Meadows generates sparks on the opening title track “Players Club,” cutting loose on tenor and soprano with help from Matt King’s baritone sax work.
Player’s Club features eleven standout tracks. “It’s a select group that really deserves the title, a fraternity of players who have sustained over the years – and that’s saying a lot in the music business these days.” “Player’s Club is dedicated to my colleagues – all the saxophonists and musicians who go out there every night and give it their all,” Meadows says. Moving effortlessly between contemporary jazz and soulful R&B, this recording – the sexy saxman’s ninth album overall and fourth for Heads Up – is the follow-up to In Deep, his best selling 2002 release. Taking Back Sunday have evolved from being key players in the early 2000s alternative rock scene to becoming a genre-defying rock band, never ceasing to push the limitations of their sound.Player’s Club (HUCD 3082 – SACD 9082 in 5.1 Surround Sound) finds saxophonist/composer/producer Marion Meadows paying tribute to his fellow musicians and peers. The band, in its various formations, has released seven albums to date (four of which were in the Billboard 200 Top Ten, and three of which earned gold records). The current line-up-vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist and vocalist John Nolan, drummer Mark O’Connell and bassist Shaun Cooper-have been through a lot together. It will never be duplicated.” The BBC praised the band’s “ability to write fantastically catchy songs that are poppy and fun as they are upbeat and emotionally aggressive,” while Drowned In Sound prophetically declared, “This is the start of a movement.” Alternative Press called Tell All Your Friends “the record that changed everything,” adding that it was “as close as it gets to a modern masterpiece…. Tell All Your Friends has been widely acclaimed as a breakthrough album in its genre. The album’s enduring popularity prompted a 10th anniversary Tell All Your Friends US tour in 2012, and a live, acoustic version of the album, TAYF10 Acoustic, a year later. One year after its release, Tell All Your Friends had surpassed 100,000 units and was certified Gold by the RIAA in 2006. Thanks to nonstop touring and the emerging power of online fan communities like Yahoo Groups, Myspace and peer-to-peer file sharing, Taking Back Sunday soon found themselves selling out headlining shows, performing a few East Coast shows on the mainstage of the 2003 Warped Tour and sharing the stage with bands like Blink 182, the Used and Saves the Day.
Album sales would grow steadily-and mightily-over the course of the year and would be a testament to the grassroots efforts of the band, their label and their fanbase. With a good start for a relatively unknown band, Tell All Your Friends would sell 2,300 copies in its first week, enough to have tastemakers take notice. Highlights off the album, released in March of 2002, include the dramatic and sonically lavish first single, “Great Romances of the 20th Century,” which tells the tale of an inevitable breakup the darkly catchy “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut From The Team),” which helped popularize emo and post-hardcore music with the mainstream “You’re So Last Summer,” about the brevity and intensity of summer flings and the poppy “Timberwolves at New Jersey,” in which the band reminisces about their early days together. The album’s anthemic melodies, relatable lyrics, driving guitars and tight songwriting resonated with fans and critics alike. With its tongue-in-cheek name (the band anticipated that the album’s success would be largely dependent on word-of-mouth), Tell All Your Friends blended pop with emo, hardcore and punk. Following the release of a five-song demo in 2001 and a year of nonstop touring, the young band went into the studio with producer Sal Villanueva (Thursday, Murphy’s Law) to record their debut.