Martinez Tribune The website of the Martinez Tribune.
BY DANIEL GLUSKOTER
Anyone who lived thru the MTV generation or remains fond of new wave likely has a place in their heart for Martha Davis and The Motels, a band that had multiple Top Ten hits and video exposure during the first half of the eighties.
Davis, the lead singer and face of The Motels, is on the comeback trail after needing to cancel a handful of shows at the end of last year after losing her voice following radiation treatments during a two year battle with breast cancer.
Martha Davis of The Motels performs at The Guild Theatre Sunday night.
The 74 year old Berkeley native and her uber talented band featuring original member Marty Jourard on sax and keyboards along with guitarist Clint Walsh, drummer Eric Gardner and bassist Nic Johns performed a stellar 80 minute, 19 song set of songs old and new to a rousing reception at The Guild Theatre in Menlo Park Sunday evening on the last night of a brief four shows in four nights swing thru California.
Originally christened in the Bay Area as the Warfield Foxes in 1971, four years prior to moving to Los Angeles and rebranding the group as The Motels, Davis and the band were fixtures on MTV and alternative radio stations like KQAK and KROQ, with early hits like “Only the Lonely” and “Suddenly Last Summer” seeing heavy rotation.
Martha Davis of The Motels.
The Motels released five albums on Capitol Records between 1979 and 1985, with 1982’s All Four One and the following year’s Little Robbers going gold, spawning two Top Ten singles before breaking up in 1987 when Davis decided to dissolve the band and go solo. While the original band was only together for eight years, Jourard rejoined in 2011 and has been a mainstay ever since. On Sunday, cuts from six of their albums including a sneak peak at a track from an upcoming album were presented.
Davis voice has showed no signs of loss over the years in spite of her medical battles, and if there was any slippage it wasn’t noticeable within the crisp acoustics of the intimate Guild as the band gave a solid career spanning set of The Motels catalog. Opening with “Tipping Point,” the crowd didn’t have to wait long for performances of “Take the L” or “Suddenly Last Summer,” quickly followed by “Danger” and “So L.A.”
“Art Fails” and “Only the Lonely” wound down the set, but a sneak peak of the unreleased “Strange Days” and the punkish “Cry Baby” from 1979’s self-titled debut album provided additional highlights before the nostalgic “Last Few Beautiful Days” from 2018’s album of the same name provided a fitting finale for the critically praised but often under appreciated Davis and company.
Martha Davis and The Motels perform at The Guild Theatre Sunday night.
After a long seven years without any new material, the band is preparing to release their first new album since the aforementioned Last Few Beautiful Days. In a recent interview with Forbes, Davis stated “I’ve got an artist working on the artwork. We’re just mastering a couple of the last tracks. It’s called Escape From Planet Earth, and it’s a sci-fi musical. The first side is terrestrial, so it’s all on the alien planet Earth. And the second side is celestial, so it’s all in space. There’s so many beautiful vocals on this album. It’s really wonderful. It’s a crazy album.”
A release date for Escape From Planet Earth hasn’t been scheduled yet, but Davis and Jourard and company clearly have a lot left in the tank. Hopefully the album will create the traction The Motels deserve to help propel the group to larger audiences and the appreciation they so rightfully merit. Only the strong survive.
