Motorolla

“Congratulations”/”Broken Eyes” 45

(North Carolina 1992)

By 1993, there were at least 45 self-contained record companies that could offer full major-label funding and distribution to a new artist.* Hundreds of A&R reps were scouring the country to turn up bands that could make the next 5-million-selling alternative smash.

Things got a little crazy.

Motorolla were sold off in one of the weirdest auctions in music business history. Record companies decided that the Raleigh/Chapel Hill scene was a combination of Athens and Seattle and home of the next big thing.

Bo Taylor, formerly of Eight or Nine Feet, fronted Motorolla and also played guitar in Dish, a new band fronted by Dana Kletter of Blackgirls. Motorolla & Dish shared a manager and they all came up with a scheme where any label who wanted one band had to take the other.

The whole scenario was a extremely weird. Eight or Nine Feet were one of the thousands of Southern bands that bore a more than passing resemblance to R.E.M. They never got a record deal.

Bo tried again with Motorolla, a band who “played in the current style” that came into fashion in late 1991.

Dana quit blackgirls to form her own band. Quite a few folks thought the Dish sound bore a strong resemblance to the popular Little Earthquakes album.

The fact that these two bands had adopted new musical styles didn’t sit well with many on the local scene, but the record company A&Rs had seizures after they decided that either or both bands had that infinite alt-rock commercial potential.

I looked at it this way: in 1966, almost every band in America wanted to sound like the Rolling Stones. That turned out really well for everyone. When Bo decided to copy Seattle instead of Athens, he relaxed and found a style that gave some kick to his melodies. I liked Motorolla much more than Eight or Nine Feet and would have loved to sign the band. Unfortunately, I didn’t go for Dish and wouldn’t sign one band to get the other.

Interscope had no such hesitation. Interestingly, they wanted Dish and (unlike almost every other label) acted like Motorolla was just a throw-in to seal the deal.

Once the extremely large contract was signed, Motorolla had to change its name to Motocaster to satisfy the demands of corporate America.

Neither band had a real touring base before they made very expensive records. Interscope didn’t hear a hit on either album and both bands quickly became corporate writeoffs.

I really liked this single before the signing circus started and still like it more than ten years after Motorolla was erased from the corporate memory banks. I also like that the band did us the courtesy of releasing a 45; by the time the 90s rolled around, labels were scouring the country and lots of worthy bands skipped the vinyl stage in hopes they’d win the demo tape lottery.

• Download: Congratulations
• Download: Broken Eyes

*Compare that with 11 labels offering major-label deals today. All counts are mine, so there’s room for error.

(Blast-O-Platter Records BLO-7)

NEW MODELS

“Permanent Vacation”

(Boston 1981)

The Cars don’t get enough credit for all the effort they put into helping other Boston bands in the early ’80s. Maybe they felt obliged because Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr had struggled for years in Cap ‘n Swing, never quite getting a record deal. Even David Robinson’s time in The Modern Lovers had amounted to a few great record reviews and almost zero record sales.

When the checks started rolling in, the Cars bought Synchro Sound in the Back Bay and Ric produced amazing records by ex-La Peste singer Peter Dayton and Bebe Buell.

New Models got to open for the Cars at Boston Garden in 1980 and Ric later produced this single that was released on Newbury Comics’ Modern Method Records.

By the time I moved to Boston in the fall of 1981, “Permanent Vacation” was playing all the time on WBCN. It seemed like a complete miracle that a local band with no record deal could have a real, live radio hit on Boston’s #1 commercial station (not that it wouldn’t seem like one now) and I bought this single in spite of endless abuse from everyone at the college radio station.

New Models never got that major label deal, releasing one EP on New Jersey’s PVC Records. Leader Casey Lindstrom played guitar on Ric’s first solo album but the band faded away.

Unfortunately, “Permanent Vacation” has also disappeared; a song that proposes suicide as an escape from a toxic relationship seems more inappropriate now than it did in 1981.

Art note: a computer scan doesn’t quite do justice to the record’s extra-hot pink sleeve.

• Download: Permanent Vacation

(Modern Method Records MM 009)

Image swiped from LOL BOTS.

The Creation

“Painter Man”

1966

DIETER MEIER

“Cry for Fame”

(Switzerland 1978)

Yello, the Swiss synth group fronted by Dieter Meier, is supposed to be an art project but they’re really just an annoying, cut-rate Kraftwerk.

So I’m not sure how serious Dieter Meier was when he made “Cry for Fame.” Is this a real punk record or an arch European commentary on a punk record?

• Download: Cry for Fame

(Periphery Perfume Records PP 00178)

CINECYDE

“Don’t Come Crying to Me”

(Detroit 1982)

If Cinecyde had released this song on a single, I’m sure that 45 would be one of the most highly coveted records of the era.

Unfortunately, “Don’t Come Crying to Me” appeared on I Left My Heart in Detroit City, an album that isn’t as good as its title or its unsettling cover photo.

• Download: Don’t Come Crying to Me

(Tremor Records TRLP-104)

THE CELIBATE RIFLES

“Sometimes (I Wouldn’t Live Here if You Payed Me)”

(Sydney 1984)

I’m not sure how widespread the mid-80s Australian rock explosion was outside of Boston and New York but, for a couple of years there, the East Coast seemed to care a lot more about Sydney than Los Angeles.

When the Celibate Rifles arrived at my Somerville apartment in 1986, they were a ragtag military unit of hyperactive boys led by a jaded and dissolute commander. This was the story: Damien Lovelock was a legendary Sydney surfer & self-styled poet who corralled a group of much-younger high schoolers into giving a punk-rock accompaniment to his onstage rantings. Damien styled himself as an Australian Leonard Cohen but he probably more resembled a blonde Jack Sparrow.

Now, I’m not sure how much of that was true. Looking at the photos now, Damien doesn’t really look much older than the rest of the band. Guitarist Kent Steedman was hyperactive but he might have been the real driving force behind the band.

Damien Lovelock did have incredible powers of persuasion; he somehow convinced me to let him smoke in my car as I chauffeured him around Boston during the week I hosted the band.

This single version of “Sometimes” was a giant hit on the Boston College radio stations in early 1985. The song was recut for an album at some point but it was this version that convinced What Goes On Records to sign them and bring them to the States.

• Download: Sometimes (I Wouldn’t Live Here if You Payed Me)

(Hot Records 718)

BUCK OWENS
“Satan’s Gotta Get Along Without Me”
(Buck Owens Ranch Show - 1966)