Majorlabelland and Assorted Oddities

By Pete Crigler

Majorlabelland and Assorted Oddities is comprised of an essay about hard rock bands in the eighties and nineties and their struggles with major record labels which resulted in several albums that have never been released. Interviews have been conducted with almost forty musicians from some two dozen bands and they all graciously agreed to chat about their career and the problems they encountered that ended some of their careers dead in its tracks. The book is also comprised of short stories that have been complied since the author was in college and they fi t the feel of the book: very antiestablishment and hovering on the fringes of society and conformity. Closing out the book are interviews done with several other musicians, most of which have never been published before. They are all intriguing because the musicians talk about facets of their career that they havent spoken about in years if at all. This book captures a time in the music industry when there were no rules.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491706022

Pete Crigler

“Pete always had one of the greatest combinations an editor could ask for; a workaholic mentality with a clear, authoritative voice when it came to music. Asking Pete to write about music was like asking a brewer to taste beers. It’s no surprise that his jump from short to long form with his fi rst book, Keeping it Tight in the Old Dominion: A History of Virginia Rock Music, was a success. Read on fearless reader, you’re in good hands.”

Book preview

MAJORLABELLAND

AND

ASSORTED ODDITIES

This book is amazing!

Pete Crigler

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

Majorlabelland And Assorted Oddities

Copyright © 2013 by Pete Crigler.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0601-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0602-2 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013949734

iUniverse rev. date: 09/13/2013

Contents

THANX 2: The Secret of the Ooze

MAJORLABELLAND

ASSORTED

Chris Xefos

Tom Maxwell

Tim Quirk

Tommy Vinton

Peggy Hambright

Chuck Cleaver

ODDITIES

Don’t Let Me Die…

Where the Hell’s My Money?

Naked Rain (or: Tragic Joke)

Methodist Coloring Book

About the Author

"Pete always had one of the greatest combinations an editor could ask for: a workaholic mentality with a clear, authoritative voice when it came to music. Asking Pete to write about music was like asking a brewer to taste beers. It’s no surprise that his jump from short to long form with his first book, Keeping it Tight in the Old Dominion: A History of Virginia Rock Music, was a success. Read on fearless reader, you’re in good hands."

—Ian Lashbrook

(Musician, former editor: punkbands.com,

digitaltourbus.com reviewer)

Crigler’s book resonates since the stories of small-label bands mirror also the plight of writers in search of publishers and readers. Some—both bands and writers—never make it, some do, and most all eventually fall into oblivion. That Crigler tethers this reality to his own personal and spiritual journey underscores the book’s implicit lesson: that how one plays the music, writes the words, and lives their life is—in the end—more important than what people (many or a few) take notice of one’s work.

—Casey Clabough,

author of The Warrior’s Path

and Confederado: A Novel of the Americas

Crigler is an editor’s dream as he’s always able to come up with not only interesting and varied subject mater but also unique angle for each of his stories. As such, I’m always anxious to hear from him to find out what his next project will be. Of course, I’m excited to see what he comes up with for this second book.

—Jason Gross,

editor/founder Perfect Sound Forever

online music magazine

"A blistering re-cap of the hopes and dreams from emerging underground bands whose careers became stalled or shelved after signing big-label record deals, typically resulting in a five-word cliché that no band wanted to hear; ‘We don’t hear a single.’"

—Rob Zabrecky

(magician extraordinaire, ex-Possum Dixon)

Crigler’s writing has been noted as savory and satisfying as a wholesome, home cooked meal. Having much first hand experience in the current music industry makes him more reliable than many authors today.

—Aaron Tamachi

(writer/photographer, Lithium Magazine)

THANX 2:

The Secret of the Ooze

Well the second book has now been completed and released. A lot has changed since 2010 when Keeping It Tight in the Old Dominion: A History of Virginia Rock Music was released. First off, I want to thank all the musicians I’ve talked to who’ve graciously donated their time to answering an obsessive music fan’s questions. Every one of them were absolutely amazing and inspiring with their wealth of information and stories to share. I can only hope that I’ve told all their stories in a way that makes them happy to be presented so thoroughly.

I next want to thank my family (and that includes my four legged friend who slept by my side while I was typing) for supporting me the whole damn time even as everyone kept asking just what the hell this book was about. You always believed in me and kept my spirits up even as things occasionally hit the shitter and the emergency room and for that, I will forever be grateful.

Next, I want to thank my supporters who aren’t family but sure do feel like it: Pam Hembree, Lisa Hornsby, Professor Casey Clabough, Dr. Laura Marello, Shawn Arnold. Carolyn Green, Carolyn Austin, Stuart Porter, Lois Minor, Linda and everyone at Doc’s Music (R.I.P.), everyone at Wyatt-Ogg/Radio Shack, Blake and everyone at iUniverse, Jason Gross and everyone at Perfect Sound Forever, Sarah Zupko and everyone from my brief stint at PopMatters, Laurie Lonsdale, Aaron Tamachi and everyone at the coolest writing gig I’ve gotten thus far at Lithium Magazine. And thanks a million to the glorious golden treasure that is Facebook and the rotting, maggot filled corpse of MySpace: without whom a lot of this wouldn’t have happened.

I want to especially dedicate this book to the musicians who stepped above the call of duty to help me out during the times when I wasn’t even sure that I could bring myself to finish this damn thing: Jody Powerchurch and Maria Christopher. Thanks for coming through and helping me see to the other side.

I also feel it’s necessary to single out my friends from all around who have been amazing during this time: Brandon (Pop! Pop!), Holly, Brian, Josh, Tom, Aaron, Adrienne, Heather, Kristen, Dawn & the Robinson clan, Rad, Robert, Evan C., Danny Mason, Laura, Tyler, Derek, E.T. (Represent!!!), Joe Selby, Simba, the Southworth clan, the Butchello’s, Toni, Mr. Vondaryl Jones, Katie Hansen, Beatty and Harms, (Ginger) Bavis, Mike White, Marilyn, Miss Jessy Miller and Will Hill. Special thanks go out to everyone else who offered support when it was desperately needed.

The final dedication of this book goes out to three people who have passed away since the first book was published and one who passed before this book was published. These people meant a lot to me, some were family and some were musicians that took time out of their lives to talk to me and others just made great music and should be remembered for that and because of it all, I will forever appreciate it. Tony Lopacinski of Red Henry/Earth to Andy, Cory Smoot of GWAR, Celso Chavez of Possum Dixon and Belle Tinsley: You Are Eternally Missed!!

MAJORLABELLAND

Major labels and rock ‘n’ roll have always had a very tumultuous relationship. Where one label can lavish one band with tons of promotion and millions of dollars, they can also take another band and ignore them and beat them down to the point where many of them give up on music altogether. Some just got flat out and out ignored but I felt that every story I came across had to be shared. This is the story of several dozen rock bands and their experiences with major labels. As you’ll see, the stories of many of these bands are quite similar but give a vastly different outlook on the music industry. It’s also a story of unreleased music; hours and hours of music that are sitting in record label vaults all over the world, some good and some very mediocre but all wanting to be heard. Some of these albums have been shared all over the internet on peer-to-peer networks and YouTube while others have never been heard at all. Not all of these bands have had their records shelved but they all have very similar stories to share and that makes for some very interesting reading.

When I first told people that I was going to be writing about bands that a majority of them had never heard of, most of them gave me BS statements like Oh, if I’ve never heard of them, then they couldn’t have been that important. When you hear something like that, you can only wonder what being an imbecile really feels like. After writing about music for several years, I’ve come across my fair share of bands that have been burned and deserved better treatment. So when someone begins reading this book, they may begin wondering why such and such a band was as important as to be written about when maybe they didn’t accomplish that much. The important thing to remember is that whether or not someone has heard of a particular band, every band is important at least to someone and their stories need to be heard.

The story really begins in the late ’80s because around that time, rock really started to become big business that major labels could once again get their feet wet with. Once other bands on much smaller indie labels had started to get recognized by labels as potential money makers by the majors then anything was fair game. Over the next couple of years, thousands of bands ended up making the jump to a major label. Some managed some success while others fractured apart because they didn’t know how to combine the popular and the underground together cohesively. As a result of these predecessors, any band that had a hard or very heavy sound or seemed like they could fit in with what was already making a bunch of money for the labels were taken out for a bunch of fancy dinners and then given a contract to sign. Many artists have differing opinions on what the majors did for them but they all share similar stories. Within these pages contain many stories of heartbreak and success, but hey enough of my yakking, let’s boogie!

One of the most adored British bands of the ’80s, the Mighty Lemon Drops were becoming bigger on a small indie label, where they released their debut EP, Out of Hand before they were snapped up by Sire Records, an offshoot of Warner Brothers in 1986. After releasing their first album, 1987’s Happy Head, the band released what is now considered their best record, 1988’s World Without End. The record garnered the band their biggest hit with Inside Out and they thought the future would be smooth sailing.

During the making of their next record, 1989’s Laughter, their bassist and primary co-songwriter Tony Linehan decided to leave. In a 2012 interview with the author, guitarist David Newton talked about his departure, "Tony left after recording two tracks for what would become the Laughter album. We had spent the best part of four years with each other most days, & that will magnify any differences personality-wise or musically you might have: it was a stupid situation really and Tony now considers it a mistake on his part to leave, but we were also still quite young & things like this happen!" Thus began a tumultuous time for the band as they struggled to bring themselves back to their previously high standards. By this time, they’d started becoming Sire’s ‘pet band,’ basically a band the label could tinker with and use their own resources to advance and promote. They would put them on tour with labelmates The Ocean Blue and John Wesley Harding, a triple billing that made no sense at all.

The band had begun to believe that things weren’t going the way they should’ve been going, that what they what they needed was a change of direction and sound and once this was done, then they’d be more popular but the next album proved to be a disaster. With the release of 1991’s Sound . . . Goodbye to Your Standards, Sire brought producer and sometime songwriter Andy Paley in to work with the band. It turned out to be the biggest mistake they ever made. What resulted was a horrendous record lacking any hooks or efficient melodies and the sound of a band totally out of their element, yet unable to come up with anything strong.

After a while, the band even turned their back on the record, with David Newton talking candidly about the making of the album in 2012, "Laughter sold a respectable amount in the USA but didn’t do so well in the UK/Europe, so Chrysalis [their British record label] opted not to take up the option for a fourth album. Sire were happy to keep the band and put the next album out worldwide via Warner Brothers, provided we ‘re-negotiate’ the contract as the amount of $$$ they were contracted to ‘advance’ for a fourth album was for a much larger amount than we had sold records. One of the ‘negotiating’ factors was that we used Sire’s ‘in house’ producer, an American guy named Andy Paley (& his engineer Mark Linnett), and that was a HUGE mistake! They didn’t understand, and made no effort to understand, what we were about, what music was contemporary to what we did, our ‘musical lineage’ if you like (we had been lucky to use amazing producers like Stephen Street, Tim Palmer & Mark Wallis for our other records, who TOTALLY understood where we were coming from) . . . these guys didn’t have a clue and didn’t appear to care." Once the album came out, the record completely flopped and as a result, fans and radio began shunning them.

David Newton continues the story, "We should have been dropped after Sound’s dismal failure really, but I/we were inspired & wanted to prove that we still had life/legs, so I had the idea of making an album by ourselves really inexpensively/cheaply. Surprisingly Sire opted to fund it and release it." In 1992, they released Ricochet, an album that was barely promoted upon its release and remains the most unheard record in the band’s catalogue. Newton: I LOVE this album, so did Sire, but didn’t predict it being a huge success, so we decided to do one last US tour before breaking up, & in October 1992 The Mighty Lemon Drops, Material Issue & Too Much Joy hit the road on what was a big-fun tour, playing our final show in November in Chicago.

Over the years, the band’s legacy has continued to build as more and more people discover how special they were. But their legacy was tainted by Sire’s meddling and almost complete lack of interest after their experiment failed. The band members have all moved on to different things; David Newton stayed in music, producing bands and starting his own band, Thee Mighty Angels and Tony Linehan works as a project manager and moved to New Zealand.

Then there’s Raging Slab, a boogie-metal band from New York that had some of the worst luck of any band on any major-label, period. Formed in 1983, the band proceeded to release their debut album, 1987’s brilliantly titled Assmaster and the following year’s True Death EP on an indie. By that time, they had started garnering major-label interest and after a fierce bidding war, they signed with RCA, which by that time was in desperate need of real rock bands to drive attention away from the likes of Starship and Rick Astley. The label figured that Raging Slab was the band they needed so they proceeded to bring the band into the studio to begin recording their second, self-titled album.

The album was released in 1989 and the band immediately broke through with the single Don’t Dog Me. The band then toured for the better part of a year before settling down in their new home studio to begin recording album number three. Recording with a producer mainly known for thrash metal, the record, to be titled From a Southern Space was a much different affair than the previous record and the label was not happy with it and shelved it to the band’s dissatisfaction. They then retreated back to the studio with famed producer Michael Beinhorn and session drummer Jack Irons, formerly of Red Hot Chili Peppers and recorded what would’ve been their fourth record. This record, to be titled Freeburden, took them back to their roots and despite the name producer and Jack Irons’ credentials, the label was still unsatisfied and once again shelved the record. In 2001, metalsludge.com asked frontman Greg Strzempka about the record and he said, To the best of my recollection—some jackass in a suit told us, ‘I don’t hear a ‘Don’t Dog Me.’’ At this point, the band was at the end of their rope and had no idea what to do.

It was then that Rick Rubin came to their rescue and offered to buy them out of their RCA contract and sign them to (Def) American Recordings. The band accepted and soon reentered the studio to begin recording once more. Some songs from the shelved albums were re-recorded for the effort and this time, the record, Dynamite Monster Boogie Concert was finally released to mild critical acclaim in 1993 and spawned the minor hit Anywhere but Here. The band then ecstatically toured but the euphoria didn’t last as they went back to the studio to work on their next record. When they completed Black Belt in Boogie, Rubin rejected the record and the band was once again at a standstill.

During this period, longtime rhythm guitarist Mark Middleton quit, but the band decided to give it one more try and quickly recorded Sing Monkey Sing! which Rubin released in 1996. But he failed to promote the record at all and the final straw came when American Recordings split from their distributors at Warner Bros. and neglected to even mention it to the members of Raging Slab. Knowing this, the band decided to split from the label and sued to gain their freedom. This time it began to take a toll and the band found themselves in a stalemate as they decided not to fight the label and wait until their contract expired. It was around this time that the band experienced more lineup changes as at least four drummers came and went.

In 2000, everything finally expired and the rejuvenated band began a recording frenzy. After contributing numerous songs to compilations, they finally released their long-awaited official fifth album, The Dealer on Tee Pee Records in 2001 and continued touring. The next year, they released Pronounced: Eat Shit and toured once more. After losing their rhythm section, they drafted in the rhythm section of the Swedish band Backdraft and went back on the road. They began work on another record but as of 2013, it has yet to be released. All the unreleased records have wound up on the Internet to be freely downloaded and shared as bootlegs but the masters still sit scattered in record company vaults all across America. Fortunately, the band’s reputation as a down-home boogie band with a twist will live on.

Next up, the Rave-Ups, a powerful pop band originally formed in Pittsburgh in 1979 but after a few years of slogging away in the clubs, they decided to move out to L.A. Hooking onto the new teenage wave of films in the mid-eighties, the band managed to land a song on the soundtrack of the blockbuster Sixteen Candles. By that time, they’d already released an independent EP titled Class Tramp in 1984 and undergone a severe lineup change. As a result of a subsequent appearance in Pretty in Pink, performing their underground single Positively Lost Me and their first full-length album, 1985’s Town and Country, they managed to snag a deal with Epic Records in 1987. But the band was also having difficulty getting out of its deal with the indie Fun Stuff as frontman Jimmer Podrasky told me in 2010, ‘Positively Lost Me’ was doing very well at college radio and the Fun Stuff folks made us linger for almost two years before finally allowing us to leave and go to Epic. At that point, most of the major labels that had shown interest had long since lost that interest due to the machinations of Fun Stuff and their powerful lawyer. We ended up having to hire a heavyweight attorney ourselves (who wound up getting the lion’s share of our first album advance). It sucked, but we weathered the storm as best we could.

Not long afterwards, they entered the studio to craft their major-label debut, 1988’s The Book of Your Regrets. The record failed to sell well and the band was in danger of getting dropped by the label but the label decided to give them one more shot and allowed the band to go back into the studio to work on their third record. By this time, the band was undergoing changes including children and marriage and these themes began to weave their way into their songwriting.

Naming the album after Podrasky’s son, 1990’s Chance started off well and the band’s future looked promising. A strong single in Respectfully King of Rain almost cracked the top ten on the modern rock chart and the band started getting recognized for their talents. But suddenly, as the band was getting ready to release a second single, (She Says) Come Around, the label dropped their support and cut the band