An appeal on behalf of Chris Sheehan

A few weeks ago, while I was on my way to New York City one morning for a weekend of fun, my phone buzzed, indicating receipt of a new email message.  I took a quick glance at it to see who it was, and practically ran off the road when I saw the addressee - none other that Mr. Chris Sheehan himself.

For longtime readers of this blog, you'll know that Chris Sheehan was the driving force/sole member of The Starlings, a "group" that released a couple of fine albums in the early '90s, 1993's Valid and 1994's Too Many Dogs - both of which I wrote about at length here back in 2010.  Before his work with The Starlings, Sheehan was a longtime member of the legendary and popular New Zealand group The Dance Exponents (joining the band when he was only eighteen).

After being unceremoniously kicked off of Dave Stewart's Anxious Records in the mid-90s in the contentious wake of the commercial failure of his first album and his spleen-venting, label-attacking second album, I wrote that Sheehan's personal commercial viability had ended, and since that time he had been "working on fringes of the music industry" as a musician-for-hire, playing with such as The Sisters of Mercy and The Mutton Birds.  I was pretty sure that what I wrote regarding Sheehan's career was pretty accurate (I do try to put in some research into the things I write!).  Still, as excited as I was to receive the first note from an artist I'd actually posted about, I was a little nervous about reading his message - I thought he might be a bit P.O.ed with my characterization of him.  I pulled over at the first rest stop I came to and, with some trepidation, opened my email to read his message.

Well, my fears were completely unfounded; as it turned out, his email couldn't have been more pleasant.  Here's what he wrote:

Hey, great stuff.  I sneaked off and released 2 albums as Chris Starling: Planet Painkiller in about 2000 [ed: actually, 1999], and Sounds Like Chris Starling in 2002.  P.P. was on my own label and sounds like as well but it came out thru Pop Child in Europe.  Haven't squeaked a note since the last record and have lived abroad for more than 10 years.

Thanks for writing about the records
Chris

Relieved, I wrote him back immediately:

Dear Mr. Sheehan -

I saw that I received an email about an hour ago, and when I looked at who it was from, I practically fell out of the car!  Wow - Chris Sheehan himself!  I'm very excited and honored to hear from you!

I'm glad you had the opportunity to read my screed regarding your first album - as I said, I LOVED pretty much every song on it . . .  (BTW - over the years since I wrote this, I've sometimes imagined that you read the part about Too Many Dogs being a "Fuck You" masterpiece at the label and laughing your head off…!)

. . . Well, this is all very, very cool!   Thanks tons for contacting me.  I look forward to hearing from you again soon.  Until then, 

Best wishes always - 

And of course, I couldn't resist asking him:

. . . I hope that my assessment of your life and situation with Dave Stewart's label at that time was accurate.  Please know that everything I wrote was from the heart, and not a slam on you at all; the label screwed you on that first album, which should have been HUGE . . .

Chris's immediate and succinct response was perfect:

Don't worry, you were right!

Since that first exchange, Chris and I have written back and forth a couple of times, and we've 'friended' one another on Facebook.  In his notes and in the few posts he's made to his Facebook page, he's seemed relatively happy and settled with his wife in his current life - at least as far as I could tell.  I was sort of sad to hear that he had been out of music for the past decade, and in one of my notes to him, I wrote the following:

I hope that, when the yen strikes you, you get back to making more music - I have a feeling that there's still plenty within you, and lots more you want to say . . .

I didn't think much of it when he didn't respond to that.  Yesterday morning, I found out why.

Just before heading off to work, I made a quick check of my Facebook page, and found a new post by Chris, for a site called Fundrazr.com, a crowd funding site where people and organizations can raise money for charitable, entrepreneurial, political and personal causes and projects (it appears to be a pretty successful fundraising application; since its founding in 2009, the site has raised more than $20 million for its users). 

The title of Chris's appeal jolted me: "1 Last Album Despite Incurable Cancer".

Here's the narrative he wrote to explain the motivation behind his Fundrazr drive:

I can't justify any of my limited income to be spent on my own non-profit activities. Stage 4 metastatic nodular melanoma. Clinical trials and palliative treatment only. Wife terminally ill. Dozens of rescue animals. I don't own a computer anymore and would like a good laptop and software to see what comes out. I will not divert money from my family for selfish artistic urges. Maybe someone who enjoyed a Starlings record at sometime is flush. The closest I've been is flushed. Anyway if no one helps I'm off the hook so nothing to lose. Ta Chris.

For the second time in less than a month, Chris Sheehan had jolted me again.  Now I know why he was so reticent to discuss a return to recording.  If you check the link to Chris's Fundrazr.com account here, you will see photos posted of the surgery that he has already undergone in an attempt to combat this disease.  It's sad enough that he's going through what he's going through; the fact that his wife is also terminal just compounds the tragedy.

Folks, I don't want to be melodramatic about this - but this is real, and no B.S.; Chris Sheehan is seriously ill.  There's no easy way to put this . . . but there's no getting over what he has.  But during the time he has left, he just wants to have one last opportunity to make available to the world just a small amount of the music he has left within him; a final testament and legacy for his friends, family and fans to remember him by. 

I've never felt the need to include dramatic appeals of this type on my blog before.  I have no lofty goals, aims or aspirations for this site beyond making some good music available to like-minded readers, and making a few friends from amongst you along the way.  And it's rare that I serve up anything high-minded or profoundly philosophical in my writing - I usually just pen silly, lightweight stories that tangentially relate to songs and albums I have enjoyed throughout my life.  But if there was ever a time for me to set all of that aside for a moment, and use this blog as a pulpit to hopefully help out a really good guy like Chris Sheehan, who could really use a hand at this time, NOW is the time for me to do so.

So please, if you can, check out Chris Sheehan's Fundrazr site.  If you're willing and able, please contribute what you can to his appeal.  And also, if you can, leave him a note - he's always happy and appreciative to hear from his fans.  If you haven't heard any of his music, click on this link for my Starlings posting from three years ago, and contact me for a link to the album - I think you'll enjoy it as much as I do.

I'd also appreciate it if some of my fellow music bloggers could pick up Chris's link as well - the more people know of this, the more success he'll be in meeting his 5,000 Euro goal.

Thanks -

All the best to you all from Pee-Pee Soaked Heckhole

The Starlings - Valid

In the late winter/early spring of 1993, just before I packed up and moved to New Zealand, I was lucky enough to hear some really great music by some then-unheralded bands. I was living in the DC area at the time, and by then, grunge had been going strong for almost two years. The local 'alternative' station, WHFS, had fully jumped aboard the bandwagon, and was rapidly devolving into an "all grunge, all the time" format (a move that was probably no small factor in the venerable station's decline and failure a few years later).

However, a couple of 'HFS DJs still showed some flashes of the old independent spirit, and dared to play some groundbreaking stuff. In those few months, the station began playing a superb little Pixies-esque LOUDquietLOUD song called "Creep", by an unknown English band called Radiohead. They also occasionally played a roaring guitar anthem, "That Ain't Bad", by a little-known (in the States) Australian band named Ratcat.

They were playing The Cranberries' debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, practically from the moment it came out in March of that year, nearly a full year before that album and its lead single "Dreams" became mainstream U.S. smash hits [side note: I loved that band from the get-go, bought that album immediately, and brought it with me to New Zealand, where The Cranberries were equally unknown. It was amusing when, months later, I bagan to hear raves from my friends in the States about this amazing 'new' Irish band and their great song . . .].

And then there was "That's It You're In Trouble" by The Starlings, another song in semi-heavy indie rotation at WHFS that I really enjoyed:

I think part of the appeal this song had for me was that the band was made up of New Zealanders, my soon-to-be home country, and it made me look forward that much more to moving there and really getting into what appeared to be a cutting-edge music scene.

The Starlings were essentially Chris Sheehan, a young guy originally from Christchurch (the place I was moving to). Sheehan was somewhat of a musical prodigy, so much so that before he turned 18, he became lead guitarist for the popular Kiwi New Wave band the Dance Exponents. He stayed with the Dance Exponents for three years, then followed a buddy to Los Angeles, where he found himself serving as a guest musician on the debut album of his buddy's girlfriend, Jane Wiedlin (ex-Go-Go's). He was in L.A. for only a year or so, before drifting over to London, England and starting to record solo records under the name The Starlings.

Early results were promising, and on the strength of an EP (Letters From Heaven) he released on Rough Trade in 1990, Sheehan/The Starlings were signed to Anxious Records, Dave Stewart's (ex-Eurythmics) personal label. And that's when the problems started.

One thing Sheehan didn't bring with him to London from the States, but picked up quickly, was a very serious heroin habit, which of course significantly reduced the volume and quality of his output. He was in pretty bad shape for the two-plus years following the release of his Rough Trade EP, but in 1992 he began trying to pull himself together. He entered drug rehab and began work on The Starlings' debut album, Valid. Valid is essentially a chronicle of Sheehan getting onto and off of the Horse, and its making was apparently theraputic for him; he got out of rehab the same week the album was released in 1993.

In addition to "That's It You're In Trouble" (my personal favorite here), there are a lot of good songs on this album, and it got glowing reviews upon release. But in terms of sales, Valid sank like a stone. Sheehan was ENORMOUSLY pissed off at his album tanking, and placed the blame squarely on his record label, which did little to promote it (I'm not sure they really had the money to do so). Sheehan was so ticked off, in fact, that he quickly returned to the studio and recorded an album's worth of splenetic, vitriolic songs holding nothing back regarding his anger at and contempt for his label, calling the album Too Many Dogs. In its own twisted way, Too Many Dogs is a "Fuck You" masterpiece, fairly dripping with bile and venom, but it did nothing to endear him to his label executives. They buried this one even deeper than his debut.

Anxious Records got the last laugh on Sheehan, though. Even though they were livid about Too Many Dogs, they went ahead and allowed Sheehan to record a followup to that album, making him think all was well. The moment he wss done, they told him they were NEVER releasing the album, confiscated the tapes, then unceremoniously threw his ass out of the building and off the label. The guy's been on the fringes ever since, working as a guest/backup musician-for-hire for several other bands.

Just goes to show you: if you can't say something nice about someone . . .

Here's the tuneage - enjoy:

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