Hey you little Love Birds –
It is Valentines Day. The day of hearts, flowers and romantic love. And of course we troth our undying love to you, the GMR listener. Forsooth.
So to get it going we have a super fun, super pop release by soon to be superstar Olvia Bloch. Hey – you know that name – she was on last December’s jolly Xmas album Hail The Jolly Christmas Monkey, with “I’m going Back Home for Christmas Time.”
Now she has a delightful EP Georgy Girl. For her debut, Olivia has turned back the clock with her frothy pop take on 60’s and 70’s international girl-hits: the Bacharach/David treat “Always Something There to Remind Me” was #1 for Sandie Shaw in the UK in ’64. “Georgy Girl” was #2 in the US for Australians The Seekers in ‘66, while ’73 brought “Ring Ring”, the first gem in the crown of Europopsters Abba. In Olivia’s hands, these carry a youthful innocence, purity and charm straight to your heart. Her high-spirited, sunny delivery belies the hapless lyrics underneath – this is classic pop at its magical best!
The EP stars Olivia on vocals (and cover design!), with Will O’Brien on drums and Olivia’s dad, featured GMR genius, Al Bloch on guitar. The EP was recorded at Willow Studios in Roanoke, Virginia in August and mastered by Olivia’s Uncle Kurt Bloch of Ye Olde Fastbacks.
Olivia Bloch is a Los Angeles born, Virginia raised musician and singer currently attending American University for Musical Theatre in Washington, DC. She is a cat lady, tea drinker, art nerd, Off-Broadway musical enthusiast, and book lover.
Olivia grew up in a house with art and music ever-present, exposing her to a variety of musical genres at a young age. From there, she became particularly enamored and inspired by the work of Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Shaina Taub, ABBA, She and Him, Brittain Ashford, and the musicals of Dave Malloy, to name a few.
Now she is ready to assume her rightful role as Teenage Queen of Pop.
In nearly related news, Mr. Al is coming to Seatown at the end of the month to record his new album with King Kurt for an upcoming GMR release. So exciting. If you want a foreshadowing of things to come, be sure to check out Al’s recent EP Fifth Dimensionality with its custom hand stamped sleeve. I will be dropping into the sess and will get a few snaps for ya’ll.
Reverend Howie has cut loose with another action packed Chemistry Set video from his ‘88 footage for their song “Fields” https://youtu.be/QpFZatKjpmQ. Howie was certainly thinking ahead, knowing that footage would be uber handy thirty-some years later.
Next week we are going to put out a Jeff Kelly digital single and video “Of Missingness”. In theory it will be on his next album later this year but Jeff will first be doing further research on the continent. Anything is possible. In the endless internet redo/update of the GMR website, we just redid the Jeff Kelly artist page – I think it looks pretty nice! https://greenmonkeyrecords.com/artist-jeff-kelly/
On my to do list is Alien City by Jon Strongbow. Originally released by Jon in 1979 when he was going by Tornbow, it was remastered recently by guru Steve Turnidge and it sounds sooooo good. There is a wonderful article on it by the late, great Frank Gutch right here: https://bobsegarini.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/frank-gutch-jr-jon-strongbow-meltdown-in-alien-city-plus-notes/. I play it on my KAOS show FreeForm Northwest regularly and think the world must be Jon’s oyster. So I will get to it. Soonish.
Finally, The True Olympians show on Feb 1 was sure lots of fun – we continue to toil relentlessly on the Olympia album!
That’s it til March.
td Feb 2020