Every now and then I am going to review an obscure, rare, or under appreciated piece of music that can be found in discount racks or elsewhere for dirt cheap. Think of these as Amazon steals (but nothing illegal), complete with personal notes or cool background info.
This first one I’d like to share is Heartbreak Town
This is the second release they put out. Three were released on the Wonderland label:
- 1989 – The Stand
- 1990 – Heartbreak Town
- 1992 – In Three Days
The only other album for sale online is In Three Days
The Stand that I’m talking about came out of Canada and the lead singer was Tony Valenziano. The funny thing was I purchased this thinking it was somehow related to Altar Boys. I was wrong, but it has a lot to compare to the Altar Boys. I was thinking that Mike Stand was in the band, but nope… As an awesome freak accident, they sound much like the Altar Boys and have the Christian lyrical themes to compare to. The songs are great and half the disc was instantly lovable. The rest of the CD is good too though. Without being cliche, they seem to carry the powerpop sound into the 90s well. There is a nice balance of consistency and echos of different styles. All songs have a pop sound that brings back a 60s feel (Beach Boys/Beatles) fused with the lighter alternative sound of the Replacements (and their influence Alex Chilton).
Where are they now? Tony had a another band Smash on his own label Smile Records and has a new band The Ultra Suede. He’s still kicking out powerpop work, but not sounding as good. He actually did release at least one more album by the Stand called “Replay,” but I’ve never heard it. If I get the urge I’ll get “In Three Days.”
3 comments
Kurt Emmert says:
Apr 16, 2008
WOW! I did a search for The Stand and I actually found something. I never knew that they did three albums.
tony valenziano says:
Aug 27, 2008
Hi-
Thought I would send you a note on this and give you some of the back story with accurate info if that’s gruvee…Someone sent me this link and I found it quite interesting and started the “memory file” to kick in a bit …Just so you know, I/we aren’t from Canada…played there some years later but thats not us… if there was another “Stand” act at the time, wasn’t aware of them…in fact when we signed with A&M (thats the actual label that did the deal with us, but you have the Wonderland version/imprint with Word in this review, we had to have our lawyer do a “name search” and tell 2 other bands (one in Nashville and somewhere else I can’t recall) to cease and desist (also, we happened to be christians in a band, not a christian act, didn’t even play churches, but when they found out we were, A&M who had just bought Word Records and were looking for artists for crossover hopefuls, I think us , The Choir and Dave Perkins and Tonio K got the nod to do the Word deal as well) but we were an LA band from the start and were signed as one (we had all been in bands in LA prior to The Stand well because we all lived here)…. I remember I had a friend at college who had a brother who was a drummer near by and had a rehearsal space, so he and I started jamming, my friend also had a friend who he worked with and was a gtr player and that gtr player new another gtr player willing to play bass, so we officially started around Thanksgiving 1983 and played every dive from Club 88 and the the Blue Saloon to The Starwood, The Central (now the Viper Room) The Whisky, Roxy and so on till we built up a following…we did the LA scene for 5 yrs before we got a major to sign us (we had a small indie deal with Explosive Records outta Tulsa because my drummer at the time was a huge idol of mine named Phil Seymour (who had a killer solo thing going on after leaving the Dwight Twilley Band) they released that record more than a year after we had done it so we were pretty bummed at the time and in fact half the band quit before we went on tour in support of the record….. I am from Chicago originally, Rick from Seattle and Fish from LA…the original bass player Gary (from Oklahoma) was in and out of the line up for years (actually he was also an original member of the Choir too (gtr)) but did do allot of engineering on that 1st record with me…my college buddy Doug Knecthel and I had a band in college, (who is the cousin of Larry Knechtel (Bread, and every hit single that LA sessions guys played on in the 70’s), played bass on the title track only… while another friend in a rival band (Brighton) named Vince Campi who did join, kinda, played on most of the rest…I did the bass on Everyday & J146 but that was the players and line up….The way we got the deal was we were playing the Palomino ( famous old country bar in NoHo that had the best acts in town and actually paid their entertainment) and a couple of guys at the bar were drinking and digging this band they were watching…he says he is a producer, owns a studio, like to have us come in and do our set live and see what tunes we can record for an album…we sign a production deal, do about 30 tunes and the 10 we picked make up the Heartbreak town album…(later we find out its the most well known xstian studio in town and has everyone in the biz secular to non-sec tracking in there…in fact the Dolly Parton show is recorded there and we become enamored with all the artists going thru there that we use the engineers and gear to do all our stuff till they let the pychos take over the asylum……(there is a story I have were before anyone ever hears of the Trav Wibury’s, I am working as a second honing my engineering /producing talentsat the studio, that all of a sudden huge names start walking at midnigh because Petty’s wife is screaming at them to get out of the house and stop recording and we happen to have the exact tape machine and board at our studio he has in his house so the tape will align and play with the boards same EQ’s, but a really long story goes with that)….Anyway. Heartbreak Town sold decently enough and we toured heavily with cool artists and label mates enough to get a second album out of it…The next round (or sessions that became In Three Days) we again were approached by a player from Brighton, (Mark Robertson but he just left that band and was looking for a gig and always liked what we did and vibe) and he was from Indianapolis originally and was heading back home and I said hey, the label we are with in the christian market is in Chicago, I am wanting to go back home as well, so we will at least have someone to continue doing biz with, lets meet up there and jam and hang and see what happens….he ends up moving into my basement in Chicago and we do all the demos down there , bring them to the label, re-record and track it in Chicago, they release it early 1st qtr, we hire a couple of guys to drum and play gtr to tour with us, again everywhere we can (Canada included)….Sorry I went off on a tangent there about what starts to happen after that 1st record….Well anyway, I could say allot of what was happening at the time (mainly each members personal drama that always created chaos internally and the road stories which is a movie by itself) but needless to say we broke up and moved on….But I was just wanting to give you the Cliff notes version of what was the “behind the music” thang for the Heartbreak Town Record…hope that was all right…and you might wanna take a listen to both “In Three Days’ and “Replay”…you might like it and see where we were going direction wise as a band and how we wanted to keep exploring what we were….
Tony
liquid parallax says:
Aug 29, 2008
Surprising- It’s cool that you ended up finding my review and that you chimed in with a detailed background of the personal side of things. And sorry to misplace your origins. I’m not sure where I got that The Stand was from Canada (maybe the reissue company was from Canada?).