Oh cool. We get to talk about Romeo Void. And yeah, we're dealing with Romeo Void's most commercial song from their brief stint on a major label, but Romeo Void were one of the finest bands to come out of the SF punk explosion/aftermath, steering a propulsive Gang of Four-ish art rock that was cool as hell.
Let's enjoy the smooth beauty of this week's song for a few minutes before we get to the story of Romeo Void. As major label polished songs from post-punk bands go, A Girl In Trouble is pretty damn fine.
We don't do a whole lot of narrative storytelling here. If you made it here, you obviously know how to use the internet, and can find all that stuff yourself. But in doing a little research about the band's history--because I'm a fan and I wanted to know more--I decided their story needed to be told, and it will be told through stories from lead singer Debora Iyall.
I'd come down to the Bay Area a few times to see Patti Smith. Then I got a fortune cookie that said 'Art is your fate -- don't debate.' So I applied to the SF Art Institute. After seeing Patti Smith, I still had it in my mind that you had to be skinny to be up there [on stage], but after going to the Mabuhay ... you just do whatever you want, be whoever you want, just make it happen. My approach was always that I had something to say, I had a point of view. I remember seeing Penelope from the Avengers at the Mabuhay Gardens and thinking, I can do that. I have something to say.
Even though I was going to the Mab so much, I also had criticisms: Everyone was leaning against the wall wearing black. I guess we were considered New Wave, but for me Romeo Void was a reaction against the regimentation of everyone having to be bleached blond and everything being about despair and no future, when I thought the do-it-yourself thing should encompass all the different kinds of emotions, and all the different colors. ... I was proud of being American Indian, so I purposely never bleached my hair blond.
I was told by our culture that I would never be a full human being because of my size. Aggression was in high value at the time, and there was an aggression just in me being a singer, because I didn't fit the mold.I wasn't ever really a rock 'n' roll gal; I might've been listening to Erik Satie or Billie Holiday! we played a college in Santa Barbara, and there were all these blond people crowding the stage, and I thought 'These are the people who hated me in high school!' When you grow up being 'outside' -- because I wasn't white, and I was fat, and always a bit of a free thinker -- it was strange. It was like, 'uh-oh, I must be doing something wrong -- they like me!
Their independently released EP blew up, propelled by Never Say Never. If you've never heard it before, it's one of the smartest, funniest, coolest songs of its era, or any era. Here it is:
The major labels came coming, and the story took a decidedly fucked up turn. There's a story out there that the label told her to lose weight and she refused.
Howie sold us from 415 to Columbia Records, and they were like 'Who's this fat chick?' They decided that was as far as it was going to get, and pulled their support.
The very next town we got to after they made that decision, there wasn't an A&R person there," said Iyall. "[There] was no local person there, there were no interviews and in-stores arranged as they had been. All that just ground to a halt.
That would have been right around the time this song reached #35. Without support from your label, you're pretty much dead in the water. Romeo Void broke up shortly thereafter. Debora Iyall made a solo album a couple of years later and then went back to poetry and teaching. The band reunited to play shows in 1993 and 2004, and she began making music again in 2009.
A Girl In Trouble is a glimpse of what could have been. A fiercely intelligent, empathetic, feminist vision in the heart of the Top 40. Listen to the lyrics. Listen to the music. The song even features one of the few 80s saxophone parts that doesn't make you cringe. To quote one of Debora Iyall's best lyrics. "You don't get it? Rain on you and the world disappears."
Score: 9/10.
THE NUMBER ONE
Iyall's story is one version of punk. She sees someone on stage throwing their intelligence and anger at the world and realizes there's an outlet for their own intelligence and anger. You can do it too was one of the most powerful messages of punk. And one of the most insidious, as it quickly gave permission for testosterone-fueled white boys an outlet for their anger (most of them missed the intelligence part), esp. their anger at people they considered to be not-like-them. But for a while there, people saw punk as a challenge to do something different. Before it became the most conformist, dogmatic genre in music, it was the least conformist, the least dogmatic.
You're wondering what punk has to do with this Stevie Wonder song? I was having lunch last week with a friend, and the place had a Stevie Wonder playlist on the--not radio, I guess whatever music dissemination format the restaurant was using. Anyway, I knew this song was coming up in the blog's future, and eventually (the service was, uh, lackadaisical--it's fine), this song came on and I got the chance to make it a working lunch.
While it played for what seemed like an eternity, I thought about the Sex Pistols. There a scene in The Filth and The Fury documentary where Johnny Rotten talks about covering the Small Faces and changing the words from I want you to know that I love you baby / I want you to know that I care to Rotten's version I want you to know that I hate you baby / I want you to know I don't care. He talks in the doc about how ridiculous the original was, and how just by changing a couple of words you make it interesting. It made me think about how much more interesting this Stevie Wonder song would be if you changed it to I Just Called To Say I Hate You.
But Stevie wouldn't do that, would he? And that's as good a definition of the "punk impulse" as I could ever come up with. There's all these emotions and feelings that dominate our lives, but we can't talk about them in public. That was the case in the late 70s, and that's kind of become the case now. There's no room for anger/despair/humor in mass culture. While the Stevie Wonder song played in the restaurant, the very sweet, gay, person of color working there was dancing and smiling as he listened. I thought about my version of the song, what his reaction would be if I changed it to hate, how it would ruin his moment. It might even confuse him. A lot of time when I make jokes like that, people's initial reaction is shock and discomfort. We hold so many things sacred these days.
Anyway, Wonder's song is garbage. I don't care who enjoys it. There are other things to enjoy. Sometimes our desire to enjoy something means co-existing with bullshit. All you have to do is walk the streets on Valentine's Day to see that.
Score: 1.
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