Josh Joplin Group

I just got through listening to Pet Sounds for the first time in my life today. I bought my first copy at a record shop just up the street from me. It’s the only record shop like it in all of Brooklyn, according to Henry, the proud proprietor. It’s more like a musty crawl space than a shop. Milk crates stuffed with vinyl from every era, sorted and indexed with careful attention paid to all things camp. Posters of the MC5 and Tony Orlando and Dawn (get it!) hang on what little wall space there is. Nestled amid the dead and dying rock stars, garage bands, and early synth sex vixens, are the half-hearted collections of Beatles cups and Kiss dolls. This is the lifetime property of a man whose great pleasure comes from passing judgment on those who have no idea who Russ Myers is.

Henry likes me despite my short stint on radio and MTV, Conan and Letterman. He has ever since the day I bought a rare, Demonstration Only copy of Phil Och's Gunfight At Carnegie Hall and we got to talking about Phil’s music and life. He went into a long story about how he waited in line on 57th Street in the rain for four hours to get tickets to THAT very show, just to be turned away at the door for being intoxicated. We learned in subsequent conversations that we liked many of the same musicians including David Bowie, Bukka White, Beth Orton, Elvis Costello and The Attractions, and we respectfully wretched at the bands neither of us could understand what the other heard in them. His disappointment seems to be my soft spot for The Smiths. Mine is his exultation of The Cramps.

Henry only learned that I was in the dreaded music industry much later. He doesn’t like my first album Useful Music much and I suspect that had it come out on vinyl it would have a home in his R.E.M.p.e.c.t. bin, which is where all bands from the South who don’t sound like the Allman Brothers go. Much to my surprise though he seems fairly pleased with this one. He likes that The Future That Was was produced by Atlanta-based Rob Gal (Kelly Hogan, Smoke, Big Fish Ensemble), someone he’s actually heard of. He was happy to hear that we played most of the album live (backed by Josh’s band, Geoff Melkonian on bass, Allen Broyles on keyboard and Eric Taylor on drums), which we did and that it was recorded locally at Stratosphere, a studio owned by Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne) and James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins). But had he known then what he knows now, I think he probably wouldn’t have listened to it at all. And most likely I would have been banned outright from his store forever. Cast out with the others who unknowingly ask if he might have a copy of Elton John's Caribou (and on CD no less!).

The fact that I never cared much for The Beach Boys or appreciated the boundless abilities of Brian Wilson's genius is bad enough. But there is absolutely no excuse for my never having owned the Holiest of Holy Grails, the album that Paul McCartney apparently deemed to be the most important album of all time, Pet Sounds.

"What’s wrong with the copy you have?" Henry asked as I came forth and placed the album beneath others I was buying, hoping on the slim chance that a Ritchie Havens collection might distract him long enough that the rest might go unnoticed. What a fool I was! I could have bought this fucking album at a Barnes and Noble for Christ's sake! But here I was, just like every Saturday, out of routine or loyalty, or perhaps friendship. Or maybe out of something deeper, something subconscious. A perverse need to come clean and confess my sins and be absolved of them by someone who would rather die than forgive me.

"My name is Josh Joplin, and I don’t own Pet Sounds."

Facts about Josh and the band:
·Josh Joplin plays guitar, Geoff Melkonian plays bass, Allen Broyles plays keyboards and trumpet, Eric Taylor plays drums.
·Josh grew up in Lancaster, PA but at the age of thirteen his family moved to the suburbs of Washington, DC. Josh’s grandmother was a music critic for the Washington Observer, briefly for a few years in the late fifties and early sixties. She recently retired from The Indianapolis Star.
·Josh quit school in the first few weeks of the tenth grade, he started to travel around the country for a few years until he was eighteen and settled in Denver, CO, where he played in small clubs and on the streets.
·Josh became interested in music after hearing Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A Changin'".
·Josh met everyone in the band in Atlanta where he lived for several years.
·Geoff played in many bands before he and Josh met in 1992, and started the Josh Joplin Band, which later changed its name dramatically to, Josh Joplin Group.
·Allen played piano for years with Kelly Hogan before joining the band 6 years ago.
·Allen is Susan B. Anthony’s great nephew.
·The band recorded Useful Music for Shawn Mullins' SMG Records about four years ago, and a couple years ago it was picked up by Artemis Records. "Camera One" was the most successful single on that record; it was # 1 on the Triple A charts.
·Josh moved to New York four years ago, the band still live in Atlanta.
·Eric joined the band three years ago.
·Josh Joplin Group spent 6 weeks at Stratosphere Sound Studio in New York City with Rob Gal, a friend of Josh’s for many years, who agreed to produce this album.
·Of this album Josh say’s "recording The Future That Was, was very different from anything else we’ve done in the past. I think I had the most fun pulling from the past. It reflects an aspect of all the music I love, everyone from Harry Nilsson to David Bowie."