Probably not everyone knows who Kevin Junior was. Raised in Akron, Ohio, and having moved to Chicago, Illinois, as a young man, Kevin Junior (Gerber) was one of the greatest and probably most misunderstood musicians and songwriters of his generation.
This is a definition that might appear exaggerated, but after all, if I tell you he was a great misunderstood, I'm not saying it randomly, because despite his undeniable talent, his name and that of his most important band, the Chamber Strings, never achieved success in a career that, having begun at a very young age, saw him always engaged in musical productions from his early episodes and his first bands, the Mystery Girls and the Rosehips, to collaborations with some of the most influential artists of the alternative scene of the 1980s and 1990s, especially the brothers Nikki Sudden (Adrian Nicholas Godfrey) and Epic Soundtracks (Kevin Paul Godfrey), who were two of his great personal friends, mainly known for being the founders and leaders of the Swell Maps project, but over the years also engaged in a series of collaborations and solo productions that are truly staggering both in the quantity of publications and the level of artists involved.
Nikki Sudden, Epic Soundtracks (whom Kevin Junior tried to support in the most difficult moments of the English musician's life), Rowland S. Howard, and Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Here they are, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, four musicians infected by that damned virus and at the same time by that blessing which is the light of rock and roll to which all four gave their lives too soon. Jeremy Gluck, known mainly for being the leader and frontman of the Barracudas, succeeded in 1989 in the feat of having all four play on the same record which would become one of the most legendary works in rock and roll history, 'I Knew Buffalo Bill'.
What did Kevin Junior have in common with these artists (besides the collaborations I previously mentioned) and this beyond possessing undeniable musical talent and particularly in composition and lyric writing? Influenced since his beginnings by bands from the 1960s and 1970s and artists like Marc Bolan and T.Rex, the Faces of Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart, and especially the myth Johnny Thunders, and compared to the Kinks and Big Star, Kevin Gerber over the years reinterpreted the musical content of those who were his sources of inspiration through the sounds of the 1980s that, more than the new-wave, looked to garage and always had as a source of inspiration the blues and rock'n'roll of the Rolling Stones. A great music enthusiast, analogous and although with different approaches to what Paul Westerberg represented in the 1980s and beyond for the city of Minneapolis, or Greg Dulli and his Afghan Whigs for the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, Kevin Junior with the Chamber Strings, and after years of what we could define as apprenticeship and searching for a true musical identity, arrived at acquiring his very personal form of writing becoming at the same time both what we could define as an intimate singer-songwriter and a true rock star and the voice of what could be an entire suburban generation of a city, the third most populous in the USA, which would mainly be known for being one of the key cities in the history of blues music.
Kevin Junior, although perhaps little known internationally, was a true rock star, styled his hair like Rod Stewart, and always had a sophisticated look, and above all, he was a musician with enormous talent. However, at the same time, he had a suffering soul, and at the height of his success, after the release of the second album with the Chamber Strings, 'Month of Sundays' in 2001, he sank into what he himself defined as the hell of heroin. Years later, practically after five years of oblivion, he recounted that during that whole period, it was as if he had been abducted by aliens.
Kevin Junior lost everything he had. Forgotten by everyone, he stopped making music and disbanded the band, was shaken by the death of one of his best friends, and was abandoned by his wife. At this point, disillusioned by the city that had welcomed him and which had somehow constituted the reservoir and source of his inspirations, Chicago, he decided to leave it and was first welcomed by his mother in Akron and then moved to Los Angeles. Rehabilitation centers, assistance programs, and cures for detoxification, all of this until he was penniless and began sleeping on the street and was arrested for vagrancy. His mother could no longer get any news of him and it is said that for this reason, she called and tried to contact all the most famous musicians of the Californian scene. The story that tells of an encounter with Anton Newcombe is famous, where he would say that he had spoken to his mother twice on the phone, after which Kevin thought, 'Damn, I must really be bad if my mother is calling Anton Newcombe to try to help me!'
Around various cities of the United States of America and in England, from time to time being hosted by some friend trying to help him detox and get back on his feet, in March 2006 he was violently shaken by the death of Nikki Sudden from overdose. He then returned to Chicago and tried several times to get back to working full-time with the Chamber Strings, but somehow he never got out of that black hole he had entered.
All there is to say about this record here, 'Ruins (A Collection of Rarities, B-sides & Outtakes), is practically in the story I have told you. The album, originally released by Sunthunder Records in 2009, contains twenty songs. Twenty unreleased recordings with the three bands Kevin Junior was part of (from the Mystery Girls to the Rosehips to the Chamber Strings) and other tracks recorded by Kevin alone. Although these are rarities, b-sides, and outtakes, and for what it's worth, the quality of the recordings is mostly very good, which makes this collection not just a mere relic or something that could be considered, now that Kevin Junior is dead, a sort of tribute, something to be listened to just to dedicate a thought or a formal recognition to his art.
What I can say is that the two Chamber Strings albums, 'Gospel Morning' (1999) and 'Month of Sundays' (2001), are two of the best pop song albums I have ever listened to and, in general, two of the best albums released in that period. There is a phrase, which I will never forget, with which Jim Carroll wanted to salute Kurt Cobain after the death of the Nirvana frontman, stating (roughly translated into Italian) that true talent is truly something ungenerous because it always demands something more in return than what it can actually give. The same was true for Kevin Junior, who passed away on January 18th at the age of 46. Kevin Junior had a shy and reserved personality; he was both a rock star and a person of great sensitivity, somehow searching for a peaceful life, wanting a family, a 'normal' life like everyone else's, and did not want an over-the-top life like his idol Johnny Thunders. Yet, ironically, Kevin Junior passed away at the same age Johnny Thunders was when he died of a methadone overdose in New Orleans in 1991. His songs remain, here they are.
Tracklist
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