KEENE IS KEEN!
NEW YORK—Like an elephant, Kruschev or Pepperidge Farm, Tommy Keene remembers. He remembers the pulse quickening pop songs of then and now—and he remembers that great music is made by inspired individualists, not re-hash artists. While Tommy Keene’s streamlined pop stylings may offer brief glimmers of anybody from the Grass Roots to Mott The Hoople to Robyn Hitchcock, comparisons are a deadend.
KEENE IS KEEN!
NEW YORK—Like an elephant, Kruschev or Pepperidge Farm, Tommy Keene remembers. He remembers the pulse quickening pop songs of then and now—and he remembers that great music is made by inspired individualists, not re-hash artists. While Tommy Keene’s streamlined pop stylings may offer brief glimmers of anybody from the Grass Roots to Mott The Hoople to Robyn Hitchcock, comparisons are a deadend. Tommy Keene remembers that glistening guitars can still have plenty of muscle and that carefully shaded vocal harmonies make a song more intriguing every time you hear it.
“What I did was make this gradual transition from playing drums to playing rhythm guitar to playing lead guitar to writing all the music to doing everything—writing all the music and singing all the songs,” Tommy recalls, “So the last real band I was in, a D.C. band called the Razz, I was the principal songwriter, music-wise and the lead singer wrote the lyrics...777/s was just the last frontier, (laughs)”