100 Records is Sonny Smith’s (Sonny and The Sunsets) mad world of imagined rock created with the help of musical friends: Ty Segall, Tim Cohen (Fresh & Onlys), Heidi Alexander (The Sandwitches) and more of San Francisco’s best and brightest.
Turn Up Records and Sonny Smith are proud to present a five disc limited edition 7″ boxed set. The box titled “100 Records Volume 2: I Miss The Jams” will be in stores November 16th (or can be purchased here.)
Here’s Earth Girl Helen Brown singing “I Wanna Do It”
Sonny Smith’s 100 Records Volume 2: I Miss The Jams – I Wanna Do It by Earth Girl Helen Brown on Turn Up Records
Sometimes the community rallies around an individual and the results are undeniable. There is a long and winding back story to the Sonny Smith’s 100 records project, but all that you really need to know is that Sonny Smith, one of the brightest lights in SF’s neu-Garage scene, has recorded an album that is one for the ages. Sonny wrote songs that make up 100 conceptual 7” singles for a multi- media art show that traveled around the US this past year. Although Smith penned all the music he attributed his masterful tongue-in-cheek brand of laid-back garage- pop tunes to mystical musicians like Zig Speck, Earth Girl Helen Brown and The Loud Fast Fools derived from Smith’s imaginative prose.
Along with producer Marc Dantona, Sonny assembled a “Wrecking Crew” of players the SF scene got together to record songs in basements and apartments around the city and a whole other team of visual artists contributed artwork for each record cover. Here you have 10 songs from the Sonny Smith’s 100 Records. Recorded with local heroes such as Tim Cohen from the Fresh & Onlys, Kelley Stoltz, Ty Segall, and members of The Sandwitches all contributing.
While the artwork and the concept are both wonderfully original and compelling, it’s the tunes that stand out here. Earth Girl Helen Brown’s “I Want To Do It” (featuring Heidi Alexander from The Sandwitches) sounds a bit like the B-52′s singing on some sort of Alex Chilton ‘Like Flies on Sherbert’ outtake. Zig Speck & the Specktones features Ty Segall sounding looser and surfier than usual, like he’s playing with Sonny & the Sunsets. The Loud Fast Fools sound like Modern Lovers but with Tim Cohen of the Fresh and Only’s and Sonny Smith trading lyrics. Sonny’s songs have a rawness that is hard to come by these days, and his beautiful, fun, and often heart wrenching melodies send the whole record into classic territory.
Distribution: Revolver USA
]]>Get ready to “Sweat”.
Boyz IV Men
Boyz IV Men – The Bomb Dot Com on Turn Up Records
Boyz IV Men
TONIGHT!!!!!
at Milk (http://www.milksf.com/) 5 BUX
From the Article
What inspires you to make music?
We like to have fun, bring people together and create music that makes people want to dance.
How would you describe your live set to someone who has never seen you perform before?
Sweaty, packed and fun.
What is the ideal setting for someone to hear your music?
While committing any one of the seven deadly sins.
What has been your biggest challenge as a band?
Blowing amps has been a major issue, along with the lack of funds to replace them … and parking tickets.
How has living in the Bay Area affected your music?
We love the Bay Area and want to provide an environment for all the kids that are full of energy and want to dance.
What is the best compliment you’ve received?
“I’ve gotten laid at every one of your shows.”
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If you haven’t heard their brooding Americana meets melodic 60’s doo-wop yet, do your eyes and ears a favor and check out their video for “Kiss Your Feet”:
TheBloodBeat: So tell me a little bit about what’s going with you guys now? You put a record out last year (How to Make Ambient Sad Cake), you played a bunch of shows..
Heidi: Yea, we played a bunch of shows. We went on a short tour, and then we went on a long tour. And now we’re taking a bit of an extended hiatus to fuck around and work on ourselves.
BB: Thats always important.
Grace: Yea it will probably be at least another couple of months.
BB: The record was on Turn Up Records. Tell me a little bit about how you got in with those guys?
H: Marc is a friend of ours. Last year he called us up, said he was thinking he wanted to start this label and wanted to put on a Sandwitches record as his first release because he liked our songs and was a real supportive. He thought it’d be a good way to start off so we were like yea, sure, of course! And he was kind of old fashioned about it. He was willing to put up the money and have us go into the studio and do the recordings and do it in a real cool way so it was great.
BB: And where is the studio?
H: In the East Bay.
G: This place called The Wally Sound Studio, run by this guy Wally. He’s a cool rockin’ dude and this place is in his garage.
BB: So Sonny is also on the label?
H: Yea Sonny is. Marc is doing I think 5 of his 7”s. Sonny is doing a series of 100 7”s as this conceptual masterpiece.
BB: I saw it at Gallery 16 when you guys played there, and he played as well. Really cool idea.
H: It’s so cool.
BB: So are you friendly with Sonny as well? He’s like a Bay Area staple huh?
G: We both recorded on some of those 7”s.
BB: That’s cool. And Grace, you put out a solo record recently, Grace Sings Sludge?
G: Yea, I recorded a bunch of songs on my own. It was a bunch of recordings I made last year and my friend liked them and put them out as a limited tape release.
BB: Very cool. And you also in your other time work at Amoeba Records?
G: Yea, I’ve been there about 3 years. It’s like a big dysfunctional family there. Everybody’s really nice and usually a musician.
BB: You must listen to a shit load of music from working there?
G: I’m not quite as obsessive or expert as some of my co-workers. But yea…
BB: Is there anything you’re really stoked on now that you’re listening to?
G: My friend is putting out a Michael Yonkers record so I’ve been listening to him a lot.
H: I got a bunch of music from my roommate recently. So I’ve sort of been slowly making my way through. I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz recently. John Surman, Don Cherry, and am seeking some new pop experiences.
BB: So how do you guys know each other?
G: We met through her ex-boyfriend who worked at Amoeba. So we became friends and hit it off. She gave me a bunch of songs that I really liked. Then she gave me a CD of her recordings.
H: Yea we both did a bunch of recordings, we swapped, and both liked each others stuff.
BB: What do you use for home recording equipment or software?
H: I just use my computer. Mostly GarageBand on there.
G: I have a little digital 8 track that I use sometimes. But mostly GarageBand as well.
BB: More recently you put out the video for “Kiss Your Feet,” which Joey Izzo produced, how did you guys get hooked up with him?
G: He’s my honey.
BB: Oh nice. So when you’re working on new music, it seems like you split on the vocals, do you both bring in stuff you’ve been working on and go from there?
H: Yea, pretty much. I think we both enjoy being in lead and supporting roles so that works out nice. Both vocally and instrumentally. Songwriting wise its a pretty happy union, because all the different sides of it are different and satisfying.
BB: You have really complimentary voices, it make sense.
H: Ha, yea we like singing together.
BB: So any plans for shows coming up?
G: Not for a little bit.
H: I think our next show is in August. We’re not really trying to book anything until that.
BB: The first time I saw you guys play at Cafe de Nord you had a guy drummer, and then when I saw you at Gallery 16 you had a girl drummer…
H: The girl, Roxy, was our drummer on the album. Lance is our current drummer who went on tour with us.
G: He’s in a few other bands and he had a show that night at Gallery 16. He plays with Tongue and Teeth.
H: I thought they were going by Zoo?
G: I think it might be Teeth and Tongue. Or Zoo, haha.
BB: I read somewhere that you used to play with the Fresh & Onlys?
H: Both of us. We were back-up singers. We met through my ex-boyfriend who is Tim Cohen, who is the lead songwriter.
G: He recorded our EP that’s coming with Wymond from the Fresh & Onlys.
BB: When is that coming out?
G: Pretty soon.
H: I think we just got the record sleeves for it.
BB: Is that two legged cat going to be on it again?
G: No, we did the art for it this time.
BB: Is that on Turn Up as well?
H: No, it’s going to be on Empty Cellar.
G: Our friend Greg recorded it.
H: Empty Cellar is part of Empty Nest. There are levels this collective I guess. It’s Arvel Hernandez and Greg Gardner. Arvel doesn’t work at Amoeba anymore but he once did. So it’s those two guys putting it out.
BB: And no bassist right? Is that intentional?
H: We’re always looking! We’ve had some candidates. Bunch of flakes!
G: I like the way the songs sound with the bass on the album but I’m not really in any hurry to expand the band. We’re getting better. We’ve been working on harmonies on the guitar to make it sound a little fuller.
H: There’s always a touchy social dynamic in a band too. Bringing in another person is kind of a terrifying prospect. It’s gotta be the perfect person.
BB: Where do you practice around here?
G: In the TL at Park and Taylor.
H: Francisco Studios. It’s three stories, there are tons of bands there. Francisssco.
BB: Did you both grow up around here? Your music sounds much more like a small town, country folk origin. If you told me you both grew up in Oklahoma I’d be like, yea I know…
G: I’m from the suburbs.
H: Menlo Park.
BB: Well where the hell did you come up with this sound?
G: I have no idea what comes out.
H: It just happened pretty naturally I guess. We had those songs and that’s just how they sounded when we played them together. And we played them together a bunch so we filled them in. Everybody has kind of a good ear so we just heard it out and it felt right.
- matthew hunt
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Sonny Smith's 100 Records at Gallery16 in San Francisco
Sonny & the Sunsets Frontman Launches Crazy Art Project
Sonny Smith, frontman for the starry-eyed Bay Area garage-pop group Sonny & the Sunsets, has put an ungodly amount of work into an art project called 100 Records that’s currently running at San Francisco’s Gallery 16. He made up names and song titles for 100 fictitious bands, then sent them out to 100 different visual artists, who made up fake record covers for all the fake artists. Then Smith recorded 200 different songs (A-sides and B-sides) for each of these fake artists. Which is nuts.
The 100 Records exhibit, which runs through May 28 at Gallery 16, features all the original artwork, as well as a jukebox with all 200 songs. Smith recruited people like Ty Segall and Bart Davenport to help him record the songs. Artists behind the record covers include William T. Wiley, Mingering Mike, Chris Johanson, Reed Anderson, Jo Jackson, Harrell Fletcher, Chris Duncan, Tucker Nichols, and Paul Wackers.
http://pitchfork.com/news/38723-sonny-the-sunsets-frontman-launches-crazy-art-project/
S.E. Land Otter Champs 7" on 100 Records Blog
Check out this post on the 100 Records Blog where they’ve discovered a 7″ from one of the great white north’s lost classic bands “S.E. Land Otter Champs”. Sonny Smith tells me that this little 7″ is a gem of a record. I can’t wait to check it out.
]]>Gravel and Gold loves Jonesin’. Turn Up loves Gravel and Gold. Here’s a nice post from our good buddies over at Gravel and Gold:
Summer in Winter, Winter in Summer
This balmy January afternoon has me thinking of a most delightful new song.
From their recent album, Jonesin’, loving duo Matt & Jenny Jones have it down with their tune “Bummer Summer”. Thanks be for something to rival the too oft’ used Twain-ism. I suggest vigorous jumping around the room to this sweet, addictive, track as it creeps into your happy recesses to stay.
Jonesin
Sonny Smith Singin in the Hit Pit
Solar flair
The sun rises on songsmith Sonny Smith and Sonny and the Sunsets
By Johnny Ray Huston
Sonny Smith knows how to write a song. He better, because he’s writing a lot of them. The Oakland resident is currently shoulders-deep in a mammoth project titled “100 Records” that combines music he’s composed and recorded with cover visuals by a not-small army of Bay Area artists. Anyone who has heard Smith’s 2006 album Fruitvale (Belle Sound) or read his column for the Examiner is aware that he has a direct, colorful way with words. Anyone who has found a copy of Tomorrow is Alright (Soft Abuse/Secret Seven), the new album by Smith’s group Sonny and the Sunsets, realizes he has a gift for classic melody: “Too Young to Burn” is worthy of Ronnie Spector; “Death Cream” is a balm; and “Planet of Women” is the kind of music that will give you that summer feeling on Christmas Day. In the immediate wake of Tomorrow, I asked Smith some questions.
SFBG Around the time of Fruitvale, you sent out a little black-and-white comic called Life and Times of a Mindless Ape as your musician’s bio. I liked reading about your Bolinas youth.
Sonny Smith My folks moved all around the Bay Area when I was young, so I wasn’t a Bolinas kid. That’s what you could do back then, even if you had no money — one year you could live in Bolinas, the next on a houseboat in Sausalito, then in the Mission, then in the Sunset, and back to Fairfax.
They met at an anti-Vietnam rally in Golden Gate Park in the Summer of Love. My dad was in the seminary in San Anselmo; my mother was a resident at Baker Street [halfway house]. One could be a bohemian back then. My dad was a fan of writers like Brautigan and Kerouac, and he was part of a circle of old-time string band musicians that included sculptors and painters and artists.
SFBG Can you tell me more about the gentleman with the tarot deck in Paris that you mention in Mindless Ape?
SS Laurent Despot was the man I met. At the time he was a freelance journalist working for magazines, smut or otherwise. I was transformed by the tarot reading and it might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Basically he was a very nice man who helped a 17-year-old sleeping in the Paris Metro. He also lived exactly across the street from his wife, which I now see as wonderful.
SFBG I have to ask you about the Fruitvale song “Mario,” because it reminds me of a Mario.
SS I lived next to a big Latino family, and their driveway was by my living room window. The teenage son would hang out in the family minivan late at night and listen to tunes. One night I peeked through our blinds and I saw him in there putting on makeup and dressing up as a woman, partying a bit, making some phone calls, and then taking the makeup back off, going back to the Latino teen with slicked back hair. Fruitvale is a tough place to be anything but macho, so I was thinking how tough you gotta be to be a queen in the ghetto. We found the toughest beat ever created — “We Will Rock You” by Queen — and we started with that, then tried to make it a little desperate and sad but fighting to the end.
SFBG How did the idea behind your “100 Records” project come about? In terms of hypergraphia or forced hypergraphia, [the Magnetic Fields'] 69 Love Songs (Merge, 1999) comes to mind, but this is quite different.
SS I didn’t intend to write so many songs. I had written a novel last winter about all these fictional musicians, and I got a small residency at the Headlands to write songs for these fake singers and make sketches of what their albums would look like. I thought that might be cool to insert in the novel. But I farmed a few drawings out — one to artist Paul Wackers, one to Mingering Mike [godfather of fake 45s], some to a few artists at Creativity Explored, and a few others to people I met through Headlands. The pieces were so amazing that I couldn’t not do that for all of the songs, and I couldn’t slack on the song-production end. So my novel just kinda broke up into this epic art project. Now there are about 60 artists, and I’m trying to do 200 songs. Marc Dantona has been helping me produce some sessions. We have a little wrecking crew band, and we are knocking shit out left and right. The “100 Records” show will be in April at Gallery 16.
SFBG Tell me about some of the bands and musicians of “100 Records.” Who are they, what are their back stories?
SS There are about 50 so far — Beachticks, Cabezas Cordades, Little Antoine and the Sparrows, Earth Girl Helen Brown, Zig Speck & Specktones, Prince Nedick, Bobbie Hawkins, the Fuckaroos.
Prince Nedick for instance was born Washington Rice, and for a short period was a child preacher in his hometown of Turkey Creek, near Leicester, N.C. He started his showbiz career as a dancer, working at the 81 Theater in Atlanta as a young teenager. Rice was gay and flamboyant; he worked the tent shows in drag, a great Southern showbiz tradition in itself, and an important influence on rock ’n’ roll — hence the term “tent show queen.” He sang the repertoire of said tradition, many of the same tunes Little Richard would clean up and take to the bank, like “Tutti Frutti” (original lyrics: “Tutti Frutti/Good booty/If it don’t fit/Don’t force it/Just grease it/Make it easy”). He was known for his flashy style and violent temper. At the height of his fame, he went on the lam for assaulting his brother’s wife with an ax, and ultimately ended up in Minglewood, a lumber camp a few miles east of the Mississippi in Dyersburg, Tenn.
SFBG Are there box sets or large music projects (Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, for example) with an artistic element that you especially love?
SS Harry Smith’s is a huge influence definitely — probably the biggest. Mingering Mike, certainly. Woody Guthrie just swimming through all those songs over the years is influential. I wanted to step into a place where everything is available at all moments to be music, to be art, and it appears I had to come up with alteregos to allow that.
SFBG Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?
SS My girlfriend’s dad was named after Eugene V. Debs.
http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=9501
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