House Of Schock - House Of Schock

For the past couple of weeks, they've been hyping the new Showtime documentary airing this past weekend, detailing the rise and fall of the classic early '80s New Wave group The Go-Go's, "the first all-woman group to write their own songs, play their own instruments and have a #1 hit" (as we've been reminded over and over again in recent days...).  Here's the official trailer for the program:

As I've mentioned here before and just recently, I used to be a pretty big Go-Go's fan. I was speaking with my buddy Camob just last week, and he reminded me of when he and I went to see them at Merriweather Post Pavilion near Baltimore during a break we had in U.S. Naval Academy summer training in July of '84, just before they broke up (INXS opened for them). Heck... I'd forgotten most of the details regarding that show, other than the fact we went (I do recall that tickets were something like $14-15...). As I recall, Jane Wiedlin quit the band shortly afterwards, in the fall of 1984, and after a half-hearted attempt to replace her (moving Charlotte Caffey to rhythm guitar and recruiting Giant Sand's Paul Jean Brown as the new bassist), the group had completely fallen apart by the following spring.

After this initial breakup, the band members scattered. I've already detailed in a previous post the careers of both Belinda Carlisle and Jane Wiedlin in the immediate aftermath.  Charlotte Caffey stayed connected to Carlisle, writing songs for Belinda's subsequent successful albums, and formed a band of her own called The Graces (with future star Meredith Brooks); their sole album, 1989's Perfect View, was critically acclaimed but sold poorly. Kathy Valentine sort of drifted around the fringes of the music world for several years, becoming a member of many short-lived, forgotten bands, before forming the blues rock collaboration The Bluebonnets with bassist Dominique Davalos. This group eventually evolved into The Delphines, and released two albums, a self-titled album in 1996 and Cosmic Speed in 2001.

This leaves drummer Gina Schock.  Like Valentine, Schock had long-term professional experience on and competence in her instrument of choice well prior to joining The Go-Go's; also similar to Valentine, Gina had trouble catching on to another band after The Go-Go's broke up in 1985 - which is sort of odd. In any event, Gina noodled around as a drummer for a couple of years for various obscure mid-Eighties now-forgotten bands, at the same time honing her own singing and songwriting skills. By 1987, she was ready to blaze her own trail. She formed a new band called House of Schock and recruited as its first member a transplanted L.A. by way of LA (as in Louisiana) native on bass named Vance DeGeneres.

Vance DeGeneres was/is a very interesting guy. A former Marine in the 1970s, he returned from his military hitch and settled in New Orleans. A local buddy of his, Walter Williams, was creating stop-motion Claymation comedy shorts on Super 8 film in 1974-75, featuring a character

he called "Mr. Bill", and showing them around town; at William's request, Vance stepped in to assist and began playing a character called "Mr. Hands" in some of the films. It was all just a local thing until late 1975, when the new NBC network comedy show Saturday Night Live sent out a request for viewers to send in their own home movies, and Williams' were selected. More than twenty episodes of "The Mr. Bill Show" were produced for SNL, and the character became extremely popular nationwide, generating millions of dollars in merchandising sales annually.

In 1979, DeGeneres (who by then had moved on to a gig hosting a punk/New Wave radio show in New Orleans) filed suit against Mr. Bill copyright holder Williams in federal court for payment from the shows and merchandise sales, claiming that he too was a co-creator of the character and was entitled to fifty percent of the proceeds. After a year and a half of litigation, the courts awarded Williams total control over Mr. Bill and related characters (his dog Spot, Sluggo and Mr. Hands). The settlement said Williams was responsible for 'the basic idea in concept' of the characters in the Mr. Bill show, but added that DeGeneres 'participated in bringing that idea' into being.  As a result, the judgment said Williams would have to refile copyrights on the four characters so that they bear DeGeneres' name as co-creator. The judgment also said DeGeneres would receive 25 percent of all net proceeds of articles produced around the four categories. In exchange, DeGeneres relinquished all claims to copyright and trademark to the characters.

During this period of litigation and radio program hosting, DeGeneres honed a comedy act that appeared in area clubs, and also played bass for a beloved local Bayou New Wave band called The Cold, which performed in and around the Southern Louisiana region until the mid-80s before their breakup. With the radio show also ending around that time, Vance moved west to Los Angeles to try his luck out there in the entertainment field.

Oh, and one more thing I should mention - Vance DeGeneres is Ellen DeGeneres' older brother - yes, that Ellen DeGeneres.

Anyway, Schock gathered up a couple more members for her new band (Chrissy Shefts on guitar, and Steven Fisher on drums, since Gina planned on fronting the band and limiting her time behind the skins), and signed a deal with Capitol Records; the label was undoubtedly happy to add an ex-Go-Go to its roster, to hopefully emulate/rival the success Gina's former band mate Belinda Carlisle was having in her solo career with MCA Records. They even teamed her up again with Richard Gottehrer, the veteran producer behind The Go-Go's multi-platinum debut album Beauty And The Beat (along with other classics like most of Blondie's early albums, The Fleshtones' American Beat '84 and Richard Hell & The Voidoids' Blank Generation... at the time, however, it seemed to have been conveniently forgotten that Gottehrer had sort of dropped the ball a couple of years earlier with The Go-Go's follow-up album, 1982's Vacation...).  Ten of the songs Gina had written over the previous two years were released by the band on a self-titled album in early 1988.

I hadn't played or thought about this album in a while, so I went online to do a little research before I wrote this piece. The very first review I read, on Allmusic.com, was so spot-on it made me laugh out loud: "This album has "record company interference" written all over it..." Yes, it does. It suffers from the same sort of malady that affected Jane Wiedlin's solo debut, which I wrote about earlier this year - it's WAY overproduced, laden with the by-then cliched '80s shimmering, slick-as-grease pop music effects to make the songs ostensibly more "radio friendly"... which is a shame, because buried beneath the gloss and reverb are some decent little tunes.  The opener and debut single, "Middle Of Nowhere", is actually a great song, well suited for Schock's voice.  Here - have a listen:

 

 

Of course, it sounds dated and "Eighties-y" now. However, the tune was a hit in Australia, and could have done well in America as well. But Capitol Records almost immediately disowned this album, putting nary a nickel of money or a line of publicity into sales or promotion, and it sank like a stone, not even charting here in the States. This ended up being House Of Schock's only LP release.

Since that time, Gina Schock has turned her musical efforts more towards songwriting, penning tunes for the likes of Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, and for various movie and TV show soundtracks. Except for the various Go-Go's reunion tours over the years (the first one was in 1990), she had largely retired from live performance. Vance DeGeneres has moved on to bigger and better things in the comedy realm (he was a writer for various shows, including his sister's first network show on ABC, and later served as a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show for a number of years) and in production (developing and co-producing some of Steve Carell's recent films), among other pursuits.

Here's House Of Schock, by the band of the same name, released on Capitol Records in 1988. This album isn't by any means a deathless addition to the overall Go-Go's canon, but it's still worth listening to if you can get past the whizz-bangs it was laden with. Plus, it's kind of hard to track down nowadays... so here you go - put this one in your ears, and as always, let me know what you think.

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