Believe it or not
(I'm walking on air ... er .. no), the seed of The Fond Farewells was planted
over a decade ago when the members worked together in a group in Boston called Welcome
Mat. Since the guy who wrote the tunes was a beginner, he thought he'd have a
band of beginners, or at least, you had to be a beginner on the instrument you
were handling in the group. Hmmmm, well, the Nobel Prize for ingenuity was not
claimed by the group that year, but, really, it was nowhere near as bad as it
sounds. In fact, a quick listen to those old basement tapes reveals rather an
engaging energy.
Everyone recognized that, hey, these songs were clever, catchy, thought-provoking,
bloody fantastic, really, and comments such as "you guys are way too goofy to do these
tunes justice" only spurred the group on. When a series of club gigs failed to set the Boston pop world
alight, the group turned its attention to studio work. Response to the release of
their eight-track demo tapes sent the group's spirits soaring fully several inches off the ground.
With reviewers spouting the likes of, "this tape has no high end," the sky seemed the limit, yet cracks
appeared in the group's once impenetrable veneer of unity. An intra-group battle over Classic
Coke vs. New Coke proved too much for them to handle. The winning faction promptly (read "prematurely") entered a better (well, it boasted sixteen tracks) studio to "do these fine songs justice" as a duo.
Emerging several hours later from that studio in the woods of New Hampshire, they came with tapes in hand.
Panting from having scaled new heights of not getting it right, the pair promptly
shelved the recordings, never bothering to mail them out, and moved far apart from each other.
Through the intervening years, though, those songs -- not just a few, but about fifty of them, haunted them both. Neither realized that technology was catching
up with them, year by year, soon to present an opportunity to record again. A get-together in 1998 led to a session that produced the song, "The Nice Channel," on a
home digital eight-track recorder to quite good effect. It was duly sent,
under the group name Parachute Splash, in response to a call for new material, to a
small local label who selected it to appear on a compilation cassette, which was sent to no less than nine
music journalists nationwide and achieved retail sales topping a dozen. Despite having
"gone national," no more came of this brief reunion, but it planted another seed -- it proved
that a good recording by the group alone, without the meddling of producers and engineers could be made and could
sound good indeed (um, if you have an "indie" sensibility). So, yes, it planted the seed, finally, to get something started! The
material was just too good, too timeless to be allowed to languish any longer.
As the new millennium dawned, one of the pair emerged from years of band work with
significant recording experience and possession of quasi-professional recording gear. The
other had continued writing songs and had moved back to the northeast. These things
conspired to inspire the birth of The Fond Farewells. In 2004, with the rapid decline of
western civilization glaringly evident all around, screaming bloody help, the band came up with their first album, Don't Get Up. Not a single record company dared release this gem, for fear of making their back catalogs look positively dreary by comparison. Word quickly spread among them, and Don't Get Up remains available only directly from The Fond Farewells.
The conspiracy against the band would certainly be of massive public interest were it not for all the other conspiracies hogging the headlines this decade. Notwithstanding, The Fond Farewells have indeed dipped a toe back into demo-making this year with the thought of another album before another year has passed. It's sure to be even better and possibly even more unknown than the first! Beware that the conspirators have gone so far as to fabricate another, newer band, with the name Fond Farewells, and the fact that you now know this, added to the folks who know only them and not us, proves that they are better known than The Fond Farewells, and that the conspiratorial treachery is succeeding!
Note: It's best never to take any single source of information as the whole truth. Use critical thinking and analysis in your processing of input. For an alternate
history of The Fond Farewells and a ton more detailed info about the songs, visit The Fond Farewells: The adventures of an unknown pop band.
Rob's Politics and Music Blog
