I TALKED TO THE PLIMSOULS!

I TALKED TO THE PLIMSOULS!

FEATURES

J. Kordosh

The Plimsouls come from Los Angeles, where you can find rich bastards and poor bastards and record companies and high-priced real estate and even a few good musicians if you don’t mind looking. I come from Detroit, where you can find mostly poor bastards. I’ve never been to L. A. and Peter Case, who writes, sings and plays guitar for the Plimsouls, had never been to Detroit. So we were pretty much even when I met them in their Detroit motel, except that I had the advantage of having listened to their debut album, The Plimsouls (Planet Records, Los Angeles, California).

The Plimsouls arrived in the flush of the Wall Street Journal coverage (“A Rock Band Finds Stairway To Stardom Is Crowded And Steep”... wouldn’t you know it, the exact title I’d planned on using). While we talked, Case reclined on his motel bed, wearing shades and drinking beer. Road manager Bill Barnett, who wanted to see his name in print, sat on the next bed eating McDonald’s hearty rock cuisine. Other Plimsouls wandered in and out; fellow plunker Eddie Munoz showed the most staying power by perching on a handy table. I sat in a chair and let the tape roll.

“How do you feel about being written up in the Journal?” I asked, waiting real patiently for Case to realize how thirsty I was and offer me a beer.

“That thing in The Wall Street Journal? That was cool—I thought it was kind of neat that they even wanted to put it in there, you know? It stirred up a little interest at the company, believe me.”

Case was reading an article about his band in a Detroit paper; the writer had also mentioned the Big Biz Bugle feature. He kept his eyes (at least I think he did; remember, he was wearing shades) on the paper and continued. “To me, rock ’n’ roll—when you write about it, it gets so boring. Everybody goes on and on about the business, y’know what I mean?” Then referring to the newspaper, which I guess he really was reading, he said: “She came up with some conclusions from that article that I really didn’t read in the Journal. ‘All of it adds up to severe doubts about the band’s future’,” he quoted.

“What do you say to that?”

“Even if we get dumped by the label, there’s still the band,” Barnett said.

“There’s no doubts about the band’s future,” Case interrupted. “There’s still gonna be the band. But the thing is, any band trying to break in, it’s a fucking...”

He let the thought die. The key words so far were boredom and business. The business chat was inevitable: the Plimsouls were touring without any support from their record company—although I’m pretty sure they were getting moral support, anyway. As Barnett said: “People couldn’t believe it. They were hesitant about even putting out any kind of promotion or radio spots.” When I asked why, Case laughed and said, “Because they didn’t think we’d actually show up for the gigs.”

But they were, and Barnett said they weren’t having problems with “any kind of audience,” but I’m not sure what that means. I found Case’s boredom more interesting. The Plimsouls is almost an atavism of an album: the whole thing is worth listening to. It’s the understated kind of album you might’ve picked up on a whim in 1967, before albums shipped Californium or died. I’d be hard-pressed to pick out the best stuff, but a cover of the Friday-minded Easybeats’ “Women” and Case’s “Everyday Things”—“Everybody here’s got the everyday curse”—ripped up practically everything else on the market in that quarter. A convincing “Who cares, it’s produced” production makes the work of even fellow earnest Angelenos like X and the Bus Boys sound like Grammy-gropers by comparison.

Case, who came to L. A. via Buffalo, is a former member of the Nerves, who enjoyed a brief Pacific vogue.. “Everyone’s heard of the Nerves now that they’re broken up,” Munoz laughed, but he was probably not far from the truth. A month after The Plimsouls was released I’d never heard of ’em, but I could’ve discussed the Nerves for a good two or three minutes. Hey, I can’t read every Beat Goes On around here. Since I liked the album’s sound, though, I asked Case if he did, too.

“Umm...the sound,” Case paused like I’d asked for an easy solution to the Palestinian Crisis. “For a first album... yeah.”^

“I’m not really happy with the way we did it,” he quickly added. “Ana I learned something about making albums that I’ll never do again. That is: to make an album as an album is just boring, man. It’s just fucking boring and I’ll never do it that way again.”

Still mighty thirsty, but interested in the Case Of The Bored Case, I wondered how he did want to make an album. As a flower arrangement?

“Just go in and cut singles,” he said, sipping his beer. “The way I*see it is like the way records used to be made. Everybody would rehearse, then you’d book a six-hour session and you’d cut a song. And you’d come out of it with a finished song in six hours or something like that. Instead of dicking around with tracks for—you know, ‘We’re tracking for the first three weeks...’—that’s really boring and it’s fragmented. And the bass player and the drummer, one day—y’know, what’ve they got to do?—so everybody splits and I’m just in there doing guitar dubs and it’s fucking boring. So the only way I see to make any records, forever—I’ll never, ever make another ‘album.’ Did you ever notice that the Buzzcocks—this is a good example— their albums don’t mean anything compared to their singles. That’s because they make their albums like albums and they make their singles like singles. A single’s an exciting way to go.”

Since Case was right, I agreed. He went on: “The Beatles recorded their first album in twelve hours or whatever. That’s what the rap is, y’know? It was quick—it’s gotta be quick. The point is also having the whole band there involved, making the thing together—’cause it just gets so fucking boring. If you’re a musician and you’re ever bored in a recording studio, you know there’s something fucking wrong.” .

It must be true, I mused. “Hey, d’ya wanna beer?” Case asked. Yeah...well... sure, why not?

While Case went into the next room for more dilute ethanol, Barnett and Munoz told me that ace CREEM photog and all-around-cool-guy Bob Matheu couldn’t keep up with their studio chugging and got what they call sick. Sorry to wash this linen in public, Bob, but see how long I had to wait for a beer? They probably figured we’re all a bunch of Casper DiMartinoasts. When Case returned, the talk returned to the biz and where The Plimsouls fit (or didn’t) into same.

“There’s certain people at the big labels that are really coot but you’re talking about a huge company with all sorts of people,” Case said. “And it’s really a business just like anything else. It’s like the shoe business. It’s kind of fucked up, y’know.

“What happened is The Plimsouls came on real strong the first week and we got real excited. And it went to—what’d go to?— 155, and then the next week it went to 133, then 132; then the next week, it disappeared. And the single we put out—‘Now’—they put out because they thought they could get it on Top 40, but nobody on Top 40 really wanted to hear about it. It’s the only love song on the album, right? So what the bit is, I think, when people heard that on the radio by a group called the Plimsouls.. .they wanted to hear songs like that from Rupert Holmes or somebody like that.”

We both drank beer as he considered the record’s fate. “See, there was no anticipation for a record by the Plimsouls. Nobody outside of L.A. knew who we were. In L.A. we sold, like, 15,000 records in about two or three weeks, and in the rest of the country we sold about 2,000 records in the same period of time.”

The guys told me about some new band on Elektra who sound “just like Toto.” Case muttered: “Everybody thinks they’re fucking Messengers of God. If you’re a guitar player, you spend half your fucking life in bars.” I asked Case how he could stand it.

“I don’t know, man. I dig playing in a band and I dig making records. And I dig having a little bit of money and being able to do what I want to do.”

Emphasize ‘little bit of money’,” Munoz urged.

“But the point is: it’s a lot of fun—it’s what I’ve been doing for a few years, y’know—and I’m not about to stop doing it. And it’s a challenge—it’s kind of like an addiction. Like, if you gettothe top of L. A., you wanna go out and tour and see if you can get to the top of that.”

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 23

He stopped, his mind wandering back to ThePlimsouls. “It’s like the album—it might not be the most inside-produced, totally right-up-the-butt-of-radio album in the history of rock ’n’ roll...it doesn’t have that ‘stellar sound.’ But it’s a quality album; every song on it’s good. I swear to God, I stand behind everything on it. Eventually it’s gonna sell, ’cause it’s a good record.

“Y’know what this guy said to me the other day—he’s in a CBS band, I don’t wanna say his name. But he says to me, ‘You wanna know what the secret is? I found it out from my first album. You know what the secret is?’ I go ‘No, what?’ He goes, ‘You can’t put all the good songs on an album; you gotta just put on one good one and make the rest of ’em shitty, or not so good’—this guy really said this, truthfully, looking me in the eyes. Saying ‘you gotta have one good song so all the radio stations go on that song. Your problem is they’re playing “Zero Hour,” “Now,” “Lost Time,” “In ThisTown,” and “Women”.’ I mean, it’s just so fucking cynical it make me wanna fucking puke. That’s just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Me, I’m not so sure. I like the Plimsouls and all and Case makes sense to me, but I wish he would’ve told me that guy’s name. Maybe he knows the writing secret, too.fe