FORTUNATE SMILES
(released on Epic in March 1991)
"We only had the best of intentions," Jeff Jooce has said about the crushing developments for Plaastik in the early '90s. 1989 was the first year since 1981 to drift past with no new album or EP from Plaastik. 1990 became the second, and not a peep was heard from the band unless you counted their understated contribution to the soundtrack of Matthew Meshekoff's "Diskobox." (The LP was never commercially released.)
In fact, although the band did take a break to enjoy the success of MR. ROSS VERDICT, GADABOUT, their flurry of activity resumed as early as mid-1989. That fall, rehearsals took place in North Dakota (without Kevin Keys and Christina Singleton) that, according to interviews at the time, resulted in "five new songs." Of these, an instrumental called "My Full Attention" surfaced two years later, but not on the album. Another, called "Idol," was released on the TODAY'S CAJUN SPICE album in 1992. The others, including "About Last Night," "Go Ahead," and a fifth unkown song, remain unreleased. The band gathered, again without Singleton, in Nashville in the winter to fully explore the new compositions -- and dropped all of them within the first week.
Nick and Janet had been listening to lots of free-jazz, while Jay Kay Ray and Jeff Jooce were increasingly interested in hip hop and Mitchell Blank was showing an interest in the propulsive thrill of African music. A decision was made to put Jeff behind a piano, give Nick a long bass, and hire a saxophonist, a trumpet player, and an extra percussionist to give their next record a unique sound.
For the next two months, the band plus English fusion mastermind Wayne S. Brooks, the great Quayle Dickson, and the eternally gifted Yasha Worrell -- eventually joined even by Tina -- sat around in a studio and played for hours upon hours, thrilling jams lasting anywhere between two minutes and two hours. And Nick Parker got it all on tape.
By the time rehearsals ended, Plaastik had exceeded their studio budget and the record company was expecting an album. Thinking quickly, Nick Parker promised to deliver a double album -- if the band was given another six months to make it. He then went out to write lyrics and vocal lines for the new songs, and after a long walk and lots of listens to preliminary cassettes decided that additional work on the album wasn't needed at all. He phoned up the record company; thrilled, they asked for master tapes to be sent so that mixing could be immediately commenced. Epic executives talked of the proud ability to "rush out" Plaastik's eagerly awaited followup to their biggest album to date.
Needless to say, CBS was taken aback by what they heard -- essentially, a jazz record with feedback -- and turned it down, asking for "pop songs." Nick, who by now was extremely attached to the final recordings of the instrumentals, which he'd edited himself, agreed to do a conventional album but still claimed it would be two discs. He planned to make it half regular songs and half instrumentals. (His initial tape of the instrumentals is not the same as the final SODAS IN HELL tracklist -- it lacks "Drop Soap," "Wild Sound," and "Mix," and adds "Play With," "Steal the Show," and the old rehearsal tape of "My Full Attention.") Epic also insisted that Plaastik needed a producer and, failing in an attempt to reach John Cale or Brian Eno, dumped Steve Lillywhite on the project. The band hated him.
But Lillywhite insisted that new songs would be recorded and, in long, arduous sessions, it was done. Because of Plaastik's new style of writing, a given day would produce one new recording at best, and most of the new songs took an entire week to finish. The well-paid Lillywhite did not interfere, watching coolly while the band worked out the nuances in their new material. Eventually, they came to enjoy it nearly as much as they'd loved the jazz sessions. They had finished "Equal Ideas," "You," "Lust," "I Don't Know," and the b-side "Give" when Janet Kieran suggested that Dickson, Brooks, and Worrell be brought back in to finish the LP. The others enthusiastically agreed, and their producer failed to protest, and in any case he was accustomed to working with large groups.
The supplemental musicians added their touch to the material that had been recorded already, with the exception of "Give," which was seen as a throwaway, and "I Don't Know," which was considered "perfect." The sessions now became out of control, producing some very uncommercial cuts like "Nice Guess," "It's Late It's Awful," and "Nails" but also some leaping pop songs in "Revolver in Her Hand" and the tear-the-roof-off revision of the old garage band classic "Lies." At the time that the sessions were supposed to wrap, there was more than enough material, but Plaastik wanted to keep going, and the record company allowed it since this was now their star performer -- and Epic, indeed, was now embroiled in a massive buyout from Sony and sorely needed Plaastik's consistency.
But Plaastik was working at what might politely be termed a leisurely pace. The band was so happy with the way they sounded with ten members that they briefly considered expanding their lineup once again, and Nick Parker scoured his old notebooks -- a painstaking process -- to find old, unrecorded Plaastik songs to revise. One of these, "I Don't Think It's That Deep," made it to the LP, while legend has it that the band even tried out such forbidden works as "Ocean Sky," "Among Us It Lingers," "And When the Seconds Feel Like Years," "Dreams of Old News," and "This is the Shit."
All sorts of spontaneous covers were attempted, one of them, "World Without Love," finding its way to a b-side. When Plaastik had spent a week trying to make a version of Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot" "discordant enough," without even recording it or having plans to release it at all, Steve Lillywhite screamed that he'd had enough and left. The band just kept going, scarecely caring if they would be paid or if they would ever record or issue any of the music they were playing.
Finally, with millions of dollars in the project that weren't budgeted, Parker announced that the album was finished. Sony wanted to send it straight to the presses without any delay but they also wanted lots of hype, so they planned for a November 1990 release and, just a month beforehand, issued a press release with the information Nick had sent to them. The master tapes would arrive a week later and, according to the plans, people would be working 24 hour shifts to get the album pressed in time for Christmas -- the first single, "I Don't Know," would go to radio just a week before the LP's street date.
The album was to be called SMILE, perhaps in tribute to Brian Wilson's unreleased Holy Grail, and would be two LPs or two CDs, with this tracklist:
disc one:
1. Two
2. Cabinet
3. An Inspiration
4. Quietly Square
5. All Too Rare
6. Love is Neverending
7. Revolver in Her Hand
8. Broaden
9. I Don't Know
disc two:
10. Petty Hawk
11. It's Late It's Awful
12. Grabbing
13. Starstruck
14. Nice Guess
15. Steal the Show
16. Pool
17. Play With
18. I Don't Think It's That Deep
19. My Full Attention
20. Equal Ideas
21. Nails
22. All the Circles
23. You
24. Lies
25. Stopping Raw
Cover designs were finished, b-sides were arranged, promotional duties were handed out. Everything was ready. Then, appropriately enough on Halloween, the tapes arrived at Sony, and the music executives were red with fury. They accused the band and Lillywhite of sabotage, spewing their hatred of the overlong tracklist, the tangential jazz instrumentals, the "spoken word" vocals on some tracks, the presence of two '60s covers that were considered anachronistic, and most of all, the cost that had been required to produce something they felt was so abysmal... particularly considering that they wouldn't be able to sell it for less than $27. Attracting a particularly large amount of criticism was the sixth track on the first disc, "Love is Neverending." Little is known about it except that it has no vocals and is thirty-nine minutes long.
After screaming at various people, the folks in charge at Epic renounced previous press releases, shaved off all of the instrumental tracks except "Broaden," removed the cover of the Kinks' "Starstruck" plus the "weirder vocal songs," "Nails," "I Don't Think It's That Deep," and "It's Late It's Awful." The band was not consulted and the record was penciled in for an early December release. This was the result:
"SMILES" (notice title change)
1. Two
2. Cabinet
3. Quietly Square
4. Revolver in Her Hand
5. Broaden
6. I Don't Know
7. Nice Guess
8. Pool
9. Equal Ideas
10. You
11. Lies
It took some time for the band to find out about this. When they did, legal action was immediate and the release was stopped. This was indeed a rather brash breach of contract, but it could be argued that Plaastik's recording of "intentionally uncommercial" music was same. The two parties settled out of court. Plaastik would issue a conventional LP version of the album on their own terms, then would offer a separate -- clearly marked and well-promoted -- release of the instrumental tracks later. Somewhere in the same out-of-court settlement was the end of Plaastik's Sony contract. As soon as they delivered these two records, they were free. Sony was happy to be rid of the troublemakers, especially when it turned out that neither of the resulting releases -- FORTUNATE SMILES for the conventional tracks and SODAS IN HELL for the instrumentals -- sold even 25% of the amount of the prior LP. And Plaastik was happy to be rid of the record company.
Despite the settlement, they weren't going to make it easy on anybody, and one is surprised that Sony didn't sue again atfer what Plaastik did with the final products. First they removed the three obvious singles -- "I Don't Know," "Two," and "Lies" -- from FORTUNATE SMILES and put the rigorously uncommercial cut songs back. And the other record became more bizarre as well; see SODAS IN HELL for details. The singles that were released included a delightful pop confection called "Revolver in Her Hand" that got little airplay thanks to its grisly subject matter, plus the sparse "Pool" and the nine-minute hip hop diatribe "You." As for the infamous "Love is Neverending,' it continues to sit in the Epic vaults; they swore they would never allow it to be released on any record.
Although some fans feel that the entire affair is an example of silly indulgence on the part of their favorite band, others maintain that the double album would have been quite an edgy and respectable release in its time. Nearly unanimously, the spontaneous attitudes displayed by Plaastik through all this are widely missed by followers today.
tracklist:
1. You (single 3)
2. Equal Ideas
3. Nice Guess
4. Revolver in Her Hand (single 1)
5. Cabinet
6. Nails
7. I Don't Think It's That Deep
8. It's Late It's Awful
9. Pool (single 2)
10. Quietly Square
Revolver in Her Hand b-sides
Lies
Let the Circle Be Unbroken (This is a Church)
Pool b-sides
Give
I Don't Know
You b-sides
Amusement Parks U.S.A.
World Without Love/The Star Spangled Banner