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The
origins of the rock band TSAR
are best traced to a institution for higher learning:
The University of California at Santa Barbara.
That may seem incongruent with a band who claims the marked characteristic
of being so crotch-forwardly, obviously -dangerously!- rocking,
but on second glance perhaps it's not so strange at all since TSAR's lyrical
content could never be considered "dumb".
Now, they may not be cerebrally poetic in the way that say, Leonard Cohen's
songs are, but nonetheless their song lyrics perfectly convey adolescent
power and yearning. Imagery conjured using seemingly unconnected words
or phrases cause the songs to transcend mere "pop" and become
a revolutionary-cry-shared-memory-celebration of the explosive energy
of the Teen-age.
while studying at UCSB the members of TSAR played together on and off
again in a multitude of projects during the early 1990's, including a
Glam-Metal band called "Mons Pubis" featuring
Gregory Vaine
on guitar, Jeff Whalen on Bass and Steve
Coulter on drums. After graduation several of the band's members
moved to Prague where the musical experimentation continued as they worked
together on an English language newspaper called "The Prognosis".
A group of musicians--featuring future TSAR bass player Jeff Solomon--busked
for tourist's money in the summer of 1992 under the moniker "Whalen"
playing acoustic versions of several Jeff Whalen penned originals.
During this stay in Prague Jeff Whalen also formed a band called "Royal
Supremes".
Some of the material performed by this group contained early versions
of songs that would go on to comprise a portion of TSAR's future live
sets
(ie: "Let The Sunshine In" and "You And Jim
Will Hit It Off") as well as an embryonic version of "The
Teen Wizards" known at this time as ""The Teen Destroyer"-
obviously also a precursor to "Calling All Destroyers".
The band recorded a CD demo but little else happened.
After leaving the Czech Republic coming back to California, Jeff Whalen
re-grouped and spent time producing a series of demos that were sent out
to various record labels and A&R heads in a bid to secure a songwriting/publishing
deal. The resulting "Blue
and Red Tapes" are legendarily rare glimpses of early TSAR material.
He also teamed up with longtime
childhood friend and guitarist Daniel Kern to form a band called
"Stupid Gurl" which released an acclaimed self-produced
CD and played around California and Oregon during the mid to late 90's.
The "Blue And Red" demo-tape push failed to yield much in the
way of concrete results but constantly working the tapes and playing in
Stupid Gurl created a momentum that helped bring old friends and band
mates back together. In 1998 a group comprised of Daniel Kern on lead
guitar, former Mons Pubis member Steve Coulter on drums
fellow "Prognosis" writer/"Whalen" busker Jeff Solomon
on Bass guitar and Jeff Whalen on vocals/guitar beagn practicing using
the name "Stupid Gurl", a moniker which Whalen and Kern had
toured under years previous. Due to the negative misunderstnadings this
name seemed to foster in their audience they tried on both "Drug
Boy" and "Drug Czar" before finally
settling on TSAR.
Within only a few months of practicing the band began playing heavily
around the Silverlake area of Los Angleles gaining a rabid fan base, particularly
at their un-official "Home Venue" the legendary "Spaceland".
Word of TSAR's explosive live show spread quickly and record label interest
soon followed.
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 Finally
signing with Hollywood records, a subsidiary of the Walt
Disney corporation--totally appropriate, in my opinion for the modern bubblegum
Tsar were delivering-- the band set about recording their debut record with
high powered, super producer Rob Cavalllo (Green Day's "Dookie"
and "American Idiot", Goo Goo Dolls"Dizzy Up The Girl"
and "Gutterflower").
During the sessions they worked on at least 2 songs that have not surfaced,
"Angelyne" (which may be the small acoustic snippet you quietly
hear at the beginning of "Afraidio.." I've asked Jeff Whalen at
least 2 times about that snippet and I can never remember
what he tells me...) and "Take Aim".
Chris Lord-Alge was brought in to polish up the recording
and the album
was released in the US in June of 2000. A UK/German version of the record
was also released via Hollywood Records and it included the brilliant "Suicide"
as an extra track.
A month later, in July of 200, the band set out on a tour to promote the
record in the opening slot of their Hollywood Records label mates Duran
Duran's "Pop Trash" tour.
This is a pairing that, though great for someone like me who is a huge fan
of both bands, maybe wasn't the best fit and crowd reaction often ranged
from indifference to outright hatred.
Jeff Whalen told a story of how excited the band were to be out on a large
tour like this one, wholly confident of their inevitable domination of the
country: "You come out with 'Destroyers' -Bam!- then hit them with
'Kathy Fong', finish up and there's silence. From the back of the room you
hear a lone male voice: "Fags."" Demoralizing to say the
least.
and so began what can be seen as a series of mishaps that set the band back
instead of helping to take them to the next level.
During this time a website, tsar.net, emerged supposedly
the work of a young girl named "Casey" this site was the go-to
destination to get any information about the band. Though Casey was a real
person, and was a friend of the band, she was no high schooler and once
one realized this the site became a hilarious outlet for the band to propagate
real and imagined news stories about what they were up to.
A large amount of time, money and resources were put into
the production of Tsar's debut album. However, label support after its release
was sparse and, despite very positive critical response,the band started
to slip through the cracks.
In an attempt to maintain momentum the band announced the release of and
EP called "King
Of The School" in the spring of 2001.
Comprised of demos and un-used songs from the first album--you can see that
"You And Jim Will Hit It Off", a song Whalen had been playing
since his days in "Royal
Supremes", was on the whiteboard
in the studio during the debut recording sessions--this was basically a
promo-only item and is now prized as one of the more collectible Tsar CDs.
***One of the tracks included on "King
Of The School", "Smart Boys",
was re-recorded for the Band Girls Money sessions in 2003 but not released.
The B-G-M version is very reminiscent of "All The Young Dudes"
by Mott The Hoople.***
Also during the spring of 2001, Tsar embarked on a fairly extensive tour
of the US with Eve 6 and American Hi-Fi which lasted almost 3 months but
at its end their prospects seemed not much better and the band only played
sporadically for the ramainder of the year.
Thier being dropped by Hollywood Records was jsut a matter of time.
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 The
front cover image is a painting by Scott Seeto though though most
of the conceptual drawings and rough sketches were
drawn by Dan Beltran.
Critically acclaimed (and amazing) comic book artist Alex Ross (known for
his "Marvels" and "Kingdom Come" comics series)
was originally in the running to do the painting but was unable to.
The cover contains many concepts and images chosen by Jeff Whalen and features
things like suited men milling about on a
city street with one man attempting to restrain a little girl who is pointing
to the "TSAR
symbol" (which appeared for a time on
Steve Coulter's bass drum head) shining in the clouds above.
The clock tower in the background reads 7:04 some have speculated this to
have a sinister meaning. Ie: 7:04 = 6:64--almost 6:66.
The moment before the apocalypse? The inclusion of a horned goat lurking
behind the men only adds to the occultish overtones. |
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During
2002 and into 2003 news on the tsar.net
site became more and more sporadic and what did appear was actually a
bit alarming to the fans reading.
Reports of Jeff Whalen "disappearing" from his mom's house,
living in the band's practice space and from some accounts becoming despondent
over the disappointing performance of their first album.
Understandable. In a ... not even perfect universe, but a just and proper
one, that album should have been huge. Colossal. This place sucks though
and this album only resides on "best of" lists of only the most
hardcore pop enthusiasts.
The lack of news and the drastic fall-off of the band's live performances
left many questioning the groups future or even their continued existence.
 In
the spring of 2002 I met Jeff Whalen at Spaceland and he confirmed that
the band was still active and were wood shedding a bunch of songs and
it turned out that the end of that year or the beginning of 2003 saw the
band in the studio recording a slew of songs, two of which would make
up their first release since 2001, a 7" single from Birdman Records.
"Straight
b/w "The Creature In Disguise" was a sonic-punk-blast
that was , on the surface, a massive departure form the
Tsar of old. Fast, distorted and pissed-off sounding it was like "Afraidio..."
on steroids.
Maybe not as nice to listen to as the first record but it was exciting.
Not only because it was so balls-out rocking but because it meant these
guys weren't giving up without a fight--the stylistic intent of the material
was evidence of that.
This release from Birdman was actually supposed to be the first of several
one-off vinyl by the band via different record labels. Sadly, the others
never materialized.
Early 2003 saw Tsar return to the stage for a couple of performances and
I was able to attend one on July 12th. During this
visit to Los Angeles I was lucky enough to hear an pre-master version
of what was to be "Band-Girls-Money" (at the time many alternate
titles were being discussed including "16 And Savaged"). The
sound of the record was tough.
Punch-you-in-the-face rock and roll similar to the "Straight"
7" but more polished. The change could be attributed to the fact
that the band had taken a lot of criticism from their original Silverlake
fan base upon the release of the first album--it was too slick and people
claimed the production failed to capture the intensity of Tsar's live
act which was how everyone got to know them in the first place. They weren't
going to wimp out on this one it seemed.
But then nothing happened. Scattered live dates. A MySpace account was
set up in July of 2004 but no real movement on the new album.
But there were signs that the band was attempting to garner label attention
in the hopes of securing a new deal that would see a proper release for
the songs they'd been working on for 2 years.
The first sign was a band-produced CD called "Songs
From The Upcoming Album Band-Girls-Money", a 4 track
sampler featuring mixes slightly different from what would be eventually
released on the finished "Band-Girls-Money".
Also at this time an acoustic session feat ruing Dan Kern and Jeff Whalen
was recorded at Indie 103.1 radio in Los Angeles for broadcast. The songs
from that performance eventually made it to the internet further whetting
fan's appetites for something new.
One other major change happened during 2004. Drummer Steve Coulter left
the band.
His replacement was Chuck Byler and shortly after Chuck joining, Tsar
appeared on national TV on the Late late Show With Craig Ferguson performing
Band-Girls-Money.
This performance marked what was one of bassist's Jeff Solomon's last
performance with the band and with the addition of his replacement, Derrick
Forget, this was the beginning of Tsar 2.0.
More to come...
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