CD Review: Maldroid's Oakland Lad's Club

By Julia Cooper

Maldroid’s history would make any new band jealous: the quick courting by music industry honchos; the backing of local radio; the appearance on Good Morning America -- all surfaced without a single recording or live show to speak of. Winning a YouTube music video contest in 2006 propelled the Oakland seven-piece into the national spotlight, leaving behind a trail of listeners eager to see just what these guys are made of. (more >>)

With the April 15 unveiling of their debut full-length just around the corner, the Oakland Lad’s Club EP, released in September, offers a brief two-song, two-remix appetizer of pop anthems fit for rock airwaves. On “You Wanna Touch It,” Maldroid transforms into sexed-up robots, fusing a soaring Bon Jovi chorus (“Turn off the lights and take off your clothes/ I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”) with spaceship synth sounds and a thick ‘80s hair metal thump of guitars and drums. “Heck No! (I’ll Never Listen to Techno)” continues the band’s let’s-party spirit with a page taken from Devo’s deviant new-wave songbook in, oddly, a Radio Disney-friendly burst of bouncy keyboard blips.

The robot and tech overtones of lyrics and instrumentation transition well into remix treatment. Both reimaginings by fellow Oaktown artists -- “You Wanna Touch It” by Scott Blonde (the Lovemakers) and “Heck No!” by Amp Live (Zion-I) -- tender groovy beats that would shine brightly amid any dark nightclub dinge.

Led by frontman Ryan Divine who, in a thoroughly modern approach to the music biz, formed the group to focus more on creating artistically vibrant videos à la its YouTube hit rather than on the music itself, Maldroid still has some catching up to do, song-wise. The music-by-numbers, three-minute-length structures prove catchy enough, but lack the rawness and heart for the songs to stand on their own. They’re still developing, though, and the impending LP will likely provide a better clue about Maldroid’s sound.

But with energy that oozes fun and a compelling visual spectacle, Maldroid has certainly earned the cast of watchful eyes -- and ears ...

Maldroid Signs to an Indie

Oakland band Maldroid announced yesterday it has signed to progressive San Francisco "music company" Fuzz. While the group did receive major label attention in the aftermath of its YouTube music video victory in November, it opted to sign with a like-minded indie in order to retain complete control over its image and products. (more >>)

Maldroid has designs on some unusual steps in the future, such as releasing a full-length album as a series of singles and ultimately packaging the record as a DVD, with each song having its own video. Fuzz, for its part, goes by the slogan "Music Uprising" and hopes to "revolutionize the music industry," so chances are good that many of Maldroid's new ideas will be seen to fruition. Of course, some of the band's plans, such as more elaborate music video production, will require increased financial backing that Fuzz may or may not be able to provide -- certainly not to the extent that a major could.

Lead singer Ryan Divine reports that Maldroid, especially founding members Divine and Johnny Genius, will play a role in steering the small company, an arrangement that notably deviates from the master/slave relationship they could've expected at a major. All in all, Fuzz sounds like a great fit for the creative and ambitious young band. Maldroid are joined at Fuzz by Brooklyn's CocoRosie, NYC's Greg Garing, Nashville's USSA, and fellow Oaklanders the Lovemakers. This partnership has been in the works for a while -- since well before the band played SXSW two weeks ago -- but the official announcement was made just yesterday. Here's the full MySpace blog post from Divine.

Josh Fix

MySpace (listen to "Don't Call Me in the Morning," "Jethro")
Official site

Hometown: San Francisco
Next local show: 3/22, Red Devil Lounge
Upcoming release: Free At Last, 2007

I had to do a double-take to make sure I wasn't listening to some lost Queen tracks instead of the full-length debut of 29-year-old San Francisco musician Josh Fix. No kidding. His production values are top-notch, his vocals and instrumental parts fully realized, and his songwriting consistently glorious -- replete with melodies, harmonies, hooks, and all the pleasures of grandiose '70s pop-rock. But unlike Freddie Mercury, Fix never goes over the top -- though he has retained the soaring background chorus vocals. (more >>)

By keeping his tunes rooted in Elton John-esque turns at a Hammond B3 and an antique Emerson upright piano, and by being blessed with a vocal range that doesn't dare reach Mercury's heights, Fix has fixed the bombastic '70s style for the more jilted '00s. That's not to say he doesn't have a ton of fun with it. Just check out the piano ballad "Rock and Roll Slut," track five on Free At Last: "I've been going with a rock and roll slut / At least that's what she calls herself, I know she's not / She's so good she won't even complain / When I come home late smelling like a drain."

This record captures the ideal balance of camp and rock. With few missteps, Fix deftly revives an era that he wasn't around to experience, yet knows just where it went right. Free At Last will be released this summer, and since Fix got hooked up with a pretty sweet distribution deal, the record will be available just about everywhere ("iTunes, Best Buy, the whole shebang, except of course Tower Records, hehe," he wrote in an email).

HE IS THE CHAMPION:
-In 2004, Fix released a seven-track EP called Steinway the Hard Way. It met with rave reviews tagging him a piano rock revivalist.
-Fix has received coverage in the New York Daily News, the Portland Press Herald, KTVU Channel Two news, the Boston Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and others.
-Through a hot demo that made its way into some pretty famous hands, Fix has made fans of Lenny Kravitz, Eddie Van Halen, Toto, and the Who (for whom Fix's previous band the Furious Force opened at a gig in Los Angeles after Adam Duritz of scheduled act the Counting Crows lost his voice).

Maldroid

MySpace (listen to "Heck No," "He Said, She Said")
Official site
Hometown: Oakland
Next local show: 2/17, Slim's
Recent release: Malfunction EP, 2006

Looking at the above picture of Maldroid, you may be asking yourself: What's up with the brown suits? And the painted briefcase? And why is the band posing in front of a row of Gibson guitars? Good questions, all...good questions with very good answers. To find them, we direct you to this cover story on Maldroid that was published today in the East Bay Express. (more >>)

The EBX story will tell you all you ever wanted to know -- and didn't realize you needed to know -- about Maldroid, an Oakland rock group that in the last three months has taken an utterly unique path to success. There may be no other band quite like it in the history of the music biz, and that's no hyperbole.

The short version? After two years of planning and preparation, Maldroid was launched to national success -- including being interviewed on Good Morning America and meeting with major labels -- before it had played a single live show or released a single song for sale. This may sound like an anomaly or a stroke of luck, but it's neither: Founder and lead singer Ryan Divine planned at the band's conception three years ago to build Maldroid on music videos. YouTube, the platform that would eventually put the band before millions of eyes (again, no hyperbole), didn't even exist at the time he started working on his first video.

To read more, and to check out some great photos of the band, read the Express story.

BY THE NUMBERS:
-Maldroid's first video, for "He Said, She Said," has earned over 700,000 views on YouTube since early October. Most of those came after the contest win was announced in late November.
-Its second video, for "Heck No (I'll Never Listen to Techno!)," has earned over 900,000 views since January 1. The majority have come since early February, when, in the span of five days that the video was posted on the YouTube homepage, its view count totalled 700,000.
-Maldroid's digital EP, Malfunction, has sold over 800 downloads through the iMusicast website.
-News 3/30/07: Maldroid signs to SF indie label Fuzz.