Chet Bolins - All American Masher
#330
By John Seven
1981 Housekeeping
Chet Bolins
All American Masher
Genre: New wave keyboard sleaze lounge
Allen’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5
John’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Highlights:
All American Masher
Love Mugger
Boom Boom
Superman Love
There’s a story that goes with this one. Of course there is. Because anything really great in life is much more than just the thing it is and to explain that, you need a story.
I have tons of records and when I look through them, though I thought I would always know exactly where I got any given record because my mind works that way, I’ve long forgotten where I got most of them. But Chet Bolins is different. I know EXACTLY where I got it and I know EXACTLY when I got and I know EXACTLY who I was with when I got it.
I was in Sounds Records on St. Mark’s Place in New York City in June of 1984. I was preparing to leave for a couple months back at my parent’s house in Savannah, GA, before I returned to NYC the next fall for what I had decided would be permanent — or, at least, I would not be moving back to Georgia the following summer. Anyhow, I decided to do some record shopping so I would have some things to amuse me for the next couple months until I was back. So I went to Sounds because they had an awesome 25 cent record section there — I had picked up the first One the Juggler album there a few months before — and for the sealed records they were keen to get rid of, there was the 88 cents section.
I was not alone. I was with Allen. And a girl. A girl who I was head over heels in love with and who was passing through NYC on her way to England. A girl who I was enjoying every moment with because for all I knew, once she left for England, I might never see her again. No internet in those days, of course, and anyone who’s only ever dealt with cell phones would be astonished at how difficult it was to make an international phone call back then. There was only letter writing and though she had my address, well, things happen, you lose pieces of paper and address books, especially when you’re traveling and while I didn’t expect that to happen, you had to be prepared for heartache.
So we were at Sounds together and I was rummaging through the bins and pulled out the Bolins album. It was still sealed and I was intrigued. We were all intrigued. The girl said that I should buy it. It was only 88 cents. Just buy it. So I did.
I don’t think I got around to playing it until I got back to Georgia, since I was leaving the next day and was going to spend the evening with the girl, especially after she had misplaced her bag with her passport and money. After a disaster like that, we couldn’t even be sure she would recover these items and if she did, get them in time to catch her plane. By the next morning it had all worked out — the items were retrieved from a taxi that contained the most honest passenger in New York ever and he had found my phone number in her wallet and contacted me that he had found her belongings. Problem solved, though that meant that she was in a taxi and onto the airport. That was the depressing thing about the next day — one of us was going to leave the other, it was just a matter of who. How depressing.
The Bolins album did perk me up a bit once I got back to Georgia. It was a little slice of the life I preferred to lead that accompanied me back to the life I preferred to leave. And it was on red vinyl! And it had photos of Chet Bolins and his back-up singers inside! And it had the title song, with its thumping glam rock beat and its screeching saxophone and layered keyboard accents, Chet Bolins speaking over the music, which coincidentally sounded like the kind of thing that you would want to be playing when you entered a bar, relating the tale of a tedious, athletic jerk, puffing himself up and bragging about how much more of a fine specimen of malehood he is than Mr. Bolins. It was hilarious, it was infectious, it captured my social in a football-obsessed Southern state where clean-cut sports guys jerked around us poor, sad dorks. All American Master was MY song.
It’s also a song that announces what the rest of the album is supposed to be — a record of a lounge act. But not any cliched lounge act that embraced retro-sounds and fumbling standards, but one that was trying to be hep with the times, one that was trying to add a new-wavey vibe to his song stylings. I had no clue whether this was the real thing or not, but it was such an oddity that I embraced it. It seemed sincere — whether it was a sincere real thing or a sincere parody actually didn’t matter much to me. It was its own thing, that was what was important.
There isn’t another song as powerful and ear-grabbing as the title song, which deserves a place in the annals of ‘80s music as it thumps its way into your brain and stays there for decades. It is infectious, hilarious. It deserves your attention.
Despite the other songs cowering under the shadow of the title track, there was much to like about the album. It was playful — a song like “Boom Boom” had a feel-good synth pushing it along and vocal delivery not unlike Squeeze’s “Cool For Cats” if it was native to Pittsburgh. “Love Mugger,” my second favorite track on the album, is a bouncy, ska-tinged screed against a lover who’s not giving Chet his due, one that finds Chet explaining what the deal is with this thing called love. “I think it’s show time right now,” he tells her.
“Avenue of Love” has a Kid Creole vibe to it between it’s faux funky ‘70s and Bolin’s goofy rap-style delivery about trying to pick up ladies on the street while the lady back-up singers deliver a call and response reminiscent of the Coconuts, taunting the song’s narrator. The back-up singers takeover the singing in “Superman Love,” a full-speed-ahead proclamation of the kind of man they desire — and I don’t think it’s Chet.
There are a few others on there, including the spoken word ballad “Without Love,” in which Chet crosses over decisively into amusing, corny retro hipster delivery, packed with faux sincerity. Oh, and it has a surprise twist.
Chet Bolins thinks he might know what the kids like and that he may possibly be able to deliver it straight from the stage of the local Holiday Inn.
Some years later I found out more info on Chet. His real name is Chris Darway. He started out in a New Jersey band called The Critters in the 1960s and then went on to form a Philadelphia band called The Johnny Dance Band. Poised for national fame, it didn’t happen and Darway put together the Chet Bolins Band with his wife. They did the lounge parody thing live and the best comparison I can come up with is to think early Tubes. Like the Tubes, Chet Bolins was performance and the album, it turns out, is a relic that was part of a more expansive project that was apparently inspired in the first place by the high school photo of Darway on the front cover of the album. Darway described all the Bolins songs as being about “Love and Irony.”
I actually met Chris Darway some years later. Well, I met him online. I had participated in WFMU’s 365 Day music project and my contribution was the Bolins album. Darway emailed me to thank me. I fished for Bolins info. He was obtuse. He treated Bolins as if he were another person entirely, talking about him in the present tense. He was, in a tiny way, keeping Bolins alive as a character, and I appreciated that.
Nowadays you can find Darway online as a metal worker and jewelry maker. I don’t know what Chet Bolins is up to, though.
Sounds Records closed in 2015, but I still have that Chet Bolins album, though, the same one I bought there 35 years ago.
Allen created and is overseeing this group.
And the girl?
I married her.
More than 30 years later, we’re still together.
https://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/2007/284.html
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