I'm not sure, but I think that the point Midnight in Paris (the latest in Woody Allen's remarkable late career streak) was getting at was that getting stuck in the past is no good, especially when you're idealizing a past you never actually experienced.
That said, most of my favorite records, regardless of genre, were recorded in the '70s. There's just something about that decade. Of course, I didn't live the '70s; I only imagine them. They probably weren't as cool as I dream, and my father is more than willing to shatter my idealized version whenever I ask him (but he got to see Boston tour on that first record, so I disregard most of what he says).
I get the sense that the guys in Oakland's Bare Wires might be younger than me (taller, too, of course), but they have that same '70s worship thing going on, too. Look at the leather jackets, the mustaches, the pipe-thin jeans, and try not to imagine a ratty tour van rolling down the interstate with domestic beer-swilling dudes hanging out the back.
They sound like it, too, like they are high on T. Rex's earliest, catchiest Chuck Berry-fumes. "Don't Ever Change," which opens the band's latest, Cheap Perfume, even comes complete with a Rock 'N' Roll High School-aping video, and just about every song on the album is as instant and as fun, like the garage R&B stomper "Back on the Road," and the snarling "Television Girls." Yeah, the thing sounds like songwriter Matthew Melton tossed out any his records from before he was born, but it sounds pretty damn great, too.
Watch "Don't Ever Change" after the break, and see the band (for free) at the Yucca Tap Room next week.
Bare Wires are scheduled to perform Monday, February 27, at the Yucca Tap Room in Tempe.
