The Latest: Folk-rock ‘Wounds’; a slick Attic

Wounds to Bind

Jerry Burgan with Alan Rifkin

Rowman & Littlefield; 209 pages

I still remember the first time I heard We Five’s 1965 hit “You Were On My Mind.” It came on my bedroom radio when I was 8 or 9, and I quickly began taping it, mistaking its slightly androgynous harmonies for the Everly Brothers. Before long, I realized I was wrong, but the song’s joyful ascent, starting with a solitary drumbeat and surging to a cascade of harmonies and percussion, hooked me so much that I didn’t erase the tape.

It’s an exhilarating performance, and the kind that can thrill even more in hindsight if it kicks off a long and storied career. “Wounds to Bind,” the new memoir by former We Five member Jerry Burgan, is the wistful tale of how it didn’t. Over these beautifully written pages, we track the history of We Five as the group converged on the 1960s California folk-rock scene, burst to national prominence with its first hit (the phrase “wounds to bind” comes from “Mind’s” lyrics) and then disintegrated rapidly as inexperience, trends and haphazard management took their toll.

This story, as Burgan tells it, bears a similarity to the Coen brothers’ recent film “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which showed the Greenwich Village folk scene of half a century ago through the eyes of a performer who wavered on the edge of the spotlight. At the end of that film, the hero’s fortunes hit bottom just as Bob Dylan comes onstage for the first time, and in “Wounds to Bind,” Dylan hovers just outside the narrative as a looming presence — as do Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles and other contemporaries whose careers excelled far beyond a single hit.

Sometimes, We Five did cross paths with those who thrived more in the industry. One of the most fascinating — and frustrating — insights in “Wounds to Bind” is how, in the days before stadium extravaganzas and territorial PR machines, pop careers were largely ramshackle affairs, meaning that an act could play a college campus one night and open for the Rolling Stones another. Through the locations in “Wounds,” which include such scrappy venues as the now-mythologized Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, we glimpse an industry that was still straddling the worlds of bohemia and bottom line.

Still, it was an industry, and Burgan shows us the jolts of competition: When groundbreaking works like the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” hit stores, reactions among fellow musicians range from admiration to fear. A backstage moment in “Wounds,” in which Mick Jagger coolly hands the fast food he was snacking on to a We Five member and heads off to a fancy banquet instead, gives a hint of the winner-take-all game that rock would soon become.

If there’s a silver living to this glum portrait, it’s that the ultimate winners are the listeners — who can spin “You Were On My Mind” again and again while knowing nothing of the behind-the-scenes turmoil. For all his cynicism about the business, Burgan turns wide-eyed when talking about the music, constantly extolling the genius of We Five bandleader Mike Stewart and giving a detailed account of the hit’s recording. We Five, in his estimation, was once “in a leading position to redraw the rules of both folk and rock,” and critics may debate whether that’s truth or just ecstatic hype.

But then, why not be ecstatic about it? Here in the suit-yourself 2010s, when Facebook has trumped balladeering as a tool of social change and the very notion of a song becoming an anthem feels quaint, it’s intoxicating to imagine a time when a single’s debut would gather spellbound listeners around a radio. Burgan, and others of his generation, emerged from the 1960s with plenty of wounds. Maybe time doesn’t always heal them. But sometimes, an uptempo tune can make them smart a little less.

—Michael Miller

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Can Anybody Hear Me

Adam’s Attic

Independent release, 10 tracks

It’s incredibly tough to be a successful pop singer or group nowadays. There’s very little headway for inspiring artists to break into the mainstream amid the Taylor Swifts, One Directions and Miley Cyruses of the world.

To be successful, a pop act has to offer something refreshing. I didn’t find that, or enough of it, as I was listening to Orange County band Adam’s Attic’s latest self-released album, “Can Anybody Hear Me.”

I’m not saying that the 35-minute, 10-track LP wasn’t great; it just wasn’t memorable. For example, the song “Heart Is On Fire” is a ballad that slowly becomes more dynamic-sounding as it comes to each chorus. The problem is that the verses are very soft and sleepy, and the chorus doesn’t offer enough punch to be dynamic at all.

The opening track, “Can Anybody Hear Me,” is a moody and dark song lyrically, but again it lacks a certain kind of ear-grabbing, vibrant tone. Call me old school, but I like hearing live instruments because they offer the warmth and soul that sounds produced by a computer just can’t replicate. It seems to me the band did some heavy post-production editing on its drum track, which makes it sound too artificial. I know there are ways to make computer-made songs sound great, but Adam’s Attic didn’t pull that off with this song.

While we’re on the topic of artificial, the No. 1 tool that many, if not all, pop artists use is auto-tune, an audio processor that bends the tone to make it sound close to perfect. If used correctly, the device can clean up the rough edges on a great singer’s voice. However, if used on a voice that needs a lot of work, robotic-sounding vocals result.

The use of auto-tune on the album, especially on the track “Confessions,” is abundant and turns me off. I had to scour YouTube to find a live performance of the band, and I could hear that frontman Joe Henry has a fantastic voice. I’m not sure why auto-tune was used for this song and several other tracks on the album when Henry’s voice is naturally powerful and impressive.

I mentioned that artists and bands need to set themselves apart from the crowd, but often these up-and-coming musicians borrow elements from their favorite artists. Adam’s Attic took that philosophy too far with “Love Will Be the Way.” The song opens with a catchy acoustic guitar riff that sounded oddly familiar to me. As I looped that intro over and over again, I realized that the band had closely imitated the riff from Justin Timberlake’s “Like I Love You.”

I was impressed with one song, the track “If It’s Not Too Late.” It sounds like a pop-country song that could easily be played on the radio. The solid production value makes me wonder why the band couldn’t do this with the rest of the album.

So all is not lost for Adam’s Attic and the band’s dreams to make it big. The group’s previous album, “Off the Wire,” is an acoustic session record that truly shows how great the band can be. It sounds more like what the band really is and not what it is trying to be or what major music labels want it to sound like.

—Anthony Clark Carpio