This page contains excerpts from the book, “You’re a Nice guy, but.. (The true story of a garage band)
Chapter 9 — Childsplay (1985)
March 23 was a date that we had circled on the calendar. It was a Saturday night, and we were playing at The Casbah with ‘til Tuesday who were arguably the hottest band in Boston at the time. They had won the WBCN Rock and Roll Rumble in 1983 and now were riding the wave of their single “Voices Carry” being on rotation on MTV. The song peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘til Tuesday was fronted by Aimee Mann who played bass and was the centerpiece of the group. We knew that the club would be packed, and we set out to give the show of our lives. We played a set of originals with “Rock On” being the only cover in our set. We had always been a very energetic band on stage and that night was no different. We were madmen but it didn’t take away from our musicianship. The only drawback to the night was the stage setup. Usually when we were the opener, the other band’s crew would strike the drum kit so we could set Dave’s up on the drum riser. ‘til Tuesday did not do that, so we had to set Dave’s drums up on the main stage to the left of the drum riser which took up what was left of most of the available space. All it did was fuel our fire a little bit more to put on a good show feeling that there was a little gamesmanship going on.
(Dana on Robert Holmes, guitarist in ‘til Tuesday) I got to talk with the guy who is their guitar player, Robert who was a total wizkid. He was amazing on the guitar, and probably one of the most humble musicians I ever got to talk to during that time period. A really good guy.
(Dana on the ‘til Tuesday show) The night of the show was fantastic! All we had
to play was one 45-
In April, we started our own publishing company, MEMCO Publishing, with BMI in advance of the release of our new single “Drag me Down”/ “Childsplay.” We continued to keep a busy schedule of gigs with a trip to Thomas College in Waterville, ME and played at a reggae dance party for Delta Tau Delta fraternity at the University of Maine in Orono. It was a fun gig, and we played an assortment of reggae and ska influenced songs. Our single was released on April 25 and we played at Derringer’s and Kings Row to close out the month.
We had parted ways with Debbie Arsenault in 1985 and began to self-
On May 3 and 4th, we played at the Carousel in Salisbury Beach, but we were gearing up for what we were hoping would be a career defining moment. In March of 1985, we had sat down as a band with Emile and had what was in effect a staff meeting. We set up goals and action items and assigned roles to everyone. This isn’t something that we had ever done before, at least not officially. It was obvious that we weren’t happy with the direction that we had been going since Mike Sheehy left the band and wanted to make a change. Here are a few of the items from that meeting.
1. Dana: deal with Don Williams and Neil Schneider
2. Jim: Equipment manager. Extra strings, etc
3. Dave: band accountant
4. Alex & Emile: Assistant Managers
5. Goal: Record Contract
6. 50/50 on cover gigs
7. 6-
We had a new focus and we had agreement on what we wanted to do. We had always sent publicity kits and that type of thing, but this time we had a specific purpose. Through these efforts, we had sparked some interest in some West Coast people who had heard our tapes and now wanted to see us live. We set up the date and place for this showcase, May 17 at The Casbah. We chose a place where we knew the crowd would be familiar with us and gave us a home field advantage. We packed a set of our best original songs and proceeded to play an energy filled set in hopes of impressing our guests. We had a new record receiving some airplay, a new focus, and a showcase under our belt.
Alex had some unique views on how we could create a buzz for ourselves and in a lot of ways they weren’t bad ideas. One was to go to a place like The Rat during the daytime and hang out in the bar upstairs and have a few drinks. Dress like we would on stage for these excursions so people would know that we were a band. When we were travelling throughout 1984, we never had time to breathe let alone hang out in Boston. Essentially, it was a form of networking which wasn’t something we had been good at. We started going to clubs like “Spit” which was next door to “Metro” where we had seen Stray Cats. “Spit” was the alternative club to “Metro” which was the trendy club. Going there also introduced us to more new music and remix versions of already classic songs like “Heartbeat” by Psychedlic Furs, “Nemesis” by Shriekback, “I wanna be a Cowboy” by Boys Don’t Cry, and “You Spin me Round” by Dead or Alive. We were certainly enjoying soaking in more of the scene than we had previously.
Alex also encouraged us to try something that we hadn’t done since our photo shoot
in 1982. Makeup. We had worn makeup for the photo session but had never worn it on
stage. Stage performers have worn makeup for a long time, and it was common-
Our stage wear had changed a lot since 1982 and the new trend in fashion was bright neon colors. Dana was immersed in the new trend and standing out as the front person of the band was paramount in our revitalization. The problem was that men’s clothing stores didn’t offer shirts in hot pink and other exotic colors. Dana always had a slight build, so he began to buy shirts in the women’s section of stores. I still wore a suit coat and my main one was a red and black leopard skin print that Patti had made for me that accompanied a number of shirts and ties that had tinges of the hot pink and turquoise colors that were wildly popular. Dave was more of a California cool look that had become popular thanks to movies and TV.
On June 1, we played at Kents Hill School for the third time in four months. On our second trip we stayed at the school infirmary across the street from the campus. A security guard came by occasionally to check on us. Kents Hill was always a fun place to play with a good crowd, but this last trip was on graduation day, and most of the students had left after the ceremony which meant a smaller crowd. Andy Arnold made the trip with us and we stayed in some empty dorm rooms since students had checked out.
On June 9, we were at University of Maine at Farmington followed by three nights
at a club on Wollaston Beach in Quincy, MA called Nostalgia on the 20th-
The 23rd of June, we were slated to perform three songs at the city of Lawrence’s Hispanic Cultural celebration. Alex’s father had been one of the organizers and asked us to perform as a multicultural act. It was a little early in the day for us after having finished up late the night before. One song that we were going to play was “La Bamba” and Alex would be singing it. The event was being held in the Lawrence Common and as these events usually go, things were running behind schedule and there was some tension about performance times. Nobody wanted to get bumped or cut short. We found out and volunteered to give up our slot so others could perform. Alex’s dad made an announcement saying what we did and something to the effect that others could learn from our gesture.
(Alex on the Festival) Oh yeah my father was on the Hispanic Week festival committee (I think that's what they called it...I think it still happens every year.) Anyway, he knew that if you spend more every year, they would get more every year from the state etc. in the form of funding or grants (he was cunning that way my old man!) So, he got us a grant as a multicultural rock band...all we had to do is include a conga player and do La Bamba and any other songs that had some kind of Latin or island beat that a conga player would fit into...Anywho, we got a conga player. I think we were going to perform La Bamba, Child's Play (that has a La Bamba type feel to it) forgot the third song. And the old man found a way to pay our sound guys to do the whole festival...that was interrupted by drunk warring Latin groups for the Dominicans getting more stage time than Ecuadorians or something hilarious like that (I think it was just the alcohol speaking) Anyway...what a hoot!
The Hispanic Festival, and a gig we had been booked to do at Lawrence High School earlier that spring to promote racial harmony demonstrated that the city of Lawrence or some active group was at least looking to find ways to bridge the gaps in the ethnic groups. It may have come about because of the riots a year earlier but it was at least a start. This was the inaugural event, and it is still going strong 35 years later which is a testament to the many good people of Lawrence.
During the summer of 1985, a couple of things were happening. First, Alex and I had been working together on a plan to move him to guitar and me to bass. Alex was an excellent guitar player, and it was his natural instrument. He played bass because bands always needed bass players. At some point we were going to pitch the idea to Dana, but we had to be sure that I was ready because we couldn’t afford any setbacks in quality. I felt that it would be an improvement to have another good guitarist, especially live. Alex’s style and sound was different than mine and more like the guest guitar player that had done studio work for us back in 1983/1984.
We decided to make a new demo and rented an 8-
On August 1, 1985, I debuted as bass player for The Memos. At least for one set. We started off by having me play half of the night on bass and the other half on guitar. A fair compromise. We were playing at Nostalgia again and had hired a cameraman to shoot video on the last night of the weekend. We were hoping to use the footage for a music video. He used the microphone on the camera to capture the audio for reference purposes and as he moved around the stage, the audio that was recorded would change based on where he was. The actual video was excellent and when he used a straight on shot from the dance floor, the sound was quite good. We had an opening band for that weekend, but I don’t remember their name. (Dana on Nostalgia) There is a video of us playing a club on Nantasket Beach in Quincy, MA called "Nostalgia" in August 1985. Alex was our bass player by then. "Nostalgia" (which had also been called "The Beachcomber") had been there for many years, with lots of famous people having played there, going back to the jazz age. We got booked to headline there. I feel like we had really hit our stride as performers and as a band by that point. I see that video and all I can think is that we were playing 'in overdrive'. We 'had it down' by that point. We worked hard on stage and were fully confident at what we were doing. In my memory, I never really thought of "The Memos" as a really great band. But, as evidenced by the video taken that night, we were everything any band would want for themselves: we were tight as a band, in control of the audience, and exciting to dance to, hear and watch.
The following weekend we were playing at a club called Forefathers in Kennebunkport, ME. At this gig, I was playing bass full time. A cassette copy of the first two sets exists from one of the nights and it sounds like a band clearly in control of themselves. I was still a little bit stiff in my bass playing but was gaining confidence every night. Some of the recordings from that weekend have been posted on our website. A record collector, who was selling a copy of “Drag Me Down,” researched us and found the recordings and wrote this review for his website which was dedicated to ska music, Tone and Wave (8/16/2016).
The Memos was a band from Boston who played new wave and the occasional ska song. Their live shows incorporated lots of covers of the current new wave hits at the time, which they did amazingly well, with several of their own songs and the occasional oldie but goodie thrown in.
Even though these guys could write a great song they only ever released one 2-
I would have loved to see these guys in the eighties. Hell, I'd love to see them now.
They had another original ska song called Procrastination Song that never saw a formal release. You can hear a live version of that on this official bootleg which also includes some other originals and some of those amazing covers I mentioned.”
Even though it was only five or six days since the gig at Nostalgia, things sounded
better, and we were just as fluid on stage with our sequencing and performance. Emile
was on the top of his game with the live mix, the vocals were clear, and all the
instruments were balanced perfectly. We weren’t perfect, there were some hiccups
but if you listened without knowing this was probably only my seventh or eighth performance
on bass you wouldn’t know it. Alex had a few arrangement miss-
In the autumn of 1985, both Dana and Alex had written new songs. Dana had three new
songs: “Man of the World” which was a ska song that reflected on different themes
of growing up, “Independence Day” which had a revolving bass line reminiscent of
“Alternatives” and was challenging to play and “Grey Area” that had a distinctive
guitar riff throughout the song. Alex’s contributions were, “Lust for Love” which
was a three-
That fall, we also played at the Exeter NH campus of the prestigious Philips Academy. We had a dressing room in the basement of the gymnasium and were able to hang out there while preparing for the gig. I remember that we were on a stage that was about three or four feet above the crowd, and we were hitting on all cylinders that night. We were becoming more of a spectacle to see and not just a dance band. The crowd was surging against the stage and it was moving but I never felt that there was any danger in it, just exhilaration.
It seemed that our perseverance was beginning to pay off. On September 28, Dave and Alex flew to Los Angeles to meet with a group for a potential record contract. When we did the showcase at the Casbah, it was attended by two guys that appeared to be in their 70’s with grey hair and large glasses reminiscent of something you’d see in one of the 70’s gangster movies. The main contact who I will call “Uncle Tony,” had set up a meeting in Los Angeles to see if a deal could be reached. Dave and Alex stayed at Dave’s father’s house to keep costs down and it was also a good way for Dave to spend time with his father. There was some level of concern that maybe Uncle Tony wasn’t on the up and up, so Dave’s uncles who were in law enforcement did some background checks to make sure everything was legit. They were unable to find any concerns.
The group they met with consisted of Michael Elias and Rich Eustis who also produced TV shows (Head of the Class). They were starting a record label called Crown and Key and had released just one record in 1983. Dave and Alex drove to Uncle Tony’s house in Pasadena and then followed him to the meeting. Dave was still uncertain about the validity of the meeting and parked his dad’s Corvette on the street outside of Mike Elias’ gated house just in case. They met for about an hour and engaged in some small talk and eventually talked about a producer. The producer they chose was Lui Lui Satterfield, a member of the Phenix Horns who were the horn section for “Earth, Wind, and Fire” and had been supporting Phil Collins on his most recent tour for “No Jacket Required.” There was a problem, Lui Lui was not going to be available any time soon. With Elias and Eustis in the midst of developing “Head of the Class” and Lui’s schedule, the timing may not have been right. Dave and Alex returned from California about a week later without a deal. So close, yet so far.
Was this happening to other bands? We were disappointed for sure. We had worked harder than ever to reach our goals and seemingly had them within our grasp. Now, it seems inconceivable that we sent two band members to possibly negotiate a deal for a recording contract instead of legal representation. At this point in time, like many small bands, we had no professional management. It may have been for the best as we could have been locked into a deal that was unfavorable for us and put us into a great deal of debt, but we weren’t thinking about that.
We continued to play shows and seemingly played every campus in the University of
Maine system and continued opening for many of the big local bands that had been
signed to major labels during 1985. Another one of these bands was Digney Fignus,
who had entered a competition on MTV by submitting a self-
Over the summer, a music video channel went on the air from Framingham, MA called
V-
Alex had been doing some intern work at Eastern Sound after we had recorded there and had secretly been working on a solo project. Around the end of 1985, he informed us that he was leaving to pursue a solo career. Here we were again, having to replace yet another member of the band. We could never keep the momentum going. This time there would be no happy ending. I don’t know if it was the constant struggle, the endless gigging, the financial strain or the amount of alcohol that I consumed, but I had finally hit rock bottom. I don’t know if it was an emotional breakdown, but I didn’t see a path forward. I remember having a shouting match in somebody’s car on the way home from seeing old friend John Woodman’s band one night. Maybe it was a conversation that we should have had months earlier or at least while sober, but to me this was the end. Ten years after my journey began, it was over.