying modulation and key changes across the whole album, rather than just one song.

"In the sequence of songs, starting with 'Up in the Sky' and 'House Full of Bullets,' each new song in the sequence starts in a higher key, so I ascend in a higher key signature with each new song," he said. "My thought was maybe that if someone sits down and listens to the whole album and even cycles it back and starts at the beginning again, they're going to get this feeling the album keeps moving them upward and forward."

Naturally, Satriani is pleased with the results.

"I really love it," he said. "When you come out with a new record, people ask you, 'Well, is it your best record?' You don't want to belittle anything you've done before, but I do know I had a great time writing it and a great time recording it. It was written, recorded and mixed and mastered all in separate time periods which were bookended by G3 tours, so we had a lot of time to leave the studio, go out and play live and then get back into the studio and sort of bring that vitality and excitement into the record."

BWF (before we forget): Strum along with Joe Satriani on the Web @ www.satriani.com. ... The Satriani album discography - "Joe Satriani" EP (Rubina, 1984); "Not of This Earth" (Relativity, 1986); "Surfing With the Alien" (1987); "Dreaming #11" (1988); "Flying in a Blue Dream" (1989); "The Extremist" (1992); "Time Machine" (1993); "Joe Satriani" (1995); "G3 - Live in Concert," with Steve Vai and Eric Johnson (Epic, 1997); "Crystal Planet" (1998).

Merl Saunders and all his funky friends

(Nov. 1, 1998)

Only Merl Saunders and his beloved Hammond B-3 organ, Jessica, could get Blues Traveler's John Popper, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, Dr. John and Jerry Garcia on one CD.

The legendary singer-keyboardist's latest album, "Merl Saunders With His Funky Friends - Live!" (released Sept. 15 on Sumertone Records), gathers live and studio sessions from 1989 to 1996, highlighted by Popper's stellar harmonica playing on "You Can Leave Your Hat On," Anastasio tearing into "We All Wanna Boogie," Dr. John's collaboration on "Paris Blues" and Garcia's contribution to "Sunrise Over Haleakala," cut in 1989.

Saunders may have funky friends in high places and lately some of his songs can be heard on the CBS series "Nash Bridges," but he's hardly a household name. That's just the way he likes it.

"Sometimes I detest notoriety," Saunders said recently. "I hear I'm a legend or a cult figure because I've played with the Grateful Dead and Jerome (Jerry Garcia). I walked away from a lot of things. I walked away from doing certain things with the Grateful Dead, because I didn't want somebody controlling my life.

"I like being around kids; I'm the kind of guy who likes sliding down the slide and playing on the swing set with my grandkids. I like to go into the school system and play for kindergarten kids. That's what turns me on. Like Sly (Stone) said, 'Everybody is a star,' but I see superduper stars all coked out. I have my superduper friends who've had a lot of money, but I'm looking up at the sky where they're living right now. When you've got your health, you're a super superstar, you're a millionaire."

Here's what Saunders has to say about other funky friends and past collaborators:

Frank Sinatra - "Very shrewd man. Powerful man. Knew what he wanted and could sing his ass off. Yes, I've got Frank Sinatra records."

Harry Belafonte - "I recorded with this man 20 years ago. He's a genius and a wonderful person."

Bonnie Raitt - "A very classy lady, very soulful. A great blues singer, and people forget she's a great guitar player."

The Grateful Dead - "No one does what they do. They're a great organization, and it's like Jerry (Garcia) said, 'You do not want merely to be considered just the best of the best, you want to be considered the only one that does what you do.' "

John Popper - "Immaculate young man, always striving, and it looks like he's at the top looking down. He's a wonderful singer. He should just stay off motorcycles; I've talked to him about that."

Dr. John - "My soul brother. A remarkable, talented man. We're still trying after 20 years to put a whole album together."

Former classmate Johnny Mathis, who sang in Saunders' first band in the early '50s - "We were fortunate in that we knew what we wanted to do. I think I met Johnny in grammar school when we were about 7 or 8, and we went to the same junior high school. We were always practicing and singing in church.

"A buddy asked me, 'You grew up with Johnny Mathis.' I said, 'Yeah.' He says, 'How do you feel, he's a millionaire up there in Howard Hughes' house in Beverly Hills?' I said, 'Well, he ain't got no grandkids, no kids.' I'm happy to go see my grandson quarterback his team. You couldn't pay me a million dollars to give that up."

BWF (before we forget): Join Merl Saunders and his funky friends on the Web @ www.merlsaunders.com.

Save Ferris comes to the rescue

(Nov. 6, 1997)

Brian "T-Bone Willy" Williams, trombonist for the rock 'n' ska band Save Ferris, knows precisely when he first fell in love with ska.

"It was in 1984 and I was watching Madness on 'Solid Gold,' " Williams said recently. "I remember watching it and thinking, 'Man, that was cool.' "

So cool he has played in a variety of punk-influenced ska bands the past 10 years, finally settling on Save Ferris in 1995 with Monique Powell (vocals), Brian Mashburn (guitar, vocals), Bill Uechi (bass), Marc Harismendy (drums), Jose Castellanos (trumpet) and Eric Zamora (alto sax).

Their self-produced independent EP, "Introducing ... Save Ferris," broke the ice last year, selling more than 10,000 copies. A win in the national Grammy Showcase for unsigned bands quickly led to a deal with Epic. Their full-length debut album, "It Means Everything," powered by a perky cover version of Dexy Midnight Runners' "Come On Eileen," was released in September and peaked at No. 75 on Billboard's pop chart but continues to sell well.

"Everyone's talking to us about charts and sales and radio response, and it's so funny for us," Williams said. "The album's been out for more than a month, and we've been touring since before it came out that we're so far removed from it. We're just driving in our van 12 hours a day, doing sound checks and playing shows. We don't have time to stop and look at it and go, 'Wow, look what's happened.' "

Spawned from the same streets of Orange County, Calif., as No Doubt, Save Ferris members have a long history in ska and aren't bandwagon riders, Williams said.

"Personally, I've been doing this about 10 years now, and everybody else in the band has been in the Orange County ska-punk scene in other bands before this," he said. "In Orange County, ska-punk has been around for so long, it's so embedded in the music scene, that it was just a natural progression for us. It wasn't like 'Look what everyone else is doing across the country.' "

No doubt, fans will be drawn to the energetic "Come On Eileen," but that's not even the album's strongest track. That's a good sign for Save Ferris.

"Just before we recorded the album, we kind of threw together a version because we really wanted to do it and put our own little spin on the song," Williams said. "We call it Ferrisizing songs. Whenever we can, we try to do covers. We did it live at a show and the crowd response was just so good that our producer (Peter Collins) said 'Why don't you guys try it?' And now it's taken off. It's a great song to help introduce people to our stuff."

BWF (before we forget): Help Save Ferris on the Web @ www.sonymusic.com.

Scheer takes the good with the bad

(May 16, 1996)

Mutual friends convinced U2 manager Paul McGuinness to attend one of Irish alternative rock quintet Scheer's early gigs at the Baggot Inn in Dublin.

Band members knew he would be there and were prepared to bowl him over. Instead, they were the ones knocked down like silly wooden pins.

"That was definitely the worst gig ever for us, a complete turning point," lead guitarist Neal Calderwood said recently. "Things had been going quite well because we had a development deal with Son Records (in Ireland), and they thought for sure Paul McGuinness would like us. And we thought, 'Ah, no problem, this is our big step up.' We were far too cocky about it."

McGuinness called them mediocre and derivative. Calderwood said McGuinness was right, but rather than running away with their tails between their legs, Scheer was prodded into action. They rehearsed harder and longer, honed their songwriting skills and arranged the best material they could muster, coming up with "Infliction," their debut album on 4AD/Warner.

Released stateside on April 19, "Infliction" will be issued in Britain and Europe on May 27. The early U.S. release, along with the heady single "Wish You Were Dead," coincided with Scheer's six-week tour with headliner Lush and Mojave 3.

"After that experience with McGuinness," Calderwood said, "we were completely gutted. We thought for sure we had it in the bag. We bounced back, though, and we're never going to let that happen again. It's the best thing that ever happened to us. I don't think we've really played a bad gig since."

Scheer teamed in 1991, culling band members from two Northern Ireland towns only 9 miles apart. Calderwood, singer Audrey Gallagher, drummer Joe Bates, bassist Peter Fleming and guitarist Paddy Leyden had similar self-sufficient, uncompromising views about their careers. They didn't want to move to London where their odds of being discovered were higher; they wanted to stay in their homeland, playing anywhere anyone wanted to listen and recording at their own pace.

"You may think that we were just signed to 4AD and have an album out just like that in America," Calderwood said. "It may seem like an overnight thing, but it's not like that. We've been together since '91. We've done our apprenticeship, so to speak. We've paid our dues."

Those dues led to luring Head (who did PJ Harvey's "Dry") to produce "Infliction."

"We chatted with him and he seemed to have the same attitude, that he wanted us to create our own record and be as creative as we wanted to without so much control from him," Calderwood said. "He did all the engineering and told us what we could and couldn't do physically and technically. As far as ideas went, it was completely up to us. We experimented a lot."

They experimented so much that residents near the former BBC studio they rented complained about the excessive noise.

"I like to have a lot of amps going at once," Calderwood said. "It was a proper BBC studio, with walls a few feet thick and soundproofing. But we were asked to stop recording by 6 o'clock at night. The owner said 'I don't understand why you need these big amps.' He just didn't understand the concept of getting an amp and whacking it up to get the best sound out of it.

"After that, we went to a factory in London. We really added a lot more to the songs and ended up getting the album that we wanted."

Glen Scott is poised, ready and balanced

(June 20, 1999)

The Japanese know a good thing when they hear it.

Popular Tokyo FM station, J-Wave, latched onto Glen Scott's potent debut single, "Heaven," last winter and stayed with it all the way to the Top 10 on its weekly Hot 100 chart. (The song also peaked at No. 3 for three weeks on P&P's weekly Picks chart in March.)

The London-born singer/multi-instrumentalist, a cross between Bobby Womack and Roachford, finds the whole concept beyond belief.

"They've responded really well to it in Japan, which is a total shock for me," he said recently, "because the album wasn't even released there yet. That's what music's about, reaching people of all different races, ages. That's the power of music."

Now it's America's turn. Scott's debut 550 Music album, "Without Vertigo" (released May 18), is wonderfully melodic with elements of 1970s soul, Beach Boys harmonies and Caribbean influences.

"The music is quite eclectic-sounding," Scott said. "I found myself pouring out all my different influences over the years. From being a session musician and playing on other albums and tours, that sort of influences the way I am and have stayed."

Scott first honed his talents - singing and playing a Hammond organ and a drum machine - with a reggae-gospel band at age 15. By 19, he toured with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and other artists.

"It was more about paying the bills; I was doing sessions to pay the bills," he said. "You get to the point where as a musician you become really frustrated because you're not doing what you feel you should be doing, and when you don't quite know what you should be doing, it's even more frustrating.

"But I had a lot of encouragement from various friends of mine in the music business, and it was through one particular individual, Kenny Hall, that I started doing my own tracks and write. He really helped me a lot and was a surrogate manager; he's now my publisher, actually."

Scott then began collaborating with Swedish producer-guitarist Martin Terefe.

"We recorded about 30 songs," Scott said, "and it was the music that made people's ears prick up. We didn't go shopping for a deal or anything like that. It was a natural response from people, who discovered the sound more than anything else. For me, that's a major buzz, to hear people's enthusiasm.

"A number of labels wanted to sign the project. I was about to sign a deal with RCA in London. I was in the states when my manager got a call from 550 Music and they desperately wanted to meet me. Reluctantly, I went over to New York to meet them. At that point, I had already met with a lot of record companies and wanted to get on with finishing the album. I fell completely in love with their enthusiasm for me as an artist and the album, and not for just one album but for many albums. They showed a huge commitment for me. I thought, 'This is a place I could call home.' "

Whether "Without Vertigo" falls in the cracks between superstar releases and hot newcomers is beyond his control, Scott said.

"It's all new to me, even regards to doing interviews. I'm a novice," he said. "Whenever people ask me, 'What do you want to be remembered for?,' the best thing I can say is 'I want people to know me for me, Glen Scott.' I'm just a musician who likes to write songs, express himself onstage and in the studio."

THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: "I used to follow my older brother everywhere, and we were going to my auntie's house in south of London. We were walking past a second-hand store, and I remember my brother had 50 pence on him. We saw this Parliament/Funkadelic single, 'One Nation Under a Groove,' and it had two bonus tracks on it. We bought that together. My father was a builder at that time and he used to clear out old houses and build them up. He brought home this orange turntable and it had speakers built in, and we played that song all the time on it."

THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "I haven't been much of a concertgoer. I used to find it frustrating, because it was always something I wanted to do. I was almost afraid of being inspired and enjoying it, even at a young age."

BWF (before we forget): For more on Glen Scott on the Web @ www.glenscott.com.

Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies rolls with the punches

(May 2, 1996)

This just isn't Mike Farris' day.

His band, the Nashville-based Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies, has arrived late in Seattle and their hotel has jumbled up their reservations. He is forced to use a streetside phone booth to talk about his favorite subject, the Wheelies' second Atlantic album, "Magnolia."

He nearly chokes up recalling a fan who came to a show and delivered him a poem.

"He had written it telling us how our first album helped him through some hard times, that he had lost his wife," Farris said. "I just wanted to sit him down and let him know me as a friend and not feel weird about talking to a singer in a rock 'n' roll band."

Farris' tender moment is interrupted by a woman who demands to use the phone. She calls him several derogatory names and even takes a swing at him. Her boyfriend considers stepping in, but by then, Farris has already left and says he will call back.

Minutes later, Farris sneaks into a Moose Lodge nearby to use the phone. With his long, stringy hair, he stands out like a sore thumb. Unfazed by all that has happened in the past 20 minutes, he reveals the inspiration behind the album's first single, "Hello From Venus."

"I went home and found out they were going to build a car plant on farmland I was raised on," Farris said. "All my friends kept saying, 'Things are changing around here.' But people were strung out on crank, nothing had changed. I'm thinking, 'It's only going to get worse.'

"I was upset they were doing this to my old neighborhood. A whole flood of emotions came out. When something like that happens, it's like some part of you is dying. It makes you wonder, 'What are we doing? We're destroying everything.' "

Farris felt isolated, uneasy that his friends were treating him differently ever since the Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies' 1993 self-titled debut album.

"I wrote ('Hello From Venus') partly through the eyes of a person praying to God like a friend, an intimate conversation," he said. "It just breaks my heart to see what's happened in my hometown."

The gutsy rock quintet has learned a lot since its first album, Farris said, mainly to be patient.

"We didn't know what was going on the first time around," he said. "We just wanted to do our songs, and the label said we'd be stars. I learned not to take it too seriously. That doesn't feed me; I don't thrive off being successful. We're just out doing what we do best."

Secret Garden on 'The Dawn of a New Century'

(July 4, 1999)

On paper, Secret Garden fits in the new age category, and that's fine with Norwegian keyboardist Rolf Lovland and Irish violinist Fionnuala Sherry, but their lush, lilting sound is so much more.

"New age, that's not where we're coming from," Lovland said recently, "but we have learned to see that within the new age category, there's very little that would suggest some music is new age. There's a variety of styles within the category, everything from Enya to Yanni. There's very little that ties these artists together. Very often it's instrumental music, somewhere between contemporary and classical music. That's true for our music; that's where we are."

Sherry loves how their atmospheric melodies cross oceans and borders and are not bound, for the most part, by lyrics.

"By being instrumental, we're not confined to lyrics, and this music does allow it to travel," she said. "We see it, whether we're performing here in the states or in Asia, that there's a huge understanding of this music. It's also very emotional music, very passion-driven. The melodies are so strong, it's important that the melodies tell the story.

"Everybody around the world has the same emotions. We all cry and laugh and hurt the same way. That's what triggers people when they're listening to our music; that's why it has a universal appeal. It was something we dreamt about when we began this project; it's great to see other people appreciating it."

For the past month, PBS audiences have been appreciating Secret Garden's hypnotic style in an hourlong special titled "A Night With Secret Garden." The special comes on the heels of the duo's third album, "Dawn of a New Century" (released April 20 on Philips). The LP is perched this week at No. 7 on Billboard's new age chart.

Lovland and Sherry, both accomplished performers in their native countries, first met at the Eurovision song contest in Dublin, Ireland, in 1994 and hit it off immediately.

"I just knew there was an instant connection," Sherry said. "We've both worked with a lot of people, so when you find someone you have an instant chemistry with from the word go, it's special. When you have that musical chemistry, the friendship falls naturally into place; you don't have to think about it or work on it because it's there."

It worked so well, the pair entered its first collaboration, "Nocturne," at the 1995 Eurovision contest and won. Since then, their first two albums - "Songs From a Secret Garden" and "White Stones" - both topped the new age chart.

For "Dawn of a New Century," Secret Garden didn't rest on its laurels: It incorporated solo vocals on the tracks "Prayer" and "Sona" and the Celtic choir Anuna on "In Our Tears."

"The first two albums established our sound," Lovland said. "We developed a repertoire that defined Secret Garden. With this album, we felt a little bit more free to do songs such as the two with vocals and not restrict ourselves. We did material that I don't think we would've done on the first two albums; we let our creativity take us wherever we wanted to go."

Neil Sedaka's back ... again

(Nov. 3, 1994)

Neil Sedaka may not seem like the hippest performer, someone only the parents might enjoy, but consider this:

One of his compositions, "Solitaire," appears on the Carpenters tribute album, "If I Were a Carpenter" (sung by Sheryl Crow); Gloria Estefan does a ballad version of his No. 1 hit "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" on her new album; he once dated Carole King and formed the Tokens during high school; members of 10cc once produced him; Elton John helped engineer his well-storied '70s comeback, and if you want to get technical, Sedaka had a song titled "Stairway to Heaven" long before Led Zeppelin.

Blowing caution to the wind, Sedaka is about to make another return. In February, PolyGram is planning the European release of his "Classically Sedaka" album, in which he wrote original lyrics for classical melodies by the likes of Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Rachmaninoff. A U.S. release date is unknown.

"If this takes off," Sedaka said recently, "it could be the biggest move of my career."

He said classical purists should reserve judgment of such a bold move till they've had a chance to hear the words and his performance.

"It's a reinvention of my career for me," Sedaka said. "I'm singing in a Pavarotti style and playing virtuoso piano. It's very different. But the words are so natural that people think these pieces always had words to them."

For those more inclined to Sedaka's past work, Varese Vintage recently released "Laughter in the Rain: The Best of Neil Sedaka, 1974-1980." Among the 20 tracks, his '75 No. 1 "Bad Blood" (with Elton John on backup vocals) makes its CD debut.

"I'm lucky I'm still working after 35 years and people are still paying money to see me all over the world," Sedaka said.

(Varese Vintage Records, 11846 Ventura Blvd., Suite 130, Studio City, CA; 818-753-4143.)

Sowing the Seed of rock

(Nov. 10, 1994)

"Saturday Night Live" may have lost its bite and its edge, but for rising Austin, Texas, rock quartet Seed, it's flattering to have fans in high places.

The band appeared several weeks ago on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," and attracted quite a "SNL" following.

"Everybody came down," said lead singer Chadwick Salls. "Janeane Garfalo came down, then Adam Sandler and Tim Meadows.

"It was cool to hang out and talk with them. Obviously, we're not selling 17,000 records a week, but luckily they like us and are into our music. Let's hope the rest of the country starts taking it in."

The band's first single, "Rapture," saw regular rotation on MTV's "120 Minutes" and "Alternative Nation." Salls is hoping for much the same with Seed's follow-up, "Doe." The four shot the video in Atlanta earlier this week with director Bill Ward.

Seed's Mechanic/Giant album, "Ling," was released in late June. Salls said they're buoyed by late-blooming success for acts like Weezer, Candlebox and Blind Melon.

"We're taking it all with a grain of salt," he said. "Not to sound conceited, but I think our album's good enough to be with everybody else.

"If we don't sell a million records, it's not going to kill us. We just want to sell enough so our label will say, 'Okay, that's a good job. Do the next record.' Just as long as we can do what we want to do, that's all that matters."

Pete Seeger enjoys the good life

(June 21, 1998)

Pete Seeger seemingly has done it all in his 79-year life.

In 1940, he formed the Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie. He was one-fourth of the Weavers, the most influential and commercially successful folk group of the 1940s and '50s. He was blacklisted by anti-Communist zealots in the early '50s and, a decade later, was revered by Vietnam War protesters. He has written many folk standards, including "If I Had a Hammer" (with Lee Hays) and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," and carved his name in rock history by adapting the words from the Book of Ecclesiastes to create "Turn! Turn! Turn!," a No. 1 hit for the Byrds in 1965.

He's still a crusader for social and political causes, but today he's reveling in a simpler life on his sprawling farmland along the Hudson River near Beacon, N.Y.

He deserves the rest.

"I don't go on long tours anymore, and I don't go overseas anymore," Seeger said recently. "The last couple of trips were too full of red-carpet treatments, with receptions, receptions, receptions, and I didn't get to see the country at all, so I decided I can sing up and down the Hudson Valley. I sing once, two, three times a week."

Seeger doesn't even have to leave the comfort of his living room to get the red-carpet treatment. Appleseed Recordings, through Red House Records, recently released "Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger," a two-CD, all-star salute to the troubadour's legacy.

His fans came out in droves: Bruce Springsteen does a wistful version of "We Shall Overcome"; Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt team for "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine"; the Indigo Girls deliver "Letter to Eve," and Bruce Cockburn takes a stab at "Turn! Turn! Turn!" The guest list rolls on: Roger McGuinn, Judy Collins, Donovan, Ani DiFranco, Richie Havens, Nanci Griffith, author Studs Terkel, actor Tim Robbins and John Stewart, to name a few.

"It was a great honor to have these extraordinary performers singing some of the songs I've written years and years ago, or helped to write," Seeger said. "Many of them, as you know, I did not write them all. Some of them I contributed extra verses or a rhythm or melodies to somebody else's words. I'm better at melodies than I am at words.

"Occasionally, I'll make up a good verse. I made a good version for Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now,' and I'm not the only one who sings it."

In a raspy, weathered tone, Seeger sings it earnestly: " 'Daughter, daughter, don't you know, you're not the first to feel just so, but let me say before I go, it's worth it anyway. Some day we may all be surprised, we'll waken up and open our eyes and then we all will realize the whole world feels that way. We've all been living upside down and turned around and love unfound, until we turn and face the sun. Yes, all of us, everyone.' It was a good verse, if I say so myself."

Two years ago, Seeger was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. He admits he's "amused by the situation" but says rock 'n' roll is the real folk music for the late 20th century.

"The term 'folk music' is such a widely disagreed upon term," he said. "I hardly ever use it. Originally, it meant the music of the peasant class, the ancient and the anonymous. The phrase was coined about 150 years ago.

"Then it was extended to cover cowboy songs and coal miners' songs in this country. Then Woody Guthrie comes along and me and others and we're all called folk singers now. Anybody who plays an acoustic guitar is a folk singer, if you have a microphone in front of you. If you don't have a microphone in front of you, you're not a folk singer, you just sing songs, I suppose."

Even when posed a trite but respectful question - like "How would you like to be remembered?" - Seeger answers it with a twinge of humor and humility.

"There's too damn many things for kids to remember already," he said, "and I expect to be mercifully forgotten. Maybe my grandchildren will remember absent-minded Grandpa. If you're a researcher in the field of music, my books and records will be somewhere on the shelf."

He quantifies that with "... if there's a human race."

"Keep in mind that I think there's only about a 50 percent chance that there'll be a human race in a hundred to 200 years," he said. "People think, 'You're awful pessimistic,' but I'm putting an optimistic view on it. I think there's a chance.

"There's a lot of people around who think there is not chance, because they simply point to what's going on. The population is slowing down, but not enough, and there's irresponsible scientists inventing new ways in which we can wipe ourselves off the map, if it's not explosives, it's bacterial warfare or chemical warfare.

"So, a lot of people are pessimistic and not having children for this reason. On the other hand, I think there's a 50 percent chance, so I count myself as an optimist. And I urge people to have at least one kid, because it's a very wonderful experience."

BWF (before we forget): For more on Pete Seeger and the "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" tribute, check out www.appleseedrec.com or www.pressnetwork.com, or send e-mail to FOLKRADICL@aol.com.

Self has an identity of its own

(Jan. 25, 1996)

If he didn't know any better, Matt Mahaffey might be a little Self-conscious about his band's recent appearance at the Taste of the Grove festival in Miami.

Playing to 5,000 people - "some hanging in palm trees," Mahaffey said - the Murfreesboro, Tenn.-based alternative-pop quintet Self discovered a new audience trend.

"They were throwing plastic water bottles at us from the mosh pit," Mahaffey said recently. "I thought they didn't like us, but apparently they want to get a reaction out of you, to see if you'll yell at them. Either that or they really didn't like us."

What's not to like? When not touring, Self is a virtual one-man show in the studio - Mahaffey's baby from the beginning. The 22-year-old self-taught whiz wrote, produced and performed nearly all the instruments on Self's debut Spongebath/Zoo album, "Subliminal Plastic Motives."

The album is a witty slab of tuneful, hip-hop drenched songs mercifully short on narcissistic excesses. From one nebulous track to another, Mahaffey is never content to stick with one style - he mixes it up, tossing in surging guitars and homemade samples (not one generated by a computer).

Jaded and unchallenged by his courses at Middle Tennessee State University a few years ago, Mahaffey hooked up with Spongebath Records president Richard Williams, who offered to take his demos to the major labels. Before he knew it, Mahaffey was putting together a touring band - which includes his brother, Mike, on guitar - and playing to label executives at the Nashville Extravaganza Music Convention. Zoo Entertainment bagged them but certainly isn't confining them.

Now Self's first single, "Cannon" - a loose tribute to Williams - is making headway on modern rock radio.

"This is the record I've made," Mahaffey said, "and hopefully people will get something out of it. They finally played 'Cannon' on (MTV's) '120 Minutes' last weekend. That's when it hit me, 'This is really happening.' "

Mahaffey is still trying to adjust to his position as the band leader.

"This is strange," he said. "I've never fronted a band before. I always did things on my own, but I'm getting used to it now. We've been playing a lot of shows, and sometimes I get stage fright a little, but it wears off quickly."

This is no small feat for a group from conservative Murfreesboro.

"It's a very small, quiet and flat town," Mahaffey said. "I always like coming back to it after being on tour. I never did a whole lot of traveling before this. Now I've been Los Angeles and New York and lots of points in between.

"But you won't hear me complaining."

BWF (before we forget): Self's second Spongebath album, "The Half-Baked Serenade," is available through mail-order only. The quickest way to order is by visiting the label's Web site @ www.spongebath.net.

Senser is all 'Stacked Up'

(March 30, 1995)

British neo-thrash-metal band Senser's conquering of America didn't happen at the recent South By Southwest Music & Media Conference in Austin, Texas.

Maybe the next go around, says singer Kerstin Haigh, who's not taking the discarding too serious.

"By the time we got on stage," Haigh says, "everyone decided to leave because they didn't know us. They had no good reason to stay. I think we played to only about 100 people, but the crowd that was there enjoyed it and we were pleased with our show. I just wish we had a bigger crowd."

Perhaps once word gets around about Senser's highly touted debut album, "Stacked Up" (out April 4 on A&M), they will change their tune.

The British press has gushed over the seven-member band's eclectic merger of thrash, rap and Eastern influences, likening their verbal onslaughts to Rage Against the Machine. The commercial energy is there as well: they've had chart hits with "No Comply," "Switch" and "Eject," the latter of which was the top-selling indie single of 1993 in England.

"Stacked Up" is well over a year old, and Haigh attributes the long delay in releasing it stateside to promoters not being able to pin a label on them and uncertain how to market them.

"I'm quite happy about it taking time to be released in the states," she said. "America's quite a big place to hit. You don't want to leap into there without complete security in what you do.

"We've managed to get a fairly good control on our music now, and live we really know what we're doing, but if we had done it a year or two years ago, it could've been too early and we might not have had the energy to give it."

Serah glows with 'Senegal Moon'

(Nov. 29, 1998)

Serah doesn't care much for neatly fitted musical categories. She's not pop, she's not new age. She's not another Enya. She's Serah, plain and tall.

While marketers and promoters at her label, Great Northern Arts, may grapple with what to call her music, she's genuinely thankful when mentioned in the same breath of Peter Gabriel, who similarly has merged world music into his melodic pop sound.

"I've never known how to categorize my music," Serah said recently from her home in upstate New York. "The marketers are always trying to categorize it, because I guess they don't consider you pop unless you've sold a gazillion records. Until then, they've got to find something else to call you, and the category choices are not very big. It's country, jazz or new age.

"A lot of people compare me to Enya, and I respect her greatly, but I don't think I'm like her because the lyrics are important in my songs. I'm not sure the lyrics are quite as important in terms of how she zeros in on things when she's producing her music."

Serah's latest album, "Senegal Moon," travels the same eclectic terrain taken on her 1991 breakthrough LP, "Flight of the Stork," named the record of the year by Germany's music trade Stereoplay. Produced by Serah, Bernard Paganotti, Bertrand LaJudie and Grammy winner Neil Dorfsman (Sting, Dire Straits, Bruce Hornsby), "Senegal Moon" accentuates Serah's lilting vocals and global-village outlook.

"I lived in Africa for a while in the early '80s," Serah said. "I was working with some friends in a drought area, and I got to know a lot of people in the bush and shared a lot of music. I would back them up and they would back me up. It was so wonderful, I thought, I would love to incorporate that into my music. Then when I started working in France, I discovered that there were these singers from Senegal, and that I could do this. We started using that as part of the tapestry, an ingredient.

"The first album that I did, 'Flight of the Stork,' had a lot of themes based on the blending of cultures from Africa and France and Europe and the Old World. The beauty of the Old World culture and the spontaneity of the African culture, the whole idea of cultures being able to blend, it became a metaphor for the human spirit, to be able to blend more harmoniously with one another, whether it's in your personal life or culturally or politically. 'Senegal Moon' touches on those elements as well."

Raised in the Midwest, Serah was destined for a career in music: She was singing before she could talk. In her teens, she moved to the East Coast and sang in coffeehouses before touring much of the '70s with Jonathan Edwards ("Sunshine").

"I lived in Canada at the time," she said, "and then in '77 I had a hit in Canada called 'Nova Scotia.' By the early '80s, I felt I needed to do something hands-on, in terms of helping with world problems. That's why I joined my friends in Africa. That was a very challenging but fruitful experience.

"I had this romantic notion of running off and saving the world by singing them songs. I realized that problems aren't always easily solved as much as we wish they could be, no matter how much love you pour into them. At any rate, we did manage to solve finding homes for a lot of children. There were like 500 children who had lost their parents during this drought and we were able to find families to absorb them into their homes and lives and give them a sense of family. I was grateful for that."

Having seen how the other half lives, Serah doesn't take anything for granted.

"As much as we complain about our country," she said, "you don't know what it's like till you go to a Third World country. You can't help but wish you could help, and yet you feel pretty helpless. It's pretty devastating."

BWF (before we forget): For more on Serah, visit www.wvtc.com/~arts.

Martin Sexton's all-'American' debut

(Nov. 8, 1998)

Martin Sexton's big-label premiere, "The American" (released Oct. 6 on Atlantic), has something for every American.

It's such a diverse record, Sexton says, he can't imagine there's not one tune that someone can sink their teeth into.

"If they didn't like rock, then they could like (the title track) 'The American,' " Sexton said recently. "If they didn't like cowboy music, then they could like 'My Maria.' If they didn't like churchy soul music, they could like the folk tune 'Way I Am.' If they didn't like that, they could like the sort of R&B-ish 'Where It Begins.' If they didn't like R&B, they could maybe groove on a boogie-woogie tune like 'Diggin' Me.'

"I made it that way because it's the way I like it. I'm not trying to appease any audience; I'm just saying, 'By the way, it happens to be a reflection of who I am as an artist on this record.' "

The Boston-based poet-musician is another do-it-yourself success story. He went from busking on street corners and playing the club circuit to recording a self-produced album of demos, "In the Journey," which sold more than 25,000 copies in 1992 and earned him Boston Music Awards for best male vocalist and songwriter. After his 1996 album, "Black Sheep" (on Eastern Front), sold more than 30,000, Atlantic entered the picture and Sexton stuck to his guns, demanding creative control over future albums.

"If they had said no, then I would have said, 'Thank you and nice talking to you,' " Sexton said recently. "The deal was such that I could have say on how to make the record and how to present myself and my songs, because I wasn't going to deal with anyone that wasn't going to let me do that. I would just as soon put out my own records or stay independent. But I think they had confidence in my art and my craft and they knew that I could make good records.

"I had come close so many times to major-label deals in my past and then they fell through at the last minute. Any artist is accustomed to rejection; any good artist has got to know rejection because for every one step forward, there's 10 backwards. So you have to make 11 steps for every one that you get. That's the nature of any business, really. Any salesman has to make 10 pitches before he gets one bite; any fisherman's got to cast out 20 times before he catches a fish. Art is no different. I just went out there and played."

The early returns on "The American" have been effusive. Billboard's editor in chief and most influential writer, Timothy White, said the album "deserves to make Sexton a household fixture."

"I think it was a blessing in disguise that I didn't get a big label deal way back then," Sexton said. "I think God was telling me that 'You need to go and make records and see how it's done so you can know how to do it yourself and be true to your art.'

"It's been a long time; I've been in the trenches doing it for so long. Whatever happens, no matter what corporation is behind my records, I'll be out singing. My live show will remain. That's all I wanted to do was sing and play."

BWF (before we forget): Salute Martin Sexton and "The American" on the Web @ www.martinsexton.com.