Category: The Big Fame

E2TG Presents: The Grimm Generation – The Big Fame – Review Vol. 2

For Vol. 1 of this review –   GO HERE

 
 


For Vol 2. – Jump with me

When considering how to present the songs from The Grimm Generation’s next CD ‘The Big Fame’ in a live setting, an odd bit of magic and luck presented itself: they were introduced to the President of The Vintage Radio & Communication Museum of CT who were considering a concert series. The recent experience of making a real ‘film noir’ video for ‘Blink, I’m Gone’ coupled with the classic radio elements already taking root in The Grimm Generation’s new material (based on dramatics and dynamics, all rooted in Carmen Champagne’s slow sultry drawl) caused Carmen and Jason to think bigger, expanding the death of ‘Asher’ into a full blown noir musical. Ginger Miller plays the role of the narrator, who fills the performance with real tension, as she uncovers more about her ill-fated love and his head long path into oblivion.
Coming to your town soon, The Grimm Generation is bringing ‘The Big Fame Radio Hour’, a pairing of modern sounds and radio noir drama, as part of the release of their upcoming CD ‘The Big Fame’.

 

The thing I love and identify most with The Grimm Generation is the constant striving for something creatively bigger.  Sometimes, I think I would be better off settling for something smaller and simpler. Regardless, this drive to push forward and try something new, is an inherent quality. For me, this drive often struggles against the equally inherent inertia of  our age. Within the struggle lies the tension and tension makes a tangle… or something.

Here’s the remaining songs on The Big Fame:

7.  Quiet (St. Francis)

8. Road to Joy

9.  Real Bad Voodoo

10. Wreck of My Bed

11. Eye of Tranquility

12. Bigger Than

13. The Big Fame

The second part of The Big Fame (and please understand this division is mine alone due to time constraints) features a bit more Twang – both in Jason Krug’s guitar and in Carmen Champagne’s voice.  Being from Nashville, I know good Twang when I hear it, and this is some excellent Twang.

Let’s just keep it simple.  I think I said most of what I needed to say about this record yesterday. Here’s the bottom line.  With The Big Fame, The Grimm Generation have stepped up and produced a defining record of our times.  How appropriate, as we live through these dark and broken times, that we have this wonderful album filled with songs of darkness and brokenness.

What are we to do with this place where we find ourselves? Perhaps we just need to keep walking, limping, crawling, and dancing our way down the “Road to Joy”.  Perhaps…

 


The conclusion I’ve reached is that I absolutely love this record, and that I want to do what I can to spread the word. 

Here is one place you can buy it.  Also, go visit The Grimm Generation Website
 
Also go like The Grimm Generation on Facebook, Follow them on Twitter, and Subscribe to them on YouTube.


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E2TG Presents: The Grimm Generation – The Big Fame – Review Vol. 1

“Great Rock and Roll record define the time they were made. Welcome to 2013.”
 
 
 
I can’t remember when I first came across the music of The Grimm Generation. I think maybe another band I follow mentioned them.  I do remember hearing “Sometimes I Subtle (Sometimes I’m Drunk), and I remember thinking, “Wow, this is music everyone should hear”, and at  the same time thinking, “I feel like I already know this music.”.  I later had the opportunity to do a brief e-mail interview with the band, and it began to make sense.
 
You see, and what has recently begun to gel in my mind is that The Grimm Generation make the music I would make if I made music (and if I was talented).  We come from the same place age and influence-wise (and perhaps experience-wise as well), and so – although I do like have very diverse tastes in music – The Grimm Generation manages to hit all the right spots in my psyche, and thus, as word began to build about a new album I couldn’t help but be excited.

Another reason I identify so strongly with this band is their audaciousness reach for something bigger – thus the quote from above which comes from the band’s Facebook page – about The Big Fame.
 
The Big Fame is 13 songs.   Today, we cover the first 6 songs.  I haven’t decided yet if this will be a track by track review or just a non-linear overview.  It will be what it will be, and it shall come to reveal itself soon.


I’ve heard the whole album so there will likely be references to other songs in this review, however, the songs I listened to this morning were:

1. Earthquake, Hurricane, Flood and You

2. The Next Indie Boy

3.Dizzy in my Hips Swinging

4. House Drinks

5. Miller, Don’t You Even Care?

6.  Until Then

*Side note, songs 3 and 4 are switched on my CD cover which means this bad boy’s gonna be worth a fortune some day!


The Grimm Generation have been described as “Music for the morning after”.   To me, songs like “The Next Indie Boy” and “Dizzy in my Hips Swinging” are the soundtrack to a party that seems to be constantly on the verge of going completely off the tracks in the best possible way. 

At times, I was reminded of that feeling one gets as dawn is beginning to break after an all-nighter, and you are at once still drunk and beginning to have a hangover, and you can’t quite decide if you want to go somewhere and crash or just have another drink… and you are standing in someone’s backyard surrounded by dear friends or total strangers or else you are alone, and this music is playing from somewhere in the distance and you just want to laugh or cry or maybe just puke….

Not that I know anything about any of that, but that’s what this music brings to my mind.

It’s about the right relationship with the wrong person, or the wrong relationship with the right person. It’s about waking up alone and not knowing where they went or who they are.

This is music for our time, our generation as we struggle through this mystery doing the best we can.  It’s also about sex and murder and the music machine and love and art and truth. Mostly, it’s about The Big Fame which happens to be the name of the album.  There is a strange mixture of optimism and resignation inherent in this music, and that strange mixture as much as anything else may be the defining characteristic of this Grimm Generation.

So, I tip my hat to Jason Krug  and Carmen Champagne and company for making this bold statement and for kicking so much ass musically and lyrically.  I don’t know much about how one achieves The Big Fame, or if it is even something one should strive to obtain, but I do know I want as many people as possible to hear this music.

Alas, I’ve run my course for today.  Tune in tomorrow same place and close to the same time when we present the next Volume of our review.


DETAILS:

The Grimm Generation  (WEB    FACEBOOK   TWITTER )

 
 


 

 
 
 

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