Pianosaurus “Groovy Neighborhood”

A brief stay in the “North Woods” (actually at the Stinking Root Writer’s Retreat, just to get away from the car alarms, emergency vehicles, police intrusions, and the tap tap tap of water on my window AC unit—plus, it’s supposed to look good on a resume) but since it’s Friday, I thought I’d put aside the new novel for a few minutes and randomly pick an LP from the pickle crate and drop it on the Victrola—which turns out to be Pianosaurus—a band that I totally remember and had totally forgotten about even existing! The crazy thing is, the first song, “Thriftshoppin’,” is SO familiar, it’s almost as if I played on this song myself. I did not. Why is it so familiar, then? I can only think I must have put this song on a mixtape cassette—one that I listened to excessively. Have I mentioned that I still have about 70% of my cassettes—the ones that didn’t get water damaged—and they may still play, but my cassette deck (that may still work) hasn’t been plugged in—I won’t go into it—for about 7 or 8 years. Anyway, I’ve been realizing that I’ve been losing things from my memory—possibly items that have been sitting dormant and have the pandemic between now and the last time I engaged. Does that make sense? The other day, I read a reference to a song, somewhere (Pynchon), which was: “He’s good-bad, but he’s not evil,” and it took me the longest time to come up with the memory of the song (“Give Him a Great Big Kiss”). Worse, because I was in a band that played a cover of that song!

Well, it didn’t take me long to remember what this band had going: toy instruments. It’s a gimmick, and a pretty good one, it’s not subtle. Everyone knows what a toy piano sounds like, even if you think you didn’t. Naturally, someone might add a toy piano to a recording, occasionally, like for flavor or something, but no one else (that I know of) has featured the instrument, like here. And there’s a reason for that. It wears out its welcome horrifically fast. As you would expect. But it also works here, in some weird way, because the songs are good. Good pop songs, written by the band, and a few covers. Some really good songs, actually—and one has to wonder if they considered at any point that a compromise—playing the same songs with NOT-toy instruments might be their ticket to number one hits, coke, groupies, etc. On the other hand. What other hand. Well, I’m delighted to see there are extensive liner notes by Don Howland, written at a time (November 1986) when he played with my very favorite band at that time (Gibson Bros.) during a brief period that I lived in Columbus, Ohio. It’s very possible I ran into him at the bar on the very day he wrote this. I’m kind of embarrassed, in that he says (in the notes) a lot of what I have just grappled with—though his version is much better (and 40 years ago!) which is why, whenever I go to write one of these “reviews”—internet-free North Woods or not, I never read about it first—I just listen. I do wonder what happened to this band. It’s very possible they’re on the bill at Summerfest, back in Milwaukee, on this very night.

6.27.25