Below is my featured article of Everclear for the month of July & August 2001 that I wrote.

This is an article page but the first thing I want you to see is an essay actually written by Art Alexakis himself. (I got this from www.members.nbci.com) Here it is:

"When I was a kid living in the Mar Vista Gardens projects of Culver City.California, I shared a room with my older brother George--whenever he wasn't in jail or on the lam. that is. We slept inthe same big double bed. I can still picture him sitting on the edge of our bed. sniffing a sock that he had filled with glue. Once. George fell asleep stoned, with his cigarette still lit. I woke up whenhe threw me out of bed--the mattress was on fire. He got some water from the bathroom. pouredit on the flames, and went back to sleep. The bed must have been smoldering, because an hour later I woke up surrounded by flames. George threw me out of bed again. dragged the mattress downstairs, and put out the fire in our front yard while all our neighbors gawked. George was nine years older than me. so I basically worshiped him. After my parents split. mydad was never around, so George was the man I looked up to. When I got a bicycle for my birthday. George was the one who put it together. A year later,George was the one who took off the training wheels. Before he started using drugs, he was considered much better looking than me: blond hair. soft blue eyes. He got voted Best Eyes and Best Teeth in his junior high school. He was very patient, very charming, very funny. When our dog Cleo had puppies underneath the house. George was the only one she'd allow around her. He went in there and cleaned off the puppies one by one. George was always a compulsive liar--he would tell anyone anything in order to be liked and accepted. He started hanging around with a stoner crowd in 1968. When he was fifteen and I was six. This meant that I didn't see him as much. Disneyland was only a short drive away. so he would take me there sometimes; that would keep me excited for weeks afterward. But often George would get wrapped up in getting laid, scoring drugs. whatever--and forget about me till it was too late to go. I spent a lot of my childhood waiting for my brother. My birthday was April 12 and his was April 13. so we usually celebrated together. When I was eleven. George was supposed to pick me up at noon and take me to the Magic Kingdom. Hours went by with no sign of him. I was smoking cigarettes. just hiding from everybody, because I felt let down and abandoned. Eventually, George showed up stoned. My mom didn't want me to be in the same car with him. but I insisted. We drove down to Disneyland. only it was raining, so we ended up seeing a movie instead. That night. we slept at Aphrodite Waterbeds. George was the manager of Aphrodite, which was basically a head shop. My mom wanted me to have a man's influence--I was living with her and two of my three sisters-- so George would pick me up on Fridays and I'd spend the weekend at the water-bed store. I'd sit there reading underground comics like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and the R. Crumb catalogue. which were really over my head. "George, what does 'splooge' mean?""Why do you ask!" "Well, he's splooging on her face." These comics were too raw for me at that age. "Hey George. what does 'gash' mean?" At night. the water-bed store would close and all these freaks would show up. Couples would start screwing on the water beds in the showroom, and I'd fall asleep. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and there'd be a couple in the same bed as me, making waves. My brother was infamous for having these young hippie-chick girlfriends who were closer to my age than his. When he was twenty, he was going out with girls who were thirteen or fourteen. But I thought they were grown-ups: They were hot. they wore halter tops, they had big tits. When I was eleven, George took me out for the Fourth of July and got me wasted. This fourteen-year-old girlfriend of his said. "I'II take care of you tonight, little brother." She gave me a blow job in the backseat of George's station wagon, but I was too stoned to come and probably too young. I became more sexually active a year or two later. mostly with older girls. In Southern California during the Led Zeppelin era, these fourteen-year-old girls were giving blow jobs like porn queens. The age gap between George and his girlfriends looked even greater than it was, because George had aged prematurely. When he wasn't in jail. he'd grow a beard and long hair. The drugs made him look perpetually tired and beaten down--you might think he was in his late thirties. And After he got shot (a payback for some seam he never told me about). when he took off his shirt you could see the wires that held his abdomen together. But when he was younger and still whole. George played third base in Little League; I used to watch his games all the time. He was really good, until he hurt his knee. I loved the uniforms and the pageantry, and the sense of belonging. I played for years myself, starting off in right field but eventually holding down second base and first base. Every year in spring training they'd let me pitch a game, and I'd always get hammered. I was never big enough to excel, but I usually hit over .300. All the kids who were really good were practicing with their dads in the yard. As time went on, George became too wrapped up in drugs to play catch with me. On a Saturday afternoon when I was twelve years old. I went to the local batting cage. I was going to practice my swing. and I was also meeting my girlfriend so we could make out. I hadn't been there long when our next-door neighbor Dianne and her boy-friend pulled up to the field. They told me I was needed at home right away. I didn't want to leave--I was still batting--but they insisted. On the way home. I peppered them with questions. which they wouldn't answer. I sat in the backseat of their Mustang. just knowing something was wrong. We pulled up to my house, and my sisters were running out the door all at once, crying and screaming "George is dead!" I was just standing in the backyard. absorbing the news. still wearing my cleats. Everyone in the neighborhood was hanging on their clotheslines. watching my family fall apart. When George died. he had been clean for six months. He had a real job in an electronics factory, he had a fiancee: things he'd never bothered with before. I don't know if he could have kept it together over the long term. but we never had a chance to find out; he overdosed on heroin and cocaine and was found in a flophouse. Foul play was suspected- George had called a friend that night saying he was going to collect some money and might not make it back--but. nothing was ever proven. I still think about hiring detectives to find out what really happened. My memories of the funeral are hazy. My family stayed behind a curtain so that people couldn't see us. but that meant we couldn't see them either, so I never knew who came to say goodbye to George. He was buried at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles-- there were some really hokey singers at the service. and I remember thinking that George would have hated it. AFTER GEORGE DIED, MY MOM LATCHED ON to me and became really overprotective. It backfired: She only made me want to rebel more. Before George's death, I smoked weed. drank, popped some pills--but I never wanted to do anything that would interfere with being a baseball player. Afterward. I didn't give a damn. I hung out with these surfer hoods. but we were too poor to surf. So we would rip off rich kids' Schwinns and turn them into motecross bikes. Then we could ditch school. ride around. break into houses. steal money, and use it to buy drugs instead of surfboards. Even before George died I'd felt isolated, but afterward I was incredibly lonely. It was good to fit in somewhere. I was so skinny that I could help the gang by going through houses' dog doors. Once, I got into a house that way and found an envelope with $700 in it. We played pinball for four days straight. My mom got religious after George died. which helped keep her from going insane. At first she made me go with her to the Assembly of God, which was full of Holy Rollers: speaking in tongues. frothing in the aisle, and other craziness. I told her I wanted to go to the church down the street. She'd give me money for the collection plate. but I'd get somebody to buy me a beer and a pack of cigarettes and just hang out at a girlfriend's house. She did make me show up for the church's Youth Brigade. where we would wear stupid uniforms and hang out. After meetings, they'd let us into a local liquor store. The guy who owned the store was a member of the church. and he'd let each of us pick out a dollar's worth of candy. They thought we were these nice church boys. but I'd walk down the aisles sticking bottles of booze Into my pants. Then about fourteen of us would cut school the next day and go drinking by a local sewage canal. Everyone was telling me that I was going to end up like George. I thought that I was too smart to become a corpse. but I probably had an unconscious death wish. I even used to bet people that I wouldn't live past my twenty-first birthday. I ultimately paid one guy a hundred bucks. I didn't have a lot to remember George by--an old photograph. a classical guitar that he never really learned to play, a bandanna that he used to tie off with when he shot up. But George did name me as the beneficiary on his life insurance. Because it was a drug overdose. I got only $10.000. which I received on my eighteenth birthday. My mom used part of it to help the family. and I blew the rest on a black Toyota Corolla hatchback. Four years later. that car got stolen. I collected insurance money for the Toyota. and with that settlement I bought an ounce of cocaine. I shot it up, overdosed, and almost died. George had left me a legacy after all. That was my last time with a needle. I made myself get off drugs, and unlike George. I stuck to it. Although you can run away from your family history, it won't leave you. In 1987. thirteen years after George died, I wasworking as a car messenger in Los Angeles. delivering packages. My life was pretty unhappy and I was drinking too much. On a hot day in the middle of June. I was drinking on the job and I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in the Forest Lawn cemetery. lying on my big brother's grave."

3/30/01 The Oregonian (www.oregonlive.com)

Everclear

Friday, March 30, 2001

As a touring musician, Art Alexakis has developed a conflicted relationship with his hometown's weather. Portland is cloud-cloaked and rainy on a recent morning when the rocker calls from Albuquerque, N.M., but what bothers him is talk about how lovely and dry most of the past few months have been here.

"You know, I hate hearing that," he complains. "My wife keeps telling me, 'It's beautiful, it's beautiful!' I come home for a day and it stinks. It's all overcast. I live in Portland, I'm used to it, so it's not a big deal."

Getting a day off at home, though, is a big deal for the leader of the platinum-selling Portland band Everclear, on the road with Matchbox Twenty and working toward a Wednesday night show at the Rose Garden arena. Alexakis' real weather wish is for more snow in the Cascades, but even though success has afforded him a mountain cabin, he admits that "every chance" he gets to indulge his passion for skiing has amounted to only about a half-dozen times over the past year.

Life gets busy when you're out supporting two albums at once. The volumes of Everclear's "Songs From an American Movie" -- the pop-leaning "Learning How to Smile" and the hard-hitting "Good Time for a Bad Attitude" -- have continued the band's string of radio hits with songs such as "Wonderful," "When It All Goes Wrong Again" and "AM Radio."

Some of Everclear's work has been done in Portland, including tour rehearsals at the Aladdin Theater in January and a Pine Street Theater video shoot in December. So the conversation with Alexakis, excerpted below, started on the latter subject, with the singer explaining that the "When It All Goes Wrong Again" video was so seldom seen because the song was too hard-edged for VH1 and MTV already had "AM Radio" in its rotation.

Q: Was that conflict with video airplay the only logistical problem you've had with working two albums at once?

A: It was a little bit of a problem, but I foresaw that happening when they wanted to put out the two records. I'm not worried about it. We've sold a lot of Volume 1 and we're almost platinum with Volume 2. Both records have been critically acclaimed and fans seem to dig them both.

We're having a problem with Capitol right now, because the label president was fired in December but he's still there because the new guy, Andrew Slater (known for management and production work with Fiona Apple, Macy Gray and others) hasn't signed his deal yet. That we're selling as many records as we are while we're in this limbo, I think is amazing.

Q: Is opening for Matchbox Twenty bringing you some new fans? Rob Thomas said you guys are making them work pretty hard.

A: Yes we are. We're a rock band. They're not a hard-rock band, but their fans love 'em. A large part of the people are Everclear fans. But then the largest number are there for both bands. As far as Matchbox Twenty goes, they've been nothing but gracious to us. And it's been hard for them -- the critics have been kind of brutal to them.

Q: How do you approach the more textured material from "Learning How to Smile" in concert?

A: Keep in mind, we only get 50 minutes. We're playing 10 songs, so it's not like we're going to pull out the orchestra for "Otis Redding." I'm trying to get them to give me another five minutes for Portland. We make the most out of that 50 minutes that we can. There are different textures and instruments there, and then we get rocking. But it's mostly singles, or future singles, like "Rock Star."

Q: I happened to click on the TV awhile ago and you were on VH1 talking about the tour a few years ago when everybody got stressed out and Craig (Montoya, bassist) left for a while, and there were tensions and break-up rumors. When I'd asked you about that back then you'd just shined me on.

A: I shined everybody on. It wasn't personal. We had agreed not to talk about it. It really wasn't that big of a deal. But you know how VH1 tries to find drama at the half-hour mark? They didn't have anything! There really hasn't been any drama in the band. That was the closest thing.

3/11/01 The Cincinnati Enquirer (www.enquirer.com)

Sunday, March 11, 2001

Everclear Overshadows Tepid Matchbox Twenty

By Jay Webber

Enquirer contributor

        If not for a "special guest," matchbox twenty's performance Thursday at the Firstar Center may have been a qualified success.

        A solid if unspectacular modern rock band benefiting from a generally dubious era for pop music, matchbox twenty has in short time produced an impressive string of hit singles.

        Thursday night's 100-minute performance, capped by a fantastic light show, drew from each of those hits, from older favorites "3AM" and "Push" to "Bent" and "If You're Gone".

        Unfortunately, those hits usually bookended slower tempo or lesser-known efforts that did not captivate the audience. The effect was an uneven show that simply seemed too long, particularly after failing to approach the energy of "special guest" Everclear.

        Why is Everclear still touring as a warm-up act? This band has evolved from powerful punk to polished rock and pop, all the while producing five diverse and captivating CDs. The fan base and the material are there to justify top billing, yet they persist as underdogs.

        Thursday night, the trio from Oregon &emdash; augmented live by an additional guitarist, percussionist and keyboardist &emdash; ripped through an ear-ringing, pulse-quickening 45-minute set. Where matchbox twenty seemed sterile and motionless, Everclear was raw and energized. Lead singer Art Alexakis ran, spun and jumped about repeatedly. Craig Montoya didn't so much play his bass as attack it, while drummer Greg Eklund, the band's musical glue, maintained a frenetic pace.

        The result of their efforts were good new takes on recent hits, including a surprisingly hard-edged "AM Radio" and a full-throttle "Rock Star" backed by several fans invited to dance onstage.

        For all their power the Everclear hallmark remains deeply moving lyrics. The band took the stage to "Song From an American Movie," a beautiful ode to Mr. Alexakis' daughter, delivered the emotional "I Will Buy You a New Life," "Father of Mine" and "Wonderful" and closed with the irresistible "Santa Monica."

        That most memorable conclusion raises this question, though: How many more acts will be upstaged before Everclear is forced to headline a large venue?

3/1/01 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (www.jsonline.com)

3 bands hook packed house

By GEMMA TARLACH

of the Journal Sentinel staff

March 1, 2001

Wednesday's sold-out pop-rock party at the U.S. Cellular Arena had more right hooks than a prizefight, thanks to three of radio's friendliest bands, Matchbox Twenty, Everclear and the new but promising Lifehouse. The crowd of roughly 9,000 - ranging from grade schoolers there with Mom and Pop to fortysomething professionals still in their suits - was treated to nearly four hours of solid, often inspired songcraft. Matchbox twenty may have been the night's headliner, but for pure energy, Everclear's 45-minute middle-bill set couldn't be topped. The California trio - augmented by a second guitarist, a keyboardist and a percussionist - is really a rock act that happens to write great pop songs.

Everclear's spirited live performance redeems the band from the rock star indulgence of releasing two mediocre albums last year instead of culling the material into one masterpiece, along the lines of 1997's "So Much for the Afterglow," which spawned the band's biggest hits. Opening with a spare acoustic intro that faded into the thick, fuzzy guitar wash of "When It All Goes Wrong Again," Everclear wasted little time with between-song chitchat - though front man Art Alexakis did stop rocking just long enough to tease a possible return gig at this year's Summerfest. Alexakis can write smart, catchy ear candy like few others in the biz; the band's long line of hits over a relatively short career offers ample proof. The highlight of Everclear's set wasn't its no-filler pace, tight musicianship or even the songs themselves, however - it was the contagious fun that rolled off the stage like a Seattle mudslide.

Matchbox twenty's top-card set was as loud as Everclear's but seemed anti-climactic and, clocking in at one hour and 45 minutes, too long. The Florida band carries on with a terrible self-seriousness - Slayer cracks more smiles - as if they want us all to know being a rock star is a hard job. Talented musicians all around, with the formidable songwriting of vocalist Rob Thomas as their base, M20 tries to present its sensitive male pop as deep art rather than, let's face it, a catchy "Felicity" soundtrack. Songs such as the band's 1997 breakthrough "Push" and more recent "If You're Gone" and "Crutch" are well-written and well, if stoically, delivered. But it wasn't until the band's first encore, the chestnut "Lonely Weekends," which they covered on a recent Sun Records tribute, that M20 shed its relationship-heavy weightiness for a little levity.

Opening act Lifehouse could be mistaken for a matchbox ten. The rookie quartet takes its cues from the evening headliners right down to singer Jason Wade's mimicry of Thomas' over-enunciation. But imitation isn't always a bad thing. Lifehouse's crowd-pleasing 25-minute set struck a nice balance between heavy commercial hooks and pathos-lite, most notably on the band's current radio hit, "Hanging by a Moment."

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 1, 2001.

7/13/00 Rolling Stone Magazine (www.rollingstone.com)

Artists Against Piracy

Alexakis, Alanis Morrisette and Christina Aguilera are among nearly seventy musicians who have joined the coalition Artists Against Piracy. The group sent out its first volley in their battle with Internet-based music piracy Tuesday with full-page advertisements that read "If a Song Means a Lot to You, Imagine What It Means to Us" in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

"I felt there was a absolute need to get the artists, the creators to educate the public about music on the Internet," says coalition organizer Noah Stone, a songwriter and musician who also runs his own Internet-based label, GME Music.com. "Napster is exciting and the fans really want it. We have to meet the demand for fast and easy music on the Internet, but we also have to remember the artists. I wanted an organization where the artists' voices are in the dialogue on this issue. Sixty-seven artists is a good start."

Among the other music acts aligned with Artists Against Piracy are Garth Brooks, Barenaked Ladies, Blink-182, Aimee Mann, Bon Jovi, Faith Hill, Hanson, DMX, Sarah McLachlan, Bryan Adams and Herbie Hancock.

Stone claims the initial ad was intended as a sign of support as the Napster debate went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to be heard before a Senate Judiciary committee. "It was a statement we wanted to make to support Lars [Ulrich] on the day he was testifying," Stone says. "We wanted him to know that this isn't just about Metallica and Napster."

Stone says that subsequent Artists Against Piracy messages will come in the near future, including Internet ads, television public service announcements and radio spots. But he stops short of following Ulrich to the Capitol. "It is intended as more of an awareness camp," he says of the coalition. "I don't think of it as a lobbying force. But we'll see where it goes."

More information about Artists Against Piracy can be found at the group's official Web site, www.ArtistsAgainstPiracy.com.

ANDREW DANSBY

(July 13, 2000)

2/22/00 Rolling Stone Magazine (www.rollingstone.com)

Performance: Everclear

So much for the afterglow.

Everclear have two new albums coming out this year but you'd hardly know it from the rare small club appearance they made Friday night at San Francisco's intimate Bottom of the Hill. Those curious what direction singer/songwriter and all-around Greek guy Art Alexakis might be leading his trio on the forthcoming Songs From an American Movie, Volume I: Learning How to Smile and Volume II: Good Time for a Bad Attitude, would have to wait.

Despite the building buzz for the new records, despite this being their first gig in ages, despite a house packed with guest-listed radio industry conventioneers (this show was part of the annual Gavin fiasco) and a few keen fans, the band opted to debut a less than generous, solitary new song,"Now That It's Over." From first lick to last it was a greatest hits affair spanning Everclear's catalogue of user-friendly FM rock.

Cultivating the punk-y Dwayne Schneider ("Hey, Ms. Romano!") look in workman's pants, a white wife-beater and bleached platinum coiffure, Alexakis took the cramped stage looking every one of his thirty-eight-hard-years -old. But he and the boys -- drummer Greg Eklund, bassist Craig Montoya and what Alexakis affectionately called the "auxiliary band" (Some Guy on guitar, Some Guy on keyboards/squeezebox, Some Guy on percussion) -- came to rock and, however uninspired, rock they would.

Opening with their Grammy-nominated instrumental "El Distorto De Melodica" and segueing into an ill-tuned "Amphetamine," the Portland rockers seemed want for intensity and cohesion from the get-go. Pink-maned Montoya dangled the requisite smoke from his lips, said the f-word a bunch and busted the odd high kick, Eklund thumped with precision (but how totally emasculating that they need a second drummer to augment his snare and crash attack!) and Alexakis thrashed and bounded about. Yet, the whole night felt less like an urgent rock happening and more like a private payback party for every programmer and A&R rep ever pestered into submission by the infamously eager Alexakis.

While the band reached all the way back to 1993's World of Noise for a lively "Nervous and Weird," and broke up the power chord monotony nicely with an acoustic "Strawberry" from 1995's breakthrough Sparkle and Fade, the evening's most effective moments came from 1997's hit machine, So Much For The Afterglow. "Father of Mine" was tight and punchy as was a spirited tear through "Like A California King," and a particularly bouncy reading of "Everything to Everyone."

Elsewhere though, they faltered hard. Alexakis has an uncanny knack for writing big melodic hooks sadly above and beyond his natural vocal range, much like his key-challenged brethren Billy Corgan, Dave Grohl, Anthony Kiedis and Stephen Jenkins. Forty-seven takes in the studio and you've got yourself a Billboard Heatseeker, but up close and personal it's drop an octave time. To that effect, "Electra Made Me Blind" suffered as did a strained, "I Will Buy You A New Life;" the latter introduced with a mandatory heroin story. Gotta play that drug card.

Of course the most anticipated moment of any Everclear show is and forever shall be the "do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do (chicka-chicka)" riff that signals the beginning of "Santa Monica," still the trio's finest number and clearly the best radio anthem of the Clinton-era. But again those nagging high parts wouldn't go away so Alexakis conveniently yielded the mic to the crowd for half the number. Sadly, on this night the Drunken Gavin Convention Choir sounded even worse than his fading rasp.

Strangely, there was nothing special about seeing Everclear in a tiny club. It didn't feel monumental or privileged to be within sweat smelling range of Art & Co. As both a complement to their down-to-earthiness and a comment on their non-dynamic nature, the multi-platinum selling, MTV mainstays don't really seem that famous. Whereas prior prominent-band-plays-venue-that's-too-small gigs at Bottom of the Hill, most notably Green Day and the Beastie Boys, brought nothing short of a teenage riot, Everclear might as well have been just another talented local band for all the frenzy they drummed up. Some apparent fan club members attempted rebellion with a minor mosh pit, but visceral electricity was conspicuously absent both onstage and in the crowd. The obvious scapegoat for the lackluster vibe would be the preponderance of old industry farts and schmoozing labelettes on the floor, but a great live band should have no problem waking even the deadest of dead. During the encore, Montoya manned the mic for an amply raucous stab at AC/DC's "Sin City," but even the potent combination of his best Bon Scott impression and Alexakis' senseless beating of his Les Paul couldn't salvage an underwhelming evening.

GREG HELLER

(February 22, 2000)