Thought Tom Murse did a good job with his story/obit on Sam Lugar in today’s Era. It’s on the front page, where it should be.
Bryan Rutt has a good piece on Lugar and the Sharks over at his blog, talking a bit more about the music. Was listening to a bit of it last night and this morning - I have “Discmemberments,” a compilation, on disc - and it’s interesting because back in the day I and maybe everyone else thought of the Sharks as “new wave” - skinny tie and all that, as Brian notes they started out doing covers of Elvis Costello, the Talking Heads and Flock of Seagulls before anyone else was, before they started writing their own stuff. But it strikes me that the Sharks were actually a power pop band - don’t know whether that label’s ever been used to describe them. But it fits.
In particular, this morning listened again to “You Better Watch Her,” and thought of how the guitar on the solo is what later came to be described as “angular” - a real similarity to some of what the Plimsouls were doing around the same period.
Brian notes how “In a Black and White World” - the EP the band “won” from Elektra after it’s Basement Tapes victory - was overproduced:
The bland, antiseptic MOR sound of the record sucked every bit of personality out of what was truly a great band. I remember the year I became the music director for the University of Richmond’s radio station, WDCE, I found The Sharks’ major-label fiasco LP in the station’s record library. Whoever had been music director at that time had written a note on the album cover that said something to the effect of, “Remember that band from PA that everybody said was going to be the next big thing? This is them. They aren’t.”
I think that’s specifically because the “The Next Big Thing” at the time was the Hooters, Bryan Adams, and that sound - snare drums booming like cannons, keyboards way up front in the mix, all the edges sanded down real smooth. Think “Summer of ‘69″ and you get an idea of what Eletra might have been trying to do with the Sharks. It homogenized them and made them indistinguishable from other bands of the period.
You wonder sometimes what might have happened to the band had they not won the Basement Tapes. I’d bet some of the band members themselves have wondered that, too.
