A 'Fresh' start for Devo

Ignorance used to be bliss. Yet somewhere along our evolution as a society, we all went ape.




This week our news media delivered a gem of a story, a slice of life so tasteless it made one almost wish for another aimless balloon over Colorado: the evolution of swine flu parties. People hoping to build immunity to the pandemic are flocking together to get each other sick. Are we witnessing de-evolution at work?



"Well, absolutely," says Gerald Casale, who would co-found rock band Devo soon after he watched his friend die at the hands of the Ohio National Guard. She was one of four students killed on May 4, 1970.



The Kent State University shootings would only further embitter a country already furious with Nixon's relentless actions in Cambodia and Vietnam. Devo, a band out of Akron, coined their name from an overall disgust with the regressive evolution they watched unfold. Man was, in the group's mind, de-evolving. Ergo, Devo.



"There's no question that de-evolution is real. It came true. The world went backwards and down," says Casale, whose band will unleash a pair of remastered albums and hit the road for a seven-city tour Tuesday.



Known for their minimalist synthetic sound, herky-jerky performances and uniform wardrobe -- sometimes clad in JFK wigs, sometimes in flowerpot-like headgear -- Devo sparked two major musical movements during the '70s: punk rock and new wave.



"They really are the first post-modern band," says Jade Dellinger, a Tampa art curator and co-author of We Are Devo!, the group's only biographical account.



"Their ambition was to sign with one of the biggest record companies in the world -- which they did -- and to sort of dismantle them from the inside, which they never did," adds Dellinger.



Warner Bros. Records -- the label that dropped Devo following their 1984 album, Shout -- has partnered again with Devo, the company announced in September. Such a move should be considered sacrilegious, even anti-Devo, given their outspoken attitude toward record companies.



"They're sort of countering what they used to make fun of," says We Are Devo! co-author David Giffels, "but they pull it off in a charming way."



The music industry has changed over the years, argue Mothersbaugh and Casale. It's not about selling albums anymore. Touring brings home the bacon, Devo's leaders proclaim, and Warner Bros. knows how to whip it into shape.



"It's the devil you know," says Casale. "It actually made a lot of sense."



Mothersbaugh admits: "It was ironic. The old Warner Brothers we signed with, they were just thugs. I was totally ready to say 'forget it, I don't want anything to do with it.' But I think we'll be a good match for each other."



"I'm sure this is not some nostalgic move on Warner Brothers Records' part," says Stan Cornyn, a former creative executive at Warner Bros. "These days, it's hits or see ya, and that's not just in Burbank."



Now flirting with age 60, the members of Devo will perform back-to-back nightly shows of two albums in their entirety (Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and Freedom of Choice). The band have rehearsed the material since Oct. 21. Between both albums, there are 11 songs they haven't played live in about 30 years, says Casale.



"We try every day to get better at them," he laughs.



"They were predictive. Now they're reprising their past, saying 'I told you so,'" says Robert Margouleff, who produced Devo's 1980 Freedom of Choice album which spawned the hit "Whip It."



"They created their own boogie," says radio personality Kal Rudman. "The Devo crowd in particular catered to a special niche of people, so it becomes a real treat to go see them again."



Call it foreplay; Devo are just getting warmed up. Paunchier, angrier and more passionate about de-evolution than ever, Devo's November live dates should prove to be good practice for the band's scheduled spring tour and first full-length recorded project in 20 years. Just don't call it an album.



"'Album' is just a term to figure out what we're doing," says Mark Mothersbaugh, the other creative half of the Devo brainchild. He would prefer to release Devo's new stuff online, a few songs at a time. "We'll see what comes out. We're having fun so far."



"The working title is Fresh Devo, because it is. We're treating it like produce," Casale points out. "I think it'll carry forward what people like about us."



Devo have stepped away from the console this time around, and have tasked a handful of producers with remixing and reworking the finished tracks. Contributors include Greg Kurstin (Geggy Tah, Kris Allen), John Hill (Shakira, Jay-Z) and DJ Adam Freeland. John King of the Dust Brothers -- a duo known for its textured production of the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique -- will produce "Step Up," a new Devo song.



To bookend the new album and tour, a Devo documentary will likely hit the big screen next year, says Tony Pemberton of Go East Productions, a New York-based company.



"Our release date at the moment is for Fall 2010 or Spring 2011, mostly at festivals and, hopefully, immediately in theatres," says Pemberton.



Gerald Casale acknowledges he's working on a Devo biopic that follows the band from its early days in Akron to its first days with Warner Bros.



Mark Mothersbaugh, whose scoring credits include Pee-wee's Playhouse, Rugrats, Wes Anderson's films and, most recently, the animated Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, says he plans to pitch an "Adult Swim-style show" along the lines of "a twisted, dark Dick Tracy." It too will examine the theory of de-evolution.



"Since the beginning we've been kind of anti-stupidity and pro-information," he says. "I'm all for six billion humans, but I'm not for having them on the planet at the same time."



Fresh Devo won't be the last we'll hear from those iconic perpetrators of political prowess.



"I'm hoping that after we put this out there'll be at least one curtain call," Casale laughs.



For their first album in 1978, Devo chose to cover a classic song, one that likely seemed ambitious on paper. What they made was arguably one of the best covers of all time: a rhythmically robotic version of The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction."



Well into their sixties, The Stones continue to make music and tour the world for their fans. Will Devo follow suit ten years from now? Mothersbaugh and Casale are, after all, the new wave Jagger and Richards: bold, haunting, oddly sexual.



"Who knows," says Mothersbaugh. "Humans might not be around when I'm approaching 70."

Herb Alpert: No more Tijuana Brass hits

John Lennon had it right -- in 1966, The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. That would, in a matter of speaking, put Herb Alpert above God.

Barely into his thirties, the California-born co founder of A&M Records had trumped fellow trumpeters Louis, Dizzy and Miles in album sales and American appeal. This sharp, striking man fronted six musicians known as the Tijuana Brass, none of whom hailed from Mexico. They were Italian, their leader was Jewish, yet all wore charro suits; the band's mariachi sound was complimented by their crisp wardrobe. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass told sensual stories without vocals. A walloping trombone and hysterical xylophone intertwined with soft strings to place four Brass albums in Billboard's Top Ten -- at the same time. It's a record that no one, including the Fab Four, has topped.

"When we got to London, they loved us," remembers former Tijuana Brass bassist Pat Senatore, 74. "We hung out with The Beatles."

Not bad for a guy who started his record label out of his garage. Good thing Alpert's business partner suggested the Tijuana Brass name in 1962.

"It became a hell of a lot more successful than I could have ever dreamed," Alpert admits of the band name he originally hated.

Jerry Moss -- the 'M' of A&M Records -- had told Alpert to call his group the Tijuana Brass for his love of bullfights. Alpert agreed, but he wasn't jazzed.

"We're having dinner tomorrow night," he says of his best friend of more than 40 years.

Since Alpert partnered with Moss in 1962, the trumpet player has sold more than 75 million albums. Alpert -- born 38 days before Moss -- ran the independent label with his friend until the men sold A&M Records for half a billion dollars in 1989.

"We never signed any papers. We never signed anything," says Alpert of his loyal 30-year business relationship with Moss. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the two men in 2006.

No longer backed by the Brass (their leader disbanded the group by the early '70s), Alpert now records and performs with his wife of 36 years, Lani Hall.

"It's never been an obstacle," he says. "She's been my guardian angel."

The couple leave for Newport News, Va. on Thursday for the first of 22 American shows. Expect a performance of jazz improv; just don't expect to hear "Tijuana Taxi."

From his Malibu home Alpert explains in his silky voice that, as grateful as he is for the songs that built his success, he has made a significant change to his setlist. At 74, the only thing Alpert has retired is his live Tijuana Brass ensemble -- no more "Spanish Flea" or "Lonely Bull."

"Every time I played it I got a funny feeling in my stomach. It was not fun for me," Alpert tells the Tampa Liberal Examiner. "The audience doesn't seem to miss them."
"The music is still alive in a lot of people's minds," says Pat Senatore, one of three surviving former Brass members.

Senatore operates Vibrato Grill Jazz, a Bel Air club that recently featured a surprise set from Stevie Wonder. Alpert and Hall played Vibrato in April, when the married performers treated the audience to songs from the couple's first album, Anything Goes. The title parallels the improvisational, unpredictable essence of jazz music to which Alpert has subscribed since he first picked up a trumpet.

"I never, ever rehearsed or played the songs before I recorded them," Alpert says, then quickly points out "Zorba The Greek" as the lone exception.

His music is heard everywhere: on elevators, on commercials and, most recently, on iPods. Alpert understands this new world of illegal downloads and instant gratification. As for today's budding musicians: "My advice to them is to make friends with the Internet."

His songs have subtlely sold household products, spurred romantic flings and stirred up hip-hop music with a cornucopia of melodic samples. One might call Herb Alpert the original crossover artist. Alpert's an act for all ages, and he's not about to age out.

"I try to be as authentic as I can," he says. "It's odd, but playing the trumpet gives me energy."

Jack Kerouac's death in St. Pete remembered 40 years later

St. Petersburg, Fla. / "I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic," the physically bloated and socially awkward writer told the St. Petersburg Times in Oct. 1969. "As you get older you get more ... genealogical."

It would be Jack Kerouac's last interview.

Ten days later Kerouac's handsome, French-Canadian features flanked an obituary as dark as its subject. Newspapers struggled to articulate the 47-year-old's literary brilliance that somehow managed to spiral into self-indulgent madness. Kerouac died in St. Petersburg 40 years ago this week, on Oct. 21, 1969.

John Louis Kerouac was born a child of the Great Depression on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Mass. Years before he would tell the world tales of male lust and cross-country travels, Kerouac would be discharged from a two-month stint with the Navy. The military had diagnosed the 21-year-old with premature dementia.

In 1948 destiny would bring together Kerouac with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs; these men would comprise the core of the Beat Generation, a clique that moved out to San Francisco in search of experimental sex, drugs and free-form literature. Time dubbed Kerouac the "cult leader of post-World War II intellectual vagrants."

"He saw the American dream kind of burst," says Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia. "Kerouac had the virtue of sharing all sides of himself even if they didn't make sense."

He was indeed a conflicted man. A loyal patriot. A devout Catholic. A closeted bisexual. A jealous loudmouth.

A surviving Beat Generation poet remembers his confrontational first meeting with Kerouac in the 1950s.

"He was annoyed that Allen [Ginsberg] had a boyfriend, and I was his boyfriend," Peter Orlovsky, 76, tells the Tampa Liberal Examiner from his Vermont home. "He tried to put his fist through a bathroom wall.

"I loved him, I loved him, I loved him," Orlovsky punctuates with a slow, scratchy voice.

"Publicly, he could never quite open up to it," says Nicosia of Kerouac, who found himself torn between his sexuality and religious faith.

By July 1957 On The Road was just weeks from publication and years from appreciation. Kerouac and his ill mother, Gabrielle, picked up and moved to 1418 ½ Clouser Avenue in Orlando. It was in this cottage Kerouac would write The Dharma Bums.

Over the next decade, Kerouac and his mother bounced from Tampa Bay to Long Island to Cape Cod, where Kerouac once challenged the son of writer Kurt Vonnegut to a fight -- in Vonnegut's kitchen.

"He was crazy," recalls Vonnegut in his autobiography Palm Sunday. "There were clearly thunderstorms in the head of this once charming and just and intelligent man."

Kerouac would marry Stella Sampas in Lowell, Mass. in 1966. A few years later the couple took Kerouac's mother with them to 5169 10th Ave. N. in St. Pete, "the town of the newly wed and the living dead," as Kerouac called it. It was an eerie thing to have been said by a man who would waste away the last eleven months of his life here.

Injuries he suffered during a bar brawl would collide with years of hard, daily drinking. An internal hemorrhage forced blood from Kerouac's throat while he watch television one Monday night.

"The poor guy was in shock from the time he hit the emergency room," a surgeon told reporters.

Attempts to save Kerouac had lasted three hours and nearly depleted the blood bank at St. Anthony's Hospital. He was gone by 5:45 the following morning. St. Pete had been, in Kerouac's words, "a good place to come to die."

Forty years on, Kerouac's estate remains entangled in court. Stella's relatives have controlled Kerouac's image, manuscripts and property since his wife's death in 1990. Kerouac's daughter, Jan, fought for his belongings until she died in 1996. Those on both sides of the battle have estimated the value of the estate at between $20 and $30 million. A Tampa judge, however, ruled in July that the signature on Gabrielle's will -- which left her son's estate to his wife -- had been forged.

"It's clearly misspelled," a pulmonary specialist pointed out in court. "There's an 'i' in there that shouldn't exist."

Nicosia, author of Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, says he's writing a complete legal history of the 15-year-long case for California Lawyer Magazine.

The Sampas family is appealing the judge's decision, says attorney Alan Wagner, who represents Paul Blake Jr., Kerouac's nephew and last surviving blood relative.

"It is extremely hard to predict the appellate process," adds Wagner. "Hopefully, it will be over soon."

"The last time I was in Lowell, a homeless man reclined against one of the pillars in the Kerouac Commemorative Monument in Kerouac Park," remembers biographer Michael Dittman. "To Jack, the man might have been a Holy Fool, but the tourists averted their eyes, made the conversation little bit louder and did their best to pretend the old man didn’t exist."

"End Of The Road," Steve Rowell and David McElroy's one-man play about Kerouac's last days, premieres Wednesday at American Stage Theatre in St. Petersburg, on the 40th anniversary of his death.

Tampa Bay remembers Matthew Shepard and Laramie

A pen and a pad can usually get a reporter to the front of the line that's snaked around the corner, but not tonight.


The new Raymond James Theatre on St. Petersburg's Third Street holds 182 spectators. No standing room allowed. No exceptions. It's one of 150 theatres across the country hosting a one-night performance of The Laramie Project Ten Years Later: An Epilogue, an oral history of the 1998 murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard. And I can't make out a word of it.

I'm huddled with six others around a small table in the lobby by the concessions booth, just outside the theatre doors. We're staring at a giant television screen without sound. One tiny ceiling speaker lets an occasional burst of sound escape, but it's quickly drowned out by the blast of air conditioning and the jet engine din of a nearby vacuum cleaner. We watch as four actors read scripts from behind metal podiums standing against the backdrop of rural America.

"I babysat her," the woman next to me says, breaking the silence with a few proud words while pointing at the grainy screen.

Nineteen minutes into the performance, the seven of us are hanging on to the actors' every word, despite not being able to hear a thing.
Maybe I'm destined to not see this show. My brother Scott once played several roles while at Auburn. I remember hearing he played the preacher at Matthew Shepard's funeral.

Shepard, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, was beaten and tortured by two homophobic men. Shepard would be found by another student who later testified that the body had resembled a scarecrow. The 20,000 residents of Laramie, Wyoming refused to believe Shepard's sexuality had triggered his murder. It must have been a robbery, a drug deal gone bad. It couldn't have been a hate crime, not in their city.

For the last decade, Congress has stopped short of approving legislation that would federally protect gays under hate crimes law. A North Carolina House representative would even call the story behind Shepard's death a "hoax."

This week the Senate might pass the Matthew Shepard Act, which finds itself bundled with a $700 billion defense spending bill dedicated to buying more missiles, training Afghan security forces and transferring Guantanamo detainees to the states. On the eve of the vote our senators are poised to decide whether the bill should include money to prosecute those who harm someone based on his sexuality, gender or disability. The hate crimes legislation would finally guarantee federal protection for gays.

"It's time for Laramie to come into the 21st century," the faint ceiling speaker belches just before intermission.

Eleven years on, has the attitude of Laramie -- and the country -- changed toward gays?
"I don't know much about the story, and that's why I'm here," says Kelsey Carter, 17, who remained in the lobby through the show's first act.
So far Pres. Obama has promised to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, yet he's refused to recognize gay marriage. Kudos are due to Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who this week signed into state law a day of recognition (May 22) for equality activist Harvey Milk. Milk was murdered by a fellow politician in 1978. A new law says married gay couples who move to Calif. will not be required to register as domestic partners, despite the state's passage of Proposition 8 last year.

Osceola High School student Nicholas Kemp of the Gay-Straight Alliance hopes Monday's national performances of Ten Years Later will teach his generation to accept people's differences.

"It can inspire everyone else to be who they really are, gay or straight," Kemp says.

"Every year I've become more comfortable with it," says lesbian student Corey Panabaker, who came out to her family and friends four years ago.

"It's who I am. It's what I am."

And then, the 17-year-old student says nothing. Sometimes you don't need to hear words to get the message. Time for Act Two.

Gore ignored in Nobel Peace Prize list

Whether through unexpected delight or profound anger, the world did a double take as it awoke to news Friday that U.S. Pres. Barack Obama had earned the Nobel Peace Prize, making him the fifth -- not fourth -- president to garner the award.

Pres. Al Gore, whom the American people elected in 2000, received the Prize two years ago for his work with climate change and global warming. The media have mistakenly overlooked Gore this week in their coverage of past presidential recipients of the Prize.

The Nobel Foundation praises Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," one day following the president's discussions with Gen. Stanley McChrystal to send 40,000 more troops to fight in Afghanistan.

While the award sends a signal to the world that Obama's efforts are worthy of such honorable recognition, the Prize now sets the highest of expectations for a man Republicans say was too young and inexperienced to serve as Commander in Chief.

As much as it stings to agree with Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chief got it right when he said Obama "won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action." Not yet, anyway.

To his credit, Obama's humble response to the Nobel Foundation's announcement proves our president agrees, albeit indirectly, with Steele.

"I don't feel I deserve to be in the company of the transformative people who won this award,” Obama told the nation Friday.

Obama has been president for only nine months. It takes nine months for a child to develop in the womb. Nine months is the length of a typical school year. Nine months into the first Bush administration, 9/11 happened.

Might it be the Nobel people had become so polarized with Bush's pompous middle-finger-to-the-world attitude and overall absence from positive foreign policy that they now find his nemesis personifying that blast of fresh air we've gasped for since 2001? Aside from Bush's efforts to help fight AIDS in Africa, his international outreach involved a steady increase of ego and bloodshed.

Simply put, the Nobel Foundation should have waited on its premature decision to award Pres. Obama the ultimate Prize. It now requires Obama achieve peace while he struggles to balance an unstable economy, the highest-ever unemployment rate and two expensive wars, all created by the previous administration. It will take a lot longer than nine months to heal the world and clean up the mess. Peace will not come until the fighting stops, which should happen by the end of 2011, Obama promised earlier this year. Pledging additional troops to Afghanistan, however, will prove otherwise.

When people asked why I voted for Obama last year, I gave them this answer:

"Because the world will accept, understand, and even like this man."

That alone should be the reason we elect our president. We're in good shape if the rest of the world likes our leader. Maybe that's why he's worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. But not just yet. He's got to prove himself. And he's still got to create peace at home.

Obama promised homosexuals a "commitment" during Saturday's Human Rights Campaign National Dinner to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." He stopped short of providing a timetable of when Congress would honor the reversal of the 1993 military policy, which bans gay soldiers from disclosing their sexuality.

"Finally, we heard something quite remarkable from the President," H.R.C. Pres. Joe Solmonese said in an email.

As thousands of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders march on Washington today, the Senate will vote this week on a defense policy bill which includes hate crimes legislation that will -- for the first time -- protect homosexuals. The bill, assuming it passes the Senate, will go to Obama's desk to be signed into law, once and for all. Let's hope he makes good on his commitment.

Until then, the Republicans must remember Obama is our elected leader, and should cease their vile campaign to discredit him while boasting their own sense of patriotism. If ever there were a time for the G.O.P. to drop its childish antics toward Obama, it is now. After all, the only five presidents to take the Nobel Peace Prize have been left-leaning men (except for that white supremacist Woodrow Wilson).

Makes one wonder: If the liberals are the ones doing all the peacemaking, what's wrong with all you "compassionate conservatives"?

Almost Famous: How unsung singer Scott Wilk made the greatest lost album of the '80s

Has nothing changed in 30 years?

Record companies remain ruthless -- they're just not doing all the dictating anymore. We're still living in a musically-material world: iTunes creates our playlists, American Idol commands our tastes and a satellite controls our dials. None of this existed at the turn of the '80s. It was, as rock 'n' roll photographer Richard Schoenberg puts it, "the last time music would not be sold on television."
It was sold on the radio, where disc jockeys spun singles -- songs sold as seven-inch vinyl discs in glossy paper sleeves. Some even offered an extra cut on the B-side. MTV would showcase these singles in a new way in 1981, a year that marked the end of a little-known rock band that came awfully close to going big.

You've likely never heard of Scott Wilk + The Walls; even Google can't tell you much. One might find the Chicago band's lone album bookended by Wilderness Road and John Buck Wilkin records within the stacks of a secondhand vinyl shop. During the summer of 1980, copies of Scott Wilk + The Walls were displayed side by side in store windows to form an abstract puzzle. Its simple artistic design, created by Wilk's high school friend, smacked of a new decade.
The Walls would appear and vanish within a year's time. Without a hit single or a solid tour, a phone call from Hawaii would serve as strike three for the new wave quartet.

"We need to hear from you today," a voice barked into Mark Wolfe's answering machine.

It was Warner Brothers Records on the line. Executives there had a new rule: no second album without first hearing the band's new demos. The first release, Scott Wilk + The Walls, never charted. It barely sold.
The story of what was said during that phone call between Warner Brothers and Wilk's manager isn't clear -- Wolfe adamantly refuses to acknowledge the conversation. Whether or not Wolfe lost his temper (as some claim happened) doesn't change the fact that Scott Wilk had, by the end of that call, lost his record contract. What's worse, Wilk had the new songs ready for Warner's review -- an album's worth -- but suddenly found himself stuck in Los Angeles without the record deal that brought him there. It was early 1981, and Scott Wilk + The Walls were done.

Building The Walls

By 1971 one could easily gauge the American attitude toward the Vietnam war by observing what was happening in Chicago. Take that morning in January, when more than 200 men in the city failed to show for Selective Service induction. Northern Illinois was quickly surpassing the rest of the nation in draft evasion cases that month.

One Friday, not far from Northwestern University, F.B.I. agents arrested a 22-year-old musician manager. He was immediately arraigned on charges of draft evasion before a federal judge. Mark Wolfe posted the $1,000 bail himself, but couldn't escape a mention in the next day's Chicago Tribune blotter.

Three hundred miles east in an Ohio college town, a music student was working on a song with Noel Paul Stookey, known to millions as middleman Paul of folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Scott Wilk -- tall, lanky and bespectacled -- had spent most of his 18 years making music. Born in November 1952 to his piano-playing mother, Wilk would pick up the clarinet at age six; by 11 he'd write his first song.
"He had an innate connection with what music is and could be," remembers Highland Park High School friend Thom Glabman.
"Scott also had the drive necessary to function and succeed in the commercial world of music," an Oberlin professor recalls. That, Wilk would discover, would take time. Almost a decade of writing and recording jingles in a Chicago studio passed. Wilk wanted more. He could write, he could sing, he could play most instruments. He needed only a band.



In 1979 Wilk recruited three guys he knew from the studio: Roger Ciszon, a guitarist with a blues bent; bassist Bob Lizik, the group's funkiest and, at almost 30, oldest member; and Tom Scheckel, whose tight, groove-oriented drumming provided the perfect backbeat for what would become Scott Wilk + The Walls. Wilk, the frontman on keyboards and vocals, rehearsed his band and prepped them for a trip to Los Angeles -- they were lined up to audition for dozens of record labels, courtesy of Wilk's new manager. The man's name was Mark Wolfe.

"We did showcase after showcase," remembers Bruce Gaitsch, who joined Scott Wilk + The Walls during the band's first auditions in West Hollywood. "No label guy showed any interest. They were all stone-faced after our short set."
"It was intimidating," says guitarist Roger Ciszon of the band's first days in California. "But we had the energy and we pulled it off."
The late '70s had thrown electronic experimentation into the punk rock mix; something called new wave music was washing away rock's current political brashness with the sounds of synthesizers. Bands like Devo and Talking Heads were creating something more complex, more cerebral. All Music Guide simplifies the distinction: "Where post-punk was arty, difficult, and challenging, new wave was pop music, pure and simple." Bands exhibiting the style were fast approaching dime-a-dozen status by 1979.

If obscurity was hell, musical purgatory might well have been the front office at Warner Brothers, where bands like Urban Verbs and Code Blue barely got past the receptionist. "A lot of them had no chance of surviving," says Richard Seireeni, the label's former creative director. "It was a crapshoot."
Former A&R representative Felix Chamberlain compares the era to "the running of the bulls at Pamplona. You just get stampeded by the big guys, like Van Halen and Prince.
"But everybody really, really, really liked Scott," adds Chamberlain, who helped sign 26-year-old Wilk to Warner Brothers in September 1979.
"Everybody thought this was going to be the next big, big thing," bassist Bob Lizik says of the band's first meeting with the record company.


Becoming almost famous

Scott Wilk's passion and efforts culminated Monday, 31 March 1980, when he and his band first entered the now-defunct Cherokee Studios. The building at 751 Fairfax Avenue had been home to decades of album recording sessions. It was here where Scott Wilk + The Walls would record their first -- and last -- notes.
On this particular day rock band Toto had just wrapped a session for its Turn Back album, which left Jeff Porcaro's drum kit at Tom Scheckel's disposal.
"Being a fresh 25-year-old kid with my own style to create, I detuned them and started over," he says. "I've often wondered what the tracks might've sounded like had I left Porcaro's tuning on them. Maybe we would've had a hit."

A hit for The Walls wasn't out of reach -- famed producer Michael Omartian, 64, who would go on to make dozens of successful songs, including "We Are The World" and "She Works Hard For The Money," stepped in to help Wilk with the album's sound.
Omartian would take home several Grammy Awards in 1981, including Album of the Year, for his production on Christopher Cross.
"Oddly enough," Omartian says from his Nashville studio, "it was the album that I thought wouldn't do well that turned out to be the big hit. I loved being able to go from Chris's polished sound to the alternative, punk sound of Scott's record."
"He was coming off of his mega success with 'Sailing' at the time, which made me initially skeptical about whether he would get what we were up to," says Wilk. "He turned out to be a fantastic person to have as a co-producer, in that he let me have my head but steered me away from trouble."
Nothing, however, would quite steer Scott Wilk + The Walls toward stardom, though Billboard noted in August 1980 the band "delivered sinuous rock situated somewhere on the plateau flanked by Tom Petty and Elvis Costello."
The comparison to two of rock 'n' roll's leaders was without question the most encouraging press The Walls would realize during their whirlwind year of recording and touring. Wilk's catchy melodies and layered arrangements on songs like "Man In The Mirror" and "Shorting Out" were, at the very least, garnering appreciation from audiences beyond Chicago's FM circles.


I'm feelin' Radioactive
think I'm gonna melt down tonight
Feelin' Radioactive
like uranium dynamite
You really got my Geiger counter clickin'
got a hydrogen heart -- can't you hear it tickin'
I'm Radioactive -- 'cause you're so attractive
Feelin' Radioactive gonna melt down tonight


A European police siren wails over Scheckel's explosive crash cymbal, which jump starts "Radioactive," an up-tempo adventure of a song not far from the approach of The Ramones. Wilk's voice evokes images of Joe Jackson, Ric Ocasek, even a bit of Bowie. A herky-jerky, freewheeling David Byrne angst peppers an Elvis Costello likeness that would draw criticism from the alternative press.
Scott Wilk + The Walls are one hell of a long way from jingle territory here. Their songs stretch across the musical spectrum: Wilk brings a classical touch to Ciszon's hard rock spirit, while Scheckel and Lizik have the jazz and funk areas covered. The group comes together to create a confident, experimental new wave album.
The textured "Victim Of Circumstance" weaves a metallic percussive click through a sardonic song of personal consequence, highlighted by Ciszon's speedy picking on his '62 Gibson Firebird. What sounds like a slight false start on Wilk's keyboards launches "Man In The Mirror" into one of the album's catchiest hooks about an identity crisis. Scheckel's hypnotic toms and hi-hat thunder through tracks like "Danger Becomes Apparent," while Lizik's throbbing bassline underscores a dark depth to the spastic "Shorting Out," which could well be Scott Wilk's "Psycho Killer."

The band's first single, the paranoid "Suspicion," would find an audience on Chicago radio in the summer of 1980, and was added to playlists as far away as Cleveland.

Former WMMS-FM program director John Gorman claims "the song never really caught on. It received three to four spins a day for about three weeks. July is a rough month to establish a new artist," he says.

"This brooding cut might forge its way into Top 40 and AOR playlists," Billboard predicted the following month. Nothing happened. Warner Brothers, in its effort to expose Scott Wilk + The Walls to a national audience, wanted a music video for "Suspicion." There was talk of a television station that would, within a year, broadcast these things around the clock.

A prickly feelin' creepin' down your spine
A blind alley in the back of your mind
And in the shadows where no light shines
Suspicion
Suspicion

The band shot a sequence on the second floor of a post-production house, an appropriate location which still stands on Chicago's Grand Avenue. Garry Gassel knew Wilk from his jingle-composing days, and assembled a team to shoot and edit what would become the music video. It was beyond low-budget; it had no budget. Gassel's assistants had worked for free, which meant weeks of labor to hammer out the four-minute clip.
The video stalks a nervous Wilk who traverses tight hallways, anxiously jiggles doorknobs and winds up trapped inside a game of Pong. "As dated and stupid as that video looks, it was comparable to videos of that time," Gassel says.
That wouldn't make any difference. By the time Gassel presented his finished product to Warner Brothers, the label had already dropped Scott Wilk + The Walls. "Suspicion" never aired on MTV.

The Costello comparison

"Suspicion" had legs to keep Scott Wilk + The Walls going on a modest tour of clubs and colleges. A hair salon now stands in place of Tuts, on Chicago's West Belmont Avenue, where the band first played in May 1980. Once they released the album in August, The Walls performed for a crowd of 5,000 as the opening act for ChicagoFest headliners Robin Lane & The Chartbusters. Momentum would push The Walls toward the band's biggest gig: opening for The Pretenders, who had topped both the U.S. and U.K. charts with "Brass In Pocket." It was to be short-lived; Scott Wilk + The Walls replaced The English Beat for a single show.


Meanwhile, rock journalists were accusing Wilk of mimicking Elvis Costello's look and sound.
"Scott Wilk needs to branch out," advised Billboard.
Trouser Press writes: "Encountering the line between artistic influence and stylistic plagiarism, Scott Wilk grabbed a copy of Elvis Costello's Armed Forces and blithely pushed ahead."
The late '70s had killed off Presley and birthed an all-new Elvis, this one from England, who rolled in with the new wave tide in 1977. His songs were addictive, melodic and, unlike Wilk's music, overtly political and heard internationally. One could argue similarities exist -- the energetic bridge of Wilk's "Too Many Questions" easily qualifies as Elvis-esque. There are, however, obvious differences between Wilk and Costello's talents: They play different instruments, for starters. And while Costello can write a hit song in his sleep, Wilk can sing much more articulately. The media, however, ignored Wilk's originality, and hastily wrote off Scott Wilk + The Walls as pop poseurs.
"I took it in at a deeper level than I should have let it," Wilk says. "There was no conscious effort to emulate him."
Had Wilk chosen to imitate anyone, it was, by his admission, a quirky American singer-songwriter with a similar appreciation for tongue-in-cheek lyrics and fun melodies.
"Michael Omartian called me the new wave Randy Newman. That's what I was trying to be, I guess," Wilk says of the musician whose success peaked during the '70s. "He completely floors me."
Scott Wilk and Randy Newman share a knack for scoring films; Newman has won several Grammys for his work on movies like the computer-animated Monsters, Inc. Today he's arranging the music for Toy Story 3, due in theatres next summer.


Scott Lawrence Wilk, trim and handsome at 56, sports silver streaks through a dark mane of hair that cascades from high above his round glasses. Contacted by phone the day before Michael Jackson's death, Wilk sounds a bit apprehensive to discuss his fleeting year as a major label musician. It was, after all, half a lifetime ago.
"Perhaps we should just chat on Facebook," he graciously suggests with a trace of nasality in his voice.
He's lived outside Los Angeles since Warner Brothers signed him 30 years ago. His son, a college student, studies broadcast journalism less than an hour from home. Wilk enjoys blogging and social networking when he's not composing music from his home studio, but doesn't communicate much with his old band members back in Chicago. Before those guys could make the move to California in 1981, a phone call from Hawaii -- the conversation manager Mark Wolfe won't discuss -- stopped The Walls in their tracks in Illinois.
"I placed an inordinate amount of trust in him to steer the band, and ended up with a terrible mistake," Wilk says of his former manager, with whom he hasn't spoken in 25 years. "I was way too naive."
Wilk, caught in the crossfire between his manager and record company, had his new material for the follow-up album heard, but it was too late. A shouting match had erupted between Wolfe and Warner Brothers, he says. The contract was gone. Wilk eventually decided against taking his manager to court.
"We worked our balls off," grumbles Roger Ciszon, 54. "We were just left hanging. Though I had been through many band breakups prior, that one hit me rather hard."


...And The Walls came tumbling down

The track that concludes what would be the only album from Scott Wilk + The Walls seems to eerily reflect the band's collision course with Warner Brothers. "Shadow-Box Love," a sultry, dark tale of love gone wrong, almost hints at the morbidity of The Beatles' "A Day In The Life." Both songs gently begin with ironic lyrics and culminate with haunting, powerful piano chords.
"Michael Omartian played the piano solo in one inspired take," remembers Wilk.
Of the more than 100 albums Warner Brothers released in 1980, most have received the compact disc reissue treatment, regardless of their obscurity. Scott Wilk + The Walls appears to be the lone exception. Somewhere along the way, the C.D. revolution neglected this gem.
David McLees, former senior vice president of A&R at Rhino Entertainment, expects the album will remain unavailable.
"C.D. is a dying format," he says. "Unless the record company sees great sales potential, then it won't get to first base. Least likely, there's something great in the vaults that the record company is unaware of and hasn't got around to it."

Why? Sales? Politics? Was new wave old hat? What broke down The Walls?
"It seemed that there was an awful lot of similar music in the marketplace. That is in no way to denigrate the quality of Scott's music, but there was quite a logjam of punk and alternative going on," offers album producer Michael Omartian.
Scott Wilk, determined to "stretch" his style after reading those biting record reviews, by 1983 had cut his hair, lost his glasses, and founded electronic dance group Bone Symphony. The band -- a deliberate departure from the sound of The Walls -- recorded a five-song E.P. for Capitol Records and landed a single on the Revenge of the Nerds soundtrack.
"I just think that pop music was shifting to a different vibe and there was some very exciting music happening that we wanted to be part of," says former bandmate Marc Levinthal.
Wilk would compose the soundtrack for the film Valley Girl, and record with musicians like Harold Faltermeyer and Charlie Sexton. The '90s would find Wilk releasing a concept album under the moniker Swyvel. The sound collage communicates the story of a man's struggle with amnesia following a car crash.

The other Walls -- Lizik, Ciszon and Scheckel -- returned to Chicago following the band's breakup. The unexpected end of Scott Wilk + The Walls would lead its members toward other musical avenues there.
While Roger Ciszon has been in and out of several bands in his hometown of Palatine, you've likely heard the music of drummer Tom Scheckel; he played for President Obama in January, in what was the drummer's second inaugural ball in four years.
"They're like any other corporate gig," he says.
Since 1983 Scheckel, 54, has backed up oldies group favorite The Buckinghams, whose '60s hits include "Kind Of A Drag" and "Don't You Care."
Bob Lizik -- a session bass player in high demand -- would go on to back up artists like Madonna and Billy Joel. Perhaps Lizik's most notable gig was spent with Beach Boys founder and Pet Sounds mastermind Brian Wilson. Lizik agreed to play alongside Wilson for a handful of concerts during his Imagination tour in 1998.
"Brian gave me very specific direction," says Lizik. "Those few tour dates turned into ten years."
Former bandmate Chuck Soumar says, "All I can say about Bob Lizik is that he is the consummate professional. He is the best at what he does."
Lizik, 59, ended up recording several albums with Wilson, and retired from touring last year.

Though the three former Walls live within a short drive of one another in Cook County, Illinois, they rarely see each other. The band left its founder in Hollywood on good terms 30 years ago, but there's never been talk of a reunion.
"I have tremendous respect and affection for those guys. I've never felt more comfortable with anyone in the studio," says Wilk of the band he formed during his days as a budding composer.
His Walls agree. Casual phone calls and occasional spins of the album aside, however, the four men haven't been in the same room since Warner Brothers dropped them in early 1981.

From Oberlin music student to jingle writer to quasi-celebrity, the prolific Scott Wilk scores television shows (remember Duckman?) and international commercials (ever tried Kirin Ichiban® beer?) from his home production studio, Scott Wilk Music, outside Los Angeles.
Says Everett Peck, creator of the mid-'90s animated series Duckman: "What I tried to do with Duckman was match the fantastic writing we had with equally strong visuals and music. Scott understood this and really succeeded beautifully."

Who knew a great lost Warner Brothers album from 1980 would catapult Scott Wilk + The Walls into a musical world where record sales don't determine true success?

Elvis Costello once admitted to a certain musical inspiration during the recording of his debut album, My Aim Is True.
"I hadn't really found my own voice," he writes in the reissue's liner notes. "I certainly learned quite a bit while shamelessly attempting to copy Randy Newman. It was just part of my apprenticeship."

You've never heard of Scott Wilk + The Walls. But you've heard them. You've witnessed their contributions, however subliminal, in film, on the radio, at concerts halfway around the globe. They've somehow always managed to be almost famous.

"It's been said that if someone can talk you out of being a writer, or a songwriter, or an artist of any stripe, well," Scott Wilk pauses to reflect, "you should probably look into what else you can do."

Florida leaves children behind on Obama speech

"Whenever a parent calls and says, 'I'm keeping my child home,' it's always excused. We never question what a parent does."

-- Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Julie Janssen

In keeping with George W. Bush’s tradition of leaving every child behind, Florida school superintendents have now decided to teach their students a lesson in treason.

President Barack Obama, in his effort to connect with children in a 15-minute televised education speech next week, will, in the opinion of certain superintendents, be armed with too much liberal propaganda for students to bear.

That’s why Pinellas County parents have been offered the choice to “opt out” their children from school on Tuesday, which nicely parlays Labor Day weekend into a cozy, four-day vacation for those who want to stay home.

One more time for those in the back row: Students will be excused from school because the president will be talking.

I remember being made to watch the damn O.J. verdict in my ninth grade art class. What’s happening?

Here’s the real lesson here for Florida students: Many of your leaders are hopelessly devoted to the Republican Party, and will fight President Obama at every turn. Take Pasco County Schools Superintendent Heather Fiorentino, the three-term Republican state legislator who once cosponsored a bill requiring every public school to display the “In God We Trust” motto. And there’s Mary Ellen Elia, Superintendent of Hillsborough County Schools, who gave money to the Republican National Committee just last November. Somehow this week, right-wing radio revved its engine and allowed school superintendents to drive this unequivocally anti-American decision straight into the history books.

Ah, history books. Talk about propaganda. Find me one school textbook that devotes more than a paragraph to civil rights, the Vietnam War, or Oliver North.

As for compassionate conservatism, Florida has always been really good at being really bad at running elections. TheSunshine State runs the darkest and worst-managed children and families department in the nation. And we’re the only state that refuses gays the right to adopt children.

Ralph Nader remembers his father’s nightly question at the dinner table: “What did you learn in school today? Did you learn how to believe, or did you learn how to think?”

Maybe most parents will decide to send off their children to school Tuesday. Maybe they’ll even decide to gather at the dinner table as a family, and discuss what President Obama had to say.

While people angrily accuse him of spreading socialism and/or fascism, those same critics only encourage anti-patriotism; they spitefully plan to shelter their children from their president, and from what might well be an important lesson.

Whatever happened to staying in school?

Trusted Man

"Cronkite fought for Tampa's right to truth"

And that's the way it is.

Walter Cronkite, known to millions as "the most trusted man in America" for his consistently careful reporting, lost his tenacious battle with cerebrovascular disease at his New York home tonight.

Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. His confident delivery became iconic for viewers who turned to the newsman for the latest on Vietnam, Watergate, Kennedy, King and Lennon.

A fierce advocate of ethics and accuracy, Cronkite once went to bat for a Tampa investigative team facing the fight of its life.

"He was so gracious," former Tampa television journalist Jane Akre remembers of the 92-year-old legend.

"He was a gentleman, with the emphasis on gentle."

In April 1998, Akre and husband Steve Wilson sued Tampa's Fox-owned WTVT station. The reporters had been fired over their four-part investigative series on bovine growth hormone. A number of farmers in several states, Akre and Wilson discovered, were injecting their cows with the controversial additive. The story would expose its maker, the Monsanto Company, for failing to inform the F.D.A. about the hormone's potential health risks on those who drink milk, the journalists claimed.

Monsanto threatened Fox, and the station pulled the story after Akre and Wilson refused to slant their story, according to the lawsuit. The team soon found itself embroiled in a sour seven-year court battle with the "fair and balanced" network.

"We needed someone in the business to explain to the jury why reporters don't lie on television," Wilson explained to the Tampa Liberal Examiner from his Detroit home. The 57-year-old has served as the chief investigative reporter for WXYZ-TV since 2001. Wilson remembers dialing up news directors and media think tanks, but no one wanted to fight Fox.

"Everybody told us we were crazy," he chuckled. "They said you cannot beat someone with pockets as deep as Rupert Murdoch's."

Walter Cronkite, it turned out, was happy to give a deposition about the ethics of journalism.

"He was appalled at what had happened," Wilson said.

When, in April 2000, Cronkite was asked in court to what extent a reporter should mislead the public with a story, the television veteran replied: "He should not go a microinch towards that sort of thing. That is a violation of every principle of good journalism." Fox's counsel would object to Cronkite's role as a "media law expert" in the case.

"Mr. Cronkite is not an expert in the pre-broadcast review of a story," the network's lawyers argued.

The newsman, then 83, continued: "The reporter's reputation for integrity is of great importance to the reporter. And I think he would have found in this case that his employers did not have that same sense of journalistic integrity, therefore there was an incompatibility that probably could not be bridged."

For all his wisdom, clout and experience, Walter Cronkite could only halfway convince the jury that distortion has no place in a news story. Wilson was eventually ordered to pay $156,000 in legal fees; Akre, who was awarded more than $400,000, lost it all on appeal from Fox. Akre would never again work in television news.

The truth had certainly set them free.

By 2005, investigative team Akre and Wilson were free of their house, their life savings and much of their credibility. The couple had lost just about everything in its standoff with Fox, despite having the most trusted and respected man in news by their side.

Wilson said, "He was everything you would expect him to be. Walter Cronkite is in a totally different class."

Added Akre, "I'm eternally grateful for that man."

Cronkite's final sign off tonight, though without words, says so much about the death of fair journalism. Before he left the stand in that trial where business interests prevailed over ethical responsibility, Conkite said this of today's journalists who face intimidation from their superiors:

"His duty is to protest as much as possible. I think his ultimate duty is to resign."

Thanks, Walter. And be sure to say hello to Ralph Flanary, my late granddaddy, who never missed your broadcast. -P.F.

The Infomercial

Remember Ronco?

Come on, who wasn't tempted at two in the morning to buy one of those rotisseries?

The Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman and, yes, even that spray-on hair stuff.

Original pitchman Ron Popeil was born into sales in New York City, but would introduce his products when he made the transition to television. He did so in Tampa, Fla.

Thus the infomercial was born in Tampa, although Popeil would air his first television spots elsewhere in the country. He produced his first ads on WFLA in 1963, according to Entrepreneur. Why Tampa? It was the only place Popeil could afford. A 60-second clip for what would become the versatile Ronco Spray Gun cost 500 dollars to make.

Popeil would blaze a trail for a new generation of salesmen, and would retire from the limelight just as a stocky guy with a beard was weaseling his way onto our airwaves.

Let's shout it together: "Billy Mays here!"

Early medical reports indicate OxiClean magnate Billy Mays died of heart disease at home on Sunday at age 50.

Mays lived in Tampa. He attended church in Tarpon Springs. Many of Mays' segments and spots were shot OmniComm Studios in Clearwater, and aired nationwide on the Discovery Channel's Pitchmen. Billy Mays was a Tampa Bay celebrity whose products will be forever found tucked into pantries and beneath countertops across the country.

This week Ron Popeil, 74, mourns the late contemporary infomercial king in an email released to the Tampa Liberal Examiner:

It has been a sad week already, and with Billy’s passing, the world has lost another gem. Billy mastered the art of the pitch with his warmth and amped-up energy. For those of us who grew up before him on the boardwalk and at the state fairs, Billy was the leader of the next generation of pitchmen. I’m sad to see his sale cut short. He was a teddy-bear and my thoughts are with his friends and family. It was a privilege to know you Billy!

"Billy realized that an eye-to-eye pitch has to be honest and salable to the core," Popeil tells Time in its July 13th issue.

"It was this skill -- along with verbal agility, stamina and likability -- that he used to get consumers to buy products they never knew they needed."

One could argue the infomercial was born in Tampa with Ron, and died in Tampa with Billy.

We'll remember Billy Mays as pitchman... but that's not all.

-P.F.

Billy Mays

Billy Mays is no longer here.

The infomercial icon, who flamboyantly showcased products like OxiClean and Orange Glo, died this morning, according to Tampa Police.

William Darrell Mays, Jr., who would have turned 51 next month, suffered a bump on the head during a landing at Tampa International Airport yesterday.

Upon his return from Philadelphia, Mays had tweeted: "Just had a close call landing in Tampa. The tires blew out upon landing. Stuck in the plane on the runway. You can always count on US Air."

It was his humor that never failed to provoke reaction; Mays would often inflame "Pitchmen" co-host Anthony Sullivan during show tapings for the Discovery Channel. The show airs Wednesdays at 10:00 p.m. A recent episode featured Mays dangling from a pirate ship near St. Petersburg's Pier while demonstrating the strength of a new product.

Mays would joke about his "hard head" to television crews following the flight. It's not clear what struck his head, or whether his death is connected to the blow.

Mays' wife, Deborah Wooley, told police she found Billy's body inside his Tampa home this morning. Police do not suspect a break-in or foul play.

The enthusiastic pitchman had been working on a book deal in New York earlier this month. He had just appeared on Tuesday's "Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien." And Mays had been scheduled to undergo hip replacement surgery -- his third -- tomorrow, per his Twitter entry.

"He's gone. I'm gonna be strong for him. Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers everyone," Mays' 22-year-old son, Billy III, tweeted this morning.

The King

The King is dead.

Throughout a career equal parts charisma and chaos, Michael Jackson still somehow managed to heal the world.

"Weird Al" Yankovic wouldn't be "Weird Al" without those infectious Jackson parodies, like "Fat" and "Eat It." Tonight Yankovic tweets: "Oh man. Can't believe it. RIP Michael Jackson."

Another contemporary musician -- ?uestlove of The Roots -- posts on his Twitter account: "Elvis got revisionist media treatment. I expect the friggin same for my hero."

The media certainly never encountered a more intriguing icon-meets-spectacle personality. He was the original M.J. He was his own reality show. And he was only 50.

"He was a positive thinker," remembers Bruce Swedien, Jackson's recording engineer on every album since Off The Wall.

Reached at his Florida home tonight, the 75-year-old Swedien describes Jackson as "a joy to work with...totally prepared, always." During recording sessions Jackson would come to the studio with the music already memorized, Swedien says.

The men met in 1978 during the filming of The Wiz, an African-American adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, which features Jackson as the Scarecrow. The Off The Wall album would soon follow, and by 1982 Thriller would set the musical masterpiece bar to an all-time high.

Thriller isn't just the best-selling album; Thriller may well be the best album ever made.

Swedien couldn't predict the impact the record continues to inflict on the world. On Thriller's success, he remarks, "You can't go into it with that in mind. What comes out is what comes out."

The year 2001 would represent each man's final venture in music-making; the ironically-titled Invincible arrived post-9/11. The engineer claims Jackson had "no firm plans" to make another album when the two spoke last year.

"Michael kept things pretty close to his chest," Swedien recalls.

While recording the Bad album in 1987, Jackson struggled with his vocal on a song that demanded a higher key. He couldn't sing it. So he walked out of the studio.

Swedien found Jackson in the corner of his room, sobbing.

"He was totally upset that he couldn't perform it," Swedien says.

The men decided to take it down a key. And then the song sounded just right:

If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, and then make a change.

"'Man In The Mirror,'" Swedien sighs. The single would hit number one in early 1988.

Tonight Jackson's musical partner and friend of 30 years chooses to remember that -- in spite of the controversy, the disgrace and the stigma -- Michael Jackson lived up to his loving lyrics.

"If you could think of the best possible situation, that was working with Michael."

-P.F.

'Jenny' Memoir

Forget all the gossip you've heard about Jenny.

She never dated any member of the '80s rock band Tommy Tutone, and she certainly never changed her number; the girl who got away does not -- and never did -- exist.

"There was no Jenny," songwriter Alex Call admits during a telephone interview from his Nashville home Wednesday. "The number? It came to me out of the ether."

Since late 1981, Call's classic "867-5309/Jenny" has maintained urban legend appeal with its young lust tale of a boy who discovers his crush's phone number scribbled on the wall of the men's room.

The song itself serves as a bittersweet paradox; heavy radio and MTV rotation would catapult the San Francisco band to Top Five status, while the tune's popularity would ruin the lives of those who shared Jenny's phone number. Three decades following the birth of "Jenny", the crank calls continue.

"It was a joke that happened one day," Call remembers of the quick songwriting process. Today the man behind the Tommy Tutone tune puts the finishing touches on his forthcoming rock 'n' roll memoir, For A Good Time Call: 867-5309: I Wrote The Song That Saved My Ass. The 300-page snapshot will span his experiences between 1960 and 1988.

By 1981, Call had already recorded with Elvis Costello and Huey Lewis, and had even gone platinum with a song he wrote for Pat Benatar. But there was just something about Jenny.

Call had the catchy chorus down. The name and the number had seemed to fall into place while he sat beneath a plum tree in his Mill Valley, Ca., backyard, just north of San Francisco. But Call was missing something. He needed verses.

That day Call got a visit from Jim Keller, a well-known guitarist and friend Call had met through the local music scene. Within 20 minutes, the two men had it: I got your number on the wall.

Before long Tommy Tutone were off to Los Angeles, but 32-year-old Alex Call was stuck at home digging ditches for a contractor, publicly unattached to the band's fame that was only beginning to bud. "Jenny" was creeping up on mainstream radio. And suddenly the band wanted exclusive rights to the song.

"There was always a dagger in someone's hand, and it was usually a friend's hand," Call remembers. "Sometimes, it's your best buddy."

Call wasn't about to sign over his share of the writing credits. His decision paid off when Arista Records offered him a deal. His self-titled first album barely hit shelves in 1983 when the deal fell apart. The guy who had signed Call had been fired. Another guy had abruptly quit the label.

The songwriter, now 60, chuckles, "I went from zero to hero to zero in about a year-and-a-half."

Jenny was a work of fiction, but she somehow managed to come between the men in her life.

While the song's opening guitar lick, chord progression and chorus were Call's idea, Keller beefed up the tune's backbone with additional lyrics. The two songwriters agreed on their roles in the composition. It was Tommy Tutone frontman Tommy Heath who, according to Call, created the copyright controversy.

"We did fight over it. Tommy wanted to be part of the song [credits]. But he wasn't." Heath could not be reached for comment.

Even with the band's success realized, Tommy Tutone would later refuse to record another Call-penned song, "You Never Really Loved."

"It would have been perfect for them," he says.

Still, every time "Jenny" plays, she pays. Even today. Record sales are down, and those '80s compilations have lost steam, but the royalty checks have never stopped coming. Call splits a sum with several people each time an FM station spins "Jenny": roughly 12 cents.


That's when 30-second television spots have come in handy. "It's a real good place for songwriters to get money out of their catalogues," Call explains.

Hits from the '80s have recently featured in television ads, many selling a taste of the old school while those who recall the hits -- many no longer considered "thirtysomethings" -- eat it up. A new Ore-Ida advertisement serves up a snippet of Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel the Noize" cover. And a nationwide Benjamin Franklin Plumbing commercial presents a rendition of "867-5309/Jenny."

Call continues to compose and record music in Nashville -- and the only lady in his life is named Lisa. The married couple have performed their album, Passion & Purpose, at a number of healthcare conferences across the country.

Call's next project involves polishing those final chapters of his rock story by the end of August.

She may have saved his ass, she's nothing more than the hypothetical heroine of a three-minute teen angst anthem.

"Jenny's just a good rock 'n' roll name."

-P.F.

Joe's Show

Despite David Gregory's best effort, the "Meet The Press" host couldn't quite unhinge Vice President Joe Biden this morning.

Yet somehow -- during a nonstop, fast-paced 32-minute Q-and-A -- Joe never lost his footing. He wasn't overly defensive. He never appeared angry. And no inappropriate jokes! Phew.

Gregory's rapid-fire reporting style kept our Veep on his toes. Let's face it, when Dick Cheney starts logging more media face time, the American people deserve a Biden status report. We need answers on the economy, soaring unemployment and our health care state. And we need them from Mr. Second In Command.

Three key points from Biden's "Meet The Press" appearance:

• While he withholds comment on the impact of Ahmadinejad's election win, Biden assures "we're not going to allow Iran to go nuclear";
• on our country's rising unemployment claims, Biden remarks "everyone feels mildly better about where the economy is going"; and
• with some prodding from David Gregory, Biden admits he "won't rule out" a future run for President.

Well, Joe, you almost made it through an interview without an awkward statement.

First, saying we won't allow Iran to develop nukes is like saying we won't allow Lindsay Lohan access to alcohol. It's inevitable. And neither seems afraid to advertise it.

As for people feeling "mildly better" about the economy, I'd like to meet those eternal optimists. "Mildly better" more aptly describes how one feels the morning after a NyQuil-induced coma.

And, I'm sorry, but Joe Biden should have never hinted at a future Presidential run. That's one question you should have dodged, Mr. Vice President. Are you suggesting Obama is a one-term President? Assuming a second-term victory, you'll be 74 when Obama leaves office in 2017. And, for argument's sake, what if Obama refuses to endorse you at that time?

Well, look... Joe's a good guy. He's weathered unspeakable family tragedies during his lifetime. He's sharp and approachable. And he calls his 40-year-old son Beau (who's serving in Iraq) "the finest man I have ever known in my life."

Not bad, Biden. You've lately perfected the art of answering questions without necessarily answering them. Maybe you should run for President.

-P.F.