Adversity has a weird way of bringing the best out of people, doesn’t it? Take, for example, the shenanigans relating to the making Shack’s classic album “Waterpistol”, which involved the collapse of the band’s label, fires burning down the studio holding the master tapes, the band’s two prime movers succumbing to debilitating heroin addiction and the producer leaving the one DAT copy of the album on the back seat of a hire car. In America. Doh! Of course it all came right over a long period of time, with the DAT copy being recovered, the album finally being released on import and being hailed as a classic in time for Mick and John Head to gradually rehabilitate themselves and become the still under-rated cult heroes they are today.
You may, of course, wonder why I’m prattling on about such Scouse-related matters when I’m supposed to be reviewing the timely re-issue of a great album by a fine Pennsylvanian trio, but there is a point to all this rambling. That point being that MARCY PLAYGROUND leader John Wozniak himself underwent a similarly potentially fatal personal meltdown en route to making “MP3”: an album which, initially, may well have taken quite a different course.
When MP were about to record the original version of “MP3” there was a real buzz surrounding them. They had surreptitiously leaked several of the tracks due to make their album out onto their website during 2002 and immediately fans began getting hot under the collar with excitement, record companies started calling and radios stations were playing them like never before. To coin a cliché, it looked like it was all about to kick off.
But behind the scenes, Wozniak had the forces of nature to contend with and he was losing a battle royal when a particular weekend brought 18 inches of dense snow to the nearby Poconos. As a result, the heating oil ran out, the furnace went out, the water pipes froze and burst in Wozniak’s house causing a flood in his basement best described as ‘apocalyptic’. The past 20 years of Wozniak’s life on paper, journal, photograph and tape was wiped out in one fatal swoop.
If, at this stage, you have visions of Oliver Hardy in that episode where he goes to work at the sawmill with Stan and ends up lying under the debris when all the shelves have fallen on top of him and then one final can of turpentine falls and smacks him in the eye, then those were probably the kind of feelings flitting through Wozniak’s head at the time. Why me, Lord, why me? Yet, in the way that elusive DAT of Shack’s album was recovered against all odds, this was the time when the tide finally turned back in Wozniak’s favour.
Yes, most of the DATS, CDs and hard-drives had perished in the flood, but the 2-inch master reels had been stored off the basement floor and had survived mostly intact. From these, Wozniak and his henchmen Dylan (bass, vocals) and drummer Gonz worked their way through the snippets of remaining songs, fired themselves up and ended up with a whole slew of songs they felt were superior to those they had been intending to record. Result.
And indeed, the songs which would ultimately be laid down when they recorded “MP3” in Vancouver later that year remain a testament to talent and strength through adversity winning out. It’s an inspired, guitar-heavy record with hooks aplenty, lashings of that time-honoured US power pop nous and Wozniak’s knack for intelligent, socially-aware lyrical observation clearly having made it to dry land as well.
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Highlights come quick and fast. Sometimes – as on “Blood In Alphabet Soup” – MP hi-jack that still rolling Nirvana/ Pixies grunge-bubblegum vehicle and make it their own as Gonz’s excellent drumming ricochets gleefully off the studio wall. On “Punk Rock Superstar” they mine a genius seam from a deliberately lunkheaded approach and Wozniak excels when he weighs in with observations such as “just say you love me for who I am/ just like my supermodel wife”. Hmm, who can he mean, readers?
Elsewhere, MP prove themselves equally adept when they allow a string section to sneak in the back door on “Jesse Went To War”s tearjerking tale of two boys who went to war from the standpoint of the one who returned and slip into something equally comfortable when they set up satirical Nada Surf-ish set pieces like the anti-censorial likes of “Flag & Finger” and the self-analytical “Paper Dolls.”
For this writer, though, it’s the back-to-back “Hotter Than The Sun” and “Rock’n’Roll Heroes” which really quicken the pulse. A yin and yang akin to the Jesus & Mary Chain’s “I Hate Rock’n’Roll” and “I Love Rock’n’Roll”, the former is a cautionary tale of getting your soul burnt by the filthy music biz with Wozniak warning “Just remember what I say/ that when you go to Hell/ rock’n’roll is how you got there” as the strings swell and the anthemic chorus rolls in. “Rock’n’Roll Heroes”, meanwhile, magnificently apes the motif from The Cars’ evergreen “My Best Friend’s Girl” and with lines like “and when I’m pushing daisies/ I’ll have my tunes to carry on” could have been written for your still smitten reviewer. And probably for you, too, if you’ve read on this far. Good for you if you have, because this is an album you’ll surely enjoy.
So, three years on, this re-issued “MP3” once again shows us why classy power pop will always piss on the Emo pretenders from a very great height. John Wozniak had the strength of character to turn his personal tragedy into something thrilling all us discerning folks can thoroughly enjoy and for that I salute his courage and tenacity. If we ever get to meet up, the beers are on me, OK?
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