The State

The State

Columbia, South Carolina

Friday, May 25, 2001

Pool Q's rode new wave of music into Midlands

by MIKE MILLER

What a difference a couple of decades can make.

When The Swimming Pool Q's first came to Columbia in March of 1979, they found an audience starving for something out of the ordinary. Nowadays, a regional band is lucky to find an audience here at all.

The Atlanta band had made their maiden voyage to New York to play clubs such as Max's Kansas City and CBGB's that year, and on their way home they stopped by for a two-night stint in the Golden Spur in USC's Russell House student center.

"As I recall, the student radio station (which is also in the Russell House) was little more than a couple of booths, and they let us take over the station for an hour or so," said the Pool Q's Jeff Calder. "At WUSC, the snobbishness of the art-pop worlds in Athens (Ga.) and Manhattan was pleasantly nonexistent. Frankly, the Gamecocks were ready for anything new--wave or otherwise."

The infectious energy of punk and new wave was beginning to infiltrate the South at the time, and a growing number of Columbians were ready for it. A club in Five Points called Von Henmon's (where Mugshots is now) was hosting bands from Athens such as Pylon, R.E.M. and the Method Actors, as well as giving local punk bands such as The Fanatics a place to bang away.

Another Five Points club called Greenstreet's was located at the present site of the condo high rise on Greene Street between Garibaldi's and Andy's Deli, and it featured more mainstream artists such as Jack Williams and Rob Crosby. That is until manager Doug Goolsby was persuaded by his pal Dale Bailes to go see the Pool Q's on one of those nights in the Golden Spur.

"They weren't exactly radical, but they were a lot different for me," Goolsby said. "But I knew good musicians when I saw them, and they were incredible. Very accomplished. And they had fun with their music, too. They had a ball on stage."

Goolsby booked The Swimming Pool Q's into Greenstreet's that same spring of 1979.

"This was a daring move on Doug's part because the South was still in the grip of Southern boogie rock," Calder said. "But our USC supporters along with Columbia's erudite pop fans--a larger number than you might think--combined to make the Greenstreet's dates a big success. From that moment on, The Swimming Pool Q's have been treated as visiting royalty in Columbia, a welcome that has, remarkably, never become worn."

Of course, rock bands such as the Pool Q's were exploring a much more artistic territory then than most bands are today. And their onstage antics and quirky camaraderie made for an extremely entertaining show.

"There were no more literary, intellectual voices in Southern music than the ones in that band," said John Emerson, a Columbia attorney and rock fan who played in a band called The Vectors in the mid-1980s. "The Swimming Pool Q's were drawing from sources such as Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor and effectively transforming that Southern gothic sensibility into rock 'n' roll. And they did so without appearing pretentious or artsy. I danced at their shows as much as I did at any other."

As the Pool Q's made more visits to Columbia, more rock fans came to their gigs to dance and sing along to "Little Misfit," "Rat Bait" and "Stick in My Hand," songs that were all included on the Pool Q's 1981 debut album, The Deep End (see page 11). They developed a strong local following, and other regional bands such as Let's Active, The Killer Whales and Cruis-O-Matic followed suit and took advantage of the burgeoning audience and vibrant Southeastern club circuit.

"That doesn't exist for bands today," Calder said. "There's a big difference between then and now. There's not much chance for bands to build a grass-roots audience, the club scene just doesn't exist."

But Calder doesn't want to be stuck in the past, although he believes it's important to celebrate the early days of new wave and punk rock. (The Pool Q's, by the way, are still an active band with a new record in the works. Look for them to play a Columbia gig in late summer.)

"At its best, it was a moment when American pop with an artistic component stood at least some chance of being rewarded with a larger audience," Calder said of those days in the late '70s and early '80s. "Perhaps a new intellectual uprising of pop will occur in the near future, and if it does, I hope we can contribute in some small way like we did in an earlier era courtesy of generous music scenes in a few Southern towns like Columbia."

Everyone Into the Pool

The State/Columbia, South Carolina

Everyone Into the Pool:

20 years after The Deep End made

a splash, The Swimming Pool Q’s surfaces with reissued CD

“Restless youth, coming over the

rise. Restless youth, cut you

down to size. As long as there’s a

sun or a moon in the sky, restless

youth will never die.”

-From “Restless Youth”

by Jeff Calder (1981)

by Michael Miller

Twenty-five years ago, Southern rock was ruled by the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and other deep-fried, blues based acts. If you had a mind to make music outside this “boogie alliance” as Jeff Calder of The Swimming Pool Q’s calls it, you didn’t have much chance of getting heard.

“That whole thing dominated musical culture in the South throughout the middle ‘70s,” Calder said. “It had become very repressive, especially for somebody like me and others who were interested in pop music with different intentions.”

But change was in the air. New sounds were coming from New York and London, and their influence was drifting south. Small pockets of punk and new wave were springing up all over, and Calder, who was a writer living in Florida at the time, discovered a particularly vibrant scene in Atlanta.

He moved there in 1978 and met some like-minded musicians. Bob Elsey was a free-spirited guitarist who channeled the ghost of Jimi Hendrix in this upstairs bedroom at his parents’ house. Robert Schmid was a daredevil drummer who had attended the same high school as poet James Dickey. Anne Richmond Boston was a pupetter, paste-up artist and occasional singer. Bassist Pete Jarkunas was another Florida refugee who used to play in a band called Duckbutter.

Together they became known as The Swimming Pool Q’s, and along with other Georgia bands such as The B-52’s, R.E.M., and The Brains, they changed the course of Southern rock and roll.

“There was a great deal of excitement then,” Calder said. “You could feel it, the same way you could probably feel it in the late 1960’s within the world that became psychedelic music. You could feel this enthusiasm building, and you could either take the approach of impersonating punk and new wave styles or you could come up with your own thing and create an audience for it.”

The Pool Q’s came up with their own thing, a quirky, literary pop-rock style that captured a zealous audience thanks to enigmatic, stick-in-your-ear tunes such as “Stock Car Sin,” “Big Fat Tractor,” “Rat Bait,” and “Restless Youth.” In May of 1981, the band released The Deep End, its first full length album of these tunes, and now 20 years later, it has been reissued on compact disc for the first time. The Deep End CD comes wit an engaging 28-page booklet and 12 bonus tracks.

“The bonus tracks are from multiple sources, from cassettes to four track tapes.” Calder said. “It’s a wide variety from that period. I wanted to represent stuff from before there was even a band.”

Early songs such as “White Collar Drifter,” “Going Through the Motions,” and “Stingray” revealed Calder’s caustic, witty writing style and served as precursors for tales to come. As the Pool Q’s gained momentum, their songs of Southern weirdo hayseeds, tent preachers and evil stock car racers attracted a loyal following of fans in search of something more intellectual stimulating than the usual pop fare.

“Something about him makes a

dog’s ears stiff up. He’s ugly as

homemade sin. Ain’t no

stormfencing hold him in. His

real name is Roy. Roy Rat Bait…

He suffers from dyspepsia…”

-from “Rat Bait”

by Jeff Calder and Bob Elsey

When Calder was going to high school in the late ‘60s in Lakeland, Fla., he worked part time at a men’s store managed by “a button-down Bohemian” named John Dickson, who “painted, wrote poems and drank real wine,” Calder said. “When things were slow in the store, Calder would blast away on a harmonica while Dickson made up rude folk songs and played an autoharp.

Later at the University of Florida, Calder would study creative writing under novelist Harry Crews, whose books were populated with the kind of characters Calder often encountered in real life.

“When I began to write songs, I saw that this could be the substance of my subject matter,” Calder said of the influential impact of those two men. “That’s why a lot of songs on The Deep End are about characters like that.

As Calder developed his lyrical voice, the Pool Q’s were becoming a tight, exciting performing unit that rocked with an angular, disjointed rhythm welded to the melody of Elsey’s blistering electric guitar.

Crowds grew bigger, and bigger at Pool Q’s shows, and before long the band was going on tour with big-time acts such as Devo and The Police.

“There wasn’t any idea of having a big career,” Calder said of the Pool Q’s goals at that time. “It was something that you were going to do, and you were going to do it seriously, the same way you’d pursue any kind of artistic project.”

The band’s artistry earned glowing reviews and a strong reputation in the Southeast, and in the mid-1980s, major labels came calling. The Pool Q’s released two albums on A&M Records, a self titled disc in 1984 and Blue Tomorrow in 1986, and one for Capitol Records, World War Two Point Five in 1989.

The band’s personnel has fluctuated over the years as members have come and gone. During the mid-‘80s to early ‘90s, a strong Pool Q line-up included drummer Billy Burton and bassist J.E. Garnett. Following the release of Blue Tomorrow in 1986, Boston left to pursue a career as a graphic artist, but she returned in 1998 and appears in performance with the band and on a yet-to-be released CD of new Pool Q songs.

The band’s current lineup includes Calder, Richmond, Elsey, Burton, and bassist Tim DeLaney.

“We’ve begun assembling a new record,” Calder said. “The most important thing about The Deep End reissue, it will get the band’s head above the radar and we will be able to put this new record out and hopefully will have immediate access to some attention.

“Your baby is a big fat tractor,

three wheels of steam and rust.

Your baby is a big fat tractor,

ride him you must. A big fat, big fat,

big fat, big fat, a big fat tractor

riding down the rows in the dust.”

-from “Big Fat Tractor”

by Jeff Calder and Bob Elsey

Looking back at The Deep End from 20 years down the road, it sounds as fresh, brash, and provocative as it did in 1981. In fact, the hot mixes engineered by Bruce Baxter at the time are more vibrant and defined in the digital format.

“I think the record holds up well,” Calder said. “It’s a very unique record by a very unique band. I think we were always a very forward-looking act, and we had that built into our concept from the very beginning.”

For all the Pool Q’s who were involved in The Deep End and subsequent projects, artistic intentions always superseded the desire to simply rock out.

“I think that’s why we’re still doing this,” Calder said, “and I also think it’s why The Deep End still sounds so fresh to people. We were pursuing this kind of personal, really unique collective vision.”