Tsar’s self-titled debut album from 2000 is one of the finest power pop records ever recorded. Yet few people bought it back then, despite its presence on the Disney-connected major label Hollywood Records.

Why the lack of sales? With Omnivore Recordings having just re-released ‘The Drugboy Tapes,’ the collection of demos that spawned that first Tsar long-player, it’s an apt time for a re-examination of this criminally under-recognized act.

The L.A.-based outfit’s initial lineup included singers and guitarists Jeff Whalen and Daniel Kern, bassist Jeff Solomon, and drummer Steve Coulter. Their eponymous debut is everything an introductory record by a youthful pop rock group should be. It’s brash and snotty yet emotionally yearning. It harkens back to classic masters from earlier eras, but it’s also sparklingly fresh and innovative. It’s a sonically charged album that’s rich with infectious vocal hooks and bombastic guitar riffs. It makes you think of Cheap Trick, because of the similar style and because primary vocalist Whalen’s voice is so much like Robin Zander’s.

The 10 tracks largely feature anthemic rockers, but there are also a couple of gorgeous ballads that provide balance and variety. It’s as pleasing as any album made by other power pop hall of fame artists like The Posies, Guided by Voices, The New Pornographers, et al. Yes, it’s really that good. Go listen to “Silver Shifter” if you haven’t heard it before.

The 2001 odds and ends EP ‘King of the School’ doesn’t fully match the flawless execution of the debut album, yet it’s an impressive collection of demos, alternate takes, and live performances that should have brought the group the popular recognition they were wrongfully denied with the first record. They were an electrifying live act who rocked stages while opening for then-label mates Duran Duran and via guest spots on widely viewed late-night talk shows. But the sales still didn’t come. The band and Hollywood Records parted ways soon enough.

Contractual headaches with Hollywood caused the next full-length Tsar release to be delayed until 2005. By the time that album came out, the rhythm section of Solomon and Coulter had been replaced by Derrick Forget on bass and Chuck Byler as drummer. Issued by TVT, Band Girls Money has the same infectious raw energy as the first album and follow-up EP and has its share of hook-laden, punky pop keepers, but overall, the songwriting quality isn’t on the same level as that of the debut. This iteration of the group was more glam than power pop, a point they drove home by making their video for the song ‘The Love Explosion’ an homage to T. Rex. The band’s relationship with TVT began and ended with that one album, which didn’t bother the charts any more than their more deserving first LP had.

Tsar was quiet for a stretch, at least publicly. Then the original lineup reformed in 2010, and the following year they compiled and self-released the aforementioned ‘Drugboy Tapes.’ Listening to these home recordings (plus one live track), it’s easy to see why Hollywood Records snatched the band up back in the late 1990s and why Omnivore saw fit to re-release the demos collection this year. Mostly made up of bare-bones recordings of songs that were more fully developed for the Hollywood release, ‘The Drugboy Tapes’ is a lo-fi mini classic that reveals a band gifted with songcraft talent and loaded with exuberant energy.

The group then issued a five-track EP of new material, titled ‘The Dark Stuff,’ via the Lojinx label in 2012. This mini album includes the gems ‘Police Station’ and ‘White Lipstick,’ both of which merit inclusion on a best-of Tsar playlist.

And that was it for the band until Omnivore came along and reissued the early demos album.

“We were kind of hoping we’d benefit from being the only band like us out at the moment, but it seems that’s not usually a thing.”

Core Tsar members Jeff Whalen and Steve Coulter had this chat with me over email:

How old were you guys when you formed in the late ‘90s?

Jeff Whalen: Dan, Tsar’s lead axeman, and I were in our mid-20s when we moved to Hollywood to form the thing that was soon called Tsar. All four of us in the band knew each other in college at UC Santa Barbara, which indeed is a party school. I’m still hungover.

Steve Coulter: I believe the first time I was on stage with Jeff W. and Jeff S. from Tsar was when I sat in with one of their previous college bands by banging a Sparkletts bottle on my 21st birthday. Dan and I actually briefly played together in our First Serious High School Band prior to college. The cumulative hangover finally caught up with me 20 years later.

How did Hollywood become the label to release your debut?

Jeff Whalen: There had been some signing hype about us and a few labels showed some sincere interest, including Interscope, Reprise, and Columbia, but it was Rob Cavallo, who was head of A&R at Hollywood Records, who sealed the deal. Rob was a super talented music man and he seemed really excited to produce our record. He could already play some of our songs on guitar when we first met him, which was a cool parlor trick and made us think he really liked us. Rob spoke and nodded and smiled as if he understood our grandiose rock motivations.

Steve Coulter: One of my favorite nights during that brief period was an out-of-control dinner with Slash Records at a sushi place where we sat on the floor and drank fruit-flavored cocktails called “Roadkill.” But, yeah, in the end Rob definitely wooed us to Hollywood Records.

The debut got good reviews but didn’t sell well. To what do you attribute the lack of sales?

Jeff Whalen: Yeah, I dunno! You could blame it on luck or timing, it was the height of Nu Metal, after all, but I really don’t know.

Steve Coulter: Seems like it just wasn’t our moment.

I’ve read your quote about your main influences being Guns N Roses and the Monkees. What else were you listening to in the early days of the band?

Jeff Whalen: Ha, yeah, I’d say that sometimes! Also, the Dead Boys meet the Spice Girls. I was listening to a lot of bubblegum as we were writing the songs and getting the whole Tsar thing together. The Archies, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Shaun Cassidy, the Rubettes. And glam, too, Bowie, T. Rex, the Sweet.

While we were actually recording the album, though, I stopped listening to that stuff, especially Bowie. I distinctly remember disallowing myself from singing along to Bowie in the car. I can sometimes get overly influenced when I sing along to certain singers in the car. Instead, I did my driving listening to Nirvana since I felt like I needed to work on my scream and I admired Kurt Cobain’s.

To get in the right frame of mind for making the record, each morning before heading to the recording studio, I’d drink coffee and do the LA Times crossword puzzle while listening to a Spice Girls tape I’d made with my favorite songs from their first two albums.

Why did you leave Hollywood for the second full-length album and how did you get connected to TVT?

Jeff Whalen: We actually recorded the second album, ‘Band Girls Money,’ for Hollywood. When it was clear that they were dragging their feet or nailing their shoes to the floor about putting it out, our manager started shopping the record around. The guys at TVT were really excited about the record’s garage-y sound so they bought the album from Hollywood for $80,000.

Steve Coulter: Recording that second record was such a different experience than the debut, a much more stripped-down affair. A few people in the online power pop circles where I still roam, under the pen name S. W. Lauden, harbor negative feelings about BGM, but I love it. ‘Wrong’ and ‘The Love Explosion’ are two of my all-time favorite Tsar tracks. I was already out of the band and attempting to get my act together before TVT Records picked that album up.

Was either label especially good or bad to work with?

Jeff Whalen: Both were great at first and then terrible.

Steve Coulter: The early Hollywood days were really exciting. Anything seemed possible. The good times ended when the album didn’t sell like gangbusters. That’s why they call it the music business, I suppose.

Any good stories about being the opening act on the Duran Duran tour?

Jeff Whalen: The Duran Duran tour was really fun. It was our first-ever tour and we were such big Duran fans. A magical experience, corny as that may sound.

One time backstage at some arena somewhere, Simon Le Bon came up to me and asked me for a smoke. I said, “I don’t think we can smoke in here,” which was definitely true since we’d been told that a few times. Simon took the cigarette, seemed to think for a moment, then said, “I can smoke in here.” And he did and nobody told him to stop. A life lesson? Maybe! Would we all be happier if we acted like Simon Le Bon and just smoked or did whatever wherever we goddamn felt like? Certainly!

Steve Coulter: I have two specific memories from that tour:

Meeting the dudes from Poison backstage at the first show in Dallas and realizing I had a Poison pin on my denim jacket’s lapel when Rikki Rockett pointed it out.

Asking Duran Duran’s tour manager if we could start our set a little later, “You know, after a few more people are in the audience.” His immediate response, which I still quote, was, “I don’t know when you’re going on, but I know when you’re coming off.”

How about good stories from your various late-night talk show appearances?

Jeff Whalen: When we played the Late Late Show the first time, I smoked with Jon Stewart in this little outside area at Television City in LA. He brought his own cigarettes, or at least he didn’t cadge one off me.

After we played, Jeff Solomon, Tsar’s bassist, and I walked around the building and somehow ended up on the set of ‘The Price Is Right’. The place was deserted and we touched the “big wheel” and we were empowered by it.

They sent us home in a limo, which was great because we loaded all our gear in there. Their reaction made it seem like bands didn’t normally do that. We were super packed in tight, with our guitars poking out of the sunroof, driving down Beverly Boulevard with the windows down. Tremendous.

Steve Coulter: That limo ride home with our gear was a strangely magical experience, such an intense mix of emotions. I think we started joking about touring in a limo after that. We still might do it one day!

Do you feel like the high energy in your live performances got successfully translated to your studio releases?

Jeff Whalen: I dunno! I don’t think we really thought about it when making the first record. We were just focused on making the best record we could. We were more intentional about trying to feature our live unhinged-ness for ‘Band Girls Money’.

Steve Coulter: I think the first record really showcased how great Jeff and Dan’s songs were under all the live bombast, and I think ‘The Drugboy Tapes’ do that too. I always thought the second album sounded like the band we were in the rehearsal room or in some random club.

Had you broken up prior to the ‘Dark Stuff’ EP release?

Jeff Whalen: I don’t think we ever broke-up broke-up, but we were definitely hiatus-ing within an inch of our lives.

A therapist once told me, Mötley Crüe’s former therapist, natch, that the dynamics of being in a rock band are very similar to those of growing up in a family. Even after you leave, you keep exploring the same themes in relationships as you get older, trying to recreate those familiar dynamics, which is why bands always get back together.

Steve Coulter: Wow. I never heard you mention that before, but I agree. I’ve come to realize that if I ever had a meaningful musical experience with somebody, and I had quite a few with Tsar, then I will always feel bonded to them. Also, can I get that therapist’s number? I have some unresolved feelings about the cowbell on that first Mötley Crüe album.

How did the idea come about to compile and release the ‘Drugboy Tapes’ demos?

Jeff Whalen: I think it was when an interviewer played me this song by some band I’d never heard of where they’d copied our song “Kathy Fong Is the Bomb” note-for-note with new lyrics and said they wrote it. It was definitely weird to hear, and I think on some level I wanted to make it clear that it was our song so I wanted to put the original demo out.

But I’d always liked the Drugboy stuff a bunch. It was such a fun time in me and Dan’s lives, just about my favorite creative period, and we’d already been talking about putting it out for fun. Back in the late 1990s there were these lo-fi bands like Olivia Tremor Control and Guided By Voices that made it seem very doable to make “real” music with at-home technology. I had a record called ‘Slugger’ by this band from Fullerton called Charley that I listened to all the time. There was a sticker on the CD case that said “Lo-fi Kings at a Lo-fi Price,” which I was inspired by. We were also listening to Back in the USA by the MC5, which has this super-compressed AM sound to it, and I was listening to a lot of Radio Disney on the AM dial.
We started embracing the compressed, lo-fi-ness of our Tascam 388 8-track recorder, which was also beginning to malfunction in a strange lo-fi way.

How did Omnivore come into your world and re-release ‘Drugboy Tapes’?

Jeff Whalen: We’d wanted the first Tsar album to come out on vinyl back in the day. It was even in our contract with Hollywood that they had to put it out on vinyl, but they never did.
When we got together with Omnivore to release the first album on vinyl, they were interested in The Drugboy Tapes, too. It was remastered by their crack audio engineer Michael Graves and I love it.

Steve Coulter: Jeff and I made the first attempt at working with Omnivore around the debut album’s 20th anniversary in 2020. It took another five years, on and off, to get the various parties on the same page and finally make it happen. ‘The Drugboy Tapes’ are the lo-fi cherry on top as far as I’m concerned.

Where do you see Tsar as fitting in, or not, within the scope of the pop rock music world of 2000 to 2012?

Jeff Whalen: Great question! I dunno! I think we were kind of hoping that we would benefit from being the only band like us out at the moment, but it seems that that’s not usually a thing.
I remember our labels and managers all trying to figure out how to pair us with other young bands or how to make us part of a scene or movement, but there wasn’t much going that made sense. For me, probably the most right-seeming opening slot we had was touring briefly with the New York Dolls, and they’d had their heyday a few decades earlier.

Any plans for new Tsar shows or albums?

Jeff Whalen: Life’s funny, so yes.

Brian Greene

Headline photo: Tsar publicity photo (Credit: Piper Ferguson)

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