Occasional Albums Thing 031 - The Grays “Ro Sham Bo”

Once upon a time there was a band called Jellyfish, they were made up of Andy Sturmer, Roger Joseph Manning and Jason Falkner. They made an album called “Bellybutton”, a heady brew created by a mixture of American sunshine pop, Kansas, Crosby Stills and Nash, Player, Queen, ABBA, Supertramp, Psychedelic Rock, The Monkees and The Chocolate Watch Band (https://www.whiterabbitrecords.co.uk/blog/read_204795/2023-albums-thing-199-jellyfish-bellybutton.html). They toured the world promoting “Bellybutton” but Jason Falkner wasn’t happy, mostly because of his lack of opportunity to write songs for the band. When the world tour was over Falkner quit Jellyfish vowing never again to be part of a band.

So what did Jason Falkner do next I hear you cry ? Well, he joined a new band of course ! He met singer, songwriter and multi instrumentalist Jon Brion after Brion asked Falkner’s girlfriend, who was working in a coffee shop, who made the mix tape she played each day. That of course was Jason and the next day Jon passed a tape to the coffee shop girlfriend to pass to Jason.

Eventually, and much against Jason’s better judgement, he started playing together with Jon, guitarist Buddy Judge and singing drummer Dan McCarroll. They called themselves The Grays. Word got out about them and so ensued a record company bidding war. Now feeling some pressure, Falkner reluctantly committed to the band and they signed with Sony/Epic records in 1993.

The plan was to be a completely democratic outfit, working together to create a whole rather than be backing musicians to a main songwriter. All four members contributed songs (McCarroll only having one co-write), they would swap instruments to best support the song rather than sticking to their main thing. In reality Falkner saw himself as the band leader and this was confirmed when producer Jack Joseph Puig (who had been the engineer on Jellyfish’s “Bellybutton”) expressed a preference for Falkner’s songs. If you check the credits Jason has one more song included (five) than Brion and Judge (four each).

Opening song “Very Best Years” (written by Falkner) started getting heavy airplay on LA’s legendary modern rock radio station K-ROQ before the album was even released. The band were told to expect major commercial success, reviews were overwhelmingly positive and when the album was finally released…it flopped…of course it did. Falkner getting more songs on the record created some animosity within the band, especially from Jon Brion who ultimately left. That, and the commercial failure led to The Grays breaking up and “Ro Sham Bo” going out of print.

So this 2025 record store day release was very well received news by me, until I discovered that it was not available in the UK, only in Canada, Australia and the US. Some frantic messaging led me to arrange for my Canadian buddy Kevin, who was coming to the UK a couple of weeks after RSD, to grab me a copy and hand deliver it last week.

And what about the music you may well enquire. Well “Ro Sham Bo” is a tough guitar pop record, what I would describe as Power Pop. Guitars to the fore, catchy melodies, choruses with big hooks that reel you in and fab vocal harmonies. Very much in the vein of Big Star and, yes, Jellyfish (In a weird squaring of a circle, after Jason Falkner left Jellyfish, Jon Brion had been bought in to play guitar on their second album “Spilt Milk”). This deluxe 2 LP RSD edition also includes a couple of bonus tracks, covers of Wire’s “Outdoor Miner” (I’ve had an MP3 of this for some years and always assumed it was a Falkner solo recording, seemingly not) and the Rolling Stones “Complicated”.

Jason Falkner has gone on to make seven solo albums and to work as a sidekick to the likes of Brendan Benson, Beck and Noel Gallagher. Jon Brion finally made his way into writing film scores including those for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Christopher Robin” among quite a few others. The doings and whereabouts of Buddy Judge and Dan McCarroll are sadly unknown to me. The four of them left behind just this one album and it’s been a favourite of mine for over 30 years. Have a listen to my favourite track, written not by Jason Falkner who was my main interest here but by Jon Brion, and see what you think.

Not Long For This World - https://youtu.be/qmrJXRR4C8M?si=jGkDubmamqEgS2ak