Album: Night Surfer Artist: Chuck Prophet

Label: Yep Roc

Release Date: September 23, 2014

www.yeproc.com

It’s little surprise to find Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, David Bowie and Elvis Costello playing the part of would-be role models. After all, there are few albums released over the past several decades that don’t find at least one of those icons sharing their sound. However, it’s somewhat rare when all those influences mesh together or completely coincide.

It’s not that Chuck Prophet needs any guideposts to find his way; indeed, after 30 years – five with seminal psychedelic band Green On Red, the remainder on his own – he clearly commands his own signature style. Still, there’s no denying the influences that abound here, as strung through the ricochet rhythms of “Countrified Inner City Technological Man,” the robust rocker “They Don’t Know About Me and You,” the kinetic strum of “Ford Econoline,” and the relentless tempo igniting “Felony Glamour.”

Likewise, there’s no avoiding the inevitable comparisons that pop up in practically every song, often turning Night Surfer into a game of name that nuance. Prophet can be, by turns, both snarky and sardonic, qualities the aforementioned forebears know all too well. Happily though, he himself is no slacker, especially when it comes to both sentiment and sarcasm. And in many ways, that makes him every bit their equal.

DOWNLOAD: “Countrified Inner City Technological Man,” “They Don’t Know About Me and You,” “Ford Econoline”

Chuck Prophet: Night Surfer

Joe Breen

Sometimes the unknown pen can nail it: “Chuck Prophet shapes his restless career with inimitable subtle flair: a vivid parade of razor-edged one-liners camouflaged in a slack-jawed drawl, songs about heartbreak and everyman heroism, drenched in twisted lines of rude Telecaster”. In that bio is the essence of the 51-year-old Californian-born former Green On Red maverick. He makes you laugh; he makes you think; and often he does both at the same time. This is his 13th solo album since Green On Red and though the 12 tracks may not be his best collection, the likes of Ford Econoline and Truth Will Outare a cut above the herd. See him prove it at the Workman’s Club, Dublin, on October 16th. chuckprophet.com

INTERVIEW

Talking with the Night Surfer: An Interview with Chuck Prophet

by Hal Bogerd

September 16, 2014

It often sounds naïve, stupid or both to pick a favorite disc of the year too early in the year. With only a couple of months left in 2014 before obsessive listeners pick their “Best of” lists for the year I feel comfortable and confident picking Chuck Prophet’s Night Surfer (9/23, YepRoc) as my disc of the year. Night Surfer is a rocking guitar album with a romantic heart and Prophet mixes his sardonic social commentary with a healthy dose of optimism on his 13th solo album because in the end “Love is the Only Thing”.

HB-What’s a Night Surfer?

CP-Honestly it sounded like a title. Once it was married with an image it just started to look like somebody else’s record. I thought, Well, there it is, but there is a longer story if you want it. I grew up in Orange County, California and used to surf the Huntington Pier at night under the lights because it was so crowded. There’s something sort of almost post-apocalyptic about that image and at one point this record was kind of dystopian in the sense that it was an opportunity for songwriting once I tapped into that vein. I don’t really think it’s a dystopian record now or at least I had second thoughts about that but it was enough to get me excited about writing songs.

This is your fourth album on the YepRoc label. Do you have a deal with them for more to come or is it one record at a time. How’s that work?

I’m not quite sure. Many of my heroes are film makers like John Sayles. People that have been able to make stuff with their skinny foot in the door of the mainstream but at the same time they’ve been able to work outside it. A lot of it is just getting the money together. Those are the guys that I follow.

The first thing you do is get a batch of songs together and if you’re lucky enough to collect what I call “go to the head of the class” songs then you’ve got your script and at a certain point you’ve got to figure out how to do it. There’s a lot of ways to the waterfall. I met with the YepRoc guys last March and told them I want to put a record out in the fall and they said we need a record six months in advance in order to really give it the best shot. Yeah, I know but I need this to come out in September because I want to tour in the fall. And they said we don’t really base our releases around your tour dates. That’s cool, it’s kind of the tail wagging the dog thing. They’re running a company and they only have so many open spots in their release schedule. I understand but there are some things more important than campaigns for records. For me, this is who I am and maybe it is not the smartest thing but I need to be out there in the fall playing and we need to figure out a way to do it and YepRoc said we understand that too. My attitude is, I got to go out and play these songs because if I wait until the spring I don’t know if I’m even gonna like these songs. I need to look after me and that helps me make sense of my life and make sense of the dumb decisions I’ve made and they said, “Okay, we’ll help you do it”. They understood that it’s not just about being successful. There’s this thing where people assume records are dead and you should just put out one song and to be successful these are the things you need to do. I just tune out because I’m not really in it to be successful. I’m in it to make sense of things. I somehow think if I could make a classic, a real classic record then everything would come together in my life and that’s probably a lie. But in terms of the lies we tell ourselves it’s not the worst.

The first time I heard any of the new songs was a solo set at the Mystery Brewing Public House in Hillsborough, NC and then later I heard the full band versions on the record and you’re going to tour with a full band. So whatever the situation is is good?

I’d like to tell you there’s more of a plan than all that but yeah whatever the situation is.

If they’re good songs they’re going to hold up solo.

You hope. You hope they can stand up by themselves. I honestly don’t know. At Mystery Brewing. I didn’t now. I didn’t know how people were going to react. I’m desperate. I was just a desperate little man up there. The guy with a guitar and that’s it. There’s nothing to hide behind.

The record kicks off with “Countrified Inner City Technological Man”. It reminds me of the Stones around Beggars Banquet. It feels like a real rock album.

I was really into Beggars Banquet but also into Muswell Hillbillies. Ray Davies has always been a source of inspiration. Muswell Hillbillies has this almost retro-nuevo thing thematically but one of the things I noticed about “20th Century Man” is that it is driven by the rhythm guitar and it’s acoustic. If I was to be honest it’s Ray Davies, Bowie’s Hunky Dory, it’s Beggars Banquet. All these influences fighting it out. When you bring the acoustic up loud and make that the driving guitar then people are gonna come up to me and say it reminds them of the Stones. And I’ll just go “Yeah, that’s about right”.

There’s just something really odd and goofy and likable about the character in “Wish Me Luck” when he says “Wish me luck, even if you don’t mean it” and “Wish me luck, even though I don’t need it”.

I wrote that with my friend Kurt and we kind of had the first line and then it just exploded. I hit that E minor chord and started screaming “Wish me luck even if you don’t mean it…….It’s not like I need it!” And we just tapped into this boasting sort of Kenny Powers narcissistic guy that’s also very lovable and it just turned into Sideways the movie. And that was fun. You know the guy at the party that’s bragging about his adventures and holding forth and at that point it wrote itself. We had a specific guy in mind too but…

That’s probably better off left unsaid.

Yeah, definitely.

Chuck Prophet: Night Surfer

By Charles Pitter

26 September 2014

You probably want to know whether Night Surfer is any good, but the usual starting point for any article about Chuck Prophet is to lament the fact he has never hit the big time. It’s easy to bracket Prophet as a cult artist, just like Elliott Murphy, Josh Rouse, or Joe Henry, but that’s a somewhat lazy assertion because this kind of categorisation doesn’t mean much anymore. The implication of course is of unfilled potential, as if somehow the artist should be doing better than they are. While this is usually well-intentioned enthusiasm, it’s also a load of hog-wash. So-called cult artists almost always have a loyal, sometimes rabid, following of fans, an audience that will stick with them through thick or thin beyond the realms of trend. Artists with bigger commercial clout are more likely to be subject to the perilous sway of popular taste, and run the greater risk of suddenly finding themselves dumped unceremoniously at the bottom of the heap, remaindered in the bargain bin.

The other side of this well-meaning name-calling can be a type of elite snobbery, whereby the fan of a “cult” artist just wants to laud it over those who have not yet caught on to what may be the next big thing. When the artist finally breaks through, the super-fan may make accusations of selling-out.

But let’s consider the possibility that not every artist necessarily even wants a big hit. Didn’t somebody once say that money is the root of all evil? These days we should regularly be reminded that it’s no sin to be poor, and that not everyone aspires to own the latest gadget or suburban utility vehicle no matter what the advertisers try to convince us. I’m sure a lot of musicians want to be famous, but a lot of the wiser ones must have realized by now that celebrity is a dead end and probably, most of the time, a bit of a drag.

So yeah, Chuck Prophet may not be über-famous, but Night Surfer is Prophet’s 13th solo album. For the uninitiated, Prophet learnt his chops in the somewhat subterranean Paisley Underground movement, joining Green on Red in 1985 for Gas Food Lodging and successive albums. Green on Red’s music has been described as psychedelic desert rock, a relatively niche category to begin with. After Green on Red’s break-up, Prophet signed as a staff writer for BMG in Nashville, releasing his debut solo album Brother Aldo in 1990. Prophet’s last album was 2012’s Temple Beautiful, a definitively glorious record inspired by all things San Francisco. Prophet spent a few years touring Temple Beautiful non-stop around the world, including some concerts with a string octet, but here he is back again with new material surprisingly quickly for the somewhat cryptically titled Night Surfer.

Temple Beautiful was extraordinarily focused, not far from being a concept album, but ultimately a study in monochrome. After this artistic success, you can almost imagine Prophet scratching his head in the office where he writes (again for this album, often with poet Kurt Lipschutz), considering how to follow up without looking comparatively incohesive. The PR blurb claims Night Surfer is loosely conceptual, and Prophet says it’s “about a path forward, about looking around and imagining where we’ll be in 20 years if we just follow that path. And of course, you’ll find a persistent anxiety throughout; we live, after all, in anxious times.”

Fortunately Night Surfer is not an electro-futuristic nightmare, but a continuation of Prophet’s twangy, jangly, pure-bred rock and roll. The conflicted and tense title of the opener, “Countrified Inner-City Technological Man”, which is a raucous Rolling Stones riff monster, kind of says it all. The band delivers an exciting, conflicted performance, as Prophet rails about surveillance cameras and payday loans.

Night Surfer takes a different approach to Temple Beautiful, but the themes are broadly similar, covering the counter-culture (whatever that is), outlaws, and those on the margins. Prophet has kind of turned into the Godfather of Freak Power, but this time around it’s a more grandiose vision, in full technicolor due to the wider instrumentation. “Wish Me Luck”, based around a nameless real person, has a backdrop of cannabis harvests, marching in parades, and Henry Rollins. “Guilty As a Saint”, which Prophet describes as a “rescue dog of a song”, has more than a dose of pity for those who are not meeting their targets (“sorry I couldn’t be the man I never was”). It starts with an intro reminiscent of ‘70s Eric Clapton, and has a great use of strings, perhaps picked up from his recent touring. Small details enhance the overall tone: Prophet’s over-pronunciation of “connoisseur”, some sonorous clanging bells, the unexpected melodic howling as Prophet bemoans that there are “six million people in the world / and I sleep alone.”

In fact the illusive title of Night Surfer was well chosen. To get up on a wave in the dark and ride a barrel takes instinct and guts, which this record has in lorry-loads. It’s a dangerous business though. “Truth Will Out (Ballad of Melissa & Remy)” is full of fear of the unknown (“tighten up your panties, boy / loosen up your wig”), a story of moral and factual ambiguity, keeping secrets and possible cover-ups, where no one ever mentions the past. Prophet’s tough semi-spoken lyrics inform us that there’ll be no answers, as “no one knows exactly what went down in that room.” The twin guitars emphasize the multiplicity of more than one version of events, but this is how our daily news plays out. In such a climate, the cover of Ezra Furman’s “If I Was a Baby” fits perfectly, with a longing for a return to infancy.

Whilst Night Surfer is an anxious, wired record, you couldn’t call it neurotic, and it doesn’t lack in confidence. The playing is outstanding, with a real sense of the band as a unit, kicking out, having fun. Because of this it’s best listened to through speakers as opposed to solitary headphones. The atmosphere is social, as if your favourite band just happens to be playing in your garage. “They Don’t Know About Me & You” has an anthemic ring to it reminiscent of Tom Petty. “Lonely Desolation” takes unfortunate circumstances and turns them in to a positive, with plucky pizzicato violins and some quirky backing. Prophet shouts that absolution is going to be hard to arrange. Catholics, or Catholicism, seem problematic on more than one song.

Prophet’s singing is the strongest it’s ever been despite a recent throat scare, the charismatic hip vocals well matched for the dark comedy of Night Surfer’s mutant world. There’s some indeterminate dark muttering and a cross-pollinated half-horse/half dog on “Laughing on the Inside” (and elsewhere a dog who’s lost his bark). For the listener what’s important is not what’s being said, but how it’s being said. “Ford Econoline” is also a great vocal performance of a tremendous song. Prophet references listening to Talking Heads as he’s taken on a road trip, not knowing where he’s going. Pop music geeks will immediately recognize which Talking Heads track he’s listening to from the oblique but deliberately placed reference, but the lyrics are positively Dylan-esque (“all the memories like dirty plates/ stacked up in the sink of time”) as Peter Buck’s 12-string guitar pushes the song home. “Felony Glamour” also conjures up some vivid scenes, as Felony goes ballistic in the beauty shop. Party girls and broken poets perhaps, but the song suddenly and unexpectedly fades out, possibly the only minor disappointment that can be found.

Despite the nervous times, musically this is an upbeat record. “Tell Me Anything (Turn to Gold)” seems like the natural single, a catchy empathic jangle “to bring your troubles home to me.” You can easily climb inside this song due to the communal, uplifting spirit of the chorus. “Love Is the Only Thing” is a universal message of hope with a deep glam ‘70s Marc Bolan riff, and it’s a difficult philosophy to argue with when it’s put so determinedly.

In the notes to the album, Prophet considers whether Miley Cyrus should cover one of the songs. Perhaps this would please the converts, make Prophet a pile of dough, and put him front and center on an arena or stadium stage. Ticket prices would double, merchandise sales quadruple. But if Prophet was commodified, over-exposed, commercialized, wouldn’t the essence of this quirky, talented musician be diluted? Night Surfer is as good as it gets and you don’t need much more, if anything at all.

CHUCK PROPHET AND THE MISSION EXPRESS, RED JACKET MINE

(White Eagle, 836 N Russell) We’ve still got Ray Davies, but even if we didn’t, Chuck Prophet would be more than adequate compensation. The San Francisco songwriter’s knack for melody and eagle eye for emotional truth has resulted in a gratuitous wealth of terrific music, and his 13th solo album, Night Surfer, comes out in September. Until then, 2012’s Temple Beautiful is more than enough to tide me over: That album’s “Museum of Broken Hearts” and “Willie Mays Is Up at Bat” are marvelous evergreens, full of sadness and life and regret and hope. Prophet’s one of America’s best living songwriters, up there with Jason Isbell and David Dondero and Willy Vlautin. Peter Buck guested on Night Surfer, so if he’s in town, maybe he’ll come out for a song or two. NED LANNAMANN

by Jason Cohen

The Paisley Underground revival is upon us. The Dream Syndicate, the Rain Parade and the Three O’Clock have all returned this year. Mazzy Star, led by Rain Parade co-founder David Roback, is back with a new single. And the Bangles have been reunited since 2003. Then there’s Chuck Prophet, an antidote to both nostalgia and such pigeonholes. All the term “Paisley Underground” ever really meant in 1982—if it meant anything at all—was, “look, a bunch of post-punk bands who also still like classic rock and folk and psychedelia and songwriting!” And while the LA/Arizona band that Prophet played in, Green on Red, also reunited briefly in 2006, he’s been making solo records out of San Francisco for two decades plus, a rich and ragged catalog of music you could summarize by saying, “look, a post-punk kid who also still likes classic rock and folk and psychedelia and songwriting!”... and Memphis soul and glam and cosmic country and whatever else you might call rock ‘n’ roll. An equally magnetic singer, songwriter and lead guitarist, the 50-year-old Prophet has been particularly prolific in the past five years, putting out two records under his own name (2009’s ¡Let Freedom Ring! and last year’s Temple Beautiful), plus one by his bandmate, spouse and ace-in-the-hole Stephanie Finch (2010’s Cry Tomorrow). There were also two collaborations with Austin’s Alejandro Escovedo—Prophet co-wrote some of last year’s Street Songs of Love, and co-wrote and played guitar on all of 2008’s Real Animal (that record’s quasi-hit, “Always a Friend,” is a staple of both mens’ set, as well as a song Escovedo has played live with Bruce Springsteen a few times). On top of that, Prophet co-fronted a Clash cover band, the Spanish Bombs (taking the Strummer role) and landed his song “You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp)” over the closing credits of an episode of “True Blood.” Like a ballplayer who’s not a superstar but makes the lineup every game and still plays on a winter team in Mexico, Prophet never stops working. He does it because the constant action (and variety) make him a better artist and because, well, that’s the only way to make a living playing music in this day and age. When they take the stage on Sunday afternoon at the River City Roots Festival, Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express will have played 22 shows in August, including a Thursday-Friday-Saturday swing from Big Sky to Great Falls and back to Bozeman.

• Chuck Prophet’s band Green on Red was associated with the Paisley Underground in the 1980s, but it’s his solo albums that have made him a lasting artist.

You’ll still find “(formerly of Green on Red)” next to Prophet’s name more than occasionally, which at this point is like saying “(ex-Nirvana)” of the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, or putting “(from the Yardbirds)” on an Eric Clapton poster. It’s true, but incomplete. Prophet’s own website has the right perspective, listing the Green on Red catalog under “side projects” on the discography page. GoR broke up in 1992; Prophet’s second solo album, Balinese Dancer, was released in 1993. At the time, it was actually a little shocking that such a good guitarist was also such an appealing, multi-faceted singer-songwriter and frontman. It’s even more shocking that I’m still listening to him in 2013. Undeniable truth: If 90 percent of all musicians only ever made three records, we’d be missing out on nothing. But Prophet’s last two records, No. 9 and No. 10 respectively, may well be the best of his career, which, after 30 years, including 20 solo, is a rare thing to achieve, and something you can’t even say about Springsteen or Bob Dylan. And comparing Prophet to Springsteen feels increasingly appropriate. He covered “For You” while touring behind ¡Let Freedom Ring!, which the Village Voice called “a Born in the USA for our time,” and his tastes are similarly ecumenical, if more punk rock (read: better). But what really stands out is the sense of showmanship. Earlier this month in Philadelphia, Prophet sprinkled “Willie Mays Is Up At Bat” with an entertaining mid-song yammer about the inferiority of soccer (and cricket) to baseball. “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t have to explain to you what’s going on right about now ... We play this song in [the United Kingdom] and they don’t know what’s going on! ... In [soccer], it’s a lot like our Giants, there’s a good chance that you can watch an entire game and neither team will score a point!” It’s as kitschy a verbal riff as Bruce’s storytelling, sans the teleprompter, but almost certainly repeated other nights. It then explodes into a Thin Lizzyesque guitar duel (if you don’t mind Internet spoilers, you can listen to it and the whole show, which also features an especially raging “Cortez the Killer”-style “You Did” at archive.org). And this carnival barker persona is nothing new. “Ladies and gentlemen, step right this way,” Prophet sang way back on his debut album, 1990’s Brother Aldo. You still should.

In some parallel dimension Chuck Prophet is a star, though for the real-world fans he’s amassed over the past three decades, beginning with his stint in Green on Red through his well-regarded solo career, he may as well already be one. Certainly Prophet stands as a revered writer’s writer, earning the respect of such peers as Lucinda Williams and Alejandro Escovedo—the latter’s last three records were cowritten with Prophet.

One wonders whether Escovedo’s pronounced trips down memory lane partly inspired Prophet’s latest, Temple Beautiful, a tribute to his San Francisco roots that’s populated with figures both familiar and forgotten, from Willie Mays, murdered politician Harvey Milk and legendary stripper Carol Doda to an ode to the colorful characters gathered to watch the annual Castro Street Halloween parades. The music itself combines the provincial street poetry of Lou Reed with roots-riffs and the jangle of power-pop, all propelled with a passion and soul that lifts the project well past its personal scrapbook blueprint. And that’s really the gift of a great storyteller: to make memories public, to make friends out of strangers, to take something specific and transform it into something universal. Or, in the case of the oblique AIDS chronicle “Museum of Broken Hearts,” to turn the tragic, dirty or damaged into something beautiful.

Chuck Prophet

Temple Beautiful – Yep Roc

Green On Red man’s ode to San Francisco

The city by the bay, a radical outpost and rich source of urban myth and legend, provides a fine springboard for the ever buoyant Prophet here. Titled after the long-since defunct punk rock club where he earned his stripes, Temple Beautiful provides a home for the many musical genres Chuck has explored since then.

With songs combining wry world weariness, affectionate homage and emotional depth, the singularly sumptuous production makes Museum of Broken Hearts’ valediction for the AIDS epidemic a standout, but the pleasures are abundant.

The title track manages to combine Stones in the honky tonk groove with a crafty Ramones tribute and Willie Mays Is Up To Bat is what The Replacements might have sounded like, had they been able to stay together and get into a Dylan influenced late period. A heroic all round smash and grab raise on rebel rock across the generations. Well played, Sir.

7/10

Gavin Martin

Actually, I think he’s in Oslo on Tuesday. Yep, Chuck Prophet has left the building, split town, crossed the state line and fled the country ... all the way to Europe, where he’s touring in support of his brand spanking new release, Temple Beautiful (Yep Roc Records). He’ll be performing solo, opening up for the Jayhawks on a short, nine city blitz, but returns to Europe in April for 31 headlining dates with the full Mission Express band, featuring the eternally cheerful Stephanie Finch (Chuck’s wife) on keyboards and vocals, James DePrato on guitar, Rusty Miller on bass and “never quite sure” on drums. Not that unusual for Prophet to venture across the Atlantic, where he’s developed quite a following since his 1980s “Paisley Underground” days, fronting Green on Red.

Unless you’ve spent the past couple of months sequestered in a seedy Pacheco motel room, you’re probably aware that Prophet and the Mission Express (named after a San Francisco bus line) played six Sunday night shows during their recent Armando’s residency. Each concert was expectedly unpredictable, whether the band was road testing new tunes or pulling out the irresistible pairing of Chuck’s chilling bible and bullhorn preacher feature, “Automatic Blues” and Neil Young’s big spike classic, “Motorcycle Mama,” starring Finch as Nicolette Larsen. It was fascinating to witness Prophet and reformed hair metal guitar prodigy – now double necked slide hero – Deprato, adroitly switch off between lead and rhythm. I hear things got a little hot and sweaty towards the end of the sold out two month run, with disheartened fans being turned away at the door. But don’t fret if you missed out, because I have a strong feeling our Prophet will return. After all, it appears a musical free love society has blossomed between Chuck, Roy Jeans and the patrons of his Marina Vista nightspot.

Prophet turns 49 this year, but at an age when most recording artists have long passed their creative peak and are coasting on autopilot, Chuck defies the norm by actually improving with age. His previous album, Let Freedom Ring! (2009), was a paranoia fueled masterpiece, recorded under chaotic circumstances (swine flu epidemic, earthquakes, power outages and “policia” hassles) in the bustling metropolis of Mexico City. And while a new Chuck Prophet CD is usually a cause for celebration, I’d been anticipating the Feb. 7 release of Temple Beautiful with some degree of trepidation. After all, how does one fashion a worthy successor to the alt-rock equivalent (reasonably close anyways) of Abbey Road (The Beatles), Blonde on Blonde (Bob Dylan) or Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones)? The Beatles responded to their success by breaking up, Dylan fell off his motorcycle, and The Stones stuck a goat’s head in a soup pot.

In retrospect, I really had nothing to worry about, since Prophet attacks each new project by applying his typical “nothing to lose” attitude. You can’t go wrong when you have the ability/gift to consistently craft timeless tunes, à la Paul Westerberg, Alex Chilton and “On the Beach” era Neil Young. Plus, you have an exceptionally potent combination when you add Prophet’s razor sharp Telecaster guitar skills (think Keith Richards meets the twin guitar assault of The Clash and Television) and his haunting, slightly cynical Alt-Petty vocal drawl (take two thirds cup Tom Petty, add a pinch of Jim Morrison, a dash of Dylan, blend well and bake at 375 degrees until crispy on top).

Temple Beautiful (his 12th CD) is named after a long defunct music venue – oddly shoehorned between The Fillmore and Reverend Jim Jones’ People’s Temple – where a precocious Prophet caught seminal punk acts like Black Flag and The Dead Kennedys. The album mines a similar alt-indie-punk-pop-soul-folk-blues-country-rock (here-to-after referred to simply as rock) vein as earlier releases, although instead of Freedom’s shattered American Dream, the lyrics pertain to various people, places and things associated with the bohemian city in which he resides – or as Chuck puts it, “a love letter to the town where I grew up ... San Francisco.”

High points of the new record include the slashing, “You Really Got Me” guitar burst of title track (“Temple Beautiful”), the poignantly rocking ode to “the freakiest most beautiful celebration” ever (“Castro Halloween”) and the Cain and Able-like brotherly love story between Jim and Artie Mitchell (“The Left Hand and the Right Hand”). All three conjure up vivid images that will have you singing in the shower and humming in your dreams, both day and night.

Every track contains numerous examples of Prophet’s piquant wit, whether he’s discussing Carol Doda in “Willie Mays is up to Bat” (“She showed them everything she had, then she showed them all a little more”), the frailty of art and human emotions in “Museum of Broken Hearts” (“Some of them are permanent, some have come and gone / some are just too delicate to move”) or a night of tragedy in “Castro Halloween” (“When the shots rang out and two men died, you took off your mask just to see me cry”).

Prophet and Yep Rock Records decided to promote the album by organizing a San Francisco bus tour/record release party, hosted by long time KFOG radio personality, Peter Finch (no relation to Stephanie). However, this was clearly not your typical corn on the cob fed Nebraskan über tour bus excursion, as confirmed by Prophet’s claim that participants would see, “The liquor store where Janis Joplin purchased her first bottle of Southern Comfort.” Following a jaunt through the city, revelers were dropped off at an 18th and Capp St. warehouse and treated to a Mission Express concert, with special guests Kelley Stoltz and John Doe (X). Yep Roc generously provided the free Mexican food and two kegs of beer – no tip jar in sight.

Well, the verdict is in: it’s a pretty damn good record – perhaps even better than Freedom. And if there was any justice (hah!) in this world, Temple Beautiful would go multi-platinum and the title track would be a number one smash hit! But alas, the Prophet freight train will continue to chug along as just another fairly well kept secret. And though he’s accumulated a fair sized collection of faithful followers, in order to pay the utility bills he augments his income through songwriting and strategic television placement. In recent years, Prophet has written for, collaborated with and had songs covered by a wide range of artists, including Alejandro Escovedo, Dan Penn, Solomon Burke and country music stars Kelly Willis and Cyndi Thompson. One composition in particular, “No Other Love,” was covered twice, by the classic rock group Heart and by Michael Grimm, winner of America’s Got Talent (2010). As for television, Prophet’s “You Did” appeared on the season two soundtrack to HBO’s True Blood and his “Love Won’t Keep us Apart” was heard on Sons of Anarchy (FX).

So, the next time you need a break from watching high-def TV, or downloading the latest G4 App, and want to hear a really good album from one of the last purveyors of original rock music, hop on down to your local Rasputin Records and purchase the new Chuck Prophet CD, Temple Beautiful. Or better yet, make audiophile Chuck truly happy and pick it up on 180 gram vinyl – free poster while supplies last.

CHUCK PROPHET:

TEMPLE BEAUTIFUL

(Yep Roc)

Chuck Prophet’s 12th solo album is a love letter to San Francisco (though only the most well-informed locals will catch every reference). Not only does the longtime Bay Area resident pepper his tunes with classic local characters like Mission district oddball Red Man and self-proclaimed world leader Emperor Norton I, but he also sets each story-song amid the city’s lost cultural landmarks. Characters wander through the Albion bar, fall in love at the Temple nightclub, commune with carnival attraction Laffing Sal, and teeter atop high heels at the Castro Halloween Parade. Meanwhile, his band – which includes such local luminaries as the Flamin’ Groovies’ Roy Loney, the Tubes’ Prairie Prince, and Prophet’s wife, Stephanie Finch – wraps Prophet’s Tom Petty-esque vocals in an anachronistic style of rock that fits the songs as snugly as fishnet stockings. The title tune evokes the rough-and-rowdy strut of Mott the Hoople, with its honking sax, plinky piano, and chugging guitars, while the serrated riffs of “Play That Song Again” recall Prophet’s work in the ’80s Paisley Underground scene with Green on Red. The occasional luridness of the material may give the stiffs at the Chamber of Commerce pause, but Temple Beautiful paints a vivid, romantic picture of the San Francisco demimonde.

A-

Dan Strachota