Stars After Stars After Stars

Americana UK Review

Great collection of obscure covers.  A veteran of American new wave/post punk/power pop bands including Dumptruck and the Hello Strangers, this is Priggen’s second album.  A collection of covers , he states that “a lot of the artists I admire were known as great songwriters and equally as great interpreters of other peoples songs.” Cover albums can be fairly awful vanity projects (the equivalent of inviting someone over to see your very tasteful collection) or a chance to bring a particular vision to bear on influences allowing a degree of insight into an artist’s roots (Bowie’s Pin Ups?, any other takers?). Priggen falls firmly into the latter camp although there is a  degree here of having impeccable taste (but then, don’t we all?). The only songs that listeners might immediately jump on are Alex Chilton’s “Nightime” and (gulp) Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen.” Otherwise Priggen’s tastes seem to be biased towards mid eighties British indies , Nikki sudden and the Jacobites, Everything But the Girl and Orange Juice with a nod to earlier years with the Zombies “How We Were Before” and a smattering of American indies. Gathering together a collection of worthy musicians including Bun E. Carlos(Cheap Trick) and (the) Mark Spencer (of Blood Oranges and Jay Farrar fame), the sounds here are redolent of vintage power pop, approaching the delights that were to be heard from Dwight Twilley and his ilk. Opener, “In the Inside” (originally by The Hot Bodies) churns along with  Priggen’s voice sounding a little like Alejandro Escovido. On “Big Store” (written by Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy, originally by the Jacobites) the band conjure up a colossal wall of noise with the guitars riffing away until unleashed at the end. The guitarists throughout (Mark Spencer and Ivan Julian of the Voidoids and Matthew Sweet) are superb. There are some hidden tracks after the main fare, one, a musicians’ in-joke apparently, is a recording of some guy pitching to record labels execs to put on a huge show of some sort. This tape provides the album’s title as he states that Warner Brothers have on their roster “stars after stars after stars.” The humour escapes me but after this there are two other songs, the final one a rousing cover of Orange Juice’s “Felicity”.  Priggen has a healthy attitude to the internet and his website has information on several of the covers on the album. There’s also an opportunity to listen to it as a stream, so if this review whets your appetite head on over there and tell him we sent you. Link.

New Haven Advocate Review

Link
"It may seem strange that an album of covers--by such familiars as Alice Cooper, the Ramones, the Zombies and Big Star--can seem so personal, so lived-in, so fluid and consistent in tone and outlook. But not if you know Spike Priggen, who adds nuance and wistful abandon to every band he leads or joins, from the Hello Strangers to Dumptruck. Many of the tracks are deliciously obscure (Scritti Polittis A New Soul, Tracey Thornes Plainsailing, and the Jacobites punkily dry-witted Big Store), and one of the best is locally rooted: Hot Bodies In the Inside, penned by Kerry Miller. All are couched in Spikes preternatural alt-pop cloud of knowing, and fluffed up by a spectacular group of sidemen, including Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos and Blood Oranges Mark Spencer. Now where's that promised second album of original tunes?" — Christopher Arnott

Spendid Magazine Review

If nothing else, Spike Priggen is a generous man. Not only does he offer both Stars After Stars After Stars and his first album, The Very Thing That You Treasure, for free download on his website; he also sent us a CD featuring the originals of the songs he covers on Stars....

Yes, you read that correctly: for his second outing, Priggen elected to record a covers album. Given that he spent his entire life recording his debut, it's understandable that he might have trouble coming up with an album of new material in just two or three years, but it's still odd, to say the least. Even if the songs he covers aren't very well known, it's a strange career move.

Then again, after listening to Stars After Stars..., you get the idea that maybe writing your own material is overrated, particularly when you're able to make other people's songs sound so much like your own, as Priggen does. In part, this is because the songs he covers -- tracks from acts like Hot Bodies, the Pontiac Brothers and The Jacobites -- are hardly chart-topping hits, so Priggen can apply his Stipe-like vocals and power pop sensibilities to them without immediate concern about unfavorable comparison to the originals. Thus, Jennifer Jackson's "When You Looked At Me" becomes Beatles-tinged country-rock, while Hot Bodies' "In The Inside" and the Pontiac Brothers' "Be Married Song" evolve into big, crunchy pop-rock.

Songs by better-known acts give more of a sense of how much Priggen makes each tune his own. His version of Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen", for example, is just as rocking, but his twangy vocals are a distinct change. Similarly, his version of "Questioningly" is a million miles away from what The Ramones did with the original -- it would work well on an early REM record. In Priggen's hands, The Zombies' "How We Were Before" becomes a hybrid of power pop and flamenco, and Big Star's "Nightime" evolves into a beautifully understated acoustic lament.

It's unlikely that Stars After Stars After Stars will bring Priggen much attention or acclaim, except from power pop aficionados who have a thing for covers. That said, it's definitely worth your time to investigate it; not only is it free, but the accompanying blog functions as the sort of old-school liner notes most artists can't be bothered to provide, offering background information and revealing the personal significance behind each song choice. Priggen deserves a bigger, more devoted fan base, and Stars After Stars After Stars can only help it grow.-- Matthew Pollesel

Note From Spike: The music is actually only available as pretty low-res Realplayer files for the most part, although I have been putting them up as mp3s one at a time. I'm not actually giving it away for free (at least, I wasn't meaning to).  Also, I've actually written many more songs than ended up on my first CD and have already recorded 11 songs for my next CD which will be all original songs. As far as it being a weird career move for me to record an all-covers record, I'd have to say, what career? Cool review though. Starts off like it's gonna be really negative, but I won him over!

Downtown Express Feature

Volume 18 • Issue 4 | JUNE 17-23, 20

Spike priggen
Saturday, June 18th
The Lakeside Lounge
162 Avenue B
between 10th and 11th Sts.

Power pop tribute album

New York-based musician sings cover songs

By David Chiu

Spike Priggen may not be a recognizable name to most casual music listeners, and that’s fine with him. “Yeah, nobody knows who I am,” deadpans the 41-year-old singer, songwriter who has been part of the alternative rock scene for over 25 years. “I’m totally obscure. Most of the music I like is really obscure so I can take some solace in that.”

Obscure also best describes the NewYork-based musician’s choice of cover songs that make up his second solo album “Stars after Stars After Stars.” It consists of tracks originally recorded by the Ramones, Big Star, Alice Cooper, and the Zombies, as well as songs by the Jacobites and Hot Bodies, two local bands from Priggen’s hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. Making the covers album started out as an excuse to experiment and test new production techniques. “I did it for fun early on to begin with,” he says. “It kind of grew into a record that I wanted to release.”

Rather than recreating the songs in their original letter-perfect form, Priggen applied his distinct power pop melodic touch to them; one might have thought the catchy songs were truly his own tunes. “I’ve been doing them for so long that I can almost forget that I didn’t write them,” he says. “I just had it in my head from the way I remember them. I didn’t want to have them be just like the originals.”

The songs transported him back to the ‘70s and early ‘80s during which his musical tastes developed. One song he felt proud of interpreting on the record is “When You Looked At Me” by singer/songwriter Jennifer Jackson. “I think we added a pretty arrangement on that one, like what Harry Nilsson did on the Badfinger song “Without You.” Priggen even goes as far to cover “A Slow Soul” by the British pop group Scritti Politti. “It’s more of a soul ballad before they used drum machines,” he says. “It’s as far away from their later [‘80s synth pop] stuff.”

Priggen employed several talented local musicians for “Stars after Stars After Stars;” the biggest highlight according to him was having Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos play on several tracks. He has been friends with Carlos for over 25 years since meeting him backstage at a Cheap Trick concert. “It was almost like having Ringo Starr and [Led Zeppelin’s] John Boham playing drums on my record,” he says proudly. “I couldn’t think of anything that comes close to that.”

Cheap Trick were one of the bands that fostered Priggen’s love for power pop as a kid in New Haven; one of his other influences were legendary cult band Big Star, whose “Nightime” is on Priggen’s record. “I loved Big Star since when I was 12 or 13,” he says. ”I’ve always been a big fan of theirs, back when it was literally me and two other guys in New Haven knew who Big Star were.”

Spike (nee Michael) Priggen had been playing music since 1978 as a member of various bands in New Haven. He was a part of the city’s underground punk and New Wave scene (whose graduates included musician/producer Jon Brion, and Mark Mulcahy and Ray Neal of the rock band Miracle Legion). Priggen later moved to New York to study photography at the School of Visual Arts; he also formed a band called Blue Period, which later evolved into the Hello Strangers during the ‘80s. He was involved with other ensembles including the Boston-based Dumptruck; he later launched an independent label #1 Records and produced various projects. “I figured out over the last couple of weeks that a band I was in, in 1980, called TV Neats is on three different power pop compilations,” he says, indicative of his long musical resume.

After years of playing and recording with other people, Priggen finally released “The Very Thing You Treasure” (2001)—his first album under his own name—to acclaimed reviews. Recording and releasing that album proved to be a challenge when Priggen was involved in a car accident that sidelined him for several months, and suffered a vocal ailment. “I couldn’t sing for like a year,” he remembers, “between recording the music and the singing—it sort of made that record take a long time to get done.

Priggen is already busy working on a new album of his own original compositions. He doesn’t plan to go out on an extensive tour, although he will play a few local shows. Right now, he hopes that people will like and enjoy “Stars after Stars After Stars.” “I like to play and sing,” Priggen says simply. “That’s about it really. It’s like a big vanity project. I’m not making these records because somebody’s paying me. I’m making them because I’m taking money out of my own pocket and doing it.”

Inaudible Cities Post

Inaudible Cities has a cool little post about my blogs and new record.

All Music Guide Review

Stars After Stars After Stars
Spike Priggen   
by John D. Luerssen
From The All Music Guide

Unlike most albums of covers, Spike Priggen's Stars After Stars After Stars succeeds from start to finish. Priggen -- who's done time in almost-famous bands like Dumptruck, The Liquor Giants and The Caroline Know -- knows a thing about arranging an alt-pop song, and it shows on this diverse song cycle. "In The Inside" is a scorching, superb take on the Hot Bodies' original, and The Zombies' "How We Were Before" comes off as a winsome, warm tribute. A pair of ballads (The Pontiac Brothers' twangy, spooky "Be Married Song" and Jenifer Jackson's shimmering, guitar weeper "When You Looked At Me" are done right, while Priggen's lilting, gorgeous rendition of Big Star's "Nighttime" may be the best thing going for Stars After Stars After Stars. The man even scores by resuscitating Alice Cooper's rebellious hard rock classic "I'm Eighteen", turning it into a likable countrified bastardization of the original. Well done, Spike, well done.

East Bay Express Review

Spike Priggen
Stars After Stars After Stars
By Eli Messinger
Published: Wednesday, April 20, 2005

New York-based Spike Priggen of Liquor Giants, Pussywillows, and Dumptruck enthralled fans with his 2001 solo debut's synthesis of Big Star's chime, the dBs' quirkiness, and Dwight Twilley's pure pop power. This follow-up of lovingly selected covers (in the tradition of Bowie's Pin-Ups and the Band's Moondog Matinee) melds the hearts and minds of the originals with his overarching melancholy, mating a collector's ear for material with a producer's imagination for re-creation. Highlights include Priggen's versions of the Pontiac Brothers' yearning "Be Married Song" and the Zombies' delicate morning-after B-side "How We Were Before." The Ramones, Tracey Thorn, and Scritti Politti's songs all find a common wistfulness in Priggen's soul- and country-inflected arrangements. Closing the disc is a mesmerizing found-sound "J&H Productions" tape, in which a would-be Cincinnati concert promoter attempts to "get with" the "label industry." Whether the "label industry" "gets with" Spike Priggen, lovers of Lennon, Chilton, Stamey, and Sweet certainly should.

South Florida's Entertainment News & Views Review

Spike Priggen: Stars After Stars After Stars (Volare)
With an extensive two-decade pedigree that’s found him working with some of the most America’s most illustrious alt-rock ensembles (Dumptruck, Liquor Giants, the Schramms, etc.), Spike Priggen certainly knows great power pop when he hears it. So while an album of obscure covers may seem an unlikely career move a mere two sets into his solo sojourn, given his musical inclinations, it does seem to make some sense.
Granted, most people will have no idea who these artists are. The Pontiac Brothers, the Jacobites, the Hot Bodies and Scritti Politti never made much of an impact on the public radar. The Zombies, the Ramones, and Tracey Thorn of Everything but the Girl are represented, but Priggen’s song selection still manages to keep the recognition factor nearly nil. The best known track by far turns out to be a revved-up cover of Alice Cooper’s defiant adolescent anthem, “I’m Eighteen,” rendered here in a manner befitting Neil Young and Crazy Horse, i.e. all attitude and amplitude.

Nevertheless, despite the lack of instant identification, Priggen does an admirable job of reinventing this melodic material. The fact that they’re not known actually works in his favor; unhindered by previous perceptions, he makes these tunes his own, embellishing each with lavish arrangements befitting his pop pedigree. As a result, “In the Inside,” “Be Married Song,” “Big Store,” and “Only Children Sleeping” sound like radio-ready contenders circa the ‘70s, rich, robust and instantly accessible. Things take a strange turn when the album reaches its end, as a rambling dialogue by an obviously inept talent promoter takes over the proceedings. Two uncredited songs follow, but by then the listener’s so perplexed, they seem like an unlikely coda.

Nevertheless, with Stars After Stars After Stars coming on top of his outstanding debut, The Very Thing You Treasure, Priggen’s proven his point. Rock ‘n’ roll is often at its best when it comes from unexpected sources.    By Lee Zimmerman

Evansville Courier & Press Review

By MARK WILSON, Music critic
April 1, 2005
Spike Priggen
Stars After Stars After Stars (Volare Label)

Intelligent, well-crafted pop rock is vastly underrepresented in today's music scene. There seems to be a a consensus that it has to be disguised as "punk" (of the most lightweight variety), and even then it's generally rendered in primary colors and paint-by-numbers formula.

But for those willing to dig a little deeper, there is still a wealth of great new music out there. Priggen's 2001 solo debut, "The Very Thing You Treasure," was an under-the-radar gem. It wasn't just critics who picked up on it. It slipped into the mainstream with a song on the TV show "Felicity" and another song ("Outtasight") appearing in the first-ever iPod TV commercial. Considering that mega-rockers U2 are also shilling for iPod these days, that puts Priggen in some pretty heady company.

Although it is a highly eclectic collection of mostly obscure songs by other artists, Priggen's second album, "Stars After Stars After Stars," underscores the considerable depths of his talent. Priggen makes each song his own, giving the album a remarkable coherent sound. Some of that is due to his song selection, songs which, except for a straightforward reading of Alice Cooper's "Eighteen," render themselves to his vaguely rootsy power pop interpretations. Priggen reclaims "Questioningly," the Ramones' well-written but improbable stab at country-rock and rescues from obscurity early British pop gems such as Tracy Thorn's "Plainsailing" and Scritti Politti's "A Slow Soul."

Other highlights include a beautiful, guitar-filled version of singer-songwriter Jennifer Jackson's "When You Looked at Me," a loving rendition of Alex Chilton's "Nighttime" and the melancholy "How We Were Before," originally done by the Zombies.

The other thing that makes this album work so well is its stellar caste of backing musicians. In addition to Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos on six songs, "Stars After Stars After Stars" features a virtual Who's Who of the New York City underground music scene, including legendary guitarist Ivan Julian and musicians who have played with acts such as They Might Be Giants, Fountains of Wayne, Jay Farrar, Beat Rodeo, XTC and even Ozzy Osbourne.

Don't miss the bonus tracks either, which include the hilarious underground hipster "J and H Productions" tape (Google it for background) and two excellent bonus songs that are as good as any of the songs on the proper album.

Dream Magazine Review

Spike Priggen
Stars After Stars After Stars (Volare)
This second album finds Spike Priggen and a bunch of friends (Ivan Julian, Bun E Carlos, etc.) covering some great underknown songs by folks like the Pontiac Brothers, the Zombies, Nikki Sudden/Dave Kusworth the Jacobites, Tracy Thorn, the Ramones, etc. If Spike is doing all of the vocals as the press kit seems to indicate; he's the best singing vocal mimic I've ever heard. His Tracy Thorn, and Joey Ramone are uncanny.
George Parsons
Dream Magazine #5