| Hailing from the same scene that championed The Strokes, the Mooney Suzuki, Fountains of Wayne, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jonny Lives! takes cues from the Brit-pop, rhythm ‘n blues, and LES punk scenes of the 60’s and 70’s and updates it with unbridled, anthemic rock..
Road-testing in the UK proved that Jonny Lives! is on to something. NME Magazine raved: “Jonny Dubowsky quakes like a hairless hellcat,” and “Jonny Lives! are so pant-droppingly brilliant that this reviewer has just been ordered to sex them down so you don’t eat the magazine from sheer lust and excitement. So yes, ahem, Jonny Lives! Quite good. Ones to watch.”
NME also wrote “indeed Jonny does live…..but we had no idea he was in a shit-cool NY rock and roll band…On ‘Get Steady,’ Jonny Dubowsky manages to sound exactly like ‘Raw Power’ era Iggy.”
There is no higher praise than that, folks Dubowsky, who graduated with top-honors from NYU as a student of interdisciplinary studies (philosophy, environmental management, music), has been “inspired by great writers: Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust…I read a lot,” he chuckles.
“We’re enchanted with The Kinks, the Stones, and The Who,” says Jonny, who writes “little vignettes…I paint a situation out of thin air, play around with the characters, and tell whatever story I want to tell.”
From the street to the art-scene, Jonny’s “Everybody’s Trying to Break You Down,” on the other hand, was inspired by Yoko Ono’s exhibition of interactive performance art at Carnegie Hall.
“She stood on stage wearing only a burlap sack, and everyone in the audience came up and cut off a piece, bit by bit, until she was naked. The song is about a bartender who hates where she is in her life, who feels like everybody is picking her apart, taking pieces of her. It’s from the perspective of a guy who is in awe of her and doesn’t understand why she’s letting people treat her that way.”
“Cliché,” featuring some guest-star guitar cameos (Nick Valensi of The Strokes, Jody Porter of Fountains of Wayne, and Sammy James Jr. from The Mooney Suzuki), is a night in the life of a New York summer…
With a strong fan base for their live shows in the UK, a hand-full of impressive performance write-ups, and some brilliant rock songs, Jonny Lives! is currently finishing their much-anticipated 2nd album “Revolution For Free”, which will be released in late Spring of 2010.
More on Jonny Dubowsky and The Rock ‘n Renew Foundation
Al Gore meets Iggy Pop! In just three years, Jonny Dubowsky has rocketed from a next-big-thing rock star, with a green bent, into an exciting and formidable environmentalist in his own right– a young man whose sincerity, passion, and flawless track record have upended everything we think we know about the sustainability movement.
With his newest venture, True Offsets, Dubowsky brings transparency to the world of carbon offsets, allowing users to buy a tree for roughly $40, track the tree over its lifetime, The company is a new model for green business, ecological restoration and serious investing, and has attracted worldwide media attention. Dubowsky’s other venture, The Rock ‘n Renew Foundation, is an interdisciplinary program that teaches students, parents, businesses, and communities how to integrate sustainability directly into their lives. Partnering with everyone from the National Resource Defense Council to Bill McKibben’s 350.org to An Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David, the program uses art, music and pop culture to inspire change; it was visited by over 250,000 students in 2009, and a dedicated building, in New Jersey, is set to open in 2010. www.theglazzies.com www.jonnylives.com
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