I was preparing my show this morning. The program in the last hour is a bit more contemporary than usual, so I was hunting through LPs and 45s for stuff that would fit together. It's weird how radio "works" - you wouldn't in a million years figure that Glen Campbell's record of the "William Tell Overture" is a nice lead-in to "My Old Man" by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, but it is.
There are a lot of underground radio pundits who pump and stump, screamin' for credit as to who first innovated so-called "freeform" radio. I know that all of them are wrong in citing ANY contemporary milestone - Marinetti and the Italian Futurists were really the first to experiment with it back in early 1930s. The published manifestos about their experiments (and their results) at the time - I read some of these not long before I got into radio full-time in 1985.
I still think they nailed it - what they were looking for was disjunctive combinations of material, and they were astonished that the segues between elements that were wholly unrelated seemed to invoke a third plane of conciousness which "married" the elements. That's a nice way of putting it.
Anyway I happened to run across Volume 1 of the series "Waves". This was a short-lived group of LPs issued on the Bomp! label in Berkeley that repackaged key tracks from indie and one-off labels created by artists. These records were supposed to come out monthly, like a magazine - this "issue" is dated January 1979. The series only got to about six issues when the label itself called it quits. Pere Ubu appeared on one of these records, but most of the groups represented got not closer to so-called "success" than their own backyard.
However, one group listed here did connect with me - The Human Switchboard, from Columbus, Ohio via Kent or Akron. I had seen them in 1981 or 1982 at The Rhine Room on Universioty of Cincinnati campus, and may have opened for them. Bob Pfiefer from this band had a notorious reputation for being a self-proclaimed music industry "big shot", and he was aware of that - but he later made good on this as he did move into executive postions with some of the the majors (he's no longer there now and is reportedly glad to be rid of this career.) Myrna Marcarian was the main singer and also played the Farfisa organ that helped give the Switchboard it's distinctive sound. She and Bob were married, but split up not too long after The Human Switchboard called it a day sometime around 1983- 4.
I had never opened the "Waves" album - bought it sealed, but I got out the old thumbnail and winced as I automatically took the value of the album down a notch. But my curiosity about what the Human Switchboard number sounded like was too great to withstand the disciplines imposed by informed record collecting. To my delight, the record is on a streaky, light violet vinyl pressing - colored vinyl was all the rage in those days. I listend to the Switchboard track and tears came to my eyes. Sure - I remember this song; but I don't remember hearing it from any record - I remember them playing it at the Rhine Room more than 20 years ago. I remember Bob and Myrna, and how much I liked them both - Bob drinking beer after beer, waxing rhapsodic about the fact that Talking Heads were drawing funk musicians into their band, and how this would finally break down the racial divisions in music and make everyone free. And Myrna; stoic, exasperated, silent and disgusted.
Gee the song ain't bad; it goes perhaps a chorus too long, and is a bit dated in a "New Wavey" kind of way (I like that sound, nonetheless) but it's cleverly written and well-played - could stand to have been better recorded. It occurs to me now that the popular 1980s English group, Young Marble Giants, completely and totally ripped off the Switchboard's trademark sound down to the type of girl singer they got to front the band. But what moved me the most was the memories this particular song brought back, they made me both sad and happy. Such is the nature of New Wave Nostalgia.
Uncle Dave Lewis
udtv@yahoo.com