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Review from Listener Magazine, Winter '98.
Mark Johnson: 12 in a Room.
Produced and recorded by Mark Johnson
NotLame Recordings 10003
Website: www.notlame.com or www.mark-johnson.com
It's too bad, and it's so sad that most of you never had the chance to hear Mark Johnson's music till now. The first time I heard Mark at Kenny's Castaway's on Bleecker Street in the late '70's, I thought "Why haven't I heard about this guy?" He was too good to be true. There were maybe 10 or 15 people in the audience, but Mark sang and played as if his life hung in the balance. He doesn't know how to hold back. I've seen him maybe 30-40 times since then, and he's always like that. Mark Johnson lives through his music, Just as you and I breathe in and out.
All it took was that first night, Mark's music was permanently burned into my synapses. His songs have an urgency to them, sharp desperate longings for connection, warmth, innocence, and you guessed it, love; they form a pithy catalog of impossible-to-resist pop. It's not just me; the Roches, Dave Edmunds, the Smithereens, Robert Gordon, and Paul Butterfield have all found something unique in Mark's tunes.
Mark's own recorded output has never gotten the distribution it deserves. He made his first record for Vanguard, "Years," in '72; I guess they were too busy selling Joan Baez or Country Joe and the Fish records to spend any time pushing "Years." Twenty years later Mark put out a CD on his own, "12 in a Room," and that one managed to make some ripples here and there, and garnered the lead review in the March '92 issue of Musician magazine. Kristine McKenna summed up Mark's gift this way: "How does one create three minutes of music, involving simple language and the same musical notes everyone else uses, that somehow tweaks the soul and seems mysteriously in synch with the most private dreams to create music: "A melody comes into my head 'da-da-dah-da, show me some mer-cy' and I start thinking is that some Motown song I heard in the sixties? And I go uh-oh, no it isn't, it's mine. When they come out pretty fast like that, they're usually pretty good." He's a student of the history of pop music, but the songs are very much his own.
"12" has been out of print for years, and believe me, it wasn't that easy to find the first time around. Now it's back, remastered, augmented with four unreleased tracks, and sounding mo' better than the '92 original. For the most part, "12" was recorded by Mark alone in his 11' by 14' living room on a couple of 4-track Teacs; yet he doesn't sound the least bit reined in by the relatively simple technology. Mark and Richard Lloyd mixed it, using vintage EQs, compressors and limiters to give "12" a late sixties saturated tape analog sound. It's Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" shrunk down to a densely packed tiny Greenwich Village apartment; MJ's "Closet of Sound." Layers of guitars, keyboards, bass, drum machines, and Mark's voice, doubled, tripled, multiplied, processed, manipulated -- stretched to the limits and back again. There is something about his voice -- the man possessess the sort of idealized rock/pop instrument that can do no wrong. He's singing pop, but his intensity is closer to R&B. You can hear him working stuff out through his songs. It's all for real.
When I queried Mark about the traces of Lennon and McCartney I hear in his writing, he thought for a second and said "No, I was influenced by the same music Lennon and McCartney were influenced by: Doo-wop, Elvis, Everly Bros, early Del Shannon, and of course Doc Pomus. Doc Pomus? - just listen to "Hey Jude" and "Save the Last Dance for Me" and see for yourself.
The songs go all the way back to stuff he wrote in high school right up to the late eighties. I'm not going to analyze all sixteen, but here's a quick round of impressions. "Desperate" iimmediately grabs your ears with Its jangly opening chords, propelled by a punchy Springsteen beat; it's Mark's most anthem-like tune. "King of Love" (covered by Dave Edmunds) Is a rockabilly rave-up that looks at love and sex in our times. No, it's not about Mr. Clinton's escapades, but when Mark belts out, "I think I hear the King falling down, down, down" I'm left wondering. Mark's pure pop-craft for now people grooves out on a bunch of tracks; check out "When I Fall," where he bounced his vocals seven times to fill out all of the doubled three-part harmonies and background parts, and "I Like the World" (when it ain't falling down on me), for its irresistible Nick Lowe-style hooks. Mark is some kind of "music mechanic" whose finely tuned ears keep even the biggest, fattest arrangements for! songs like "Lovely Liz" from misfiring. Sure, it's a Beatle-esque romp, but Jeff Lynne could easily pick up a few pointers from Mark. "Little Cricket" is a sparse little ballad, and I just love the lyrics: "She's a crazy little cricket/Look out for her/In the brushes and the thickets I always hear her stir/When all the stars are bangin' up against the dark/It's the sound from her laughing and the hope in her heart/I'm going to ask her to be mine."
I suppose you've gotten the impression by now that I love this CD, and I do. It flat out amazes me how Mark just keeps keeping on with his music. It's not some sort of fashion statement, or a plot to make him rich and famous ( not that he would turn that down). "12 in a Room" has everything to do with producing something that moves people. Once those motivations have mutated you wind up waiting to be used in a movie soundtrack or sell some other product in a commercial. Why the world has ignored great music like "12 in a Room" is beyond my compreshension. If you feel as I do, "12 in a Room" could be the sort of record you'll always want to hear. It's simply music for people who love music.
-Steve Guttenberg
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