Happy Rhodes
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Happy Rhodes

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"HAPPY RHODES / FIND ME"

http://www.theprogfiles.com/findme.php

This was a long awaited album for Happy fans, nearly 10 years after her “Many Worlds Are Born Tonight” CD, Happy finally came back with “Find Me”. This project was delayed due to financial reasons since she is not signed to any label anymore; most of the songs on the CD date back to early 2000’s.

I still remember the very first time I heard Happy’s voice. It was way after midnight when everybody else was sleeping, I had my headphones on and I started listening to her “Many Worlds…” album. I immediately felt like I was surrounded by “strange beings”, it was both a chilling and an irresistible feeling. Many layers of keyboards and vocals and complex and unusual song structures combined with her unique lyrics make her music very special, uncategorized and progressive. After that night I started collecting her music.

Find Me will hit you before you even start listening to the CD, with the art work, Happy’s own. Next to her self portrait, you will find drawings of monster/alien type of creatures. These interesting illustrations can be found all over the lyrics sheet. There are 11 songs on the album. Happy does all the vocals and programming and plays acoustic guitar. Bob Muller plays drums and percussions. Other musicians who have contributed to the album are: Hansford Rowe (electric bass), Teddy Kumpel (electric guitars, acoustic guitar, and tambourica), Rob Schwimmer (piano), Carl Adami (bass), John Catler (fretless electric guitar), Trey Gunn (war guitar), Bon Lozaga (electric guitar), Fab (additional programming), Michael Seifert (orchestral arrangement).

Now get ready to be haunted by Happy’s 4 octave voice. Just like the opening track “One and Many” that talks about multiple personality “issues”, first time listeners of Happy Rhodes will often wonder how many people are singing. Well, the answer is “one and many” really, because in a split second she can go from an angel to demon no problem. In this sense I think the song “One and Many” ironically fits the situation.

One of the most thrilling moments on this album is the song “Find Me”, both lyrically and vocally. Picture someone floating in the middle of the ocean for days and waiting for help. Happy’s vocals are very intense here, and she uses sounds to make the situation even more dramatic, that will really give you chills. For instance, the helicopter is flying around to find the person, but can’t see her as she sings “Now I can feel you flying overhead / But I’m swallowed in the waves” and you hear the helicopter in the background, slowly fading out. And she shouts “Oh God, please find me, alive” with a high pitch scream coming from the debts of the ocean almost. Throughout the song there are sound effects that made me think of dolphins and whales as if they are watching that person or welcoming her underwater.

“Can’t Let Go”… A time frame in your life that made you who you are today, that you try in vain to let go, because it bothers you so much, because it haunts you all the time, wherever you go, every time you look in the mirror and wherever you are. You want to free yourself from it because you want to change things, but it keeps you from moving forward, it is stuck on you so much that everyone else identifies you with it. It is the reason why you built yourself a “Treehouse” to protect yourself from harm, and pain, from everything happening outside. I find some kind of connection between these two songs on the CD. “This is my treehouse, I built it this summer / All by myself, without your help / And only those who like me / Are gonna be invited in”.

Happy paints a not so self-confident picture on “Here and Hereafter” and “The Chosen One”. First one is a love song of someone who is scared of losing their love, the person who you think is everything to you and without whom you wouldn’t know how to survive. Although the song has a calm and soft rhythm, the lyrics appear to reflect a moment of panic attack, when suddenly you realize that there is the possibility of “losing” and how you never thought about what it would be like. With “The Chosen One” you look into yourself and question what it is you missed in life that others seem to get so easily. People would look at you and think of you as a “solitary entity” as Happy describes it, and wouldn’t realize that like everyone else you long to be loved by somebody, and be the most important person in their lives. It is actually ironic that situations like “a perfectly planned wedding” in a white dress, with guests so cheerful almost to the degree of being artificial, make you think like you are a loser. After all, they are the ones who meet the society’s guidelines, not you. Maybe you never wanted it to be this way for yourself, but you wanted “somebody”. “The Chosen One” is a very nice acoustic song on which you can hear Happy’s wide range of vocals, which with the ups and downs perfectly describe the emotions.

Happy’s lyrics, unlike her name, are pretty dark and heavy. Like “Charlie”, a song inspired by Charles Crumb, talks about how some things in life can drive a person into madness and finally suicide, although for many there is a thin line that stops them from getting there. What is it that pulls the trigger in some people, and what is it that holds another one just near the edge? She boldly states: “If I had stayed that day / It would have been me / Wishing for a handgun / Or a rope on a sturdy tree”. The song has a little bit of David Bowie taste as well.

“Queen” and “Fall” are the songs of “acceptance” although the lyrics at first may seem like “giving up”. This kind of acceptance surely comes with age, maturity and experience. It may not be a very pleasant situation, but harshly, it is what it is. That is why I believe when she says “I’ve accepted my fate / Very reluctantly” or “I surrender all hope to youth” it has virtue in it rather than weakness.

I find this album to be the mixture of her electronic and acoustic works. In this sense, if you have discovered her with this album, it will give you access to her early works. Lyrically speaking, she is in my opinion, better than ever. Hopefully she won’t make us wait for another 10 years. And lastly, I will not give this one a star rating, only because I don’t want to categorize it that way.

Hande BURDG


- The Prog Files


Discography

Find Me (2007)
Many Worlds Are Born Tonight (1998)
The Keep (1995)
Building The Colossus (1994)
RhodeSongs (1993)
Equipoise (1993)
Warpaint (1991)
Ecto (1987)
Rearmament (1986)
Rhodes II (1986)
Rhodes I (1986)

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Bio

Happy Rhodes is an enigma. This is according to the Music Industry, which has never been able to pigeon-hole her into any category. Her music is otherworldly yet substantial and her 4-octave voice has a haunting familiarity to it. Most listeners find her work difficult to describe and yet she incites an almost unheard of devotion among her fans. She goes from Kate Bush highs to David Bowie lows and you find yourself being beckoned to follow her into her multilayered worlds.

She was born on August 9th, 1965 and named Kimberley Tyler Rhodes. Three days after her birth, while still in the hospital, her brother Mark called her "Happy-baby" because she was so smiley and he couldn't pronounce Kimberley. It seemed so fitting that it stuck. The family never knew her as Kimberley and so when she was 16, she made Happy her legal name.

Happy's youth wasn't easy. She lived in poor neighborhoods, in a poor family and experienced a never-ending onslaught of peer rejection and abandonment. Despite the truly bad odds, she was driven. Music was an early inclination, as were dance and art. Her father, Vernon H. Rhodes Jr., exposed Happy to his very eclectic musical tastes early on. She would sit on the floor in front of his console stereo and listen to Switched-On-Bach until she could sing along with every note. "I remember some Saturday mornings I'd wake up to Bagpipe music BLARING through the house and that meant that he'd be listening to his whole collection all day...... I loved walking around the house, singing along with every record or reel-to-reel tape."

When Happy was 11, she got her first guitar. She had no desire to learn the instrument the way everyone else was doing it. She simply wanted to begin writing immediately. Creating was always the main objective for her, not excelling at any one particular instrument. It became instantly clear that Happy's path would not be one of virtuosity. But by the time she was 14, she was already performing her oiginal songs in school shows.

As time went on though, she became increasingly removed from the outer world. High School became a place of alienation for her because she was already driven for a musical future and depression was slowly becoming part of her everyday existence. She knew she needed to do something or she would explode. At age 16, Happy left school and got her G.E.D.

For the next two years, she wrote and made some Open Mic Night appearances at a legendary cafe called Cafe Lena in Saratoga, NY. During this time, she met up with Pat Tessitore, a co-owner of Cathedral Sound Studios in Rensselaer, NY. She approached him with the idea of becoming an intern of sorts, just so she could learn the basics of audio recording. "I knew I wanted to be a professional musician, but didn't really know where to start. So I decided I'd learn how to MAKE records first, get my foot in the door and then figure the rest out later." Happy never really got the full recording education she was looking for because as soon as Tessitore heard her sing, he insisted on recording everything she'd written up to that point. "She played and it absolutely blew me away. And I had heard a lot of voices in my day", recalls Tessitore. "She brought tears to my eyes."

Soon, Happy met up with another musician and mutual friend of Tessitore's, Kevin Bartlett. Bartlett had been writing his own instrumental music for years and had a small, cassette-only label, called Aural Gratification. He heard Happy's work and asked if she'd like to release her music to the public on his label. She accepted. One of these cassettes made its way to a woman named Vickie Mapes, who at that time, was doing an all-female-artist radio show in Kansas City. She began to play Happy's tapes and circulating samplers to unsuspecting music-lovers. From her efforts, a small fan-base was forming. They organized themselves into what is now known as ECTO, a Happy Rhodes Mailing List. This is a forum through which, music lovers can discuss Happy's work, as well as other "Ectophilic" artists.

Happy released approximately 9 CD's on the Aural Gratification label. In 1997 however, Happy decided that it was time to seek out a different kind of record label. A good friend recommended her to a newly forming label called, Samson Music. Founded by Norm Waitt Jr.(co-founder of the Gateway Computer company), this was a label that Happy felt would take her music to the next level. She signed with them and released "Many Worlds Are Born Tonight" in August of 1998. "I went through a lot of darkness to make that album. It was also the most fun I've ever had making a record." Happy and Samson Music parted ways in early 2000.

Her 11th full-length album, Find Me, is currently available on CD Baby.

Happy lives on a beautiful farm in upstate New York, has a day job, and lives her life, content to make music for others to enjoy.