This Page Is Under Construction

biography/history.....

exploding girls biography

Twenty-odd years after first taking the stage with Gene Loves Jezebel, Michael Aston leads them through Exploding Girls, a new album that raises some serious questions. Such as: How can this band, whose turbulent history would have burned out any other band several times over, turn out material like this? Exploding Girls bristles with brutal candor, slams with passionate performances, and poses challenges that listeners will not be able to ignore, and, in fact, even drove other members of Gene Loves Jezebel into angry exchanges with Aston. The answer is simple: Exploding Girls is about something that has changed the lives of countless musicians, fans, and even people who don't care about music at all. It's about…women. Specifically, Aston explains, "women I've loved, women I've admired, women I've detested, women who have elevated me and others who have half-destroyed me. Every single song on this record is about someone who has had a great impact on my life; they're all 'exploding girls.'" Very quickly, the soft-spoken singer realized how tricky this theme would be. He had written a long list of classic songs for Gene Loves Jezebel, going back to their early Goth period with "Shaving My Neck" and "Bruises" and through later periods of alt-pop accessibility with "Shame" and "Heartache." "But a lot of my old songs were mainly about angst," he says. "It was very rare that I would write about women." Perhaps this is why the material he would produce for Exploding Girls stands out from the pap that's ground through the pop machinery these days. "The key, for me, was to write each song about an individual, rather than just writing to a formula," Aston says. "Very often, when you write a basic love song, you're just tying words together. But when you have a specific person or event in mind, that gives you clarity."

As he dug into a regimen of writing on his own and with his guitarist/keyboardist Michael Ciravolo, images began to emerge from Aston's imagination like photos in a darkroom. Some were innocent, as on "My Heart's a Flame," a recollection of first love idealized by time. Others are painfully honest, such as "What Do You Want From Me," a confession of helplessness and incomprehension before his partner's furious flurry of "daggers, wings, and feathers." On "Exploding Girl," to the sound of a crunchy riff and jaunty chorus, Aston recalls Wafa Idris, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber. "When I first heard this story, I was completely aghast, amazed, fascinated, and engaged," he says. "This girl, who was so young, educated, deeply committed and fuelled by her people’s insufferable oppression, is demonized as a terrorist; but one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and another one’s martyr.” Then we come to "Jenin," in which we visit the Middle East again and through the example of another young woman, come face to face with issues of violence and sacrifice, heroism and insanity. “This seems to be about a woman, but it’s actually about Jenin, the Palestinian refugee camp. I’m always touched by young women, like 23-year-old American Rachel Corey who was run over while trying to stop an Israeli bulldozer razing yet another family home, who risk their lives in dangerous places. It’s outrageously courageous, but in many ways it also gives great hope.”

"In the years that I've lived in Los Angeles, I've learned that a lot of men in particular don't have any empathy beyond the borders of the United States," he says. "I've even felt this conflict when talking with my wife at the end of the day. She's an American, the daughter of a Republican policeman, and we often don't agree on these things. It works out well for us both, though, because we've learned a lot from each other. Being raised as a steelworker's son in a socialist household, I've come to feel it imperative for all of us to speak our minds; that exchange of ideas is very important." But sometimes dialog can flare up unexpectedly. As Ciravolo, bassist Pando, drummer Michael Brahm, and Aston's co-producer Michael Rosen—all Americans—worked through this material, tempers in the studio began to rise. "They were all excited about 'shock and awe' and going into Baghdad," Aston says, "and I'm like, 'You're going to kill thousands of women and children! Destroy lives! People will get their limbs blown off! How many heads will make you satisfied and will ths heal the pain of the Twin towers? Fortunately, the band had the discipline to put this tension to good use, first in nailing "Two Hungry Women," a grim wartime saga that plays out as "another woman watches her child die." This same energy surges through all of the Exploding Girls sessions, adding up to an intensity that's rare even in this band's catalog. "Talking with the other guys only made me more emotional, more passionate," Aston insists. "It made me want to be sure about what I was saying and to be able to back it up. Sure, some of what I say on these songs might be misunderstood, but what matters more is that it draws people into the discussion. Exploding Girls demands something of you; how you react to it may tell you more about yourself than you expected to learn."

Aston is used to fighting for his beliefs; longtime fans already have had a taste of this in the long wrangle between Michael and his identical twin brother Jay over rights to the name Gene Loves Jezebel. (Michael won that legal battle; he and Jay, haven't spoken since their last performances together with the band in 1997.) His uncompromising approach to conceiving Exploding Girls only shows that he’s become even more steadfast, fearless and resolute. "I don't like being vague about things, especially when I'm addressing serious issues," he explains. "That's why Exploding Girls was so hard for me to do. I really thought about each song and worked for many, many hours in bringing them to where I want. On all my other records I've been happy to be impressionistic, to just let people listen and make up their own minds. That can be effective, but for me that wasn't an option. Working this way changed my ideas about women: I see them now as very powerful and vocal, which I can very easily identify with. It made me feel stronger about standing up even to people I work with and care about who might be pro-war and couldn't understand why I'd write a song about a girl who, as they saw it, blew up a bunch of innocent people. Which all means that Exploding Girls led me back to Gene Loves Jezebel. We've been many things to many people, from Gothic to alternative to empty-headed pop. But our original manifesto was to make passionate, confrontational music—and that's exactly what we do, once again."

Beggars Banquet will also be releasing a 'Best Of' Gene Loves Jezebel album and re-releasing the first 3 classic albums, in de-luxe expanded editions, these releases are planned for May 2005 release.

The awesome new Gene Loves Jezebel album, 'Exploding Girls', which has already received a FIVE STAR review in ROLLING STONE, be released in Europe in May 2005 via Track Records and Universal distribution, with summer-long tours and festival appearances, promoting the album.

GENE LOVES JEZEBEL - HISTORY

Twin brothers Jay and Michael Aston began playing music in 1980 when they formed Slav Arian with guitarist Ian Hudson and a drum machine. Though the Astons grew up in Porthcawl, South Wales, they moved to London in 1981 and renamed the goth-influenced group Gene Loves Jezebel. The trio played several live shows and was quickly signed by Situation 2. In May 1982, the label released Gene Loves Jezebel's demo single "Shavin' My Neck." The band then added bassist Julianne Regan and drummer Dick Hawkins. Regan left soon after to form All About Eve, leaving Ian Hudson and Michael Aston to alternate on bass until Peter Rizzo joined in 1984. Hawkins also split for a time -- replaced by John Murphy and later Steve Goulding -- but returned in 1983.

Gene Loves Jezebel released two more singles in 1983 before their debut album Promise hit number one in the U.K.'s indie charts. In 1984, the group recorded a John Peel radio session for BBC and toured America with John Cale. After returning to England, Gene Loves Jezebel released the singles "Influenza (Relapse)" and "Shame (Whole Heart Howl)," but then waited a full year before second album Immigrant appeared in mid-1985. (It's not very surprising that the album was recorded with a lineup change, this time drummer Marcus Gilvear instead of Dick Hawkins.) Immigrant also hit number one on the indie charts, but during a tortured American tour, founding member Hudson left, and was replaced by former Generation X guitarist James Stevenson.

The year 1986 brought a contract with Beggar's Banquet and, subsequently, popular-chart success for the group. "Sweetest Thing", and the resulting album Discover (which included a limited-edition live album called Glad to Be Alive) reached the expected indie-chart top spot and also did well with college radio in America. Chris Bell became the band's fifth drummer later that year, and Gene Loves Jezebel's fourth album The House of Dolls was released late in 1987, yielding a single, "The Motion of Love," that grazed the U.S. charts. The Astons turned their attention to dance with the single "Heartache," but Michael decided to leave the band by mid-1989.

In a small twist of fate, Gene Loves Jezebel gained its highest-charting American single the following year, with "Jealous," the major single from Kiss of Life. Two years later, Michael and Jay reunited, and released Heavenly Bodies, which did well in Europe and on American college radio; the group's American label folded one year later though, and after a few sporadic live shows, Gene Loves Jezebel called it quits.

As early as 1992, Michael Aston had been working with a new band called the Immigrants. Two years later, he re-formed the band as Edith Grove and released a self-titled album. Michael and Jay began working together again that same year, and later recorded two songs with Stevenson, Bell and Rizzo for a GLJ best-of compilation, released in September 1995. While Jay performed occasional acoustic shows under his own name, Michael played with members of Scenic and released a solo album, Why Me, Why This, Why Now, in 1995. Gene Loves Jezebel reformed in 1998 for VII, released in 1999 on Robinson Records. It was followed that same year by both Love Lies Bleeding and Live in Voodoo City.

Since then, there has been the legal battles over the rights to the name, with Michael Aston now having sole legal ownership and trademark rights to the Gene Loves Jezebel name.

Now, the stage is set for a complete re-emergence of Gene Loves Jezebel with a fresh chapter in the form of 'Exploding Girls', set to be released in May of this year on Track Records.

Beggars Banquet will also be releasing a 'Best Of' Gene Loves Jezebel album and re-releasing the first 3 classic albums, these releases are planned for May 2005 release.

More Information coming soon.

About | Gigs | Biography | Press | Latest News | Pixs

Gene Loves Jezebel website: www.genelovesjezebel.com

This Page Is Under Construction