The Gerry Alvarez Odyssey

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Music & Art


New Release!

The new second solo CD, with the tryptic title of 

Omega Tea Time, 
has just released. 
His musical 
inspiration, 
that being the late 60’s 
and the pop 
psyche guitar sounds 
that used to emanate daily 
from 
the radio. Gerry is still 
digging those 
heartwarming sounds and you 
will too once
you pop this in your CD player (or whatever means 
you 
have of listening). So sit back, enjoy some tea, 
and groove 
along 
with Gerry as he takes you on a 
musical journey. 
And if you like this, 
you’re sure to 
dig Gerry’s previous CD, 
Candy Prankster, also on 
Ricochet Sound. 
Produced by 
Flavio Monopoli.

Candy Prankster

The first solo CD effort from singer, guitarist 
and 
founding member of Canadian Garage-Punk 
Legends 
"The Gruesomes"!! During the long 
breaks in the 
bands career Gerry has written, 
recorded and produced 
11 original slices of 
Psych Rock reflecting a wide range 
of moods + 
emotions. A virtual cornucopia of driven 
rhythms 
+ surreal passion commencing with the fuzzed-
fueled and sly lyric humour of the title track 
"Candy Prankster" 
thru the catchy lead-in hook 
+ warning of "Fly by Night" to 
the phased-out 
inverted guitar/vocal harmonies + far 
eastern 
drone of "Urban Shaman + Heaven" then 
culmination with subtle effect on the 
Lennonesque 
inspired "The Trail"!! Superbly 
assembled and 
performed... 
produced by 
Gerry Alvarez and 
Alphonse Lanza. 
RICOCHET SOUND is proud to 
offer this aural 
delicacy 
to the world... But don't take our 
word for it. 
THE TIME IS NOW! JUMP ON BOARD AND JOIN THE ODYSSEY!!!

Links


Prints


Temple On The Hill 
by Gerry Alvarez
Black ink silkscreen on
japanese paper with
gold paint.






Books


Candy Prankster
Illustrated Book
of Songs and Stories
Includes lyrics, short stories,
poems and illustrations.
Available at Lulu.com










Latest Reviews

Leicester Bangs Blog UK

Gerry Alvarez Odyssey - Omega Tea Time (Ricochet Sound)

So you play the CD in the car, on the motorway, and you mean to review it the next day. But it’s two weeks until you get round to it. And you play the CD and find yourself singing along. It’s gotta be a recommendation. Gerry Alvarez, former guitarist with garage rockers The Gruesomes, has produced a scorching collection of psych-pop. Drawing on mid-career Beatles for inspiration, and with the licks and tricks to pull it off, this is my new CD for drifting into reverie. “No Man’s Island” is a sinister starter on a journey that by “Middle Way” is in the groove and sun-kissed. “Cosmic Weaving” is far from a call to lysergic needlepoint, and perhaps sums up the second half of this fine collection.

Gew-Gaw-Fanzine

The second album-under a magnificent cover for Gerry Alvarez (guitarist + singer from the legendary Gruesomes) entitled (so psychedelic and enigmatic title) Omega Tea Time has just arrived! It is focused more in the sunshine psych-pop of the 60's than his first Candy Prankster. It has fantastic songs like No Man's Island, Voices from the Sky, End is Beginning, and Temple on the Hill with great melodies that been stacked in my brain since first listening. The more psychedelic, Repression, Cosmic Weaving, and I Hear the Wind brings me in mind the English 60's groups. On top of it all is the hit of the album Too Many Reasons. It is a great song fully inspired by psych/pop culture as if it had been born in the sixties and developed in the 80's.

The Sunday Experience

A very brief mention for this mainly for the fact that both the name The Gerry Alvarez Odyssey and the album title ‘Omega Tea Time’ took our eye and had us imagining something special brewing in Toronto, Canada. Something special brewing i

s a understatement for the Gerry Alvarez portion of the Gerry Alvarez Odyssey is upon further investigation revealed to be the same Gerry Alvarez who fronts garage punksters the Gruesomes. His second album is just out - the excellently titled ’omega tea time’ (his second solo effort in fact following ’candy prankster’) which if like me ought to conjure images of lysergic happenings upon your hi-fi and in many respects you wouldn’t be too disappointed because it seems that Mr Alvarez has a thing for delivering prime nuggets of sub three minute bubblegum grooved power pop that are liberally coated in servings of softly shimmering psych. Agreed the prime reference here is the Beatles especially the ’revolver’ and ’rubber soul’ era though add to soundboard some healthy nods to Nick Lowe (especially via ‘too many reasons’ with its Cockney Rebel styled la la la’s), Kevin Tihista and June Panic and you begin to get the measure of this 60’s star child - we suggest you redirect yourselves to the subtly sublime shade adorned fuzz pop of ‘cosmic weaving’ which has unless our ears do deceive something of a ’reckoning’ era REM aura about it's wares.

BY DENIS ARMSTRONG ,
OTTAWA SUN

Gerry Alvarez had the same job for 25 years. Write churlish punksongs and play guitar loud for Montreal punk giants The Gruesomes. It’s a job he and the boys did remarkably well, until 2003, when the band went their separate ways.

“It was time,” Alvarez said from his home in Toronto. “It was like growing up with your brothers. After 25 years, you want your own room.”So he picked up and moved to Toronto where’s he reinvented himself as the psychedelic The Gerry Alvarez Odyssey.

“I think I’m updating the 60s sound so that it doesn’t all sound the same. I was influenced early by The Beatles, but I also loved XTC’s The Dukes of Stratosphere. I like the idea of a musician as an artist, I can do whatever I like.”

In 1985, Bobby Beaton, John and Eric Davis and Alvarez were four Montreal teens with no previous musical experience but shared a fantasy to become a band like their idols.

They began dressing the part in matching suits, even taking their name The Gruesomes from an episode of The Flintstones. Within a year, they recorded their first album Tyrants of Teen Trash.“Growing up in the ’80s, I didn’t like the music that everyone was listening to. I was more drawn to the underground punk scene,” he said

Now that he’s on his own, Alvarez, 45, is still making the bare-bones rock and roll he loves, but with a contemporary twist.“It was there that I discovered all these great bands that were popular in the sixties. Pink Floyd, The Troggs, early Who. But my favourite band from then is The Creation. I knew then that’s what I wanted.”

He released his first solo album Candy Prankster in 2006 and even self-produced a coffee table book of short stories and Alvarez’s illustrations to go with it. Omega Tea Time followed in 2010.

“It’s a lot easier to make records than it was when The Gruesomes first began. “But the business is much harder. The artist now has to do everything. I want to do my own thing.”