R&B/pop band Small Faces still leave there impression on history that they were a lot more than a mod combo. Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenny Jones and Ian "Mac" McLagan, four young hungry musicians who looked to break the business wide open. And they did. And then everybody sort of forgot. (There were the best band ever not to hit the American bigtime and then they became the Faces with Rod, Marriott went off to lead Humble Pie, but those are other yarns.)

Yes, Don Arden was a bus y manager too, working on The Small Faces recordings and shows, and having a pretty aggressive go at whatever money was earned. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of rock 'n' roll history knows The Small Faces were a million stories in one—too many to name—not the least of which is a we-got-fucked cautionary tale. (Arden was extra special at robbing the band piggy bank.)

Marriott, playing the electric guitar, moving on the right of Ronnie Lane, two artists who were bursting with cool, a peerless creative duo. They were East Londoners and had a huge following with the kids who shared a love for fashion and love of bands who could do bold live show that excited absolutely. The Small Faces troubled the waters with a passion for loud, raucous vocals (Marriott!) while psychedelically treating each new single—with knobsman Glyn Johns at the helm—with rock-challenging ideas and a sort of irony or self-deprecation.

In '67, Marriott penned "Tin Soldier " for P.P. Arnold, herself an R&B belter and star who
they respected and worked with on their records. (I'd guess Marriott felt too close to the song and decided to keep it for the band, instead cutting it with P.P. sharing the chorus.)

Keyboards kick it off, then the drumstick-on-rim to make the entrance perfect, guitar and bass warming up as Marriott yells "C'mon!" then delivers the sparse first verse which quickly rocks with full-on American R&B power and muscle, the whole outfit just kicking full tilt, loud, heavy, then back to that intro one last time. Each performer plain in the pocket, obviously thrilled to be putting their stamp on this historic single. It's all them, and it has been covered but seldom well. "Tin Soldier" is included nicely as a bonus in reissues of Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, which remains a imperfect masterpiece—from the circular tin cover art to the very British narrator.

Sometimes when I want to know why I still love rock 'n' roll I play "Tin Soldier" and wait for the magic they made. Young, sure and alive.
 

At the end of a politically charged week, one in which the Doomsday Clock was officially advanced forward to two and a half minutes to midnight—in a symbolic countdown creeping humanity ever closer to the apocalypse—revelers found hope in booze, smoke and not-dead-yet beats of rock ’n’ roll.

Fronted by Nogales resident Andy Puig, the newly christened Flight Thirteen (formerly known as The Jagg) kicked it out to a bar crammed with hipsters this past Saturday night at Che’s Lounge. The lads were in high spirits celebrating guitarist Kyle Rees’ birthday and a milestone. “We're officially a Tucson band now ... we’ve played 5 shows here,” says Puig addressing the audience, that simply could not have stood any closer to the band.

The band’s new moniker homages The Dearly Beloved, the godhead ’60s Tucson psych-garage combo band and their inescapably great 7” “Flight Thirteen" (Split Sound, 1967) penned by Terry Lee.

With fluid, spirited guitar lines, Farfisa organ runs and three-part vocal harmonies at the forefront, Flight Thirteen—who reference points fall into the lush sound of west-coast bands circa ’66 and ’67 such as Love and The Seeds et al—have developed their own raw, energetic sound that winks more at the first psych era (’65-’68) than it does the debauchery of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in Tom Wolfe’s ’68 masterpiece Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Er, you get what we’re saying …

Sandwiched between ace songs—“Moderation Honey” and “Street Hassle” (not Lou Reed!) that speak of being “out on the edge of time” and “getting hassled by the man”—Flight Thirteen took a moment to make a poignant political statement. “We ain’t gonna build that wall, right?” Referring to mook Trump’s insanely racist Great Mexican Wall promise. The manifestation of humanity gathered at Che’s cheered in complete accord.

Finding asymmetrical balance somewhere between Devo and Charlie Feathers, with six albums to their credit, Golden Boots—fronted by Philadelphia area transplants Dimitri Manos and Ryen Eggleston—shared the stage that night.

I am up early staring at a photo of The Clash. They should of negotiated a deal with some dentists while pulling off one of the more incredible feats of rock 'n' roll l history. They released Sandinista in December 1980, and by summer were in New York City, promoting what was to be a three-night soldout at the storied Bond theater. A promoter sells a finite number of tickets, yes, well, no ...

The first show was so overbooked the fire marshals shut it down and that became the 17-show stand at The Bond with the hippest openers you could dream up. It led to a Clash in NYC. craze no other band will ever do again.

They Put out the single "The Magnificent Seven" backed with a "Special Remix" produced by the pseudonymous Pepe Unidos and he used Ian Dury's Blockheads Norman Watts-Roy on bass and the keyboard player as well for a more funky/discofied sound with more congas and bits of dub to change the version and make it ready for the Black Radio Station of them all, 107.5 WBLS.

At 4 p.m. D.J. Frankie Crocker stepped in with his "There I Go, There I Go, There I Go..." The chief rocker Mr.Crocker unleashed Strummer's gruff Don't you ever stop/Long enough to start/Take your car out of that gear and it was on: Puerto Rican teens with ghettoblasters on their shoulders, rhymed quality rap's of their tenement products—dope and Coke, tricked out to capture as much business as they could, up and down the streets of Alphabet City. Where urban renewal was crumbling apart and tunnels were dug into catacomb like fissure's.

If you never had the top of your head blown off by heavily storied Brazilian metal monsters Sepultura then you’ve never had the top of your properly blown off.

(Sepultura were the loudest band on earth, we swear it—laid waste to both Slayer and Metallica back in the day).

Now, Sepultura originals, irreplaceable singer/guitarist Max Cavalera and his brother, drummer Iggor (AKA Iggor Skullcrusher!), are out touring the big clubs playing that band’s seminal Roots album, start to finish.

That ’96 release was, um, a skullcrushing, shouldn’t-work-but-does mix of heady acoustic world music, sociopolitical scream-outs and gnarly down-tuned deathmetal. To this day there’s never been an album quite like it. Get your cranium crushed on Friday, Feb. 10 at the Rock, 136 N. Park Ave. With Immolation, Full of Hell, Apostles of Ale, Evasion, Guerilla Tactics at 5 p.m.

Tickets are $24-$27, or you can enter to win below.

The Manchester band that set Britain afire with their self-titled 1989 debut followed a lineage from Joy Division and The Fall to Happy Mondays.

After the Roses? Oasis.

The Euro media set these young men up to take over the globe and set a new course for pop music. It never quite worked out that way, even with that Spike Island concert that further elevated them to superstar status. American radio ignored them. Because even with all the hype, the baggy clothes, the ecstasy, and the onslaught of awards and praise, one more bad contract wouldn’t allow them to put out that ever-important sophomore album to make it clear that they were the real deal.

A lot had changed by the time they won their case and signed to Geffen Records for a hefty million pounds, proving that, at the very least, the big boys had confidence, that they could grow their popularity in America and make the record so many believed they were capable of. At the end of ’94 they released that record. Called Second Coming, it featured the single “Love Spreads.” Tinged in hard rock the newer sound had the same clever rhythm section and Ian Brown's understated vocals, which, even in the beginning, felt like they took too many takes and a throat that rarely left one feeling inspired … The record proved again that John Squire was a great guitarist, especially in his neo-psychedelic, wah-wah pedal style. That was so clear on the Roses' first album. But this one felt forced … like trying to be Jimmy Page and a list of lesser white blues players who leave most listeners cold. You're a dime-a-dozen if you can't play four chords and make a listener tear up.

Now, two decades after their last release—with all the band’s crazy mythology, its broken members nearly forgotten—The Stone Roses put out two singles, the first dull and missing the mark, but the second, "Beautiful thing," hits it. It begins with the tried-and-true backwards guitar sliding into that cool, medium groove where the rhythm section always shined. And, sure, Ian's voice didn't become a British superstar voice, but it is unpretentious with a hook of a chorus while John Squire lets loose, and just in time, and with a less-is-more approach. If you were ever into the band or the “Madchester” scene, listen to this single. Had they come back with this on that sophomore slump, who knows what might have happened? There's a line in "Something's Burning," from first album—a wonderful piece of British rock ’n’ roll while Ian sang, “Don't count your chickens/’Cause they're never gonna hatch/You can't catch a monkey with shotgun and a sack.” And that says something about the business of pop music—it may have taken an awful long time to get it wrong, then right again, so turn it up and wish them well. Because second, even third chances come around so rarely.

The Cloud Walls—Joe Novelli (Orkesta Mendoza, Nive and the Deer Children) on lap steel and guitar, Geoffrey Hidalgo (XIXA) on bass and filling in on drums, in Gabriel Sullivan’s absence, the venerable Chris Kallini—played two inspired, at times beautiful at others mind-blowingly raucous, sets to a near full house.   

The sound was a genre-jumping hybrid of fuzzed-out soul, noir-folk, dirty-country and punk-blues with Novelli’s guitar and lap steel leading the melodic surge. It formed a lush (and welcome) musical backdrop to a cold, wintery night. In the first set, Novelli went solo, deftly fingerpicking “Magdalene,” a beautiful lament to love gone awry. Then, like a runaway train about to derail, it became a face-melting rocker to close out the second set, as Novelli leaned back, sliding and slashing away at his distortion-saturated lap steel guitar while Hidalgo and Kallini fell into a tightly powered, yet finessed, lockstep—the kind that’d make John Paul Jones and John Bonham shiver. The show was such that it had us looking forward to the bands' first full-length, which is due later in 2017.)  

Opening the evening, backed by The Cloud Walls, was resident West Texan singer-songwriter/guitarist Charlie Stout—in town for a recording project—whose experience as a photographer and filmmaker obviously informs his music. His songs were filled with imagery from the American Southwest and keen storytelling.

Quick Atrophy backstory: These metal doomsdayers rose out of Tucson in the mid to late ’80s and their brand of mind-altering thrash was wholly ignored in the local press. Well, screw the press because like any music that truly matters, the kids understood it.

Atrophy’s blend of fist-jacking melodies, hardcore dirge, and speedy Judas Priest-ish riffs was too well wrought and too well executed for kids to ignore. The virulent quintet was soon blowing roofs off packed venues, pissing off parents and popping eardrums. Rock ’n’ roll! They signed with the prestigious Roadrunner Records and issued a pair of killer albums (for the uninitiated, we suggest you pick up 1990’s Violent by Nature first), toured Europe (once with bruising Phoenix thrashers Sacred Reich) and earned a cult-sized European following.

Then, like any spirited act worth its weight in skunkweed and Carlsberg Lager, they split up, and way too soon. Of course the split didn’t last because everyone knows that great rock outfits are bros for life. So Atrophy is back and louder than fuck, and have a new album due any day now.

Those kid-fans may have gotten older but they’re still obsessed. See why and at this rare hometown show (which will sellout) with The Sindicate, Eyes Go Black, Khaos Rule, and Flying Donky Punch. Friday, Jan. 27 at The Rock, 136 N. Park Ave. 6 p.m. $15. 21+.

We're giving away a pair of tickets to the show. Enter here, and we'll be in touch at noon the day of the show:

Everything was soaked that morning of the march, and then made clean again. I rifled through my records and pulled out Patti Smith Group's Peace and Noise LP, mostly recorded lean, terse, no tricks. Songs find their way to the listener through a seasoned rock 'n'  roll band whose leader is a minstrel, a teacher rich in myth, magic, danger and grace. I turned to the silenced TV beaming image upon image of women, a sea of energy, impossible. No one could have seen this coming. And I turn up the foreboding "Waiting Underground," the piano in descending chords, the band pushing the tempo, electric guitars banging out grit ... but it's in her voice where you find the power. There by the ridge be a gathering/There we shall await/The beat of your feet/Hammering the earth/Where the great ones tremble/in their snow white shrouds/Waiting underground. The bridge moves up, comes down harder, with the same piano cutting a path to the voice, calling to all who hear it. Short bursts of feedback pushing, charging the song into strength, and it's in the action of each face I see. It is hard to turn away and Patti Smith shouts one more time that we are more than here, appeased, we are alive.

Kohl-eyed goth-glamsters are back from the dead, or maybe that’s what they’d like you to believe. Or maybe they never died and just sort of faded away, which is worse.

You’ll recall Orgy had a fairly sizable hit with New Order’s classic “Blue Monday” (theirs was truly a wickedly dirty cover), and their ’98 debut album, Candyass, sold huge, going platinum stateside. But after three studio albums, Orgy had left a shallow legacy. Truth is, they are worth so much more than that.

The band never got credit for defining a moment in time. For one thing, they captured the milieu of the decadence of the porn-driven decline of late ’90s suburban Los Angeles, that bizarre cultural dead zone, and soundtracked it with the industrial throb of underground Hollywood clubs, putting their own “death-pop” sizzle on it.

It’s remarkable how their singular sound had a wonderfully nihilistic tint to it that reflected Southern California underbellies. Their latest, a seven-song EP called Talk Sick, dropped in ’15, and it’s formidable dancefloor thunder-smack, blending infectious melody with EDM. A new EP, Entropy, is just coming out.

Catch them with Powerman 500, Death Valley High, Knee High Fox, Lethal Injektion, and Swindy on at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 24 at The Rock (136 N. Park Ave.) Tickets to this all ages show, should you choose to buy them, are $18-$20. Or you could just enter to win below—we're giving away three pairs.

At the beginning of 2017, as winds turned cold and Mercury moved into retrograde, Gabriel Sullivan, Tucson guitar-slinger (for XIXA and Howe Gelb), record producer and prolific songwriter, embarked on an insane project; to compose, record and post a song a day for a year. 
It's a challenge he imposed upon himself once before in ‘14, in a project called The Crucible, completing an impressive 365 songs (that's right, 365 songs). Sullivan decided to bring back the project this year under the name The Resurrectionist. A creative undertaking not quite on par with the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus—where the legendary king of Corinth is condemned to roll a heavy rock up a hill in Hades only to have it roll back down again as it nears the top repeatedly for all of eternity—but damn close.

The setting is often sparse; most vignettes find Sullivan’s throaty voice alone with a nylon string acoustic guitar. Lyrically, it's all there, Sullivan touches on time honored themes: Pain, loss, separation, love, hubris, sin, redemption. And listeners will discover instrumental skeletons and etchings that only the darkness of late night and shots of mezcal may inspire. We here at TW have to take our hats off at the sheer aspiration of the endeavour.

At the outset, this project is much the same as a greenhouse used for cultivation. For music geeks, the type that titillates the imagination with possibility. A creative form of Darwinism, if you will, wherein the most robust of the seeds will continue to germinate then bloom in various contexts; finding their place on albums and setlists. The other seeds will inevitably freeze in the cold or wither under the mercurial sun.

Check out Song A Day Project: The Resurrectionist here.

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