BEING JAPANESE: The British Business of “New Music” [1984]

Text by Jim Downs / FFanzeen fanzine, 1984

Introduction © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2019

Images from the Internet

This column was originally printed in FFanzeen, issue #12, dated 1984. It was written by musician, photographer and friend Jim Downs. In 2011, Jim also interviewed cult band Human Switchboard for us, for which I was fortunate to be present. And just to make a quick note, at the time, Jim was a fan of the Smiths, who didn’t get much radio play back then. I’m just sayin’. – RBF, 2018

I sit across from my cousin-in-law. Both of us have been talking and playing records for a good part of eight hours. Occasionally he’ll urge me on and I’ll roll the knobs on my guitar amp to “11” and he’ll don the headphones (which surely kept my aunt from calling my parents and the police about that @#*S%! noise) and he’ll squint and giggle while I drill  a hole through his eardrums and into his brain.

“Man, that was great!” he says. “You know, you should be in a band.”

I barely smile at him and am grateful for the compliment, but mumble something about getting it really together before that.

“Well, man, if you want to really be tight, you should listen to the British bands. The only really good bands come from Britain. Like Zed Zeppelin or Cream, or the Yardbirds. What does America have? Kansas! The J. Giles Band! The Eagles! No, man, the British know what to do with music!”

* * *

It seems that “New Music” programming has taken firm grasp of American’s entertainment consciousness. More and more people want to “rock” more. Jackson Browne and his sky blue electric guitar, Billy Joel and his nylon curtain (Levolor Blinds), Michael Jackson beating it, Kenny Loggins trying to be less cute. Why? Is it really because it’s time to get back to basics, or take a good “hard” look at music? No, I don’t think so. I think that it’s time for these guys to get back to making money. Because rock, or as it’s called, “New Music,” is helping to pull a desperate music business out of financial limbo.

As I am writing this, the cold weather seems to have taken a firm foothold on Manhattan. But only about a month or so ago I was watching the return of kids back to school. On NBC’s “Overnight,” a segment was shown about fashion for the student ’83-’84, and the word was “New Wave.”

Minis, straight-legs, colored-spiked hair, sneakers (not the old fashioned Nikes), shades, and lots of black, purple and pink. Just think: all those kids and they’re going to need this year’s New Wave note pads, pencils and lunch boxes. Thank God for the U.S. Patent Office!

* * *

“Well, uh, I mostly wear, well… you know. New Wave or punk clothes; it’s in, you know?”

* * *

“So,” you ask me, “What does this have to do with your cousin-in-law and the British?”

“Well,” I say, “Lots.”

Let’s think back over this past year, specifically the new bands that broke through chart-wise, or as the accountants look at it, bands that finally made money. Now name for me all the British New Music bands that had a breakthrough this Summer: Madness; Duran Duran; Culture Club; Kajagoogoo; Big Country; Eurhythmics; A Flock of Seagulls. Great, now name all the American bands that were able to come up with the goods: … Well? … Come on, I’m waiting! Give up?

 Well, it seems that radio has also given up on American bands, or more accurately, has never given them much of a chance in the first place. I can turn on the radio and listen to a so-called “progressive” station play rehashed rockabilly, Blues, Motown, punk or rock’n’roll by groups who got their inspiration from the U.S. artists, but what about the U.S. artists? Hell, it’s gotten so bad that they’re taking credit for originating forms of music that started here. Bernard Rhodes, manager of the Clash, was quoted by Rolling Stone magazine as saying, “When Malcolm (McLaren) and I invented punk in 1976…” What is this?!?! That’s like saying that “When George Martin invented rock’n’roll…” or “When Mick Jagger invented Country & Western…”

Seems to me there were bands such as the New York Dolls, the Ramones, the MC5 and the Stooges long before Malcolm McLaren decided to sell clothes to “trendies.”

But what difference does this make to radio? Absolutely none whatsoever. Have you ever heard the New York Dolls, the Ramones, MC5 or the Stooges on the “hip” radio stations? I sure haven’t. Granted these bands have been around for a while (or haven’t been around for a while) and most of the “New” stations play current music. Well, so what happened to the Dream Syndicate (taken off the air in L.A. after only 30 seconds of play), the Minutemen, the Blasters, X, Pylon, Black Flag, the dB’s, the Cyclones, the Individuals, etc.?

The logical mind reasons that if a record or song is good, people will want to hear it, so it will get airplay. Or that Program Directors and DJs have your interests in mind, so when hearing some good music, they’ll want you to hear it, so… that you will hear it and like it, then buy the record, see the concert, so… the group will create more music which the Program Directors and DJs will like, then play the music, etc.

However, it isn’t this way a great deal of the time. In fact, it goes more like this: the Program Director and DJ hear music which is easy to digest and not obtrusive. They figure you’ll put up with it and not turn the radio off, so they play the hell out of the bland record with the catchy hook (you know, where it goes “da-da Da-da”) until you can’t help but think about the music. It’s pleasant and doesn’t upset you about the real world, so… you go out and buy the album ‘cause it’s as pleasant as the single, but it’s longer, so the group makes money and churns out more mood music, the DJs and Program Directors keep their jobs ‘cause nobody (almost nobody) turned off the radio, and you’re stuck with a musical vocabulary, a stack of records, and radio station that all sounds exactly the same: bland.

* * *

“Bland? Are you crazy? Have you seen what these groups look like, let along sound like? I mean, just one look at that Boy George will clue you in that something new is happening to music…”

* * *

In an anniversary issue of Guitar Player magazine, Frank Zappa wrote a mini-parody of the music business from dust to diamonds and back again. In the article (which outraged many in the conservative guitar community that Guitar Player support) Frank talks of a boy who puts on his mother’s dress, figures out how to bash out some songs, and ta-da – instant fame. So, in 1983, we have this bloke who puts on his mother’s dress, cops lots (tons) of licks off of every Motown and Stax record that you’ve ever heard and some you haven’t, and ta-da – instant fame [“So ya wanna be a rock’n’roll star / Well listen now to what I say…” – RBF, 2019]. He’s now at the top of the MOR New Music pile, and all the mums in Britain love him and have placed him numero uno on all the music polls.

* * *

“But Christ, he looks like a girl!”

* * *

Sorry, but not in all my wildest dreams would he ever look like a girl. He looks like what he is: a guy dressed like a girl. It’s a joke and people love it and think it’s cute. He doesn’t sing about hate, poverty, war, anarchy or anything that’s unsettling. He sings about love, time, and great stuff like that. Plus, he’s got a good voice and smiles on stage a lot. What more could you want? It’s just alike Pat Boone or Paul Williams: mellow, happy and cute.

And this happens to be the spearhead of the British Invasion. The rest don’t quite measure up to the standards that Boy George sets. Great! New bands make it across the Atlantic weekly and all of them are trying to take the crown away from Culture Club, the crown for rampaging mediocrity.

* * *

“Well, as the Jackson Five once said, ‘One bad apple don’t…' So is there still hope for the British?”

* * *

Sure, not by any stretch of the imagination are all British bands bad. There are quite a few people turning out good-to-great music; it’s just that this Invasion consists of only what the radio will allow to fit in next to Billy Joel and Air Supply. Sure there’s hope for the British, but what I wish for is hope for the Americans.

* * *

Paul Revere races along the road trying to make the seconds last as long as they can. He feels the British close, very close behind him. “Just a little bit more,” he thinks. “Just a little bit more and we’ll have a nice surprise for them,” he chuckles to himself. “The Minutemen will enjoy this.”

Connecting with HUMAN SWITCHBOARD

Text by Jim Downs, introduction by Robert Barry Francos
© 1986, FFanzeen; introductory comments © RBF, 2011
Performance still images © RBF; other images from the Internet

The following article on the underrated indie band Human Switchboard was originally published in FFanzeen magazine, issue #14, in 1986. It was written by Jim Downs.

The first time I met Human Switchboard keyboardist and co-singer Myrna Macarian it was very briefly during my initial visit to Buffalo in 1978. She was hanging out with Bernie Kugel. Switchboard had just played in there (the band had formed in Syracuse the year before), and of course Bernie, being the indie record maven and lead singer of hometown heroes The Good, connected with her.

This was followed by seeing the band actually perform in 1984 at CBGBs, and then again when they opened for Alex Chilton (RIP) on March 1, 1985. I grabbed Jim Downs, who had been in (another) band called Gangreen down in Boone, NC, and we headed over to Irving Plaza to interview the band. While Jim did the interview upstairs in the dressing room, I snapped the photos (and did a bit of vocal participation, as you’ll see; ironically, Jim would turn out to be a big-time photographer). On the way out of the interview to go catch the show downstairs, we ran into Bernie Worrell, who was joining the Switchboard onstage as a guest keyboardist. He was wearing a kilt, so I asked him if I could take some pix, and he agreed, striking a few funny poses.

The show was great, of course.

After the band broke up and some he had some weirdness with the law, Bob Pfeifer now has a new novel about to be published later this month, University of Straners, which I will be reviewing here in the blog. – RBF, 2011

Remember those grade-B horror movies from when you were a kid? A better term would be fright movie instead of horror. You know, the ones where there’s this big build up and then the scare, and nothing really happens? Kinda like a sneeze that has you going, ah…ah… ah…, then… nothing? This interview is with a band whose career has been just like that. Not in the artistic and musical sense, but in their dealings with the major labels. So many times the big payoff seemed to be just around the corner, but when it came down to it, no dice.

One of the amazing things about this band is the fact that a major label hasn’t placed them in a contract. A sound that you can dance to, songs that would do some serious chart damage, and an image that you could welcome into your own home. So what’s the problem, Mr. Record Company?

In getting ready to do the interviews, I was warned that “they won’t really talk”; “they’ll clam up”;” don’t try to talk to all of them at once, they won’t say anything.” Well, I did talk to them separately, but to the contrary, they were very friendly and open. And also quite willing to talk about their music and were honest about what they did. To go from expecting to pry statements from their mouths to the fun I had doing the interview was a very pleasant surprise.

Human Switchboard is: Bob Pfeifer, guitar / vocals; Myrna Macarian, keyboards / vocals; Jerry Nickerson, bass; Ron Metz, drums.

FFanzeen: The music that you write works on two different levels. On one hand, you have a pop feel on the surface, tight vocals harmonies, catchy hooks, etc. But on another level, there’s a deep emotional upwelling going on. Why do that; why dig so deep? For instance, there’s a line in one of your songs that goes, “A heart’s not quite a heart until it’s been broken.”
Bob Pfeifer: That’s probably a true statement

FF: Yes, I guess it is.
Bob: Well, there you go. That kind of answers it, doesn’t it? That’s just what comes out. That’s really the way it happens. I don’t think that my songs are morbid or anything, I think that actually they’re happy in a sense. I think that anyone that could say that would probably be a happy person because they could say it.

FF: They’ve been through it.
Bob: If they had been through it and are not happy, they commit suicide. No, not really, but the basic point is that, I don’t know, it just happens. I really would have a lot of trouble singing a lot of lyrics that I hear other people singing. I mean, Steve Perry or Styx or something. I really would have a lot of trouble and I simply don’t have the imagination to sing Rush lyrics. I sing about what is there. Sometimes I’ll use fictional characters, and I’ll get an idea. But at the same time the way that I’d portray it would be the way I’d – I mean, reality is more (interesting). I’d tell you the truth if I could explain it. I wouldn’t play it.

FF: That’s similar to what Van Morrison had said: it just comes out and he tries not to intellectualize about it.
Bob: You work on it, but you don‘t sit there and go, “I’m going to write a song about falling in love with a 14 year-old girl.”

FF: Have you received any flack from, say, the record companies about some of your lyrics?
Bob: No, nobody’s bugged me. Except when I used the word fuck in “Book on Looks,” and tried to get airplay with it. I mean, a lot of bands have used a lot worse words than I do that are a lot bigger than me. Prince in “Erotic City” is using –
Myrna Macarian (passing through): Fuck

FF: But with Prince, there’s this -
Bob: Mega-platinum. I know, that thing allows you to get airplay.

FF: Let me ask you about the record companies.
Bob: No, let’s not. I get in more trouble talking about record companies than about what my lyrics say.

FF: Well, maybe not a specific company. But you guys have been slugging it out since ’79 [sic].
Bob: I know it’s been a long time. I know I’m feeling my age.


FF: And it’s been that it happens, then it doesn’t, then the deals come back, then they go away again.
Bob: A lot of that has to do with people that support us, I mean our audience. Through these days that we haven’t had anything, we’ve been getting a bigger audience. The live shows and the earlier recordings being independently released saturated to a degree. That helps and the critics help create that buzz over and over again, which most bands don’t have the opportunity for. With (just) my record out, I couldn’t have headlined this room tonight (Irving Plaza). If you’d all walked out on me, playing ten dates with nobody, I would have gone, “Forget this.”

FF: Is that why you keep on?
Bob: Part of it. Of course, I couldn’t bear to play in front of no one. There’s enough people to reinforce the belief that you’re good, and that they enjoy it.

FF: So you’ll get back on stage –
Bob: And I love doing it, too; that’s another thing.

FF: Did you always want to?
Bob: Sure, who didn’t?

FF: Well, what about playing out in New York today, with the club scene as it is?
Bob: Well, I think the club scene is very difficult in New York right now. It used to be three or four years ago that you hand eight clubs. Eight first-line clubs going. You have three or four now, if you’re lucky. And you used to have clubs that had music three-four nights a week, like Harrrahs, and those places. Now you’re down to two nights a week in a lot of rooms. And the other thing is that fewer and fewer people are going out to music clubs. I think some of that has to do with the age of people; the baby boom. I think the other thing has to do with the economic situation. It’s harder and harder. You used to be able to get an apartment for $300 dollars in New York; now you’re lucky to find one for six.

Robert Barry Francos: Also, in ’75, CBGB’s was $2.50 to get in on a Saturday night, and 75 cents a drink. Now it’s like $5-$6 at the cheapest places.
Bob: The other thing is that Manhattan is so expensive to live in; you don’t have so many young people coming here any more. Every kid out of college used to come to New York for a while and it’s just not happening, because you can’t afford to do that. People are, I think, staying in their own cities, or else moving to the outskirts. And that diversifies the scene; it doesn’t make it a focal point. It makes it a lot easier to get into CBGB’s.

FF: Do you feel that this situation will help your band or hurt it in the long run?
Bob: I think it hurts all bands, but at the same time, I think that we have an older audience than most bands. I think it was Hilly (Kristal) at CB’s that said that he sells more top shelf when we play than any other band. Like, he’ll run out of Dos Equis and Heinekens, and not Rolling Rock. So economically, I guess that our audience would be capable of purchasing records. But at the same time, you look at Area or something, and that’s $15 to get in and $5 a drink. And that place has no problem being filled up. I think that might say that people that are a little older don’t want to sit at CBGB’s.

FF: What do you, yourself, like to sit down and listen to?
Bob: I listen to stuff on the radio. Stuff I get up with. I listen to Dylan, Beefheart; I like the Stones. I probably listen to stuff that everybody listens to. There are no secrets. Anybody that tells you that they were listening to the Velvet Underground at 12 is full of shit. They didn’t even have it. If all the people that talk about that album had bought it, it would have been platinum in ’68. Let’s be realistic. They sold like 3,000 units. I mean, let’s face it, the Switchboard outsold them in their time. That’s how small they were; that shows you ‘cause we’re this small. See, I’m really weird, ‘cause I’ll go in with a song and I go, “This is kinda like this…” and (the band) looks and me and goes, “What country are you in? That’s not Steve Miller! What are you going with that shit?” And I’m going, “Don’t you hear it?” And they go, “No,” and it turns into a Switchboard song. So I’m trying to relate by other music. Obviously, I don’t listen to Steve Miller, but something about it reminds me of him in this one song.

FF: The band has relocated itself in the New York area from Cleveland. Other than the obvious, is there a great change, creatively, in the two cities?
Bob: I think that you can distract yourself in New York more than anywhere else in the world, which isn’t particularly good for writing songs. “Gee, I feel depressed tonight, I think I’ll go out,” instead of, “I’m sitting in my room there’s nothing to do. It’s three in the morning in Cleveland. What to do? Guess I’ll pick up my guitar and write some lyrics.” It’s much more fun to go out.

FF: Is that what’s happening?
Bob: No, that doesn’t happen to me that much because I’ve been used to the city for a number of years. Even when we lived in Cleveland, I probably spent three months out the year here. And even when I go out, I basically hang around with my small group of friends. I’m too poor to go out in this fucking city.

FF: You were quoted in The New York Rocker as saying, “They become less involved. It’s what New York does, right? You’ve got to deal with fucking working eight hours just to pay your rent, when you don’t have enough money to buy a beer. And if you don’t get on a guest list, you’re dead.”
Bob: I could not afford to see myself play tonight.

FF: You couldn’t?
Bob: Right
RBF: Neither could I.

FF: So is there stuff that you have recorded recently?
Bob: Yeah, this last week we cut the tracks for a label for a song demo, for producers. There’s the demos from the PolyGram demo sessions, and there’s the session that Mike Thorne produced, who did Soft Cell. I didn’t appreciate his work until a few years ago.

FF: Will there be a Human Switchboard video?
Bob: Would I do a video? Sure, I’d do a video. I have no problem with videos. Certain kinds of videos I wouldn’t want to do.

FF: What kinds?
Bob: Like “Talking in Your Sleep” that the Romantics did, that I wouldn’t do. But other people have done good videos. I like Van Halen and ZZ Top’s videos; they have funny videos. I think the T.A.M.I. Show is great, and that’s all that stuff was, was videos. If you think about it, that was the equivalent of it in that day. I think that people that walk around and say, “I’m gonna be some kind of purist by not doing videos” isn’t being a purist, really. The tradition of rock’n’roll is that the music was always documented.

RBF: Even in the movies.
Bob: Sure, that was great! I remember as a kid going to see the movie just to see the performance.

RBF: In the movie Rock, Rock, Rock, with Frankie Lymon, each dance segment is a video.
Bob: Sure!

FF: On your cassette Coffee Break (on ROIR), you made the statement that you have the control of the record.
Bob: Did me a lot of good. You take it with a smile. It’s better than finding me bitter. Anyway, that’s four in the morning.

FF: In relating this to a video, how much control would you relinquish with the video? Would you write it yourself?
Bob: I don’t know. I think in terms of video I’m not visual enough in terms of my own band; that’s the difficulty. For instance, like producing records, I could produce us totally because I’m too involved. But when it comes to video, you just find a relation with the director, and you have some common ground. You don’t get a guy that’s used to doing Scorpions videos; you just be rational about this stuff and I think it works out just fine. I would be better at saying things that I don’t want, and I would pool some ideas that we would want, but I would leave it in their hands to a large degree. And you’d have to establish meetings and be aware of what’s going on, whether it’s turning the wrong way. People have a lot of fear about video and I just don’t have that.

FF: Is that basically the same process that you go through when recording with a producer or engineer?
Bob: Well, we’re probably more involved in the music than the video. We naturally have more knowledge and input because of our experience. And, the songs have been written and it goes a certain way.

FF: And producing yourself?
Bob: Well, we did that with our first record. But you’re not going to have a guy coming into the Switchboard and turning us into AC/DC. We don’t sound like that. That person wouldn’t work with us and we wouldn’t work with them. I think it’s easy enough to find a common ground. I think that if you work with good people transmitting the information of the kind of sound you want is much easier than –

FF: Putting something out of somebody that isn’t going to see it.
Bob: And that’s the ideal, right?

* * *

FF: In the album Who’s Landed in My Hanger, most of the material was Bob’s. You had co-written “Saturday Girl” and “I Can’t Walk Alone” with him. Now it seems that you’re writing more for the band. Does that change the way that you work and see the band?
Myrna: No. I think we work really well when we collaborate, and usually most of the songs that I sing I like to have a part in the way the vocals go. ‘Cause the way I vocalize something would be different than the way (Bob) would. There are songs like, well, he wrote the song “A Lot of Things” that I sing, and he wrote all of it. But that one was really suited for my voice, because we have such completely different vocalizings.

FF: Sure, because you have, well, I don’t want to say it ‘cause in some circles it’s a bad word, but you have a pop feel to your vocals.
Myrna: No, I don’t think that’s bad at all. I’m a pop singer.

FF: Whew! Great, because the way that you sing “Downtown” –
Myrna: I didn’t write that one.

FF: You didn’t?
Myrna: No, can you believe that?

FF: You might as well have.
Myrna: [Laughs hard]

FF: Well, how do you approach writing your songs?
Myrna: Generally, it’s an idea that you’ve been considering or a situation that presents itself to you. Most of the songs are about love and relationships, the way people act with each other, and friendship as a whole. But that’s what most music is based on.

FF: Say that there’s a song that you’ve come up with an idea for. Do you take it to the band and have them work it over with you, or do you more or less bring in a finished product?
Myrna: Well, I collaborate with Bob. And in some cases, he’ll come up with just a chord structure and bring it in, and I’ll work on it the way I feel and put a vocal on it. And then you have a song. Or, in some cases, the two of us sit down together and put music and then a vocal on top of it. But most of it starts with music first and then we put a vocal on top of it.

FF: You’ll get an idea for a riff or something –
Myrna: Yeah, you get little ideas. I don’t know where you get them, maybe something that you’ve heard before. You can’t help but be influenced, like a little melody, or something that occurs to you, and you build out of that. Because I seem to be more melody-oriented, I tend to go more for the melody line. I guess that’s my pop sensibility. I’m really not too self-conscious about it. I tend to be more intuitive about things. Maybe I’m not critical enough.

FF: But by being too critical, a lot of stuff doesn’t come out; by examining too closely.
Myrna: I’m not a very crafted songwriter. I would never look at it as a craft. I tend to do it the way it feels to me.

FF: You had been working with Bernie Worrell. How was it with another keyboardist in the band?
Myrna: It was great! It was great in a lot of different ways. It was tremendous to have a person of that stature. In a sense he’s probably one of my heroes in terms of keyboard players. He laid a lot of groundwork down for a lot of different kinds of music, especially a lot of modern stuff.

FF: How would the two of you work your parts out?
Myrna: In that situation, Bernie was taking over a lot of the rhythm parts and filling in. It’s kinda difficult to be able to do a lot with the keyboards and sing at the same time. It’s not like the guitar where you can get away with, ah –

FF: Just whacking at it.
Myrna: It was nice; it gave me the opportunity to sing more, and I got in front a couple of times. It gave me that chance. So, you work it out. I really liked working with another musician. It adds a different aspect. You can play around with rhythm and melody that you think about, that you can’t do on your own.

FF: It seems that the sound has changed a bit from having Bernie in the band. There are certain things I hear now in your music that were not that apparent before.
Myrna: I’d say that more than anything it gave us a chance to work things out and push them a little more to wherever they were going to go. A lot of it was just having an extra musician. You feed off ideas off people back and forth all the time. And he’s a great player.

FF: So how did all this music come to this point? In other words, why music?
Myrna: It’s like… well, people ask me that and I don’t know. It just sort of happened. Really, it did. I didn’t wake up one morning and go, “I’m gonna be on stage.” Sometimes I’ll be on stage and I’ll go, “How did I end up there?” I don’t know what happened. It’s been a long haul and there’s been a lot that went along with it; and it was a conscious choice, but for it to have gotten to where it is right now wasn’t something that we had ever foreseen. When we had decided to do it we wanted to go all the way. Maybe that’s why we’re not plagued with a lot of the same problems other groups have. Because it was something we all enjoyed and we did it because we enjoyed it. We didn’t do it because, “Well, we’re a band.” It wasn’t where you decide to do something where you wear your clothes a certain way to fulfill that. That didn’t quite happen. It evolved in a very natural way.

FF: Well, it seems natural. You look like you have a lot of fun.
Myrna: Oh, yeah. We wouldn’t do it otherwise. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. It’s not something that you do and not enjoy it. If you don’t, you’ll start hating it. But other people will hate it too, probably.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Switchboard





Bonus video

The Original NONA HENDRYX

Text by Jim Downs and Julia Masi, intro by Robert Barry Francos
Article © 1983; RBF intro and live photo © 2010 by FFanzeen
Other images and video from the Internet

The following article with musician, actor, and performance artist Nona Hendryx was originally published in FFanzeen magazine, issue #11, in 1983. It was written by writer and photographer Jim Downs, and our managing editor, Julia Masi.

I had the opportunity to meet Nona when she was interviewed on the cable access show, Videowave, where I worked as a floor manager for a number of years. The picture below is from that day.

While we were not in the habit of printing articles that did not focus on rock’n’roll, but Nona was very nice to all of us there, with a joyous heart and an open mind, which not everyone had being on public access. We would all later learn about her relationship with Dusty Springfield, but it is Nona’s own funk queen work that brought her to both Videowave and FFanzeen. – RBF, 2010
Her light blue inside-out pants suit sports a bright silver patch that says, “Tailor Made.” And although she confesses to picking it up off the rack, on Nona Hendryx, it’s an original. Her style is all her own and her vice is unmistakable, and almost impossible to imitate.

Since her days with Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells (and then Labelle), to her more recent work with Talking Heads, or her new album, Nona, on RCA Records, she managed to transcend the trends and keep a thread of consistency in her music.

“I don’t particularly like my voice,” confesses Nona. “I just use it because it’s the only vehicle I have for getting my music across. And getting my words across. Poetry is my first love. I think it will continue to be, and music is a tool. I don’t think of myself as a singer.

“A lot of the singers today try to sing like Mahalia Jackson or Aretha (Franklin). I once did one of Mahalia’s songs when I was about 13 or 14. I don’t even remember which one it was. It’s not something I tried to emulate in my voice. I just never had any delusions in my mind that I could sing like Aretha so I didn’t ever try. I appreciate her voice.

“Music really hasn’t changed that much. The only changes have been the electric guitar and computerized music. Punk was a variation of the hippies. Punk shock. That to me is not a change. And the other biggest change is the involvement of women in the arts and, therefore, music. Those are the biggest changes I’ve seen,” notes Nona.

“After 22 years in the music business – I started at five,” she doesn’t see that it’s any easier for a woman now than it was in the early ‘60s, “it’s not so much easier, but it’s less restricted. If it were easier, you’d just be a musician.”

One of the major differences between being accepted as a musician and being labeled a “female musician” is the cosmetic packaging of the performer. “It just seems that to become a part of what’s considered the norm and to be successful, you do it (package yourself). They assume that you’re gonna look like Brooke Shields. Every woman who reaches that status, and the people who’ve gotten to that place like the Go-go’s, it all goes back to that whole image of being glamorous. There’s always someone trying to sell that to you. Because that’s necessary to be liked. I think, in a way, it’s sad because a lot of women with talent are not given the opportunity because they don’t look like Brooke Shields or Diana Ross, or Farrah Fawcett.” Oddly enough, no one has ever tried to package Nona. “I do such a good job of it myself,” she laughs. “I think I’m just a very visual person. I like visuals. I love the movies. I love clothes. I go buy make-up, and then go home and try it all on.”

Nona’s also quite handy with the pen and paint brush. “I was always good at art. It came naturally and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the creative process. The frustration. I love it!

“I love poetry. It was a way to write down my feelings and divorce myself from my feelings. Like a lot of teenagers, I was very shy, except when I was around my friends. Then I wasn’t shy; I was bad then. And I mean bad as in being bad. And after junior high, ‘cause I was switched from a different high school from my friends, which was a predominately white school, and I came from a neighborhood that I’d say was a 95% black neighborhood, I felt disoriented. A teacher there helped me; you know, introduced me to poetry and also worked with me on the poems. And I just took to it really quickly. I was really good at interpreting what was being said. And then I began to write some and took public speaking in high school and did a couple of plays.

“When I started going on the road with Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells, I tended to use that as a way of passing the hours or riding in a station wagon, writing short stories and developing a writing style for myself. And what I began to develop was one of – well – taking a word and – like, joy: joyfulness; joyless; overjoyed. All the things you can add to a word (like) the prefix and the suffix, and summing up the word. I love words.”

Her taste in poetry is eclectic, ranging from Shakespeare to e.e. cummings, to Nikki Giovanni, and every style in-between. When someone admits they have a hard time understanding when words become a poem, Nona is happy to explain: “The fact is that it’s verse and it needs nothing else to make it. It needs no music or visuals to make it. Although in modern poetry what matters structure within literature, within how you use verse. Poetry can be one word; if the choice of the word fits the feeling. And if it causes your mind to bounce off or if it’s like a magnet that draws you, it pulls you into the poem.”

She believes that writing lyrics is different from writing poems. “Poetry has its own meter. When you read it, you’re reading to the meter. In a song, music has that meter also, but you must write the words to flow with the music. The syllables must fit the notes of the melody.”

When Nona writes songs, she usually goes into the studio with “the musical ideas set and the lyrics can change up to the last minute of my singing it. Sometimes I think I have the right words for something and later on in singing it and singing another words by accident, it becomes the right word instead of the one I had.

“I always leave it open for change. The music is always changing. That way it’s still something I enjoy doing. I don’t do it the same way live as I do it on record. And I don’t do it the same way each time I do it. Each time I do it, it’s different.”

Ringing the Fern

Text © Robert Barry Francos
Images from the Internet

Recently, I went to a meditation group to check it out. I am not saying I am enlightened, or am seeking, enlightenment, or am even some kind of Dharma Punk. Yes, I still like my music faster and louder and yes, rock’n’roll made a man outta me, as the Dictators proudly posited, but it was pleasant to sit still and just be for 40 minutes. Perhaps I am old enough to appreciate it, but that was not always so.

In the early 1980s, my friend Jim Downs was dating Dr. Gerri Leigh, who was both a high-end professional psychic and deep into what is then known as the New Age movement. For the unaware, New Age was a nearly cult-level belief system in the healing power of crystals, pyramids, charkas, and usually being vegetarian (if not vegan). The followers were as avid as the punk straight-edgers of the same period, except a whole market came out of it worth millions of dollars, including scents, charms, and especially books (it pretty much started the whole glut of self-help writing that even thrives today). Whole gatherings and expos were devoted to the methods of “betterment.”

Gerri was, as I stated, deeply entrenched in it, for that was her main client base as a professional psychic: upper middle class (and higher) whites with disposable income, who were looking for some kind of piece of mind, no matter what the cost. Back then, Gerri’s service was $100 per “hour” (50 minute sessions). Using various methods, she would tell her patrons whether the time was “right” to enter business deals, if they would find love, or when they would reach some kind of happiness or success.

She offered to “read” me gratis a few times, but I always refused because not only didn’t I believe it, even if I did I wouldn’t want to know. I liked Gerri as a person; hell, she even had worked for Joe Franklin as a producer on his show before her full-time New Age gig. But I didn’t believe in her psychic abilities, and felt her talent was as a great listener.

One thing Gerri did do for me was set up a date with her assistant, Fern Ring. Fern was a pretty avid follower of the New Age psyche, more so than even Gerri, and believed in Gerri unquestionably (as far as I could tell). For example, Fern would “do” her tarot in the morning, and if she had a “negative” reading, she would stay home.

On our first date, we went out to eat at a vegetarian restaurant (her choice) and then came back to her apartment on the Upper East Side. It was just about 11 PM, so we sat on the couch to watch The Honeymooners – and she promptly fell asleep. I woke her when the show was over, and went home.

Fern was a smart woman, having graduated Cum Laude from some upstate college, but she was also unassuming and claimed it was no big deal. At the time, my ego didn’t understand that attitude, but I respected it.

For full disclosure purposes, I must admit that I was a bit strong headed and somewhat closed minded about some things at that time in my life, especially toward the whole New Age thing. While I still have problems with some of that mentality – much as I do with fervent straight-edge – I am much more open minded to try new things before “poo-pooing” it.

There were signs right from the start that things with Fern would not work out, and not just because I was on the rebound from another relationship. For one thing, my humor escaped her completely. For example, the phone went off and I said, “Oh, I think I hear the fern ring.” Not only did she not find it funny, but also it led to our first argument.

Fern was a strict vegetarian. In that period, vegetarian food was not as interesting as it is these days. In fact, I found it awful. Seemed that almost everything was either green or gray: green if it was raw, gray if it was cooked. With my life-long very limited sense of smell, the food was also so bland that I was bored after a few bites. Or, if it was very spicy, all I tasted was the spices and not the object. Obviously, Fern liked vegetarian restaurants, but I kept pulling for places that served meat as well (or, as I crudely put it then, “I hope they have some dead animal flesh”).

Gerri made the rounds on television since New Age was a populist fad, showing up as a frequent guest on The Joe Franklin Show and other news magazine kinds of programs. Once she was even featured on a segment of The Morton Downey Jr. show, which was an “expose” of New Age. At one point, Fern was at the Loudmouth podium shilling as one of Gerri’s clients, but not identifying herself as Gerri’s assistant. She did the same on some feature news program segment about Gerri.

Toward the end of the short-lived relationship, I went with Fern to one of Gerri’s parties. Gerri threw them occasionally for her clients, essentially for them to bring their friends, hoping to farm new clients. In my punk, stripped-down attitude, I was not impressed with this navel-gazing crowd. Here are a couple of true conversations from that party:

Woman: What’s your sign?
RBF: Lobo, the Wolf [a Bugs Bunny reference for those who don’t get it]
Woman: No, really.
RBF: I’d rather not be judged by when I was born, but if you guess, I’ll say so.
Woman: [five guesses later] Taurus?
RBF: Yes, May 10th.
Woman: I knew it!

Man: How do you know Gerri?
RBF: I’m a friend of her boyfriend.
Man: Has she ever done a reading for you?
RBF: She’s offered to do them, but I said no.
Man: How much did she ask for?
RBF: Nothing.
Man: [Angrily] Nothing? I see her three times a week [meaning $300 per week, $1200 per month, in early 1980s dollars] and she offers them to you for free and you turn her down?!
Then he stormed off in disgust, though I’ve never found out if he was mad at me for turning it down, or her for offering it to me for free. Either way, he kept seeing her.

One evening after a dinner, we were getting cozy, when the phone rang. She went to another room to answer it, and when she came back, she said, essentially, I just don’t do it for her, so goodbye. A bit shocked by this turn of events, I left and never saw her again. While hurt, I was not heartbroken. And it truly was for the better of everyone involved. It certainly was good she realized it early.

Jim soon also split from Gerri, and eventually married Denise Nadvornik. It was a lovely wedding. A few years later, Gerri went into the “next big thing,” channeling, which was popularized by JZ Knight / Ramtha. When I heard that Gerri passed away in 2003 of cancer while in her 40s, I was saddened by the news. She worked with 9/11 survivors, and I wonder it that may have been a factor. Here is some info on her: www.themetaarts.com/archives/200306/drgerri.html.

As for Fern, the last I heard anything about her was in the late 1980s. This is the story as I heard it, which sounds plausibly to me: seems she was dating an acquaintance of a friend of mine. The guy was mugged one afternoon, and Fern got mad at him, demanding to know what he did, on a karmic level, that caused him to get attacked later in the day.

Yet as strange as all that was to me, Fern was at heart a good person who was devoted to her beliefs and definitely well meaning. I wish her well.

Coincidence in a Rock and Roll World

Text and photos © Robert Barry Francos

When my decades long good friend Joe Viglione isn’t successfully touting with corporate windmills or promoting deserving artists like Marty Balin, he is also fascinated by coincidences. In conversations with him on this very topic, I recalled a couple that were in my life, one directly, and one to someone else.

[Human Switchboard at Irving Plaza, 1980s]
In the early 1980s, I was working in a corporate in-house print shop. It was loud and noisy, and there was a radio always on playing Top 10 music. In other words, I heard “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “Rhythm Is Going to Get You” by Gloria Estoban every hour, and since Michael Jackson’s Thriller had recently been released, there was one of his songs playing every 15 minutes, like “Billy Jean” and the title cut, which was driving me insane. It was the period of garage punk revival in my world, and naturally I hated mainstream radio (still do). So I bought myself a Walkman to play tapes to help drown out the dreadful noise.

Around that time, the corporation for which I worked decided to do a big project, and they hired two or three temps for a few days. There I was, working away listening to my Walkman, and I caught the eye of one of the temps. Now at the time, most people who listened to a Walkman usually were playing the same type of industrial noise that was on the radio. This man gave me an eyes-rolled back look, like, “Oh, he’s another one.” This pissed me off.

I had never spoken to this person, so I walked over to him. I said, “I’ll have you know, I am not listening to the same crap that’s playing on that radio over there.”

This Asian man said, in a deep southern accent, “Oh, yeah? Then whut are you listenin’ to?” with a challenge.

“On this tape, I have the Standells’ “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White,” the Shangri-Las’ “Shout” (best cover of the song after Lulu’s), Chocolate Watchband’s “Don’t Want Your Lovin’,” the Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much to Dream”….

His attitude totally changed, and he said, “Oh, wow, that’s some great stuff! Yeah, I was in a band in North Carolina up to a couple-a weeks ago that played more punk, but I shore like that kinda stuff.”

Bob Pfiefer of Human Switchboard during interview described in blog]
I had recently come back from Greensboro, staying a week with another good pal, Nancy Neon (and her family), going to amazing clubs like Fridays, seeing my first Big Star food market, going to my first drive-in, and hanging out with a bunch of cool people, including Lynn, who would eventually end up in Love Tractor.

“I know some bands down that way. What was the name of yours?”

“Aw, you never heard of us, trust me.”

“Try me.”

Bernie Worrell backstage at Irving Plaza]
“We were Gang Green. Not the same ones in Boston, we were outta Boone (NC).”

I looked at him, mouth hinged open, and I asked, “Are you Jim Downs?”

The look on his face was probably as priceless and in shock as mine was. “Yeah, who the hell are you?”

“I’m Robert Francos.”

“Robert Barry Francos?”

Seems that while he was in the early stages of the band, he was promoting them, and because of my fanzine, FFanzeen, we had been writing back and forth for a while. As the band dwindled, so had our letters, and I hadn’t heard from him in a while. Jim was preparing to come to New York, and this was his first job to tide him over until he found a real job (now he’s a well respected local New York photographer).

We became fast friends after that for quite the while, until we eventually lost touch. In fact, that meeting in some ways probably led to my getting married. In a nutshell:

[Alex Chilton at Irving Plaza]
Jim started writing a very humorous column in my magazine called “Half Japanese” and did some interviews. One was with Bob Pfeifer, of the band Human Switchboard, done backstage at Irving Plaza (I was there, too; it was a great show with the Switchboard opening for Alex Chilton, with whom Bernie Worrell was guesting). That night, Jim also brought his then girlfriend, Aurora Jones. When they broke up, I remained friends with both. Aurora is an actress, and at some point she told me that she wanted to make a stab at going to LA to try her hand at the craft, but as she was paying such small rent in Little Italy, she needed someone she trusted to take over the apartment for a couple of years, but be willing to leave it if she needed to come back. I volunteered, which gave me a welcoming space to get married and bring my partner. We stayed there for two-and-a-half years, until Aurora came back.

Jim married Denise Nadvornik, and the last I heard they had a son and live in Queens.

Bernie Kugel, Under Acme, NYC, 1998]
The indirect story concerns my pal Bernie Kugel, of The Good, and then Mystic Eyes, both Buffalo core cult bands. When Bernie finished high school in the late ‘70s, he decided to go to Buffalo State College SUNY. Much of his choice was based on two elements: the first is that is was far enough way from his parents to get away, but close enough to come back and visit record stores and clubs like CBGBs. The other was the magazine Shakin’ Street Gazette, which was an extremely hip music magazine that was published by the school. Not only did he attend the school, but he also began writing for SSG, including an interview with the Ramones at Max’s Kansas City the night before they took their infamous first tour of England (yes, I was there for that, too).

The next year, out in West Babylon on Long Island, Judi Sadinsky (her moniker was the lower case judi) was graduating high school. She wanted to get far enough away from her parents but close enough to come back. She picked up a copy of Shakin’ Street Gazette and there was a huge story about David Bowie. She thought that any school that publishes this kind of in-depth story about Bowie must be okay. She went to Buff State.

While attending the school, she met Bernie and they started off a relationship. She’s the one for whom he wrote his classic tune “Judy” (a talented artist and graphic designer, she also help me with my first issues of FFanzeen). It was well into their relationship that she found out that he’s the one that wrote the Bowie article that brought her there in the first place.

The relationship didn’t last, but…spooky.

Of course, Bernie is now married for over 25 years to the wonderful Tink and they have a son, Ben (a talented guitarist in his own right), who is about to graduate college (yep, Buff State).