Popnotes

POPNOTES: DIY-album checked off John Moran's bucket list

The album cover of John Moran's new album; he records under the name Mondello.
The album cover of John Moran's new album; he records under the name Mondello.

Hello, All You Happy People is the debut album from Little Rock musician John Moran, who records under the name Mondello.

The 14 songs on the self-released record are clever bubblegum-punk, power-pop -- think lo-fi Matthew Sweet or Fountains of Wayne -- about crushes, break-ups and everything in between.

It's a genuinely do-it-yourself work, as Moran played all of the instruments and recorded the album in his spare bedroom; it is available at Spotify, iTunes and mondello.bandcamp.com. CDs can be ordered from koolkatmusik.com/.

The 50-year-old Moran, who works for a nonprofit, is charmingly self-effacing about his first foray into making music, which he says is "one part maladjusted-loner-in-a-basement vanity project and one part aging-GenXer's midlife-crisis bucket-list check-mark. ..."

We emailed him questions about the album and found out about his love of power pop and where he got the name Mondello.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)

Q: Where did you grow up?

A: Born and raised in Little Rock.

Q: What was the first record that you loved?

A: My parents had a four-record set that was a wide-ranging compilation of '50s and '60s rock 'n' roll hits. I remember playing and re-playing certain songs from that -- like "Rockin' Robin," "Splish Splash," "Beep Beep" -- so many times that I'm surprised they didn't sell me to the monkey house.

Q: When did you start playing music?

A: Really, in my early 20s. I'd had a guitar when I was 10 or so, but I was so inept at learning how to play it that I almost immediately gave it up. I started again in my 20s when a friend of mine, who was equally unschooled on the guitar, played me a song that he'd written and recorded. Even though the guitar playing was rudimentary, the song was really good! And I thought, "Hmmm ... I could maybe do that." So, with the sum total of the three chords that I then knew on the guitar, I started trying to write some songs.

Q: What bands were you into when you were learning how to play?

A: Around that time, my "big three" were probably R.E.M., The Replacements and The Ramones. I used to say that if I only had a few minutes to check out a new record store, all I'd really need to do was visit the "R" section.

Q: How did Mondello come about?

A: After I started trying to write some songs back in my 20s, I flirted with trying to pursue music more seriously: I was in a band very briefly while living in Austin for a little bit, and then another friend of mine and I recorded a number of the original songs that I had written. (This was a different friend from the one I mentioned before -- this other fellow was an extremely talented musician who had recorded a lot of his own music, so he did all the playing on the songs we recorded and I just did the singing.)

But, as is so often the case, nothing ever really blossomed from the musical pursuits of my youth, and I ended up having to get, as Michael Madsen describes it in Reservoir Dogs, a "regular job-type job."

I would often noodle on the guitar as a diversion, although I was never any more disciplined about practicing than I was at age 10, and I managed to accumulate a big stack of unfinished songs and lots of little snippets of various incomplete musical ideas.

A few years ago, in an uncharacteristic spasm of ambitiousness, I got this "bucket list" sort of idea: What if I sorted through all my old, unfinished songs, picked out the best 10 or 15 of them, actually finished them and then recorded them? And that was how the project came to be ... although, had I realized at the time that I would manage to dither over those recordings on and off for two entire years, I might never have actually embarked upon it.

Q: Why call it Mondello?

A: It's named after Larry Mondello, who some might remember as Beaver Cleaver's sad-sack, chubby friend from Leave It to Beaver, an old favorite TV show of mine from when I was a kid.

As I would come to find out -- after I'd put out the album -- there actually is already another band named Mondello, which I think is some sort of Brazilian group, maybe, that does, like, house music? What's more, there was also a Larry Mondello Band, too, but I don't think they've been around since the '90s. (All things considered, I really should have checked into that a little better.)

Q: When were the songs written?

A: Some of the songs were begun as long as probably 25 years ago. As far as finishing them, they were all finished over the the last two years, as I mentioned. At least one of them is all new and was written within the last year or so. I sort of recorded it as a goof and, as it would happen, I've had a couple people tell me that it was their favorite ... which I guess is a good thing?

The songs you've labored over for decades, you play for people and they say, "eh," and the one you did in five minutes, they say, "This is the best one!"

Q: Of course there's a great power-pop vibe to this, I'm guessing you have a particular affinity for that subgenre.

A: Absolutely! Back when I was first trying to write songs, Rhino Records put out a bunch of D.I.Y. compilations of American and British power pop from the late '70s and early '80s, and I think that must have been a major inspiration because those records are full of songs that I still love, like "Back of My Hand (I've Got Your Number)," "Starry Eyes," "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," "Another Girl, Another Planet," "Hanging on the Telephone."

And -- returning to your previous question of the first album I ever loved -- I think the first album I ever bought with my own money may have been Get the Knack, when I was probably 10. And it still holds up.

Q: Speaking of which, what groups were influential?

A: Matthew Sweet is probably my all-time favorite individual performer, and I think Fountains of Wayne are really brilliant songwriters. Cheap Trick has always been another longtime favorite, as well, of course.

(Back when my friend & I recorded the CD I mentioned before, he came up with the tag line, "If you think that the missing link between the Beatles and the Replacements is Cheap Trick, then you'll love the Mutual Admiration Society" -- which apparently generated some really negative feedback from people who were infuriated at the musical heresy of putting Cheap Trick in that company.)

My all-time favorite band is probably Superdrag. They're more of a blues-inflected rock than power pop, but I'd say that a song like their "Lighting the Way" is about as good as any power pop song out there.

Q: I'm also hearing quite a bit of Guided by Voices on the album. Is that too much of a stretch?

A: Not at all -- that's a great compliment, in fact. I'm fascinated by them: I find them brilliant and kind of baffling in equal measure, honestly. I suspect that all but their most ardent admirers would admit that they have a bit of a ... consistency issue, but [Guided by Voices singer-songwriter] Robert Pollard at his best has written so many amazing pop-rock tunes, he makes it seem almost effortless. "Motor Away" is one of my top 20 favorite songs.

Q: Concerning the whole maladjusted-loner-in-a-basement angle, how does it feel to have these songs out in the world?

A: I am -- and forgive if this sounds humblebraggy -- not a very adept self-promoter, as I noted earlier. So, yes, it can be a bit of a conundrum when you're simultaneously trying to spread the word about your music while at the same time still trying to hide under your usual rock. But I've had some -- admittedly very modest -- positive feedback, which has been much appreciated ... and everyone I've encountered within the little "keeping-power-pop-alive" community has been super-nice. (Even if actually hearing a stranger say something complimentary about one of my songs remains for me an exquisitely discomforting experience, I am nonetheless extremely thankful!)

Style on 07/21/2019

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