True – Concrete Blonde

I knew nothing about Concrete Blonde the first time I heard the title track from this album. I loved the song True from the first play. It had a swing, and a sass and an edge that set it apart from everything else at the time. The lead singer sounded a bit like Chrissie Hynde and she managed to sound world weary and smart mouthed simultaneously. I loved the lyrics that preached self belief in the face of adversity – but not in a preaching way. They sounded like a rock band with a songwriters heart. And it was subtle and under-stated in an era when a lot of music was becoming self consciously clever and not benefiting from it. In short I had a new favourite band.

That was 1986.

It didn’t take me long to investigate the album that provided the song and I wasn’t disappointed.

Listening to the album now I’ve lost none of my enthusiasm. The difference is now that there’s so much more information to go with the music. In the intervening years I’ve played lawn bowls (long story) and had extraordinary discussions about music with guitarist Jim Mankey, I’ve had big and bad nights out with now departed drummer Harry Rushakoff and I’ve spent many strange and rewarding hours of quality time in several cities and two countries with singer and bass player Johnette Napolitano. I haven’t seen her lately but she remains one of the most interesting people I’ve met in music.

It’s almost impossible now to divorce the music from my personal knowledge of the people who made it, but playing this album again reminds me of how much I liked it even before I became acquainted with its makers.

There’s not a track on this album that doesn’t make it a better album, and there’s some that are just brilliant. Songs like Still In Hollywood,  Over Your Shoulder and Dance Along The Edge are songs that no other band could have made. They are perfect showcases for Rushakoffs’s punk metal drumming, Mankeys angular guitars and Johnette’s urgent yet embracing vocals. She’s the kind of singer that can sneer at you and make you cry in a single song.

In Still In Hollywood , Little Sister and Song For Kim her portrayals of the Queen of LA and the title characters respectively are simultaneously heartbreaking and rejuvenating.

(You’re The Only One) Can Make Me Cry is Joplinesque in its delivery and while Cold Part Of Town grows to be awash with layers it doesn’t lose any of its poignancy as a result.

Finishing the album with an instrumental version of True might seem like an odd thing to do but it works a treat as Mankey speaks eloquently and deserves his moment of expression.

True was an album that completely spoke of the place of its gestation. It was a document of LA, but a very different LA to the one being fed to us by 90210. It was Hollywood that literally danced along the edge between desperation and dignity, between the seedy and the sublime. The key line in Still in Hollywood is “It’s 3am , I’m out walking again” This from the town where supposedly nobody walks and the clubs shut at midnight.

You’ve go to remember that True was released the year before another LA band Guns N’ Roses unleashed Appetite For Destruction. Draw from that what you will.

It’s a different debate whether Concrete Blonde went on to top this album – certainly they had bigger hits and standout songs later in their career, but True remains the album that nailed me to the wall. It still does.