How Now Brown Mao?

Baby Opaque online (finally)

(Baby Opaque was a band that was active in 1984-1986 in Charlottesville Virginia. The band never played outside Virginia and DC, and did two records and then broke up. 1000 copies were pressed of the 7" EP and 1000 copies were pressed of the 12" LP.)

"Baby Opaque: Take the Minutemen, Void, and Sun Ra. Puree in blender. Add angst, depression, and alienation. Season to taste. Serves 1000."
--30 Seconds Under DC

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NEW! The Lost Baby Opaque song, DECISIONS! (and some live pix from 1984)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All of Baby Opaque's music online, free:

Download the "Pain, Fears and Insects" EP (label: Cloaca Records):

1 My Friend Died
2 I Fell Apart
3 I Don't Need To Understand (Backing vocals: Michael Bérubé)
4 Blue Crimson
5 How Now Brown Mao

Download the "Fugue in Cow Minor" LP (label: Catch Trout Records):

SIDE A:
1 Charlottesville cheezy radio commercial (intro)
2 She Sleeps In Pink Tights (Backing vocals: vocals, Todd Wilson)
3 Cow Song
4 Because She's There
5 Simple Tasks
6 Buckets
7 Sunrise
8 Long Black Veil (Traditional. Backing vocals: Ian MacKaye)

SIDE B:
9 She's Wet
10 Pain, Fears and Insects
11 Recycled (Mixed in mono to give it that AM radio sound! Backing vocals: Michael Bérubé. )
12 Cold Damp Night
13 Dream
14 Outro

(Vinyl digitization thanks: Chris Caulder) Download a three-meg zip of high rezes of front and back cover of both records (thanks: 30 under DC.)

Drummer professor Michael Bérubé on the band:

We recorded that catchy little disc in the summer of 1985 at the tail end of a single six-hour session at Don Zientara’s world-famous Inner Ear Studio, back when the studio was housed in Zientara’s basement. The session consisted of twelve or thirteen songs, most of them recorded in one take (of course—the DIY crew wouldn’t have it any other way), and it wound up as our world-famous LP, "Fugue in Cow Minor."

Our world-famous five-song EP, "Pain, Fears, and Insects" (1984), was recorded in two hours. (I know, this sounds like something out of the Rutles documentary: our first album was made in two hours—our second took even longer.) Anyway, “Long Black Veil,” with backing screaming vocals from the world-famous Ian MacKaye, was released shortly after Baby Opaque broke up that summer, and it actually got some college radio airplay for a few months.

You can tell, if you listen very closely to the end of the final verse, that the drummer is kind of exhausted and dehydrated, and yet, in the words of the Maximum Rocknroll reviewer, “spunky.”

=====

Singer Michael W. Dean on the band:

Baby Opaque was me (vocals, lyrics, bass, keyboard), Todd Wilson (guitar, lyrics), and Michael Bérubé (drums).

Baby Opaque was not popular. We were active in a southern college town about nine years before weird music got popular there. We were too jazzy for the few punkers, and too punky and jazzy for the majority of folks who just wanted to boogie and drink to rehashed white 12-bar blues. We played about 15 gigs, probably averaged 20 people at each gig.

I wrote the songs (or my part of them) in about ten days, locked in my room. Then I found Todd. Asked him "What are your favorite bands?" He said "John Coltrane, and the Ramones." I said "You're in."

I taught Todd my songs and wrote a few more with him, in about ten days' time. Put up ads for drummers. Put up one in the bathroom of the graduate English department at the University Of Virginia where Michael Bérubé was teaching. He answered the ad, we practiced four times, then went and played a gig on a few hours' notice at a frat house, after some other band practiced.

The frat boys hated us.

I tried to kill myself after the EP came out. It was my first record. I felt my "life's work was done."
I failed at my suicide attempt. Ended up in a mental hospital for a while.

Glad I failed. I'm really enjoying life these days. (Not to mention I put out 11 more records with several different bands, wrote five books and made two movies after "my life's work was done", too.)

I really feel like life's just beginning now, and I pretty much jump out of bed every day to do stuff I love to do.

And thank god for the Internet. This stuff got listened to by more people in the first few days I put it online than the number of records we sold in 20 years.

Squit It! Music (ASCAP)