Ed Kuepper ... Electrical Storm & Show # 354

Following his tenure with The Saints, Australia’s Ed Kuepper went on to form The Laughing Clowns, a band that explored Kuepper’s more experimental Post Punk nature often venturing into the Jazz genre. The Laughing Clowns split just before the New Year in 1984, one final album from The Laughing Clowns Ghosts of An Ideal Wife followed in 1985. Kuepper then began work on Electrical Storm, his first album as a solo artist. The music on Kuepper’s debut album was a departure from the sounds that were exemplified with The Saints and The Laughing Clowns, it was something different that at times made a foray into the realm of Pop. The band on Electrical Storm was a three piece featuring Nick Fisher on drums, Louis Tillet on piano and Ed Kuepper on guitar, bass, and vocals. The album features eleven songs, all of which reflect a narrative, emotive like quality. Kuepper in addition to writing the songs plays nearly every instrument on the album. The music on the album is more traditional than his previous Laughing Clown efforts, the horns have been left behind instead there is a more straightforward, raw edged sound approach. Several of the songs on this album would later become staples in Kuepper’s live sets song such as “Car Headlights” a song often described as one his most enduring, “No More Sentimental Jokes”, “When The Sweet Turns Sour” a song whose title comes from a quote in the Spiderman cartoon series, displaying Kuepper’s sense of humour and at times having a riff not unlike the Spiderman theme, “Rainy Night” and the intensifying title track “Electrical Storm”.

The album itself has soft and more upbeat songs, but they ooze with a gritty mature honesty. Being the first proper solo album, it has been hinted that some of the songs found on this album were collected from over the years and then recorded quickly. Acoustic guitar runs throughout the album often in unison with electric guitar, a technique that was employed as early as the late 70s with The Saints, but this album comes off with its own unique quality. Electrical Storm has the energy that was evident in pervious bands such as The Saints and The Laughing Clowns, but at the same time is represents the new beginning and direction that Kuepper would take his music into. Electrical Storm would be the only solo Kuepper album that proved to be this stripped back and straightforward. In March of 2011, Ed Kuepper held several live shows in which he performed Electrical Storm in its entirety along with the album Today Wonder, which was originally released in 1990.

This Week’s Play List:

1. Young Canadians - Hawaii
2. The Evaporators - On Non!
3. Hot Panda - Mindlessnesslessness
4. The Pack AD - Deer
5. Le Butcherettes - New York
6. Chain & The Gang - Why Not?
7. Junco Partners - Swinging Sixties Boys
8. Frank Xerox & The Copy Cats - Judy In Disguise
9. Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet - Spy School Graduation Theme
10. The Gamblers - LSD 25
11. Al Casey - The Hearse
12. The Pointed Sticks - Worse
13. Booker T. Jones - Everything Is Everything
14. Ed Kuepper - Car Headlights
15. Ed Kuepper - Electrical Storm
16. The Drums - Let's Go Surfing
17. The Gears - Let's Go To The Beach
18. The Marble Index - Everyone Else
19. The Modernettes - I Can Only Give You Everything
20. The Dead Boys - Ain't Nothin' To Do
21. The Victims - Television Addict
22. Buzzcocks - Time's Up
23. The Hitmen - Didn't Tell The Man
24. Exploding Hearts - Shattered
25. Gang of Four - Natural's Not In It (Live @ Second Chance Ann Arbor, MI 1981)

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for May 31. Or subscribe to Revolution Rock as a Podcast.