Son Volt's headed for 'Straightaways'

(July 3, 1997)

A Rolling Stone reviewer described multi-instrumentalist Dave Boquist as Son Volt's "secret weapon." It nearly makes him blush.

Boquist says it's a very nice compliment, but he deflects the praise and prefers to think of the trail-blazing Americana quartet as a unit.

Singer-guitarist Jay Farrar maps out the songs lyrically, and Boquist's brother Jim (bass) and drummer Mike Heidorn set the rhythm, but Dave Boquist's talents at guitar, fiddle, banjo and lap steel give Son Volt its trademark country-tinged grace.

It's never been more apparent than on Son Volt's second Warner Bros. album, "Straightaways."

Learning a multitude of instruments is just a matter of having patience and practicing hard, Boquist said recently from his home in St. Paul, Minn.

"A lot of people have a penchant for being patience; everyone else in this band certainly has that ability," he said. "But I guess I have a little bit more patience with myself. From a real young age, I was picking out different parts of songs, what the lead guitar was playing and what the rhythm guitar was doing. I really wanted to know how to play all those things."

Boquist said his parents helped nurture that musical sixth sense.

"Our father, in the 1950s, traveled in a big band and did a lot of road shows," he said. "Then the big band era sort of died out, so he never really made a full living out of it, but he always played around the house. Our mother played the piano and was always very encouraging to us. She bought my first banjo at a garage sale. It was just an atmosphere of learning and a love for music."

Boquist said he first played the lap steel during sessions for Son Volt's 1995 debut album, "Trace." It didn't make him long to grasp it.

"Sometimes I think the learning part takes some sort of math aptitude or something," he said, "because there are a lot of intervals, and it takes time to learn how to play the different keys. All I can say is, I can stick with something, but again, everyone in this band has that. Everyone plays real good guitars, and Jay can pick up a fiddle and play a little, and Jim plays real nice piano, which I hope we can incorporate more after a while."

Boquist cites other multi-instrumentalists, such as David Lindley, John Hartford and the late Jerry Garcia, as personal influences.

"I look at what they play and sometimes I think what I do pales in comparison," he said. "For myself, I always want to do more, and there are other people who do this thing, playing many instruments, and do it very well."

"Straightaways" debuted at a respectable No. 44 on Billboard's album chart in early May, but it quickly faded away after three weeks. Boquist isn't worried.

"We haven't made it a priority to get a video out or do a lot of press," he said. "I don't think we're exactly a publicity band. None of us are extremely ambitious that way. What we're more interested in is recording and touring. We love playing for people, that's what we're all about."

BWF (before we forget): Fans can plug into Son Volt on the Web @ www.wbr.com/sonvolt or send e-mail to sonvolt1@aol.com.

Soul Asylum unearths 'Black Gold' retrospective

(Oct. 1, 2000)

No one said it would be easy, especially for Soul Asylum. It took singer-guitarist Dave Pirner and his band mates 12 years to reach the big leagues, and even then, it happened with the most unlikely of radio hits.

"Runaway Train" addressed the sensitive subject of runaway youths, hardly traditional Top 40 fare in the summer of 1993, when the likes of Mariah Carey's "Dreamlover" and Tag Team's "Whoomp! (There It Is)" dominated the airwaves. But much to the Minneapolis alt-rock group's surprise, the third single off its 1992 album "Grave Dancers Union" (Columbia), climbed to No. 5 on Billboard's pop chart, was certified gold, went Top 10 in Britain and later won Pirner a Grammy Award for best rock song.

With sudden international fame and tabloid gossip (at the time, Pirner was engaged to actress Winona Ryder) came mixed blessings. "Runaway Train" exposed the group to a wider audience, but its huge success had raised the bar for expectations.

Pirner took it all in stride, and even enjoys a laugh or two about it.

"I was singing the other day down at the practice space," he said recently, "and I went out to make a phone call at a karoake bar nearby. It did a great thing for my perspective somehow. I was watching all these people support each other, whether they could sing or not, and one of them says, 'When are you going to do 'Runaway Train'?' And I said, 'I don't know, someday,' because I think it would be funny singing 'Runaway Train' in karoake. You gotta have a sense of humor or you're never going to make it through this gig.

"The essence of having a popular song is a bit of joke, in a way that you cross over into this realm that's usually occupied by whoever it is. You just gotta ride it out, it's just a kick. The songs that Soul Asylum did get onto the radio, they're all about shit that's not on the radio and that's where it comes off as a victory. It's not like we had to write something about bullshit to get on the radio. It actually took what we were doing, some oddly personal stuff."

Pirner reserves his biggest laughs for winning the Grammy.

"At that point, so many kooky things were happening, it was like 'Oh, what next?' " he said. "You feel just as likely to be receiving some sort of honor like that as you do to be on some crazy TV show with people you'd never think you'd be on a TV show with. It's all surreal. It takes on this 'Oh, this isn't me, this isn't really happening to me. What the hell, a Grammy?!' It's nuts. It's all good fun, but I don't know how you look at something like that as an artist and decide how you're going to make it. It's not like you start out with a punk-rock band and go, 'Hey, let's go try to win a Grammy.' "

Soul Asylum, like most bands, did it the hard way. Pirner and founding members Dan Murphy (guitar) and Karl Mueller (bass) first teamed in high school in 1981, calling themselves Loud Fast Rules. When they signed with Minneapolis-based Twin/Tone in 1984, they became Soul Asylum and enlisted drummer Grant Young (who stayed until 1995).

Their energetic debut album, "Say What You Will Clarence ... Karl Sold the Truck," turned heads in 1984, as did subsequent efforts in the late 1980s, but they were constantly overshadowed by hometown favorites Hüsker Dü and the Replacements.

A relentless work ethic, with countless club tours, earned them a college radio following and eventually a deal with A&M in 1989. After two more albums, they shifted to Columbia and worked for two years on "Grave Dancers Union." Their first two singles, "Somebody to Shove" and "Black Gold," were modern-rock smashes, and "Runaway Train" was an across-the-board hit, cracking the album rock, modern rock and pop charts.

Though the follow-up LPs, "Let Your Dim Light Shine" and "Candy From a Stranger," didn't nearly have the sales impact of "Grave Dancers Union," it maintained the band's foothold as alt-rock pioneers.

All those years, from label to label, are neatly summed up on "Black Gold: The Best of Soul Asylum," a 19-cut collection released Sept. 26 on Columbia/Legacy.

Seeing all the tracks, from "Cartoon" and "We 3" to "Runaway Train" and "Lonely For You," laid out before him only makes Pirner want to laugh again.

"I was just getting out of high school when I started that whole mess and just followed this blind ambition that was faith-oriented and caught up in doing what you believe in," he said. "When you're out there clocking in your dues, you're not really thinking about it. Any type of looking back like that makes me think of all the floors I've slept on and all the people that I've endured. The nuttiness of the whole thing, it seems like a sick and twisted fairy tale. There wasn't anything pretty about it at the time, but you just gotta laugh when you look back at all the shit you went through. I can't believe it.

"That's the thing about writing about something that's relevant; it becomes a document or a chapter in your growing up. It's all there for me. It's kind of weird. It's like compiling your diary."

Though Soul Asylum has parted company with Columbia, Pirner has no complaints - it was just time to move on. In fact, he had some praise for Columbia.

"To tell you the truth, ('Black Gold: The Best of Soul Asylum') was part of our deal for getting out of our record contract," he said. "We said we would like to leave and they said 'You have to give us a best-of record.'

"It was fun to work with (producer) Lenny Kaye, who's just a lovely gentleman. He was really helpful and has the perfect eye for the job. He's done all these compilations and written liner notes for hundreds of records; we also did our first major-label record with him ('Hang Time' for A&M in 1987), so it had a coming-home sense to it. That was to Columbia's credit to hook us up with Lenny and get a couple of tracks from A&M and Twin/Tone. They made an attempt to make it special."

Between label deals, Soul Asylum is busy rehearsing and recording its next album. Pirner, now splitting time between Minneapolis and his new home in New Orleans, also is working on his solo debut.

"I'm currently putting some finishing touches on," he said. "Then I collected a lot of information and came back to Minneapolis and worked again with Soul Asylum. Losing interest in the industry was an important thing for me to do. It was the perfect opportunity for me to say 'I just don't care about the industry, and I'm going to spend some time listening to music and listening to music that's not programmed by an institution,' and the only place to go for that really is New Orleans. It really gets you in touch with where music comes from and how it all works and what it takes to move ya. It's not something you're necessarily going to find in the world of commercial music. When it becomes oriented toward money, it just spoils it."

A best-of doesn't mean the end of Soul Asylum; there's still plenty of music left in them, Pirner says, but still ... 19 years together. Incredible.

"The wake of your past is like all your friends' bands that broke up and assorted other guys that you came up with that have new bands or have totally given it up," he said. "It's a really nice testimony to how much we've attempted to get along with each other."

THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: "The 45 of 'Going Down' and 'Daydream Believer' by the Monkees. I was into the Monkees as much as any kid could have been back then. That song 'Going Down' to me now sounds like a Busta Rhymes track, a real rapid-fire rhyming thing. I'm telling you, man, they shoulda let them make their own record (in the beginning). It would've been a weird thing. Can you imagine if those guys had one record that they wrote all themselves? They let 'em do it 30 years later, but by then nobody cared."

THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "Alice Cooper at St. Paul Civic Center. We got tear-gassed, and the crowd had to leave just as he started playing 'School's Out.' Somebody smuggled in tear gas and let it off as some sort of prank. That's bad stuff, tear gas. I was thinking, 'Wow, this is what rock concerts are like?' It totally freaked me out. I was just a little kid. I mean, seeing a horde of people running was a terrifying thing."

THE LAST CD I BOUGHT: "A local hip-hop group called Lost Race, and I bought it over the counter at the gas station down the street. I thought it was so cool. The guy in front of me was waiting to buy some Gatorade and the clerk was pushing this record on the guy and it sounded really good to me, so I said, 'Well, I'll take one of those.' I thought it was pretty enterprising of the guy to do two jobs at the same time, being a clerk and trying to sell a record."

BWF (before we forget): Soul Asylum can be found on the Web @ www.soulasylum.com.

Soul Coughing can hack it

(Oct. 6, 1994)

Just when New York alternative-rock quartet Soul Coughing had all but given up, a miracle walked through the door.

Their savior: Randy Kaye, an A&R representative from Slash Records.

"We were playing right next to CBGB's, at a place called CB's Gallery," says lead singer Michael Doughty. "Randy tried to get into CBGB's and he either couldn't get in or whatever - Boss Hog was playing that night - so he wandered next door and was going to sit down and chill and have a cup of coffee, and we were playing. The rest is history.

"We thank Boss Hog and their immense popularity for all our success," Doughty says with a hearty laugh.

That success, credited to Kaye's divine intervention, comes in the form of one of the year's quirkiest releases, "Ruby Vroom." It's a mishmash of sounds, from rap to jazz, coupled with Doughty's beatnik-inspired poetry.

While working as a doorman at the Knitting Factory club, Doughty met bassist Sebastian Steinberg and drummer Yuval Gabay, and later keyboard sampler Mark De Gli Antoni, and coaxed them into his dream groove band. Ultimately, he wanted a showcase for his poetry and his love for hip-hop.

They played their first gig after only one rehearsal and haven't looked back since, developing a cult following in New York's club scene.

"We were talking to a small label about putting something out, but they were kind of being (jerks) to us and offering not enough money to make a record," Doughty says. "At that point, I said, 'To hell with it, I'm just gonna play New York and hopefully enjoy myself,' and get two or three people who live here to like our music.

"Right about then, when we were ready to pack it in, Randy shows up."

Doughty can't define the typical Soul Coughing fan. He says there isn't one.

"We have this very odd and diverse confederacy in New York," he says. "It's a real broad kind of category. It's NYU kids, indie-rock pavement kids, hip-hop heads, guys in suits, chefs, waiters, stewardesses, park rangers ... I think you get the picture."

BWF (before we forget): Soul Coughing's second album, "Irresistible Bliss," was released in 1996. ... Check out them out on the Web @ www.soulcoughing.com or send e-mail to soulcghing@aol.com.

Stirring up the Soup Dragons

(Oct. 27, 1994)

What's a group founder to do when his bandmates up and quit in a huff? Pick up the pieces and carry on.

That's what Sean Dickson did when Sushil Dade, Jim McCulloch and Paul Quinn exited the Soup Dragons. At the time, Dickson had begun work on the Glasgow rock band's Raw TV/Mercury album, "Hydrophonic" (which was released last month).

"I wrote and recorded 35 songs," Dickson said, "and I didn't have any pressure because I recorded it in my own studio.

"There was a kind of blind vision to it. I mean, I went ahead and did it without giving it much thought till it was finished. Then I realized, 'Hey, I did this all by myself.' "

Despite the setbacks, "Hydrophonic" stretches pop's boundaries. One of the album's better tracks, "Rest In Peace," goes from reggae to thrash-metal in five minutes. Elsewhere, Dickson experiments with dance-rock, funk and rap. He played nearly all the instruments and enlisted help from Bootsy Collins, Mickey Finn (T. Rex) and ex-Specials Lynval Golding and Neville Staples.

"The LP has the same ingredients as our last three LPs," Dickson said, "but this time it's just better executed."

Space is out of this world

(March 6, 1997)

Franny Griffiths was in a nightclub one night in his native Liverpool, England, minding his own business when someone delivered an empty pack of cigarettes to him.

Scrawled on the back of the package was an offer for the keyboardist/sampling wizard to join the quirky rock group Space. He immediately dismissed it as soon as he read who had signed it: singer-bassist Tommy Scott and drummer Andy Parle.

Griffiths knew better.

"I know Tommy and Andy from way back when," Griffiths said recently, "and they didn't like each other when we were kids. So, I get this note that said, 'Please come and join, help us do a demo.' I thought someone was joking because Tommy and Andy were never friends, and here's their names written on the back of a cigarette box."

Cautious but curious, Griffiths agreed to meet Scott, Parle and guitarist Jamie Murphy the next day. Lo and behold, the group's strange little songs showed promise and Scott and Parle were working together side by side.

Was Griffiths in another dimension?

"It sure felt like it," he said, with a laugh. "To see them together now, it's like they've known each other all their lives. They get along famously with each other. I'm still trying to get used to it."

With the addition of Griffiths nearly three years ago, Space transformed from an ordinary collection of young lads from Liverpool dreaming of success (Sound familiar?) into a force to be reckoned with. On the quartet's brilliant debut Gut Reaction/Universal album, "Spiders," featuring the amusingly macabre single "Female of the Species," their sound and influences extend in all directions: space-age pop, ska, Broadway tunes, Looney Tunes theme songs, rock 'n' roll and B-movie soundtracks.

In fact, "Female of the Species," with Griffiths' eerie keyboard loops and Scott's toast to cocktail jazz, would feel right at home on the soundtrack to the films "Ed Wood" and "Mars Attacks!"

Griffiths never thought in a million light years that "Female of the Species" would take off in England, but it reached No. 13 on the pop chart. The next single, "Me & You Vs. The World," peaked at No. 8 and a re-release of the first U.K. single, "Neighbourhood," nearly cracked the Top 10.

Stateside, "Female of the Species" is in the Top 20 and climbing on Billboard's modern rock tracks chart.

"To be honest, we didn't know how people would take to our music, how they were going to react to it, whether they were going to like it," Griffiths said. "In England, this has just gone ballistic. Everyone's gone mad for it, and we just don't understand it. It's hard to get used to."

"Female of the Species" was intended to be a B-side, but after the group finished recording it, they knew it would end up on the album and be a single. Gut Reaction in England agreed.

Griffiths considers it a compliment when critics, fans, radio programmers and music stores are unable to categorize Space.

"Each member is totally into different types of music," he said, "and it comes across that way. I'm into hip-hop and punk, and Tommy doesn't even listen to music. He watches movies and stuff. That's where he gets all his ideas for songs, which we call short stories. And Jamie's playing whatever's going on at the time. It's basically a mishmash of everything. We wondered whether it would work, but it has. It's good because you don't always have to stick to one formula, and you don't get bored."

All that has confounded the British music media.

"They really try to compare you with other bands in England," Griffiths said, "and they always come up short. The press likes to think they can make a band and also get rid of a band. They build them up and then they drop them.

"They didn't know how to pigeonhole us, so they couldn't build us up in the first place. Till maybe when the second single came out, the press started getting interested, especially within the past few weeks."

Coming from Liverpool has its drawbacks. Griffiths said most people expect another Beatles, so in press interviews they often open up with "We're not the Beatles" even before a question is asked.

"We all loved the Beatles," Griffiths said, "and we're proud of what they've done for Liverpool, but if the Beatles were around now they'd be like The Prodigy or something. They would go with technology.

"You've got a lot of bands wanting to be like the Beatles now and think they are the new Beatles, but the Beatles would be spacing out, making techno music. They would've gone with the times."

BWF (before we forget): A remix version of "Female of the Species" popped up on the "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" soundtrack album.

Trend-setting Sparks still strike it up

(Feb. 23, 1995)

Russell Mael honestly doesn't know how the American public will react to Sparks' first album in six years.

He already has a pretty good idea where they stand in Europe.

After a triumphant, sold-out and celebrity-packed comeback show in London in November and rave reviews for their Logic Records debut album "Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins," the influential pop duo of brothers Ron and Russell Mael are enjoying a resurgence in Europe and hoping for renewed interest in the United States. The album is scheduled for a stateside release on Feb. 27.

"We thought people could have perceived it in two ways," lead singer Russell Mael said recently from his Beverly Hills, Calif., home. "One, 'Oh, God, don't bore us, Sparks is back,' or two, 'Wow, this is a really interesting album.'

"Fortunately, it's being perceived in the second way. Now people are starting to go back and analyze our whole career but in a really positive way."

A Melody Maker magazine writeup of the Sparks' first London show in 17 years put everything in perspective for the quirky, techno-based duo and their impact on modern-day pop bands.

"It said that any comparisons with bands like Pet Shop Boys and Erasure slights Sparks for what we've done, that we're working in our own world," Mael said. "They said those bands wouldn't be if it weren't for Sparks. It was a great compliment, that they thought that there was even more substance to the whole body of our work."

One listen to Sparks' new single, "When Do I Get to Sing 'My Way'," and you'll agree with Melody Maker. Other tracks, like "I Thought I Told You to Wait in the Car" and "(When I Kiss You) I Hear Charlie Parker Playing," underline the band's sly pop vitality.

"Gratuitous Sax" is Sparks' 16th album spanning a 24-year career. Over those years, the Mael brothers have been big names throughout Europe and underappreciated in America - to the point where it surprises even Sparks fans to learn that the Maels grew up in Los Angeles.

"A lot of people from England even think we're English," Mael said with a laugh. "Stylistically, what we're doing doesn't sound like it's from (the states). Our manner and our image isn't typically Los Angeles. Musically, we have no ties to what's going on here."

What does Sparks have to say in the '90s?

"More than anything, we think people should be attempting more interesting music," Mael said. "We wanted to keep this album lyrically striking, with no compromises to try and fit in with the radio scene. If the album works here, that's great, but if it doesn't, we know we made the album that we wanted to make."

Spin Doctors recover from overdose of 'Kryptonite'

(May 16, 1999)

In the never-ending fight for truth, justice and the American way, lead singer Chris Barron and the Spin Doctors finally have prevailed.

For two years, beginning in the summer of 1992, few bands were hotter than the New York-based rock quartet. Its debut Epic/Associated album, "Pocket Full of Kryptonite," sold more than 6 million copies, stayed on Billboard's pop chart for 115 straight weeks and yielded three hits ("Two Princes," "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" and "Jimmy Olsen's Blues").

"I used to walk into a mall and like 200 people would mob me," Barron said recently. "It was nice to have that kind of adulation and appreciation, but at the same time it was difficult to buy sweat socks."

On the surface, it appeared Barron and his band mates - guitarist Eric Schenkman, bassist Mark White and drummer Aaron Comess - had it all, but behind the scenes, it slowly began to unravel.

"You would think, hey, you're selling records hand over fist and it's probably the best time," Barron said, "but in a lot of ways that period really sucked. We were selling all these records and selling out these huge places, then we were backstage screaming at each other and throwing fruit trays around. I hate to say this, because anybody would kill to be in that position, but I think we were all a little bit foolish. We were really young and didn't know how to handle what was happening to us.

"There were elements in the band that were really difficult to work with, and I guess I'm just not Sigmund Freud. I wasn't able to surmount those interpersonal difficulties and so we really didn't have a very good time. And then, believe it or not, when Eric left the band (in 1994) and Epic was giving us the cold shoulder, that was all a drag, but we were having a ball. The music was really alive. We were playing tunes that no one in the band had ever played before, like spontaneously breaking into Otis Redding tunes and the Temptations. We were partying our brains out, but in a wholesome way. We were staying out late, jamming on the bus into the wee hours of the morning."

The Spin Doctors' follow-up album, "Turn It Upside Down," did just that in 1994: It sold 2 million, but Epic considered it a commercial failure when the singles "You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast" and "Cleopatra's Cat" didn't burn up the charts. By then, Anthony Krizan replaced Schenkman. After the funked-up third LP, "You've Got to Believe in Something," fared miserably in 1996, the band and Epic parted ways, leaving fans to wonder how the group fell from grace so quickly.

"Somehow the other albums didn't reach as many people as the first record," Barron said. "I don't look at the records by how many they've sold. I'm not a businessman. I made plenty of money off 'Pocket Full of Kryptonite,' so I don't even really worry about the money. I just look at them as whether they're successful works of art. I think our music's gotten better and better over time, and maybe at some point people will visit those other albums and get some pleasure out of them."

More pleasure likely will be derived from the Spin Doctors' upcoming DAS/Universal debut, "Here Comes the Bride" (out June 1). It's a veritable grab bag of sounds and influences, from rap to jazz to pop. One minute, they resemble a '90s version of The Police; the next, they break into a Latin groove.

The album introduces new guitarist Eran Tabib and, more impressively, the addition of keyboardist Ivan Neville. The son of singer Aaron Neville and formerly a member of Bonnie Raitt's band, he has played and toured extensively with Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones, Robbie Robertson and Boz Scaggs. He also flirted with solo success in 1988 with the Polydor album "If My Ancestors Could See Me Now," featuring the Top 30 hit "Not Just Another Girl."

"Ivan Neville is like the funkiest guy in the world," Barron said. "Being in a band with Ivan Neville is amazing. We just called him up. We wanted to get another musician, like preferably a keyboard player who can sing. Aaron was like, 'What about Ivan Neville?' We were like, 'Wow, Ivan Neville, he's super bad. Maybe Keith (Richards) has him booked for the next 50 years, but what the hell, let's call him up.' It turns out he's a big fan. He said, 'Sure, I'd love to do it.' We got together with him and it clicked from the beginning." From the title track to "Tomorrow Can Pay the Rent," the Spin Doctors travel down familiar rock and funk terrain, with several surprising twists and turns along the way.

"When we made it, we didn't have a record deal," Barron said. "We didn't have a producer. At times, we didn't even have a guitar player, and we made it in Aaron Comess' basement, so we were really free to do whatever we wanted to. There wasn't anybody looking over our shoulder. When you're working in a studio that costs $3,500 a day and you're surrounded by $15 million worth of equipment, you feel like a jerk miking a speaker phone, trying something silly. But when you're down in your drummer's basement, the time is free and no one's asking you where the next 'Two Princes' or 'Little Miss Can't Be Wrong' is going to come from. You feel free to goof around, and you end up with a record that has a lot of influences."

Barron is even more proud of his improving, always topical songwriting abilities.

" 'Wow' is about Mother Teresa and Princess Diana and the whole media circus that surrounded that," he said. " 'Gone Mad' is about Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac and the senseless death all around us. These are some of the best lyrics I've ever written, like on 'Fisherman's Delight,' that line about 'bombs and blessings, everybody's guessing what will next fall from the sky.' I think about the whole Yugoslavia thing. You know when you're really writing stuff that is in touch, when you're really in touch with yourself and the world and where you fit, you start to get kind of psychic. A while after you write stuff, it starts to come true and plug into current events."

Will "Here Comes the Bride" return the Spin Doctors' to the dizzying heights of 1992-93? Barron doesn't care; he's having the time of his life now.

"Selling millions of records isn't everything," he said. "I have a wonderful family, I have fantastic friends, Aaron Comess is a genius, and making this record with him over the last couple of years has been one of the great musical experiences of my life, going over to his house and the two of us eating Cuban food everyday and making music. It's been great.

"The way I keep score is I still don't have a day job. I'm just a lucky guy. I'm really glad to still be making music for a living. I'm glad to be here. I have no complaints."

THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: "The Who's 'Live At Leeds.' I went into the Record Exchange in Princeton, N.J., and I was about 13 years old. There was this kid named Seth Frank, who was 15 and worked there for a long time. We went to school together and I thought he was really cool because he smoked cigarettes. I had my allowance in my pocket and I had like $3, and I asked him, 'What's a really good album that's like cheap?' He said, 'Dude, The Who's 'Live At Leeds,' a killer album.' It was a used album for 99 cents. I had money left over for a slice (of pizza) and a Coke."

THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "John Denver in Sydney, Australia, in 1977. I lived in Sydney from the age of 8 to 12, from 1977 to 1981. Going back, John Denver rules, man. C'mon, 'Take Me Home Country Roads' and 'Grandma's Feather Bed,' those are great songs. And 'Leaving On a Jet Plane,' that tune makes me cry. I get that big lump in my throat. I've left on so many jet planes, that tune just kills me."

BWF (before we forget): Take a whirl with the Spin Doctors on the Web @ www.spindoctors.com. ... The Spin Doctors album discography - "Pocket Full of Kryptonite" (Epic/Associated, 1992); "Homebelly Groove ... Live" (1993); "Turn It Upside Down" (Epic, 1994); "You've Got to Believe In Something" (1996); "Here Comes the Bride" (DAS/Universal, 1999).

In the name of Spring Heeled Jack USA

(Aug. 30, 1998)

Most bands sweat and toil for months over the perfect name. A seven-member ska-pop band from Connecticut thought it had it made when it came up with Spring Heeled Jack.

They cruised up and down the East Coast, scoring legions of fans. Then one day their worst fears were confirmed: They learned there was a similarly named band in England.

"That was frustrating," drummer Dave Karcich said recently. "We had heard things about it, but it really started hitting home when they started releasing records and someone said, 'You guys are in Spin magazine.' I got a copy of Spin and it said Spring Heel Jack and I thought they just spelled it wrong, but then I opened it up and it's two friggin' guys, an ambient-dub-drum-and-bass thing.

"I've heard that 300 ska kids showed up in Boston for one of their shows, thinking it was us. Eventually, we talked to them. It wasn't a big problem. We added USA to the end of our name just to avoid confusion, and apparently they added UK to theirs. If it had to come down to a brawl for the name, we have seven guys and they only have two."

Spring Heeled Jack has come a long way from its 1996 independent album, "Static World View." It honed its sound while opening for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Cherry Poppin' Daddies before cutting its debut Ignition Records album, "Songs From Suburbia" (released July 21).

"We decided that with each record we're going to try to make it better than the last one and record in a better place," Karcich said. "The last one we did ourselves; we paid for the whole recording ourselves, and it was pretty much an independent project.

"I remember at least three or four times during that first record us running out of money and having to stop the recording, go out and play, get some more money back in and record again. It's frustrating to record under those conditions, and this record was real nice, Ignition was real good to us. They put us in a real good studio, and they just said, 'Do your thing.' I really do think we succeeded in making a better record than the first one."

Spring Heeled Jack - Karcich, singer-guitarist Mike Pellegrino, guitarist Ron Ragona, bassist Rick Omonte, trombonist Tyler Jones and saxophonist Pete Wasilewski - is a throwback to Madness, the feel-good band of the 1980s. In particular, the first single, "Jolene," is a pop delight.

"We just don't want to be a ska band, not that that's bad," Karcich said. "We have so many different influences and things we like, that we really wanted it to come out in the music.

"Madness had a lot of different influences. Bands like that, we kind of take that as a framework for this band. They did some ska stuff and had some horns, but that wasn't what they were all about."

BWF (before we forget): Karcich died April 5, 2002, of a brain aneurysm, just four days before the self-titled debut album from his new band, Avoid One Thing, was to be released.