I’ll stop the world and melt with you
The Squirrels fashioned themselves in the nouveau of the early ’80’s. They didn’t come out of nowhere though. In high school they would have been digging everything from AOR (remember Album Oriented Rock?) to Reggae to Art & Progressive Rock to Jazz-Rock and Ethnic Fusion. Even KISS. They sensed the aesthetic vacuum of the mid ’70’s, that even their favorites were turning into duds.
The Sex Pistols roared through the morning news, punk coverage was filtering into the only mags that mattered, Rolling Stone, High Times, and Skateboarder. Skateparks, like the one at Wacky Golf, were a barometer of teen-age suburban cool. A high energy soundtrack was in demand (Ted Nugent was pretty big). Perhaps the first new wavers to grind out there were DEVO. No-one knew from Dada, but those flower pot hats spoke volumes. It was crazy, new, and confused the hell out of adults, who were just beginning to accept long hair on males.
Music videos spread the news like wildfire in in the mass consciousness. Before MTV there were various Friday night cavalcades, one notable being USA network’s Night Flight - always a stunning discovery waiting there. Now we have YouTube.
Later, the night action shifted to the Wit’s End, and dance meltdowns to the strains of the Pedestrians (the Peds). They had distilled punk and rockabilly down to very accessable souped-up covers of Presley, Cochran, the Stones, etc. The dance release represented the track that the Squirrels wanted to ride, at least for a start.
Peter recalls early record buys, based solely on critiic’s recommendations. Talking Heads’ Fear of Music, London Calling by the Clash, Tom Verlaine, Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Blondie’s Eat to the Beat. They stirred in his consciousness, yet he couldn’t totally get with it from a songwriting perspective. The Police had scored with Reggatta da Blanc, a cool cocktail of punk, pop, reggae, and jazz, but that was the radio. Soon Peter found his bliss, as if the best minds in the world flowered at the same moment. He considers the following his pivotal five, his way forward, that shaped what in time became the Squirrel’s own cocktail.
Of course there were a long list of others on the Squirrels’ turntables. It was a tremendous time for young music, plenty of sunny optimism, head to head with dread and gloom. This was the Reagan era, kind of Cold War Part Deux. People were scared to death, people were getting over it on the dance floor. Brave new worlds….
