Best Of 2015: Johnette Napolitano, Concrete Blonde

1. Gifting, and working with, The Mojave Desert Land Trust

2. Recording the The Naked Album at home with the MediaLab mobile unit under a sky of diamonds

3. Lots of road time, laughs, horse talk, and great music with Laurie Sargent, and every great gig we did together this year, and all the great clubs that had us

4. Finally shooting the “Naked” show at BART Lounge (voted Best Ambience in the Coachella Valley by Coachella Weekly) for DVD due out Year of the Monkey

5. Being chosen “Drunkard of the Issue” in Modern Drunkard magazine

6. Drinking a lot of wine and writing poetry with Harold Budd

7. My fAnimaly, which actually should be #1

8. Discovering Victorian musician/author/all-around female Nikola Tesla, Marie Corelli

9. Joseph Pilates

10. Getting a typewriter

Johnette Napolitano released The Naked Album on September 22.

Best Of 2014: Johnette Napolitano, Concrete Blonde

Top Ten Happy Things of 2014 (that I can recall)

1. The good folks at Pioneer Feed in Joshua Tree finding me an awesome new truck, ending almost two years of vehicle hell.
2. Watching my horse, True, mellow out into the sweetheart I always knew he could be.
3. Singing the “Ave Maria” live in Lexington, Kentucky.
4. Seeing and hanging out with my old school pals Toto out here in the desert.
5. Finding amazing Flamencos to open for me in Las Vegas, and the cool ride back to the hotel with the security guys in the squad car.
6. Emo Roadie
7. Best show I’ve ever played with Flamenco LA at Hotel Cafe, Hollywood
8. Ride up to No Cal with Ben Woods and getting all schooled up on music on the way. . . and hanging with old bandmate Jerry Harrison
9. East Coast with Laurie Sargent, accidentally finding we needed to get on a ferry two minutes before it left.
10. Too many ghost stories.

Johnette Napolitano is in the middle of a solo North American tour. Her book, Rough Mix, is available on Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

New Vinyl: Concrete Blonde, “Rosalie” b/w “I Know The Ghost”

By Cait Brennan

From their circa-1980 Dream 6 post-punk bona fides to their genre defining alternative rock gems like “God Is A Bullet,” “Joey,” “Ghost of a Texas Ladies Man,” and “Everybody Knows,” Concrete Blonde has made an enduring career of mixing the sacred and the profane, the earthy and the unearthly, a mosaic assembled in light and blood. Now 30 years into a truly iconoclastic career, singer/songwriter/bassist/artist Johnette Napolitano makes her home deep in the Mojave desert, and the ghosts of Joshua Tree haunt all seven inches of the group’s eminently cool new white vinyl spinner “Rosalie” b/w “I Know The Ghost.”

The limited edition 45 was originally pressed for the band’s 2011 Texas Halloween tour, and now a handful of the records are available at the band’s Official Website.

“She wraps herself in firelight, and dances in the sand like a ghost,” Napolitano sings on “Rosalie,” all low and mournful like a lost coyote. It’s a great country-infused old west tune, the kind you’d spin at midnight on Dia De Los Muertos. The flip side, “I Know The Ghost,” is a rave-up that hearkens to the band’s punk roots, buzzing with the kind of Madame Wong’s energy that only authentic survivors of the era could conjure.

Both tunes feature founding Concrete Blonde guitarist Jim Mankey (ex-Sparks, and himself a Joshua Tree resident) and drummer Gabriel Ramirez-Quezada, one of the brothers in LA rock en español standouts Maria Fatal and a ten year veteran of Concrete Blonde. The disc was recorded at Stagg Street Studios in Van Nuys with the band’s rock-steady engineer Anne Catalino. Videos for each of the songs are in the works.

The band is about to launch an East Coast tour, kicking off at Boston’s Sinclair Music Hall on Dec. 12 and heading to NYC’s Irving Plaza (12/13), Asbury Park’s Stone Pony (12/14), Washington DC’s 9:30 Club (12/17), Carrboro, NC’s Cat’s Cradle (12/18), Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse (12/19), Chicago’s Park West (12/21) and Minneapolis’ Variety Theatre (12/22). The band will also perform on WXPN Philadelphia’s “World Café Live” radio show on December 15.

One of the most unique and enduring bands of the alternative rock era, Concrete Blonde is still getting it done with passion and fire. These “songs of the spirits of the desert” are a welcome reminder of the band’s strength and Napolitano’s singular voice.

Concrete Blonde, Bloodletting 20th Anniversary Edition

By Noreen Sobczyk

Did you ever notice that Johnette Napolitano rarely, if ever, gets mentioned in those Top Women of Rock lists? Even if Concrete Blonde never had a good song on any album besides Bloodletting (which, rest assured they did), this album alone is enough to put her in the Top 20. Napolitano has the swagger, songwriting talent, and the vocal ability to assure her space as, perhaps not the Queen of Rock, but as a high-ranking member of the royal court.

On Bloodletting, Napolitano shows her vulnerability, desires, and strengths in spades on classic songs like the dysfunctional love song “Joey” (the band’s biggest commercial success); “Tomorrow Wendy” (a cover of the heartbreaking Andy Prieboy song about a friend dying from AIDS); and “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song);” one of the best vampire songs ever written, arguably second only to Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”
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