The Leaving Trains
EMOTIONAL LEGS
Why EMOTIONAL LEGS?
"Because legs have feelings, too," says singer-guitarist Falling James. "And as a nod to the Stones' EMOTIONAL RESCUE, maybe. And really because I was stoned one night, and it came to me that way. Previous working titles for the album had been A CHARLOTTE SPIRAL -- inspired by this gracefully inverted, archaic figure-skating move that Michelle Kwan does -- and MY LOST DANIELLE [after a song on the CD] and even THE ASSISTANT'S MAGICIAN [a reversal of possession from the popular novel]. In my serene, clairvoyant haze, though, EMOTIONAL LEGS ultimately seemed a more . . . intuitive . . . compassionate . . . sexy . . . description of the album. Legs can talk. They have brains and memories and their own ways of communicating, of insinuating, of getting what they want."
L.A.'s psychedelic punks the Leaving Trains get what they want when they bare their very EMOTIONAL LEGS on Steel Cage Records, the band's first all-new CD in six years. Highlights include the eerily prescient "New York Is Gone" (recorded before September 11) and the power-ballad-turns-to-train-wreck rave-up, "Dumb as a Crayon," a fannish tribute to the late, great teen-angst TV show FREAKS AND GEEKS. As if to make up for lost time, the Leaving Trains throw down/up 66 minutes of new music, including hidden bonus tracks and Trains-mogrified interpretations of disparate classics originally by the Urinals, Cheap Trick, Eddie & the Subtitles, Black Sabbath and the Circle Jerks.
The Leaving Trains' original songs range from the furious punk-rock romanticism of "Capricious" and "My Lost Danielle" (which laments long-lost love, and the closure of L.A.'s legendary Tropicana Motel: "They tore it down, my last connection/that's the way it always happens/they're not very sentimental in Hollywood") to melodic, obsessive blue-mood ballads, like the swaying album closer, "Allura," with its celestial tangle of sparkling guitars.
EMOTIONAL LEGS kicks off with a brace of the Trains' trademark short, fast and laconic hard punk songs before unfolding into stranger states, like the lingering, languorously pulled-apart twist on "Black Hole" (marking, by the way, the second time the Trains have recorded this obscure Urinals reverie, which has also been covered by Gun Club and Yo La Tengo; the Trains' previous recording of "Black Hole," a more straight-up punk/hardcore version, appeared on the Trains' late-'80s SST release TRANSPORTATIONAL D. VICES). Similarly, the quietly lurking bass pulse and serpentine octave guitars of "Use Your Own Weapons Against You" build to an inexorable, explosive climax. The latest in a long line of Trains anti-war songs, "Use Your Own Weapons" can be seen as being from the point of view of bombings' victims ("you're going to feel how it feels to be on the ground"), or as a polite critique of pop culture ("the celebrities we've been assigned are all inbred, bland and fake"), or as catty advice on the perils of dressing to kill ("you're already caught on your own fishnets/you'll have to chew off your legs").
Indeed, EMOTIONAL LEGS is an undeclared rock opera, trance-engendered and psychedelic, the politics of sex and spying and justice . . . ESP via gams . . . Our heroine gets mixed up in the Balkan wars . . . she's jealous that she's never been to a laserium show, not even once, and behaves badly . . . it really is okay to share . . . goodbye, Europa, we're leaving, we get the hint . . . LEGS has nothing to do with QUADROPHENIA . . . and ends with a swarm of bumblebee guitars during the electric, sinking fields of the fadeout . . . alluring . . . allura . . . a lure, oh . . .
Produced by new Trains bassist Andrew Buscher (who also produced Texas Terri & the Stiff Ones, Calavera and many others at recently shuttered Rufftone studio in North Hollywood), EMOTIONAL LEGS features the classic Leaving Trains lineup:
Lead singer-guitarist Falling James, ex-Mongrels. Also plays rhythm guitar in the Helpful Nuns. Keeps running for president as an anarchist write-in candidate. Writes for L.A. WEEKLY, HIT LIST and CARBON 14 magazines. Vegetarian. Scorpio with Virgo rising.
Guitarist-singer Melanie Vammen went from keyboards in the legendarily wild garage-rock band the Pandoras to guitar in the Muffs' original lineup to playing with the Trains. Melanie also leads her own new band, Pointy Kitty, which stars Andrew, Dennis and Miss Koko (basically, everyone in the Trains except for James). Semi-carnivorous. Leo.
Sometime bassist Miss Koko Puff, the former Sluts for Hire singer-guitarist, played bass on most of LEGS. She rarely appears with the Trains live these days, but Miss Koko does play guitar and sing lead in Pointy Kitty. Made her recording debut with the Trains on THE BIG JINX album. Used to play flute in the Wildstares Acoustic Chamber Orchestra (W.A.C.O.); she's "The Devil in Bakersfield." Recommended listening, Sluts for Hire's THE HAPPIEST BAND ON EARTH CD (Flipside) and Pointy Kitty's "It's Late" (unreleased single). Vegetarian her whole life. Another Leo.
And the return of prodigal-son and longtime L.T. drummer Dennis Carlin (who also plays in the sinister synth duo EMA 3), who participated in so many ways (songwriting, singing, a little guitar and synth, Bill Murray impressions) besides those magnificent drum fills at the end of "Dumb as a Crayon." The band's class clown, he is indeed comedian George Carlin's nephew. That's Dennis singing lead on one of the catchiest tunes on EMOTIONAL LEGS, "Judy Don't Mind." Omnivorous. Astrological status unbelieved in.
EMOTIONAL LEGS also contains tracks recorded with occasional members of this extended circus: drummers Allen Clark II (Hot Damn!, AC3, Fearless Leader, ex-Lazy Cowgirls) and 1977-era punk legend Maddog Karla (the Controllers, Legal Weapon), and bassist Jimi Green (ex-Dwarves spinoff Penetration Moon, latter-day Gears lineup). See further below for complete track order and credits, including the titles of secret bonus tracks not listed on the CD.
EMOTIONAL LEGS is out now on Steel Cage Records, whose other cool bands include the Chicken Hawks, the 440s, Antiseen, the Frankenstein Drag Queens, Cretin 66, Hellstomper, Limecell and Rancid Vat. Steel Cage Records is run by Leslie Goldman and Larry Kay, the same sick and kindly folks who bring you CARBON 14, "a journal of art, music, smut & wrestling." (See the end for list of distributors and full details on ordering the CD.)
It's the Trains' first full-length CD on Steel Cage Records (the L.T. also appear -- with a different mix of "Capricious" than the version on the CD -- on SCR's L.A. KINGS OF ROCK split-7-inch vinyl EP with Texas Terri & the Stiff Ones, the BellRays and B-Movie Rats, which came with issue #18 of CARBON 14 magazine) after nine albums on former label SST Records, including SMOKE FOLLOWS BEAUTY, LOSER ILLUSION, THE BIG JINX, KILL TUNES, SLEEPING UNDERWATER SURVIVORS, FUCK and the greatest "hits" roundup, FAVORITE MOOD SWINGS.
Complete EMOTIONAL LEGS track listing, comments and credits:
1. BIG BABY (words and music by Falling James). The song was made up on the spot at Rufftone, during a night when then-bassist Jimmy Green couldn't stop talking, even when we'd all left the room, and I couldn't stop aching over a faraway tease. It's punk rock to cry.
2. NEW YORK IS GONE (a.k.a. THE ASSISTANT'S MAGICIAN) (music by Melanie Vammen/lyrics by Falling James). I miss the old Lower East Side and San Francisco. And I believe that the magician's assistant is the one in control. She possesses stronger magic than the magician.
3. MADE THAT MISTAKE BEFORE (music by Vammen/lyrics by Falling). I have a casual old friend who once sent an innocuous letter, sealed with a lipstick kiss on the outside, which I saved because it looked cute. Later, I heard she was in danger of dying, and I was furious at the thought that this piece of envelope with traces of red lipstick might last longer physically than the real person! I couldn't understand how that could happen. Well, it turned out that my friend didn't die after all, and that my cat Wolfie destroyed the scrap of envelope with the kiss print I'd saved. You never can tell what will last. Plus, I was tired of NATO bombing the Balkans.
4. CAPRICIOUS (Falling). Another strangely out of time love song to that lost Danielle, a sentiment I should've written 13 years ago when I still could find her. It's the minimal pretend-I-don't-care-but-I-obviously-really-do desperation love song to her, almost wordless compared to the tell-all secrets of "My Lost Danielle."
5. BLACK HOLE (Jones). Nothing beats the haunting art punk of the Urinals' original version. This version is an experiment, pulled apart and examined, Melanie's and Miss Koko's vocals hovering icily above my low intonations. Nothing beats Urinals' bassist John Talley-Jones' spacy, pretty lyrics: "Three feet of gravity/tearing lengthwise rip me up/Stars dissolve above me/down to black below/black hole, I've seen this all before/black hole/fingers clutch my hair, gouge my eyes, you want me blind/inside you've no hope for me/in a void of complacency/black hole, I've seen this all before/black hole."
6. MY LOST DANIELLE (Falling). The one I shouldn't have let get away.
7. AMERICAN SOCIETY (Eddie and the Subtitles). Dedicated to the late Chaz Ramirez, who played in the Subtitles and the Trains. Chaz and produced the first Social Distortion album and two Leaving Trains CDs (LOSER ILLUSION and THE LUMP IN MY FOREHEAD, as well as parts of THE BIG JINX). The original vocals by Eddie were a kind of foreboding, doomy bellowing that I couldn't match in our version, so I took the low road and experimented with filtered vocal effects.
8. DUMB AS A CRAYON (Falling). Dedicated to Busy Philipps (a.k.a. Kim Kelly on FREAKS AND GEEKS). Kim Kelly was the kind of girl I've always fallen hardest for. "I like the way your smile implies a crime and says 'let's get out of here.'"
9. JUDY DON'T MIND (Dennis Carlin). Dennis sings (and plays drums and even the guitar solo) on this cryptic rocker about fashion victims driving in overly hip cars.
10. USE YOUR OWN WEAPONS AGAINST YOU (Falling). I was still mad about the bombings of Yugoslavia, Sudan, Iraq, etc. Every American problem is solved by bombing innocent people from the air, without variation. I'm also furious that celebrities seem to be chosen for us these days by invisible societies with little taste or appreciation for genuine charisma. And, irrationally, I'm furiously turned on by people with inexpressibly beautiful legs.
11. NEVER SAY DIE (Iommi/Butler/Osbourne/Ward). We almost didn't put this on the CD, since we recorded it as a lark. Dennis and I have always liked this Black Sabbath song, which we felt was relatively underrated. As with "American Society" and "Killing for Jesus", my initial attempts to approach the song like the original singer were disasters, so I ended up sounding cagier and more restrained. I also consciously tried to play a guitar solo that was different than Tony Iommi's, and obviously mine was much simpler than his elaborate flurries.
12. ALLURA (originally known as SHE'S NOT YOU) (Falling). The tug of the Old World, the smell of diesel trucks, the taste of richer chocolate. The red-tile roofs of ancient towns and rooms painted red. Continental evictions. Like that scene in TAXI DRIVER when one of the other cabbies tries to reach out and help Travis Bickle, but can't really get through to him, and keeps saying "You're okay" even though it's not true. Why does nature make us fall in love with people who don't want us? Doesn't nature know better? Will evolution get here in time?
"Black Hole" was originally recorded by Urinals and published by Inane Artists Music/BMI. "American Society" was originally recorded by Eddie and the Subtitles, copyright control. "Never Say Die" was originally recorded by Black Sabbath and published by Westminster Music Ltd.
Songs by Melanie Vammen published by Pussycat Slush Music/BMI, Dennis Carlin by Vanishing Parades Music/BMI, and Falling James by Blue Turtletop Music/BMI.
Unlisted, secret bonus tracks:
13. KILLING FOR JESUS (the Circle Jerks). With Miss Koko on bass, Dennis on
drums, and Melanie and James as usual. This is a different mix of a track
submitted to a still-unreleased Circle Jerks tribute CD. We're still mad that
Jerks guitarist Greg Hetson stole the music for "Live Fast, Die Young" (and
also "Cover Band") from my friend Ken Salter's song "Civilization" when we
were all in the high school punk band the Mongrels in the late '70s. Hetson's
a thief who's had two decades to correct the error by adding Ken's name to
the songwriting and publishing credits but still hasn't done so like he said
he would. Despite all that, Circle Jerks singer Keith Morris is a good guy, a
passionate rock fan and an always entertaining live presence, which was a
good enough reason to donate our version of this song to the Jerks tribute
CD. We chose "Killing for Jesus" partly because all of the better known,
early Jerks songs were taken by other contributors, but also because I
thought this rocked, with funny/true lyrics.
14. INVADERS OF THE HEART (Cheap Trick). All the instruments were played by
Dennis and Andrew. Dennis sang lead and says the song was done in five
minutes. People forget that just about every Cheap Trick album has at least
some and usually a lotta great songs, and here's a textbook example.
15. NEW YORK IS GONE (Vammen/Falling). An instrumental mix of the same song
that appears earlier on the CD.
16. 10 GENERATIONS (Falling)/ CREEPING COASTLINE OF LIGHTS (Falling/M.
Hofer)/ SUE WANTS TO SLEEP (S. Merrick/Falling) . These are rehearsal versions
of three old Leaving Trains tunes, secretly recorded by Andrew Buscher while
the Trains' all-gal lineup (Maddog Karla, Miss Koko Puff, Melanie Vammen and
Princess Falling James) practiced at Rufftone. The extended, trippy jam at
the end of "Creeping Coastline of Lights" may be the album's musical
highlight.
17. UNTITLED (Vammen). An instrumental rocker that Melanie came up with;
it'll probably be reincarnated with vocals on the next Trains album. Cool
false start!
18. UNBOLTED (Falling). Another instrumental, a slab of unleashed anger.
Best legs:
MELANIE VAMMEN: guitars, train whistle on "Black Hole," vocals
FALLING JAMES: guitars, most lead vocals
DENNIS CARLIN: drums; plus, lead vocals, lead guitar and synth on "Judy Don't
Mind"
MISS KOKO PUFF: bass (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 16-18)
ANDREW BUSCHER: bass (2, 8, 9, 11, 14-15), slide guitar (2), vocals
MADDOG KARLA: drums (3, 6, 7, 10, 16-18)
ALLEN "ALIEN ROCK" CLARK II: drums on "Big Baby"
JIMI GREEN: bass on "Big Baby"
Produced and engineered by Andrew Buscher at Rufftone studio in North
Hollywood, California from 1997-2001.
CD design by Chris Moore.
CD-booklet photos by Cathy Mosher-Brewer, Jack Gould, Melanie Vammen and
Orlando La Brea.
BAND HISTORY
The Leaving Trains were formed in West Los Angeles in the summer of 1980 by
Falling James and brothers Manfred and Tom Hofer, after their high school
punk band, the Mongrels, broke up (1978-1979, R.I.P.). They were inspired as
much by Sylvia Plath, Richard Pryor, Lame Deer and Raymond Chandler as by the
Germs, the Ramones, the Avengers, Love, the Sex Pistols and the Doors. Their
first recording, "Virginia City" (an ode to a tumbleweed cemetery in Nevada,
with an ethereal keyboard solo by future cult hero Sylvia Juncosa), appeared
in 1981 on the KEATS RIDES A HARLEY art-punk compilation (Happy Squid
Records) along with the recording debuts of Gun Club, 100 Flowers and Meat
Puppets.
The Trains came to wider attention a few years later with the 1984 release of
the alternately jangly and idealistically punky out-of-print first LP, WELL
DOWN BLUE HIGHWAY (produced by the band with brooding Mazzy Star/Rain Parade
guru David Roback, and recorded by Manfred, Tom and James with Green on Red
keyboardist Chris Cacavas, Gun Club/Bags drummer Terry Graham and Sylvia
Juncosa), which linked them with Green on Red, the Bangles, the Dream
Syndicate, Salvation Army/Three O'Clock, and Rain Parade in L.A.'s briefly
magical Paisley Underground scene.
Perversely, the Leaving Trains went in a more overtly punk and politically
caustic direction in subsequent years, after signing with Black Flag's
self-run label, SST Records, for the Trains' second album, KILL TUNES, which
led to the band's chaotic but ultimately successful first national tour in
1986, sadly without the Hofer brothers, who departed before the tour.
That was the year that THE NEW YORK TIMES' influential critic Robert Palmer
named KILL TUNES as one of his Top 10 releases, and around the time when Tom
Waits announced in the English music press that the Pogues and the Leaving
Trains were his two favorite new bands. Waits even namedropped Falling James
in the first line of the shaggy-dog yarn "Gun Street Girl," from RAIN DOGS,
so James retailiated by "waiting for Tom Waits to finish the sequel" during
"How Can I Explode?" on the Trains' next SST CD, FUCK (produced by Trotsky
Icepick/the Last's Vitus Matare). FUCK's crammed with typically manic, trashy
(yet literate) garage-punk rockers "Temporal Slut" and "27 Days" alongside
contrastingly dreamy, Stones-y ballads "With Dr. A.W.O.L." and "So Fucked Up."
The Trains, with Falling James now augmented by bassist Eric Stringer,
drummer Dennis Carlin and guitarists Sam Merrick (the Nymphs, Bobbi Brat
Band, Juan Fangio) and, later, Bobby Belltower (Nymphs, Piss Factory),
fulfilled a longtime ambition by recording the next two albums in the late
1980s with legendary producer Earle Mankey (the ex-Sparks guitarist and
producer of Concrete Blonde, Possum Dixon, the Dickies, the Quick, the
Runaways, the Weirdos, Three O'Clock, etc.). The drugs du jour for certain
band members during the first Mankey production, TRANSPORTATIONAL D. VICES,
were crystal meth and alcohol (and pot, as always); hence all the impatient,
short punk songs with one-word titles ("Worst," "Cement"). The Trains made
the first of several tours to Europe, going as far as Budapest and Dresden
(before the Berlin Wall was down) after the release of TDV.
For the following CD, the band was often under the influence of heavy downers
(sorry, Earle!) . . . these weird knockout pills . . . hence all the moody
and slower, experimental songs on SLEEPING UNDERWATER SURVIVORS, probably the
Trains' strangest release yet: an album of twisted love songs recorded during
Falling James' tragic two-year marriage to Courtney Love in 1989-1990. Before
everything fell apart, James also produced Hole's debut single, "Retard Girl."
Eventually, Sam Merrick went back to Idaho, Bobby Belltower moved to
Manhattan, and James started hanging out and writing malicious, satirical
songs like "Kids Wanna Know," "Gas Grass or Ass" and "Bleach in the Fishtank"
with New Orleans provocateur Whitey Sims. The Trains' confrontational
tendencies escalated with James and Whitey's black-humor collaborations in
the early '90s (as captured on the LOSER ILLUSION, PART ZERO and THE LUMP IN
MY FOREHEAD CDs), which led to so much literal censorship, and several years
of arrests and other police harassment, onstage nudity and sex, soundpeople
pulling the plug and bouncers assaulting the band, a surprising amount of
mainstream media outrage, stubborn onstage AND offstage transvestitism, and a
glut of cheerful ditties like "Bob Hope," "She's Got Bugs," "Rock & Roll
Murder" and "Fuck You, God! (I'm Already Living in Hell)."
After Chris "Whitey" Sims moved on to San Francisco (where he edits the
satirical rag BEHAVE and performs with the Southern Restoration Society),
James reconfigured the Leaving Trains in 1993 with Miss Koko Puff and drummer
Dennis Carlin. Former Social Distortion producer and Eddie & the Subtitles
bassist Chaz Ramirez played bass on most of THE BIG JINX recording sessions,
before dying in a tragic fall in a warehouse. Chaz was first replaced by
Gwynne Kahn (the Pandoras, Mad Monster Party), then Fred Manchento, Jimmy
Green and finally Miss Koko Puff. In 1994, James' fashion idol from the
Pandoras and the Muffs, guitarist Melanie Vammen, joined the group,
revitalizing the Trains by co-writing many of the best tunes on the next CD,
SMOKE FOLLOWS BEAUTY.
In recent years, the Trains performed at the first Las Vegas Shakedown
festival in August 2000, and went on North American tours with Honeyburst and
the Humpers. Although obscure on this planet, the Leaving Trains have
nonetheless had an insidious impact here in some unusual ways. Original
Trains songs have been covered by an unlikely assortment of musicians,
ranging from the Screaming Trees' Mark Lanegan to the 440s, Cobra Verde,
Vanilla Trainwreck, Snatch, Nearly Girls, Temporal Sluts and the Point.
Stranger still, a punk rock band in Como, Italy used to call itself Falling
James Band, and later changed its name to Temporal Sluts, inspired by the
first song on the Trains' FUCK album. To add to the confusion, the real
Falling James later recorded a few tunes with FJB and another Italian spinoff
band, Nearly Girls, in Italy. In a less consensual tribute, a dreadful new
mainstream rock outfit in San Francisco insists on calling itself "Falling
James," against the wishes of Falling James, who has no participation with or
connection to these parasites. Buyer beware!
Also, just for the record: an old Leaving Trains song, "Kids Wanna Know," was
prominently featured in last year's dreary Kirsten Dunst cheerleading flick,
BRING IT ON, although the band refused to give permission for the usage and
has never been paid for the theft. Ironically, what little plot there is in
the film centers on the theft of another squad's cheerleading routines. Bring
on the lawyers . . .
Like Casper the Friendly Ghost, the Leaving Trains only want to be loved but
end up scaring everyone instead.
For revisionist Britney Spears-Bob Dole conspiracies theories, sentimental
Manu Chao/Tijuana No/Tex & the Horseheads/Vice Squad worship, and objective
punk-rock figure skating reporting, go to the latest news.
Listen to leggy, easy-to-access clips on the new jukebox!
The Leaving Trains
e-mail: fallingj@aol.com
Steel Cage Records
(215) 351-0909
www.steelcagerecords.com
e-mail: carbon@voicenet.com
The Leaving Trains' EMOTIONAL LEGS CD is available on Steel Cage Records.
Distributed in part by:
In the United States -- Revolver, Get Hip, Choke, CTD, Very, Temperance,
Disgruntled and Bomp mail order
Canada - FAB
U.K. -- Cargo U.K.
Australia -- Dropkick/Corduroy and AuGoGo
Or order your own pair of EMOTIONAL LEGS directly from Steel Cage Records,
via the Web site (www.steelcagerecords.com), using a credit card with Paypal
or through the regular old postal service.
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"I am the magician's girl who does not flinch."
--Sylvia Plath
(Thanks to Karie Jacobson of the Dagons for sharing the Plath quote.)
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