Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone, April 25, 2002
RS Rating: - Reader Rating: Not yet rated

SONGS/SOUND CLIPS Man on the Moon | Heroin | He’s at it Again | Imagination | Bifocals | Doctor Says | Jack Kerouac | What Am I Talking About | January February | Mommy & Daddy | Crackhead | Patti Smith | Torn Rice | Diablo | Cassady's Bible | Apology | Suicide | Man of Stone | New Hampshire | Suzy Said So | Old Tan Datsun | Marco Polo | Outrage at Walsh’s | Jigger of Rye | Places | Candystore | Pandemonium and the Scare | My Uncle Made Me Do It | Trouble on the Line | Turning Myself In | Ferlinghetti | Freedom from Sense | Two Little Bugs | Remember Me | Lost Keys | Cab Jim | Words and Dreams

(Pandemodium Records - 2002)

Buy this CD

The first time I met singer-songwriter Kenn Kweder, in 1975 backstage at a club in Philadelphia, he pulled a sword on me, a genuine military saber. It was his way of saying hello. But that was nothing compared to the show he played with his then-band, the Secret Kidds: a manic aggregate -- in chords, language and vocal spunk -- of electric Dylan, seaside Springsteen, blues-wolf Beefheart and early solo Lou Reed. In Philly's pre-punk age, Kweder was a loose cannon with a poet's mettle. (He papered the city with posters showing his name, the word folk and a photograph of Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald.) He may now be the most audacious man in rock: a guy who's never had an album deal and rarely plays outside the Philly area but has the gumption and tape stash to fill Kwederology Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (Pandemonium, CD), separate two-CD and single-disc anthologies of live tapes, old singles, stage rants and late-Eighties studio work with Ben Vaughn. Maybe I'm biased, but you don't have to grow up on cheese steaks to embrace the wit and bite in Kweder's songs of love, wanderlust and fleeting sanity: "Torn Rice," "Man on the Moon," "Pandemonium and the Scare." And I still think "Suzy Said So" is one of the best '66-Dylan ballads the bard has never written.

--DAVID FRICKE
(RS 894 - April 25, 2002)

Rolling Stone, September 7, 1995
On the Edge by David Fricke

I've known singer/songwriter Kenn Kweder since the mid-'70s, when I was holding up the bar in the Philly clubs he was torching with his madcap take on mid-'60s Dylan and garage-punk crunch. Kenn Kweder (Pandemonium, CD) is the best record he's ever made, a potent work of quiet electricity that suggests New Morning with a dark jolt of Oh Mercy. Frankly, I'd buy five copies even if he wasn't a friend.

Rolling Stone, November 2, 1989
On the Edge

...Man Overboard (Pandemonium, LP and cassette), by Philly rock bard Kenn Kweder (his real name), is the sound of a man possessed by the aggro-folk spirit of mid-Sixties Dylan. "Apology" is great ersatz Zimmie, an acoustic broadside full of righteous vocals and asthmatic harmonica. "Jimmy the Beanstalk" has no lyrics other than the title chorus, but it kicks like a '67 Basement Tapes mule. Producer Ben Vaughn drops hints of here and there, yet the wit in Kweder's writing and the gusto of his delivery prove he's definitely his own maniac. Of course, flirting with madness was once one of Dylan's most endearing qualities.