Johnette Napolitano live at The Famous Spiegeltent (Melbourne): 2012

Venue: Famous Spiegeltent

Date: 15/03

The Famous Spiegeltent, a 1920’s-era tent/saloon bar, complete with its original fittings is one of the last of its kind in the world. Images of Marlene Dietrich seducing a crowd of absinth-drinking bohemians or a thrilling display by trapeze artists come easy to the visitor, but its another ‘last of their kind’ that's pulled a full house tonight. As striking as the venue is to the eye, it’s a real effort to take one’s focus away from Johnette Napolitano even for a moment during her short but engaging show in this iconic setting.

Not a lot of performers take stock of their career highlights with the relish shown by Johnette Napolitano, nor do they display the respect she does for her fans, and importantly, her own material. When the Italian/American singer is on stage, she is guttural, fragile, fascinating and hilarious as she participates in a one woman show as though there were multiple characters/musicians around her and the distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’ is forgotten. It is occasionally disarming to feel such a close bond with the artist as she is performing on stage, but Napolitano is a great communicator above all things and for this one-hour session at least, sat in a bar somewhere, each and every one of us feel the warmth and ease of old friends chatting.

Being an actual career retrospective, poetry reading and storytelling set, there’s an added emotional breadth to the show. The fact that the concert is so short is one of the sadder aspects to it when you consider Napolitano’s incredible voice, prolific solo work and the many years fronting Concrete Blonde. Her appeal above many of her American contemporaries though is the fact that unlike them, Napolitano is apparently devoid of any ego and acknowledges that proper hard work is required to maintain any kind of life in the spotlight. She feels no sense of entitlement, but considers fortunate to be able to scrape a living from performing. At this stage, her three-night residency in Melbourne - titled A Self Portrait: 2012 - suggests she has arrived at a point in her life that needed a line drawn under it. Her last visit to Melbourne was for the 20th anniversary of Concrete Blonde’s breakthrough album, Bloodletting in 2010, but these solo acoustic gigs are clearly much more personal affairs for her.

The shows are segmented into music, poetry and significant tales of her life thus far, coinciding with a book she’s written about her song’s back-stories. The ‘songs’ element to the concert range from her first ever written piece at aged twelve – a charming but ultimately sinister conversation between a frog and a fruitfly – to cover versions which have become Johnette standards, and of course plenty of Concrete Blonde material. The poetry is good if not a little hurried as Johnette skips over her hand written notes as though she is concerned she is boring us. (She’s not). And finally, there is the storytelling. “This one’s a drinking song….” She offers at one point. “Oh fuck what am I saying… They’re all drinking songs!” And so begins the tale of Joey, Concrete Blonde’s most famous track. The subject in Joey, Marc Moreland from LA new-wave band Wall Of Voodoo – and former Johnette squeeze - succumbed to his drinking, she recalls, as the show shifts – but doesn’t dwell - into a serious tone. Her recently deceased father also receives a poetic tribute, and it dawns that Napolitano’s energetic, sharp wit hides a good deal of personal sadness.

Further key moments in tonight’s show include a heart-stopping Wedding Theme which Napolitano wrote for the Heath Ledger film Candy. Performing it seems to bring the singer close to tears, yet with Jonette there are always the many laugh-out-loud moments to balance the mood. A spontaneous clap-along of Amy Winehouse’s Rehab during Take Me Home, for example adds a tongue-in-cheek angle to a somber, reflective song on excessive boozing. Also a roar of laughter follows Johnette’s mock anger at how ‘none of her friends drive fucking Porche’s… They’re always begging for lifts’ in an acapella cover of Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz. “Any requests?” Johnette asks finally from beneath her gigantic hat which barely hides her copious amount of long black hair. “Wendy!!!” Comes the unified reply from various points around the room. Unsurprising, as Tomorrow Wendy was many Australian’s first taste of Napolitano’s voice and the song’s impact has never abated.

Musician’s biographies usually focus on a few on the road hi-jinx, album sessions and in-band relationships, but often they make the reader feel like they are peeking into a foreign, unreachable world. But within one hour of doing her ‘live biography’, Johnette completely broke down the wall between artist and fan. Her openness itself makes her relatable. Even if most of us don’t live in the Mojave Desert, or front alternative rock bands, Johnette’s driven by the things that connect us all. Her parting words to her audience is a reassurance to everybody present, as well as herself, as though she knows instinctively what draws people to her music in the first place; “The sun will come out tomorrow and things will be better. I promise.”

lEIGh5

Concrete Blonde - 20 Years Of Bloodletting (live in Melbourne, 2010) review

 Venue: The Palace

In the twenty years since Hollywood natives Concrete Blonde released their defining album, Bloodletting, interest in all things vamp has skyrocketed, perhaps loosely benefiting this once nearly forgotten group. The title and content does reference Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, true, but the songs on Concrete Blonde's third album were never meant to be taken as literal tales of the freaky un-dead. Addiction and consequence were the songs thinly disguised subtexts – many of which were veiled pleas from the band's singer/bassist Johnette Napolitano to the people closest to her, including the rest of Concrete Blonde. But original drummer Harry Rushakoff and, to a lesser degree, guitarist Jim Mankey's substance abuse basically sunk the band less than four years after Bloodletting broke them out of obscurity.
 

In the last decade a rehabilitated and revived Concrete Blonde delivered the self-reflective 2002 sobered-up sequel to Bloodletting, Group Therapy and found their way out of the haze and put the wasted years behind them. Last year Napolitano paid a fleeting visit to Melbourne to test the waters with a small-ish solo gig and seemed genuinely surprised by the amount of slavering fans turning up she could still lay claim to. The time was right for her long-awaited musical return and both the artist and any fan despairing over Johnette's fellow Californian, seemingly plague proportion pop bitches, felt it at that show.

Napolitano is one of a dying breed of front-persons which has helped to keep her in good stead despite years of relative obscurity. The Concrete Blonde faithful don't waste any time - or volume either - in letting her know how much she's adored tonight at the Palace, as the dirty opening bass chords of Bloodletting's title tack are beaten into our ears. Australia was the first country outside of the US that Concrete Blonde toured, prompted by the album's reception here, and specifically the second single, Joey. It receives no encore placing either, but rather runs straight out of Bloodletting's feedback finish. Joey, like much of Bloodletting, runs at a mid-tempo pace, so the band hurl in a few bigger-sounding rock crowd-pleasers from other albums. Breaking away from Bloodletting - so far in running order - God Is A Bullet, Happy Birthday and True from Concrete Blonde's late '80s period, are especially well received.

Tonight's support band Graveyard Train had been the perfect pre-cursor to Concrete Blonde. The eight-member gothic blues group whipped up a bone-rattling storm that Johnette and co. rode in on, harnessed and wrestled into submission. Continuing their diversion from Bloodletting, the band haul Graveyard Train out from backstage to join them – as a kind of ghostly choir - for a momentous romp through Ghost Of A Texas Ladies' Man . The night was almost stolen by this near-forgotten single from the band's Walking In London album. The thrills were far from behind us though, and as Leonard Cohen's Australian live dates approach, a reminder that if he wants his song, Everybody Knows back from Napolitano, he'll need to pick up his game. Following that, a surprising cover of Hendrix's Little Wing gives guitarist Jim Mankey a chance to indulge himself a little - but not to be outdone, a barefoot Johnette indulges us all with some spirited flamenco dancing during two cuts – Heal It Up and the title track - from Spanish-flavoured album Mexican Moon.

The return to the Bloodletting tracks actually means some lost momentum built up over the side serving of nostalgia, a fact not lost on Johnette as her movements become noticeably exaggerated, including plenty of compensatory eye-bulging and eye-brow raising. The album was always more 'eight-parts-soulful and two-parts-rawk', so the decision to drop its beefiest moments – The Sky Is A Poisonous Garden and The Beast – is a very odd one indeed. The concert felt just a little incomplete from those song's omissions, but the frankly pissed-and-out-of-control audience don't seem to mind, especially once the stand-out sing-a-long moment Tomorrow Wendy begins. Johnette's near-accapella reading of the albums only cover track (it was an Andy Preiboy song) is a seriously powerful end to the set. Concrete Blonde receive a deafeningly raucous hand on their exit which is sustained for a good five minutes before the final encore of It'll Chew You Up And Spit You Out, which again is out of step with the mood built up by Tomorrow Wendy, but is no less a satisfying all-in-rock-out for the group and fans.

Although the running order of the songs needed a rethink, it feels like a triviality when in the presence of Johnette Napolitano, who never once failed to be completely mesmerising. Drummer Gabriel Ramirez and guitarist Jim Mankey made for outstanding accompaniment, but it was Napolitano's show for her sheer authority as a vocalist and bass player. The 20 Years Of Bloodletting tour winds down soon and the demand for them to tour again may never be overwhelming enough but Concrete Blonde proved tonight they are much, much more than just a 20 year old album.
 

lEIGh5

THE PALACE SETLIST: 22/10/10

BLOODLETTING 

JOEY

I DON'T NEED A HERO

DAYS AND DAYS

LULLABYE

SCENE OF A PERFECT CRIME

GHOST OF A TEXAS LADIES MAN

SOMEDAY

EVERYBODY KNOWS

CAROLINE

WHEN I WAS A FOOL

GOD IS A BULLET

RUN RUN RUN

LITTLE WING

HEAL IT UP

YOUR HAUNTED HEAD

MEXICAN MOON

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

TRUE

TOMORROW WENDY

BEDS ARE BURNING

IT'LL CHEW YOU UP AND SPIT YOU OUT

Photos by myself and Fruitbat

Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde) live in Melbourne 2009 - venue: Corner Hotel

The contrast between Angie Hart - who's warming up the room for Johnette tonight – and the main act is pretty striking. The former Frente singer seems so vulnerable on stage and is even apologetic for us having to 'sit through' her set in anticipation of the headliner. Angie remains completely motionless as she runs through a short set of brand new songs and Frente classics and from where I'm standing, no apologies were needed. Perhaps Angie was nervous about opening for an act who hasn't played for her Australian fans in over a decade. Really, the anticipation for Johnette Napolitano tonight is so intense that Elvis could walk on stage and get booed off if it meant having to wait longer. The big question on everyone's lips is after nearly 30 years of making music, what will she play?

After Concrete Blonde disbanded in 2004, Johnette moved out of LA into the California desert where she began writing for the self-funded self-produced Sketchbook album series. Highlights from these CDs are scattered in amongst Concrete Blonde's most loved songs tonight - and some pretty surprising covers - making for a 'fan's greatest hits' live experience. Johnette is already on stage and playing before the the curtain finally parts, revealing a pale and expressive face peering out from a mop of untamed black hair. The welcoming cheers are brief so as to not miss any of opening number, The Real Thing - a new song which is sadly very hard to find, but has all the potential to be massive - Johnette is in warm up mode, testing her voice which cracks a little here and there. The song loses nothing in this process and by the end of tonight's show, it becomes very clear why Johnette is still gradually smoothing out the creases in her astounding voice long after soundcheck. Gradually using more range, Johnette launches into Amazing - this tense, mid-tempo song are perfect bait to hook us all in and very soon the room is hushed and still.

The stage is now bathed in red light as Joey kicks off with restrained amusement. Being Concrete Blonde's only big hit in Australia, I sense there is a feeling of obligation to play it rather than want. The much faster and shorter re-working is quite nice for it's familiarity but soon becomes hilarious as Johnette, feeling her concentration going, widely pops open her eyes and stares madly at someone filming her, then in tune with the song's chorus informs him "I'm going to shove that camera up your ass". The laughter and applause brings the song to a quick finish, and Johnette makes a hurried apology to the camera wielding dude, reinforcing what we already knew - that she simply saw the chance for a spontaneous rhyming gag. Making sure that the concert never flat lines is Johnette's driving purpose here. She's making it fun for herself and for us. Still, I would be willing to bet anybody in her line of sight got the goose bumps in that moment her eyes fixed on the unwelcome camera.

The short acoustic intro is now over and Johnette welcome's to the stage her drummer Gabriel Ramirez (can you get a more Mexican name?) to spice things up. He's one of those dark brooding types with expressionless eyes who would look quite comfortable screwing a silencer onto a pistol. He's greeted enthusiastically and gives a characteristic faint smile and slight wave to the audience. Comfortable behind the kit, Ramirez slips into his zone and stays there for the entire show. Meanwhile Johnette is playing her matt-black painted acoustic guitar just like a low slung bass, making me hang for when she inevitably swaps the instrument and we get to hear one of the best ever lead bassists live and unleashed.

As a performer, Johnette has equal measures of sombre and completely feral - at times she's like watching Patti Smith or Janis Joplin whooping it up. She can be sweet and girlish one minute and scary as hell the next. The Italian-American looks as though she's not simply singing, but exorcising the music from herself. It's an almost frightening display of primal channeling as Johnette seems to be at the mercy of her songs as they leap from her throat. She looks disoriented and detached, sometimes even violent as though she's in a struggle for ownership of her soul. Her lips curl back and her teeth chatter like she's freezing before every line sung, giving the appearance mini seizures taking place. It's as if Napolitano's jaw is being operated against her will. Adding to the wild, unpredictability her and Ramirez frequently start the songs out of time with each other. It's barely a distraction though, as the raw energy being produced kills any need for standard structure.

In their live set, Concrete Blonde always chose interesting covers, tonight Coldplay's The Scientist is the first of four, and not even close to being the most bizarre. The song's gentle plodding pace is scrapped as Johnette, preferring to make it her own, pays little honours to the original and gives a gritty, unpolished performance. The raw edge given to Coldplay is all smoothed out for the next cover - Johnny Cash's Ghost Riders In The Sky. Johnette shares with us that this was the last song she played for her father who died two months ago, before singing her heart out. It's impossible not to be moved.

Encores are always nice little sweeteners to send everyone home with, but Johnette tears up and re-writes the book on them. Not only do we get two encores, but the first one involves filling out the stage with a surprise guitarist named James - from Johnette's extended touring party - and a guest second vocalist named Fiona. Best of all, Johnette's plugging in that bass and after a few plucks on the strings, she yells; "Okay, it's pretty close to halloween and because I know you love it Melbourne....!" It's Bloodletting. Oh Yes! The place is going absolutely bananas. Johnette is pulling out the thickest, blackest bass chords ever and completely drowning out the band while getting everyone to sing along in the chorus. How do they top that, I wonder. The answer it turns out is play a Midnight Oil song. Beds Are Burning to be exact, and Johnette's even doing the Peter Garrett Darlek voice. It's an amazing version, and we forgive Johnette for not remembering all the words in fact that just adds to the comedy of the whole thing. As the band exit the stage they treated to a response that can only be described as outright hysteria. After a few uncertain minutes, Johnette reappears to deafening screams and under a single spotlight, recites in perfect pitch Tomorrow Wendy - acapella with accompaniment from the whole audience. Goosebumps time again, and then her final exit but still nobody wants to leave. Instead Johnette Napolitano earns the longest post-encore applause I have ever seen.


lEIGh5


photos by me & indolentdandy

Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde) interview

ONE NON-BLONDE

If Concrete Blonde had have been the fully fledged goth band in frilly sleeves they were often painted as, maybe they could have broken through commercially. Then they could’ve gotten on with pretending to be vampires and stealing fans off The Cure until they turned into a parody. The truth of Concrete Blonde however is far greater than their misconstrued image. In their first incarnation (1984-1994) they released five albums veering wildly through many different styles; peaking commercially on 1990’s reflective Bloodletting album and finishing on 1993’s flamenco-influenced Mexican Moon. Guiding the Californian trio was a passionate, raven-haired Italian-American named Johnette Napolitano. Totally uncompromising creatively and with a head for business, she was always destined to be passed over in a town hungry for the next big thing eager to sign on the dotted line.

The singer has imposed on herself a colossal work load - the kind that comes from knowing no other way to do things. Today, even as we speak Johnette is running between her home studio in Joshua Tree – where she has been pouring song ideas out into her personal recorder – and LA to master the new works for the third installment of her Sketchbook projects. These albums have been made independently and released through her website; “I’m more conscious of how people buy music now,” Johnette explains, “I wanted to offer something a little more so these CDs are going to be signed limited editions instead of just selling individual songs for 99cents.” There will be a major release next year, but for now Johnette is happy not dealing with labels. “It’s just that there are hardly any dudes in the business that you can just hang with and talk to.” She says, “It’s rare to find people who aren’t jaded by the business, and still love music. I’ve walked away so many times because I didn’t want to just churn out the music that somebody else thought we should be making. It has to mean something to me or else what’s the point?” Walking away sometimes meant from her band as well, Concrete Blonde fell apart in the mid-90s, weighed down by personal problems and malfunctioning relationships.

The second incarnation of the band (2001-2004) happened in the strangest of circumstances. During 2001 Johnette was plagued by horrific nightmares and an impending sense of doom which ultimately led to a frantic hunt for her former band mates. “I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I was going to die and if that was going to happen then I was determined to finish what we had started as a band.” Johnette explains in chilling conviction, “I thought I wouldn’t see those guys again and we didn’t end on a particularly great note the first time so it was my wish to make it right with them.” As she describes the realization that her visions were a prelude to 9/11, the subject of Johnette’s ‘gift’ (she is a spirit medium) opens up. “I have never had such a vivid ‘warning’ before or after that period in my life. It was so extreme and I kind of cracked for a time because of these visions coming through of people falling from skyscrapers and mothers running from falling buildings with babies in their arms.” Despite some gruesome ‘information’ from the other side, Johnette maintains very pragmatic view of her gift. “Spirits make themselves known to me I think because sometimes these people need to feel connected to the living world for various reasons. You know, my father died recently and his presence was so strong just as it had been when he was alive, and so I took a lot of photos there in his house because I was so sure he would show up in them.”

Johnette’s father John Napolitano was an Italian builder working in Hollywood who hadn’t known what to make of his daughters musical career until a chance meeting with one of his idols. “My father built a pool at the house of Robert Cray (blues guitar legend) and my dad absolutely loved Cray’s music. One day Robert brought out an interview with me in the local press and asked my father about me and my band, and I think my dad just went ‘Oh wow Robert Cray knows who my daughter is, holy shit!’, and I think that was the first time my dad really acknowledged what it was I was doing. I’ll always be grateful to Robert for that.”

Any obvious gothic overtones in Napolitano’s work seem trite to mention, but Johnette’s eye is cast over all of her own and Concrete Blonde’s visual output, and the recurring theme of skeletons visible through the skin in her artwork and videos reveals a surprising foundation. “I’m from LA and there’s always been a strong Mexican influence there which meant a lot of traditions also remained like the El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) where people leave gifts of bread, liquor and cigarettes for the dead souls. I loved that they celebrated the spirit instead of mourning over the body.” Johnette elaborates, “The other thing that really cemented my interest came during the time we toured in Paris and I visited the catacombs underneath the city where the walls are just lined for miles with human bones and there are huge chandeliers and artworks made from hundreds of skulls.” Johnette continues breathlessly, “The overwhelming thing about it all was that there’s no black, white, male, female, gay, straight - it’s just endless rows of bones and that profoundly changed my outlook on everything. It really doesn’t matter you know dude, getting so caught up in each others physical differences when at the end of your life, your body just becomes this piece of rubbish, indistinguishable any other one.”

Recently Johnette moved to Joshua Tree – a Californian desert town – from her Hollywood birthplace. Despite the world famous city’s soulless reputation, Napolitano speaks affectionately of her Hollywood; “You have to remember I was born there, I didn’t get on a bus and go there to become famous.” She adds with some infectious laughter, “The Hollywood I know is Spanish and Italian immigrants, the old Mafia suburbs and tattoo parlors, where to go and how to get shit if you don’t speak English and of course, where to get the best pizza.” One Spanish immigrant in particular struck a chord with Johnette, the surrealist’s surrealist Salvador Dali, whom she pays tribute to on the track Riding The Moon from her new Sketchbook 3 CD; “Dali to me was an anarchist in his art and his life, and that’s such a beautiful thing to see. He knew how to communicate with and capture children’s imaginations in particular. Children have this really surreal view of the world which we all eventually lose, but Dali was somehow able to hold onto that all through his life.”

Johnette herself is a sculptor active in the Joshua Tree arts community where the one rule is materials from the local area only are to be used in the works as way of keeping a very old tradition alive. “When the Indian natives were in this area, they would live in the same place for generations and everyone from young children to the elderly made sculptures from whatever was available in their settlement. No one really traveled away from their community so these artworks were such a huge part of their identity.” It was her strong, arresting guest vocal on the Andy Prieboy song, Tomorrow Wendy that Australia really identified Johnette with in the early days. Although it was not a Concrete Blonde song, the cult hit forged a decent enough path for Johnette’s band to walk when they decided to focus on Australia as their first international destination to tour. “I really didn’t know what to expect going there. I do remember clearly walking around St Kilda at about four in the morning thinking how European it all looked.” She adds; “Plus Melbourne has a lot of Italians there, so I kind of felt at home!”

On this tour, her first visit in over a decade, Johnette will present a more stripped back affair. “I’ll be playing bass and guitar, while my ‘monster drummer’ Gabriel Ramirez keeps the beat.” She adds, laughing; “We’re calling ourselves Not Quite The White Stripes!” Ramirez played drums in Concrete Blonde 2002-04. “We’ve developed this sort of musical telepathy which has really come from playing together for years. He’s definitely my favourite person to play with.” This tour will only include Melbourne and Sydney because of Johnette’s commitments to several other music projects, most notably a tribute album to Morphine lead singer Mark Sandman who died on stage during their 1999 tour. “That’s just been completed,” Johnette tells me excitedly, “It’s me and Jim (Mankey – Concrete Blonde guitarist) and Tom Petersson (Cheap Trick bassist). Tom just ripped it up man, he was such a cool guy!” Their cover of Morphine’s Buena will be released as Concrete Blonde featuring Tom Petersson, but a full Blonde reunion is not on the cards. “If it happens it happens, but at the moment I’m kind of bored with even talking about it.” She adds with a final burst of machine-gun laughter; “I don’t ever plan stuff like that!”



Johnette was simply wonderful to talk to. She agreed to do two interviews (This is a composite of both) because her father had just died and she was still fairly raw during our first talk. Not only is she an amazing singer, she's got this rare, totally infectious energy just flowing out of her. A captivating speaker and easily my favourite so far.


lEIGh5


You can follow Johnette's activities and buy exclusive music directly from her official site, here:
http://www.johnettenapolitano.com/