MP3 A Brokeheart Pro - The Kitten Next Door

When rockabilly, alt/country, punk and red red lipstick meet Jeannette and her lovely 8 track recorder.

11 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Rockabilly, ROCK: Punk



Details:
Jeannette Kantzalis started off in her grandma's garage. Literally. Making little 4 track demos to "woo" boyfriends, she was offered 3 demos deals and "passed" on by the "Three Big C's":CAPITOL, CBS AND COLUMBIA .

What's a girl to do? Keep writing and working, she supposed.

Born and raised in the working class suburbs of Southern California (dubbed the "Inland Empire"), keeping two full time jobs, going to school and writing at night wasn't that big of a deal.

While working in a Mailbox Plus in the ghetto of Hollywood, she was discovered by Steven Rosen, a manager for Peer/Southern, a very prestigious publishing company.

After being a signed as a songwriter for Peer, she proceeded to get turned down by the likes of Madonna, Taylor Dayne, Sheryl Crow, etc., for being "too inside, too personal and too dirty", Peer decided to recoup some of their money by selling her as a singer/songwriter in her own right.

She was quickly the center of a bidding war between 5 major labels after one of her "little demos" ended up on the soundtrack, "FATHERS AND SONS".

She decided on A&M and was picked up by manager Frank DiLeo.

After spurning the advances of the prez of A&M, she was unceremoniously dropped after her debut album, Pink Mischief was released. A short year after she was signed.

Broke, broken and disillusioned, she returned to her home in Upland, California and moved in with her parents with the clothes on her back, her Suzuki Samarai, her beloved 8 track recorder and 57 dollars to her name. She'd left her pride somewhere on the 10 freeway between success and utter failure.

What's a girl to do? Keep writing and recording, I guess.

Her punk peers that she'd left behind didn't take kindly her homecoming. She began recording demos, (again!) and selling them at the local punk clubs she grew up in. A cassette and a patch sealed in a baggie for 5 bucks.
She was met with the cold shoulder, the icy stare and one slushy drinks doused on her by the snowy wannabe's of the I.E.

What's a girl to do? Keep on writing and recording.

One of those baggied demos ended up in the hands of the infamous "LONG GONE JOHN" of Sympathy For the Record Industry (Hole, The White Stripes, Bad Religion and on and on and on).

15 seconds into the first song on the "I'm The King" cassette, LGJ called Jeannette and asked her what she'd like to do.
"I'd like to make an album".
"Fine", John said. "But", she hesitated, "I don't have a band. Nobody around here really wants to play with me, so it'd be just me doing everything, just demos from my 8 track".
"Good", LGJ said, "I love these songs just the way they are".
And THE CHUBBIES were born.

She went on to release 11 albums with John, including the coveted 10th Year Anniversary 7 " with a cover by Mark Ryden called "I LOVE MY LABEL".

Just after her debut album, "I'M THE KING", she recruited her best friend Christene Kings (The Sharp-Ease) to play drums and sing backups. They toured all over the world for 7 years in a yellow shortbus.

After giving birth to her son, (recording 5 different releases while she was pregnant with the boy!) she decided she wanted to try yet another new sound, something that had been nagging at her since her first copy of "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash fell into her hands at 6 years old.

She wanted to create something rootsy, rockabilly, alt/country-like but with a darker underlying feel. She started a band called Caroline No but it wasn't quite right. Then another called Tragic Hearts, still not right.
What's a girl to do?

Keep writing and recording. On that same 8 track, all alone in her room, she came up with something that moved her.

Myspace was just starting out so she put up a page, just to see what would happen.
What would happen, indeed.
She averaged 500 hits a day with no promotion, no touring, NO ALBUM! This Myspace was some sort of miracle to her.
Finally, a place she could engage the very people she was trying to reach.

As she recorded 1,2,3 demos then 9,10, 11, she decided to put them all in one album.

This is that album.
The Kitten Next Door by a brokeheart pro.

I hope you like it.

And it's only the beginning. . . Jeannette's already halfway through her next album hinting at what's to come in her "Josephine" blogs on her myspace page.
If you're curious, check it out: myspace.com/abrokeheartpro