“60 Years On…” 10-02-25 playlist Hr.2
*The Sawtelles – Smashed To The Floor
*The Sawtelles – So It Goes
*The Sawtelles – Space Aged And Girl Shy
*The Sawtelles – 3 Cheers
The Psychedelic Furs – Mr. Jones
XTC – Generals And Majors
The Beatles – She’s Leaving Home
Greg Lake – C’est La Vie
Neko Case – An Ice Age
Jethro Tull – Cross Eyed Mary
The Tubes – TV Is King
Aerosmith, YUNGBLUD – My Only Angel
Elvis Costello and The Attractions – Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head
* IMC ‘Zine #64 Jul. ’04 Feature CD: The Sawtelles – “The Sawtelles (Yellow)”
27 years ago on Sept. 1, 1998 I founded IndepenDisc Music Club.
To Celebrate, during hour #2, we will revisit all the IndepenDisc Monthly Feature CDs/Artists from 1998 – 2013.
Issue #64 July ‘04
The Sawtelles
The Sawtelles self-titled debut (subtitled “yellow”) is an exercise in minimalistic DIY that produces a refreshingly sparse, indie sound that subtlety runs much deeper when examined more closely.
Picture yourself walking into a Greenwich Village coffee house during the height of the early 60s beat poet era. As you sip your herbal tea, a trio launches into a groove that produces a sound so unique that it turns your attention from the libations to what is, or should I say isn’t, happening. It’s not an acoustic guitar, nor a soaring electric, but what sounds as one tuned as that of a banjo. Yet, Peter Riccio produces a very un-banjo-like sound with it. It’s not a drum kit, yet there are toms and a snare, with symbols of course, but no kick drum. How can you lay down a beat without a kick drum? Julie Riccio shows you that you need not overpower the beat to drive the song. And where is the bass? Oh, it’s there, supplying the rhythm so effortlessly that you don’t even realize it until the 3rd song, and once you do, you won’t be able to shake the once overlooked Peter Brunelli again.
What sets this CD so far apart from what has become the standard fare of these times is the approach these 3 musicians have taken. Combining an intense less-is-more musical sound with lyrics that produce some of the best life affirming statements to surface since those of the 60s coffee house dignitaries and Peter Riccio’s vocal style (that recalls a young Michael Stipe), The Sawtelles have created a testament to the simple joys of life.
Some may call it Avante Garde, but “Smashed To The Floor” hands us a comparison of child to adult, and the adult who wishes to still be the child, but realizes that life is not that simple unless you grow and change. It is the allowance of change that will lead you to “…imagine / Waking up to find / You’re suddenly all you’ve hoped to be.” That is pretty straight forward.
Whether it’s the security of a fragile relationship that is threatened by the past (when it really shouldn’t be) in “So It Goes” (it’s here that the expansive spaces of the music allow for the voids to be filled by the vocals that represent an almost helpless yet satisfied feeling) or the insecurity of a relationship that exposes the privilege of essential life in “Space Aged And Girl Shy” where The Sawtelles lay at our feet; “It’s easy to forget in these times / That it’s a privilege to / be at all / to / laugh it off / to / Live it at all / to / love / to love at all,” the essence seeps through and fulfills us in ways that are difficult to express unless wrapped in the basic simplicity that The Sawtelles exude. They bring forth the realization that one of the most complex human emotions – Love – can be one of the simplest joys achieved when looked at it through the eyes of love itself.
And that central theme is no more present than on “3 Cheers”: one of the most positive feelings that one could direct to the physical aspects of two individuals’ love for each other. When our narrator sings his heart out (“like there is no tomorrow”) and claims “I’m going down / 3 cheers for love,” it gets right to the ecstasy, and you’re thinking ‘Oh Yeah!’ Then he lets us know how much real love is directed to his only object of desire when the feelings are vocally expressed accordingly with, “I love it best / when we can spend the day / Having nothing closer than / no distance between us.”
Think about that for a minute —–
It says it all.
Love doesn’t have to be complicated to work.
Neither does music.
I’m going down.
3 cheers for
The Sawtelles.
– G.Gone
