Born Kimberley Tyler Rhodes, HAPPY RHODES is a singer/songwriter with an amazing 4 octave voice. Her first instrument was an acoustic guitar (she also plays keyboards and synthesizers)that she received as a gift from her mother at age 11. She started performing in cafes around New York at a very young age. When she got a job at the Cathedral Sound Studios, she then began to learn the techniques of recording. In 1986, Rhodes released 2 albums under the label Aural Gratification. These albums were called Rhodes Vol.I and Rhodes Vol.II.

Since 1997, Happy Rhodes is an independent musician. She self released her long awaited 11th album "Find Me" in September of 2007. Because of her incredible vocal abilities, a lot of first time listeners of Happy wonder how many people are actually singing. You can see a chart on Wikipedia showing her range along with the sound samples HERE She is a natural alto, but self-trained to sing the high notes. People often compare her high ranges to Kate Bush, and her low ranges to Annie Lennox or even David Bowie.

Happy's lyrics are often dark, especially in her early works. It would be no surprise to hear her talk about strange creatures either. There are songs she talks about suicide, depression and death. Her music is not easy to categorize with both the acoustic and the electronic elements. You can hear different genres like folk, new-wave, rock, ambient or trance in her music. But they all blend in such a unique way that separates her from others. She also has an extremely devoted fan base. They get together almost every year for ECTOFEST where Happy performs live, and they have a mailing list called ECTO where they share their opinions on Happy's music. You can find all the information about these two on her myspace page HERE. Although it says it is a fan page, everything is authorized by Happy, and she reads your messages as well. You can purchase Find Me on CDBaby, and find her previous albums on www.auntiesocialmusic.com, which is her official website.

Happy Rhodes was very kind to accept our request to be our proGuest. But besides that, she also shared with us what 3 albums she is currently listening to. And they are: 1.“Joy Of Molybdenum” by Trey Gunn 2.“Going For The One” by Yes and 3.“Queen II” by Queen

And now, her reviews for our selected indie artists of the month:

When I first heard his voice, I thought, “Oh cool.. He sounds a little like Robert Smith of The Cure.” That lasted about 5 seconds. The song starts out sparse; piano, synth strings, voice. Then as each verse passes, a bit more rhythm and orchestration comes in, though none of it seems to make musical sense. Parts should be complimentary or serve a function. In this case, they seem random and placed simply for the sake of more sound. I’m sure it’s meant to build to a climax but the cheesy, dated drum loops do not push this song to where it wants to go. Rather, it makes it feel like you’re watching the Weather Channel. Now, I don’t mean to step on personal feelings, but the lyrics are saccharin and overly simplistic. They’re diary-oriented and would have been better left in the journal. They don’t translate well with this music and the vocal melodies are unimaginative and drawn-out. The phrasing is sometimes clumsy as well. Unfortunately, this man’s voice quality, along with the maudlin nature of the lyric content, just make him sound like he’s whining. A 5 minute-long whine. Not good. On a more positive note, I think his backing vocal arrangements in the choruses are decent and sound like at least a small amount of thought went into them. Jay Jacobson Website

This is a Trance-like electronica piece, which starts out with a simple and inoffensive drum pattern. A main melody line comes in, played on what sounds like a Roland guitar controller of some sort. The line is left of center and not at all soothing, which I happen to like. Little bits of quirky, unrecognizable sonic elements are introduced as the tune begins to morph and grow in urgency, all the while revisiting the main melody line, until it winds back down to a quietly driving groove to an abrupt end. What really works about this piece is the author’s ability to use his elements wisely. The sounds are interesting and the piece flows logically. There are however, a couple of drawbacks. One is with the main melody line. While the rest of the parts are heavily quantized,(and so should they be in this case) the main melody seems to be played without quantization. That’s not usually a bad thing necessarily, but in this case unfortunately, it just sounds like sloppy timing. The other is with a vocal effect which appears twice in different parts of the song. It’s a heavily affected voice saying phrases of a scientific nature, such as, “relativity” and “three-dimensional space.” I found this to be overtly corny, especially considering that the voice sounded like an anemic, trans-gendered “HAL9000.” Other than that, I thought this piece was well executed. JVOX Website

I had to listen to this all the way through a couple of times before I could even grasp what was going on, and there’s a lot going on. It’s very prog in an older Genesis/Steve Hackett sort of way and the musicianship actually doesn’t totally suck. There are some nice sounds…who doesn’t love a mellotron? But I have to honestly say that the writing is pretty poor. In fact, it’s kind of a train wreck. It goes from the “quiet section” to the “big chorus with b/v’s” to “the instrumental section,“ and so on, just like any good progressive piece. However, despite the obvious structuring, they don’t achieve any musical relevance. It’s just all over the place. The song is trying to be complex and sophisticated but it falls way short. Instead of taking you on a journey, it’s slapping you in the face with a dead fish. Though I assume the lyrics are deeply personal to the author, they’re a bit silly and the phrasing is non-intuitive. Part of good lyric-writing is being able to make them fit the music. There’s nothing worse than awkward phrasing. Unless you’re Jon Anderson, (and most of us aren’t) you can’t just write words on paper ,then start singing with your fingers crossed. The tone of the singer’s voice is quite nice, but his vocal skills are very limited for what he was trying to pull off. With a title like, “Face Down In The Swimming Pool” I really wanted to like this song. If it had been written as tongue-in-cheek, it would’ve been funny as hell and I would’ve liked it. Somehow though, I think they were serious. The Sad Song Co. Website