Gerl says there will be a soundtrack album, but only if Finding North finds distribution. Otherwise, Cafe Noir--which still includes longtime members Gale Hess, Jason Bucklin, and Lyles West--is beginning work on its fourth album, using as its demo a tape of live material recorded at UCLA in January. The band has undergone radical changes since the release of The Waltz King in 1995: Vocalist Randy Erwin has left the band, joining Gary Sweet and the Rounders, and Russian-born Vladimir Kaliazine has signed on as the new accordion player. But the real revelation is the addition of Dennis Durlick, the first drummer to join Cafe Noir in its 10-plus years of existence. "It was hard at first," Gerl says of the addition. "But Dennis is such a monster, he has made it work." We'll learn if that's the case in May, when the band is slated to make a rare hometown appearance at the Gypsy Tea Room.
Scene, heard
Speaking of movie music, Colin Boyd has a song featured in the recently released Barney's Great Adventure (hey, you in the corner, stop laughing). Titled "Rainbows Follow the Rain" (no, really, stop) the song runs over the end credits and is featured on the soundtrack, which also includes such music-biz luminaries as Roberta Flack, Peabo Bryson, Sheena Easton, Take 6, and Jane Siberry. Boyd says he was approached about contributing a song by Tim Clott, the CEO of Lyric Studios, which produces Wishbone and Barney; Clott ended up co-writing the song with Boyd, who says, with all sincerity (but of course, since that's the name of his most recent album), "I love the song. I sing it in front of people, and they go, 'Yeah, that's a good song. It works for kids and grown-ups.' And Barney moves product. They expect the record to sell more than 350,000 copies. If it's a gold record, I'm getting one." Yup, Boyd has the world by the big purple tail: He's also currently writing songs with Austin's country-pop hunk Monte Warden, and though there's no plan to record right now, they are working on demos. "We get together and make the words rhyme," Boyd explains...
Movie music, part 2: Pimpadelic also has a song on a new soundtrack, if you can even call Burn Hollywood Burn a movie. The band landed on the album after despised Hollywood screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct, Showgirls) put out a call for bands to give him songs for free that he could include in his latest film, which is about a movie so bad no one wanted to take credit for it. Talk about life imitating art: Burn Hollywood Burn hasn't been released outside of L.A. and perhaps never will be, mostly because it could suck chrome off a tailpipe. Eszterhas claimed the L.A. production company, Cinergi, had no money left to spend on music, so he put an ad in the trades begging for young bands to donate their, uh, talents in exchange for a piece of the soundtrack sales. As a result, Pimpadelic landed "Out for One Thing" on the, uh, record. If you just can't get enough--and go ahead and kill yourself if you can't--Pimpadelic's new CD Statutory Rap, featuring such would-be hits as "Middle Finger" and "Tits," will be released on April 25. Like I give a damn...
This ain't the want ads, but we're always willing to give some free space to a guy who's worth it. Peter Schmidt is looking for a drummer to join his band Legendary Crystal Chandelier, which will perform in support of his solo debut, Love or the Decimal Equivalent, due out the first week of July on steve Records. It's not yet a full-time gig--Schmidt's had enough full-blown bands to last him a while--and he says applicants can be committed to other projects; indeed, bassist Brandon Curtis (of Captain Audio) and guitarist-keyboardist James Henderson (Dooms U.K., Corn Mo) have their own projects right now. (Both Curtis and Henderson appear on Love or..., in addition to producer Matt Pence and Scott Danbom, both of Centro-matic, Brave Combo's Jeffrey Barnes, and Hagfish's Doni Blair.) Also, Schmidt needs someone good with a sampler. "Basically, I'm looking for whatever I can get," says Schmidt, who can be contacted via e-mail at lcc@irby.org. "Sex and age not important, but they have to be sexy."
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