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Think
Iggy doing the Stones a la Sin City and you'll know just what
to expect from BIG MIDNIGHT on the album 'Everything for the
First Time'. With a sound that knocks spots off the current scuzzy
would-be 60's garage bands, it's loud and proud. As lovingly
put together as a Sire-period Groovies record. - Bucketfull of
Brains #64 (UK)
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Maybe with a little
luck and the right management, Big Midnight could be the next
Stooges or, at the very least, fill in the gaps between Iggy
Pop solo albums and Stooges reunion jaunts. Those who would've
thunk this type of Motor City muscle would crawl out of California,
a place good for nothing much more than beer commercial music
these days, please raise your hand. Not since The Left, on their
1985 EP "Last Train To Hagerstown" (I know, I know
? obscurity is my specialty), has anyone come as close to capturing
the same type of lightning in a jar, er, turd in a punchbowl
that Iggy, the brothers Asheton, and James Williamson did at
the cusp of the 70's (and beyond) in the sleepy little college
town of Ann Arbor, Michigan as these guys have (no small feat
? just ask The Trolls). Besides apparently trying to best Iggy's
record on Disc 5 of "1970: The Complete Funhouse Sessions"
for saying the words "all right," what's immediately
unsettling about singer Shea Roberts' voice on opening cut "Doin'
All Right" is how much he sounds like the world's forgotten
boy, circa "Kill City," the collection of demos Iggy
did with James Williamson during his mid-70's period of uh, refocus.
And did I mention the song swings like a motherfucker? In fact
much of "Everything For The First Time," from the keyboards
down to the production (by Roberts and Jeff Saltzman) seem to
echo what is perhaps the great lost album of the Iggy/Stooges
canon. Refusing to play entirely to their strength of honking,
dribbling, drooling, blasts of grit like "Doin' All Right"
and "Little Miss Mercy", Big Midnight temper "Everything
For The First Time" with downright moody, bleak, and sometimes
excruciating sonic pap like "All The Dreams," "Spent
Too Much," and the piano-driven "Trying To Get By."
Plodding though they may be, these songs may appeal to those
who enjoy the type of solace only a warm bath and a razor blade
can offer. Thankfully, and at the risk of beating the Iggy/Stooges
comparisons into the ground, it's the one-man freak show side
of Iggy that Big Midnight choose to mine for the most part on
this album. "Neglect Yourself" may be a blatant nod
to "Raw Power's" recommendation to "Lose sleep
baby and stay away from bed," but it kicks like a mule anyway
and Lydia Walker's backing vocals are a nice touch. On "Gotta
Get Down," guitarist Elisha Drons coaxes a Nugentian wail
from his guitar then spends the rest of the song trying to saw
the damn thing in half. Big Midnight is apparently Alive's latest
entry in the Murder City 500 and continues in the professionally
packaged and produced grand tradition of their "Motor City's
Burnin'" comps and albums by surf/instro throwbacks the
Silencers. There's no denying these guys have the chops and cocksure
arrogance (not to mention teen dream looks) to either wallow
in a whomping grimefest or float on material bordering on psychedelia,
but it may behoove them to choose one or the other. Fence sitting's
not a wise long-term career choice. But what do I know? I'm just
a guy with a computer. - Clark Paul / I-94
Bar
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Do
you remember when you first heard the Strokes and thought to
yourself, "hot dawg an' damn, this band is way too good
to be American!". That's kinda what you experience hearing
Big Midnight. In a musical era where one wishes so many bands
would have stayed in their garages, it is fortunate that Big
Midnight are in fact seeing the light of day. They are a polished
- but not too polished - rock band that seems to be straight
out of a time untainted in comparison by corporate America and
Britney Spear's having mistaken Joan Jett for Pat Benatar. Yes,
the rock'n'roll gods are smiling on us ... let's for once not
ignore it. - Emily Morse / The College Voice
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Opener "Doin'
All Right" is strictly Mick Taylor-era Stones-by-numbers
(by way of Soundtrack of Our Lives' "Sister Surround,"
but that's another discussion), but I own somewhere between 20
and 30 Rolling Stones albums, so I say bring it on. - Complete review
of the album on the Lollipop
site
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The
Richmond Sluts, San Francisco's garage rock prodigies, didn't
last nearly as long as they should have. Lucky for us, they're
back in a new incarnation called Big Midnight. The '60s influence
that shaped their erstwhile outfit has been replaced by an injection
of the early '70s sounds of the Rolling Stones and the Stooges.
The vocals of Shea Roberts have an Iggy Pop quality to them that
makes this record that much better, especially on the slower
tunes. The sound is further boosted by the occasional organs,
harmonica and the backing vocals of Lydia Walker. If they decide
to stick around longer than the Richmond Sluts did, chances are
good we'll be hearing a lot more about them. - Rob Ferraz/Exclaim
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'Everything
for the First Time', one of the top 40 Albums Of The Year 2003
lists on the Birdmansound site
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Big
Midnight is yet another band with shaggy hair and bad attitude
joining such luminaries as the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Vue,
Warlocks, the Agenda, and Richmond Sluts in the retro-as-if-retro-never-happened
category. Everything for the First Time will have you
jumping around doing air-guitar moves while draining every bottle
in the house before starting in on the cough syrup and shaving
lotion. It's a sonic battering ram of completely exhilarating
proportions with none of that brainy, genteel Sonic Youth veneer. Take the opener,
"Doin' All Right," which strikes a perfect balance
between Stonesy swagger and Stooges malice. Exciting wall-of-sound
melodies with female backing vocals augment "Neglect Yourself"
à la the Stones on "Gimme Shelter" and no less
dramatic. Speaking of the Stones, the comparisons are so apt,
Big Midnight even mentions 'em in the anthemic "Gotta Get
Down": "I listened to the Stones, and I got some Lou
Reed." Part of Everything for the First Time's
appeal is that it's just common blues (and hence wisdom) such
as the line in "Take the Blow" in which Shea Roberts
sings: "You threw my heart on the floor/And then you stomped
it out." Big Midnight is better at this than the New York
Dolls ever were. It's also the best Iggy album in years: "Trying
to Get By" is cabaret Ig as crooner complete with somber
piano and female vocals (the latter courtesy of "fifth Midnight"
Lydia Walker). "All the Dreams" is brooding junkie
blues like latter-day Stooges circa "Open Up & Bleed."
"Love for Sin" is also Iggy. "Spent Too Much,"
meanwhile, is total T. Rex, complete with strings. Clearly,
Big Midnight has fashioned a start-to-finish winner. - Joe S.
Harrington/ New Times
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Pop, rock, seventities,
garage et voluptés, sont autant d'adjectif pour décrire
"Everything For The First Time", nouvelle album 12
titres de Shea Roberts et Chris Beltran, anciennement Richmond
Sluts !!!. Et oui, ce nouveau combo n'en est pas à son
premier essais, et avec ce nouvel album, ont décidé
de laisser libre court à leur talent... Tout les instruments
fétiches [ claviers, percus, guitare, harmonica.. ] à
ces deux frontman capable d'écrire des chansons brutes,
élégantes, britishs avec "All The Dreams",
"Doin' All Right", "Gotta get Down", et "Make
It" très personnelles et provocantes... Certainement
le disque le plus aboutie en matière de rock'n roll garage
... - Underground
Society
(France)
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Big
Midnight's Everything for the First Time is a truly impressive
debut album. The songs generate the ambience of 60's garage punk
combined with old school 70's style; and yet, the sound is still
freshly modern, with crisp vocals and clean production. This
is the type of music that works for jump-starting sleepy mornings,
manages to make dreadfully long road trips well worth the drive,
and makes lonely-stony evenings simply divine. Praise should
be given to the wistful voice of singer/guitarist Shea Roberts
and the splendid bass playing of Chris Beltran. I'm sure they'd
be great live as well, so can they do us all a favor and please
go on tour? - Sharon Chow / The Sentimentalist
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Main
guy Shea Roberts drops a hook here and there and he can even
pen a lovely acoustic number ("All the Dreams") and
not sound cheesy. I hear elements of the Stones, MC5, Spacemen
3, Stooges ('natch), and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, etc. I'd
say a superb debut. - Dagger #32
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Big
Midnight turns back the rock-and-roll dial and recaptures the
sound, if not always the spirit (not that I'm old enough to really
know), of the 1970's as delivered by doctors Pop, Bolan, Jagger-Richards.
These formers Richmond Sluts are hardly the first to re-embrace
70s rock (...) but I quite like their swaggering bass lines and
bluesy guitars. - Shredding Paper
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The
latest incarnation of the sadly defunct Bay Area rock-revivalists
Richmond Sluts is Big Midnight. What this new band does
differently from the Sluts is play a more straight-ahead rock,
leaving the Sluts's comparisons to the Stooges and MC5 way far
behind. Everything For The First Time serves as a great
debut album, because as the title suggests, this is an entirely
new sound to anyone who hears it. However, those words mean something
entirely different when considered in the phrase's original context,
where it is part of the lyrics on the track "Treat Me Too
Bad," on which you can definitely make the connection between
singer-guitarist Shea Roberts (who wrote/co-wrote every song
featured here) and the late, great Johnny Thunders. As it has
been said before, the album rocks; it also has some tender moments.
Songs like "All the Dreams" show a sensitive side of
Roberts as he begs that he "want(s) to feel loved"
and when he confesses and repents for having "traded his
love for sin" on the appropriately-titled "Love For
Sin" with a voice that's a cross between Mick Jagger and
Bono. What is curious about these slower songs regarding love
(which are not power ballads by the way) is that the anthemic
songs such as "Neglect Yourself" and "Gotta Get
Down" follow the aforementioned songs, respectively. It's
as if the track order has a theme that says 'Hey it's ok to have
your heart and goals trampled on, but after you realize that
you were hurt, you better rock with your balls out and not sit
there pitying yourself for too long, 'cause we just won't let
you do that.' One track that sticks out in the torn-heart department
is the track "Spent Too Much" where Roberts feels no
remorse for a former love in the beginning of the song, and then
halfway into the track, he absolutely loses it in a frenzy of
bursting guitar before the music settles back into a soothing
tempo with "ah-ah" backing vocals; but not for too
long because the manic guitars and crashing drums come back into
the picture to carry the song into the sunset as it fades away
gently, which brilliantly depicts the way love tends to be for
a lot of us. The meaning of the following track "Take The
Blow" is unclear, but when Roberts brings in his best imitation
of Jim Morrison proclaiming that the "sun is so bright"
and that "love is a stranger," it makes me wonder just
how wild this band can get. A few motivational titles such
as "Make It" and the album closer "Trying To Get
By" show how a rough and tumble business like Rock n' Roll
can be rewarding when you add enough fun into the equation as
Big Midnight has done marvelously here. Alive Records has invested
a lot of energy and time into this band, whose music deserves
to be heard. - Nessim Halioua / Left
of the Dial
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The
guys are into dirty (altho' the production is pretty clear) r'n'roll,
mixing late 60s/Early 70s 'Stones influences with possibly anything
we file under "rock". I really like the two ballads
in this release. What come's out is a "new school"
(Singer Shea' Oasis look certainly helps) sounding rock, something
sort a new with a strong retro feel. Not bad for a debut, uh?
- Misty Lane (Italy)
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From
the opener "Doin' All Right," these fellas make a go
at the type of rock 'n' roll that only the Stones can. They,
of course, mix it up a little with upbeat songs and ballads,
such as "Spent Too Much." They even throw in a few
guitar solos that are more melodic than fast. This music on this
album may not really be everything for the first time, but at
least they did it the right way the first time. - Chain Whipped
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With
guitars set for maximum blooze, Oakland's Big Midnight shucks
and jives its way onto the Stones-influenced stage with an album
full of big power pop numbers sure to leave any fan of Cheap
Trick or the Vue grinning from ear to ear. Sure, there are tons
of bands working this territory right now, but unlike so many
of them, Big Midnight manages to inject its own style into the
changes and en up in new places as a result. If Big Midnight
isn't entirely original, it is, at least, genuine. - Allan Martin
Kemler / Rockpile #92
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With
garage rock aggression, glam rock attitude, rock/pop melodies,
rootsy instrumentation and a classic snotty-but-soulful frontman
in Shea Roberts, the young men of Big Midnight have a yummy recipe
in place on Everything For the First Time-all they need
are some good songs. Oh, wait, they've got those, too. Goodtime
rockers like "Doin' All Right," "Take the Blow"
and "Gotta Get Down" (with backup singer Lydia Walker
doing a Merry Clayton to Roberts' Mick Jagger) shimmy next to
psychedelic soul ballads like "All the Dreams" and
"Spent Too Much," while catchy blues rockers like "Little
Miss Mercy," "When Shadows Come Alive" and "Make
It" are the glue that holds it all together. There's not
a bad cut here; if there is any justice at all Everything
For the First Time will be popular enough that Big Midnight
will find itself mentioned in the same breath as lesser lights
like the Strokes and the Mooney Suzuki. We can only hope. - Michael
Toland / High
Bias
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Contrary
to popular belief, looks are never deceiving. Every fucker that
I sized up on first glance as a dick turned out to be one, and
every chick that I could just tell on first sight would never
fuck me in a million years never did. And so it goes with the
members of Big Midnight, who look too cool for rock & roll
on the cover of "Everything", like they're doing us
a fuckin' favor by releasing this record, and that's exactly
how they sound. Luckily, arrogance goes a long way with me, and
nothing succeeds better than well placed bravado. These guys
are so good at what they do: swaggering garage rock, scarf-strangled
power-pop, druggy bliss-outs - you know, rock star stuff - that
I'm practically beside myself. Big Midnight used to be the Richmond
Sluts, by the way, who were the cream of the glam-punk crop,
and the band is even better now. If these cats aren't topping
the hipster charts a year from now, then all hope is truly lost.
I suppose that being young and good looking will probably be
a requirement to get on the guest list when they roll through
town, but hey, there's always the backdoor. - Weekly Dig / Boston
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These
denim-clad, sunglass-sporting, Rolling Stones-patched hombres
from the Bay Area have crafted a great smoking-in-the-high-school-parking-lot
vibe on this debut single. The A-side, "Doin' All Right"
is a heavily Stones-influenced rocker. The B-side, "Love
for Sin" sounds like it could be an outtake from the Stooges'
first album. - Brian J. Bowe / Creem
Magazine
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One
of my fav lps a couple years back was by the Richmond Sluts.
Ex Sluts' Shea Roberts and Chris Beltran are now back in the
saddle with Big Midnight. You can hear the Sluts to a degree
in the new outfit but where the Sluts came at ya from a more
60ish garage meets 70's punk rockin angle the Big Midnight is
decidedly more "rock" with a foot planted firmly in
the 70's. With the swagger style of early 70's Rolling Stones
this band have unleashed a winner. With a well produced album
that features great songs and hard hitting music this should
be internationally acclaimed if there's any justice left in this
world. Pretty sweet! - Birdmansound
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It's
this 70s influenced garage Punk, the type the Strokes have been
making popular. But fuck the Strokes, Big Midnight have this
shit down, and could easily make the Strokes their bitches given
the chance. Plus, Big Midnight is a way cooler name. A great
mix of bluesy ballads, raunchy rockers, and pure old-school rock
and roll, that is instantly appealing. - Urotsukidoji's
Pad
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| Many bands have dreamed of making a
record that is a combination of Exile on Main Street and Physical
Graffiti. Few could pull it off. You get a feeling that something
was up like this for Big Midnight when they recorded the songs
for "Everything For The First Time." Bid Midnight seem
like they are taking music a step further. They take all the
lessons of garage rock and British music and do something really
interesting. They were one of the few bands that shook up the
place at the recent LA Shakedown. Every song on this record is
a hit. - Alexander Lawrence / SF Burning |
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Auténtico
Rock and Roll al estilo de las grandes bandas de los 70's, imaginate
a los Stones haciendo canciones de los Faces o a Bowie a duo
con los New York Dolls. Si te gustaban los Richmond Sluts no
dejarás pasar desapercibido a este grupo, olvidate de
una vez por todas de los Strokes y fijate en los Big Midnight.
- IPunkRock (Spain)
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Like
their previous outfit The Richmond Sluts, Shea Roberts and Chris
Beltran mine 60's and 70's rock with their new group Big Midnight.
But where the Sluts hewed closely to the sex-art trash netherworld
of NYC punk, guitarist Roberts and bassist Beltran dig into 70's
era Stones riffs for a hip-shaking groove, while Roberts vocals
echo Iggy Pop's nasal yelp. Playing old-school rock/soul licks
pays the bills these days, and one can't fault any new band for
wanting a taste from that gravy boat. " Everything for the
First Time" serves up the retro sound hot: tracks like "Doin'
All Right" are back alley rockers that swagger on Beltran
and drummer KCC Kozak's concrete rhythm, and "When Shadows
Come Alive" adds crackling feedback to acknowledge The Stooges
yang to their Stones-ish yin. - Paul Gaita / No Ho (LA)
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Out
of the ashes of the Richmond Sluts comes Big Midnight. The sound
is still pumping, sleazy rock-star trash but the Midnight sound
would seem to owe more to the hard-drivin' Stones or Faces than
the junky-punk the Richmond Sluts seemed to emulate. Personally
I think that's a good thing. This is a maturing, well-rounded
combo sound that sounds like it has it's collective eye firmly
on the arenas and festivals of the rock'n'roll world as opposed
to the endless dingy stink-hole one-nighters of club land. -
Colin Bryce/Mohair Sweets
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Big
Midnight make it seems like it's 1972 all over again: Iggy Pop
fronting The Faces, The Stones, or Mott The Hoople attired entirely
in leather and denim, sparkle-spangled guitars slung below the
waist, smacked-out and dancing with the devil in a Memphis barroom.
It's only rock'n'roll (the ultimate rock'n'roll ride, actually!),
and I like it.- Roger / Under The Volcano
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Everything
for the First Time could have as easily came out in 1973 as it
did in 2003. Call 'em "the Rolling Stooges" and the
band will have to plead guilty, as Big Midnight combines the
nihilism of Iggy Pop ("Love for Sin" could have been
a Bowie or Reed side written specifically with Ig in mind) with
the bloozey, boozy swagger of Keith Richards' crew. The songs
remain the same, but what sets the band's debut apart from its
many garage-rocking peers is not what it is, but what it is not:
the disc reeks of attitude, but none of it is of the punk variety
that was all the rage when it was released. That may not sound
like a good thing, but debauchery for the sake of debauchery
is boring, and good songs never go out of style. Big Midnight
is calculating enough to eschew the former and smart enough to
load its debut with the latter. - Brian O'Neill / AMG
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Big
Midnight's predecessor, The Richmond Sluts, from which vocalist
Shea Roberts and bassist Chris Beltran both hail, worked out
the glam-punk-rock formula for their 2001 debut, and this follow-on
project further refines the chemistry with blues and heavy, heavy
soul. Roberts has the swagger to stand out front (at times he
sounds like Iggy, at other points surprisingly like Jim Morrison),
and the rest of the band provides a hefty sonic punch. - YAHOO
review
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When
the Richmond Sluts released their debut and self titled album,
were guitarist / singer Shea Roberts and bass player Chris Beltran
suspecting that this adventure would come to an abrupt end ?
The answer belongs to them but was it for their benefit or not
? Only few listening of Big Midnight's debut full length record
are enough to start tipping the scales in favour of "Everything
for the first time". Where the freshness and the youthfullness
of the Richmond Sluts hid an obvious lack of personality so by
the way of maturity, Big Midnight have known since the beginning
to soften their ardours or at least to channel them into some
well-crafted songs but nonetheless less accessible at first glance
for some of them. Around Shea and Chris we meet up with KC Kozak
( drums, backing vocals ), Elisha Drons ( guitars ) and Lydia
Walker ( backing vocals ) whom bring much sensitivity and strength
to the songs owing to all their finer aspects of singings and
playings. Here
the most ass-kicking rockers, where the shadow of Keith Richards
merges into the background leaving the field open for his most
credible heirs, mix with some quieter ambiences almost loungy
on some occasions. In a style which doesn't owe anything to anybody
apart from this filiation with the Rolling Stones, the listener
firstly lets himself get caught by the flagrant and catchy vibe
of "Doin' all right", "Make it", "Little
Miss Mercy", "Treat me too bad" or "Neglect
yourself" where the band exhumes an explosive blend of groove
( "Take the blow" ), rock'n'roll ( "Treat me too
bad", "Make it" ) and soul music ( "Little
Miss Mercy", "Trying to get by" ) that only the
Bell Rays or in faintest measure the Swedish band The Chronics
are actually in position to claim. Besides Lydia Walker plays
a large part in the soulful atmosphere insufflating some warmful
tones in most of the aforementioned tracks verging on ethereal
intonations during "Spent too much". It's in these
moments for that matter that they show themselves even more in
a good light, such numbers as "Spent too much", "All
the dreams" or the power-ballad "Love for sin"
will reveal their delightful opium-infused essences to the listeners
who will try to listen to them carefully and whom won't only
focus their attentions on the rawest aspect of Big Midnight.
This latter linking the combo to the Richmond Sluts but being
in fact rather classic. This is the combination of all these
nuances which makes "Everything for the first time"
spontaneous et thoughtful, in short it should be what we call
maturity. An essential release for rock'n'roll aficionados. -
Renaud Rigart / Zoopa
Loop
(France)
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| Pop,
rock, seventies, garage et voluptés, sont autant d'adjectif
pour décrire "Everything For The First Time"
Certainement le disque le plus abouti en matière de rock'n
roll garage... - Underground
Society (France) |
| Big Midnight captures that extremely
triumphant, potent feeling imparted when first we heard Cult's
Electric ("When Shadows Come Alive") and Iggy Pop's
first, classic solo records, like Lust for Life ("Love for
Sin", "Gotta Get Down"). This is in no way merely
derivative or purely imitative. Big Midnight has simply fully
incorporated the powerful blues-based rockers that have had such
an impact, as The Rolling Stones and Lou Reed mentioned in "Gotta
Get Down". - Tom 'Tearaway' Schulte / Outsight |
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