Artist description Quirky pop sensibilities, superb musicianship, airy harmonies

Music Style California swinging psychedelic pop

Musical Influences Mamas and the Papas, ABBA, Fleetwood Mac

Similar Artists Aren't any...sorry.

Artist History Don was sitting on the floor of his 9th floor Hollywood apartment with an acoustic guitar and a woman of dubious origin. For the entire summer he had been listening to Pet Sounds. He looked at his guitar, then at the woman and said, "I wanna do Pet Sounds...I wanna do Fleetwood Mac." At that point Alyxx walked in and Don began strumming the chords to his favorite Fleetwood Mac song. When he got to the chorus, everyone in the room came in an on the right harmony: "You can go your own way...go your own way." The girls and boy collapsed into convulsive laughter and went out into the early summer evening to walk around West Hollywood... A Love Triangle at Pride. A band was born. Don began writing and recording new material for the new band. (Three of those songs appear here.) Two singers later, Don and Alyxx found Ursina and they lived together, singing, watching blake Edwards' movies and eating Indian food. Don wrote songs. Don sang 'em. Alyxx sang 'em. Ursina sang 'em. They all sang for each other. It was the first band of it's kind in L.A. any of them had ever seen. Gigs started. The demo dragged on. The band fell together...a collection of fine players from both coasts and Nashville. The band got better. The gigs got louder. The demo got born and here it is for you to dig. To paraphrase Mike Bloomfield at Monterey, "The colors will flash and the sounds will embrace you and it's beautiful." It's Love Triangle.

Group Members Alyxx Ian, vocals; Ursina Amsler, vocals; Don Ian, vocals & instruments

Instruments Guitars, bass, drums, keys, strings & a trio of lead singers

Press Reviews LOVE TRIANGLEJune 9, 2000 One day in 1966 I turned on my 9-volt transistor radio and, 33 years later, Love Triangle blared out. Wintery Friday nights in L.A. can be cold, wet, and along with being the end of a week, can also seem to be the end of just about everything else, too. This was a Friday like all that. I'd developed a case of the Pore Me Blues and was holed up at Nudie's in the Valley in an effort to shake them. I settled down with a hot double-latte and waited for Don Ian's new band, Love Triangle,to play their debut set. In between the headlining band's two sets, Don,Alyxx, and Ursina set up with the other guys' cables while I fished out a Sharpie and started doodling on some nearby napkins. While I hacked at some jagged, angular figures on the paper, the amps crackled, Don introduced the group, and the room filled with the opening strains of "Baby Gets Me High." Eight bars later I left off of the damn doodles and looked up. I forgot whatever the hell else in the world was wrong and listened to something right: the music of Love Triangle. "Baby Gets Me High" has a groovy, gently swaying canter to it that blossoms fully under Don's confident arrangement of harmonies for himself, Alyxx(who sings the high parts) and Ursina (who belts out the low ones). It's an infectious feel-good anthem to Baby's good vibrations, but even more than that it's a celebration of the singer's figuring it out at just this moment, and that's what swings this song so sweetly. You might easily hear this song playing over a good movie's tail credits, and I actively imagined it, my leg unconsciously swaying to the groove. As I looked back down at my doodles, I noticed the sharp hash marks I'd been making had developed into loopy, giddy swirls. My spirits, obviously, had been lifted. I reached for another napkin and on they played. "I Can Make You Happy," which was inspired by a rumoured conversation between Mama Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty, starts off in a loping, goosey,bass-driven gait that ingeniously develops its way through a cautionary tale of how both "he" and "she" have got a lot to learn from each other, and culminates in Don's striking vocal cadence halfway through, where he seems frankly a little scared of how ever present "she" is in his life. He's going to be made happy whether he likes it or not. I called this one Don's little concerto, but don't let that get in the way of enjoying it; Don certainly doesn't. The deceptively simple ballad "I Know I Let You Down" is a good example of Don's affection for mid-'60s California Pop; but listen to how, as he sings his confession, Alyxx and Ursina's vocals slyly develop underneath and grow, lingering at the end with the bittersweet notion that despite his best intentions, they'll just have to "get along without each other" after all. Do you hear some of the electric folk influence of The Mamas and Papas here, some Scott Mackenzie, or wall-of-pop Hollies echoed in these songs? Sure. Don makes no bones about it. After all, (who said it? Picasso? Lennon and McCartney?) if you're gonna steal something, steal from the best. But he's done more than ape the sounds of those, his own pet sounds from his earliest acquaintance with a transistor radio. He's fashioned intelligent and catchy tunes that, while telling his personal stories of love'svimprobable salvation, nevertheless brighten the moment and convince us that everything'll probably turn out all right anyway. Of course, they played more than just these three songs that night and I wish to God they could all have been on this demo -- but a demo's a demo, I guess -- and the next disc won't be so short, I'm sure. Suffice it to say for now that the happy doodling I did that night exhausted the napkin supply at my table and two others. I made my exit before Nudies' thought to charge me for them all. Get into Love Triangle.

Location Los Angeles, California - USA

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