Fresh from the Toaster!

Some Poptarts trivia:

Just as with the Ball Turret Gunners, we all took on stage names, although these were more "pop" names than "punk" names. Mostly they harkened back to the British Invasion. I became Cathy Kensington (I liked the alliteration, but I was not about to change my C to a K for symmetry's sake). Gael S. became Gael McGear (a nod to Paul McCartney's brother, Mike McGear). Susan J. became Susan Mersey (get it? as in beat?). Margie F. became Margie Shears (sister, no doubt, to Billy). And Debby R. became Meegan Voss... and eventually she became Meegan Voss for real and true and legal.

We never, ever played out the first cover tune we learned, which was "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. We came up with a killer harmony arrangement for it with vocals that swirled all around each other, but we couldn't figure out a way to end it properly. And once we had figured out how to do segues, it just didn't occur to us to resurrect a cover.

We never played out the first original we wrote, either, which was inspired by a story in the Weekly World News. It was called "Baby Elvis," and was about an infant who was said to look just like Elvis as a lad. There were photos to compare, with the supposed reincarnation's gas-inspired sneer providing all the evidence anyone could need.

Margie created a signature stage move, a kind of dreamy back and forth shifting that we called "doing the Ventura," after the model of her first used bass.

And, yeah. Before we ever played out, we had a logo and t-shirts:


Here is Gael, modeling a blue one for the folks in NYC.

Anyway... we were on our way. The very first time Susan played the drums officially was on our three-song demo. Gary Allen, local radio DJ, had a new wave show called "Off the Boat" that aired on Sunday nights. He played imports and demos or singles from local bands. He asked us for a tape, so we pulled Gary Frenay and Arty Lenin from the Flashcubes and Ducky Carlisle from a band called the Ohms to record us on Frenay's state-of-the-art four-track reel-to-reel. It was recorded in the upstairs flat Gael and Susan and I shared on Lancaster in Syracuse's student ghetto. We recorded "I Won't Let You Let Me Go" and "Glad She's Gone" (the bitch song from hell about how happy we were that Paul, also of the Flashcubes, and his harridan of a girl friend had broken up--alas, they reunited by the time we recorded the song...) with Susan debuting on drums. The third song, "My Boy," was accompanied only by Arty playing a classical guitar as Meegan, Gael, and I sang. It was a ballad that originally was called "Everybody's Love," in "honor" of our inspiration, Buddy Love (get it? Every Buddy's Love?), who also turned out to be a heartbreaker. Well, according to Meegan. All of the songs were originals. They were pretty rough sounding, but good enough to play on the radio. We went into the studio for an interview when Gary Allen first played the tapes, and we talked about how we envisioned product placement schemes (Meegan Makeup!) and how we wanted our pictures on lunch boxes. Like the Beatles, we were sure we were headed to the toppermost of the poppermost!

Gary Allen became our manager.

And he had contacts.

One of them was Harvey, a rather famous producer, then at Epic. Harvey didn't think we were right for Epic--not yet at least--but he did start bringing A&R guys around to see us. Those were heady times!

We played dives and we played respectable gigs. We opened for national acts, including the Tourists, an early vehicle for Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, pre-Eurythmics. Their roadies stole our tambourine. Bastards! We opened for Robin Lane and the Chartbusters--her bass player was the session man who played bass on the Archies album--Sugar, Sugar! See how the fates were aligning?

It wasn't all fun and games... we got threatened with eviction for practicing in our flat (although the frat boys on the first floor had the police around every single weekend, threatening to break up their keggers--we, on the other hand, were practicing on weeknights...). So we found a practice space in a west-side church hall. That lasted until someone broke into the storage closet and stole Susan's sparkly silver Lugwigs. She somehow got her parents to front her some money (they didn't yet know, I don't think, that she had dropped out of grad school to practice full time), and she bought a brand new set of Ludwigs--these were candy apple red. We found another church hall... this time on the east side of town. We practiced every night we didn't have a gig. The only days we took off were the days after gigs... unless we had another gig scheduled. Looking back on it, we played out a LOT.

We played a military base up near Lake Ontario. If you've seen This Is Spinal Tap, you can pretty much imagine what that was like. Except that we were five women in skirts hemmed up to our asses, and there was no stage. It was right after the dismal failure of the attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages and, in some kind of misplaced effort to win these leering, slavering guys to our side, Susan decided to pipe up and dedicate a song to the hostages. The response? The whole hall erupted in shouts of "Fuck Iran! Fuck Iran!" The shouts soon morphed into a chant. And we somehow found a way to get ourselves and our gear out of there before the testosterone-crazed mob converged on us!

We plucked a plum of a gig opening the season up at Alexandria Bay--gateway to the Thousand Islands. Or so we thought. Turns out the promoter who booked us got the date wrong. Our gig was actually the weekend BEFORE the season opened, and so we played to a cavernous and pretty much empty hall. We looked good, though!


Left to right, Margie, Meegan, Me, Gael, and Susan, in the "dressing room" at Alex Bay

Another bit of trivia: Several years after this gig, the promoter was found dead in a parking lot in Syracuse. He'd been shot in the head. I wonder whose gig he screwed up to deserve THAT? Yikes.

We had some wonderful times, though. We played twice at Dobbs on South Street in Philly. Dobbs is a bonafide rock 'n' roll institution, and they had us back! We played the Haunt in Ithaca, which had really cool t-shirts. We asked if we could have some, and when the management said no, we had to buy them (BUY them?? We've been selling your beer and filling your coffers for three frickin' sets, ya skinflint!), we found several boxes full of them in the dressing room and just helped ourselves. I think that was the moment when we realized that we really, truly had become a band! What punks we were, bonding over petty larceny!

And we had some adventures--some were great highs, like when we were grocery shopping after rehearsal a little after midnight one morning at Price Chopper on Erie Boulevard, and we heard one of our songs, "Jealousy," come on the radio that was playing through the PA system in the store. We screamed and ran down the aisles, we were so excited! So what if it was the middle of the night! We were on the radio!

Other adventures were not so much fun. For example, we agreed to record an LP side with some wannabe producers who were looking to get a label deal for themselves, and if they did, they would bring us with them. Except they turned out to be jerks and no-talents (and what a surprise THAT was... hmmm). They recorded us at the facilities at Newhouse, on the Syracuse University campus, at night. All night. And Susan, who tried her hardest--harder than anyone else in the band, without a doubt--just wasn't quite up to snuff. Because we were looking for a "live" sound, we recorded all the instrumental tracks as a band, but that meant that if any one of us fucked up, the whole take was lost. One night we did more than 70 takes of "August Is a Wicked Month," most of them due to drum issues--and most of those drum issues occurring right at the end of the song. When we finally decided to give up (it was about 5 AM, and we would have to relinquish the suite to students soon), the door stuck and we couldn't get out of the studio! Argh! And after all that, when we finally heard the tapes, the assholes had stripped out all the instruments anyway and put in lame synthesizers and drum machines! Sigh...

But despite it all, it was wonderful to be a part of something so creative and all-consuming. We had label interest. People were telling us we really WERE going to go to the toppermost of the poppermost... and we started making lists of things we'd buy when we were rich. Things like custom short-scale Les Pauls with hot-pink polka dots and Telecasters finished in turquoise glitter. But you know what they say about pride and wish lists coming before a fall...

To be continued...

Your Attention, Please!

We interrupt this string of House on the Rock entries to bring you this bit of news that is just too quirky to wait for the end of the tour:

I ordered two CDs for my brother for his birthday and had them sent, gift-wrapped, from Amazon. They were Wesley Willis Greatest Hits and Wesley Willis Greatest Hits, Volume 2. Wesley Willis was a local Chicago music phenom and, let's just say, an acquired taste. I had given my brother a copy of his greatest hits CD as a Christmas present a few years ago, but, alas! He had loaned it to a friend and that was the last he ever saw of it. So I figured a replacement would be a perfect birthday gift. When I found that there were MORE compilations of Wesley Willis's "hits," I added onto the treasure trove.

They arrived to him in good order, but he plucked them out of his mailbox as he was heading into work at one of his several jobs--this one at a local coffeehouse and watering hole. He stuffed the wrapped CDs in his messenger bag, planning to spend the evening after work listening to the oeuvre of Monsieur Willis. Alas, yet again! Sometime during his shift, the CDs were pilfered, gift-wrap and all, out of his bag! He called me that night, angry but chagrined. I told him not to worry... stuff like this happens, and, while it sucks, it's just stuff. And Christmas is looming...

Well, he just called me. Turns out that he has a shift at the same place this morning, and when he arrived this a.m. he found the CDs, unwrapped, under the bar. Only one of them--the original greatest hits album--was out of its shrink wrap. A guy had brought them in last night, saying that he had picked them up out of the closet by mistake, and that he was horrified to discover that they were not his... so he was returning them!!

Now, really. The CDs were gift-wrapped with a tag addressed specifically to my brother on them, and they were INSIDE his bag, so there is no way this guy could have picked them up by mistake. The most hilarious thing about the whole incident is that the guy obviously opened the first one, popped it in the deck, and was so horrified at what assailed his ears that he didn't even bother to open the second one--he just gathered the two of them up and BROUGHT THEM BACK to the scene of his crime! Too funny!!

Sometimes the karma police have a grand sense of humor!