| Willie Loco Alexander performed in Salem, Massachusetts on Sunday, September 20, 2009. WMWM DJ Doug Mascott phoned while Willie was singing "At The Rat". We hope to get a CDR of the show from WMWM as it was most likely taped. A full review will follow if the CDR materializes.
Remember to click on the CD/Album covers to find Willie Loco product in GEMM.com http://tinyurl.com/willielocoalbums is the direct link to this article.  | When Willie "Loco" Alexander & the Boom Boom Band split after 1979's Meanwhile...Back in the States on MCA, Alexander immediately picked up the slack by having a Boston area power trio, the Neighborhoods, back him up on-stage while he began recording the first of his many releases on the European New Rose label. The original Boom Boom Band reunited 23 years later, only to go into the studio owned by the Neighborhoods' guitarist/vocalist David Minehan. The results are phenomenally great, only proving that had the rock & roll minefields not existed to stand in this juggernaut's way, Willie Alexander & the Boom Boom Band would have emerged as Boston's answer to the Rolling Stones, and then some. Read more here: |
This album should have been listed in the VH1 book Casualties of Rock, the phenomenal sound and fury of Willie Alexander & the Boom Boom Band condensed and distilled into a homogenized and compressed postcard that hardly represented what the band was all about. In the first place, crediting bassist Severin Grossman, guitarist Billy Loosigian, and drummer David McLean with co-authoring "Mass. Ave.," the solo underground hit single that relaunched Willie Alexander's career, is downright blasphemy. Read more here: Sons of the Dolls link |  |
 | It opens with a mournful wail that is the a cappella version of "Tennessee Waltz," the number one Patti Page 1950 hit that Sam Cooke reworked in 1964. Both artists never imagined this rendition, the naked voice defiant after his band and MCA deal collapsed. The genius of Solo Loco is best displayed on the French release on New Rose/R.C.A. Here tunes like "Are You Leaving" and "Eyes Are Crossed" provide the proof, as if any was needed, to why the Boom Boom Band got signed to MCA in the first place. Willie's songs have the inspiration, the intensity, the individuality that make for good listening, if not stardom. Read more here: |
Electro Acoustic Studios moved from the ambience of Boston's theater district (the drag queens would reportedly have knife fights outside this space across from where the famous Coconut Grove fire happened), the facility where the previous Solo Loco masterpiece was etched, way up to Bethel, ME, a studio in transition changing dramatically the sound of an artist in transition. If Solo Loco was vindication, the artist in complete control after losing his band and MCA contract, A Girl Like You is a trip deeper into the mind of this creative artist, further into the insightful ramblings of Willie Loco's psyche while he was assembling his new group. Read more here: Interesting link |  |
 | Willie "Loco" Alexander & The Confessions Autre Chose: Live, Bourges 1982 Arguably the most concise overview of the prolific and quite valuable career of Willie Loco Alexander, this live album was recorded two years after he signed to what was the RCA-distributed New Rose Records label. His wailing cover of Tennesse Waltz retains the stark madness of Solo Loco, his post-Boom Boom Band release and New Rose debut. With the two prior MCA albums distributed in Paris by Barclay, there was an audience, and this band delivers the goods. The double vinyl includes a wonderful gatefold which has photos of the bandmembers with dates and cities -- Bordeaux on March 7, 1982; Mont De Marsan on April 6, 1982; Paris March 23, 24, and 25 -- 13 dates listed in all. Read more here: |
| Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band signed a three-album deal with producer Craig Leon and MCA records back in the '70s, but the group imploded after tracking just two albums which failed to capture their magic. Decades later, the Tokyo-based Captain Trip records has seen fit to issue this single CD, which includes portions of two live shows and a bonus 45 rpm. It achieves what the major-label releases did not. The CD begins with material engineered by Jesse Henderson at Boston's notorious nightspot the Rat on August 27, 1976, exactly one month before the recordings this band made for the Live at the Rat album (September 27, 28, and 29 with Jesse Henderson as well). Read more here: |  |
 | Released a year after the French label New Rose issued Fifteen Years of Rock & Roll With Willie Alexander, this is pretty much the same album with different cover art and some track discrepancies. It, of course, being a year older is Willie "Loco" presenting 16 years of his solo work. None of the material from the Bagatelle on ABC Dunhill, the Lost on Capitol, or his Boom Boom Band work released on MCA appears here, with the exception of "Dirty Eddie," the song considered "too dirty" to put out on either MCA release, it stands as a testament to what could have been had producer Craig Leon just let Willie be Willie. Read more here: |
| It may have been Genya Ravan who said, "What's the point of putting out a 'greatest hits' album if you have no hits"; the thinking, of course, is to use the words "best of" instead. But to the French, Boston, New York, and L.A. underground, Willie "Loco" Alexander is a true hero, an artist who is both prolific and original, and to those fans, these are his "hits." Outside of the live double LP Autre Chose on New Rose and the ultra rare Sperm Bank Babies LP (only 500 were pressed of this circa-1977 WERS radio broadcast by Willie Alexander & the Boom Boom Band), there are three studio collections of Alexander's work on the market, Northeast's 1991 U.S. release Boom Boom Ga Ga, Fan Club's Fifteen Years of Rock & Roll With Willie Alexander on New Rose's subsidiary released in France in 1990, and 1985's Willie Loco Alexander's Greatest Hits, also released in France on the Fan Club imprint. Read more here: |  |
SQUEEZE album, Doug Yule's Velvet Undergound, not Willie Loco Alexander Willie Loco Alexander did tour Europe with Doug Yule, Moe Tucker and Walter Powers. Willie was told the band was not going under the name Velvet Undergound, according to an interview. The SQUEEZE album credited to a Velvet Underground is Doug Yule and possibly Ian Paice, the drummer from Deep Purple, but not Willie, Moe or Walter. Moe and Willie did track a Lou Reed song, "I'm Sticking With You" and had they all recorded it would have been a fun record. Happy he wasn't on Squeeze, Willie "Loco" Alexander wrote us on Monday, September 21, 2009 9:55 AM to say: "I never replaced Lou Reed as rumor has it. We all took turns singing lead or fronting the ghost VU. i liked playing drums behind Moe when she would sing the best." |
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