Concrete Blonde: What Happened to The Band Behind 'Joey?'

Concrete Blonde: What happened to the band behind 'Joey?'

0:00- Early Musical Beginnings
2:50 - Pre-Concrete Blonde Years
3:50 - Concrete Blonde's Beginnings
5:34 - Bankruptcy
6:34 - Second/Third Album
9:21 - Near Death Experience



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Dubbed as a band that played initially moody and a stormy brand of rock music, they were in their early days labeled as the heir to the Los Angeles punk band X as being the City’s official underground band. They would sometimes shed a light on the darker side of los angeles. Concrete Blonde would go from being underground darlings to having mainstream success in just a few short years,. But along the way the band went through a lot of turmoil, - bankruptcy, issues with management and their record label and of course internal problems

The story of the band begins in 1980 when frontwoman Johnette Nepalitano and guitarist James Mankey met while working at songwriter Leon Russell’s studio in Los Angeles. Nepalitano was working as what she calls a gofer secretary person doing errands for the producer. She got the gig after meeting somebody at a party who was doing woodworking at the producer’s studio. A lot of famous people came and went in the studio with Nepalitano admitingt to The Sacramento Bee that she once spent a whole night rolling joints for leon russell and willie nelson.

Nepalitano would be described by Spin as the girl who handed you eyeliner at a Germs show’ and the type of girl who every girl wants to confide in and guys respect. She would joke to the magazine that her bad relationships were made up of boyfriends which could stretch around the block and she should have had ‘lie to me’ tattooed on her.

Nepalitano would grow up in Hollywood .with her father being a poolcleaner for major celebrities including elvis and liberace.. Bella Legosi even babysat her when she was a kid. As she got older her family moved to the valley and at the age of 9 her dad once took a piano as a form of payment for a pool job he gave it to Johnette. In addition to learning piano she soon learned to play guitar and wrote her first song at age 12 for her baby sister. It was an aunt of hers who was working in hollywood as a dancer at the shindig and dating mickey dolenz that peaked her interest in showbusiness. Guitarist James Mankey would play in the 70’s era group Sparks with his brother Earle. He also spent some time as an engineering technician for radio DJ casey kasim on his America’s top 40 program.

After working for Leon Russell for a few years, he soon left LA and headed ot Nashville, but Nepalitano and Mankey didn’t follow him. Instead the pair opted to stay in LA and work on music together at a 16 track recording studio in Thousand Oaks. It would be a local fanzine named DIY that picked up one of their songs named Heart Attack for a compilation LP that was put out in 1982.. At that time the pair of musicians called themselves the Dreamers and they decided to find a bassist and drummer and start playing clubs around LA. They struggled to get much attention initially because they couldn’t be pigeon holed into a particular scene in LA.

Fast forward to 1984 and the pair now playing under the monicker Dream 6 were playing a lot of post punk clubs in LA. The band put out a self titled EP on a french label, which got critical praise and quickly attracted major label attention. The pair soon recorded what would be concrete blonde’s self titled record with their own money costing them about $15K.

But the pair’s friends told them they might want to act sooner rather than later on getting a record label deal, since the opportunity may not present itself again. Well, they did the complete opposite rejecting any label that forced them to compromise on their sound. The band nearly signed with Columbia Records and worked with bangles and fishbone producer David Kahne, but he insisted bringing in outside musicians and he wanted to co-write songs with them, which they said no to. Elektra wanted them to work with big shot producer Michael Wagener but they asked the band do a cover of the Creedance Clearwater Revival song so they said no to elektra. One record label according to the ottawa citizen tried to get the band to sound like motorhead,

The band soon decided to go the independent route