Pretty Poison
November 8, 1983
Studio 4,
Philadelphia, PA
WYSP-FM
November 8, 1983
Studio 4,
Philadelphia, PA
WYSP-FM
01 Pretty Poison - Let Freedom Ring
02 Pretty Poison - unknown _I Still Love You
03 Pretty Poison - unknown _Save Myself
04 Pretty Poison - unknown _The Roses
05 Pretty Poison - Tempest Nightmare
06 Pretty Poison - The Realm of Existence
07 Pretty Poison - Band intros
08 Pretty Poison - Expiration
09 Pretty Poison - Never Forget Your Face
10 Pretty Poison - Seal It With A Kiss
11 Pretty Poison - No Tears
12 announcer - WYSP-FM Outro
Hello, Voodoo Gang!
Once again, I'm tackling a band I don't know, in a genre I know little about, from a city that I visited for an afternoon fifty-three years ago, broadcast on a radio station I've never heard of.
Can you guys throw me a life preserver? I'm drownin' here...
But I'll give it a go. First of all, this is an EXCELLENT tape sent to me from back east by our blog-buddy, Sam Eliot's Mustache. Can I get a round of New Year's applause for him?
As I mentioned, I'm flyin' blind here (yeah, I'm mixin' metaphors, so sue me...) but for a band I've never heard of, these guys (plus a girl...) are fabulous. An easy comparision is they're a bit like BERLIN...synth-pop, dance music, but aimed at a rock n' roll audience.
Only they're a bit darker, a bit more "Goth."
Or at lease "were" a bit Goth at the time of this recording; it looks like they smoothed things out a bit by the end of the 80s after they got a major label deal. But in 1983? The San Fran punk rocker in me immediately recognized "No Tears" as a cover of a song from first EP put out by Tuxedomoon in 1978. You can find "No Tears" on YouTube, and as an influence, it's a pretty grim piece of work.
The next thing I learned about Pretty Poison was they're from Camden, New Jersey. A glance at the map shows that burg is right across the river from Philadelphia. I suspect there's probably some local angle I'm missing; here in Oakland we like to point out that we get to look across the bay at one of the world's most beautiful cities while those fools gotta look out their windows at us, and we're ugly. So we win. If any of our Philadelphia fans can provide some local insight about Camden, it'll beat my stupid guesswork.
I also don't know anything about WYSP-FN...they mention this is from "Studio 4." Is that a studio at the radio station itself? Or somewhere else? Did they really have four studios at a radio station?
I'm clueless, but what I'm not clueless about is Pretty Poison impressed the hell out of me. I consider this tape a major find; there are several songs I couldn't track down that are probably unreleased, so excavating this tape is like Schliemann finding the ruins of Troy!
Okay.
Yeah. That's a bit of a stretch, I'll admit it. But seriously...if you like electronic goth-rock, give this one a spin. Đ®åⒻṬëŕṽøï says, "Check it out."
Oh, yeah...I almost forgot...I was guessin' at the titles. If I'm wrong about any of them, please let me know by leaving a comment. If you know the titles to any of the "unknown" songs up above, well, jeez...let me know that, too. I'm happy to know I'm wrong about something, you're not going to hurt my feelings by pointing out I have no idea what I'm talking about; I've already made that clear. :)
I can't tell you much about them but I do remember them. Tuxedo Moon rehearsed in my basement studio on Frederick ST at Stanyan, right next to Keezar. G Spot Studios. Winston would rent a room during the days to just write and rehearse. I was in the Ophelias and The Hollowmen, later in A3I with Will Shatter and with Michael Dean, as Bomb and Jill the Witch. Maybe you remember some of that stuff. I didn't know you are a homie. I'm in the mountains a couple of hours away these days. Best wishes for you and yours, and everyone else here, in the new year. rock on.
ReplyDeletePretty Poison scored one hit, "Catch Me I'm Falling" in 1988. They also did a Philly-style version of a Christmas song which hit locally that same year. WYSP (94.1 in Philadelphia) was a rock station in Philadelphia which for a lot of years hung in the shadow of WMMR. That is, until Andy Bloom took over as PD, declared war on MMR's very popular morning man, John DeBella and the Morning Zoo, and broadcast Howard Stern's morning show in Philly from New York. Then WYSP beat WMMR in the ratings for the first time in five years. Others who worked for WYSP included legendary Philly DJs T Morgan, Ed Sciaky and...John DeBella, who became the afternoon guy on WYSP before starting a long run on another classic rock station, WMGK. Meanwhile, WYSP became WIP-FM, and switched format to all sports.
ReplyDeleteHey, FiveGunsWest... I'm not only a homie, the first of my family moved here when this was the Republic of Mexico (a great-great uncle), although my direct ancestors didn't hit S.F. until the 1860s. My great-aunt ran a disreputable dive in the Barbary Coast in the 1880s/90s.
ReplyDeleteI'm East Bay, central-Contra-Costa County (Walnut Creek). No actual talent or ability but punk opened up a window and I jumped out of if., plus I had DRIVE to do it, and that means something. When I discovered there were a lot of hot-shot guitar players, I switched to bass, and was renting a rehearsal room at 22nd and Illinois down in Dogpatch from Flipper's manager. The band before us was Silvertone (Chris Isaak) ... I met all the guys from Flipper but at this point (2023) the only one I remember chatting with was Depace, who was a super-nice guy. I took lessons from Hank Maninger (the Punts, Bonnie Hayes & the Wild Combo), started a rockabilly band (the Corvairs, not the same as the punk Corvairs from Denver..) played out for a year, Fab Mab, Chi Chi Club, Sproul Plaza, Mills College, frat parties, a nasty biker bar down in San Carlos. I remember the Ophelias; but just barely...my period in the "underground" was '77 to '83...when my live-in girlfriend finally gave up on supporting a drug-addled, disorganized rock n' roll wanna-be and moved to Boston to be rid of me (we're still friends, so it's all good).
I suspect you overlapped with me, but a bit later. For a lot of us, there's a period where we're making a stab at an arts career...but at some point you gotta pay the rent.
Other bands/talent I ran with were Central File (mod band), Mojo, Start (both put out self-released 45s..), Jennifer Blowdryer was a pal, so was Lizzie from the TouchTones, Reggie & the Rebels, Naomi Ruth Eisenberg (from Dan Hicks & the Hot Lick...)...
And then I had to get a real job. :)
Thanks for sharing. this is a great story. Dan Hicks ... ! Super cool. Steve DePace is a great guy. He produced Pinky and the Brain, of all things. I don't know what he's up to these days but now I wonder. I was in Walnut Creek in the early 2000s. Some project manager building a Hollister Store at the mall there. The plans clearly show that all Hollister store porches extend into the main hallways. The mall manager told him to tear it down and move the whole storefront back. He did. Then he went home for the weekend and never came back. I had to go and have the porch put back in the hallway while they called the cops. I showed them the plans and the A&F contract with the mall and had a good laugh.
DeleteStudio 4 was a recording studio located in Philadelphia. Like the old Sigma Sound recordings in the 70's, Studio 4 was used for live broadcasts of local bands for WMMR & WYSP in the 80's and early 90's. Every now and then there would also be a national act broadcast live as well. And I have come across a couple other Pretty Poison shows.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info, Sam! So, to compare it to what I'm familiar with... this was like KSAN and KFOG using the "Record Plant" or "the Plant" studios over in Marin County for their live broadcasts...Studio 4 was NOT in the radio station itself?
ReplyDeleteI was gonna say similar to the Record Plant studio shows from the 70's as well. I just forgot. No, Studio 4 was a recording studio that produce various genre's of music from R&B, rock and mainstream. The studio has since been relocated to the suburbs of Philadelphia to Conshohocken.
ReplyDelete