Saturday June 25, 2022 “Tears on My Pillow” Clem Snide
Let’s get right to the band name which was taken from a character in the somewhat controversial William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch. OK, we can move on now.
Clem Snide was first assembled by singer, guitarist, and songwriter Eef Barzelay (spelling correct), who grew up in New Jersey. While he was attending college in Boston during the '90s he put together a version of the band whose early sound was dominated by noisy, punk-jazz-inspired dissonance with abrasive guitar lines and bleating saxophone. Maybe not the best choices for a first sound.
Clem Snide enjoyed a critical and commercial breakthrough with their first major-label release, 2000's album Your Favorite Music, and although they were consistent and productive through the 2000s, after 2010's The Meat of Life, the group slipped under the radar.
After the 2015 unsuccessful Clem Snide album Girls Come First, Barzelay went into a period of inactivity as he struggled with a failing marriage, the collapse of the band, and serious financial problems, but when Barzelay saw a video of the band the Avett Brothers covering a Clem Snide song in concert, he reached out to the group, and Scott Avett responded, offering to collaborate on a new project.
That collaboration would become the core of the studio crew that recorded 2020's Forever Just Beyond, the first official Clem Snide album in a decade.
Stay safe and well…and as we end our musical time with our new zombie friend Stubbs, some of you might have been intrigued by these interpretations, some of you might just be relieved that it is all over but I will recommend a deeper dive into some, certainly not all, of these artists.