The Black Watch >> I won't skip over anything

California Month, tremor #5:

The Black Watch - "Terrific"

(Doctor Dream Records, 1991)

I got into this song via a 1992 Doctor Dream Records (yeah, I had never heard of that label either) compilation CD called Doctor Dream Records Super Sampler.  I bought it in a pawn shoppe in Laplace for 50 cents in late 2007.  I'd already owned the band's '94 album Amphetamines for around a decade, but had only listened to it once or twice.  It has the awesome single "Come Inside," but not much else on it has grabbed me.  You can find it in almost any used CD bin, since Zero Hour apparently pressed up an enormous quantity of them, thinking the band would hit it big.  So they erred on that, but at least they had faith in the band, unlike Doctor Dog.  (Read more about this below.)
"Terrific," from their sophomore album Flowering, didn't do much for me at first, until I grew to anticipate the huge shift from jangly lite pop to urgently passionate intensity, specifically at the 2:30 mark, and then an even more dramatic shift at 3:10.

Like R.E.M.'s "The One I Love," it comes off as a love song, but is actually quite a bitter breakup song.  Or maybe it was written in two parts to illustrate how the mind works when it realizes it can't have the object over which it obsesses, and resorts to looking for every bad thing about that object in order to convince itself that it doesn't really want that object.  Violinist and occasional backup singer J'Anna Jacoby delivers some really inspired playing, and the evolution of the John Andrew Fredrick's singing over the course of the song is impressive too.  According to the interesting bio page on the band's website, he has a Ph.D. in English from U.C. Santa Barbara, and later received an award for Lecturer Of The Year while briefly teaching there, before they laid him off.  (Which makes me wonder if the lyrics of "Terrific" were aimed at UCSB rather than at an ex.)  And he has written two books, The King Of Good Intentions and The Knucklehead Chronicles.

I forgot where I found this; presumably on someone's Tumblr page

The song really has that "California feel," with effortless chordal propulsion and easygoing melodies, making it ideal as a car song.  I read something about how TBW really believed in this song, and quite rightly wanted Doctor Dream to push it heavily to radio and release it as a physical 7" single or CD single.  When the label refused, the band got really ticked off, and I think that's why they left the label, signing to Zero Hour Records.  Of the album, one of my idols, Jack Rabid of The Big Takeover & AllMusic Guide, said:
"Right from the brilliant opening song, "Terrific," the listener is clearly in good if familiar hands -- a brisk, clipped power pop / U.K. new wave rocker that eschews feedback in favor of a clean punch, all topped by the lovely violin work by Jacoby, showing why she's been in demand as a side person on a number of other recordings, and a sweet-and-sour lyric sung by both Frederick and Jacoby."

Option (the best music mag of the '90s, in my opinion) said:
"Often the group sounds English, sometimes recalling The Cure's poppier moments... Flowering works best when Frederick's winsome voice is dragged fiercely along by Jacoby's endearing fiddling and the twin strum of acoustic guitars."

(Note: "Terrific" can also be found on the band's 2000 album Lime Green Girl, which for some reason has seven of their early songs tacked onto the end of it.)

That's my grandparents, Paul (Pop Pop) and Marcie (Mom Mom), with their kids: my uncle Tom in blue shorts, my dad Steve in green shorts, and my aunt Kathleen.  My uncle Mike, the oldest of their four kids, took the pic, according to my dad.  The back of it states "This Is A Kodacolor Enlargement, November 1959."  Yes, I had to take a photo of this photo, since I don't own a scanner... sorry.  This was likely taken in Hawai'i, since Pop Pop was stationed on O'ahu, presumably at Pearl Harbor, at around this time.  I think my dad said that the family lived in 15 different places by the time he (my dad) was 13, including Germany, Savannah, Albany, and of course Hawai'i.  Pop Pop is my idol, by the way, and my middle name is Paul.  He and Mom Mom were married for about 50 years until his death in 1994.

That's a photo I took in the French Quarter of some women (I believe only two or three), using a long shutter speed, from my car, probably on Royal Street facing west or Bourbon Street facing east.  The file is dated 11/25/04, but I'm not sure if that's the exact date it was taken.  I rarely go down there, since the Quarter is mainly a tourist destination that locals avoid, so it might've been on the night I went down there to see Cat Power, which was on 9/20/04.  I can make out the word "Bistro" on the yellow sign, and the Stop sign means it was at an intersection, if that helps anyone to ascertain exactly where this is.  Despite the poor resolution / quality, this has always been one of my favorite photos that I've taken, maybe because of how the multi-tiered building right behind the women sort of looks like it's a kaleidoscopic extension of them, and it melds with the refraction from the big white light at the top.  Overall, it just has a good sense of motion and mystery.  The Quarter is one of the best places to do nighttime "drive-by" photography, since all the neon lights really blur well when using a long shutter speed, and there are always drunk m.f.'s doing stupid or entertaining stuff, because they feel they are obliged to do so the second they set foot in this city.

Planets with similar climates: The Smiths - "This Charming Man" (1983), Felt - "Penelope Tree" (1983), The Lotus Eaters - "The First Picture Of You" (1983), R.E.M. - "The One I Love" (1986), The Go-Betweens - "Streets Of Your Town" (1988), Film School - "Nothing's Mine" (2010), Sand Rubies - "Goodbye" (1993), Matthew Sweet - "We're The Same" (1994).