Don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusions that people read these posts and become superfans of obscure artists I pick. But it was fun seeing that Annette Zilinskas -- aka founding and current (but not "classic era") bassist of the Bangles -- also sees the genius in Holly Beth Vincent, calling today's Song of the Day a "cross between Joan Jett and Patti Smith" when she shared it on Facebook. After releasing just one album with her band called the Italians (1981's "The Right to Be Italian"), Vincent released one solo record the following year (confusingly titled "Holly and the Italians") before fading in and out of the music business over the past four decades. Although she has been frequently unsigned -- at one point she recorded asThe Oblivious, then she did an album with Johnette Napolitano of Concrete Blonde -- her creative prowess has never wavered, with today's gem turning up on "Demos Federico," a 2002 two-disc collection on the reissue label Wounded Bird. What a shame the music business never figured out "what to do" with her, because more people should know her music.
Longtime readers know I'm a Holly Beth Vincent aficionado, which can be a lonely place. The gifted singer/songwriter is a bit manic in her output -- vanishing for years at a time and then releasing multiple double-disc collections plus online side projects all at once. So it has been comforting during this current quiet period to find Damian taking to her. Last week he was working in the living room (his "office)" when he heard me playing 2007's "Super Rocket Star" in the bedroom (my "office"), which instantly blew him away. (He called it a more accessible P.J. Harvey, which is high praise from this particular P.J. superfan.) When 2009's "Minnesota-California" followed -- I'm a chronological queen -- he asked if this was a collection of "Celebrity Skin" outtakes. (More high praise -- that's one of his fave albums!)
From there I dabbled in some Vowel Movement (would you believe I tossed that CD out when I went digital and had forgotten to rip it so had to re-buy it used on Amazon Marketplace????) before going deep into "Demos Federico" featuring 29 raw takes and unreleased songs from the lost years. (He feel in love with "Then Carolyn.") Wait till he hears her two classic albums from the Virgin years.
I guess every writer finds himself saying, "How did I not write this" at some point or another. But a New York Times piece about "12 forgotten songs by women-led New Wave bands" -- featuring Josie Cotton, Holly and the Italians and the Waitresses? Seriously, how did I NOT write this?!!!! Best part: I've recently been on a Rachel Sweet kick -- someone I haven't given my full attention despite loving "Voo Doo" and her theme for John Waters's "Hairspray" -- so this confirmed I'm totally on the right track. Read HERE.
Former Spin magazine editor in chief Doug Brod writes:
On her second album, released when she was just 17, this Midwestern squeaker and howler convincingly covers the Damned’s 1976 classic about the glory of the burgeoning British punk movement. Strangely, her version replaces the signature slashing opening riff, as she employs her Ronnie Spector-ish pipes to make the song all her own. Perhaps even stranger, after leaving the music business Sweet went on to write and produce TV sitcoms, including “2 Broke Girls” and “The Goldbergs.”
P.S.
Click HERE to find out what Rachael has in common with Jenna Elfman, Katey Sagal and Madonna.
Fresh on the heels of news that Holly and the Italians will be performing next month in Los Angeles comes the release of "Punk Xmas" on Holly Beth Vincent's Soundcloud page. She wrote and performed it -- and it sounds like it could have been been included on one of those 1980s holiday albums that I miss so ...
Glorious b-roll interview from 1981 HERE. Love the fake British accent!
P.S.
Totally missed this (remix?) effort from 2015. Listen HERE.
As longtime readers know, I'm kind of obsessed with Holly Beth Vincent, best remembered for writing the song "Tell That Girls to Shut Up," which was recently heard on "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." Not only do I think she's the most underrated woman of the New Wave -- she was right there with Debbie Harry and Chrissie Hynde in my book -- I'm fascinated and heartened that she has continued to find new ways to make music even after her "next big thing" moment passed (The Oblivious, Vowel Movement, CD Baby). I recently located her on Facebook, and if I'm not mistaken, it looks like she and a reformed version of her band The Italians are playing an upcoming gig at the Redwood Bar in Los Angeles, one I sadly will not be able to attend, Please reach out if you're going. If you're going, please know that I need to know EVERYTHING! (How about a return to NYC, Holly Beth?)
An '80s gal has a '90s moment ...
Fun discovery on HBV's wall ... I'd forgotten just how beloved Cheap Trick was by the alternative crowd.
Also found this photo on the Waitresses' Discogs page. Although it's widely known that Patty Donahue was briefly replaced by Holly during the fractious recording sessions for "Bruiseology," I had no idea Polydor ever set up any photo sessions. As I said when it was first released, it was a real missed opportunity to not include any of the songs Holly Beth recorded with the band on the 2013 "Just Desserts" compilation, which was purported to be their "complete recordings." Anyone have access to any of those?
UPDATE: From a friend.
He writes:
I got "The Akron Sound" book for Christmas -- finally tells what really happened with the Waitresses. I think when Patty died Chris Butler didn't want to trash her but enough time has gone by ...
Holly Beth Vincent was hired as a replacement... did a few gigs and then just didn't show up to one. That was the end of that. They imploded recording "Bruiseology" -- too much partying. Patty got pissed when Chris Butler started recording vocals with Tracey Wormworth. The band split but the record company offered Patty $$ to come back and do a video at least. Then she tried to continue the band without Chris -- and the other members were offered salaries. She recorded demos with new songwriters for a third album and the record company passed.
Chris Butler says: "She went Hollywood on me -- bad advice from bad people."
They did reconcile before she died. 😇
If ANYONE has access to those Patty demos, I will do anything to get my ears on them!
It's hard to believe it was the same woman who recorded "The Right to Be Italian" and the confusingly named solo album "Holly and the Italians," but that's just how talented Holly Beth Vincent was. Whereas the album from which these two songs came was polished power pop, the followup was delicate and artsy, replacing New Wave guitar licks with mandolins and violins to create an cluttered yet incredibly intimate sound, The Chicago-born singer/songwriter/guitarist has never been wholly recognized for her genius, but will occasionally turn up on "best albums you've never heard" lists. I'm grateful I'm not one of those people.
Holly Beth Vincent was the unsung hero of the New Wave. Her band Holly and the Italians' first album, "The Right to Be Italian," was the perfect blend of power pop, '60s girl group and punk attitude, yet somehow never found an audience the way Blondie and the Pretenders did. But it was her confusingly titled debut solo LP, called "Holly and the Italians," that convinced me she was a genius. With its lush orchestration, thick production and dark subject matter, it was like no other album from the era. Fans of her first release were horrified by it, but some 30 years later it remains one of the period's best. In the 2000s, Wounded Bird put out superb reissues of both LPs, complete with tons of bonus material. Both seem to be out of print now, but you can download the classic "Holly and the Italians" LP HERE.
More like Waiters and Waitresses, but who's keeping a tab?
Although Blondie and the Pretenders had already secured their places in my heart by then, no band better symbolized the changing of the musical guard for me from pop-rock (ONJ, Hall and Oates) to New Wave than the Waitresses. (The Go-Go's and Missing Persons were right in the same window.) The year was 1982 and my brother was home for the weekend from the University of Arizona when he pulled out this album that looked like a tablecloth in an Italian restaurant with a black-and-white graduation photo on the center. Scribbled in the upper-left corner were the words, "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?" The second he put it on my stereo and she started singing (OK, half-talking, half-snipping) "Needed new posters, so I bought 'em. I know the cost of stamps now ...," I was hooked. The she was Patty Donahue, who along with guitarist/songwriter Chris Butler (and an assortment of musicians) had recorded this insanely original album that sounded like Gloria Steinem had stepped in for Kate and Cindy in the B-52's. "I Know What Boys Like" would later become one of their best-known songs, but in many ways it really was one of the weakest on the album, because while it had the sass of the others, it lacked the cerebral touch that made Butler's lyrics so much more than throwaway '80s novelty fare. Killer Pussy records were a hoot too, but you weren't going to hear Lucy LaMode croon:
Shocked? Dismayed? Or maybe just a little upset Well, no this isn't pretty And yes, my hair was longer then It's what happens when your choices Are narrowed to fashion or violence Adjustments, you make adjustments
or
Get tough, don't be so patient Get smart, head up, shoulders straight Since when is it a disaster? If the "S" on your cape is a little frayed? What's a girl to do? Born to shop? No! Pretty victories What's a girl to do? Scream &. screw? No! Pretty victories
The way I remember it, a demo tape Butler had recorded with some friends was well-received by a label in New York in '80 or '81, so Chris lied and said his band was back in Ohio, then suddenly had to get Patty to the city and then get an actual band together to start playing live.
Patty Donahue, vocals and sarcasm
Within months, the Peppermint Lounge became the Waitresses 2.0's domain and "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?" was released in 1982, quickly becoming a "college hit." ("No Guilt," "Wise Up," "Quit," and "Pussy Strut" are all New Wave classics.) A stopgap EP was issued later that year. "I Could Rule the World if I Could Only Get the Parts" contained five new songs, including the band's cute theme to the short-lived but much-loved television series "Square Pegs" (on which they guest starred and had their album cover prominently featured in the booth at Johnny Slash's school radio station) and what would become Butler's ultimate cash cow, the perennial holiday favorite, "Christmas Wrapping."
"Wise Up:" Only stupid people fail to see that it's a bad thing maybe in the '80s (but I doubt it)
By the time 1982 came to a finish, the band was seemingly on top of the world having been on a whirlwind ride of success and new-found fame. In '83 "Bruiseology," the much-anticipated (by me, at least) sophomore album, came out but before promotion got started in earnest, the band was pretty much done. First Patty quit. Then Holly Beth Vincent was slated to step in. Then Patty returned. Then the whole thing was over. (The album, by the way, plays like a uncompleted coulda-been gem: "A Girl's Gotta Do" and "Everything's Wrong if My Hair's Wrong" pick up nicely where the original left off, but "Make the Weather" reveals a sweet, Brian Wilson side of Butler that hadn't been seen before. The other standout tracks, "Luxury" and "Open City," show Patty's character has matured (or wised up). But then "Spin" had to be sung by bassist Tracy Wormworth when Patty went M.I.A., during exhaustive recording sessions in England (Tracy had also recorded the title track, which some people actually prefer, but then Patty did her own take and that was used.) "Pleasure" is an unnecessary instrumental (were vocals dropped when Patty vanished?) and "They're All Out of Liquor, Let's Find Another Party" is a great title, but the song is as humorless as it is tuneless, which is everything the Waitresses were not.
In 1990, Chris Butler explained in the liner notes to the band's best-of package that "it's very easy to become a victim of too much fun. but it's so embarrassing! how could a bunch of stubborn people who refused to be cliches stumble smack into a typical show biz crash and burn. maybe it's because 'that which ye be the most afraid of is guaranteed to happen' ... so you can work through it and come out the other side and not be afraid anymore. all i know is that i was trying to write three-minute Preston Sturges movies, but as it turned out, we were all really living 'All About Eve.'"
While the record industry continues to amaze me from time to time with its reissues ("Despite Straight Lines," anyone?) to date, shamefully none of the Waitresses' original releases have been released on CD. ("Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?" did, however, make it to iTunes last year and a best-of disc is available HERE.) Years ago Chris Butler, who shared a rehearsal space with a guy I work with, told me that a box set of the band's catalogue was imminent. But five years on and having already produced my own Waitresses CDs, I'm not holding my breath. What still haunts me, though, is that I never got to see them perform live. In 1982 they even came through Phoenix and my brother Bill was fortunate enough to catch them. But alas the show was at a bar and I was far too young, and then they broke up before I ever got another chance. (Even sadder, in 1996, Patty died tragically of lung cancer at 40, ending forever any hope of a reunion.)
So imagine my shock and delight when Cherry Red -- the very people who reissued the Marilyn album on CD last year -- recently released a live Waitresses concert DVD, "The Waitresses: Live at Hurrah,"which I have just added to my NetFlix queue!!! (I swore I'd never join but I wouldn't dare buy a DVD after you-know-what.) I miss ya, Patty, and I can hardly wait for it to get here. The show is just 54 minutes, but I'll call it even just to have it last that long ...
A flawless recreation of the perfect '80s New Wave album, above
The EP and album No. 2 never looked so good together, above
I got "The Akron Sound" book for Christmas -- finally tells what really happened with the Waitresses. I think when Patty died Chris Butler didn't want to trash her but enough time has gone by ...
Holly Beth Vincent was hired as a replacement... did a few gigs and then just didn't show up to one. That was the end of that. They imploded recording "Bruiseology" -- too much partying. Patty got pissed when Chris Butler started recording vocals with Tracey Wormworth. The band split but the record company offered Patty $$ to come back and do a video at least. Then she tried to continue the band without Chris -- and the other members were offered salaries. She recorded demos with new songwriters for a third album and the record company passed.
Chris Butler says: "She went Hollywood on me -- bad advice from bad people."
They did reconcile before she died. 😇
If ANYONE has access to those Patty demos, I will do anything to get my ears on them!
UPDATE: Christmas 2021. Lyndsey Parker of Yahoo Music did a great interview with Chris Butler about the enduring appeal of "Christmas Wrapping" that has some great Patty info that I wanted to include here:
Butler had a fraught relationship with Donahue, who later died of lung cancer at age 40, right around Christmastime 25 years ago, on Dec. 9, 1996. While Patty sang about a meet-cute holiday romance in “Christmas Wrapping,” her own love life was decidedly less Lifetime-holiday-movie-esque.
“I have some good [memories], some not,” Butler says of Donahue, who retired from performing in the mid-‘80s to work behind the scenes in A&R. “She's substantially responsible for having our band break apart. But on the other hand, this was a smart, very funny woman, a trooper who took a lot of chances, in that she had never really done anything like this. She was a very good actress who could take a role and run with it. She has a lot of instincts that made her appealing. I think she could have done more potentially an actress. There were some opportunities that she turned down. I’ve got to be careful what I'm saying here, but I know a lot of women who are talented and perhaps don't have enough of a sense of how talented they are, due to self-esteem issues. And I think Patty was not aware of how much chops she had. She had a lot of chops. I just wish that her choice of boyfriends had been more supportive and encouraging of her, because I believe she really was a natural. It's too bad. I think she fell in with, um, bad companions, shall we say? And that had a negative effect on both her self-image and what she could have done with this attention she was getting from people. I don't think she was comfortable with [the attention], or knew how to parlay it into a more of a creative career.
“We were all trying to be in encouraging,” Butler continues wistfully. “But I think that when it came to dealing with men, her own family history — presuppose that — made it so she wouldn't take our word for it when we were our saying, ‘You can really do this. You're really good at this. You should stick with it.’ I think her father left way too early, and a single mother raised her. She also was a party girl, and sometimes her personality would change when she would party just a little too much. She became kind of a different person, and that was hard to handle. She became very combative and I think, like most abused people, they're very, very oversensitive. But then there's the odd inversion of them being attracted to [abusive tendencies] in their mates. … She was in a music environment, and manipulative people could come out of the audience and try to get into her head and whatever. We tried to protect her. There were warnings from us saying, ‘You should watch out for X, because he's not what you think he is. He's a sleazeball.’ But sometimes she resented and rebelled against the protection, and I think she fell into some bad companions. And so these outside forces, these bad influences in her life, is ultimately what led or contributed to the breakup.”
Butler, who “had a lot of big ideas” for the band, confesses that the Waitresses’ split in 1984 “kind of broke my heart, to be honest. I have a lot of blame that I need to take on myself, because I wasn't aware of the stresses. My preoccupation was trying to be established as a writer and to keep this group of very cranky, very talented musicians together and write things that would not bore them. I had a real hard time when the whole thing blew up. I had four or five years of just trying to reinvent myself and stay somehow active as a writer. It was not a happy time for me. It was a real blow to have the thing blow up. It took a long time for me to hit some kind of normal after that.” The Waitresses never reunited, not even for a one-off occasion, but Butler notes that shortly before Donahue’s death, “There was a bit of a rapport reestablished on the phone, because I knew she was sick and I didn't want to miss the opportunity to at least let her know that I cared about her and I wished her well. We had a few phone calls and even thought about, ‘Hey, let's do a reunion for the American Cancer Society,’ but she didn't make it.”
However, Butler believes Donahue’s complex personality was a key reason why “Christmas Wrapping” became such a perennial holiday favorite. “I think that's why Patty rings true, because there is a little melancholy in the song,” he says. As for reasons why the song continues to connect with listeners 40 holiday seasons later, he theorizes, “The thing I've grasped on is that people want to know that there's a force for good going on in the background, and that maybe everything will all work out. Maybe with the stress of the holidays, all this kind of Hallmark-card cheerfulness just doesn't ring true in a more cynical age — and it was certainly a more cynical age then. The song kind of captures that, but also takes the cynical and turns it on its head.”
The endearing, quirky result, driven by Donahue’s deadpan, attitudinal delivery, is sort of the ‘80s equivalent of a Sex and the City carol, with would-be actress Donahue cast as a new wave Carrie Bradshaw. “I do have to bring up the 'silent character’ in the song: the city of New York,” says Butler, who also drew some inspiration from Kurtis Blow’s 1979 single “Christmas Rappin’” and the burgeoning New York hip-hop scene surrounding the ska/jazz/R&B-influenced Waitresses at the time. “I tried to write a female character that was an urban person, and her stresses and strains are very urban. The idea of missed connections is very New York. Sometimes you have no choice but to spend Christmas alone. You're single and you have limited funds — hence the small turkey for one, soup for one. So, our character is an urban person, a kind of everygirl, experiencing this. So, I thought of telling that story with the O. Henry twist at the end. … And if you believe that ending, well then, I've got a bridge to sell you!”
The Cut : Jason Lewis, Eric Nies, Ian Somerhalder, Tom Welling and others remember the wild, sexy and decidedly pre-Instagram world of 1990s...
Fake Jan Alert
My blog is featured in Susan Olsen's tell-all about the ill-fated "Brady Bunch Variety Hour"!
Little Kenny
Growing up in Madison Heights, Mich.
Back to the Old House
The Web leads to an unexpected return to a house I grew up in.
Oceans 11
Carlsbad, Calif. (2008)
1983
Go Behind the Music of my high-school band, A La Plage
A Death in the Family
Little Larry left us too soon.
Once I Had a Love
With Debbie Harry
'Jungle' Fever
With Robert Buckley
Roger & Me
With Roger Federer
Step Brother McMullen
With Ed Burns
Headline News
With Thomas Roberts
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