Max Indian

Hang in there on this opening detour, as there will be a payoff involving Max Indian soon enough: The book Listen to This! bears a subtitle that’s the very definition of self-explanatory—Leading Musicians Recommend Their Favorite Artists and Recordings. Most leading musicians' sections in the book run three, maybe four pages. The section covering Peter Holsapple (dB's, Continental Drifters, etc.) and his faves runs for a record seven pages, with 44 individual entries ranging from the Louvin Brothers and the Move to Eddie Hinton and Chris Bell. The guy knows music; the guy loves music—and he loves the same records you do. 

Thus, you just might want to pay attention when Holsapple says this, as he did in a Magnet interview, about Max Indian’s self-produced and -marketed debut You Can Go Anywhere, Do Anything: “It has been a long time since an album knocked me out like this one has. The songs, written and sung by Carter Gaj, are what we like to call ‘Beatle-informed,’ which means that they’re pop-rock of the highest order. ... Anything resembling a rock cliché is turned just slightly askew enough to render it refreshed.” 

The amazing thing is, you could listen to just the first 20 seconds of selected tunes from You Can Go Anywhere and be suitably knocked out. Just check out the hum of promise that leads into the indelible opening guitar riff of “Oughtagettacamra,” the buzzing, um, Beatle-informed caco(-sym-)phony that starts “Together at Last,” and the keyboard-blessed strum & stomp that kick-starts “Free as the Wind.” In all, it’s a collection of songs that honors, as the Carrboro quintet is fond of saying, “the ghost of Rockmas past.” Gaj and company know music and love music. And they love the same records you do. —Rick Cornell