|
It all started with a very simple idea, said Andrew Gagarin, the group's co-founder and maraca player and one of Kerry's prep school classmates. "The whole idea was to meet more babes," he said, calling from Watch Hill, R.I., where he's in the real estate business. "At that time, life wasn't worth living without a girlfriend, so we spent every waking moment of our lives looking for ways to meet girls." Trouble was, during the school year, opportunities were limited to the occasional mixer. Music for these tightly chaperoned events was provided by a DJ spinning records, until Gagarin and a guitar-playing buddy named Larry Rand dreamed up a way to raise their cachet with the busloads of visiting maidens from area girls' schools.
Other musicians were quickly recruited for drums, rhythm guitar, piano and sax, but the bass player slot was unfilled. Kerry at the time was known for his ice skating skills and political ambitions, which were public enough that "everyone knew he wanted to be president of the United States," said Gagarin. "Everyone." Less known was that Kerry had just acquired a bass guitar and was trying to learn the rudiments of the instrument. Rand offered some tutorials and the rest he learned on the fly. "I knew the songs I knew," Kerry recalled, sounding less than impressed with his own abilities. "I also knew that I didn't know a lot. I didn't go at this whole hog."
"It wasn't that complicated," Gagarin said. "John stood up there, a tall, good-looking guy with a bass, and that's what you needed for what we were playing, which was good ol' rock-and-roll." They focused on simply constructed instrumentals, like "Bulldog" and "Torquay," primarily because nobody in the Electras could really sing. But at dances -- all of them sanctioned and arranged by the overlords of St. Paul's -- they were a hit. Gals flocked around the band between sets, and many of them, perhaps unfamiliar with the genre, urged the boys to cut an album.
<snip>
So what does it sound like? Let's put it this way: Kerry shouldn't run on this record. Then again, he shouldn't run from it, either. They get points for spirit, though not precision, on instrumentals like "Guitar Boogie Shuffle" and "Shanghaied," and they come across a bit like a garage-rock karaoke act on the few tunes with vocals, such as "Summertime Blues." Throughout, Kerry wisely sticks to the basics, gamely slamming at the roots notes on such mid-tempo ravers as "You Can't Sit Down" and throttling back on the make-out slow tracks, like "Greenfields." The whole enterprise is pretty wobbly. The Electras, in other words, were exactly what they set out to be: a loose and frisky cover band, glued together just tight enough to give themselves, and everyone else in their audience, a decent chance to score.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4009-2004Feb1.html
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
