2 posts tagged “philadelphia”
Staying with the 80s theme of the last post but traveling a couple hours up I-95 to Phildelphia, here's Pretty Poison from their 1983 4-song EP Laced:
More electronic toms, yeah! In the fall of 1982 I was a freshman in college, and somehow I quickly got "in" with the campus radio rock DJs and scored my own radio show (3-6 AM!). One weekend, at the last minute, the program director invited me to go to the 9:30 Club with him to see a band. I had never been to a nightclub before--I had just turned 17--so I jumped at the chance. The band was Pretty Poison, the PD was on the guest list and got me in free as well, he turned out to know the band from previous shows, he took me backstage to meet them, the singer was a beautiful little creature with teased hair and fishnets named Jade, and she kissed me! "Oh, what a night!", as the song goes. I remember thinking the show was spectacular, though I don't remember any details 25 years later. I became a fan, I bought their EP when it came out, played it on my radio show several times, saw one more show of theirs, and never heard of them again until the late 80s and the infamous "Catch Me, I'm Falling". The seeds of that fluffy synthpop are there in Laced, but so are the seeds of a darker sound, as heard here. They were on a cusp and could have gone either way: in a gothic, Clan of Xymox direction, or the direction they ultimately took. I would have preferred the former, but you can't have everything.
Jade Starling is now based in Las Vegas; she continues to be thin and wear skimpy clothes, and makes what can best be described as "aerobics pop." She has a MySpace page where you can hear some of it. Her bio begins:
This award winning singer/ songwriter is best known for the ..1 platinum hit "Catch Me I'm Falling" on Virgin Records. Along with co-founder, musician/producer/ arranger Whey Cooler, they are the driving force of Pretty Poison. This ground breaking late 80's pop band helped pave the way for crossover acts such as Britney Spears, Christina Agulera and Pink.
And all those years I'd been thinking it was Madonna who paved that way! Okay, she did say "helped." Still, that's a dubious honor, I don't think I'd trumpet that about. As I've said before about other bands: oh, what might have been. Here's a little reminder of how it actually turned out, from that fine Jon Cryer film Hiding Out:
Hey, that's not bad for what it is! I confess to tapping my toes while watching it.
It was a fantastic weekend for finding long-lost songs: I found two! The first is "The Child in Me" by Philadelphia band Stranger to Stranger (1983-1992). Released in 1985 as a 12-inch single, it became a staple on WHFS, even after its transformation into a corporate station. I've been doing a web search about once a year for it, and was prodded to do it today because I came across their album Casting Shadows on my shelves. So I Googled it, and there it was, on the only Stranger to Stranger page on the Internet, on a website for Rose Parade, the current band of Stranger to Stranger singer Gary Eshbaugh. The instrumental track of "The Child in Me" could pass for a 4A.D. band, but the lyrics are squarely in introspective singer/songwriter territory, Gordon Lightfoot-y maybe; they come together to create a song that is timeless (at least it still holds up 24 years later):
The second long-lost song I reacquired this weekend is "The Way of Life" by The Puppets. This quintessential synthpop song, as dramatic as anything from Depeche Mode, came out on a 12" from Canadian label Quality Records in 1983, and the Puppets were never heard from again. The campus radio station got a copy; my then-girlfriend got a copy; but I never got one, and never managed to find one since. Last night I chanced across Brent S.'s Brave New Waves blog (following a link to an Our Daughter's Wedding EP), saw a lot of good 80s music, and asked him if he had "The Way of Life." Lo and behold, he did, and he posted it for download! Hallelujah! I don't want to steal Brent's traffic, so if you're interested (and you should be), head on over to this post at Brave New Waves. (The download link is in the post title.) [11/8/07: That blog has just gone private, so I've deleted the links. Oh well.] He also posted a picture of the record label; the songwriting credits are for Shaun Brighton and John Cannon. I tracked down Shaun Brighton: he was the leader of CBGB band Nervus Rex, who broke up in 1981. He has apparently retired from music. I couldn't trace John Cannon; do any readers know anything about him?
