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Member Since: 11/19/2007
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Reviews
Dangerman
At their best, Dangerman heat New York’s cultural melting pot to a boil. Singer Chris Scianni, who also plays guitar and bass, and his partner, Dave Borla (percussion and sequencing), team with producer Brendan O’Brien to construct muscular, rhythm-driven tracks that move. A cool-eyed survey of street hustles, "Let’s Make a Deal" -- the album’s opening song -- sets Scianni’s Lou Reed-derived drawl to a catchy Latin groove inspired by Willie Colon. On other tunes, samples draw from Eddie Palmieri, Cal Tjader, Elvin Jones and Mongo Santamaria, while a recording of Mississippi Fred McDowell floats atop a powerful rock & roll arrangement.Apart from good-hearted pieties ("I’d like to think/That we could all just have a drink/Would you meet me/In the middle of the room?"), Scianni and Borla don’t have much to say here. But their sheer energy and expansive tastes lend their party-hearty worldview all the virtue of conviction. (RS 811)ANTHONY DECURTIS
Blondie Concert Review
"So, are we living up to our goddamn reputation?" Blondie’s Deborah
Harry demanded to know about the band’s comeback tour.Well, yes and no. The older-skewing audience Friday night at Universal Amphitheatre went ballistic during Blondie’s hits but reacted politely at best to newer material. However, the new stuff -- which tends to be darker, more jazz-influenced and torchy, a distinct sonic departure -- works better with the band’s 20-years-later countenance and Harry’s throaty, soaring voice. Her voice carried the evening, a mesmerizing thing filled with emotion, attitude and fluid, reverberating pleasure. (If only the accouterments fit as well. Harry was wearing an astoundingly unflattering outfit, including a skin-tight silver skirt that would have made Calista Flockhart look fat.)Blondie’s material stands the test of time: Songs like "Hanging on the Telephone" had the same punk-pop charm they always did. Highlights included "Call Me," with its sexy, vamping rhythm track, and a pull-out-the-stops reading of "Rapture." There’s nothing wrong with Blondie 1999 that an appearance on E! Entertainment Television’s "Fashion Emergency" couldn’t fix.Opening band Dangerman presented quirky, thoughtful rock ’n’ roll sprinkled with blues, jazz and Latin influences. The band has an assured, somewhat-flashy instrumental style and a nice sense of irony, as exhibited in "Roll ’em Down" -- a song about "law enforcement officials who screw with you when you’re hanging out," frontman Chris Scianni explained -- which contrasted its turbulent subject matter with a sweet, languid groove.
By Daina Darzin
Echobrain review
PETALUMA, California — No-Cal scenesters, local yokels, friends and even fans of Jason Newsted’s old band showed up in force to witness the launching of Echobrain’s first tour at an all-ages show at the Mystic Theatre.Echobrain, with drummer Brian Sagrafena and singer/guitarist Dylan Donkin, is Newsted’s first steady gig since leaving Metallica in January 2001. The bassist seemed overjoyed at the intimacy of the show, which took place in a small theater in a town known more for its chicken industry than its cosmopolitan culture."It’s the first day of spring today, and it’s a fresh start for all of us right here," Newsted told the crowd.Echobrain came out strong with "Colder World," an infectious tune with pop sensibilities and hard rock instrumentation. Newsted banged his shaggy head as Donkin, with dark crew cut and thick eyebrows, belted out the Beatlesesque vocals with a powerful set of pipes."The spotlight is on/ The spotlight is on/ Uh huh huh," Donkin growled on the grooving riff-rocker "HWY 44," while Sagrafena slapped the snare and tour guitarist Chris Scianni’s moaning slide tone recalled ’70s-era Joe Walsh. Newsted and Donkin thumped the descending chord progression as Scianni played through a talk box — an effect that allowed him to shape his guitar sound by talking into a plastic tube stuck in his mouth — making his slide playing sound like a raunchy harmonica. They let out the road-trip tune’s jam a bit, but still maintained its structure."This feels wicked good, man," a sweaty Newsted assured the home field crowd. "It’s been a long time."Frontman duties were split between Donkin, who, as guitarist, singer and songwriter, was the central performer, and Newsted, who did all the talking. Scianni, in a knit Mets cap, and longhaired keyboardist/percussionist David Borla, both of New York duo Dangerman, helped fill out the band’s lush, occasionally psychedelic and deep-grooved heavy-pop sound with cutting guitar and oceanic washes of electronic organ harmonics and white noise.Newsted prowled the stage throughout the show, locking horns with each player, his body moving — even during quieter parts — as if he were still thrashing it out on the arena stage. He enjoyed the hell out of all the music, but he still seemed most at home when the band was hard crunching. Indeed, Echobrain sound like a young, hungry band, with fresh-sounding tunes whose often crisp arrangements just happen to be informed by a guy who knows how to get it across in a football stadium.The seeds of the band were sown at a Super Bowl party in 1995, where Newsted and Sagafrena met. They began to jam together, eventually inviting Donkin to join them and record their self-titled debut at Newsted’s home studio. The bassist’s departure from Metallica, with whom he had played since 1986 (one sticking point being Metallica’s policy barring members from side projects), paved the way for Echobrain to get serious.Newsted said the band has its next album already written, and while the songs off the band’s self-titled debut were mostly short and vocal-dominated, the newer material the band previewed was more drawn out, allowing room for improvisation.One new tune, "Jelly Neck," opened up the mix so that Borla’s organ and piano tones could be heard clearly behind Donkin’s angry vocals. Another new one, "Dogfight," borrowed the Yardbirds’ "I’m a Man" fast blues groove, popping it up a bit as Donkin played slide Telecaster, soloing with processed big rock tone, and Borla washed staticky white noise across the ending.On tunes such as "Cryin’ Shame," from Echobrain, Newsted messed around with a theremin. Moving the neck of his bass back and forth to manipulate the electromagnetic field created between the theremin’s antenna and a metal loop, he created eerie screams and birdsong wails, even while simultaneously rolling out a steady-grumbling bassline. The keyboards sounded like ripples in electric water as Donkin moaned intensely into the mic.The night began with a set from kid-rock group the Moss Brothers, a favorite band and previous pet project of Newsted’s. The Moss Brothers, 13-year-old singer/guitarist Reuben Moss and 16-year-old drummer Evan Moss (bassist Kyle Wilson filled out the bottom end), delighted the crowd with a set of surprisingly capable and original rock. Diminutive frontman Reuben, in round spectacles and an Ernie-and-Bert style striped T-shirt, announced the tunes, with members of the audience sometimes hollering back requests to repeat the titles." ’Whiner,’ " the guitarist explained, somewhat frustrated, introducing a new one. "As in whining? You’ll figure it out."Wilson and Reuben locked in on melody runs with prog-rock synchrony on the tune while Evan rode the snare and hi-hat to upbeat punk effect."You never drink/ You never think/ All you ever do is whine," Reuben sang, his youthful vocal tone juxtaposed against the band’s mature playing.During their own set, Echobrain busted out the Moss Brothers’ "Promise to Promise," a playful, crunch-a-munching tune that began with the braaap braaap of a distorted Newsted bass run. The drums and bass alone backed Donkin as he bemoaned being grounded by his parents. In the spirit of Zeppelin’s "Moby Dick," Sagrafena took a few ferocious fills before the band laid back and gave him a drum solo (with help from Borla on percussion)."I told you guys," Newsted joked with his new bandmates. "The best song of our whole set was written by a 12-year-old."
Dangerman Make a Deal
Hard as it might be to believe, the white-hot rock & soul duo Dangerman have somehow managed to house the whole of New York City inside their cramped East Village apartment -- or maybe it just sounds that way.| On the outfit’s self-titled 550 Music debut, the collaborating team of singer-guitarist-bassist Chris Scianni and drummer-percussionist Dave Borla survey just about every musical style that’s wafted by their window over the years, from block-rocking electronica beats to jazzy, Latin-flavored grooves to horn-stoked R&B struts to loping, rough-and-tumble blues workouts. Ask Scianni and Borla about it and they say the album’s merely a reflection of their years growing up in the multi-ethnic melting pot of Lower Manhattan, as opposed to, say, Des Moines, Iowa."You wouldn’t make the same record if you were from [Des Moines]," says Borla, "but you could also make an honest record that sounded like what it was like to be from there. For us, [the album] is an expression of where we’ve grown up and an expression of where we live. But I think that even though the sentiment begins with New York, it also transcends just being about New York."Apparently so. Barely a month after the album’s first single, the buoyant, Willie Colon-inspired "Let’s Make A Deal", was released, Dangerman are in danger of having a coast-to-coast hit on their hands. And on April 20, the band kicked off an opening round of East Coast tour dates supporting like-minded sonic scramblers Citizen King with an expanded lineup that includes bassist Greg Arzab and keyboardist Peter Levin."It’s a trip," says Scianni of the strong response Dangerman’s been receiving. "The other day, I was in the car driving in Jersey, randomly flipping around some radio stations, and all of a sudden, there it was. And I thought it had to be a tape of the tune playing in the deck in the car or something. There’s no *way* it could be somebody playing us on the radio.""It was flattering, to be honest with you," Borla adds. "Because there’s a lot of good music out there, and we know that you need a good team to make it all happen. You need people on your side and you need luck to push the music through." Producer-engineer Brendan O’Brien, who’s worked with everybody from Pearl Jam to Bob Dylan to Rage Against The Machine, was one of those people. Immediately after he heard the duo’s demo for "Let’s Make A Deal" (which Scianni and Borla recorded in their apartment in one day), O’Brien summoned them to his Atlanta studio."It was intimidating at first, and I personally didn’t know how to react to it," says Borla. "Because we had come from [a small apartment] where we had recorded everything, and then suddenly we found ourselves in a state-of-the-art studio working with the best rock producer in the land." In addition to producing, O’Brien also wound up contributing a variety of the instruments to Dangerman’s musical stew, including keyboards, mellotron, clavinet and lap steel.Nevertheless, the disc retains much of the rough-hewn, organic vibe and street-life savvy that piqued O’Brien’s interest in the first place. A few of Dangerman’s demos were incorporated into newly recorded songs as rhythmic and melodic loops, and flavorful, Saturday night anthems like "High Heeled Sneakers" and "I Do Not Play No Rock ’N’ Roll" -- a sizzling, affectionate homage to country bluesman "Mississippi" Fred McDowell -- sound at once like seamless, natural extensions of a century of music history (that’s not surprising, considering Scianni and Borla’s description of themselves as vinyl junkies constantly on the prowl for old LPs gathering dust in Greenwich Village record stores)."Brendan was hip to the whole ’ghetto-style’ stuff," Borla says. "He liked that sound and there was stuff he didn’t want to get rid of." If anything, adds Scianni, the wealth of studio resources at the band’s disposal, "opened up the scope of possibilities of what we could do."Figuring out how to capitalize on that "anything goes" vibe, however, took some doing on Borla’s and Scianni’s part. Before committing to what would eventually come to be called Dangerman full-time, both musicians logged time in G13, a hardscrabble grunge outfit that appeared to be going nowhere fast in the mid-Nineties. Around the same time, Borla and Scianni bought four-track equipment with the idea of recording new G13 material and finally securing the major label contract that had been eluding them. But they soon found themselves messing around with tape-loop grooves, hip-hop rhythms and, in general, coming up with loads of material that was decidedly non-grunge in nature."We pretty much started Dangerman as a side project and what the two of us basically did was get together all the time and record," explains Scianni. "But the other guys [in G13] weren’t into it. They just wanted to be a rock band. But that simplified things really quickly for us. Right away, as Dangerman, we got a reaction from people. And people were reacting because we were finally doing what we wanted to do."The buzz that’s been building around Dangerman is gratifying to Scianni, but also somewhat surreal -- although as far as out-of-body experiences go, it doesn’t come close to his stint back in the early Nineties playing guitar in tennis great John McEnroe’s band. Say what? "I was working at a camp out on Long Island," recalls Scianni, "and I ran into a guy who had been John McEnroe’s doubles partner, and who said he was putting a band together to tour." After word reached McEnroe that there was an able-bodied guitarist immediately available for the job, Scianni soon found himself on a tennis court, talking about touring and testing his backhand against the Wimbledon star. "There I am on Court One trying to keep up with John McEnroe," remembers an incredulous Scianni. Now *that*, he says, "was a surreal moment."JONATHAN PERRY(April 23, 1999)
Influences: So here we are at the influences section.This section will be divided in two categories, one for Chris Scianni and one for the admin, I hope you like it because it's a project that I really care for.This section is called
"Influences from back home":
Chris Scianni: Well he is busy at the moment so his part will be filled out when he gets the time to write something.The Admin(Andra): I always loved good music; music like all time legends: Bob Marley, Queen, Metallica, you name it. But one day I find this dude on the internet and do some drawing for him so we started talking.This is how this project started. I started to listen to Dangerman, The Secret Resistance, The Blues Band, all of the bands that Chris performed and still does and I have to tell you one thing: They rock! So listen to them because they are worth all the minutes and more. Do you know the famous movie "Runaway bride"? Well check it out and see who did the soundtrack for it.Also you can check them out at http:www.freewebs.com/scianni.
But now I want to talk about two bands from my country, which is Romania, that I just love:
Spitfire
These 4 dudes rock the house.If you ever want to see that old heavy rocking style that made you scream listen to their tunes and you will be stunned, I guarantee you that.You can find them at -- just click on the picture below
Voodoo
Well Voodoo are another band that I liked a lot. A saw them live only once but they have a great sound that will get you to skyrocket in less than a second with their African sound combined with a sip of rock and roll. Click on the image belowe to go and see their site.
Well this is all for now, I will keep you informed every once and a while with news about Chris. Have fun and keep on rocking dudes!
21 (2008) Soundtrack
L.S.F. - Mark Ronson/Kasabian
Chris Scianni is playing the guitar on this tune
All ver the Guy (2001) Soundtrack
Let's Make a Deal (Dangerman)
"Let's Make a Deal"
Performed by Dangerman
Written by Chris Scianni, Dave Borla and Brendan O'Brien
Courtesy of Sony Music Special Markets
Whatever It Takes(2000) Soundtrack:
"High Heeled Sneakers"
Written by Chris Scianni, David Borla
Performed by Dangerman
Courtesy of 550/Epic Records
by Arrangement with Sony Music Licensing
Contains elements from "Together"
Written by Hubert Laws (as H. Laws)
Performed by Mongo SantamarÃa (as Mongo Santamaria)
Used Courtesy of Sony Music
Runaway Bride (1999) Soundtrack
"Let's Make A Deal"
By David Borla and Chris Scianni
Performed by Dangerman
Courtesy of 550 Music by arrangement with Sony Music Licensing
Contains sample from "Pa Colombia" by C. Curet Alonso
Performed by Willie Colón
Courtesy of Fania Records
Record Label: unsigned
Type of Label: None
