Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Comeback Special: 2009

  

Comeback Specials feature artists who returned with new albums after absences of a decade or longer.  I choose a song from each comeback album to share with you.  2009 was a notable year.  Moebius and Roedelius reunited as Cluster. Miriam Linna and Billy Miller put the A-Bones back together.

William DuVall (whose career dates back to Atlanta hardcore band Neon Christ) joined Alice In Chains for their first album since Layne Staley's death, and Krist Novoselic joined the surviving members of Flipper.  

Robert Kidney and his brother Jack made a comeback as 15-60-75 (The Numbers Band), with Chrissie Hynde's brother Terry on sax.  Paul & Gene made a new Kiss album.  They angered fans by replacing Ace and Peter, and by selling the  album exclusively at Wal-Mart.  Pobody's nerfect.

In 2009, Ben Lee made a new Noise Addict album (which is free on Bandcamp!) with the help of Lou Barlow.  Ben started Noise Addict when he was 13. 

Sérgio Dias was 15 when Os Mutantes first appeared on Brazilian TV.    Neither Rita Lee nor Arnaldo Baptista participated in the Os Mutantes "reunion" album; only Arnaldo's brother Sérgio Dias remained for 2009's Haih... Ou Amortecedor.....

Nineties bands Polvo and Six Finger Satellite made new records. 6FS released both a new album and Half Control, an album of previously unreleased recordings from 2001. 

Stiff Records alumni Pointed Sticks and Tenpole Tudor decided that 2009 was the right time for new records.  The Pointed Sticks have since released two more albums in 2015 and 2022.  Mick O'Donnell from Downliners Sect played on the 2009 Tenpole Tudor album.  O'Donnell died in February 2022.

Guitarist and songwriter Gary Higgins came back in 2009 for Seconds, his first record since 1973's Red Hash.  Grant Hart (pictured above) released his final album, Hot Wax, which featured Basia Bulat and members of A Silver Mt. Zion and GYBE. Grant Hart died in 2017.  Billy Miller (A-Bones frontman and Norton Records cofounder) died in 2016.

5 comments:

  1. Comeback Special 2009: https://www.imagenetz.de/cQ6EN

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks! And, in the "it's a small world, sort of" department, I was looking at your notes for the 2003-2004 volume when I realized (with a bit of a nostalgic pang) that I had a personal connection to one of the tracks being featured. You quite correctly pointed out that Kjehl Johansen didn't play guitar on the Urinals' album "What Is Real And What Is Not." Well, I was for a good long while friends with the guy who DID play guitar on that album -- Rod Barker, who died in 2017.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm sorry to hear that you lost a friend. I looked up Rod Barker on Discogs and saw that he was a member of Ten Foot Faces -- a band I'm not familiar with, but they had releases on some great labels that were run by musicians: Independent Project, Pitch-a-Tent, and Iloki. I hope he had a blast playing in the Urinals. One of the many shows I should have gone to see was when the Urinals toured to support that album.

      Delete
    2. Thank you for those kind words. I knew everyone in the Ten Foot Faces pretty well, and I'd in fact been friends with both Rod Barker and Tony Fernandez even before they started playing together. I'm sorry to report that Tony died in 2020 -- not so long after Rod. But I imagine Chuck Larsen is around and doing a little drumming on the side, and I believe Devin Carson is still active with the Scotch Apostles:
      https://www.youtube.com/@scotchapostlesband3580/featured .

      As you might be able to tell, the Ten Foot Faces were a surf-and-60s-garage oriented outfit with an insouciant punk attitude (and some really good songs). I don't, alas, have their whole discography, scanty though it was to begin with. But what I DO have is currently residing at the other end of the link I'm sending you at the e-mail address associated with this blog.

      Delete
  3. Looks like another winner -- thanks Jonder!

    ReplyDelete