Sounds From The Junkshop #59 - Bubble

 

"You know you've gotta trust me, even when I'm goin' wrong..." - Bubble - Sparklestar

The word "supergroup" is generally something that inspires dread in me. It usually has the connotations of a band of coked up millionaires between albums who've ended up jamming with each other in the studio and thought "hey, what if we released this and bored the hell out of everyone?"

Occasionally though, you get such a group who genuinely deserves the moniker. I think I was originally drawn to Bubble by the presence of former Dogs D'Amour and Wildhearts drummer Bam in there. Bam was (rightfully in my opinion) regarded as "the cool one" in the Dogs - I remember reading an interview with them in Kerrang! (the first time I bought it I think, around the time of Straight?!) where Tyla had spent the first few paragraphs explaining to the interviewer that he didn't just want the Dogs to be known as that bunch of lunatics who drink like it's going out of fashion only for Bam to walk in and apologise for being late as he'd just spent the night in the cells for getting in a fight in a pub!

Along with Bam for the ride were his other half Share Pedersen (now Share Ross) on bass and vocals formerly of late '80s/early '90s AOR all-girl hair metallers Vixen. I have to be honest, I was aware of Vixen at the time as they actually chalked up two or three actual Top 40 hits here in the UK but even as a 12 year old they seemed a bit dull to me musically - they had one genuinely good song in the Joan Jett style I Want You To Rock Me but a LOT of filler aside from that. The only other notable thing I can really say about them is that Roxy, their drummer (and Maxine her guitarist sister who was in the latter day Vixen line-up post-hits) had both started out in a brilliantly/ridiculously OTT Canadian glam metal band called Madam X who also featured a teenage Sebastian Bach on vocals - now there's a weird set of connections for you! After the break-up of the Dogs and Vixen in the mid-'90s, the pair had put a group together with ex-Life, Sex & Death man Alex Kane but it hadn't really gone anywhere and when Tyla decided to put the group back together in 1997 or so, both Bam and Share (who replaced Steve James on bass) joined the new line-up with Kane moving on to SFTJ alumni Clam Abuse and Antiproduct.

The Mk2 Dogs line-up fell apart very messily on tour supporting Alice Cooper (the story I've heard is that Bam, Share and Jo Dog wanted to start contributing songs to the repertoire and Tyla wouldn't let them) and Bam and Share decided to resurrect their old group, this time bringing in the former Faster Pussycat twin guitar attack of Brent Muscat and Eric Stacey to round the line-up out. FP are an odd one - they were basically right at the really scummy end of sleaze rock along with G'n'R, LA Guns etc (and let's face it, that's where all the best music from that particular scene tended to congregate) but they never quite seemed to come up with an all-killer-no-filler album although both of their first two are worth a listen especially the gloriously scuzzy Poison Ivy which was their finest moment to my ears. I might well get round to covering them properly in a future Garbage Days Revisited at some point.

The result of this alliance was the How 'Bout This? album which was a proper underrated classic. The group gained some minor exposure by the lead off single Sparklestar being used in a Daryl Hannah/Jennifer Tilly film and it was one of the album's high points, a genuinely great power ballad about dysfunctional relationships with Share's raw vocals suiting it brilliantly. It was far from an isolated case though as the album had brilliant songs to spare from the snotty Don't Talk To Me through the lurching Independently Wasted and the surprisingly tender All I Want to the freewheeling pop-punk of Slut Motorchopper. The keyboard led closer Castle On The Hill and the gentle acoustic hidden track Disappear proved that they were a very versatile band as well and the future looked bright for them.

Unfortunately this line-up would only last one album with Brent and Eric leaving to rejoin Taime Downe in a reunited Faster Pussycat. Bam and Share would recruit new bassist Brian Wong for the group’s second album Total Harmonic Distortion which was another strong effort but the momentum had been lost a bit and like its predecessor it got good reviews but poor sales. The group would stick around long enough to make a third album, 2005’s much more punky Rock ‘n’ Roll Hell but I remember reading an interview with Bam around this time (I think it might have been on Sleazegrinder which had become my rock ‘n’ roll reading of choice by this point) where he admitted that the band were on their last legs just because of how much money him and Share were losing on it - apparently they’d done a couple of UK tours (which I’m gutted I missed tbh), probably figuring that the Dogs and Vixen's old followings there would ensure a decent turnout, but had lost a load of money on each of them. As the noughties drew to a close, Bubble sort of quietly wound to a close with both Bam and Share rejoining their old bands for reunion tours.

As we discussed in the Dogs SFTJ entry many moons ago, sadly the group's 2012 reunion would be a short lived one. Bam would join Jo and Steve in the Desperados and hopefully more music will be forthcoming from them in the near future and he even hooked up with his old Wildhearts bandmates Ginger, CJ and Danny for a Don't Be Happy Just Worry mini-set at one of Ginger's birthday bashes.

Share, on the other hand, remains in Vixen to this day and the band are currently that most odd of beasts in that they have their original rhythm section (Share and Roxy Petrucci) but a different singer and guitarist (original six stringer Jan Kuhnemund sadly no longer being with us while Janet Gardner left amicably a couple of years back to concentrate on raising her family to be replaced by Femme Fatale's Lorraine Lewis). She's also become bass player for the Down 'n' Outz in recent years alongside Def Leppard's Joe Elliott and half of the Quireboys and I strongly recommend you listen to their rather awesome This Is How We Roll album from a couple of years back if you've not already, it's a bit of a stormer. Of the other ex-Bubblers, Brent and Eric's time with Faster Pussycat would again be brief after they acrimoniously fell out with singer Taime Downe (possibly over his decision to try and turn the band into a Nine Inch Nails style goth outfit). The pair would start up a rival Faster Pussycat featuring future Slash guitarist Todd Kerns but lawsuits soon put the kibosh on that - a shame because I went along to see them on the one UK tour they did and they were a massive improvement on Taime's version. After that, Brent would move to Las Vegas and form the Sin City Sinners with Kerns before the latter was headhunted by Slash - the group are still active on and off to this day and I was lucky enough to meet Brent a few days before my wedding when my wife and I went to see the Sinners at the Palms Casino just off the Strip. He was a good guy, my soon-to-be missus and I drank a lot of very potent Vegas booze and a top night was had.

Bam and Share would actually reunite musically under a new moniker, Twin Flames Radio, in 2018 for a self-titled album which is a more than worthy addition to the three Bubble albums in their back catalogue, veering from full on '70s pop to fast paced punk and is more than worthy of your attention. Fingers crossed a follow-up will be in the works sooner rather than later. If their musical ventures over the last couple of decades show anything, it's that they're both very underrated songwriters and musicians who are also a lot more versatile than several of their peers from the sleaze rock era. So that's the story of Bubble then, to quote an old saying, not so much a supergroup as just a plain superb group.