Ice Cream Social at The Church of Logic, Sin & Love
by M. Alberto Rivera
My expectations of artists and their art is high and perhaps rightfully so. Much higher than say a plumber, or a mechanic. Because I expect a really good mechanic or plumber, to be more or less interchangeable with another of Image may be NSFW.
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his shared trade. Unlike entertainers, be they writers, painters, musicians, whatever; an artists work is so subjective.
Brilliance is similarly subjective. I recently found some songs on YouTube that have fallen out of favor with commercial radio and are so deeply buried in my long put away CD collection, I couldn’t tell you where exactly they might be hiding. I figured if I listened to them on YouTube, it would be enough and I wouldn’t drive myself nuts tracking down a song to get it out of my head. One of these was by a band called “The Men.”
The Men released a brilliant song, “The Church of Logic, Sin and Love” in 1992 and it was a minor radio hit. I used to hear it late at night while driving home from whatever disposable job I was toiling at. I also heard it semi regularly a few years later on the radio while stationed in Guam, where forgotten music goes on to have a strange afterlife. But the song resonated with me for a myriad of reasons. It was riding on the crest of Alternative bands now vying for air time on the commercial radio. It describes well a time and place in my life. I was old enough to serve in the military, but too young to drink legally. So where do you hang out when you’re no longer a boy and not quite a man, according to the government?
I was stationed in Ventura County, California, and I used to love cruising music stores on Melrose in Los Angeles. Because I could walk in and for $10 buy 10-15 cd’s of bands I’d only read about in hand-written ‘zines by people who spoke English as a third language.
On one trip into LA, the girl who accompanied me, a top 40 sort of girl, was not as eager as me to explore what was on these new CD’s as we made our way home. She kept scanning through the tracks of these European Samplers looking for something that resembled Phil Collins, to no avail. I made it easy for her. I had purchased a CD simply titled, “The Men” which contained the lead track, “The Church of Logic, Sin and Love,” for $1. I was excited, as this used price, in my mind, said nothing about the contents. I’ve found most of my favorite records in the cut out bins.
I put on this CD and she smiled. I don’t know if she liked the song, or was relieved that it wasn’t loud, angry young men screaming about something she couldn’t understand. Maybe she recognized from the airplay it did receive. Whatever the reason, for the next 4 minutes and 49 seconds there was harmony and agreement in the car, as The Men mused on “Work, strip bars and loneliness galore.”
Then the next song came on. And then the third. I kept waiting for another moment of similar brilliance from this underappreciated and obscure artist. It never came. I gave the disc 3 more listens in it’s entireity after that. It sounded like uninspired REM b sides or even vaguely like the unremarkable songs of minor and occasional geniuses, The Swimming Pool Q’s. But I kept the CD, I still have it, and still think the single is exceptional. I must have put it on dozens of mix tapes. Do you remember mix tapes?
The sampler CD was the natural progression from the mix tape. It allowed labels to showcase a variety of talent on the cheap, usually giving these CD’s away or selling them for $4-5. I discovered Brenda Khan on mix CD with Fishbone playing a live version of “Freddie’s Dead” and 10 otherwise unnoteworthy acts. Fishbone’s level of cool is still beyond reproach.
The song that introduced me to Brenda Khan was “Mint Juleps and Needles.” It was smart, sexy, tired, winsome and exasperated all at once, got that? There’s a post collegiate vocabulary and art school references happening throughout, and some romantic confession, “I like you better than most of the men I’ve had.” There’s the inability of the narrator to understand why the boy she likes is dating a girl who dances on a bar, and not her. That’s a lot to pack into 3 minutes 30.
Then on a caffeine laced with meth whirlwind trip to San Francisco I found another single of Ms. Khan’s, ‘Anesthesia’ which I must have played 10-15 times in a row, so amazed was I with it. My travelling companion was not as intrigued. Fuck her, I was driving. More of the same clever lyrics, with a folky band backing her. Fun stuff. There’s a reference to both Malcom X and Billy Graham, and the tag line, “They believe you if you swear your telling lies!” I was now on the hunt for this young lady, needing to hear everything else she had to say. With two exceptional singles in my possession, I was ready to buy the album, certain I’d find a masterpiece.
I paid $16 at Salzers, for a brand new copy of “Epiphany in Brooklyn” to find one more amazing song, besides the other 2 I already owned. The rest of the album was overly sentimental, boring girl folk songs of no consequence. She sang about, hell, I don’t know. There was a song about Indiana, and another where she sounded like she was learning how to fret a chord for the first time, and, and, and, I paid $16 bucks for it. Ugh.
Admittedly the third song, “I Don’t Sleep, I Drink Coffee Instead” was smart, quick witted, and I related to it like you have no idea. But come on? I was expecting something on par with an early Dylan album, “Highway 61” or “Another Side of Bob Dylan.” The songs were that good. Unfortunately for me the rest of the album wasn’t. And these days I can hardly find anything out about Ms. Khan. She has a myspace, but is about as underground as someone can be in the digital age. Youtube has precious few clips of her. Maybe her plan is to be a clever recluse. Not sure how that’s working out for her.
Enter the Primative Radio Gods. One reviewer called them the “Perfect one hit wonder.” Their hit was ““Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand.” And I could sort of tell this was the best of what they had to say. “They” meaning, the one guy, Chris O’Conner who did most everything. And there’s nothing wrong with having one amazing track. Most artists never even get that. They scratch and claw to get played on the radio and it’s over before it starts. Don’t ask me how I knew this was going to be Primative Radio Gods “Wooly Bully”, “Sex and Candy” and “Mambo #5,” I just did. Saved my money, enjoyed it when it was on the radio and still think it’s fun when it gets played.
So most anyone can be amazing once. And sometimes, just once is enough. There are an untold number of artists who for whatever reason work for 20 years releasing small works of remarkable beauty, but never see a substantial payoff for their efforts. And there are those who stumble into a hit, brilliant or just dumb and catchy, and it makes their career and/or ruins their lives. Then the people like me, who expected the aforementioned artists to be repeatedly brilliant, because of one song he made. I was holding out hope this would be worthwhile, a hidden treasure, obscured by the more popular hit, some precious stone buried and overlooked, but no. My hunt for treasure provided me a pop top to a soda can, the foil wrapper for some gum, and the one shiny coin, I had already spotted sticking out of the sand, the one I didn’t have to look for, because I already knew it was there.
This is an excerpt from the authors Ebook, Cheap Women and Cheaper Beer available at: Amazon.com