You might run into Lance Romance one day.
Back in the mid-nineties, I was just out of high school, in my first place of my own, and just out of my first real band. All I did was work and listen to music. I found tons of killer vinyl at record shops like Cheapo, Road Runner and Oarfolkjokapus. Duran, Japan, The Police, mostly early eighties stuff was the norm.
On one shopping trip, the guy in Road Runner suggested a record he said was hard to find by a local group called The Terrorists. I thought it may be a punk record from the cover, all black with “Terrorists” in letters that looked like they were torn out of magazines and pasted on. The record is only 4 songs, and was probably pretty cheap. I got home and put the record on.
Turns out it’s two guys, one on drums, and one on piano and vocals. I was thrown. This was not what I expected. The first song Sandra went by and I was about to pull the record, but then came Lance. The song Lance Romance has a bit of humor to it, and though musically a fairly simple song, I love the changes. It sounds like a piano bass with a piano. The song is acoustic disco, that’s the best way I can think of describing it. Not to mention the vocals are almost spoken word. The record is so much a demo, recorded at Ambient Sound in St. Paul, MN. It’s definitely rough, but that’s the charm of the record. It feels really live, I’ll bet the songs were produced in a single day.
So what brings up this bit on just another Minneapolis band you’ve never heard of? Well, I bought a new turntable that can convert the vinyl to MP3 directly to a flash card. Not the best quality, but you know music today, convenience trumps quality. I converted the record and have been listening to it. I decided to search and see what I could find on the interweb. I found PJ’s web site that mentions the Terrorists (as PJ and the Terrorists/PJ and the Zen Terrorists). From the looks of things he’s still involved in making music as well as branching out into film. Pretty cool. I can’t find any mention of the record I have though, maybe it’s one of the only ones left on the planet. I would love to post the songs, but wouldn’t do that without permission. Maybe we can get PJ for the podcast that’s in the planning stages. I’d read the web site, there’s some great info on PJ’s past groups.
This song also has some sentimental attachment, it was one of my ex-girlfriend’s favorites. We listened to the song one night and afterwards started telling each other stories about weird situations we’d been in involving Lance Romance. I seem to remember this going on for several hours. I can’t seem to remember any of the stories specifically, but I know we laughed a lot and tried to top each other’s stories. She passed away this past year, this song brings back fond memories of her and gives me a bittersweet feeling when I listen to the song.
The studio, Ambient Sound is still around by the way, their website mentions the owner Bob Cain, who is credited as engineer (along with David Rivkin) on this record. Never recorded there, but now I kind of want to try out the room.
