GONZAI Magazine interview with Jean Pop
AFTER 40 YEARS, ALESSI BROTHERS FOUNDED ON THE SURFACE,
In 1976 came out the first disc of the Alessi brothers, subscribers to used tanks, shockingly absent from official histories of pop. Just remember to be "Oh Lori" which climbed the UK charts with roped turbulent neighbors as the "God save the queen" of the Sex Pistols. It is time to assert new priorities and extract this bright album of purgatory in which he vegetates.
Forget the umpteenth return of 'modern young people. " Return the garage rock between its four walls pale. Make your math rock discs, slowcore, noisy pop and shoegaze to the forties in Converse that you have posed as "sensory experiences worthy of VU" and demand reimbursement of postage.

The hype that will reverse the value systems limply established by the cohort of rock critics drunken who took Lester Bangs at face value, the height of the in short, the music of tomorrow, a few handfuls of weeks anyway, This is the yacht-rock.
Behind this name that summons visions of marinas nibbled by dusk and bubble bath with candles barely disturbed by the breeze of the summer peak is hope for every villainous sophistication lovers. The yacht-rock is obviously a term coined retrospectively in an attempt to qualify this movement of soft rock 70's / 80's groovy as hell, Californian excessively, always tinged with soul chatoyances. Thus, as the world is a just place since we can restore everything and anything, it is permissible today to buy a Christopher Cross disk without concealing it in the middle of the stack, to reaffirm the importance of Hall & Oates, Seals & Crofts, Loggins & Messina and other vicious bacchantes duets, and revere the dark Albums Battleships, of Rhead Brothers or Jim Photoglo as the masterpieces they are.
The group that interests us is like the finest examples of its kind, consisting of two brothers. Identical twins Billy and Bobby Alessi born in 1953 in Long Island, is the time and the perfect place to take the brunt of the Roaring Young Rascals benefits to 14 years. They formed in 1973 with Barnaby Bye Peppy Castro, a survivor of psychedelic battle with the Blues Magoos and Mike Ricciardella, ruffling former drummer of The Illusion rascaliens very precisely. The two excellent albums they released in 1973 and the following year saw the gradual emergence of a supercharged pop that will culminate with the exhilarating spurts fluorescent Tumblin 'Damn you in and girl.

The album "Touch" concludes on So it ends this way, moist and cooing prelude to the career "solo" of the two brothers, who will take off with a contract to A & M Records. The label could be magnanimous as the discographic instances in these pre-MTV years, the duo relocated to LA and take it leaves its marks and experimenting in the studio with several producers. It is with Bones Howe takes as mayonnaise, mostly thanks to his decisive contribution to the rainbow California 60's (he triturated the levers for Mamas & Papas, The Association, 5th Dimension, the Turtles ...). With Howe as a father figure and his son and Jeff assistant in the role of vingtenaire accomplice, they go in the studios of Wally Heider, the staff invented since 1969 the sound of the 70s: in this sprawling cave were generated decisive Albums CSN & Y , Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Doobie Brothers or some expatriates as T.Rex. This is also precisely in an intimate enclave within the large complex that McCartney has just put the finishing touches on his "Venus and Mars". It is enough for the Alessi brothers, frenzied devotees of groups B initials (Beatles, Beach Boys, Bee Gees and Badfinger head) rush into the studio as a scholar children playing hide and seek in a forest potentiometers. The sessions are connected and see scroll illustrious sharks, both old pros as protean Hal Blaine and arranger Mike Melvoin, as the vanguard stéroïdée represented by the hilarious Jeff Porcaro.

The album appears in spring 1976. The success is not instantaneous, but it will point its nose through one of those charming transatlantic connections whose history is full of pop: the title "Oh Lori" is massively broadcast on the radio English, while encouraging the record company to make it a single. Cartonnera single that everywhere, even in France, and the group that will reward the inestimable honor of having his personal page on the Nostalgie radio site.

Oh Lori, written by Bobby for his girlfriend and future wife, however, is not characteristic of the album, which he is the only title jazzy, although its composition is flawless, his playful tone of worldly swing around with swear Stratospheric gems that spangle the album.