Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | September 2007 | |||
Recorded | Everest Royal Sound Recorders, December 2007—May 2007 | |||
Genre | Alternative rock | |||
Length | 51:27 | |||
Label | Hot | |||
Producer | Ed Kuepper | |||
Ed Kuepper chronology | ||||
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Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog is an album by Australian guitarist and songwriter Ed Kuepper recorded in 2007 and released on the Hot label. [1] Described as a loose concept album based around Jean Lee, the last female hanged in Australia, the album was released in a single CD and as a double CD limited edition with outtakes and demo recordings. It was Kuepper's first album in seven years.
The album was co-written by Kuepper's wife Judi Dransfield and featured Laughing Clowns drummer Jeffrey Wegener and bassist Peter Oxley, formerly of The Sunnyboys, as well as former Saints singer Chris Bailey. It included a cover version of The Go-Betweens' "Finding You", which Kuepper included as a tribute to its writer, Grant McLennan, who died in 2006. The song was recorded at Kuepper's home studio. "I went off to pick up my son from school and when I came back he'd done it," Dransfield said. "I had to convince him not to do anything to it." [2]
Kuepper told The Age the Jean Lee album ended a years-long creative drought. "I went through a sort of personal situation where I guess I just couldn't write, and didn't want to write, and just felt ambivalent about even playing music." [3] He came across a book about Jean Lee—a prostitute and petty criminal who was hanged in 1951 with two male accomplices for murdering a bookmaker, William "Pop" Kent, in Melbourne two years earlier—and said he was "blown away" by the fact that she had gone to the gallows. "When I read it I immediately thought of it as a musical-theatrical presentation." He said he and wife Judi Dransfield immediately began writing—"and it took on a life of its own." [2]
"Jude has written poetry, and it was something that had occurred to me at various times, she should be writing lyrics," Kuepper said. "I think initially she had some difficulty with the story, I mean, none of the people are particularly likeable, but then once she got started on it, it just started flooding out, and it was great." [3]
Dransfield said she did not connect with the story until she read about the arrest and what ensued. "When I read that she was willing to take the blame, knowing that the men had said they didn't do it, I was fairly impressed by that. She was a victim of circumstance and she was a single mum, which in the '50s was socially unacceptable." [2]
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Allmusic | [4] |
Sunday Herald Sun | [5] |
(All music by Ed Kuepper and lyrics by Ed Kuepper and Judi Dransfield except where indicated)
Bonus CD 2: Pretty Rough Trade
The Saints are an Australian punk rock band originating in Brisbane in 1973. The band was founded by Chris Bailey, Ivor Hay (drummer), and Ed Kuepper (guitarist-songwriter). Contemporaneously with American punk rock band the Ramones, the Saints were employing the fast tempos, raucous vocals and "buzz saw" guitar that characterised early punk rock. With their debut single, "(I'm) Stranded", in September 1976, they became the first "punk" band outside the US to release a record, ahead of better-known acts including the Sex Pistols and the Clash. They are one of the first and most influential groups of the genre.
Edmund "Ed" Kuepper is a German-born Australian guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. He co-founded the punk band The Saints (1973–78), the experimental post-punk group Laughing Clowns (1979–85) and the grunge-like The Aints!. He has also recorded over a dozen albums as a solo artist using a variety of backing bands. His highest charting solo album, Honey Steel's Gold, appeared in November 1991 and reached No. 28 on the ARIA Albums Chart. His other top 50 albums are Black Ticket Day, Serene Machine and Character Assassination. At the ARIA Music Awards of 1993 he won Best Independent Release for Black Ticket Day and won the same category in 1994 for Serene Machine.
Smudge are an Australian rock and indie pop trio formed in 1991 by Paul Duncan on bass guitar, Alison Galloway on drums and Tom Morgan on guitar and vocals. Morgan is known outside Australia as a song writing collaborator of Evan Dando and his band, the Lemonheads. In 1994 Duncan was replaced on bass guitar by Adam Yee and in 1997 Pete Kelly joined on guitar. Smudge signed with Half a Cow to issue four studio albums, Manilow (1994), Hot Smoke and Sassafras (1994), You Me Carpark. .. Now (1996) and Real McCoy Wrong Sinatra (1998), before going into hiatus from late 1999. Since 2002, Smudge play a few times a year. There has been no new music since 1998.
The Go-Betweens were an Australian indie rock band formed in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1977. The band was co-founded and led by singer-songwriters and guitarists Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, who were its only constant members throughout its existence. Drummer Lindy Morrison joined the band in 1980, and its lineup would later expand to include bass guitarist Robert Vickers and multi-instrumentalist Amanda Brown. Vickers was replaced by John Willsteed in 1987, and the quintet lineup remained in place until the band split two years later. Forster and McLennan reformed the band in 2000 with a new lineup that did not include any previous personnel aside from them. McLennan died on 6 May 2006 of a heart attack and The Go-Betweens disbanded again. In 2010, a toll bridge in their native Brisbane was renamed the Go Between Bridge after them.
Laughing Clowns, sometimes written as The Laughing Clowns, is a post-punk band formed in Sydney in 1979. In five years, the band released three LPs, three EPs, and various singles and compilations. Laughing Clowns' sound is free jazz, bluegrass and krautrock influenced. The band formed to accommodate Ed Kuepper's growing interest in expanding brass-driven elements he had brought to The Saints' third album, Prehistoric Sounds, and by adopting flattened fifth notes in a rock and roll setting while using a modern jazz styled band line-up.
The Apartments are an Australian indie band formed in 1978 in Brisbane, Queensland. The band split up in 1979 but reformed in 1984 and continued until 1997, with a new version of the band forming in 2007. Based in Sydney, New South Wales, the band has continued to perform and record, with the ninth album and most recent release, In and Out of the Light released in September 2020. Peter Milton Walsh is the band's only constant member.
Send Me a Lullaby was The Go-Betweens' debut album. It was released in November 1981 in Australia on Missing Link as an eight-track mini-album. It was subsequently released in the UK on Rough Trade Records, an independent music record label in February 1982, as a 12-track album.
Eternally Yours is the second album by Australian punk rock band The Saints, released in 1978. Produced by band members Chris Bailey and Ed Kuepper, the album saw the band pursue a bigger, more R&B-driven sound, augmented by a horn section.
Waiting for a Miracle is the debut album by The Comsat Angels, released 5 September 1980 on Polydor Records.
Jean Lee was an Australian woman, convicted of murder, and notable as the last woman to be executed in Australia.
The Feminine Complex were an all-female American garage rock band in the 1960s. The band formed while the girls were attending Maplewood High School (Tennessee) in Nashville. They released only one album, Livin' Love, in 1969. The album has been reissued twice and has since developed a minor cult following.
Don't Look Back was a yearly series of concerts in which London-based promoters All Tomorrow's Parties would ask artists and bands to play one of their seminal albums live in its entirety. The season started in London in 2005, and has since spread its wings further each year, appearing from 2006 onwards in America and Europe, and in 2008 onwards in Australia.
The Hits+ Collection 86-09: Right Back Where We Started From is the first greatest hits album by American-British singer Sinitta, released on 19 October 2009.
Today Wonder is the fourth solo album by Australian guitarist and songwriter Ed Kuepper recorded in 1990 and released on the Hot label. The album was re-released in 2002 with eight bonus tracks recorded for a Dutch radio station.
Honey Steel's Gold is the fifth solo album by Australian guitarist and songwriter Ed Kuepper recorded in 1991 and released on the Hot label. The album was re-released in 2000 with six bonus tracks, four from Kuepper's No Wonder EP, and early recordings of "The Way I Made You Feel" and "Everything I've Got Belongs To You".
Take One! is a 1980 album by British rock and roll singer Shakin' Stevens. It was his first release on Epic Records and his first album to enter the UK charts. The album featured Stevens' first charting single "Hot Dog".
Australian singer, songwriter and guitarist Ed Kuepper co-founded and recorded with the punk band The Saints, the experimental post-punk group Laughing Clowns and the grunge-like The Aints. He has also recorded 17 commercially-released solo albums with a variety of backing bands as well as another 14 limited-release albums of live and broadcast performances.
The Return of the Mail-Order Bridegroom is a covers album by Australian guitarist and songwriter Ed Kuepper released in 2014. Recorded in three days and featuring Kuepper alone with no overdubbing, it contains reworked acoustic versions of songs by his former bands The Saints and Laughing Clowns, as well as new versions of his solo material and songs popularised by artists including Jimi Hendrix and The Walker Brothers. Apart from "No Regrets," all of the songs were selected from those he had played during a 2013 "Solo and By Request" Australian tour.
"Finding You" is a song by Australian indie group The Go-Betweens that was released as the second single from their ninth studio album Oceans Apart. It was released as a promotional CD single on the LO-MAX Records label in the United Kingdom in July 2005 and by Tuition Records in Germany on 25 July 2015.
The Aints is a band name used by Ed Kuepper during his prolific early 1990s period for loud, feedback-drenched three-piece performance and recordings. In 2017, Kuepper convened a new iteration, this time known as The Aints!.