American Blood by Tan Sleeve

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THE REAL STORY??????

It started in Miami, Florida, back in the eighties. The Wind was a fiery popcombo who "recalled the Beatles and Big Star" according to then-Rolling Stone writer Kurt Loder who gave the unknown group an unheard-of one page rave review in that paper. The group were local faves. The thrombosis-inducing live shows that went down at places like the Button and 27 Birds are still spoken of with reverence in the southeast. The band self-released the now-legendary "Where It's At With The Wind" and the Mitch Easter-produced "Guest Of The Staphs". A third LP, "Living In A New World" (Midnight Records) yielded the big MTV hit "Good News, Bad News". Then, like all good bands and butterflies, the Wind shriveled up and died.

End of story? Nah. After getting involved in projects as far flung as TV sitcoms and surrealist musical theater, the Wind's primary songwriters, Lane Steinberg & Steve Katz (now Steve Barry) found themselves living around the corner from each other in New York. Informally, they started gigging acoustically in the city with a young female Brazilian singer, Ella Conchita. They jokingly called themselves Teen Slave, due to Ella's youthful appearance and played mostly fun covers of obscure sixties tunes and soundtrack themes. Then, one day, Ella's number was disconnected and her apartment was vacated. No note, nothing. Lane & Steve were shocked (still are, she hasn't been heard from since) but decided to continue working together. They changed a few letters around and decided to call themselves Tan Sleeve. After outfitting their joint recording studio, the Sausage Factory, they started writing slabs of new songs & recording them at a feverish pace. Many of the songs still retained the soft textures of their newer direction, but also recalled the pop savvy of the Wind. The first fruits of this labor came out as "Bad From Both Sides" (2004) on the Bus Stop label. Then things started heating up overseas: Lane had a compilation disc of his solo material (Wall of Orchids, Noel Coward's Ghost) released on EM records in Japan, and a Wind retrospective featuring half unreleased songs followed soon after (the Yellow Pilz label re-released the the first two Wind records Wind records domestically on one CD, "Windjammer". In the summer of '05, the next batch of Tan Sleeve songs came out on Cheft Records as "American Blood". A further broadening of the crazy-quilt hybrid of pop music from the past 40 years, "American Blood" has everything from the grungy Neil Young americana of the title track to a swampy number about Eurotrash. In between there's a handful of aching ballads that recall Bacharach/Beachboys/Delfonics, a folk ditty about a pedophile, a dance number about Condoleeza Rice, a calypso number about how we're all running ourselves ragged...you get the picture. What the future holds for this unpredictable duo is never easy to forecast, but one thing's for sure: it will be funny, charming, and melodic as hell!

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