Mark Eitzel: Culture Vulture.

From the mid eighties to the mid nineties, American Music Club influenced a generation of bands who’ve made a musical stand based on music for it’s own sake, not for the sake of commercial success. You kind of get the feeling that former AMC frontman and now soloist Mark Eitzel would be putting together music regardless of whether anyone released it or not.

Thankfully someone does, and with the follow up to his both adventurous and at times haunting Invisible Man album comes something straight out of left field. His new album of covers, Music From Courage & Confidence, finds tracks spanning a diverse range of influences from Curtis Mayfield to Culture Club to Billie Holiday all in his own unique style. Expect the unexpected. 

“I don’t want to give you the pop quote, but I don’t want to be the Barry Manilow of the indie rock set. Which of course I am…” he jokes. “I guess I’m kind of eclectic. Every song is different so I treat them all differently. Some of these recordings have been around for a couple of years, things I had done as demos. What was the Boy George track, I can’t think of the name…” 

Do You Really Want To Hurt Me… “Yeah, that one I was trying to transfer from my computer, and nothing was matching up, so I sort of threw away the version that I had. It was like a goth disco track, and I took things from another track to put it together, and it was done the day before I mixed it. I think they all sound like they’re right. It wasn’t my idea to do this record, in fact I resisted doing it for months, and a lot of the tracks were suggestions.” 

“I think I needed to have a lot of gall to do this. It’s kind of like the sentimental hits of the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. It’s all the sentimental classics. I just went ahead and ruined their work."