music
What: Harlow, Custom Made Scare, Ready
When: 9 p.m. Wednesday
Where: The Bottleneck, 737 N.H.
Ticket information: 841-5483
What: Harlow, Moxie
When: 9 p.m. Oct.11
Where: The Hurricane, 4048 Broadway, Kansas City, Mo.
Ticket information: (816) 753-0884
Welcome to the dollhouse
Goth gals of Harlow get a big boost from VH1
By Jon Niccum
jniccum@ljworld.com
Silver-screen star Jean Harlow was born in Kansas City, Mo., in 1911. At the age of 16, the actress ran away to Los Angeles to find her fortune in the entertainment industry.
The same strategy has been employed by another platinum blonde whose career is linked to the name Harlow. Singer guitarist Amanda Rootes, a comely London native enjoyed some success with
HARLOW is preparing to release its debut record "Harlowland."
her former British all-girl band Fluffy in the mid-'90s. After the group was dropped by Capitol Records and split up, she relocated to Los Angeles and formed Harlow. Now her L.A.-based act is gearing up to release its debut album after finding some unlikely exposure on American television.
"I've learned that it's always really important to be nice to everybody, because you don't know when you'll meet that person again."
AMANDA'S HARLOW DOLL is not yet available at Cracker Barrel.
Rootes says of her industry experiences. "It's very important not to get above yourself and feel like you're this fabulous, amazing, big rock star. Because the next day you could be working in an office — which is what happened to me. I went from touring the world as a rock star in places like Japan, and the next year having to work in an office for eight bucks an hour. So it's important not to act really famous — you know, like, 'I
want fresh-squeezed orange juice' — because you could be eating (exptive) before too long."
Rootes and her bandmates — guitarist Rayshele Teige, bassist Chimene Gonzalez and drummer Rebecca Gibb — are currently in L.A. preparing for the second leg of their three-month tour while "just now getting the CD artwork finished."
"It's really cool," Rootes remarks about the cover of the new album, "Harlowland."
lifestyle.
"You know how we have Harlow dolls? Chimene got this really cool dollhouse that looks like Harlowland, the place where we all live. So our dolls are inside the dollhouse."
Rootes' brief bio on the band's Web site (www.harlowland.com) mentions that in addition to driving a red '77 Trans Am, she "has a large collection of evil dolls." It becomes clear throughout the conversation that the toys play an important role in the Harlow
— Cracker Barrel. They have the best creepy, evil dolls. I don't think they're meant to be creepy and evil, but they are. I love going there. Rabbit baby has sort of a rabbit costume with no bunny ears, but
"I have a lot of dolls that I've made over," she says. "I started doing it because I kept getting bored on the road. I have this one thing called 'rabit baby.' I bought it from that one place — what's it called?
it has a baby's face. It's really disturbing."
'Run' around
Harlow first came to national prominence during the April-July debut airing of VHI's "Bands on the Run." The Emmy-nominated series followed four unsigned rock acts as they toured the nation, performing for various honors and a grand prize of $50,000 in cash and $100,000 in gear. Harlow finished third among the groups, getting bested by San Diego's Soulcracker and Dallas' Flickerstick, the eventual winner. But millions of viewers came to appreciate the all-girl band — and the wry personalities of its individual members — who seemed to be having a wonderful time without taking the whole thing too seriously.
"We got thrown out there doing the show very early on," Rootes remembers."The band had been together for two years, but Rayshele had just joined and had just started learning - she'd only been playing guitar for a year.
"We really didn't think we would get (cast on the show). And we didn't get it initially. We weren't surprised at that, because we weren't exactly VHI-friendly. But then they suddenly changed their minds. I don't know what happened. I think they realized that as a band we have a close friendship. We're very passionate about what we do. And I think we're big dorks. There's a lot of comedy to us."
Harlow never managed to win any of the showcase competitions (those went to Flickerstick) nor the economic battles and reward challenges (those went to Soulcracker). The quartet feels it didn't quite possess the advantages of its competitors.
"What was really amusing was if you saw the pilot, the bands looked one way, then in the real show everybody changed their look and had a makeover," Rootes says. "But Harlow stayed the same. We didn't change anything for the show. We just were the way we were. In regards to the merchandise and everything, the other bands had more financial backing where they could afford to get CDs on the road. We were making everything ourselves by hand. We were burning CDs and getting out promotional copies — as we still are now (laughs). We wanted everything to be really special."
Still, audiences began to acquaint themselves with the band's appealing material, which combined gothic-rock ambiance with bar chord-anchored sludge. Rootes'
vocals provided the melodic counterpoint, meandering from an ethereal prettiness to spoken-word aggression.
"Because VHI only played like 30 seconds of three of our songs, it seemed that those are the ones that everybody knows, like 'Michael Hunt' and 'Blue Lie,'" she says. "I'm not sure why they only selected those three. Maybe we played those the best on that tour. I don't know, because I don't think they're the best songs on the record. We've written a lot more songs since we came back from the tour. We threw ourselves in the studio. We were there in January starting preproduction. And pretty much up until now we were working on the record. When the other bands were running around capitalizing
PLEASE SEE Harlow, PAGE 7
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2001
THE MAG/LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD