The Greatest American Band Debate: We Miss Deadboy and the Elephantmen and also Ben Kweller

Instead of singling out one band for the greatest American band debate today, I want to talk about one band and one musician, that I'm a huge fan of both, that just kind of disappeared in the last five or six years. I was very high on both when they released new records, but one day, they both just vanished. I still listen to them in my car, but there has been no new music, at least to the best of my knowledge, from these two in a long time. This won't be like one of my previous blogs when I talked about bands I used to like, like Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals and the White Stripes, who I don't care for anymore. And it will not be like another blog when I wrote about bands on the cusp of greatness, like Alabama Shakes and Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. These two each had potential, but they just up and vanished and I have been craving new music from each of them, but I don't know that it will ever happen again.

First, I'm going to address the band. The band that I'm talking about is Deadboy and the Elephantmen. This band was, and is still, great. This was a two piece band, consisting of guitar and drums. They came out in the early to mid 2000's and really used the two piece phenomenon to their advantage. The White Stripes and the Black Keys both started to gain notoriety in the mid 2000's , and a lot of 2 piece bands starting showing up. I listened to most of them, but besides the Black Keys, Deadboy and the Elephantmen really stuck with me. I really enjoyed their sound. It was one guy and one girl. They did the White Stripes thing, the guy playing guitar and being the lead singer and the girl on drums. They did branch out a bit, letting the lady do lead vocals on some songs. They sounded awesome together.

You may be reading this and saying that you have never heard of this band, but I know that you know at least one of their songs. The song that introduced me to this bad was called "Stop, I'm Already Dead". This song was played a ton, and it is still being played. In fact, it's the opening theme song to the show "I Zombie". It was a great, hard rocking song. They sounded a bit like early Black Keys, so I was on board. I loved the single, and I bought the whole album almost immediately. The rest of the record is fantastic. They play mostly rock songs, but there is also some slower, ballady type stuff on the record. I was really intrigued by their sound and I thought that they could take it in all kinds of different directions. I listened to the record on repeat for a long time. I figured they'd be coming out with new stuff soon because their debut album was awesome.

Eight or nine years later, and there is nothing. I don't know if I missed new material or if they just stopped after one record. I really liked this band a lot and I was hoping for a lot of records from them over the next decade. That unfortunately hasn't happened and I don't know what happened to them. I love and miss Deadboy and the Elephantmen. I truly expected great things from them, but I guess I will have to settle for their one record. At least it is a very good, very solid album.

The next person was one of my favorites. He's a solo artist and he is extremely talented. There were rumors that he'd play every instrument on the recordings of his records. His concert is one that RD and I have mentioned on the podcast a couple of times. That artist is Ben Kweller.

Straight out of high school, I loved Ben Kweller. I saw the video for "Wasted and Ready", and I was enamored. Kweller perfectly blended the lines of rock, pop, and even threw some punk in there for good measure. He also knew how to write a beautiful, acoustic love song. This dude was awesome. His first album, "Sha Sha", is about 35 minutes of some of the best rock/pop music that has ever been released. Every song on the record is awesome. The aforementioned "Wasted and Ready", "How it Should Be", "Family Tree" and "Lizzy" are all great and they are all mixed genres. This album was crucial listening in my town house for me and my roommates, one of which was RD. I was hooked on Ben Kweller after this. Just two years later, he released "On My Way". It wasn't as good as "Sha Sha", but I still loved it. This record was more love songs and more ballads, but, as I just said, it was great. I listened to it, and learned a lot of it on guitar, in about 2 weeks. Kweller was still big in my life as an early 20 year old. I anxiously awaited his next album, and two more years later, he released his self titled album. This was good, but it was a bit of a letdown for me personally. There wasn't much growth. He was really honing in on the pop/rock, and I had heard the same thing for two straight records. I still listened to the album, but I wanted something different from Kweller.

With his next album, I got exactly what I wanted. A lot of people aren't huge fans of "Changing Horses", but I think it is wonderful. I wanted different and "Changing Horses" is just that. This record is pure folk. Kweller wrote and plays everything on this album. He can write one hell of a folk song and he is masterful on slide guitar. I loved this departure from the norm. It was a breath of fresh air. He showed me, and his fans, that he could do something different. He didn't just have to write pop songs, he could really branch out. I think this record is a classic, but a lot of his fans will disagree.

I was hoping Kweller would take more chances. But in 2012, he released "Go Fly A Kite", and it was back to his pop roots. It's still good, but after the masterful "Changing Horses", I couldn't help but feel let down. The best thing about "Go Fly A Kite" was the fact that he released the tablature for the whole album. This made it even easier to learn his songs from this album on guitar. But, since then, Kweller has not released any music. It's been four years now, and I don't know if he quit making music, if he got bored of making music, or if he just wanted to focus on being a dad and husband, but I miss his music. I still have all his albums, but "Changing Horses" and "Sha Sha" are the two I listen to the most. Hopefully, he will return to making music, but you never know, and four years is a long layoff for someone that is not that famous.

I loved, and still love both Ben Kweller and Deadboy and the Elephantmen, I just wish they kept making more music. They were both unique and interesting in their own ways and I could only imagine how much better and more experimental they could have gotten, had they continued to make music. I miss you guys and I hope you reunite, Deadboy and the Elephantmen, and I hope you get the urge to write and record more, Ben Kweller, because the music business and the fans miss you.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Did you know Ty likes guitar music? He even has a favorite kind of guitar. Follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.

The Greatest American Band Debate: The Moldy Peaches

For the greatest American band debate today, I'm going to nominate a band that is way off the realm from almost any band I've written about to date. You could call this band genre-less or you could say that they span many, many different genres of music. They play folk, rock, metal, ballads and they even rap on a few songs here and there. They also only put out one official album. They had LP's and EP's, but they only truly released one record in their short run. Now, I absolutely adore this band and they were also the first band that I heard that made me think, professional music can be easily done, if you know how to manipulate equipment the right way. They also did everything themselves. They recorded, produced, wrote and released everything on their own dime, to the best of my knowledge. This band will not be a popular pick for some, but as I said, I adore this group and I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize how influential they were and how they gave me true and real hope of becoming a professional musician. The band that I speak of is the Moldy Peaches.

I LOVE the Moldy Peaches. I first heard them when I was a teenager and my love has only grown from there, and they only have one real album. I cannot stress that fact enough. I don't know how they crept in my mind and stayed there for so long with such little material, but dammit, they have stuck around. I still listen to their self titled album in my car to this day. Sure, they released live and rare stuff that only hardcore fans of the band like myself own, but their self titled is the only real commercial record they have. And it is great. They have had as many as 11 unofficial members in the band, including Toby Goodshank, who I saw recently and he is great, but the Moldy Peaches is primarily, and most importantly, all about Kimya Dawson and Adam Green.

Everyone by now knows of Kimya Dawson. She is a folk singer that did all of the original music for the movie "Juno". She kind of blew up after that soundtrack and movie were released. It was well deserved because she has a unique voice, can play decent guitar and writes poignant, beautiful and silly songs. She has continued her musical career post Moldy Peaches very well. She tours and records new stuff to this day, but I will always love the Moldy Peaches stuff the most.

Adam Green may not be as well known as Kimya. Yes, he still plays and records, but he hasn't gotten the acclaim that his former girlfriend and bandmate has achieved. This is partly his doing and partly the industry's doing. He's very talented, but he is also heavily involved with drugs and art and making weird short films that make no sense. He does art with Macauly Caulkin. In fact, they have had a show and boutique of their drawings and paintings and they are very, very bizarre. Green has also played music with a lot of people including Ben Kweller, Binki Shapiro and Har Mar Superstar. He is a much better musician than artist or filmmaker, in my opinion. He, much like Dawson, knows how to write and craft sweet, but very silly and very weird songs. And, also much like Dawson, I enjoy his Moldy Peaches stuff the most. I have seen him live, and we discussed the show on a previous podcast, but, that show was weird and he walked off stage after playing wrong chords and singing wrong words. But, while I enjoyed the majority of his show, before he walked off stage, this was were I decided to buy not only his solo album, but the Moldy Peaches album.

So, this wacky and wild show was my gateway to one of my favorite bands. I went home the next day, listened to Green's solo album first, enjoyed it, then listened to the Moldy Peaches record and immediately adored it. It played on repeat in my car stereo and apartment for the next two or three months straight. Friends and family would come over and be very confused with what I was listening to, then that confusion would turn to, typical Ty, listening to some weird folk music. Everyone, with my brothers Seth and our editor RD being the lone exceptions, blew off this weird band I was suddenly enamored with. That didn't stop me. I listened to this record so much, I knew all the words to all the songs within a week. I love every song on this record. There are some great tracks like "Lucky Number Nine", "Nothing Came Out", "Downloading Porn With Davo", "Steak for Chicken", "Anyone Else But You", "Little Bunny Foo Foo", "Who's Got the Crack" and "Lazy Confessions". In my mind, these are all classics. These songs span all kinds of genres of music and they do it quite well, considering that they seem to be recording on either a tape recorder or an old school eight track recorder. I love that. "Lucky Number Nine" is a great, folksy opener to the album. It's very simplistic in it's skeleton, it's just drums, guitar and bass. But, Kimya Dawson's vocals are very good and Green's backing vocals are great. It's an awesome song. "Nothing Came Out" is also a very slow folk song, but it's also dirty and silly. Quintessential Moldy Peaches. "Downloading Porn With Davo" is raunchy, pop punk, silly and awesome. I'm not a big fan of pop punk music, but the Moldy Peaches do it extremely well. "Steak for Chicken" is so weird and absurd, but the music is classic rock and roll, with Green playing some really good, really underrated guitar. It's like Andy Kaufman wrote a song and the Moldy Peaches recorded it. It's a perfect marriage. "Anyone Else But You" is probably their most famous and sweetest song. You may think you don't know it, but you do. It's the song that Michael Cera and Ellen Page sing to each other at the end of "Juno". The song shows love from both the man and woman's perspective, but the woman is more aggressive and the man is a bit of a whipping boy. I absolutely adore this song. This song should be played at every wedding everywhere. It's wonderful. "Little Bunny Foo Foo", the old traditional kid song, is turned into a punk rock song, with Dawson yell singing the vocals by the end. I love it. "Who's Got the Crack" is everything that is great about Moldy Peaches. They sing slow and fast. They pay their instruments slow and fast. And the song is one of the most absurd and one of the dirtiest songs I've ever heard. It's incredibly vulgar and weird, but it is also tremendous. "Lazy Confessions" is a return to slower folk music and I absolutely love Dawson's vocals on this song. The whole album is great, but these particular songs are my favorites.

I love how weird and how primitive the Moldy Peaches were. Both Green and Dawson are still kind of primitive in their solo stuff, but nothing compares to what they did in the Moldy Peaches. Dawson has achieved more success, which isn't surprising, but I'm kind of shocked that Green isn't more famous. Anyway, I love the Moldy Peaches and I could not continue with this greatest American band debate without mentioning them. Don't listen to them with your kids, but listen by yourself and I can almost guarantee that after three or four listens, you will get what I'm saying and you will become a fan.

Did I mention that I love the Moldy Peaches.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Do you have a greatest american band nominee? Tell us all about it. While you think of your favorite band, follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.