On September 13th Nick Lowe’s first new album in over a decade comes out on Yep Roc Records. Providing musical accompaniment is Los Straitjackets, his road band for quite a while now. The title is Indoor Safari.
I take particular interest in this album as an old friend and former bandmate of mine plays bass in The Straitjackets. We met in September of 1962 (!) on the first day of 7th grade at Hyde Jr. High in Cupertino, California, and became fast friends (I learned to play drums on his set of Japanese drums, then got my own set of used Ludwigs and A. Zildjian cymbals). We played together in a coupla bands in the ensuing years, the last being The Hillbilly Soul Surfers, an instrumental trio working out of Los Angeles.
We both loved Nick’s debut solo album (after leaving The Brinsley Schwarz Band), Jesus Of Cool (renamed Pure Pop For Now People for it’s U.S.A. release on Columbia Records), though I greatly preferred the follow up, Labour Of Lust. Nick’s former partner in the band Rockpile Dave Edmunds (they had a falling out many years ago) I love even more. I received a concert poster for Rockpile’s October 17th, 1979 show at The Hollywood Palladium as a gift from an old (young at the the time 😊) girlfriend, and as fate would have it years later played in the band of the artist listed on the poster as Rockpile’s opening act, Pearl Harbour (Pearl was a for a time married to Clash bassist Paul Simonon, but I kept my opinion of his musicianship to myself 😁). I didn’t see that show, but saw Rockpile at The Country Club in nearby Reseda, with Moon Martin opening. A great show! Nick of course played bass on John Hiatt’s brilliant Bring The Family album, with Ry Cooder on guitar and Jim Keltner on drums. Pretty good little combo 😉.
Pete (Pedro in the parlance of Los Straitjackets) has a home studio with a 2" 16-track 3M recorder, great mics, and a nice board, so I’ll be curious to see if that’s where they made the album (I would ask him, but we too had a falling out many years ago 😉).