Continuing our survey of the Regional New Wave Counter Reformation, we focus on the Mississippi band The Trillions.
The Trillions formed in 1982 as a jazz band originally named Cooter Scooter. They soon changed the name to The Trillions in the wake of New Wave's rise and their passion for body morphing and electronics.
They settled into a modern sound by trading their saxes for synthesizers, primarily under the influence of Larry Fast. The original lineup of Calvin Jimson and Peter Robinson on synths with Randy Kucharek (drums) was maintained throughout their run.
The band played instrumental music and this enabled them to thrive, allowing them to perform at dances, frat parties and concerts with equal ease. Thus they escaped subjugation to the New Wave Hell of southern clubs and house parties. Their jazz background, and pronounced affinity with progressive rock, gave them a level of musicianship which carried them beyond the narrow confines to which their 'New Wave' styles might otherwise have relegated them.
They slowly gained in popularity and began doing shows at the University of Mississippi opening for more popular national bands. Just as they were attracting the attention of recording labels, the band was involved in a bitter lawsuit with the famous Mississippi punk entrepenuer Francis Sadileko.
Sadileko had secretly stolen the band's trademark and copyright when they signed a contract with him to open for The Ravyns at 3 Mississippi shows. The band signed the deal without reading it carefully, and when recording offers from Epic Records began to come in, Sadileko stepped forward.
Sadileko's intention was to take some large percentage of any recording contract fee but he was soon killed in a steam shovel accident and The Trillions were left in a legal limbo long enough for their popularity (and major label interest) to fade. Unable to control their name and music, unable to legally work with this tangle hanging over them, the band drifted apart.
The Trillions left no official recordings behind, although purported live tapes surface from time-to-time-- they are of poor quality and difficult to obtain. Live photographs of the band are included in the seminal work "Punk and Neo-Tribal Body Art: Volume 5."
Currrently, the members of The Trillions are all out of the music business. Calvin Jimson works as a producer for Greenville Television Channel 50, Peter Robinson is a researcher at a Bio-Defense lab in Flora, and Randy Kucharek runs a large apparel screen printing company.
Continuing our survey of the Regional New Wave Counter Reformation, we now examine the Toronto band Martha and the Muffins.
The group started in 1977 at the Ontario College of Art. Instrumentation consisted of synths, guitar, bass, drums, vocals and sax. They released their first album in 1979. It included the hit Echo Beach:
from 9 to 5 i have to spend my time work
my job is very boring i'm an office clerk
the only thing that helps me
pass the time away
is knowing i'll be back
at echo beach some day.
Oh the sound, the sound was metallic with the wispy hihat, the shimmering flanged guitar and a stiff-tongued roboticism conjuring cerebral anti-expressionist vibes born of snowy Canadian climes, and by snow I mean cocaine-- also the lead singer wore a kind of futuristic jumpsuit that buttoned diagonally across the breast.
Back in those days of only semi-coherent 'big media' all one needed to patch different chilly flavors of music together was a razor blade and some tape as evidenced by Martha and the Muffins 1981 LP, "This is the Ice Age," which paired random noises with wan sci-surf music in a prefiguration of various euro-styles. The great thing about Martha and the Muffins was that they had a fairly good-sized hit on their first record so they had the chance to put some interesting things out to a larger public via radio and video plays. They hewed proudly the mathy course in the title song:
Riding our bicycles down on the freeway,
Leaving distorted cars trailing behind,
We move like bullets!
No danger, no danger
We take that for granted.
Note the exclamation point! Another cool song from that LP was Women Around the World at Work. All in all, not as deranged as Toto but pretty coked-out in its own right. I heard a funny story in rehab about one of the dudes in Toto. He was convinced that his 'coke bugs' were actually caused by real microscopic bugs. Even though doctor upon doctor assured him it was just a symptom of addiction he refused to accept it. He went so far as to razor blade off a square-inch piece of his skin and ship it to a specialist in Europe, demanding every kind of test money could buy. They found nothing.
In 1983, Martha and the Muffins had a shake-up and some original members left. The name was changed to M+M, with the original Martha henceforth being augmented by studio musicians. M+M went on to have better commercial success, dance music hits &c. until about 1986, when the entity then began to cool its heels. A semi-reunited Martha and the Muffins have recently emerged and they are due to release a new album sometime this fall.
Continuing our survey of the Regional New Wave Counter-Reformation we turn our gaze now to Idaho.
The Mojo Goblins were Idaho's original New Wave band; though, as a friend of mine noted: "They were 'New Wave' because no one ever heard of them."
They focussed initially on a minimalist funk sound redolent of later Human Switchboard and Rip, Rig and Panic. After a brief but substantial era of relative financial success in the 80s, they withdrew from the national scene and concentrated on their home state and a more Ski Lodge Party sound featuring music from the 50s through today's hits.
Their own original bio described The Mojo Goblins as 'uninterrupted entertainment with DJ-style polyrhythmics.' I would describe them as a collection of four incredible musicians responding to the aggressive hegemony of Los Angeles and London by reforming their own approach rather than capitulating to the designs of the international system that dumped talentless bands on the market through their powerful monopoly on marketing and distribution. And compact discs were still a few years away.
The Mojo Goblins were led by songwriter Carole Hensley. Lyrically, she evinced two distinct obsessions:
Western geography.
Buckminster Fuller's Spaceship Earth.
Here's a sample from a song called Synergy:
Pulled out of Blanchard
Diesel wound up
Three days in Chattaroy
Three climate zones
Hell's Canyon architect
In the regenerative landscape.
Another interesting thing is that they never played a seventh chord.
The Mojo Goblins released one single on their eponymous label (Synergy b/w Dazzle--sold only at their shows) and they toured extensively in the west 1981-1985. The Mojo Goblins also had two live tracks recorded in LA featured on KROQ's The New Music Live Vol. 3 compilation cassette.
Two original members left to relocate to Seattle, Washington but Carole continued while dropping most of the original material from their repertoire and touring mainly in Idaho in the following decade. The latest incarnations of the band have continued more along the lines of a classic casino show-band and they have performed at many Tahoe, Reno and Las Vegas venues.
Continuing our survey of the Regional New Wave Counter-Reformation, this week we look at the late-70s-early 80s Washington, DC band Tru Fax and the Insaniacs.
With a sound somewhat akin to Pylon or The Waitresses, TFATI were a fixture at the 9:30 Club in DC which had a big pole right in front of the middle of its small stage. The club's interior was painted black, perhaps in tribute to how someone imagined Berlin was like.
The band played mostly in DC but ventured out reluctantly to NYC, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina. Like most DC bands of the time they seemed content to indulge in regional comforts. This was a hallmark of the New Wave Counter-Reformation and produced many desirable results in cities where pop music was seen as an acceptable outlet for stray or excess energy rather than some sort of serious endeavor, either in the political or financial sense.
Many DC bands followed this pattern, some by choice and others due to ignorance about the general structure of the music business or due to personal miscalculations such as drug addiction or lack of a vehicle.
Tru Fax and the Insaniacs got some local airplay with their great song Washingtron. It captured perfectly one very large side of the archetypal DC lifestyle, a side oft disguised by numerous occasion to irony or downright lying-- and, indeed, this uneasy balance between satisfaction and emptiness can be a source of mild self-recrimination for many a DC resident to this day:
I used to be a wai-tron in the lounge at the Hil-tron.
Now I work for my Sena-tron and I live in Arling-tron.
I'm just a Washing-tron.
"Washingtonian Magazine" named Tru Fax and the Insaniacs the worst band of 1980 without ever having heard them. Washingtonians thus became informed about the band and could then comment knowledgeably upon them.
Tru Fax and the Insaniacs were one of six bands picked to play concerts to close the original location of the 9:30 Club (actually, I think they used to call it "club 9:30"...) and 4 songs are featured on the 1996 CD commemorating that event. They definitely deserved the honor.
In the 80s, Tru Fax and the Insaniacs released a vinyl 7-inch and a vinyl 12-inch record on the WASP label.
Once every year, at just past midnight on the morning of July 24th (and somewhere out there: YOU know why) I toast and eat 4 frosted blueberry pop tarts.
This year things got a little tangled, the toaster was dying-- or something was dying.
Maybe I need to let this ritual fade from cinereous to absent. I should find an urn where to rest the caramelized husks of these ruined snacks.
That's what I'm talking about-- analog synth, analog hair. I've decided I really need to move to Sunnyside in Queens (before you say it, I know he's from Long Island, it doesn't have anything to do with that, OK?)
I'll get put in the back in the discount rack/ Like another can of beans/
I am the entertainer/ And I know just where I stand
I heard Sunnyside, that's all I can tell you. It's also where Bix Beiderbecke lived died. Anyone in a position to help the band relocate there be sure to hit the email for this site. Serious inquiries only.
People often ask me why I fail to rake in the big bucks and/or accolades and I explain why: Zeitgeist.
...expression that means "the spirit of the age", literally translated as time (Zeit), spirit (Geist).
I simply don't care for it. I think, you know to chase after it, that's a little desperate and needy. It's enough to be sensitive to it, that is important-- but, ultimately, it's funnier to actively go against it. Haha!
For example I've never seen these films:
Birth of a Nation
Ordinary People
ET: The Extraterrestrial
The Crying Game
Titanic
Trainspotting
Toy Story
I do know the plots, and the big twists and scenes-- I am aware of all intertext traditions.
...in German, the word has more layers of meaning than the English translation, including the fact that Zeitgeist can only be observed for past events.
"When a billion Chinese come over the hill, how do you want to face them? I'd rather be standing there with a Fender Telecaster in my hands than an AK47." ~ Alex Harvey
I'm a little bit in awe of China. Still commies after all these years, inflated with all kinds of demand and we're acting like we have same say in the matter.
I suppose Incipient Maoism is not a position to brandish before polite paid company. But sometimes I say: Wow, China! To be honest, I suspect that it is to my benefit to nurture a few outlandish opinions, as an investment.
In United States politics, a Sister Souljah Moment is a politician's public repudiation of an allegedly extremist person or group, statement, or position perceived to have some association with the politician or their party.
So, I am greedily welcomed to hang some brutal comments out there-- when they get slapped down I'll be officially Souljah'd & that's got to be bad because look at Sister Souljah's bio:
Was a member of the group Public Enemy.
Writes occasional pieces for Essence Magazine.
Rutgers University alum.
She has published an autobiography & 1 novel, with another novel due out 10/08.
1992 Solo album reached #72 Top R&B/Hip Hop.
Currently, executive director of Daddy's House Social Programs Inc., a not-for-profit corporation for urban youth, financed by Sean Combs and Bad Boy Entertainment.
Like a foul fly ball and a beer cup, The Mets and Billy Joel intersect:
Someone must sing a proper song of farewell for Shea Stadium, the nice try of a coliseum in Queens, as its dismantling draws near and a new ballpark rises just yards away.
Of course the meeting...to discuss who should sing this farewell probably lasted as long as it took to say: Billy Joel. 50,000 tickets were sold in 48 minutes.
And what about that apple?
That feeling is why there will be some sort of apple at the Mets' new home, Citi Field, which opens next season, Howard says. "Planning the new park, we always felt there should be some kind of apple," Howard says. "Whether it's the same one or not, that's something we're still weighing. Either way, the apple will be represented."
