SILVER JET

“Pull Me Up…”

I have a friend who is a fellow guitar player and he was in the process of putting together a covers band to, you know, make some money when I suggested to him that he focus exclusively on ’90s music. This was in 2014. He was curious why. I told him that the 25^th reunions for high school and college classes graduating in 1990 were just around the corner and that the market should peak in a couple years and last maybe another five years. I also pointed out that if a boom in ’80s nostalgia occurred in the mid-aughts we could probably expect a similar boom for the ’90s shortly He got an “ah-ah” look on his face, took my advice and has been working steadily since. Now, there’s not a lot of ’90s music on my favorite playlists and most of the best power pop from that decade is unabashedly retro, but one band that caught my ear with an undeniably ’90s sound was Silver Jet.

Silver Jet was one of the hundreds of Southern California bands hitting the clubs after the grunge revolution reinvigorated rock ’n’ roll throughout the country. A power pop three piece, the personnel included Luke Tierney on guitar and lead vocals, Jeff Gross on bass and backing vocals and Grant Conway on drum and, again, backing vocals. Tierney wrote most of the material, with Gross and Conway collaborating here and there. The band was signed to Virgin and promptly sent to the studio with ’90s wunderkind Tim Palmer (Sponge, Tears for Fears) and in 1997 their first (and only) album, Pull Me Up . . . Drag Me Down, was released.

The album is similar to some other post-grunge power pop, such as Tsar and the Gigolo Aunts, with crunchy, chugging guitars, minimalist bass lines and mildly aggressive, nasal affected vocals.  The opener, “Master Plan,” features period-perfect processed vocals and taut, tense rhythm guitar. While a perfectly fine track, it strikes me as an effort to introduce the band’s sound while lowballing and setting the stage for what is clearly the strongest song on the album, “Plastiqa,” a catchy, clever and, again, tense deconstruction of plastic surgery that touches all the power-pop bases while keeping its grungy cred. “Kid” takes a purer pop approach and to good effect, with lots of start-and-stop guitar figures. Another highlight. “Free to Roam” opens with angular guitar rakes and drum parts, but keeps the hooks coming strong with a terrific, nearly sing-song chorus. Things come down a bit with “Know You,” a moody slow burner that is perhaps a bit too derivative of Nirvana’s formula. “All You Are” splits the difference well—heavy, somewhat dark verses alternating with a catchy set-up and chorus that reminds me a bit of the J. Geils Band’s Band, of all things.  “That Call” discards most of the grungisms, more or less channeling Fastball—with some well-placed vocal processing gimmicks. “Scenester” is the only ballad on the album, offering a brief litany of the complaints of the aging hepcat. The closer is “The Crown,” a fairly straight-ahead hard-rocker whose lyrics are the source of the album’s title. Well, that’s actually the last song on the album—the last track on the album is a recitation: “Silver Jet would like to thank . . . .” It may seem dorky, but it’s actually disarming and a nice finishing touch.

“Plastiqa” was released as a 10” single b/w “Meant to Be” and a couple demos. Due in part to unenthusiastic promotion, neither the album nor the single hit and the band split up. Although Silver Jet would not record another album, they did have a solid cover of “Drive My Car” on the Beatles tribute CD Shared Vision. Tierney went on to form Penfifteen Club who released an album of similar hard-rock/pop in 2006. He and Gross joined up again in Chris Shiflett’s band The Dead Peasants and all three original members got together for a one-night reunion gig in Los Angeles in 2010.

Pull Me Up . . . Drag Me Down is surprisingly still in print and readily available at the usual retail and online sites. Used copies are also very easy to find and dirt cheap (as I write this, amazon has about twenty used copies on sale for less than a dollar). If the ’90s are your thing, you’ll definitely want to add this one to your collection!

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Pop Pioneer and “Lost Treasures” writer, Peter Marston is the leader of long-running power pop band, Shplang, whose most recent album, “My Big Three Wheeler” has been described as “the Beatles meet Zappa in pop-psych Sumo match.”  Peter has a new project in 2015 under the name MARSTON.   Marston have a track on the latest “Power Pop Planet – Volume 5” compilation just out now and available at:  www.PopGeekHeavenStore.com.

CHECK OUT SHPLANG out at this link:  http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/shplang

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LINKS:

All Music Guide: http://www.allmusic.com/album/pull-me-up-drag-me-down-mw0000093137

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Jet

Blog Post: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/silver-jet-pull-me-up-drag-me-down.297568/

VIDEOS:

“Master Plan”

“PLASTIQA”

“KNOW YOU”

“DRIVE MY CAR”