FLAT DUO JETS

on ‘IRS The Cutting Edge’

MTV 1985

Peter Zaremba takes us on a tour of Dexter Romweber’s living quarters.

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)