Saturday, June 9, 2018

Brighter Days With the Grays

More from Jon Brion today, this time courtesy of very short-lived power-pop supergroup (in my mind, anyway) the Grays. For their lone album, 'Ro Sham Bo', songwriting duties were more or less split into thirds between Jason Falkner, Buddy Judge and Brion. Dan McCarroll played drums and co-wrote a tune. The 1994 long player for Epic was produced by Jack Joseph Puig. He worked on both Jellyfish albums and would produce Falkner's first solo album in '96, the must-have 'Presents Author Unknown.' 'Ro Sham Bo' should have been a smash. For most of the last quarter century, it hasn't even been in print.

You know all about where Falkner and Brion went from here, but Judge and McCarroll did just fine too. McCarroll was former president and head of A&R for Warner Bros. Records, and now he is at Amazon Music as global head of originals and artist relations. Judge worked his way up at Apple Music and is now a senior product manager. If I was a co-worker, I would incessantly question them about the Grays and their other bands. Judge was in the Springfields with Ric Menck and Paul Chastain during the Sarah years, for cryin' out loud! Here is my favorite Brion-penned song song from 'Ro Sham Bo'. You might want to turn this one up.

Same Thing

4 comments:

The Swede said...

A marvellous piece of work. What a travesty that it's not always been readily available for all to enjoy. My copy is signed, though only by Jason unfortunately. He took a good look at the CD booklet before he squiggled his moniker on it. I got the distinct impression that even he hadn't seen too many copies of the album in his time. Thanks for the info on the other two, I had no idea what they'd gone on to achieve.

George said...

What a track this is! I was hooked after the first 15 seconds with that insanely catchy intro.

Brian said...

George, Glad you liked it. Hope you are well, my friend.
Swede, I thought you would know this one. Was Jason in your shop? I'm a huge fan of his.

The Swede said...

I wish Brian! No, I grabbed his autograph after a show in London. I was lucky enough to see him live several times in the late 1990s.