A Rare Treat - New Music From Wendy & Lisa

If you're a Prince and/or Wendy and Lisa fan, I highly recommend picking up the dynamic female duo's new album, "Snapshots."

Unfortunately, Wendy and Lisa's new joint is not a full-length album but rather an EP with just six songs. For those of us who are longtime fans of the duo who became famous as members of the Revolution, Prince's Purple Rain-era backup band, and hunger for more musical product, we have to be satisfied to feast on scraps. The upside is that the "Snapshots" EP comes with a photo book with some interesting candid shots, makes a nice coffee table book.

"Snapshots" is mostly an instrumental mood album, with relaxing, New Age-sounding music - Enya meets smooth jazz. There is one hard-rocking jam, "Perfect Stranger," on which Wendy delivers gruff, powerful lead vocals. With its edgy rock beat, it's easy to imagine "Perfect Stranger" being recorded by an all-girl rock band like The Donnas or Veruca Salt  - or even The Runaways back in the day.

Like W&L fans around the world, I wish the girls would record and tour more. It would be great to see them hook up for a tour of small venues with another indie rock group with a similarly devoted, if relatively small, following like Cincinnati's Over the Rhine. It would be really cool to be able to drive 15 minutes from my house and see Wendy and Lisa perform at the Southern Theatre or the LC Pavilion in downtown Columbus or the Newport Music Hall on campus.

I think Wendy and Lisa are two of the most multitalented yet extremely underrated, under-promoted and under-appreciated women in music. A lot of it has to do with the fact that neither they themselves nor their eclectic music fit into an easily-defined niche or category, and the narrow-minded suits at record labels and radio stations don't know how to market them - Are they pop? R&B? Funk? Indie rock? Or something in between? Their music is a combination of all of the above, with a whole lot of other complex, subtle textures and layers mixed in.

It's cool that W&L do television and film scoring for shows like Showtime's "Nurse Jackie" (for which they won an Emmy), the rom-com "Just Wright" with Queen Latifah and Common and the new Fox drama "Touch" starring Kiefer Sutherland. But they've only released a handful of studio albums. Many of their songs, like "If I Were Brave" from 1998's "Girl Bros.," are very upbeat and radio-friendly and deserve more promotion and airplay.

W&L's 1987 self-titled debut album, with melancholy songs like "The Life" and "Song About," got me through my brooding, awkward teen years. One of the most memorable moments of my life was meeting them several years ago at an event in L.A. and getting to tell them, "Your music made me feel less alone in the world," to which Lisa replied with a heartfelt, "Thank you for saying that."

It's hard to believe, but the 30th anniversary of "Purple Rain" is coming up in less than two years. Will Prince give us diehard fans what we crave and reunite with the Revolution - Wendy and Lisa included - for a world tour? Anything's possible... Miracles do happen.

As a 'Townie,' I Enjoyed Reading This Book

Recently finished listening to author Andre Dubus III's very engaging memoir "Townie" on CD. This was one of those audiobooks that I found hard to get into at first, but had me riveted once I got past the first CD.

Dubus very eloquently tells the story of growing up in the '70s in a nondescript New England college town. The title “Townie” refers to the insulting term that college kids have for lifelong residents of the town like Dubus – something I can relate to as someone who was born and raised in Columbus, home of the Buckeyes.

After his parents divorced when he was young, Dubus and his four siblings and their single mother struggled to make ends meet, moving frequently and surviving on cheap canned food.

Being short and scrawny as a kid, Dubus was bullied by neighborhood tough guys. At some point as a teen, he has an epiphany and decides he's had enough of being pushed around and starts working out. As he bulks up, Dubus transforms from a timid kid who was an easy target to an amateur boxer who goes looking for fights, taking his frustrations out on the very bullies who used to use him as a punching bag.

I don't usually condone violence, but there are parts of the book when you root for Dubus to beat up some coward who smacks around his girlfriend, or another jerk who had been wreaking havoc in the neighborhood and terrorizing innocent people.

Eventually, Dubus has another epiphany and realizes he can't go around solving all of his problems with his fists, that he's either going to end up killing someone or wind up dead himself. He becomes a sort of "thug whisperer," developing a knack for calming down guys who pick fights and learning to talk his way out of conflicts.

Instead of fighting, Dubus starts channeling his pent-up emotions into writing, finding almost immediate success selling short stories to magazines and later as a novelist of best-sellers like “House of Sand and Fog.” Dubus has writing in his blood, since his father, Andre Dubus II, was also a celebrated writer.

In his 20s, Dubus reestablished a relationship with his father, who was often distant during his childhood, by becoming drinking buddies with his old man. Later in life, Dubus selflessly helped his father recover from a tragic car accident that left him paralyzed.

Although it was hard to get into at first, by the time I came to the end of "Townie," I was sorry it was over.