She got the beat

Everybody, get on your feet

By Sam Pfeifle

Lady Kensington and the Beatlords play with the Belmondos, at the Free Street Taverna, June 15, at 9 p.m. Call (207) 774-1114.

FREAKBEATERS: Mark Hunkler, Chris Horne, Leo Pelletier, and Noah Mass.

Garage redux The members of the Massachusetts-based Belmondos have a long-running relationship with Portland thanks to a history of home-and-home shows with fellow garage rockers the Brood, who will open for them this Friday at the Free Street Taverna. While their mark on rock and roll history has been left primarily through their live shows (only a demo tape exists from the group’s original incarnation in the late 1980s and early 1990s; they reformed last year), their roster has been omnipresent on the garage circuit as members of the Crybabies, Stags, Actions, and Jimmy Head and the Hunters. The group is fronted by Rudy Martinez sound-a-like Artie Sneiderman (who also recently re-jump-started the Crybabies, featuring Lyres guitarist Steve Aquino), whose channeling of the spirit of ? and the Mysterians is enhanced by the Farfisa keyboards of Mike Michaud, who also handles guitar duties alongside Emmet Lewis. Recent acquisition bassist Paul Richards forms the rhythm section with drummer Ron Renault. Originals make up a third of the Belmondos’ set list; they’re joined by a couple Mysterians covers, as well as nuggets by Roger and the Gypsies, the Coasters, and Bo Diddley. They also have a love affair with Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, bypassing, in true garage band fashion, the obvious “Woolly Bully” for “Greenwich Grendel” and “Let’s Talk It Over.” Thanks to Michaud’s recent interest in New Orleans-style piano playing, they’ve also been performing Hank Ballard and the Midnighters’ “Sexy Ways,” although their version is more like the one recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis. “We try to find R&B songs and turn them into more garage-sounding things in our own style,” says Michaud. Sneiderman has been pondering the reasons why the Belmondos are still in love with garage rock’s primitive sounds. “The beats that were used in the ’60s — there’s something really physical about them that makes you move. I don’t know anything that demands dancing so much. It’s an addiction that’s not going to pass for me.” — Brian Goslow

The Brood, long one of Portland’s somewhat hidden musical treasures, are on what guitarist/vocalist Chris Horne calls “unofficial hiatus.” That’s bad news. The Brood’s last album, Beyond the Valley of the Brood (2000, Dionysus), proved that the garage rockers, who’ve been wailing ’60s licks since the mid-’80s, have still got it going on.

The good news is that the hiatus doesn’t come by way of some intra-band pissiness, rather a problem that most bands don’t have to deal with — ’cause they’re usually a bunch of boys. That’s right, the Brood has “maternal issues.”

“The organ player had a baby,” explains Horne, “actually we had two and they both got pregnant. Asch [Gregory] had a baby, then we released our album. Then, right after the LP came out, Amanda [the fill-in organ player] had a baby. It’s kind of one of those things where guy bands don’t have that problem.”

When drummer Crystal Light decided to go back to school, that was it. Horne had to find something else to do musically.

Hence Lady Kensington and the Beatlords, playing their second gig ever this Friday at the Free Street Taverna. Kensington, as you may have guessed, is Horne’s alter-ego, and the name is a hint as to the musical direction this quartet will take: British R&B and Freakbeat sounds from the 60s, the stuff that rightfully should have been on the Austin Powers soundtrack.

“Seeing that I still write the songs,” says Horne, “it’s pretty much in the same style as the Brood. I’ve been listening to a lot more British stuff, getting into the British head for a while. It was Texas garage, and now it’s more ’60s British . . . The feel of the band is still the same feel as the Brood. The attitude behind it is that same Brood attitude that I always felt was the best part of the Brood.”

Horne collected fellow interested party Leo Pelletier to round out the guitar sound, and buddy Mark Hunkler was one piece of the vital rhythm section on bass. Missing was a drummer. Luckily, Horne found a posting on one of Portland’s online music bulletin boards from Noah Mass.

“I was looking through it for pop music, or someone compatible,” says Horne. “It ended up that we all had a similar interest in this kind music and it just clicked.”

For the uninitiated, which may be many of you, “this kind of music,” British Freakbeat, is a slightly more melodic version of the garage-punk prevalent stateside in the ’60s. Garage was revived in the ’80s, and is still prevalent today thanks to bands like the Pandoras, the Chesterfield Kings, the Cynics, the Lyers, and others who play at festivals like Cavestomp, in New York, where you’ll find the Brood playing with Barry and the Remains this August at the Village Underground.

üreakbeat hasn’t had quite the same renaissance — “it’s kind of a record collector’s term,” says Horne — but was a precursor to the Beatles/Stones/Kinks pop boom in Britain. If you’d like to check it out, look for albums by the Primitives, the Beat Merchants, the Sheffields, or some of the more recently released collections on the Aip label from the mid-’90s.

Better yet, go see Lady Kensington and the Beatlords. Horne promises, “If you liked the Brood, you’ll like this band.”

 

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com.