The 21st BIG STIR DIGITAL SINGLE, "Chains" b/w "Dream Baby", arrives Friday, March 22, courtesy of the Orange County, CA collective POPDUDES. The well-known band centers around drummer and noted rock journalist JOHN BORACK (their recent and celebrated album Maximum Rock Stupidity came bundled with Borack's equally praised power pop guidebook Shake Some Action 2.0). The band features a revolving "who's who" from the OC and LA pop rock scenes, including (this time out) BORACK (drums), MICHAEL SIMMONS (guitar), Big Stir Records' own ADDISON LOVE (guitar and lead vocals on "Chains") and Addison's father TIM LOVE (bass and lead vocals on "Dream Baby"). Both tracks are available for preorder now at the link below.

https://www.bigstirrecords.com/big-stir-digital-singles

The following is an excerpt from BORACK's Popdudes tell-all tome Behind the Stupidity (which may or may not be real):

The whole thing started as sort of a joke. And in many ways, it still is.

I first met Mike Simmons in 1998 after I spied a CD by his band, sparkle*jets u.k., at the counter of a local record store. I contacted him, we connected on a fellow Beatles/pop geek level, and we’ve been pals ever since.

I think it was around 2001 when we first recorded music together at Mike’s old home studio in Fullerton, California. I was visiting Mike with my then three-year-old daughter Kayla, and we all somehow found our way down to the studio. Mike pressed the “record” button, and we lurched through several spirited-yet-silly takes of the Beatles’ “I’m Down” as Kayla danced. That fateful occurrence would come to be known as The Day Mike Simmons Would Forever Regret.

I’m joking. Sort of.

From that point on, Mike and I would get together sporadically and record stuff, mainly covers. Some of it would never see the light of day (thankfully), while other songs found their way onto various compilations and tribute albums. It was Mike who decided we would be called Popdudes, which, as some might know, is a portion of my email address. (Well, we couldn’t be called Hotmail, right?) Silly name, silly band…perfecto!

At some point in the story – details become foggier with each passing year – we started playing live gigs now and again. The “studio version” of Popdudes, as it were, was originally just Mike and myself, with me on drums and Mike playing everything else because the guy is just stupidly talented like that. But when live gigs started happening, we of course needed other folks to lend a hand. That’s when Popdudes became something of an L.A.-area pop music collective, with everybody and their brother joining us on stage (and sometimes in the studio) from time to time.

The version of Popdudes you hear on these two previously unreleased recordings feature me, Simmons, and the father-son dynamic duo of Tim and Addison Love. Four bigger Beatles geeks you'll never meet, which is why we cover a song here that the Fab Four also covered - The Cookies' "Chains" (sung by Addison). Tim Love handles lead vocals on the flip side, a reverent cover of Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby."

Both songs were tracked as we ran through them prior to a series of live shows in 2016. Unbeknownst to me, Simmons was recording our rehearsal and he used my drum tracks as the foundation for both these tunes. I would have played better had I known we were making a record…but then again, maybe I wouldn’t have. Anyway, here they are: these are new phase POPDUDES recordings; in comes the warmth and the freshness of a live performance; as reproduced for disc by Michael Simmons.

-John M. Borack, 2019

(Big Stir Records notes that the artwork for the single is also provided by Mr. Simmons as he is, as noted above, stupidly talented.)

Expected release: March 22, 2019

It's not often that we get to issue a BIG STIR DIGITAL SINGLE whose B-side is already a "hit", and an A-Side co-written by another Singles Series star... but our 20th release is just that. THE EX TEENS return, having seen this flip side, "The New Victorians" (from their EP Get On An Ice Floe), chart on THE MUSIC AUTHORITY's Top 10! But the even better news is that "Good News (For Shut-Ins)" is a brand new A-side appearing here for the first time. The A and B will be released Friday, March 15 and are available for pre-order now!

https://bigstirrecords.com/big-stir-digital-singles

We've said it before, but THE EX TEENS are one of our favorite bands on the LA live scene, with frontman SIMON GLICKMAN owning the stage, the fine guitar work of former 20/20 member CHRIS SILYAGI and the determined drumming of JOEY PONCHETTI making for an irresistible show. GLICKMAN has this to say about "Good News", with a nod to A-side co-writer JOSH GORDON of THE LIVING DOLLS (whose single we released just a few weeks back):

“I was feeling old before I started my band.

“To be fair, I WAS old. But I’m younger than that now, and I ascribe that to the restorative power of plugging in and wailing.

“I was at loose ends, stressed about my mortgage, choked with angst as I hustled ineptly for freelance work and imagined I was meant for better things. It was the holidays, the perfect time of year to plunge into an abyss of one’s own making. Then at a holiday party, I met Josh Gordon. We had chatted for less than an hour when he said, in his guileless way, “Hey, do you want to start a band?” My answer, without much thought, was yes.

“And so The Ex Teens was born. Being in the band manifestly did not make my problems disappear. My mortgage still loomed. My revenue faltered. My own mortality was ever more acutely in the foreground. But at least now it occurred to me to write songs about it. One of the first such songs is, at long last, being released as a single.

“I wrote “Good News (for Shut-Ins)” to cheer myself up. It begins:

Middle-aged middle manager Gets the middle finger every day Self-hating, self-medicating Tried meditating, tried to pray

“A tart self-diagnosis, to be sure. But in songs you can do anything. And so:

Turn your haggard face to the sun Your golden hour has just begun There’s good news, good news, good news if you’re feeling bad.

“Josh co-wrote the music with me, and we rocked it. The Ex Teens wouldn’t exist without him, so I’m forever in his debt. He’s since moved on is killing it with The Living Dolls; we are both delighted to be in the Big Stir orbit.”

“For a variety of reasons, after we recorded “Good News” (co-produced and engineered by our pal Steve Kravac), it didn’t make it onto our EP. Now, at last, it’s coming out— and will be a Big Stir Digital Single. We’re very happy to share it with the world at last.”

“So what is the good news, if you’re feeling bad? That you can turn your suffering into big, loud songs. It’s the cure for what ails ya.”

As a side note, THE EX TEENS' previous entry in the Big Stir Digital Singles Series, “Mikey & Murdercat” b/w/ the band's cover of the Byrds classic “I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better”, is still available at the link above and better yet will soon be seeing release on CD as part of our BIG STIR SINGLES: THE FIRST WAVE compilation. It's at the presses now and an official release announcement is coming soon... the first twelve A's and B's are all there, including exclusives from KARLA KANE, MICHAEL SIMMONS, KAI DANZBERG, PLASTICSOUL, TRIP WIRE, BLAKE JONES & THE TRIKE SHOP and much much more!

The 19th BIG STIR DIGITAL SINGLE is a deep roots affair. It's from the Oxford, England-based trio CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE and it should have immediate and deep appeal to fans of melodic electric British psych-folk in the Syd Barrett-Robyn Hitchcock-Julian Cope mould (in other words, people like us). The lovely and macabre A-side "Where Are the Living?" (which was given an early airing last October on the Big Stir Halloween Radio Special) and the trippy, stuttering B-side "Oscar" (about a bilocating cat, naturally) see release on Friday, March 8 and are available for preorder now!

https://www.bigstirrecords.com/big-stir-digital-singles

CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE (as SEWELL explains) were discovered in one of the drawers of Oxford's Pitt Rivers museum. Once dusted down they began to make the kind of English psychedelia for which they are now renowned. Turns out they're all old hands - mitochondrial DNA analysis shows that the members ("Swiss" RICK NASH - The Drums, JULIAN MOSS - on the bass, harmonies and even some guitar, MATT SEWELL - singing and guitar) go back to the 80s, possibly even further. The songs are about the inevitable forces of the Universe, ancient stone monuments, Autumn, love and cats. "Charming stuff" said Oxford music mag Nightshift, puntastically, but this is clearly what the band are aiming for.

The association between main Charmer SEWELL and REX BROOME (of Big Stir and THE ARMOIRES) goes well back to the relative dawn of the internet and the '90s, when Broome took it upon himself to compile a collection of original music from the participants in the Robyn Hitchcock mailing list "Fegmania". The resulting disc, Tinfoil Thoths: Songs from the Globe of Fegs, would contain early versions of what would become The Armoires' signature tune ("Fort Ashby") as well as the song featured as the B-side here: "Oscar" as performed by SEWELL's then-band THE NEW MOON.

All of which would likely have been forgotten in the wake of MySpace, Facebook and Twitter if not for The Armoires attempting a miniature tour of the UK in 2015 and needing a support band. Fegmania bonds being what they were, a connection was reforged – Rex and Christina (who had to formal found the BSR label) were duly impressed that Sewell had been plugging away with his new band for some years, supporting the likes of The Jazz Butcher, The Corner Laughers and Miracle Legion. CHARMS were duly swept up in the developing Big Stir wake, repeating the tour appearances the subsequent year and beginning to pop up on the nascent label's compilations – the Big Stir Traveling International Roadshow CD marked the band's first appearance on record and in some senses completed the circle begun on Tinfoil Thoths and opening up a new chapter for Oxford's finest.

CHARMS also frequently serves as ANTON BARBEAU's backing band on the noted psych-pop troubadour's UK jaunts, under the alias "THRUST". Big Stir Records will be issuing a BARBEAU album featuring the lads in that capacity later this year, and The Armoires themselves have gone and name-dropped the band (and the song "Oscar") on the lead track for their forthcoming album... but more on that later. Now it's time to cycle past the graveyards of Oxford as this single gets the thumbs up from a ghoul... and us as well!

THE LIVING DOLLS provide us with the 18th BIG STIR DIGITAL SINGLE, and we could not be happier. "Everything That Happened" b/w "Happy Manors", both written by main Doll JOSH GORDON are available now. A radio edit of the A-side serves a a free bonus track!

THE LIVING DOLLS have been a force to be reckoned with on the LA guitar pop scene for several years now, and although the scorching live band (GORDON on lead vocals and guitar, his fellow ex-GRETA guitarist KYLE BAER on lead, VICTOR BORNIA on drums, JOHN BIRD on keys and rotating bassists including TONY RUGOLO, Gordon's bandmate in THE QUESTION) has yet to be documented by recordings, a pair of hard-to-find albums showcased the songs at the heart of the group. We're happy to make these two samples more widely available! The A-side "Everything That Happened" is the perennial set-opening mod-rocker (imagine The Dream Syndicate does Boston by way of The Who) and the B-Side, the prime-period Kinks-tinged "Happy Manors" is so beloved by THE ARMOIRES that they're currently tracking a cover of it.

But what is that LIVING DOLLS sound? Josh explains: "Imagine yourself running among purple flower factories and fields of blue strawberries. Imagine witches flying through the air on marmalade broomsticks. Imagine (just do it) a safety pin tree and orange clouds raining tears. imagine pink rats whispering in your ears."

“You're slowly getting an idea of the realm in which THE LIVING DOLLS. Part beguiling full of color and part light blue nightmare. A place where lions mew like kittens and winged, fire breathing kitty cats are bent on your destruction. Both cynical and naive, THE LIVING DOLLS laugh in depression and cry with joy, living by an unwavering belief that in order to achieve balance one must accept that often, two opposing truths often occupy the same space.”

Musically the Dolls are an amalgamation of some of the most interesting and important eras of pop music, and they steal from the best: 70s British Invasion and American garage rock, '70s glam, arena rock, power pop and more. The band's amazing live set was one of the key inspirations in the founding of the Big Stir Concert Series back in 2015 when THE ARMOIRES shared a stage with the band and were so bowled over that they vowed to create a place where "bands like us" could play together on a regular basis in LA. It was the Dolls' mix of originals and killer covers ("Hey Joe" in its rave-up version by The Leaves, "All the Young Dudes", "Alice" by The Naughty Sweeties and more) that captured our hearts. The best is doubtless yet to come from THE LIVING DOLLS, but these two sweet sides will give you a taste of what the future holds!