Brightest Young Things

The Lucy Show "Mania"

It’s true. I couldn’t resist adding another column in hopes of turning you cats and kittens on to more music. This is going to focus on discs primarily from the 80s (and early 90s) that have long been hard to find or sort of fell through the cracks of the collective consciousness. They will also be true records in that you should own the whole thing and not download just a few songs. To make life easy, I will focus on spending some of your eMusic credits. The service is still spotty with new releases but an amazing array of back catalogues have come on-line and digging through ebay or gemm has now been simplified to single clicks at a fraction of the cost. Sit back and enjoy! 

More than 20 years have passed between us. He looks exactly the same though, with his hair parted at the side - yet constantly trying to flip up in that boyish way. It seems like only yesterday when he was the college radio (how they referred to it back in the day) loving skinny kid trying to romance my pretty neighbor. Five years older than me, he didn’t even need to give me the time of day or wipe my snotty nose, much less any nuggets of advice. Instead, he could see that I was at a formative time in developing my musical tastes and he delighted in tossing me someone to listen to on each visit. Now, he is chasing young twins with his oldest son trying to help out while also crushing on my daughter (an arranged marriage could be in order.) Time has caught up to me but he still seems to have that enthusiasm bubbling just below the surface.

We are side by side watching our kids careening across the dance floor at a surprise birthday party for his younger sister in-law (who I had a mad crush on and may be the coolest chick I ever met) and trying to close the gap since I saw him last on his wedding day (he obviously got the girl: How could he not, with his extensive knowledge of REM b-sides!) I know we will only have a few moments before life sweeps us away. I want to let him know in some small way that his influence was important to me. My brittle mind is forced to pick one artist or song to encapsulate this feeling. I wait for my indie rock rolodex to start spinning but it never does. I know what I want to say right away. I tell him that whenever I DJ, or make a mixtape, from the time we met that The Lucy Show’s “Part of Me Now” always ends up in the set.

He nods.

He knows.

Comprised of the core duo of Canadians Mark Bandola and Rob Vandeven, who moved to the UK and filled out the band into a foursome, The Lucy Show always stood out from their mopey peers due to an unabashed love of melody, often referencing The Beatles or even worse – covering The Beach Boys while opening for Love and Rockets. Their initial release “…undone” got the hype ball rolling, but doesn’t distinguish itself in retrospect when compared to Comsat Angels or other like-minded groups of the day. It did connect with the American audience though, as CMJ listed it at the top of it’s charts briefly. Much to the dismay of the US office of A&M, the UK office decided to drop the band with seemingly no notice. This would serve as the beginning of the end, but before it was over they would gather their finest efforts for the subsequent “Mania.” Big Time showed a major push to the US audience and gave the band a budget to bring in producer to the indie stars John Leckie, to clean up the sound and let the melodies ring true. It was a perfect marriage.

That’s not to say that many of the songs aren’t heavily coated in 80’s new wave glaze – they are; but the tunes and lyrics are allowed to sink or swim on their own which is all you can ask for. In the classic Beatles battle of the songwriters, Bandola and Vandeven contribute 5 each to the album proper. Kicking things off with the epic drums and shimmer of “Land and the Life,” you can hear Vandeven soaking in the R.E.M/Let’s Active scene on college radio and then filtering it through the lens of The Cure. Reverbed jangling guitars push along Bandola’s “View From the Outside” and let me know what it would have sounded like if Tommy Keene had grown up in London as opposed to DC. It’s a pretty engaging mix of The Chameleons trying to cover Stax classics. “Sojourn’s End” tips us off to the mild pretension (hey – it’s 80’s new wave – what do you expect?) with it’s clanging bell intro and spaghetti western breaks. It’s still a nice herky jerky dark pop tune in the end and has a beautiful shift into the bridge.

“Sad September” breaks down to a Church-like strum with pitter patter percussion and Vandeven sings with just the right mix of hope and misery, pregnant pauses between each word. The keyboard swell giving way to a tiny little melody line at just the right moment gets me every time. It is oh so pretty. Organs and harmonica pull us back into “A Million Things” which is sort of a paint-by-numbers college radio hit (which it was) in the Midnight Oil minus the venom kind of way. It’s solid, but not a standout track. “Sun and Moon” drags it’s in and out Cure inspired guitar lines over a crisp backbeat, but the track suffers from being a little too obvious in its whiny lyrics. Not that it doesn’t roll over a lot of similar artist's best work, especially in the fretwork. “Shame” is Bandola’s turn at the heavy hand as far as the words go, but he also has cutting reverbed lines to save this mid-tempo mover. In his defense, writing about apartheid was almost required at the time as hack as it seems today. Fading in is the chugging “Melody” with it’s McCartney finish, before the gem that has always shined so brightly for me appears: “Part of Me Now” is unusual for the band in that it is just keyboards and drum machine (in some ways foreshadowing the band being whittled down post completion.)

It is the sound of a thousand teen angst/comedies at the hands of John Hughes. It as if OMD had been up for a week straight trying to figure out how their heart no longer belonged to themselves. It aches ever so slightly. Bandola sings as if whispering to his beloved, afraid of what her response might be to this declaration. It’s not so much a love song as it is a song about that first wave of nervousness when you realize that this infatuation won’t be let go of so easily.

It is small.

It is beautiful.

Following is the trumpet burst (courtesy of session man extraordinaire Roddy Lorimer) of the other college radio hit here, “New Message.” The horn takes things somewhat into Sting territory but there was never any shame here in the pop commercial considerations. In fact, that’s what separated them from the pack.

Label troubles and financial issues would plague them despite again topping CMJ and receiving a fair amount of MTV play. The duo would split and remain active but never quite capture the old glory. Bandola in particular, managed to show up on a number of good recordings through the 90s while Vandeven took a more experimental approach as Typewriter.

The reissue has a nice handful of bonus tracks from the singles and b-sides. Listen up.

RIYL: an overtly pop version of The Comsat Angels of The Chameleons (I know that describes U2 in the 80s but this dials back the grand notions and keeps the mopey sulk.) The Cure, Flesh For Lulu, The Church… oh shit – 80s college radio in general. 

Here is Rob playing the old 930 Club.