Post and Courier

The Post and Courier

Charleston, SC.

by Prentiss Findlay  

So how have The Swimming Pool Q’s lasted all these years? The band members are back on the road supporting a reissue of their music from 1981, The Deep End. They play a show on Friday at the Windjammer.

The band’s Jeff Calder says relatively clean living and straight thinking have kept the band together. “You’re not in with a bunch of drug addicts and drinking. It’s a pretty straight bunch,” Calder said. “It’s not as though you’re dealing with people who are somewhere on the rings of Saturn all the time.”

Plus it helps that the band members have other interests such as art, filmmaking, and interior design. But what is a rock band if not a place for eccentric behavior. Calder wrote the extensive liner notes for the recently released The Deep End Years 1978-82, A Personal History of the Swimming Pool Q’s. The notes include a photo of the Jacksonville Beach Fla., police report of his arrest in 1982 for trying to stop police from arresting skinny dippers at the Ramada Inn.

While the officers were hauling away the skinny dippers, who were fans of the band, Calder said he got into a smart aleck confrontation with the authorities in the hotel lobby. The police responded by arresting him. The situation was written up in the Florida Times-Union. Calder said it didn’t help his case that he called the local police “moustachioed conch shells with pistols.”

He said the “silly swimming pool arrest” was blown out of proportion, and it was out of character for him to get into such a situation. “It’s the only time I’ve ever been thrown in jail,” he said. These days, Calder is older and wiser, but the incident lives on as part of the band’s lore. For good or bad, it’s part of his past. “I hear about this story all the time. It’s amazing the longevity,” he said. And he is amazed by the longevity of the band and how well The Swimming Pool Q’s reissue has been received at college radio stations where the audience and the music are about the same age.