Song Of the Day: April 19, 2006
The Del Fuegos, for a long time, anyway, had the misfortune of being known for their appearance in a Miller Beer television commercial, in which pleasantly disheveled leader (and now successful children’s music maker) Dan Zanes says that “Rock ‘n’ roll is folk music ‘cuz it’s music made by folks” (or something to that effect). Pretty innocuous stuff nowadays, what with iPod commercials and WB teen soaps being every indie band’s dream ticket to a national audience. But back in ’85 thereabouts, to many in the music underground, it was selling out. It just added fuel to heated discussions about major labels and selling your soul. Left of the Dial and all of that. For the Fuegos had signed to Slash/Warner Brothers, and their first record was a radical sonic departure from their live sound and this, their first 7” blast of snarling trash, twang, and (ironically) beer. That first album had BIG production written all over it. The performances seemed meticulous and coached. The old drummer Steve Morrell, famous for his crazed rockabilly moves and playing with trashcan lids, had left, and his replacement’s playing was as wooden as his namesake, Woody. Where was the joyous abandon? It was one of those albums where the huge snare is twice as loud as anything else. For some old-time fans of the Fuegos, the big-time move seemed like a huge letdown (I swear there was almost a Bambino-esque curse on Boston bands going for the gold ring back then). And their first glorious single here illustrates why. It was recorded by Rick Harte, pretty much the only cheap and sympathetic game in town for bands like the Neats, the Lyres, and other A-listers on the scene. The Fuegos were just a trio early on ( younger Zane’s brother Warren “Ork Boy would join up later), and it operated a bit like a rockabilly outfit with a direct musical and lifestyle line to their beloved 1950’s rock ‘n’ roll delinquents.
“I Always Call Her Back” represents what I remember best about checking out bands at the Rat in Kenmore Square in the 80’s. This was a scene of mostly working man bar bands made up of local guys and some transplants like a few of the Scruffy the Cat guys. Leather jackets, biker boots, red bandannas wrapped around ankles, cigarette packs rolled up in the t-shirt sleeve, sailor tattoos, sticky floors, endless bottles of Rolling Rock. It all changed somehow with the Pixies and Forte Apache studios and all those bands full of college kids and trust funders – the Lemonheads, Blake Babies, Fuzzy, Gigalo Aunts, Galaxie 500. Not that there weren’t college kids rocking it previously or townies doing the same after, but there was definitely a paradigm shift which had the unmistakable whiff of the British Invasion making the Brill Building girl groups irrelevant. It also pointed silently but unmistakably to unsettling issues about class divisions in the underground. Talking about class in one’s scene is still pretty taboo to this day.
A funny footnote: The Classic Ruins, another Boston bar band in the mold of the early Del Fuegos, upon seeing that the Fuegos had made a bunch of money from Miller, proceeded to pen a song about their favorite beer, LaBatts, in hopes of snagging sponsorship riches. They didn’t get their TV spot, but judging from the Labatts banner that hung behind the drum kit at their shows, they must’ve scored something.
A footnote to the footnote: Someone please please send me a file or post the Classic Ruins’ tune “Geraldine (I Need Money, More Than I Need You)" from the Chuck Warner Throbbing Lobster compilation Claws! Sheer old school genius.
Andrew Chalfen
17 Comments:
Isn't Warren Zanes married to April March these days? Lucky bastard.
While it's true that the beer commercial is the first thing that comes to mind (I can't think of the Del Fuegos without thinking of the Young Fresh Fellows' "Beer Money": "Well, you may say that we sold out/But that's just the way it Goes/'Cause the beer is free and we're on MTV/Then we're opening up for the Del Fuegos!"), the second is that really awful album they did around '87. Stand Up, Aqualung, whatever it was called. Endorsements are one thing, but crap mainstream rock albums with slick production are unforgivable. Good to remember them as they originally were, though.
Fantastic post. I'll have to dig up my Del Fuegos cassette. I don't recall it being as slick as your post indicates, but it was certainly a lot cleaner than the mayhem of this single.
"his replacement’s playing was as wooden as his namesake, Woody."
The real crime was that Woody's playing with the Embarrassment was as as joyously abandoned as they come. I don't know why he felt the need to restrain himself to such an extent with the Fuegos.
I have to say, though, that I think you're making too much of this supposed "class shift" from the 80's into the 90's. Scenes change all the time. There's always a strong temptation to cling to the scene with which you came of age. This has a whiff of the "music was so much better 10/20/50 years ago" riff that I hear constantly from folks who should know better.
Cool post. I still think, however, The Longest Day rocks hard from beginning to end and was a fine debut. Thanks!
The "wooden" comment cracked me up. I spoke with Brent in the dressing room after a mid-80s Del Fuegos show, and asked him if he didn't miss beating the crap out of the drums like he used to with the Embarrassment. He went into a long explanation about how he was now playing more technically precise, something about gates and whatnot, blah blah. I repeated, "But don't you miss beating the crap out of the drums like you used to?"
p.s. Follow the link in my name for information on the Embarrassment's upcoming reunion shows this August in Wichita and Lawrence.
I should preface this by saying I've only lived in Boston for four years, and the primary demographic split I see in shows these days is more generational than class-based: in other words, there're the shows my mid-30s ass crawls out to (I'm assuming we'll see you at Green Pajamas, Jon?) and the shows the college kids go to, and it's sometimes a bit of a surprise when those audiences are at the same gig.
But I've interviewed Boston musicians on both sides of that '80s/'90s line, and it's true that class does often seem to come up in the conversation somewhere. More than one person who was around him at the time has told me, for example, that Evan Dando's drug problems might have stemmed at least partially from some semi-conscious desire to be seen as more "street" than he really was. I'm not saying they're right, but class is a topic that comes up in Boston that never came up when I was on the scene in, say, Lubbock or Albuquerque.
Btw, Andrew, Charity could have sworn she had that TL comp, but it didn't turn up. If you get a copy, let me know: she loved the Classic Ruins. She still thinks fondly of "Nyquil Stinger."
Both "The Longest Day" and "Boston, Mass" were loaded with hook-filled rockin' tunes that sounded great blasting out of my car stereo in the 80's. Yeah, this single's rawer, but it's also not quite as good as the tunes they
ended up writing on those first two lp's. C'mon, don't be a production elitist! Just because it's slicker doesn't necessarily make it of lesser value. It's not as though they were Michael Jackson or Phil Collins. I'm reminded of what Ira Robbins once said when someone accused him of "selling out" and just trying to "sell magazines" when he put Jefferson Airplane on the cover of Trouser Press.--"What's wrong with selling magazines?" There's nothing wrong with selling records either.
I'm not saying the 80's Boston scene was any better or worse than the 90's scene. I loved plenty of those 90's acts (heck my band at the time played with a bunch of them), it's not nostalgia for my youthful scene experience calling the emotional shots here. Rather, I went to a lot of shows back then and I saw first-hand the class shift. I was in Philly a lot then, too, and there that dynamic just wasn't evident.
There are some good tunes on that first Fuego's album. And god knows that there are plenty of big production records that I love and crappy production records that I can't stand. Frequently, especially around that time, bands that got the big label push made sterile recordings. For me, those Fuegos albums fall into that catagory.
Hey Andrew (and others interested)-
This Italian label Rave-Up reissued a comp of Classic Ruins stuff with Geraldine and all the rest - great stuff. We have a few copies at the goner shop
http://www.goner-records.com/
sorry, don't know how to post the link thing in there...
-zac
i've got that on mp3, though i'm not the best ripper from vinyl in the world. where do i send it?
mitch (marmbru@yahoo.com)
Growing up in B-town I had the opportunity to see vats of band that were too musically beautiful for words - Neighborhoods, Human Sexual Response, Atlantics, Private Lightning, Rings ... the list goes on.
Del Fuegos were a bit of a late-comer ... meaning, after the huge impact a lot of other groups had in Boston, there were others that were 'bigger' due in part to the money that followed into the city looking for the next Cars for example.
However, for me and the others following them, nothing beat the snot out of teenage love/angst than listening to the Del Fuegos "I Still Want You".
Now, THAT"S a post to cry over.
Kevin
Re: "Class Divisions." Leather jackets and hardbox packs of Marlboro only mean so much... Dan Zanes is a graduate of Phillips Academy, perhaps the most elite boarding school in the U.S. He and Tom Lloyd, who became the 'Fuegos bassist, met and leafy, posh Oberlin... Dressing up as a 'workin' man townie' was shtick (really earnest, reverential shtick -- as opposed to nasty, cheap ironic shtick), but shtick nonetheless. That's OK, rock n roll's *all about* shtick. That's why I still like it.
p.s. -- make that, met *at* leafy, posh Oberlin.
> met and leafy, posh Oberlin
Warren has put out a new CD called "People that I'm Wrong For". I think it's excellent. I especially like the last song, whose title escapes me at the moment.
It's his second, he put out "Memory Girls" in 2004 I think, and it was favorite pop CD of that year.
Check them out.
Sad local Boston pop news: Atlantics drummer Paul Caruso died this week.
http://tinyurl.com/owo8z
Tom Lloyd is the son of two teachers at Phillips Academy. Father teachers art and architecture and mother teaches music.
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