Ween - Pure Guava

On the evening of Wednesday, June 2nd, 1993, the Naval Antarctic Support Unit (NASU), Christchurch, New Zealand, held one of its periodic Hail and Farewell ceremonies after working hours at the Southern Lights Bar, located on the edge of U.S. Navy property close by Christchurch International Airport. The event on this particular evening marked the departure of the current base Supply Officer, Nan, and the arrival of the new SUPPO - me, a fresh-faced lieutenant, recently arrived from a duty station near Washington, DC.

I had worked closely with my old friend Nan (we were friends back at the Naval Academy a few years earlier) for the past couple of weeks since I landed in NZ, meeting the people and learning the ropes related to my position. This day was our last joint stewardship of the office, and we spent the morning and early afternoon turning over responsibilities, with Nan providing me with the final bits of information and instruction needed to fully get into my new job at NASU. But she left the administration building earlier than usual that afternoon, ostensibly to run some errands out in town and to head home to prepare for the evening's festivities. I slogged away at paperwork for the rest of the day, then at five o'clock I quickly changed into civilian clothes, left the office and walked over to the Southern Lights (my car was still weeks away from arriving; I assumed it was on a container ship somewhere in the Eastern Pacific at that time). Some petty officers were already there, getting things ready along with the civilian bar staff. I was one of the early arrivals at the bar, so a grabbed a beer and tried to make myself useful, helping set up the stage and all for the ceremony and party that followed.

I was there working away diligently, hanging crepe paper and running microphone wires across the floor, and didn't really notice when Nan arrived about half an hour afterwards. I only realized she was there when she called my name.  I turned from my work to find that she had not arrived alone - next to her stood a girl . . . quite possibly the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen in my life. She was young, no older than 22, with a lovely face framed by long, flowing golden hair and a tight little body that you could break rocks on, one that was perfectly proportioned in all the right places.

To quote one of my favorite authors, Raymond Chandler, "Whatever you wanted, wherever you happened to be, she had it."

I'm sure at that moment I had a look of shock and awe on my face - that goofy look all guys get when they are suddenly faced with a smoking hot woman - but I quickly straightened out my features (at least, I thought I did) as I stepped towards my old friend and this angel that accompanied her. If Nan saw the look I had, she tactfully didn't mention it. What she DID do was introduce me to her friend - "I'd like for you to meet . . . " - well, for this story, let's call her 'Fiona'.

I have no idea what sort of noises stammered out of my mouth as I shook Fiona's hand - I can only hope that what I said was semi-coherent and not flecked with the spittle and marbles that suddenly seemed to fill my mouth. Yes - she was just THAT flabbergastingly beautiful. To cover my stuttering, self-conscious embarrassment at being so near to this vision's gorgeous presence, I quickly offered to get both her and Nan a drink from the bar - if only to get away from Fiona for a few seconds and gather myself together.  I only bumped into two people while making my strategic, hazy, hasty retreat.

While I stood waiting for their drinks, my mind racing and heart thudding against my ribs, I tried to suss out why Nan had brought Fiona along to this dreary Navy event in this rather dingy little military bar. I couldn't for a moment fathom that Fiona was there for my benefit, and Nan was making a conscious, calculated attempt to throw the two of us together to see what might occur. I just figured that Nan had decided to bring an old friend along to her final NASU function, and everything else was just a figment of my overactive (and hopeful) imagination.

But to my mild shock and utter joy, I discovered as the evening wore on that Nan had brought Fiona along for PRECISELY that reason - to introduce her to me and possibly play matchmaker between the two of us. Unbeknownst to me, Nan had been 'talking me up' to her unattached friend in the days after my arrival in country, and Fiona was eager to meet me. I brought their drinks over and sat with the two of them for a while, and found myself chatting at length with Fiona; I found that she was just as funny and charming as she was beautiful. In no time at all, we were laughing and chatting away like we had known one another for years. I was attracted to her immediately - the whole person, not just the package. I began thoroughly enjoying her company and presence near me - so much so that I didn't notice when Nan slipped away and left the two of us together alone (heh - that sly lady . . . what a friend!).

At one point during the Hail and Farewell, I had to get up on stage with the NASU Commanding Officer to be introduced and to say a few words. That briefly left Fiona by herself at our table. I was savvy enough to notice during the time we'd spent talking together the furtive, hungry glances directed at her by some of the other attendees, so I knew that the 'wolves' would be pouncing the moment I left her by her lonesome (I personally think that that's a cardinal violation of the unwritten "Code of the Guys" that men live under, but that's neither here nor there . . . ). As I stood and did my thing, I watched as the first would-be snake slithered over to make his move. In no time at all, Fiona had sent him scurrying away; she apparently was an expert at that sort of thing - not only putting the guy in his place, but also serving notice to the rest of the pack that she was there with me for that evening. After that, I couldn't help but like her more and more.

After the main events, everyone hung out at the Southern Lights for the after-party. Fiona and I mingled for a bit, then went back together to the bar's game room. We played shuffleboard as a team against two other NASU guys (I can't remember if we won or lost - frankly, it didn't really matter much to me at the time). And we shot pool on the base table, where I had occasion to execute a textbook "guy" move on a pretty girl, the "teaching-her-how-to-hold-the-cue-and-aim-at-the-ball" routine, with me standing behind her, holding her close in front of me.

After a while, the party at the Southern Lights began breaking up, so I threw caution to the wind and asked this lovely woman out to dinner with me that evening. She eagerly accepted, which pleased me to no end. We took her white station wagon down the main drag into downtown Christchurch, and ended up eating in the dining room of the Rydges Hotel, hard by the River Avon - the swankiest place I knew of in my limited access into the city. During our dinner, and in fact during that entire night, she was as sweet and delightful a person as I'd ever met in all my life.

After dinner, she drove me back to my temporary accommodations, a corner suite at the Airport Gateway Motel off of Memorial Avenue, and we said our good nights with a handshake and a quick peck - but not before I managed to wrangle her phone number and a promise of a second date out of her (I say 'wrangle' . . . but I don't recall her hesitating very much . . . !). I walked into my Spartan little room that night, giddy about my future in Christchurch, and completely head-over-heels for this amazing girl. You dream about things like this coming to pass, and they rarely if ever do. However, when the impossible happens and lightning does strike - wellsir . . .

Fiona and I had our second date that weekend, and in the days and weeks that followed spent more and more time together. Before the month was out, we were firmly established as a couple. She all but moved into my temporary lodgings with me; I'd make her pancakes some mornings, and in the evening sometimes we would just stay in, snuggling on the couch watching "Shortland Street" or something else on one of the four New Zealand TV channels that existed at the time. She was fascinated by everything

'American' - our accents, our customs and holidays (she attended her first Independence Day picnic at NASU on a wintery July afternoon - most of the activities took place in the base gym), and the foods from 'back home' that I could get at the small base commissary. Fiona became obsessed with things like Calistoga water, lima beans, Almond Roca and potato sticks (these especially!), things unfamiliar and unavailable in the world she'd grown up in.

And due to Fiona, I got my first full-scale immersion in this new land that was to be my home for the next couple of years. With her as my guide and driver, we went out and about. My first trips to Sumner, Lyttleton, the Banks Peninsula and Kaikoura were made with her. She showed me where to find the best local restaurants for Kiwi fare - from the extensive local wine selection at Saggio Di Vino to the steamed mussels at the Dux de Lux and the delicious desserts at Strawberry Faire. We did highbrow stuff - like attend a formal reception together for New Zealand military officers.  We did

lowbrow stuff - like race go-karts around a local track, and go to see cheesy dreck like Sommersby at the Hoyts 8 cinema. But mostly, we were just together, and had lots of fun with one another. And at that point in my life, it was all good.

My car finally arrived in late July (along with the rest of my household goods), and soon afterwards I moved into a little bungalow in Hoon Hay, a neighborhood near the southern edge of the city. Fiona was over a lot, and we'd spend time hanging out there enjoying one another's company, or she would go through my already voluminous music collection, playing whatever tickled her fancy.  I was working out at the NASU "Powerhouse" gym practically every day, hitting the weights or utilizing the recently-constructed glass-walled racquetball court. And most of the time Fiona would come along with me. We made quite a couple - arriving on base in my gleaming golden Porsche, and stepping out into the Powerhouse Gym parking lot, with her dressed in a form-fitting leotard. During some of our early visits there, she used the weights or stretched alongside me, and drew many a lustful eye in her direction. But soon she decided that she wanted to make use of the building's aerobics area, and asked if I could make her a mixtape of songs she selected from my collection to work out to.

One of the first songs she selected for me to tape for her was a tune I'd introduced her to a few weeks earlier, "Push Th' Little Daisies" by Ween. She loved this song so much, that it was usually one of the first things she'd put on the stereo when she came over my place; she'd bounce around the house while the band belted out their insanely, annoyingly catchy tune:

Ween was formed in New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1984 by two misfit junior high school students, Aaron Freeman and Michael "Mickey" Melchiondo, Jr., who met in 8th grade typing class. They initially didn't like each other, but soon found that they had a lot in common, socially and musically. They began jamming together (both were multi-talented instrumentalist, with a penchant for the absurd), and soon formed the band Ween, an abbreviated version of the common schoolyard portmanteau rank-out word "weenis" (combining "wussy" and "penis"), adopting the respective personas of "Gene Ween" and "Dean Ween". During their remaining years in junior high and high school, Ween produced a series of self-released home recordings on cassette (with names like The Crucial Squeegie Lip and Erica Peterson's Flaming Crib Death). They also gained a loyal audience playing shows at local New Hope bars.

Soon after their high school graduation in 1989, Ween was signed to Twin/Tone Records, and released their first album, GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, the following year. Their second long-player, The Pod, quickly followed in 1991.  Both albums were eclectic, quirky, musically adventurous - and virulently non-commercial. Yet somehow, they sold. Ween was part of that strange early-90s alternative 'avant-garde', almost comedy-rock genre, which included bands like King Missile and The Dead Milkmen, whose music featured vocal distortion, humorous lyrics and excellent musicianship. Like those other groups, Ween became a semi-popular cult band . . . so much so that label giant Elektra Records came calling. Elektra actively courted them, and ended up wooing them away from Twin/Tone in the summer of 1992.

    

Pure Guava, Ween's major label debut, was released in the late fall of 1992.  The local alternative station, WHFS, began playing "Push Th' Little Daisies" to death, and I thought it was so great that I ran out to buy the album. It took me a while to work up to exploring Pure Guava in depth, beyond the hit single - I found most of the first few songs I heard just too weird, even for me; full of high- or low-pitched vocals and highly manipulated, out-of-tune sounds.  But with a little persistence, I delved deeper, and discovered that as 'weird' as it was, practically the entire album was excellent. Songs I especially liked included "Little Birdy", "Big Jilm" and "Poop Ship Destroyer". But the standout tune on Pure Guava, for me, was "Sarah", a rare moment of restraint and seriousness on the album. Gene croons a soulful paean of love for the aforementioned girl, accompanied only by Dean on slide guitar: 

"When I find you in your sleep, Sarah

I will tell you what you mean to me,Sarah

I know this big world ain't always what it seems, Sarah

Forever may I love you, and forever may you dream, Sarah

When I find you in your sleep, Sarah

I will tell you what you mean to me, Sarah"

The result was an effective, emotive, authentic country song - not something that anyone would expect from this group in 1992, but a foretaste of Ween's later forays into the country genre, the high point of which being their 1996 album 12 Golden Country Greats, recorded in Nashville with a bevy of celebrated C&W veterans.

In addition to "Push Th' Little Daisies", I put a lot of other HI-NRG dance-type stuff onto Fiona's workout tape. But the Ween song was the tune she loved and played the most. Ween put out a total of eleven studio albums during their lifetime, along with six live albums and numerous singles. But frankly my interest in the band waned considerably after Pure Guava - not for any particular reason, mind you. I just moved on musically to other sounds, and after a while stopped paying attention to what they were up to. Their final album was La Cucaracha, released in 2007.  The band broke up only just last year, after nearly thirty years together. 

Ween lasted a lot longer than Fiona and I did. Within a year, we had gone our separate ways. I'll spare you the details . . . other than to say that the fault for our breakup was entirely my own. I behaved abominably, and did things that hurt her feelings and drove her away from me. It's not something I'm especially proud of; in fact, to this day, it embarrasses and hurts me to think about it. Through my own fault, I lost the affection of a wonderful girl. After years of estrangement and bitterness between us, Fiona finally forgave me and I made amends. We have both left New Zealand and live on opposite sides of the world, and although I haven't been in her immediate presence in over fifteen years, we still speak with each other regularly and have become good long-distance friends.

I try not to dwell too much on the "what might have been" with Fiona - that's a fool's game. I am happy with the way my life has turned out up to this point, and would happily retain the certainty of my current position and happiness for the more unknown life I might have had with her, had we stayed together.  Sometimes, however, thoughts along those lines do creep into my mind . . . but I quickly try to think about something else. With that being said, I did enjoy the time I had with her.

When I look back and recall those wonderful golden days with my beautiful girlfriend in that faraway country, a romance which began twenty years ago this very day, I don't think much about the places we travelled or the grand things Fiona and I did together. I think about the more private, personal times we shared - sitting side by side on the couch, eating potato sticks and watching TV movies at her place; going out for pizza at Winnebago's downtown; sitting on Sumner Beach, just watching the waves; driving out to Akaroa with the sunroof open . . . and of course, watching her joyfully jump around the living room while Ween played through the speakers at top volume. Nowadays, I can't help but think of her, every time I play that stupid, annoying . . . and utterly joyous song.

Here it is for you to bounce around to, too: Ween's Pure Guava, released by Elektra Records on November 15th, 1992.  Enjoy - and as always, let me know what you think. 

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The Simpsons - Songs In The Key Of Springfield

Phil Hartman (1948 - 1998) died fifteen years ago today.

I remember in detail when and where I first heard about his death.  I was working for a financial services corporation in Irving, Texas, doing a stint in the collections department after being part of the corporate staff, doing work on the commercial lending side, for my first year with the firm.  The collections group was located about two miles from the main headquarters building where I used to work, in a location close by Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport.  Most of the folks there had worked there together a long time and were a pretty tight-knit group, so there was a lot of grumbling and resentment when I, the young hotshot from Corporate, arrived there to assume a job that at least half a dozen people there felt they deserved more.  Needless to say, my first couple of weeks there were not fun. 

But gradually, most of the people there began to warm up to me.  An important tool that worked in my favor was that, as a former corporate exec, I had been granted and was allowed to keep my unlimited Internet access.  Back in those days, I guess the company's thought was that if everyone had Internet access, all that employees would do was spend all workday screwing around surfing the Web (heh - that never happens nowadays, does it?).  So Web privileges were parsed out only to a fortunate few, mostly senior executives - and, for some reason, me.  This came in handy in my new position that March, during the annual NCAA basketball tournament, when I was able to provide up-to-the-minute scores of tourney games to the multitude of hoops fanatics (and office pool participants) there.  And I wasn't stingy about occasionally letting someone into my office to use Yahoo!  It's always little gestures like that, I've found, that turn people around.

I was sitting in my office on that early morning in late May, taking a break and checking out the news, when I came across the initial headline: "Phil Hartman Dead", with no further details offered at that time.  It was such an unlikely, unexpected, out-of-the-blue story that my mind initially dismissed it as one of those wild, unsubstantiated rumors that used to pop up as "news" in the early days of web reporting.  It was when the second headline popped up a few minutes later with the news of his death that I began to take it more seriously.  It took a while for the details to emerge; as in all murder cases, the circumstances were not pretty:

Apparently he and his wife Brynn had been having marital difficulties, a lot of which stemmed from Brynn's seething jealousy over her husband's success in light of her own failed acting career (well, that along with her rampant booze and drug problems - it seemed that she had a long-standing reputation in the industry and community as a total whack-job).  After another of their many domestic spats that evening, Phil's wife went out and remained out into the wee hours, slamming tequila shooters and snorting coke at a nearby bar.  She came back home at around 3 a.m., and without ceremony shot her husband to death point-blank while he slept in their bed.  Brynn then fled to a friend's house (leaving behind her two small children, who were asleep in the home during this entire incident), telling him about the shooting and promptly falling asleep on the guy's couch.  Initially, her friend didn't believe her story, but after finding the gun in her purse, he began to have second thoughts.  Brynn woke up about three hours later and dragged the guy over to her house, were he found Phil's body and immediately called 911.  By the time the cops arrived, Brynn had locked herself in the bedroom with her husband's corpse.  Before they could break the door down, she had shot herself in the head with a second gun.

It was shocking news - so much so that I got up and left my office in a daze, and stumbled over to the first person I could find to tell them the news.  They were just as shocked.  It just didn't seem possible that something like this could happen to a star of his caliber.  At that point in 1998, Hartman's career was reaching a peak.  He was about to begin his fifth season as the lead on the NBC sitcom NewsRadio.  And through the late '90's he starred in a series of films, including Houseguest, Sgt. Bilko and Jingle All The Way, most of which were poorly received critically but financial successes at the box office.

But, of course, Hartman's greatest success during the 1990s came from his many guest appearances on The Simpsons, and the list of classic characters he left behind - Lyle Lanley (one of the greatest musical performances in Simpsons history - the "Monorail Song"):

Incompetent attorney Lionel Hutz (this is a weird color-free video, but still good):

 And of course, the immortal washed-up actor Troy McClure:

Saturday Night Live, the show that made him famous, did a tribute show in his honor that aired on June 13th, 1998, a couple of weeks after his death, showing clips from Hartman's six-year residency on the program.  They replayed some of his classics:  Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, The Anal Retentive Chef, Bill Clinton at McDonalds, etc.  One of the last things they played on that show was the following clip, "Love Is A Dream", directed by Tom Schiller.  Jan Hooks, Phil's co-star in this short, presented the piece, and couldn't stop crying as she did so.  After watching it, neither could I - in light of his passing, it is a perfect tribute, but it is devastating:

In a lot of ways, Phil Hartman's comedic work was sort of smarmy and overly broad, but it still had widespread appeal.  While he was never a big favorite with the critics, Hartman had fans of all ages, and to a man, everyone who knew of him was genuinely shocked and saddened by his death.  His friends in the industry knew him as a hard-working, 'normal' guy, seemingly unaffected by his fame and the trappings associated with it, and they were just as stunned as the rest of the public.  As Dan Snierson of Entertainment Weekly magazine wrote, in a column soon after the news broke, Hartman was "the last person you'd expect to read about in lurid headlines in your morning paper . . . a decidedly regular guy, beloved by everyone he worked with."  

The Simpsons was still going somewhat strong in the spring of 1998, the end of the show's eighth season.  And there were plenty of good and excellent individual episodes to come in the program's future seasons.  But I think that if you had to select the single point in time where The Simpsons moved from being classic, 'must-see' TV and started becoming standard, run-of-the-mill fare (or even worse), the loss of Phil Hartman's voice and characterizations is as good a place as any to mark the beginning of the decline. 

A year earlier, Rhino released Songs In The Key of Springfield, a compilation of some of the best musical bits from the show's first seven years.  There's some great stuff on here:  the entire "Oh, Streetcar!" musical episode (including the song ripping New Orleans that angered residents of that city); Tito Puente's outstanding (and authentic) mambo number "Senor Burns"; Beverly D'Angelo (as Lurleen Lumpkin) and her superb country number "Your Wife Don't Understand You".  But my favorite part of this disc is from the "A Fish Called Selma" episode, with the now-classic Troy McClure musical version of Planet Of The Apes:

Frankly, as good as the selections are on this album, there's not enough Phil Hartman on it.  And the public seemed to agree - this disc only made it to #103 on the Billboard Hot 200, significantly below its predecessor, the multi-platinum Top 5 smash The Simpsons Sing The Blues.  Still, this is an excellent overview of some of the great music that went into the show during the early part of its history. 

So, here it is for you to hear for yourself - Songs In The Key Of Springfield, released by Rhino Records on March 18th, 1997.  Enjoy, and while you listen, recall all of the great and hilarious Simpsons moments brought to you by the late, lamented Phil Hartman.  And, as always, let me know what you think. 

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The B-52's - Mesopotamia ("David Byrne Mixes")

“When someone reaches middle age, people he knows begin to get put in charge of things, and knowing what he knows about the people who are being put in charge of things scares the hell out of him.”    

― Calvin Trillin, With All Disrespect

I've been watching the current Senate campaign in nearby Massachusetts (for the seat of former Senator and current Secretary of State John Kerry) with more than my usual bit of interest in all things political. I actually have a personal connection to this contest - I know the Republican candidate, Gabriel Gomez. He was my classmate at the Naval Academy, and in the same company with many of my old Annapolis friends. I can't say that I know him well, but we're familiar enough to recognize and call one another by name in a crowd of people. It's sort of strange, seeing a guy who you knew in your younger days, the same sort of hell-raisin', hard-drinkin', tom-cattin' partier you once were, now presenting himself as a solid citizen and vying for high elective office. Although I can't say that I support his cause or agree with most of his positions, I wish him well in his endeavors.

I don't know how many of you out there are familiar with the works of Calvin Trillin, the writer and humorist, but if you haven't checked him out, I heartily suggest you do. He has a very dry, witty, gentle, self-depreciating sense of humor . I heard him in a radio interview last year, discussing his then-latest book Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff (a book that went on to win last year's coveted Thurber Prize for American Humor). During the interview, Trillin brought up the topic I've quoted above, about the people we know and have grown up with now reaching the age where they're being put in charge of things, and how weird that seems. It was a pretty funny bit, with Trillin making reference to the kids he grew up with, known for eating worms or wetting their pants in elementary school, now serving as college presidents, elected officials and other respected authorities.

I can relate to that already, looking back not just on the recent Senate candidate acquaintance, but also on the lives of many of my old elementary and secondary school friends. Back in high school, one of my best buddies and I had an ongoing (and definitely non-PC) gag that poked fun at the mentally disabled. So what is his profession now? He's a senior administrator for residential communities that provide care and independence to people with Down's Syndrome and other developmental disabilities, a cause that he's devoted his life to. In another case, I went to school in California with two brothers who did such crazy, dangerous stuff to and with one another (jumping off of roofs into pools, crashing bikes head on, etc.) that I seriously thought they were congenitally insane. Today, one is a respected corporate attorney in the Bay Area, while the other is a renowned chemical engineer. So, it just goes to show you that the attitudes and actions on display in someone's early life are no harbinger of things to come.

All of which brings me to a phone call I received a few weeks ago, from my old friend Camob . . .

I've mentioned him a couple of times here in this blog. He lives way out on the West Coast, in San Diego, so we don't get together very much - I think the last time I actually saw him was in 2009. But we've always kept in contact through phone conversations and emails, maintaining a friendship and connection that goes back more than thirty years, all the way back to when we were young pups living next door to one another in a dingy old dormitory in Newport, Rhode Island.

He's a lot like me, in that most of his musical loves and sensibilities were formed back when we were in prep school and college. Camob was well into the New Wave long before he came to Newport, and was a champion of bands of that ilk that hailed from his home state of California. For instance, I remember when L.A. natives The Go-Go's dropped their hit debut LP Beauty and The Beat in the summer of 1981; you would have thought that Camob owned stock in I.R.S. Records, the way he talked up that band and that disc to anyone who would listen! He knew a lot about SoCal bands like Sparks and the Surf Punks, groups that I had only a passing acquaintance with. But as I mentioned in a previous post, the thing that made us instant friends early on was the discovery that we were both huge Devo fanatics. During off hours, we would sometimes hang out in his room, listening to his cassette copy of New Traditionalists (released the month after the Go-Go's album, in August 1981) . . . or more often than not, he and I would march up and down the halls with our parade rifles, mock-serious, as "Devo Corporate Anthem" (off of Duty Now For The Future) blasted out of his room and James, his older, more worldly roommate, looked on at us with an air of bemusement (ah, the things we did when we were young!).

I was the one who turned Camob on to The B-52's, my favorite band at the time. I was stunned that he was unfamiliar with their music up to that point . . . but he was a fast learner. By Christmas of 1981, he was a full-fledged fan - leading up to our epic journey to Providence that winter to catch them live at the Performing Arts Center (click that link above for the full story).

Although decades have now passed and we are much older, Camob remains a committed fan of both Devo and more especially The B-52's.  He never misses an opportunity to see them play when they are in his area, which is fairly often. I've seen the Bee-Fives about 7 or 8 times in my life; I figure that, over the years, Camob has paid to see them at least 25 times all told, and has been to no less than a score of Spudboy concerts. Just before the holidays last year, during one of our phone conversations, he suggested that I keep an eye on the mails, as he was sending a package my way. I thought that was a bit odd, since he and I are not in the habit of sending each other Christmas gifts every year. I tried to pry out of him what it could be, without luck. But after a day or two, I sort of forgot about it. A few days later, however, a box with my name on it arrived at my door. I recalled that it was from him, but I had no idea what it could be. I tore the box open, and laughed hysterically as I found this inside:

A joke gift, but one from the heart, and a reminder and acknowledgement of our old days together.

A couple of years ago, I was browsing around the Web, and came across a site describing a recently remixed version of The B-52's song "Mesopotamia". So I started looking around for it, but instead stumbled upon a site that had what was purported to be the "original mix" of the Mesopotamia EP - the mix reportedly done by David Byrne that was mostly shelved after he and the band had disagreements regarding the album project (which was why Mesopotamia was released as a 6-song mini-album, instead of The B-52's third full-fledged studio album). From what I read, this "Byrne mix" was included only on early copies of the EP released in England, which were immediately pulled in favor of the version that most people are familiar with. But a couple of the English copies remained at large, and the guy running the site got his hands on one of them.

I practically levitated out of my seat as I read this. Mesopotamia has long been one of my favorite B-52's albums, but to this day it holds a mixed reputation among the band's aficionados. The EP marked a substantial change in the musical direction of the band. On this record, The B-52's moved away from the more 'basic', good-time, straight-ahead party rock sound of their first two albums (The B-52's and Wild Planet) into something somewhat darker, denser, more polyrhythmic and layered. Many fans and critics were horrified by this shift - I can recall one savage review from back then that contained the line "The B-52's tried to take the 'p' out of 'party', and failed." As a result, Mesopotamia peaked on the U.S. Billboard charts significantly lower than its predecessor, the Top 20 hit Wild Planet. This EP definitely put the brakes on The B-52's momentum, and it took them years to recover.

The full story behind the aborted Mesopotamia sessions has never been fully told.  From what I understand, the disagreements between David Byrne and the Bee-Fives stemmed from two things.  First, it was the sound itself, which was a radical departure from what the band was known for; the B-52's (and the label) were understandably nervous about so drastic a move away from what by then was considered a 'signature' sound for the group.  It seemed to them that Byrne was trying to act like a bush-league Brian Eno, and mold the band into a hybrid afro-worldbeat version of what Talking Heads had been doing under Eno's production during that time (Fear Of Music/Remain In Light/Speaking In Tongues).

In addition, Byrne was producing his first full-scale solo work, the musical score for the Twyla Tharp Broadway dance project, The Catherine Wheel. He was working full-bore on that during the day and producing/mixing the B-52's stuff at night (again, trying to be a little Eno). But unlike his mentor, Byrne obviously couldn't handle the stress/effort involved in helming two big projects at once, and one of them began to suffer. Guess which one? So between the changed sound and Byrne's inattention, they collectively decided to part ways, and scrap the full album sessions.

The problem the label had with aborting the album was that it screwed up their release plans; there was supposed to be a full-blown B-52s album on the shelves in 1981. So Warner Bros. quickly slapped together the Party Mix! remix EP for release in July 1981, buying time for themselves and the band while they tried to figure out what to do with the unfinished songs and mixes left by Byrne.

The result was chaos. Island, Warner's distributor in the UK, rushed the pressing of the overseas Mesopotamia discs for release in January 1982 - somehow including unfinished, unedited demos of some tracks, instead of the fully produced songs. So, you see - the heralded so-called "David Byrne original EP mixes" are actually nothing more than a music label's huge fuckup.

Even with all of that, they're still interesting. Three of the songs on this "Mesopotamia - David Byrne Mix" (screw it - for the sake of simplicity, let's just keep calling it that) - "Deep Sleep", the title cut, and "Nip It In The Bud" are essentially identical to what I'd heard for all these years. But there were significant differences in the other three songs/demos:

• "Loveland" - the 'David Byrne mix' is 8:24 minutes long, almost a full three and a half minutes longer than the "regular" version. It's also much 'dryer' than the familiar version; that is, there is no reverb or echo added to Kate's voice in this version of the song. Still, it's pretty good.
• "Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can" - This alternate version is a full minute and a half longer than the familiar version. I'd always sort-of liked the 'regular' version, but I always felt that, like "Nip It In The Bud", it could have been improved on. I discovered that, in this case, I was wrong. The 'David Byrne version', while longer, simply has too much going on within it - a lot of annoying sound effects and horn fanfares that intrude upon and ultimately diminish the song. I frankly prefer the version I've always listened to all these years to this one.
• "Cake" - The hands-down highlight of the 'Byrne mixes'. This version is two minutes longer than the familiar version. In this one, the song is slightly sped up from the 'norm', and overall it's a LOT funkier (in a cool Bootsy Collins, Speaking In Tongues-era Talking Heads fashion) and better put together than the released version. You don't notice the extended length of it; it's THAT good, and should have been the one to have gone on the official EP.

All in all, it was pretty exciting hearing these alternate versions. Despite its critics, I'd always liked Mesopotamia - regardless of the fact that, even at its debut, it had a sort of unfinished, half-assed feel to it. And I knew from my conversations with Camob that he liked the EP as well. So I quickly forwarded him a copy, and soon afterwards received the following response:

"Really appreciate you sending this along. As we have discussed before, I always loved Mesopotamia like you did and I always felt it got shorted by everyone but the true fans. I was never a big fan of "Throw That Beat........" or "Deep Sleep", Loved "Mesopotamia", "Cake", really liked "Nip it in the Bud" and "Loveland". And you are right on with your comments, this version of "Cake" should have been the one they included on the EP."

That's my boy Camob - always on my wavelength!

Camob graduated from Annapolis a year ahead of me, and spent all of his active duty Navy time in the Pacific Fleet. He left active duty back in the mid-90s and found a niche in the professional placement field, eventually opening up his own successful business. But he maintained his Navy connection and continued his military advancement as a reserve naval officer; as a reservist, it seemed that he was more 'active' than he was when he was actually in the regular Navy, with regular deployments to hot spots around the world.

So back to that phone call . . .

Camob called to tell me some outstanding news that he's just received - he had been selected for flag rank - my boy was going to be made an Admiral! I couldn't believe it!

. . . And yet, I could believe it. People who don't know him well might dismiss him - but Camob has worked his ass off all his life to achieve success, both in business and in the military, and has never let adversity or naysayers deter him from where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do on this planet. I have been lucky enough to see all of his facets throughout his life - from the beer-bong wielding, concert-attending, poker playing boon compadre and dependable wingman, to the dedicated family man, savvy business professional and 'watertight' military commander. He's not just one or another of those things - all those experiences and attitudes from across the years are what molded him into the man he is today.

So I don't expect him to change much, now that he's got gold stars on his lapels. He'll probably still chuckle over our email exchanges (some of the funniest things I've ever written and read have come through the banter and correspondence Camob and I have engaged in, off and on, for over thirty years now). He will undoubtedly be the first Flag Officer in U.S. history who's once owned (and worn) a plastic Devo "New Traditionalist Pomp" hairdo . . . one who's served more hours of disciplinary marching and room restriction at USNA than perhaps any other admiral . . . one who knows and appreciates who Lene Lovich, Jane Wiedlin and Susan Dallion are . . . a man who never missed an episode of The Facts Of Life when it was on, and who once nursed a years-long crush on one of the TV show's girls (I'll let you guess

which one) . . . and one who spent much more time laughing and having fun in school and in life than in sweating over things, politicking and glad-handing his way to high rank. I'm afraid to say that there are more than a few top officers out there who greased their way along with that sort of "brownnoser" attitude (and I can personally name more than one . . .) - Camob is NOT one of those officers.

As such . . . well, with my buddy making Admiral, I sort of feel like Henry Hill and Jimmy "The Gent" Conway felt in Goodfellas, when they heard that Tommy DeVito was going to be a 'made man' in the Mafia - "With Tommy being made, it was like we were all being made." With Camob, it's like, finally, the right man, one of our own, a guy I've known and liked for forever and can relate to, made it. And I couldn't be happier.

(of course, in Goodfellas, this happened . . .

. . . so maybe that's not such the best analogy to use in this case . . . but I digress . . .)

So, with all of this, I have to say that in this instance I can't agree with Trillin's assessment of 'friends in high places". Knowing that Camob is now one of the folks "in charge of things" doesn't scare the hell out of me; quite the opposite - it makes me smile, knowing that, at least in this case, justice prevailed, things are in the right hands, and all is good and proper in the world. Congratulations to my old and dear friend!

So, in honor of the new RADM (USNR) Camob, here's The B-52's Mesopotamia EP, containing the alternate demo versions, released erroneously by Island Records in the United Kingdom on January 27th, 1982. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.  

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Boy O Boy - Shish-Ska-Bob

I was going through my CD stacks the other day, and came across this old disc, which has been in my possession for over twenty years. Ah, Boy O Boy . . . a fond memory from my days in Washington, DC many moons ago. This band was a case study in the old adage, "You've got to punch your weight."

Boy O Boy was formed in 1985 by a bunch of musically like-minded friends, all students at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. They made their bones initially on the frat house circuit, playing campus parties and the like at VA Tech, before branching out further afield to other local schools as word-of-mouth began to spread. Boy O Boy started out playing mostly covers of ska and ska revival classics, but soon began penning and playing their own skank-infused originals. Their sound, a good-time, rollicking fusion of ska, rock and funk, with lyrics primarily focused on partying, girls and dancing, was perfectly suited for the college circuit, and the band became known for its high-energy shows. At that time, Boy O Boy wasn't anything of any substance; they were basically your typical frat-house-type band, a bunch of guys who liked playing music on the weekends and picking up a few bucks here and there while they did it.

After graduation, the band members (who at the time consisted of drummer Mike Boyd, keyboardist Eric Lawson, lead guitarist David Triano, Dave Peterson on bass, with a horn section consisting of Jim Pennington on trumpet and trombonist Chris Leitch and the recent addition of Virginia Commonwealth University music major Schiavone McGee as lead vocalist) decided to get serious and see if they could make a go of this music thing. In the late 80s, Boy O Boy relocated east to Richmond, Virginia, a more central, transportation-assessable location (don't know if you've ever been to Blacksburg, but it's in the middle of fucking nowhere), and began expanding their circuit, playing gigs up and down the East Coast. They also started self-producing discs on their own BOB (Boy O Boy) Records imprint and selling them at their shows - the first self-titled album was released in 1990.

I used to see these guys a lot in the DC area in the late 80s/early 90s - as I mentioned in an earlier post, Boy O Boy was a fixture on the mid-Atlantic club circuit. I was mad for ska back in the day (still a big fan today), and went running to see any act of that persuasion that passed through the Washington area (for example, Special Beat (the collective made up of former members of The English Beat and The Specials) played the 9:30 Club on F Street a number of times between 1990 to 1993. The last shows of theirs I went to before moving away in 1993 was a three-night stand at the club - I went to EVERY show, all three nights!). At the show Boy O Boy played at 9:30 sometime in 1992, I enjoyed it so much, I purchased the album they had on sale there, Shish-Ska-Bob (their second BOB Records release) which included just about every song they played that night. In addition to the original tunes on the album (written mainly by Triano and Leitch), the band added reworked ska versions of Rossini's "Barber of Seville" and Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze". But the best song on the album, in my opinion, is "All I Need Is A Holiday", a superb ska workout that reminded me a lot of Bad Manners.

Boy O Boy toured relentlessly throughout the early 1990s, eventually playing more than 150 shows per year at colleges, clubs, and other venues up and down the East Coast. In 1993 they released a Christmas EP, Bobsled, which was well received by their regional audience. Through hard work and nonstop gigging, the band reached the point where it was self-supporting, and while the band members weren't making huge money, they were making a living doing what they enjoyed.

Then Boy O Boy did a curious thing - in mid 1994, they changed their name, now referring to themselves by the new moniker "Fighting Gravity".

Why did the band decide to forgo nearly a decade of fan goodwill and name recognition by making such a move? Well, band members had long held aspirations beyond regional popularity; by the time they had completed recording of their third BOB Records disc, No Stopping, No Standing, they were openly angling for a major label record deal. As part of that process, they attempted to incorporate the "Boy O Boy" name . . . only to find that it had already been incorporated by someone else. Faced with either retaining their original name, which would pretty much seal their fate as a local act, or changing it and building the new name into a national "brand" while hopefully retaining their old fans, Boy O Boy opted for the latter.

No Stopping, No Standing was released at the end of 1994. While it was a stronger album than any of the band's earlier releases, it didn't sell as well as Shish-Ska-Bob or Bobsled. I think fans were confused, not only by the name change, but also by the subtle change in the band's sound. Ska, while prominent in songs like "Godzilla", "Deep Blue" and the title track, was no longer the overarchingly predominant sound of Fighting Gravity. The group's tone became more rock-oriented, and somewhat darker and less good-timey then their earlier work. It was a sign of things to come.

Fighting Gravity's first big taste of national exposure came in the fall of 1994, when they were invited to compete on TV's "Star Search", a talent competition. The band ended up winning the show, and began getting looks from big music labels. EMI offered them a shitty deal in 1995, which they wisely turned down. The band headed back to the Virginia area for more touring, all the while keeping an ear open for additional major label offers they assumed would come pouring in. When no new offers came through that year, Fighting Gravity recorded another BOB Records release, Forever = 1 Day, if for any other reason to keep their momentum and name recognition going. Forever = 1 Day was even more 'rockier' than their previous release, with many of the band's songs veering into the Dave Matthews Band vein of soft pop (no shock there, since former DMB producer John Alegia helmed this album) - the skankified horns were few and far between on this one.

At the end of 1995, Fighting Gravity caught another huge break in their quest for national exposure. That December, Rolling Stone magazine assigned a writer and photographer to accompany the band on one of its regional frat house tours, to document life on the road in a feature article as part of an upcoming issue focusing on college life and music. When the article appeared in the March 1996 issue, the floodgates opened; the band was suddenly inundated with major label offers. Later that year, Fighting Gravity signed with Mercury Records. It was a better deal than the one offered earlier by EMI, but not huge, so the band continued their frenetic touring schedule while preparing songs for their major label debut. Some of their older BOB Records albums were rereleased under their new name as a stopgap, utilizing Mercury's distribution network.

You and Everybody Else was released on Mercury in the late summer of 1998. On this record, the band almost completely dispensed with its signature ska sound, completing their transformation into "Dave Matthews Band-lite" that began on Forever = 1 Day. Most of the songs (such as "Turn To Me", "Waterfall" and "Wait For You") are bland rehashings of tunes done better by other bands. There is very little on this disc that showcases the versatility, excitement or personality that the band used to display in its live shows. Needless to say, the record was a huge flop - listening to it now, you can hear why. Mercury wasted no time in cutting its losses and dropping the band from the label. Fighting Gravity had their chance, and they blew it.

The band soldiered on for almost another decade, resuming its extensive touring and cranking out albums on their BOB Records imprint. Some original band members fell by the wayside, to be replaced by new members who also departed after a year or two. By the mid-2000s, McGee, Peterson and Boyd were the only remaining founding members. Earlier that decade, Fighting Gravity dispensed with their long-time horn section, becoming a straight-ahead rock combo. Needless to say, that did nothing to endear them to their fan base. Nevertheless, Fighting Gravity got one more shot at national exposure. They were signed by a subsidiary of Atlantic Records in late 2002 and prepped an album for release the following year. But unfortunately, the label they signed to went under. The album they produced, Blue Sky & Black, was eventually released on their own label in 2006. That was Fighting Gravity's final release before breaking up in 2007.

Boy O Boy/Fighting Gravity was a good regional band, but I honestly don't think they had the right sound to break out of their limited area and expand their fan base across the USA. I think the band themselves realized that their original sound was not the recipe for national success - ska is not a musical genre warmly accepted by a majority of the record-buying public. Many an American band that started off surfing the high crest of ska's Third Wave (Fishbone, No Doubt, and Reel Big Fish, for example) found more success and acceptance by coasting down into the more familiar, more tranquil, less turbulent waters of pop and funk. Shoot, even Third Wave giants the Mighty Mighty Bosstones didn't find widespread success until they released the considerably toned-down song "The Impression That I Get" in 1997, their only Top 40 hit. In my opinion, the only band in the past 20 years that found national commercial success with an uncompromised, out-front ska sound was Sublime . . . but the band ended right at its peak with the death of lead vocalist and main songwriter Bradley Nowell, so the question as to whether the band could have/would have sustained its sound and its popularity will never be answered.

So, like I said, Fighting Gravity knew that ska wasn't their golden ticket to the Top 40. But in their hunger to make it big, they completely abandoned the music that got them to where they were in the first place. By they time they disbanded, I don't think they really knew who they were anymore, musically.

I'm all for individuals and groups reaching for the stars, and doing what they can to achieve success. And I know that in that quest, sometimes compromises and changes have to be made. But when does it become too much? How much can you change and still be true to yourself? What's the final cost, and is it worth it?

Fighting Gravity/Boy O Boy found what the price of would-be glory would be, and in the end it proved to be too much for them. To paraphrase Mark 8:36 -

"For what shall it profit a band, if it shall gain the whole world, and lose its own soul?"

Here's the best representation of the original ska band in all its glory: Boy O Boy's Shish-Ska-Bob, released in the spring of 1992 on BOB Records. Enjoy . . . and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Pixies - Surfer Rosa (RS500 - #315)

I was driving home from work today and listening to WBRU, when the DJ made a statement that made me feel very, very old:

The Pixies' Surfer Rosa was released 25 years ago today.

Twenty-five years . . . jeez.  It doesn't seem that long ago - and yet . . .   To put it in perspective, Surfer Rosa itself was released exactly 25 years to the day after the release of another historic record, Please Please Me, the Beatles' debut album.  Now, think about the progression, change and development of popular music in that quarter century between the Beatles and the Pixies' first albums - through bubblegum, progressive, glam, metal, punk, post-punk, New Wave, No Wave, New Romantic, etc.  The spark the Fab Four lit in 1963 ignited an explosion in popular music that is still being felt today.  The arrival of the Pixies should have signaled the start of another 25-year rock music renaissance.  And it did, sort of, for a while - but it didn't last nearly as long as what followed in the Beatles' wake.

As 'switched on' musically as I claim to be, I have to say that Surfer Rosa didn't come across my radar for quite a while.  In the first place, it was released overseas on England's 4AD, and its U.S. distribution (handled by Rough Trade) was somewhat limited.  Secondly, in 1988 I wasn't in one place long enough to pause and get a broader overview as to what was going on musically - around the time this album was released, I was moving from Georgia to Virginia to begin my military career, and shortly after I arrived in Norfolk, I departed with my ship on a long European deployment that keep me out of the States until just before Christmas.  Outside of the Boston area (the band's home base) and more musically 'with-it' locales (of which Norfolk was not one), the Pixies didn't make much of an impression on the overall U.S. music scene in 1988.

It was the release in the following year of their second album, Doolittle, that got me into the Pixies.  Doolittle was the band's first widely-distributed international release (Elektra took over the U.S. rights from Rough Trade), and as such it seemed to everywhere all at once.  Like practically everyone else who 'discovered' the Pixies that year, the gateway song for me was "Monkey Gone To Heaven", which I first heard one evening on the short-lived Hampton Roads alternative radio station (call letters long forgotten) while I was driving home to Virginia Beach down I-64 after a hard day's work at the Norfolk Naval Base.  By the time Black Francis was screaming ". . . And GOD is SEVEN!  And GOD is SEVEN!  And GOD is SEVEN!", I was already making a swerving detour onto I-264 towards the mall to buy this album as fast as I could.  I picked up a cassette copy at Big Daddy's Records & Tapes store at Military Circle Mall (that store's big claim to fame was its "lifetime guarantee" - if any tape or CD ever broke or went bad on you, they vowed that they would replace it for free, no questions asked.  Needless to say, the place no longer exists . . . ).  

Later that spring, my ship entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard to get a new fire control system installed.  With no overseas deployment scheduled for that year, I spent the warm spring and summer days and weekends In the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area, going to the beach and hitting the clubs with my friends, with Doolittle blasting through my open car windows the entire time.  I absolutely loved this album, so much so that I quickly began looking for additional Pixies releases.  I found a cassette copy of Surfer Rosa up in DC at my old standby, the George Washington University branch of Tower Records. 

I thought that nothing could top the brilliance of Doolittle . . . until I heard Surfer Rosa.  EVERY song on this album was a winner, including my personal favorites "Brick Is Red", "Cactus" and "Break My Body".

Big Black's Steve Albini, who produced the album, was openly contemptuous of the Pixies during the sessions, and soon afterwards said several disparaging things about the band and their music, admitting in interviews that many of the seemingly innovative recording techniques he used on Surfer Rosa (having band members sing in an echo-ey concrete restroom, running vocals through guitar amps, or including extended studio banter on the record) were done basically to amuse himself, and not necessarily to benefit the band (yes, he's (or at least was) an asshole . . . but he later apologized for his remarks and attitude, heaping praise on the group).  But despite Albini's personal feelings at the time and however you feel about him, whatever he did on Surfer Rosa worked.  He and the band created a unique, groundbreaking, classic album.

Looking back, you would have thought that the release of Surfer Rosa and the rise of the Pixies in the late '80s/early '90s would have led to the same sort of long-term, lasting emergence of musical innovation and variety that occurred in the wake of Please Please Me twenty-five years earlier.  And for a while, that was the case - I think that that five-six year window after the Pixies' debut album came out was not only the Golden Age of alternative music, but really the last time when great music not only seemed to be coming out of everywhere, but was being duly acknowledged as 'great music' in its present period, not long afterwards by music critics of the future.

[Now, I'm not saying that the Pixies were the direct cause of all of this happening; Lord knows that there were many other influential bands around during and before this time also serving as groundbreakers and catalysts.  But the band and this album serves as a convenient touch-point, a place to point at and say "See?  Here's where the floodgates began opening" and fantastic tunes began flowing in from seemingly every corner.]

During that time period, bands that a few years earlier were and might have been little-known, little-heard 'cult' bands - Ween, Sonic Youth, They Might Be Giants, Nitzer Ebb, The Sundays, Pavement, PJ Harvey, Stereolab, Cocteau Twins . . . (I could go on and on) - became widely recognized, popular and commercially successful groups.  It was the heyday of independent and college radio stations, which were widespread across the country and had the courage to buck the mainstream and play 'non-commercial' music.  Alternative music morphed into several subgenres - indie, jangle pop, Madchester, riot grrl, ska-punk, and of course grunge, to name a few - all of which thrived, at least for a while.  But this "golden age" was relatively short-lived, and by the mid-1990s it definitely felt as though an era had passed, and the apparent willingness of the media to continue exposing and championing new bands and cool sounds had come to an end.  

You can't quite put a definitive date on when music started turning to shit in the 1990s, but the breakup of the Pixies in early 1993 is a pretty good point to mark the beginning of the end.  I remember following the various rumors and bulletins related to their demise during the winter of 1992-93, first with disbelief and shock, then with sadness and resignation.  It was heartbreaking, witnessing their acrimonious end; in a way, the Pixies had become more than just a band, to myself and many others.  I don't think I'm overstating the feeling that lots of us shared back then - the Pixies and their music represented more than just a genre (alternative) or a style (LOUDquietLOUD) or a location (the fabled 'Boston Scene').  They represented an entire era, when the unfamiliar and experimental and exceptional, for a while, became the norm - an era that with the band's passing would never again come to pass . . . sort of like the Beatles, in a way.

OK . . . I guess I've said more than enough about this group and this disc.  Music is what you're here for, and music is what you're gonna get!  Here, for your listening pleasure, is Surfer Rosa, the Pixies' first full-length album, released March 21st, 1988 on 4AD (what I'm offering here is actually the Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim compilation, which I picked up on CD a couple of years after my cassette purchase).  Enjoy this album as you think back over the past twenty-five years of so of YOUR life (assuming you're that old) . . . and as always, let me know what you think.

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Ratcat - "Tingles" EP

Another great memory from my days in the Washington DC area in the early '90s . . .

I first heard Ratcat's "That Ain't Bad" on the local alternative station there, WHFS, soon after I moved back to the area in the spring of 1991.  They really championed this unknown Australian band, and they HAMMERED this song on their station, day and night.  And it was easy to hear why - the song was catchy, hooky, punky, guitary - all the things I liked in music back at that time, all rolled up into one 3-minute blast.  After a couple of exposures to it, I ran like a bastard for the record store and snapped up an import cassette copy, which I began hammering myself on my car's tape player.  I didn't know much about the band at the time (it being the pre-Internet days), but their music was all right with me.  It wasn't until much later that I learned more about the group.

Ratcat was formed in Australia in 1985 by three Sydney-area teenagers, Andrew Polin (drums), Victor Levi (bass) and Simon Day (guitar/vocals), evolving from Levi and Day's garage band Danger Mouse.  The band paid its dues in the local small-club and party circuit, and gained a following among Sydney's skateboarding and punk communities with a sound that was more guitar-driven power pop than straight-ahead punk, although there were a lot of punk inflections in their music.  In late 1987, Ratcat came to the attention of local indie label Waterfront Records, who signed the band and quickly released their debut eponymous EP before the end of that year.  The record was well received in certain quarters of Australia, but did not chart.

Over the next two years, the band released several singles and one full-length album, This Nightmare, on Waterfront, which again made no great waves on the national charts.  This was mainly due to Waterfront Records' limited distribution and reach, which kept Ratcat's music off of Australian radio and held back the band's success.  Levi got fed up with it all pretty early, and quit the band in late 1988; he was replaced by new bassist John McAteer.  With the relative failure of This Nightmare, the rest of the band also saw the handwriting on the wall; after one final single release ("Saying Goodbye" / "Tura Satana" / "Overdrive") in late 1989, the band said goodbye to Waterfront as well, and signed with indie upstart RooArt in 1990.  McAteer decided to call it quits just before the label switch; he was replaced by Amr Zaid.

While RooArt, like Waterfront, was also a small independent, they had one major factor in their favor - the label had wisely entered into a distribution deal with recording giant Polygram, vastly increasing the exposure of groups on their roster.  RooArt engineered an all-out marketing strategy for Ratcat's first release that November, the 6-song "Tingles" EP.  The label saturated the country with a superb advertising campaign showcasing the band, and shrewdly directed purchasers to buy the disc at their local independent record shops (as album sales in department stores did not count towards the overall Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) charts).  The strategy was a bigger success than anyone could have imagined; the "Tingles" EP quickly shot to the top of ARIA's Alternative charts by Christmas, and soon after crossed over to reach #2 on the overall national charts.  The lead song off the EP, "That Ain't Bad", received massive mainstream radio airplay, and also reached #1 on the Australian singles chart.  Here's the video:

A band that could barely fill a mid-sized Sydney club less than six months earlier was suddenly the hottest, most popular group in Australia.

Ratcat followed up on their late-1990 success with their first LP release on RooArt, Blind Love, in April 1991.  Both the album and the lead single, "Don't Go Now", topped the charts by that June.  That spring, the band went on the road, supporting INXS on their huge "X" tour, then going out on their own as the headliner and playing to massive crowds of rabid fans.  In Australia in 1991, Ratcat could do no wrong.

Then the wheels started coming off . . .

Like many other Australian bands before and after them, Ratcat saw its future in the U.S. market.  In the summer of 1991, the band headed over to the States, playing support gigs with the likes of Iggy Pop and a recently reformed MC5.  The shows were well-received, but did little to enhance the group's profile stateside.  By the time they returned to Australia in early 1992, Ratcat-mania had subsided.  The band released two singles and a new album, Inside Out, with new bassist Marc Scully [man, this group went through a lot of bassists . . .], all of which reached the lower rungs of the Australian Top 50.  But Ratcat's bubblegummy, power-pop sound was starting to sound dated, especially in the wake of the rise of grunge music during this period of that decade.  The band released a couple of EPs in 1993 (neither of which charted) and laid down tracks for a third album (which wasn't completed/released until 1997).  But by the end of that year, the band was essentially kaput.

I had no idea about what had transpired with Ratcat; when I moved to New Zealand in early 1993, I fully expected the place to be filled with rabid Ratcat fans like myself.  So I was surprised (and somewhat put out) when some of my new Kiwi friends gave me the big laugh when I told them how much I liked this band.  By that time, Ratcat was being dismissed in one of two phrases: "Those guys are a kiddie band!" (akin to the present-day Jonas Brothers or One Direction), or "Ratcat?  Those guys were washed up a year ago!"

[That reminds me of when I was in high school in Monterey, California in the early '80s, when AC/DC was just getting big here in the States.  We had an Australian exchange student in our class, who used to laugh whenever someone came in wearing an AC/DC tee-shirt - "That band was washed up in Australia two years ago!"  I don't know how true that was, but at the time I believed it!]

In this case, my friends there were right.  With the lack of new releases by the band in the years I lived in Christchurch, I quickly determined that yes, Ratcat was no more, and moved on to new sounds.  But I never forgot that great EP and that incredible song . . .

And it appears that I'm not alone in remembering.  Ratcat has recently been experiencing a wave of nostalgia for their music; the band recently reformed for a one-off show in Sydney, playing Blind Love in its entirely and other hits before an appreciative crowd.  And a (godawful) cover of "That Ain't Bad" was recently showcased in an Australian bra commercial (Simon Day has a short cameo in the ad): 

Ratcat is now seen as a pioneer in Australian indie rock, finally providing the band with some long-overdue acknowledgement and appreciation.

And finally, here it is for you to appreciate as well: Ratcat's "Tingles" EP, released in November 1990 on RooArt Records and distributed by Polygram.  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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