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The Band
The dudes:
Tom Rosenthal - guitar, vocals, songs
Dan Boardman - bass, vocals, recording
Robb Burnham - drums, style
Their deal: Rock that is also pop. Like say, The Muffs? or The Figgs or Supergrass
or any other vaguely punk influenced pop/rock combo with loud guitars.
Their Story
This band is the continuation of a band
that used to be called just plain Magnatone. Magnatone formed in Minneapolis, MN
in the autumn of 1995 as vehicle for the songwriting of Tom Rosenthal. The original
lineup consisted of Tom singing and playing guitar with Jacques Wait (of Rank Strangers
and the Matt Wilson band) on bass and vocals and Johnny O'Halloran (Magnolias and
John Ewing band) on drums. Magnatone released a couple of singles on various labels
a couple of cuts on compilation records and in 1997 an eponymous full length on No
Alternative Records.
Magnatone's sound? A raucous mix of rock and pop recalling things like, The (early)
Beatles, The Kinks, The Clash, Elvis Costello and the Attractions and Joan Jett.
The original Magnatone did many miles of hard touring in a baby blue 1983 Caprice
Classic station wagon (wagnatone). They began to develop a small following in cities
like New York, Boston, Kansas City, Austin TX, Lincoln Nebraska, Iowa City as well
as their Twin-Cities home base. They shared the stage with such acts as Southern
Culture on the Skids, Wayne Krammer, The Lilys, Nashville Pussy, Guitar Wolf, Selby
Tigers, Radio 4 and House of Large Sizes to name a few. They also performed at 1997's
Mississippi River Music festival in St. Louis and Milwaukee's mega rock fest, Summerfest
1997 on the VH1 stage. Their debut disc "Magnatone" was nominated for best
rock recording of 1997 by the Minnesota Music Academy.
The original Magnatone parted ways in the fall of 1998. A few months later Magnatone
was reformed to record the EP, "Tokyo" for Roll Music. At that time the
band consisted of just Tom with Dan Boardman on drums. Dan and Tom shared bass duties
on "Tokyo." In February of 1999 Robb Burnham took over on drums and Dan
took on the role of bass and backing vocals. The new rhythm section was decidedly
heavier and more hyper-active than the original. The spirit was in the same place
though. This group called itself Magnatone for a bit. After a while the new Magnatone
had added so much new material and dropped so much of the old that they thought maybe
they ought to drop the old name as well. For about five minutes the band tried to
become known as The Forty-five. They even went on the road with that name and released
the song "Take Action" on the 7" Modern Radio Records presents Vol.
1 compilation in early 2000. Very soon it became ubundantly clear that there was
another band from Atlanta, GA called The Forty-fiveS. They were a touring machine
showing no signs of slowing down. Instead of explaining every time about how their
name was not plural the band decided to merge the former name with the current to
become Magnatone.45. This way the answers to the questions "are you called Magnatone?"
and "are you called 45?" would be the same, "yes."
March of 2000 saw the Magnatone.45's release of "From October 'Till Now"
(PMTR001) a five song limited edition EP and their first on Pompello. The group
feels it is their strongest effort to date. Magnatone.45 takes all the influences
of the original Magnatone and updates the sound with a touch of Weezer and Frank
Black and the Catholics type feel.
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