Tag: The Godfathers

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Rainy Day Saints/Frosting/The Godfathers at the Grog Shop, Cleveland, OH, 2.13.11

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Rainy Day Saints

When I had previously seen Rainy Day Saints, their sound mix was muddy, making it difficult to gauge anything but a beat. Sad to say, this night was more of the same. Even sitting at the bar situated at the back of the Grog Shop, the sound seemed to be mixed for some point 20 feet behind the back wall. They might be a great band, but if they don’t gauge their sound mix down a little, it’s going to be hard to tell.

Frosting

“This song’s on capo 1, everybody.”

Chicago band Frosting have a full complement of women and bald dudes and a good sense of humor. The group, led by a singer/guitarist who is not bald or a woman but does sort of look like a mashup of Doug Fieger and Mark Arm, powered through an upbeat set of guitar pop. A post-song comment from the singer gives a good idea of their sound: “I tried to sell that song to Matthew Sweet. He said, ‘No fucking way.'” An enjoyable set from a solid band with good stage presence and some nice harmonies.

The Godfathers

The fucking Godfathers, people.

As I’ve noted before, the Godfathers’ album Birth, School, Work, Death has been a staple for me since youth. In that previous post, I mentioned that I had never become a big enough fan of the group to pursue any of their other albums (which, in Ohio in the late ’80s/early ’90s, would have taken a good amount of effort), but seeing them Sunday night for their first show on American soil in over 20 years has changed that.

From the moment the Godfathers – singer Peter Coyne, guitarist Del Bartle, drummer Grant Nichols and a bassist whose name I did not catch, filling in for Chris Coyne who was detained in the UK as he’s apparently a threat to national security or something – stepped on stage, it was clear that there would be no fucking around. Peter Coyne still seems pretty pissed off, and the Godfathers’ music still carries the same intense energy. Still sharp in their pinstripes, the band delivered a punishing set spanning back to the Sid Presley Experience (the band from which the Godfathers formed in 1985) all the way up to brand new song “Back into the Future”, hitting some amazing high points in between: “‘Cause I Said So”, “Walking Talking Johnny Cash Blues”, “When Am I Coming Down”, “This Damn Nation” and on.

Coyne cuts as imposing a figure as ever, gripping the microphone like he’s going to shoot you with it, spitting lyrics with as much vengeance as he did 20 years ago, grazing the audience with his blue-eyed, hard-edge stare between snarls – though he was never anything less than gracious to the appreciative audience. “It’s been too long,” he told Cleveland at one point.

Almost as a counterpoint to Coyne’s ever-serious demeanor, Nichols’ drumming was almost gleeful, backing the songs with on-point propulsion. Bartle’s guitar playing is so precise you wouldn’t know he hadn’t written the lines himself (he played in the Sid Presley Experience and joined the Godfathers in 2008). And the low end was more than competently held down by the bass player.

It was a gratifying show on a number of levels, not least of which was being able to shout along to “Birth, School, Work, Death” and have it feel just as vital now as it did when I first heard it 20-some years ago. This is no nostalgia act. This is goddamn rock ‘n’ roll.

(And while I don’t usually do this, I feel so strongly that you should see the Godfathers live, here’s a list of their remaining U.S. dates:

Feb. 15: Maxwell’s, Hoboken, NJ
Feb. 16: Johnny D’s, Somerville, MA
Feb. 18: Black Cat, Washington, D.C.
Feb. 19: Frankie’s Inner City, Toledo, OH
Feb. 20: Double Door, Chicago, IL
Feb. 21: Club Garibaldi, Milwaukee, WI
Feb. 22: Off Broadway, St. Louis, MO)

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A Foreign Country: The Godfathers

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A Foreign Country is a non-regular series in which I’ll write about music I dug in my youth that I still enjoy now. The name comes from the L.P. Hartley quote “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”, because, while I do continue to enjoy some of the music I listened to in my early days, my tastes have changed since then (thank fuck for that) and even the songs I still like are heard through different ears.

The Godfathers - Birth School Work Death

While it is a problem that occurs with frustrating regularity that I will find a band with one great song that is followed by a string of disappointments, some of my best album purchases have resulted from taking a chance on one great song. It happened for me with the Jayhawks (“Waiting for the Sun” from Hollywood Town Hall) and Jeff Buckley (“Grace” from the album of the same name), and in 1988, it happened with the Godfathers.

In the farm community where I grew up, about twenty minutes outside of Akron, Ohio, it took some determination to hear new music that was outside of Casey Kasem’s Top 40 or the classic/stoner rock played on WMMS. But if it was a weekday afternoon and the reception was good that day, I could hear a couple of hours of alternative music from the Akron City Schools’ public radio station. Alternative music had a different, decidedly more amorphous definition then, and in a sitting, I would hear the likes of Joy Division, the Smiths, Faith No More (the Chuck Mosley incarnation), the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Lime Spiders, Lords of the New Church, the Bolshoi and To Damascus. And I also heard a song called “Birth, School, Work, Death” by the Godfathers.

 


 

On one of the occasions when I successfully whined my mother into taking me to the Westwood Connection, an alternative music shop on the College of Wooster campus, I also successfully pled my case for her to buy me the Godfathers album, also titled Birth, School, Work, Death. I didn’t know anymore about the band then that they were from England, and they seemed a little pissed off. At heart, my circumstances in the late 1980s were worlds away from those of the working class in Thatcher’s Britain, but growing up outside of Akron and Cleveland in the Reagan Era, with a mother who worked in a factory and a father who worked construction, I was close enough to get it. And, being a teenager, I had all sorts of anger and frustration… as manufactured, misplaced and melodramatic as it might have been. It was still enough to feel like the metallic, grinding guitar work, stomping force and spittle-inflected ranting of the Godfathers’ music spoke for me as clearly as it spoke for anyone in industrial Britain. Not that I was considering any of this at the time. I just knew it was loud and angry and good for dancing to up in my bedroom.

I never became a big enough fan to pursue any of the Godfathers’ other albums, but I still occasionally pop in my cassette of BSWD – which is beginning to sound a little woozy after all these years – and I still enjoy the hell out of it and am infected by its energy.

As it usually turns out when I start researching my nostalgia, I’ve learned that the Godfathers reunited in 2008, have been touring, released a live CD/DVD in 2010 and plan to release an album of new material this year.

The Godfathers Official Website

The Godfathers Facebook