A few days after the review appeared in Rockzillaworld, I received an e-mail asking me if I'd be interested in receiving some other Knoxville CD's from a record company and recording studio called Disgraceland. I knew I'd seen Disgraceland somewhere, and it finally came back to me that the V-Roys had recorded 'Cold Beer Hello' there. So I e-mailed back and said "come on with it."

Three CD's arrived (Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes "It's All Our Vault," and The Opposable Thumbs "Chicks Ahoy," and Apelife "Natural Selections"). Meanwhile, through back channels I had established that the original e-mail had come from Todd Steed and that he was one-third of the Disgraceland team.

Now I thought I knew something about the popular music of my time, in fact, as much as any non-industry civilian is likely to know. But as I went through a few Internet searches looking for background on Mr. Steed, I was shocked to find that here was someone that I should have known about. The more I found out, the more I doubted myself.

Steed has been playing in bands and bars in the Knoxville area since 1982. He was the founder and driving force of Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes. Never heard of them? Well, I hadn't either (and my excuse is that I lived outside the U.S. for most of the '80's; what's yours?). But as I read more and more about them, I knew that one of the black holes of my musical consciousness was being filled in. I learned that Smokin' Dave was in fact one of the most important bands in the South in the 80's, having performed more than 500 shows. They had been written up in the rock magazine Creem right along with Madonna in 1984. On the strength of their underground hit, 'Ethiopian Jokes,' the influential rock critic Dave Marsh had singled them out as a band to watch. But, as Steed explained in the liner notes to "It's All Our Vault," "We knew it was just a matter of time before the money started rolling in. Maybe the check got sent to an old address." And the moment passed without the Dopes becoming household names.

The mid-90's found Steed fronting a band called The Opposable Thumbs, a slick, hard-charging, hooks-laden, lyrically off-the-wall post-punk Southern rock band. (Part of The Opposable Thumbs Mission Statement: "We believe rock and roll music has historically been a fun music and that we will do our Sunday best to honor this fine tradition. If you cut your wrist to this music it will only be due to a freak clumsy dancing accident and will not be the result of pretentious depressing lyrical content or backwards masking. Probably.")

I fully intended this to be a review of all three CD's with the common thread being that all three bands are fronted by the prolific Mr. Steed. So it sorely pains my macho writing psyche to admit the job was too big for the man. Not that my desk isn't covered in piles of copious notes, profound insights and drunken scribblings that rambled across my mental synapses like radiation belts from distant solar flares as I listened to the Steed Trilogy. It is. In fact, it looks like a literary Chernobyl meltdown. But it will take a bigger man than I to organize it into any coherent structure. So I'll save Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes' "It's All Our Vault" and The Opposable Thumbs' "Chicks Ahoy" for another effort.

Furthermore, I can't do this review without making another grey-haired confession. While I like rock music, I find most of what I hear today on the teen-to-twenty-something local radio stations and on MTV not to my liking. To keep it simple, I find most of it to be trying too hard - trying too hard to be "deep," trying too hard to be "heavy," trying too hard to be "rebellious," trying to hard to be "religious," trying too hard to wallow in the angst cliche. Maybe my brain is Alzheim'ing or maybe I'm just jaded from 30+ years of concerts and records, but most rock I hear today is just no fun.

So it was with a healthy skepticism that I peeled the shrink wrap from a seven song EP called "Natural Selections" by a Knoxville band known as Apelife that I had never heard of. About half way through the third song, 'Sherpa,' my wife was giving the "turn it down if you ever intend to share my bed again" glare. Sometimes she doesn't know what's good for her. Anyway, I took the CD out of the Living Room Monster and retreated to the writing room where my trusty boom box loyally waited. Just to insure that my nocturnal activity faced no threat of disruption, I closed the door. But even on those tiny 3" speakers with the volume knob at 2, it was obvious that this was one fun record.

The veneer is mindless three-chord rock made just for fun (the very idea that anyone in rock music or the rock music audience is still interested in that in the 21st century!). But on closer examination, Mr. Steed and his band mates, Ed Richardson on bass and Matt Richardson on drums, have a lot to say under the camouflage of open chords and reverb, deft drumming and droll vocals. They would probably cringe at any suggestions that the songs offer quite relevant social critique and commentary, but what other conclusions can one draw about songs like "North Knoxville" or "Rebel Fight Song?" As the lyrics start to gel into cognitions, the listener realizes there is nothing mindless about this music. Not that anyone is trying to be Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen here, but these songs are way beyond the "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" stage. Way beyond. And did I mention they are fun?

After 20+ years of playing and song writing and one close brush with fame, Steed has mastered the ability to take an everyday idea or event and pen (or make up on the spot, as he says he often does) a song that hits that place in the brain where we say "that's me" (I don't have to use the "universal" word here, do I?). "Going Out Tonight" is a paean to Friday night, the end of the workweek, the common-as-dirt desire to get out and do something different to wash off the everyday. Since this is a website devoted to music lovers and the support of live music, I doubt many of our readers will be able to avoid identification with Steed's lyric about going out on the town after a dull week of work and seeking some rejuvenation of the spirit.

Tonight I'll go to see an out-of-town band
Stand against the wall with my pockets full of hands

And after that night on the town enjoying music, conversation, friends, and drink, Steed brings it all down to what the night's activities are truly about without any pompous pretenses or hidden motives.

Just got home, my bed is spinnin', I don't care, I'm still grinnin'
'Cause I know inside my soul I'm losing but I can make myself feel just like I'm winnin'

The hilarious liner notes answer the question "What is Apelife?" with "Go sit at any mall in America for three hours and you tell me." In the rocking, jangly, Tom-Petty-with-a-rough-edge 'North Knoxville,' Steed makes some very telling observations about urban development and the "mall-ing" of America by praising his home area. The scene he describes sounds like the urban millieu we'd all like to live in: small stores, friendly cafes and book stores, trees and parks and streets with a view, a small neighborhood with its own identity where people still walk rather than drive, where you run into friends on the street or in coffee shops. The description is almost that of a European city rather than American.

Thank God for North Knoxville where this town still looks like itself
It's the last place in America that ain't trying to be somewhere else.
Thank God for West Knoxville where the mall never really stops
Thank God for South Knoxville with all them good pawnshops
Thank God for North Knoxville where the trees still got their tops
Thank God for East Knoxville but watch the cops!

'Sherpa' is one of those punkish "go for it" anthems that are the bedrock of rock. Don't you ever get a little sick of this town? The message is simple ­ let's break out of this rut, let's think a little bigger, look beyond the horizon. Steed, who when not playing in multiple bands or recording at his Disgraceland studio serves as the student advisor for the University of Tennessee's Center for International Education (remember the "Produced by the Taoist Cowboys via transcontinental advice from Todd Steed" liner credit?), uses the unlikely foreign image of the Himalayan sherpa as a metaphor for breaking loose.

There's a whole 'nother world besides Tennessee to see (don't you wanna see?)  Be not afraid, we got it made, just like a sherpa, babe

'Everybody's Breakin Up' is a throwback to one of Steed's previous musical incarnations, the Smokin' Dave persona. This cut, with its Cobain-like vocals, sticks out like a sore opposable thumb among the other six tracks. It incorporates certain musical and structural dissonance and discordance a la The Mothers of Invention (or Smokin' Dave!). Perfect for a song about relationships in discord. And how are you going to top a line like Crime, music, love, it's rare when it pays?

'Rawk and Roll Show' has those big, echoing, John-Fogarty-in-a-garage-band, reverb-heavy guitar licks and comes as close to mindless rock as Apelife gets. Well, we got the ticks, hey Johnny scored some chicks/And we're gonna go down to the rawk and roll show. The bridge is another of those off-the-wall Zappa situational pieces surrounding a moment of group indecision (Do you wanna go? Well, I'm still gonna go). This is danceable rock at its best. Don't think, just dance.

'Rebel Fight Song' is an in-your-face Social Distortion punk explosion and the musical accompaniment is exactly what this potent composition about school violence and its causes calls for.

I ain't never going back to school, my friends are all dead and the teachers are fools
Give 'em a diploma or give 'em a gun and watch the children and the politicians run
The Rebel Fight Song, well it goes like this
Hit the floor, class dismissed
Hit the floor, maybe they'll miss

The final cut, the lazy and engaging 'Corazon,' with its mimicking, cynical, corkscrewed country overtone, could be cut from the cloth of any Terry Allen record. Musically and vocally reminiscent of early Little Feat attempts at country schtick and of Old 97's, 'Corazon' is a fine closer for the "Natural Selections" EP. It simply drifts off into the musical sunset.

Steed, who has favored three-piece bands throughout his career, has an incredible encyclopedia of rock licks that he uses to tease us song after song. There is hardly a song on "Natural Selection" that doesn't cause that "where've I heard this before" sensation, even the parts he likely made up on the spot. But this isn't retro, it isn't copy cat, it isn't derivative. It's rock. Part of Steed's interpolative genius is that it all sounds completely new and original. And it all remains true to what can only be defined as a "Knoxville sound" (listen to the V-Roys' records, Opposable Thumbs, Smokin' Dave, the Taoist Cowboys and you'll hear it even if you can't define it).

Did I mention this record is fun?

According to Steed, Apelife hopes to tour this summer and record a full album later in the year. He is "going out to the mountains and wait for the songs to come" for a few weeks. Until then, we'll just have to make do with Apelife's "Natural Selections," available from www.disgraceland.com for a mere $7. Be sure and send the check to the new address.

"Natural Selections" is not available at malls.

VISIT ROCKZILLA.NET FOR THE ORIGINAL REVIEW