Interview with Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants oktober 5, 2006

If you have ever heard the Young Marble Giants, I’m sure that you won’t have forgotten the experience. In the three years in which they were together between 1978 and 1981, they recorded just one album ‘Colossal Youth’ and a handful of singles. There are few other bands, however, that have ever managed to sound so fresh and original, or been such a seminal influence on so many musicians during the last two decades. They proved that you can create great pop music with very few ingredients. Mostly they just used a drum machine and a bass guitar to back up singer Alison Statton’s sweet, fragile voice. Maybe, however you don’t know very much about this Cardiff trio, so we at Pennyblackmusic thought that we might help you out a bit. We have for you, therefore, an interview with guitarist, organist and songwriter Stuart Moxham.

How and when did you become interested in music?
- Does anyone have a choice about becoming interested in music? It surrounds all of us from day one, surely?

What kind of music did you grow up with?
- My parents are music lovers – in fact my father is a singer. They are also church goers, so we were raised with hymns, carols, Gilbert & Sullivan, Lerner & Loewe, classical music, the radio of the ’50’s, and then eventually all the hits of the 60’s and 70’s. I have an elder brother who was in the Royal Navy and brought home an early stereo from the Far East and also had a brilliant record collection. I remember singing ‘Twist and Shout’ (the Beatles’ version) in Gladstone Junior school playground. It seemed then as though the Beatles had a new single out every week. I dug the Stones, too -grew my hair long in the early ’70’s – you get the picture.

Did you play in any other bands prior to Young Marble Giants?
- I was introduced to playing guitar by my friend Matthew Davis who later formed a group, playing covers, called True Wheel in which I was the singer and second guitarist. My brother Phil was the bassist. We played regularly for a while in Cardiff.

How did Young Marble Giants form?
- True Wheel faded away and, after an abortive attempt to collaborate in a second group with Phil, I decided to form my own group, to do my own songs. I invited Phil to join me in my new venture and he told me he’d teamed up with Alison, a backing singer in True Wheel, and that they were now a musical unit. I therefore took them both onboard.

What were your influences?
- Some of my personal major ones were: Beatles/Cat Stevens/Led Zeppelin/Neil Young/Early Roxy Music/Eno/Eno/Eno/Kraftwerk/Steve Miller/Police/Bob Marley etc.

Where does the name Young Marble Giants come from? On the ‘Final Day’ 7″ sleeve there is an excerpt from a dictionary. Does it come from that?
- It comes from a book about classical sculpture. We’d given up trying to find the name – one idea was the Clones – but even then it was too obvious. Then I was flicking through this book which was Alison’s and saw the sentence with those three words and thought it was perfect.

Why didn’t you use a ”real” drummer in Young Marble Giants?
- Have you ever met any real drummers? No, seriously, we’d only worked with one previously and he was a pain in the arse and had a lot of heavy gear which we had to carry. Plus drum machines were so sexy then. We wanted everything easy – why make work? Plus we were anti traditional rock/record production/arrangements – we wanted our great riffage to be unadorned – it didn’t need tom toms, cymbals, and some hairyback trying to write songs on his drum kit!

Did you have any goals with Young Marble Giants?
- Er, just a few…to get a record deal and therefore to get the hell out of Cardiff, which was the capital of a musical wasteland; to become necessarily famous and generally fulfil the rock’n'roll dream. To avoid a straight career at all costs. I’ve subsequently discovered that I’m useless at most jobs anyway. I was made to write songs, man!

How did the music press react to your records back in those days?
- Very favourably – we had reviews to die for. Of course there are always a few fuckwits who don’t get it but luckily none of them were in the music press!

Why did you split up?
- The usual undiscussed reasons. Tired and emotional bollocks, ego, and so on

After the Young Marble Giants split, you formed the Gist. What was that? Was that your solo project?
- Basically yes. I wanted to have a name that sounded like a group and I liked ‘The Gist’. I included various musical friends as well as my brother, Andrew, who is the person I have played and recorded with by far the most of anyone.

You also produced the second Marine Girls album ‘Lazy Ways’ in 1983. How did you get to do that? Did you know Dan Treacy (The Television Personalities frontman was helping to promote the group at the time) or any of the Girls?
- Cherry Red records rang. I didn’t know of them at the time so I asked for a tape and liked it immediately – it was so refreshing to hear love songs from the female perspective.

Today, the Welsh music scene is very much alive, but what was it like in the early 80’s?
- It seemed that nobody in living memory had ”made it.” The music industry could not have been less interested in Wales and confidence was always zero among young groups. You had to be in London or Liverpool. Or Scotland. Or anywhere. The English hate the Welsh because the Welsh are soulful, passionate Celts. The English find all that messy and soppy because they don’t have soul. Same thing with the Irish, the Scots, you name it. The English have enormous self belief and arrogance, aggression and thick skins. Everything you need to get on in life and found an Empire! Having said that I choose to live in England and enjoy the subtlety and unflappability, the coolness of southern Englishness. Life’s a mystery. Thank God. All the best things in life are unsolvable mysteries. Science is limited. End of ramble!

What do you think when you listen to those old records now?
- I almost never do but of course it’s intensely personal for me if I do. I can see the merit in them and I love them. They are like old friends.

What is your favourite YMG song?
- ‘Nita’

What are you doing nowadays? Are you still making music?
- I live in a cottage in an old village in deeply rural England. I am married with three young children and I pay the bills by being a driving instructor. I have a studio at home and am trying to get to grips with producing my music on my own CDR label, hABIT records, for release via the Internet. (Watch http://www.appelstein.com/ymg/ for developments but don’t hold your breath.) I play gigs, if I’m asked and if I’m paid, so that means virtually never! I play covers for a theraputic/spiritual event each Friday evening at a drug and drink rehab clinic. I am in a band of church bell ringers locally. I sometimes pick up a guitar and play half a song before rushing off, usually to do something less enjoyable. But then what isn’t? Hope springs eternal and I still cling to the belief that a) there is justice in this world and b) if I stick at it, one day I’ll have a huge hit or three and go back to being a full time musician/recordist. Sad, really, but we must have our dreams to prevent reality from doing our heads in.

What are the other two members doing now?
- I’m not the best person to ask – all I know is that Alison has been a chiropractor in Cardiff for years and Phil currently looks after polo ponies at his rural home outside that city.

I read somewhere that you worked on the Roger Rabbit movie. Is that true?
- Check the credits (Writer’s note: I have, and according to imdb.com, he was a painter during the production of the film.)

Have you thought about a reunion? I read something about a reunion of sorts at the Rough Trade anniversary last year…
- Constantly, for years, but with no enthusiasm from the others it was too much like hard work. It just ate away at me. I came close a couple of times and last year’s Rough Trade gig was the closest. I’ve given up now. Big shame because I know we could produce more shitkicking music if only the will was there. Life gets in the way though.

What is the single greatest moment in your music career?
- Tough question. There have been so many great moments, especially great gigs. Perhaps the summer of ‘93 when I recorded three consecutive albums, one in London (‘Random Rules’) and two in Chicago (‘Barbara Manning Sings With The Original Artists’ and ‘Plan A’ – although that one has never been released.)

If you had the chance, what would you have done differently with the Young Marble Giants career?
- Taken a step back and not stupidly let it dissolve. Treat it as a professional occupation rather than a vehicle for my hang-ups.

What do you listen to now?
- My own stuff as I record it, plus old chart music on Radio 2 because local radio stations, outside London, are shite. I don’t know why.

Interview with Chris Zither of The Essex Green oktober 5, 2006

If you were to make a family tree with all the bands that the three core members of the Essex Green are involved with, it would make a pretty large tree. We have Sixth Great Lake, the Ladybug Transister, Finishing School… well, you see for yourself. But now, Christopher Zither, Jeff Baron and Sasha Bell have taken some time to record their third album as the Essex Green, ‘Cannibal Sea’, the follow-up to the fantastic ‘The Long Goodbye’, that was released back in 2003.
Pennyblackmusic tracked down Chris from the band, and chatted to him about the band’s musical history and his thoughts about the new record among other things…

How did you get into music? When did you start playing an instrument? What kind of music did you grow up with?
- I grew up in a household without much musical taste. I seem to remember a lot of bad musical soundtracks and cheesy things like ‘Hooked On Classics’. I started on the clarinet when I was around 10 years old because my mum was convinced it was the easiest instrument to learn on… that may be true but the collection and cleaning of spit always grossed me out. I always wanted to play the piano. I taught myself on a cheap little Casio several years later… plucking out tunes from TV shows like ‘Cheers’, ‘Hill Street Blues’ and ‘Charlie Brown’. Once I got into high school my instrument was my voice. I was in any and all the singing groups that existed in the school: musicals, madrigals, choirs, and barbershops. I learned the guitar in university when I first met Jeff Baron. That was 15 years ago.

How did The Essex Green come about? I understand you formed the band after your earlier band Guppyboy split up.
- Essex Green came directly out of Guppyboy. It was born out of a move from Vermont to New York City. One member of Guppyboy, Zack Ward, didn’t want to move. Once that became clear, we decided we were going to start another group and rearrange things a bit. The personnel changed and the sound changed.

What were your major influences when you started out, and how have they changed over the years?
-  Um… well, when we were starting out we listened to the Zombies, the Kinks, Dylan, Fairport Convention, Os Mutantes and a lot of Elephant 6 bands… it’s moved through a number of phases over time. Everyone listens to slightly differently things now. Nowadays we are listening to a bit more country music… some folk music.

How do you write the songs in The Essex Green. Is it a team effort, or do you write on your own? And what comes first – the lyrics or the music?
- We all write separately nearly 100% of the time. The process is probably quite different with each person and even with each song. I personally tend to write the music first. But some lyrics may guide the direction of a compositon from the outset.

If you get to choose one song you wish you had written, which one would it be?
- Today it would have to be ‘Come On Eileen’. Could there be a better song? I challenge you…

Well, I think should be able to come up with something…
I read somewhere that you were planning a solo album. What happened with that? Is it still coming out?
- I read that too. I’m not sure what the answer to that question is. I imagine that everyone in the world is working on a solo album of some type or another… Completing a project like that is something that would take me a while to let go of…. It is much easier to set loose something into the world for inspection and digestion if you are one of many parts of the creation. To be the only name on it is a different story. Short answer – most of the songs are written and strong, but it’s going to be something that I am in no hurry to finish.

How would you describe the Essex Green to someone who have never heard you?
- 60s and 70’s inspired folk/pop. That’s my best guess.

Do you have ”regular” day-time jobs, or can you make a living out of your music?
- I do freelance webdesign. Sasha works in documentary filmmaking. Jeff works in recording. Not necessarily ”regular” jobs ‘cos we need to be able to take time off for touring and recording. But the cost of living in New York does restrict how much time we can take off. We would definitely tour or record more if we could afford it. We are far away from making a living in music. The industry is one of the most financially depressed in the arts for a multitude of reasons. I could go on for hours about that but I won’t.

On your new album, you give a special ”thank you” to Sweden. I understand that you like Sweden a lot, which is mutual, as the Swedes like you guys a lot too. What do you think is the reason why you are so successful there?
- Sweden is a country that has embraced our music and had the ability to embrace it. By that I suppose I am referring to the previous answer when I talk about the state of the music industry. Sweden was a country whose national radio was able to allow smaller bands like ourselves to be played in primetime and reach people’s ears. It just doesn’t happen anywhere else that we have been to. Even your Norwegian neighbors seem to have a similar hierarchy of corporate control in the broadcast arena. It’s refreshing to be a part of a community that has the ability to reach beyond that and dig deeper into the cultural strata without such a concern over money.
Plus we have a lot of friends in Sweden and they just wouldn’t have all fitted in the space we had alloted on the album credits.
I want to believe that, were our record able to be given the same spotlight in other countries, there might be a similar reaction. I suppose what Sweden did for the Essex Green is install a bit of confidence in the fact that our music is enjoyable to larger groups outside the indie realm. That’s an exciting prospect.

What Swedish bands do you listen to? I heard that you have toured with Shout Out Louds…
- Yes… we honestly hadn’t heard much from the Shout Out Louds before we went on tour. We are now good friends and fans. Let’s see… I am a big fan of Bjorn Olson’s music. Love Is All has some members that we are friends with. It’s great to see that band is starting to take off. Swedish music is really getting some notice… that makes me feel all good inside.

Your new album is a lot less country-orientated than ‘The Last Goodbye’, apart from songs like ‘Rue de Lis’. Was this your plan, or was it just an unplanned direction of songwriting? Tell me a little about the recording of the album…
- No specific plan. There were two songs that were a bit more country that didn’t make it on the the record. We just ran out of time. They will most likely appear on the next record or an EP or something. This record was recorded in a somewhat similar fashion to ‘The Long Goodbye’. Over the course of 12 months, we recorded in many different environments with different musicians on drums and bass… as well as strings and guitars. But a larger portion of the record was completed at one studio in Manhattan called Great City Productions. This is the home studio of Britt Myers who mixed our last record. He was a bit more involved in the recording process for this record and has some amazing gear… really nice vintage amps and guitars. Jeff, who handles most of the guitar work, was loving it. The result is a record that has a similar sound to the last record but I think the production has been bumped up a notch or two because of the quality of Britt’s gear. As always, Britt did a great job mixing the record.

Would you like the Essex Green to be the biggest band in the world, or are you happy the way things are?
- I would love our music to be be played on national radio in the states like it was in Sweden. I don’t want to be a 4 tour-bus pyro-technic stadium 360-out-of-365-days-on-tour-a-year type band at all. I just would love to have our songs appear in a number of movies or play tours that might bring in enough money so that we could spend a lot more time with music than struggling to keep the Brooklyn roofs over our heads.

Finally, I must ask about the song ‘Chester’ from your first EP. Is it about a cat? And if so, is it that cat that can be heard in the song ?
- Yes and Yes.

Interview with David Bean of The Judy’s oktober 3, 2006

There are bands who choose to release their records on their own and try to sell them to anyone they might meet. There are bands who are attracted to one of the evil major labels and gets their records released worldwide (if that’s what Mr Major Label wants). And then there are bands who build an entire career on appearing on mixtapes all over the world. Well, maybe that’s overdoing it a bit, but when it comes to the American trio The judy’s, it is almost always that latter way, at least here in Sweden. ‘All The Pretty Girls’ and ‘She’s Got The Beat’ are just two of the tracks that with their minimalist sound have charmed many of the DJs over here in the last year or so, but who are, or were, really The Judy’s? I think we should let David Bean, singer, guitarist and main songwriter, who formed the band with bassist Jeff Walton and drummmer Dane Cessac, tell us about how the Judy’s came to be.

- We all knew each other growing up and from school. Dane and I were in the same class, and Jeff lived around the corner from me. Jeff and Dane knew each other from high school band class. We played together in different arrangements in different high school bands. The three of us made up a band called Breather – that was the name of our only song!—and we played at a county fair talent show. Later we formed a band called the Mondo Babies, which was a little more straight-ahead rock/pop than the Judy’s.
In 1979, I spent the summer in Austin for a high school science program, and there was an amazing punk scene getting started at the infamous Raul’s club. I was under age, but I still got in, and was just blown away by the creativity and excitement of bands like the Skunks, the Reversible Cords (or Re*Cords), the Huns, the Next, and the Big Boys.
So I went home excited with the idea that we could actually do something like that. Jeff and Dane had started another band with a guitarist named Sam Roush called the Cleavers. Jeff was writing the material, and I thought they were great and wanted to be their manager. Jeff didn’t want to do that for some reason, so I joined them to create a punk band called the Jets. We recorded a single, which became ‘Teenage HangUps’, but while it was being pressed, we found out someone else was using the name the Jets, so we changed our name to the Judy’s. Sam died in a car accident before the record was released, so we tributed the record to him.

The Judy’s hometown is Pearland, just outside Houston, Texas. According to David it’s a typical American suburb, like the ones we are used to seeing in all the High School movies. Almost everyone knows everyone else, at least by name or reputation, and football is the main attraction when it comes to activities outside of school.
- Actually, there were about 3 or 4 different groups in our school: you were either a jock (athlete), a kicker (cowboy), head (druggie), band fag (high school band player) , nerd, or … I dunno, a nothing? At the time I didn’t much like being in Pearland, although I knew it had its good points. Now it’s becoming a surburban sprawl. It’s growing and growing. It’s getting ugly, really. It’s losing its identity.

Instead of playing football, David, Jeff and Dane used to get together in the Beans family playroom to rehearse their songs, not to get famous or to release records. No, simply to pass the time. The boys’ influences were many, but David tells me he was a big fan of anything theatrical, like Alice Cooper, Kiss and David Bowie. When they began playing as The Judy’s , their intention was to be a punk band, but that was soon to change.
- When Sam died, we lost our main guitarist, and decided to do something a little more experimental, like have alternative instrumentation.

Well, what about that alternative instrumentation? On songs like ‘Her Wave’ and the already mentioned ‘All The Pretty Girls’, David is accompanied by a bass guitar and drums only, something, according to David, that was influenced by the B52’s and the Re*Chords. David also says that he’s a lousy guitarist, and therefore didn’t want to play that much.
- Well, we did try and audition some other guitarists, but that didn’t work out, so instead of just playing loud songs we decided to use what we had and do something original.

The first release was, as previously mentioned, ‘Teenage HangUps’, which was released on David’s own label Wasted Talent Records, a label that was created just to release the records that the Judy’s put out. He also released his own solo album (more about that one later) and the debut album by the Big Boys in 1981, a record that is now a collector’s item.
- We sold the EP at school in the school cafeteria for a few days! The school let us set up a table and we only sold a handful to our friends. People thought the whole punk thing was a joke, but they also knew we were having fun. I had a maths/computer teacher who let us bring records in on Fridays, so I brought the B52’s and Wayne County, and taught the class how to pogo! We made our performing debut at the school for the first half hour of a school dance.

At that time, the Judy’s were already beginning to come up with a different more pop-orientated sound, so they didn’t think the single was a good representation of them anymore. So when they released ‘The Wonderful World of Appliances’ in 1980, they included the first single as a freebie giveaway in a bag to get rid of them. The new EP, by many regarded as the band’s first “regular” record, was recorded in a couple of hours and the six songs were once again released on the Wasted Talent label. As they didn’t have any proper distribution, the Judy’s sold most of their records at their gigs, at some of the cooler record stores in their hometown and, later on, by mailorder. The band really liked those household appliances…
- We used a lot of gear mostly in the sense of decoration and stage show. We didn’t play all the time, so we tried to make our shows special. We also had a lot of odd instruments around…t.v.’s, tom-tom drums, noisemakers, vaccuum cleaners… we just had a lot of stuff to carry around. And then if we were doing a themed show, like a Beach Party or Guyana Tragedy Anniversary, we’d have props for that, too. We didn’t have much gear like extra guitars and stuff, and my amplifier was really small, so compared to other bands, we didn’t have much to haul around.

When coming from Texas, a state that is mostly known for their boogie-rock (ZZ Top etc), the Judy’s perhaps surprisingly did not find things particulary hard…
- Well, we were certainly not what’s referred to as “Texas music”. I really dislike that phrase anyway. The state is big, and there’s a wide variety of music here, so I hate that people talk like that blues-country-rock is what we’re known for. At the time, there was a healthy punk and new wave scene. “Pop” was a word reserved for Top 40 radio stations. Most of the punk and new wave bands had a great pop sensibility, though.
Houston has always had a lousy music scene, despite the occasional great band. There’s a small pop/emo scene here now (very small, really), and most of it’s pretty bad. Junior Varsity is (was) the greatest band in the city (if they haven’t broken up yet)! Have you heard their album ‘Bam Bam Bam’? It’s a classic! (After this interview took place, I have bought that album, and yes, it’s great!, writer’s note).

‘The Wonderful World Of Appliances’ was a breakthrough for The Judy’s, at least locally. All the clubs and venues wanted to book them, all the brat kids wanted them to play at their parties and the newspapers wrote about the band’s energetic live shows.

At this time, 1981, they recorded ‘Washarama’, the album that they would be remembered by even to this day and age. The album contained 12 songs that the fans recognised as they had played them as part of their shows for a long time. Among these songs were a re-recording of that marvellous song from the first EP, ‘All The Pretty Girls’, ‘TV’, ‘Man On A Window Ledge’ and ‘Her Wave’, David’s favourite song by The Judy’s.
- That song was recorded too fast on ‘Washarama’, but we got to where we would play it a little slower live, and I just loved to sing it. My favorite to listen to is either ‘Land of Plenty’ or ‘Jesus Be My Airplane’ both off of the unreleased (or officially released, I should say) ‘Land of Plenty’ CD. It was a fuller sound than the earlier albums, and because it was not released to the public at large, I get to appreciate the recording in a different way.

On the ‘Washarama’ album is also ‘She’s Got The Beat’, a song that may be familiar to those of you who happen to like Tullycraft, as they recorded a cover version of that very song for a split-7” they made with Avocado Baby five years ago. Tullycraft is not the only band who has covered The Judy’s though. Junior Varsity recorded their version of ‘Radiation Squirm’ on a Japanese only single, a recording that David really likes…
- It’s very different from our version, and I love it! Very poppy.

David also tells me that the future has in store a CD-release of ‘Washarama’ (for the first time, oddly enough), which will also contain a tribute-CD as a bonus, where other artists and bands have recorded the songs from ‘Washarama’.
- It’s got Lisa Loeb, the Muffs, the 5.6.7.8’s, Rodney Alan Greenblat… it’s really incredible. I wish I could give you a release date, but we’ve been working on the project almost 2 years and it’s still not done… it’s a lot of work!

One of the persons working on this project is Michael Wilson, who also runs a great website at http://www.thejudys.com.
- We don’t have anything to do with that. Michael did all of it. He’s a fan who did an incredible job of creating a site based around the band. He’s some kind of computer whiz.

A year or so later, the band began recording the follow-up to ‘Washarama’, which had been a massive hit, but at the same time they were old enough to go to college, which they did. So, the Judy’s then went on hiatus until 1985, but the fans wanted to hear more, and with an album halfway recorded. David then asked some friends to help him record the rest of the album, and released it as a solo album in 1983, entitled ‘Modomusic’. Some of the musicians helping out David on ‘Modomusic’ were on loan from another Texas band, the Dishes, and to repay that favour, David joined them on stage from time to time for the next couple of years.
But David Bean wasn’t the only one to release solo records. Jeff Walton also released an EP, ‘Danger Boy’, while he was in college. According to David, Jeff’s record is heavy on dance beats and harmony vocals, and he adds that Jeff was very influenced by Queen at the time of recording it. So, will there be any reissues of those solo recordings ?
- Yeah. All of the songs on ‘Modomusic’ will be released on CD with the ‘Moo’ album. Whenever that happens… I don’t think Jeff will re-release his. I don’t know.

Then in 1985, the band decided to get back together to play some shows and to record a new album, ‘Moo’. During the years off, David had bought a Korg Poly-800 keyboard and, when he brought it to the studio, it helped to make the Judy’s sound a bit thicker than before. On this recording, they even hired a guest horn section for the track ‘Don’t Be a Hippie’. The songwriting had also changed quite a bit too…
- I wrote most of the material. Usually the words and music would come together. I’d sing a melody around a certain phrase, and then develop that into a chorus, decide what the song was going to be about, and write verses. Writing came pretty automatically, lots of times, because I used to play the piano and write songs as an emotional release. So after a bad day at school, ‘All the Pretty Girls’ seemed to write itself. ‘Moo’ was a little different. I think I had ideas for several songs before sitting down to write them. I’m visually oriented, so a lot of the lyrics were being written around images I was seeing in my mind.

After the release of ‘Moo’, Dane left the band, but Jeff and David kept on going, and in 1987 they played a show that the fans still talks about, as that very night, they also put a brand new single on sale, ‘Girl Of 1000 Smells’, recorded in two languages (English and Russian), and which also featured a small pocket guide David had written called ‘A Guide To Good Odours’.
- It was supposed to enhance the theme of the record, I guess. It will probably resurface again someday!

The single was packaged in the kind of boxes that usually carries reel-to-reel tape, and each single came with it’s own smell! On this single, two new members joined the duo, Scott Krchnak (saxophone) and Matthew McCarthy (drums), but that was the only recording they participated on. Shortly after the release of the single, they left the band, and David and Jeff were once again on their own.

It would be a long time until we would see the name the Judy’s on a record sleeve again. As a matter of a fact, I’m not really sure if we did at all.
In the early 90’s, Jeff left the band too, and David was the only original member of the Judy’s. Yet, he brought in some musicians to help him record what would the Judy’s “mysterious” final album, ‘Land Of Plenty’. Not mysterious musically, no, but nobody is really sure whether, as David mentioned earlier, it was ever released anywhere.
So, looking back at the years with The Judy’s, how did the band develop?
- We became less edgy as we got more popular. I think part of it was that we were being accepted, and part of the feelings of anger and alienation dissipated a bit and we became more of a standard pop band. A lot of punk bands had to act angry. So it seemed a bit phoney. I was trying to write from where we were at the time. Someone said once that we had become a parody of ourselves with ‘Moo’, and I think that’s true. We would have discussions about what we wanted to do musically, and try to figure if it was “Judy” or not. We wanted to grow and develop musically, but we weren’t sure if we were being true to ourselves or our audience. So we started to second-guess ourselves a lot. We were still subversive, but in a different way, like releasing ‘Girl of 1000 Smells’ with the flipside in Russian. I don’t know what type of sound you’d call that single (other than bad), but it was supposed to be a hip-sexy love-lounge song. Maybe it did work, and the idea is so subversive that it gets me!

Did you get any national attention for your records?
- I hear stories all the time about people hearing our music for the first time all over the US (and even foreign countries), but we had very limited distribution here in Texas. So I guess it’s just people passing around tapes and stuff. I think we’re all happy with the success we had, and everyone feels we could have had more, which is true, but I’m not sure how much I really would have wanted it. We all changed a bit as we got popular, and I was honestly scared at times about how we were being affected by all of it. I didn’t want to succeed at the expense of ourselves, and I didn’t trust that that was not going to happen.

Today, David is still making music from time to time, writing songs for motion pictures, corporate work etc. But he doesn’t think it was easier being a band in the 70’s and 80’s than it is now.
- There’s too many avenues for promotion today, and there’s not a big enough live music scene across the country. Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t feel like there’s the same interest and electricity around music these days. And there’s too many artists!
Right now my CD player’s got Andrew W.K., Lucinda Williams, Wim Mertens, the Pixies, Yma Sumac, Kathy McCarty, and the soundtrack to ‘Mary Poppins’ in it. Hey, do you know this singing group from Sweden called the Herrey’s, from about 15 years ago? I got their record in Russia. They sang ‘Diggi Loo, Diggi Ley’ or something like that? They did a cover of ‘Footloose’ in Swedish, too. They’re great!! I love them!!

Well, I think everyone in Sweden knows of the Herrey’s and if you happen to live in Europe, you probably remember them too. The song David mentions won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1984 and the three brothers became famous overnight.

Anyway, a reunion for The Judy’s seems unlikely though…
- We did a show together in 1995. I don’t see a reunion as very likely. We’re older now, and singing about teenage hang-ups and high school girls seems a little sick!

Well, I can agree with that.