Friend of WOW, filmmaker and visionary John Roecker is releasing an album for Record Store Day April 16th. It is a collaboration with musician Dylan Melody. Dylan lived in a small town in Illinois when John encouraged him to come Los Angeles and pursue his dream of creating music. Together they wrote 47 songs, usually drunk until dawn in John’s living room. They would create with the television on, watching everything from documentaries about Alexander McQueen to David Lynch. Their immersion in both film and music resulted in a sound which is uniquely their own. Roecker describes their relationship as symbiotic,
“I was giving Dylan an education of things that I loved and in return he taught me how to write songs.”
Roecker’s love and talent for film making and visual art manifested itself in accompanying music videos for each of the tracks on the record. The album covers, (a Mapplethorpe inspired photograph of Dylan) are all one of a kind and were hand silk screened by the duo and include a lyric sheet with a lithograph. “When I was a kid and bought an album” Roecker said” I would listen and just stare at the album cover, it was tangible beautiful art to me. Now everything is just a download, and we wanted to bring back something for fans to hold in their hands and love, something from us.”
Roecker has worked with everyone from X and Rancid to Green Day. When he was making his genius film “Live Freaky! Die Freaky!” a stop motion-animated, musical motion picture about Charles Manson, he cast Billie Joe Armstrong as Manson. The two became friends and Billie asked him to film Green Day’s next album project that would be the album American Idiot. Coincidentally, Dylan’s first Rock album which he received from his musician father at age ten was American Idiot. Eleven years after the epic album, Roecker’s documentary “Heart like a Hand Grenade” was finally released. Dylan scored the film which was an incredible full circle of meant-to-be kismet beauty.
The album is being released on Frontier Records which is owned by another WOW alumni Lisa Fancher (the first woman to own a Punk Rock label) Frontier Records released legendary albums by The Adolescents, Circle Jerks, Christian Death and Elliot Smith.
It is with great pleasure that we bring you Broken Cocktail Dress the first single from the Roecker/Melody record One Foot On The Mattress, The Other On The Floor