Cecilia Castleman at the Blue Room January 25, 2025

So...I took five excitable pre-teen girls to the Blue Room in hopes of inspiring them. 

My two eldest daughters and three of their friends were all giggling and laughing in the car ride over, going to see Cecilia Castleman for no other real reason besides it was at the Blue Room and an all-ages show and it seemed that they just might like it. My wife and I had separately come to the same conclusion that our eldest best connects with her friends via music, and given our direct connection to so much of it, we should be exposing these kids to any and all appropriate stuff every damn chance we get. So with my office mere yards away, it was an absolute no-brainer to drag a field trip on down to the Blue Room. 

None of us had listened to Cecilia prior to that night, but that kinda felt irrelevant. I remember that age, just seeing ANY live music would've captivated and enraptured me in a way that is just impossible now. The promise, the potential...it's intoxicating when you land it and some of us spend the rest of our lives dreaming of recapturing it. 

 

But 9pm start for a headliner can be a reach for the circadian rhythm of a body used to being in bed by that time. My eight-year-old laid on the floor and subsequently requested to be held all before Castleman sang a single note. The four older girls, fifth-graders all of them, held up a little better. I gave them the pep talk that the moment they wanted to leave, we could go. So after 40 minutes or so, they politely told me they were ready to go. 

The show was solid, Cecilia has a spectacular voice, it was her birthday, the band was locked in (I guess she usually plays solo?) and just a great example of an artist doing it right. And I think the girls appreciated it, in addition to the free Coca-Cola and Liquid Death I gave them (a ten year old holding a 16 oz. can will never "look" right, it just seems like a beer no matter what) and the game of Truth or Dare they played on the patio where, I shit you not, one of the dares was "say the word 'poop' as loud as you can." 

Stopped off at the merch table and I felt it was as good a reason as ever to blow some money on vinyl. So I bought multiple copies of Castleman's 8" lathe-cut single of "It's Alright" record and handed them to the girls, a little souvenir from their first-ever show at the Blue Room for the three of them whose last name is not Blackwell. I also let them each pick an LP from the storefront...two copies of "White Stripes Greatest Hits" and one copy of "No Name" if you're curious. 

Probably too soon to tell if any of my five young charges had that life-changing moment last week, but I could see other folks in the audience, adults, staring in their direction with a look on their face, not longing, but thinking back to that age, to the promise of everything that lay ahead and its ability to blow your worldview wide open. We'll get them there yet.

Kelley Stoltz "Antique Glow"

 Kelley Stoltz

"Antique Glow" 20th anniversary expanded edition

scum stats: 300 UK indie exclusive, 700 US indie exclusive, a whole mess of 'em on black and maybe some super top-secret single digit kinda things still to be revealed to you real heads

The number of albums I love more than "Antique Glow" could be counted on two hands.

Cut to February 2003. I'm still in college, loving journalism classes but bummed that I need to take French, in the beginning steps of starting my own record label and also balancing time in the Dirtbombs.

We're scheduled for a quick West Coast trip centered around a headlining spot at Noise Pop Festival in San Francisco. I made my way into Amoeba in the Haight and happily felt like I was at home. Back at that time, I knew enough people who worked there that someone I was friends with was bound to be on the floor whenever I walked in. It was a nice feeling then...I don't think it's true anymore.

I cannot remember if it was Detroit ex-pat Michael Cooper or SF stalwart Brock Galland who made the suggestion, but it was definitely one or the other who thrust a copy of "Antique Glow" into my hands.

My first impression was...I didn't like the name Kelley Stoltz. Probably to do with my dislike of Eric Stoltz and thinking that Kelley with an "E" seemed pretentious. I was NOT pulled in immediately. But after I was told that ever album cover was hand-painted by Kelley, that he self-released it himself AND that he was originally from the Metro Detroit area...I thought the $12 investment was worth the risk.

Took a minute upon arriving back home for me to throw the record on the turntable, but as SOON as I did, it was instantaneous amazement. The opening lick of "Perpetual Night", just close enough to "Here Comes The Sun" without invoking lawsuits, is the perfect enticement to keep listening. The WARMTH of it all, enveloping like a cozy old blanket, I mean, that's the GLOW we're talking about in the title, right? The lyrics lazily introduce themselves, delayed effects sputter from left to right channel like a shooting star across the night sky, it all feels like it's just going to fall apart and then at 1:52 the drums spring into step and it all locks in and just...makes sense.

The album is just full of moment after pleasing moment like the one's described. Every song, every change, every note...just a damned cornucopia of brilliance. An embarrassment of beautiful music all squeezed onto one album. Like...it feels like it's not even fair to the rest of the world. There's a lifetime's worth of incontrovertibly statuesque songs upending the statistical improbability of all being crammed one next to another across the 14 tracks on the original release. I mean, "Mt. Fuji"? Don't even get me started!

I sat and listened to that original hand-painted version for months before I finally worked up the gumption to actually reach out to Kelley and suggest that I put out a CD version of "Antique Glow" on my imprint, Cass Records.

He wrote back, quickly, and said he'd just signed a deal with Jackpine Social Club to put it out on CD, but that he was excited to try and work on something else. He wound up sending me 5-10 more copies of the LP which I handed out amongst people I trusted (Ian Svenonius, Simon Keeler, Jack White...probably some more I'm forgetting) that helped spread the word.

I wound up releasing a 7-inch single with Kelley in 2006 and by that time, I had passed his music along to Sub Pop, who ultimately ended up signing him to a three-album deal. He'd later go on to open one of the earliest Raconteurs tours, let me do a stint playing drums for him, get a crazy licensing deal with Regions Bank, join Echo and the Bunnymen as a touring member and generally making quite remarkable records in the intervening two decades. 

If there's anything that gets me OVER excited about this new reissue is the inclusion of SO MANY BONUS TRACKS. Ho-lee shit. A lot of these I'd heard back in the day as included on his absolutely necessary "Australian Tour EP" and just fell in love with. There really is no song more deserving of inclusion on some breathtakingly cinematic reminiscent soundtrack as "Old Pictures" is (side note: its Kelley's mom's favorite song of his). That along with "Frying Pan" and "Dead John" (inspired by Edward Gorey books) are just so integral to the listening my ears have done. As in....some of my most enjoyable moments of listening I've ever had have been to these songs.

So imagine my extreme happiness in the assembling of this set where Kelley pulls out a half dozen songs from that same time period that I'd never heard...and they are all absolute killers. I mean, "Too Beck" (named so because, well, it's sound too much like Beck) is just brilliant. I am still hopping around losing my mind to it. And "Umbrella" is painfully spectacular...described to me by Kelley as him "trying to sound like CSNY" and keep finding my way back to this song. The plaintive lyrics, not really telling a story per se, but just astutely conveying a feeling. "Don't you make the same mistakes that I made, don't forget to bring your umbrella" is simple at face value, but there's so many other ways to interpret it. "If you're a girl well you might see some mascara run but if you're a field...you will be smiling." 

I have not felt so compelled by a song in an unmeasurably long time. Kelley has this way with me. I am forever a fan and the ability to help spread the gospel here is one the numerous joys I get here at my dream job.

Me and the Melvins: An Entirely True Story

 (like a damn mug shot)

My earliest memory of the Melvins is being played “Honeybucket” by my uncle Jack. The CD was the first I’d ever seen where the tray of the jewel case WASN’T the standard dull gray color. “Houdini” was bright canary yellow. The packaging stood out wildly amongst a stack of Rage Against the Machine, Primus and Jeff Beck CDs in its midst. The Frank Kozik cover art was arresting, seemingly looking back at a nonexistent idealized 1950’s, but with a technicolor freakishness that was oddly comforting. 

(There was a series of Snapple promotional posters around this same time that made me feel the same way. I’ve struggled to find evidence of these online, I may have some buried in the flat files though. If you have images, I would love to revisit. The Orbit “Orby” magazine logo also fits under this umbrella)

The song was a wild ride. I reckon I’d never heard anything quite like it.

I probably read “Come As You Are” (the Nirvana biography) not long afterward and my interest level in the band was further piqued. I can’t remember if Jack gave me “Houdini" or I stole it or if I even still have it, but “Stoner Witch” was bought next, then a grip of earlier original LPs (“Lysol”, “Bullhead”, all three solo LPs) all from Car City Records in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. There was no real good reason that those titles should’ve still been available new on vinyl around 1996. I don’t believe they were actively in-print. My impression is that by that point, the hipper folks were “done” with “grunge” music, leaving it wide open for wide-eyed teenagers like myself to scoop it up and soak it in.

I first saw the Melvins live at the Shelter in Detroit, Friday September 13th, 1996. Tickets were $10 each. I bought two, one for me and one for Jack. He drove. The band played two sets. The club (with a capacity of 400) was no more than half-full. I was a freshman in high school and this was the second proper “concert” I would attend. I saw Foo Fighters with that dog in March of that year and would see Rage Against the Machine less than one week later. After that, it all becomes a blur for every concert I would see, but I can recall with specificity every time I saw the Melvins. 

In 1997, in the pit at the Shelter, there was a girl standing behind me, slightly older than I was, blatantly rubbing her breasts against my back. Jack, usually observing the show from a safe distance in the back of the room, dipped into the crush of bodies toward the front of the stage just to tell me “You know this girl is rubbing her breasts on you, right?” “Yeah.”  I’d just turned 15. I had no idea what to say or do. I just fucking stood there. Dumb. Mute. Frozen. I caught her eye as she was exiting the club, she had a look on her face as if she had never seen me before AND appeared to be in the company of a boyfriend. I still occasionally think about this incident and all I’m left with is “What in the FUCK was that about?”

I do recall the band referring to “the Insane Clown Pussies” from stage. 

In 1999 I saw them by myself for the first time. I’d just left from a White-Walker Trio rehearsal, I’d missed openers the Cosmic Psychos and the Melvins tour wiki is wrong, the gig took place at the Shelter, not Saint Andrew’s Hall. In 2000 I did see them at Saint Andrew’s, part of the Trilogy 2x4 tour. They covered “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with some unnamed woman (a fan?) on guest vocals. Buzz referenced an iconic male rock star from stage and said if the two had sex it would be “like throwing a hot dog down a hallway…but only because my penis is so small.” I remember being vaguely disappointed by the performance. 

(a decent run of three straight albums)

By early 2001, the Melvins had reached out to the White Stripes to ask them to open some shows for them. Jack didn’t seem to spend too much time on the decision, ultimately thinking that the Melvins crowd would not take kindly to the White Stripes presentation and politely declining the offer. Around this time, I was still running the email announcement list for the White Stripes from my personal AOL account. I was on tour with the Dirtbombs, staying with In the Red Records label owner Larry Hardy at his house. Checking my email, I noticed an email from a “Dr. Crover” that said something along the lines of “Hey, Bummed White Stripes weren’t able to tour with Melvins, but hope to see/meet you sooner than later. Be good. - Dale”

I. COULD. NOT. BELIEVE. IT. 

Sure Calvin Johnson emailed a year earlier asking if the White Stripes would do a single on K (to which I audibly screamed “Oh my god!” when I read the email) but this felt different.

(side note: he DEFINITELY ended the email with “Be good.” I thought that was funny and badass and have often appropriated the phrase for my own email use)

My response to Dale went something like this…

“My name is Ben and I run the email list for the White Stripes. Jack and I are both huge fans of the Melvins. I play drums in a band called the Dirtbombs, if you ever see we’re in your town, I would love to meet and say hi.”

We go off to Spaceland, expecting friends the Lost Kids to open and slightly bummed to find out that the Lost Sounds were opening. Flash Express was first of three and I really liked their song “Sneak Around”

(sidenote: I just pulled this song up and listened to it for the first time in at least ten years and it’s still brilliant and cloying but the recorded version erupts into quasi-culminations that didn’t exist live in 2001 and that slightly disappoints me. I remember this being all tense and pent up and THREATENING to explode, but ultimately holding that back. I like that as a songwriting trick.)

Any way, the show at Spaceland was a big deal. Not only was the “label” there (aka, Larry Hardy, one of my mentors in this record biz world) but also Jon Spencer (sans Blues Explosion), Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of the Cramps (who rolled up in badass 1950s Cadillac exactly as you would imagine them), Dave Katznelson, Pearl E. Gates from Pearl Harbor and the Explosions…this being the Dirtbombs first show in Los Angeles, it was vaguely anticipated by what I would estimate as about 50 people.

 (seriously, who let this guy touch these reels?)

We absolutely stunk. I feel like I had trouble hearing things on stage. Some nagging feeling is telling me that I literally forgot how to play “Underdog” in the middle of the song and had to break it down to its simplest kick-snare alternations and feel like a child in doing so. It was terrible, everyone in the band agreed, I ended by absolutely destroying my drum kit (photo from that night attached).

Backstage afterwards, I reluctantly told the rest of the band “I guess I’ll go sell some CDs from the stage.”

With a box of “Ultraglide in Black” at my side, I sadly sold these discs to people who i clearly had disdain for. How could they actually want to buy a CD after such a shitty performance?

In the middle of a transaction a gentleman says to me “I think you sent me an email today.”

“Oh yeah…what’s your name?” I replied.

“Dale.” he said.

HOLY SHIT. My mind was blown. Dude read my email, immediately looked up my band, found out we were playing that night and made his way to check out the show. How fucking cool and classy. I was shocked. Still am reminiscing about it all these years later.

His sole appearance was enough to totally change my perspective and turned that day into one of the more happy accidents in my life.

Dale has since become a dear friend. He saw every Dirtbombs show in Los Angeles for almost ten years. I went to Disneyland with him and his wife and they got me mouse ears with “Benny” embroidered on them. He invited us to play the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival they curated in the UK in 2008. We’ve crashed at his house, he introduced me to Ben Shepherd, he’s hooked me up with untold limited edition Melvins vinyl goodies and in 2013, Third Man put on a Melvins show recorded live direct-to-acetate. After giving Buzz Osbourne a tour of the place, he simply said “You’re doing everything right.”

This is mighty high praise. Buzz does not bullshit or blow smoke. Amongst the many compliments and platitudes that have been heaped upon Third Man over the years, this is one that I hold above just about all the others.

After the show, Buzz came up to me and said “Hey, we own the rights to a bunch of our back catalog. Would you be interested in reissuing it with us?”

“Hell yeah, absolutely. But what’s the deal with your Atlantic albums?”

Buzz went on about how he’d not talked to anyone at Atlantic forever, that anyone they worked with at the time was long gone and fired and that he hadn’t even seen a statement in forever. He also said Ipecac had tried to get the rights to reissue those LPs and they were told in no uncertain terms they would NEVER be able to put them out.

I was young, I was brash, I said “I’ve got some friends over at Atlantic. Let me see if I can make anything happen.”

“Have at it” or something along those lines was his reply.

With approximately one phone call to the wonderful Billy Fields, I was able to find out that while the reissue department of Warner/Elektra/Atlantic was working on plans of a 10” boxset reissue of those titles for Black Friday, since TMR was in touch and working with the band, WEA would nix those plans and let us work on licensing those titles.

(ugh...this dude needs to lose weight, diet starts tomorrow)

Even typing this now, I cannot believe it. What I’ve failed to address until this point in my rambling is how important and canonical all three of these albums are in my formative years on through today. When I’m all alone at a drum kit, it’s quite likely “Spread Eagle Beagle” is one of the first things I will play (that or “Scentless Apprentice”). The smooth, full-range low end of “Lividity” is at the same time funereal and meditational. “The Bloat” still gives me pause whenever I hear it…so sparse, so naked, so vulnerable, yet utterly and completely moving. I wrote bad teenage lyrics using that song as the framework/inspiration that, although the notebook containing them is mere feet from me, I cannot be compelled to share them with you right here. 

The moment the original analog masters for these albums arrived at TMR HQ, I took in a breath of disbelief. I’ve said it time and time again…but I am so absolutely lucky to be in a position to work hands-on with so many records that not only do I love, but are intrinsically important to me. Third Man is a damn dream factory in the regard.

To paraphrase a quote from John Peel regarding the Fall, the worst part of my eventual death is that you can be sure the Melvins will release a new album a few months after I die and I’ll be unable to hear it. On this re-release date of “Houdini”, “Stoner Witch” and “Stag”, let’s have a toast to one of the greatest and most reliable rock bands of all-time and hope for everlasting life, if only to continue to be amazed by their prowess.