HE ROCKED, HE ROLLED, HE SURVIVED JIM BASNIGHT TALKS TO ROCKWIRED ABOUT HIS FORTHCOMING RETROSPECTIVE A LIFE IN ROCK N ROLL AND MAKING IT BIG (DEPENDING ON HOW YOU LOOK AT IT)
INTERVIEWED BY BRIAN LUSH
Seattle native JIM BASNIGHT
chased that rock n roll dream all the way to New York City and Los
Angeles, California with his band THE MOBERLY'S back in the 1980s. At
decades end, THE MOBERLY'S disbanded and BASNIGHT chose to move back to
Seattle to reconnect. Bear in mind this was 1992, the year that the
music industry descended on Seattle, made "grunge" a fashion statement
and shined the light on a new set of rock legends like NIRVANA, PEARL
JAM, ALICE IN CHAINS, and SOUNDGARDEN. Strange, that one of Seattle's
own never broke through in the same way, given the fact that his
embrace of garage rock/power pop was what defined THE MOBERLY'S sound
in the eighties and viewed as a reference for many bands of that era
and locale.
BASNIGHTS twenty five years of
music making are about to be catalogued into a CD retrospective
entitled, WE ROCKED AND ROLLED: 25 YEARS OF JIM BASNIGHT, THE MOBERLY'S
AND BEYOND (BETTER THAN YOUR RECORDS). Judging by his extensive
catalogue, this retrospective promises to be a voyage through
everything thing that makes rock n roll fun, with the garage power pop
of THE MOBERLY'S and his other band THE ROCKINGHAMS to the
jazzier-acoustic feel of THE JIM BASNIGHT THING, and the BEATLES-meets-
THE BEACH BOYS-meets-THE KINKS and everything in between feel (with
every instrument imaginable) of his latest group THE JIM BASNIGHT BAND.
This is certainly one of the most over-looked catalogues in the
ever-winding history of rock and popular music, but with all that
BASNIGHT gives in his live performance and the ceaseless enthusiasm o
fhis latest label, something is about to happen.
ROCKWIRED spoke with this popsmith over the phone on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Here is how it went.
You were telling me about this CD of your thsts coming out. It's a Retrospective?
It's a Cd on a label that is based in New york City. the label is called BETTER THAN YOUR RECORDS.
How many years does this retrospective cover?
The title of the album is WE ROCKED AND ROLLED: 25 YEARS OF JIM
BASNIGHT, MOBERLYS AND BEYOND. THE MOBERLY'S was a band I was in coming
up in the 80's. We lived in LA for awhile and were in New York City for
a while. We worked in seattle for a couple of spots in our career.
I was the lead singer and the main writer but they were two completely
different line ups. One of them has a full length CD on a German Label
and the other has a full lenght CD on a french label. I just put out a
BEST OF...for both of those albums on vinyl in Italy and I've also put
out a BEST OF THE MOBERLY'S on a Japanese label called WIZARD IN VINYL.
It's a well put together package. The vinyl pressing is also well put
together also. It's a high fidelity pressing.
After the MOBERLY's broke up, I recorded some stuff in LA actually, the
last years I was there and that ended up being my first solo CD POP TOP
which came out in 1993. I moved up here to Seattle in 1992. It's been
14 years since I've moved back up here to Seattle and I've been making
music full-time ever since. I got a band together here after puttingout
the POP TOP CD and I had quite a good bit of buzz going on from press
from the being with THE MOBERLY'S up here in the northwest. We put
together this band called THE ROCKINGHAMS, which was this power pop
garage rock kind of band. Eventually we put out a CD as THE ROCKINGHAMS
after doing some shows and apearing on a bunch of compilations.
On the side of that was this project called the JIM BASNIGHT THING
which had more of an acoustic-y kind of jazz meets BEATLES-BEACH BOYS
and different kinds of instruments, a lot of harmony vocals, and
violins, trumpets, piano, and all kinds of stuff like that. We
eventually put out an album that pretty much stands up pretty well
agianst a bunch of other JIM BASNIGHT releases. This was arounfd the
the time that the ROCKINGHAMS were winding down and the JIM BASNIGHT
BAND was coming together which did everything from all my career as
well as my new career and also incorporated a little bit of the JIM
BASNIGHT THING with violin and trumpets and female and male vocalists.
That sound was also used in my latest CD RECOVERY ROOM.
So that 's what been going on around here. I've been playing all over
the Northwest I went ot New York for a week to play a bunch of dates
for the new CD that's getting ready to come out on the label
there. I was surprised that for the first hour or so, it was all
requests. People new my music and would yell it out. Theere is a cool
kind of nght club scene going on in New york. There are not a lot of
live bands , but dj's playing music from different eras of rock n roll
and one of the things that's popualr now is power pop, music from the
eighties and stuff so I'm kind of getting a good vibe from that and I'm
finding that my music is fun and that people like the beat. the songs
are good and they fit well with what's going on today. I'm busy all the
tme and I've got a show that's really good.
I was just noticing you list of covers. T-REX - Boogie On!
We just touch on T-REX a little but I love T-REX. We do 20 CENTURY BOY,
JEEPSTER and BANG A GONG of course. I love T-REX! It was one of the
first concerts I ever saw. I also love THE KINKS!
I do to, but all I've got is this cheap greatest hits thing, that isn't all that definitive.
Yeah, I understand what you mean. And of course I love BOWIE too. I've
been going through my whole glam rock phase and listening to a lot of
LOU REED. I found a live CD of his which was released in 1972 around
the time that THE TRANSFORMER album was released. I love all that stuff
is really great! One of the greta moments in my life was playing bass
with THE JOHNNY THUNDERS BAND.
You played in JOHNNY THUNDERS BAND? I didn't read that in the bio!
I don't really push it. I only played for a month and a half. It was a
fill in gig and it was kind of "scandalous" because it was a pretty
tawdry situation going on back there. I've never really been
acknowledged as one of the bass players there.
How did it begin for you? Music , I
mean. What made you realize that this is what I've gotta do and I'm
gonna go ahead and do it?
When I was a kid growing up, I loved music and listening to the
transistor radio and going to the stores and buying the records. It got
to a point where I realized that I could write songs. Ever since then
I've written about 500 songs probably. I really love getting up and
playing and having a good time on stage. I've played all kinds of music
with all different types of musicians and I've realeased about 6 CD's.
I've never made it big or gone Hollywood. I was therefore seven years
and in New York I was there for three and a half years.
For a while there, in the early nineties, it seemed as if the music industry descended on your hometown of Seattle. That was a weird deal. I
came up here, because i had reached the end of
my rope in LA because of this day job that I had. My first marriage had
broken up and I had lost my sobriety. I came back to Seattle to
reconnect with my old man because he was getting ready to pass away
which he did about a year later. He and hung out for quite a while and
I thought about going back to LA but I decided to stick around because
the music scene had changed and there was a lot going on. I never realy
got much of a bump from the Seattle music scene. Their view of
what I was doing was that I was power pop and not what was happening in
Seattle but i disagree. I had alot to do withte development of the
scene in Seattle going back to the mid eighties before anything had
really happened and my band THE MOBERLY'S brought in a lot of the same
influences that became emblematic of the grunge era. Not the dirty
metal side but more the garage punk glam kind of side of that. We used
to do shows on Central where the whole thing kind if started and the
house would be packed. In retrospect i moved to LA in 1985 people in
Seattle had this attitude that we didn't stick it out and help build
the scene up in Seattle.There wasn't that much of a connection between
myself nand the big movers an shakers of that Seattle music scene so I
just did my thing and s lotof people really liked what I did and
respected me for who I was. I just maintained the ability to make
a living as a musician ever since I came back here in 1992.
I showcased the band DJ MONKEY not too long ago. You know those guys? JOEY ALKES is the guy I know
very well. He co-wrotea number of my songs with me. We've spent a ot of
time writing songs together. JOEY's a great guy and a great talent and
just a fun guy. We've had a lot of fun hanging out together in LA.
When I go down there, I always get a chance to see him. DJ
MONKEY is a really good act, I like what they do. He's a great guy.
Crummy basketball player, though.
Explain, if it's explainable, the creative process in writing a song. There are about three, four
different ways. One way is, hearing a melody in your head and even a
lyric at the same time and fleshing it out with a guitar. Another way
is just playing the guitar and coming up with a cool melody or chord
progression and then writing a lyric for it.Something that comes to
you. Another way is to basically write a poem, and taking a guitar and
writing around that , melodically and letting that fall into a musical
place. Another way would be to take something that someone else has and
giving it your spin.
What do you want people to walk away with after hearing your music? I want people to walk away feeling that I'm a serious persona and a deep person that
has a perspective on the world and that I love life and that I want you
to smile and have a good time. If they walked away humming a tune,
that's great for me.
