Cincinnati City Beat

The Swimming Pool Q’s- The Deep End (DB Records)

City Beat grade: A

by Brad Quinn

In the very early 1980’s, during the late heyday of New Wave, the uncontested musical capitol of the south was Athens, Georgia. Other Southern cities might have had bigger music scenes, but Athens had two major players in the B-52’s and R.E.M. There was the illusion, for a brief time, that Athens had a great band on every corner.

Just up the road, however, in the musically overlooked city of Atlanta, was another equally vital group called The Swimming Pool Q’s. Fronted by Jeff Calder-a shock-haired dandy who seemed to occupy a conflicted space somewhere betweed Oscar Wilde and Tennessee lawman Buford T. Pusser-and a bespectacled, provocatively nebbish vocalist named Anne Richmond Boston, The Swimming Pool Q’s were one of the first groups to satirize life in the South. They were also, crucially, never consumed by the joke. Instead, The Swimming Pool Q’s mixed literate and gleefully perverse humor with strong songs and crack musicianship.

These elements are found in abundance on the re-issue of The Deep End, the Pool Q’s first album. Originally released in 1981, The Deep End has all the hallmarks of its time: angular, frenetic performances, lean instrumentation, and an emphasis on dancefloor rhythms rather than the slow, coma inducing thud common to groups like Pink Floyd and the Eagles. But what is surprising, listening to The Deep End 20 years later, is just how bluesy some of it is. The Q’s may have been happy to align themselves with the vanguard, but they also had firmly grounded musical roots. It’s at times dark and at times absurd, but at all times its punctuated by the superb guitar playing of Bob Elsey. The Deep End is a minor American New Wave classic.