Ready for the world, or R U just ready to gitcha Bone on?! Let me love you till the morning comes. Alright, nevahmind the urban spoon... GB25 opens up and says ahh with a rare treat from Billy D’Vette and his old posse’ once upon a time known as Agent X (pictured right with Mayor of the Sunset Strip, Rodney Bingenheimer w/the penis-head hair-do). The band also featured Danny Simon (aka Simon Daniels, aka “Brazilian Recording Star”) on vocals. GB6 showcased their gem “Rock & Roll Angels,” but what we didn’t tell you then is the roots of how that song came about.
Started out being called “Sheila.” It was under the advice of the Runaways brainchild Kim “I wrote King Of The Nightime World” Fowley,
that suggested the later title of what the song became. With recording engineering twiddling of the knobs from Candy’s Jonathan Daniel, who happened to be chumming it up with Fowley at the time, as evident on the god-awful songs he contributed to on the Runaways “Young And Fast” slab of shite, Jonathan recorded “Sheila” on his 4-track in his bedroom. Billy tells us a small label known for releasing CD’s of L.A. band demos is currently discussing the possibilities of releasing all the Agent X recordings sometime in the near future. We’ll keep you posted, in the meantime, fix your ears on this.
Summer of ’11 hard rockers can expect the long awaited return of Black N Blue with their first studio record in 20 years. Jaime St. James phones in for cool convo as we ask him about the new release, the early days of Movie Star featuring Julian Raymond (Dear Mr. President), and the story behind being part of one of the first Kiss tribute bands (Cold Gin) that really ignited the fire in loads of bands to follow, all paying homage to the masked 4-some.
“Basically, Tommy said (to the other guys) well you know Jaime can play drums, he knows all this stuff, and he would be perfect. So they called me and I said ok I’ll come in and I’ll sit in with you guys. But there has to be one thing understood, I’m not playing in a Kiss tribute band unless we put the make-up on and get full costumes, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense...just gonna walk up there in jeans and a t-shirt that would be stupid. And I said, let me tell you something guys, we’re either gonna be the heros of L.A. or we’re gonna be the goats, and I aint no god damned goat.” Jaime goes on to say “not only did it start the tribute thing, it also I think influenced Kiss to put the make-up back on, to be honest with you.”
The packed half-hour show closes with one of the last of the good ones that Jonathan Daniel penned. “Lies My Father Told Me” surfaced as a tune on The Loveless cd. The version here actually sounds closest to what we would expect, a song that could easily have been from the end of the Candy/Gilby days. With Ryan Roxie’s guitar playing, you can not go wrong. The band re-recorded the track with guitarist John Ceparano on “A Tale Of Gin & Salvation,” who’s style would’ve much better paired up with a jazz trio. Way too much over usage of the Roland JC120, but thankfully this version exists.
to the Bone!
(download)
