IMPERIAL DRAG Imperial Drag (Work/Sony)
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Sure, vintage synths are plenty hip in indie-rock circles in these days, with everyone from Stereolab to Sabalon Glitz singing their praises. But I’m not just talkin’ cool Krautrock minimalist synths. I even like big, pompous, overblown dinosaur synth like those favored by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Rick Wakeman, the Japanese genius Tomita, and the godfather/godmother of ’em all, Walter/Wendy Carlos, the poineer behind 1968’s Switched-On Bach and pop music’s first transsexual superstar, which makes him/her a trailblazer any way you cut it. And this is why the kitschy self-titled debut by Imperial Drag and the even kitschier The Moog Cookbook are such wonderful guilty pleasures.
The credit (or blame) for both of these albums is due in part to keyboardist/vocalist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., a veteran of the justly forgotten early-90s bubblegum group Jellyfish. Jellyfish was what I would consider bad kitsch: a bunch of guys in their early 30s tarted up in junkstore clothing to look like teenagers circa 1968, delivering ultralite pop tunes ripped out of the Beach Boys and Squeeze songbooks. Jellyfish alum Jason Falkner is still pursuing this very VH-1 direction (he makes his solo debut in August with Author Unknown on Elektra), but Manning and Eric Dover(yet another Jellyfish alum) are tackling something far nobler with Imperial Drag: crafting a merger of early-70s hard rock a la Grand Funk Railroad and Ted Nugent and early-70s synth rock a la ELP, tailored (of course) to the current hook-happy demands of modern rock radio.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): pictures of record covers.
