Video by Susan Willmarth
Nothing But Happiness • Retour • Glass Redux REDUXCD011 • June 30 2017
"A mainstream rock record from 1991 that was never released", and by today's standards sounds positively avant-garde.
I posted this previously and repeat it here to re-set the scene:
In 1984 I released a compilation LP on the original Glass Records label, called ‘Shadow & Substance (The Wonderful World Of Glass Vol. 2)’, intended to show the label as part of, or at least allied with, the UK/US International Pop Underworld of the day. Alongside tracks by Half Japanese, Cheri Knight & Bruce Pavitt (of Sub Pop, which at that time was a cassette fanzine type thing), sat ‘Nothing But Happiness’ & ‘King Of Culture’, two connected ‘groups’ that I heard, and indeed met in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, through Pam Weiner of Green Records, from Tampa Bay FLA. I used to write to labels or bands I had seen reviewed in Option Magazine back in those days, exchanging discs or tapes with them, which is how I connected with Bruce, Calvin Johnson, Jad Fair and Pam. Cut to: 30+ years later, Glass Records is ressurrected as Glass Redux, to give me something to do in my old age, and I spot David Bowman on Facebook. Next thing you know he’s telling me about the unfinished 2nd NBH LP from 1991, goes off to Seattle to finish it, sends it to me, I love it, and here we are, closing the circle and maybe drawing a new one up.
David Barker, Glass Records Redux
Now the 2nd NBH Album, 'Retour' is set for June 30th 2017 release on Glass Redux on CD and DL.
'All of this comes as a total surprise’
PROFESSOR JON DALE ASKS DAVID BOWMAN SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT NOTHING BUT HAPPINESS, DAVID MAREADY and ‘RETOUR’
- Nothing But Happiness released their first single in 1985 – “Narcotics Day”. But what had you been doing before then, both music-wise, and otherwise?
Well, I was born in 1960, which was a great time to be born. I was old enough to watch the ‘60s going on around me and my parents were liberal college professors and so I got the Beatles and Stones and King Crimson records when they came out (as long as I was careful with my allowance money.) Before I got a guitar or a tape recorder, I had to content myself with making album jackets, complete with track lists and timings and labels. Once I got some cheap instruments and a cassette recorder, I started recording the albums to go with the sleeves. I must have recorded a hundred of those, down in the basement of our house in Atlanta. This is when I was 10 and 11 years old. Unfortunately, there are no Nothing But Happiness ‘basement tapes’ from 1970/71, because I only had one cassette that I used over and over, so each time I made a new album, I erased the previous one.
A big thing for me was during the Beatles breakup was when the ‘McCartney’ album came out. I’d read the Hunter Davies Beatles book so I’d sort gotten a handle on wild ideas like overdubbing and multitrack recording. But when I read that McCartney had played all the instruments on the album, had built it from the drums on up by himself – that was a major discovery. How was that possible? I got hold of another handheld cassette player and started experimenting, recording guitar on one machine and playing a ‘solo’ along with the other player recording the results. And I made a point of seeking out more one-person recordings: Stevie Wonder, Shuggie Otis, Peter Hammill, ‘Tubular Bells’, Kate Bush … Anyhow, that was the big ‘eureka’ moment for the future Nothing But Happiness idea.
Another great thing about being born in 1960 was that I was 17, 18 when punk hit Florida (where I was in college.) I’d been playing bass guitar in the school jazz band while majoring in (classical) composition. One day in music theory class, I saw a guy who looked just like Richard Lloyd from Television. He was wearing an ‘Andy Warhol’s Bad’ t-shirt and carrying a copy of ‘Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy). This was Sid Dansby. He had a beautiful Rickenbacker guitar too.
When I answered a notice for a bass player for a ‘new wave’ group, I brought Sid and my sister Rachel along, and a guy who looked exactly like Tom Verlaine answered the door! That was Bill Carey. Anyway, that turned into The Stick Figures, and that was my first experience of a band, and it was extraordinary in every way. I didn’t waste a lot of time playing in cover bands and going-nowhere groups. These guys were great. I’m sure that, at our best, we were as wonderful as anything coming out of New York, or – since at this point were at 1980 – on the records we heard from Rough Trade, Factory, Postcard, Cherry Red. We recorded a bunch of songs and four of them ended up on a 7-inch single. Our manager Pam Weiner, who co-hosted the local community radio ‘new wave’ show with John Dubrule, sent them out to every address from every record they had played on their show. And David Barker of Glass Records replied and said he wanted to make an LP of The Stick Figures!
Things being the way they were back then, we figured we had to move to New York to make that album. We should have stayed in Tampa. Had it been the 80s or 90s, we WOULD have stayed in Tampa. But back then, it seemed like you had to be in either New York or London. On the way up north, we played our biggest (and last) show, opening for The Fall in Atlanta, on their ‘Hex Enduction Hour’ tour. Anyhow, we couldn’t cope with the big city and I was the first to go running back to Tampa. We only recorded three songs for that album and it never came out. However, Pam stayed in touch with Glass, and a couple of songs DID come out on Mr. Barker’s fledgling label: a song from Bill and Rachel’s New York band ‘King of Culture and the very first track credited to Nothing But Happiness, which was myself and a friend Jackie Alexander on guitar.
- “Narcotics Day” was the second single on Justine. That label released a small but perfect body of music – singles from Nothing But Happiness, Crash, The Woods, and Ultra Vivid Scene. How did you connect with figures like Mark Dumais, Bill Carey and Kurt Ralske, and what was it about that ‘scene’ that made it so distinct from other scenes in New York?
Well, for one thing we didn’t do heroin. We like the IDEA of it, but we were too straight for that. We were a little late for the ‘no-wave’ scene, and what was left of that – Sonic Youth, Swans, Live Skull – seemed phony and dull. Mark was a friend of everybody’s and I owe it entirely to him that I finally got out of Tampa and stayed in New York. When I moved to the city for the third time in 1984, he took me under his wing, took me to parties, got me an apartment and a job. He also gave me the keys to his apartment where he had the first 4-track Portastudio cassette recorder I’d ever seen. In exchange for playing bass in his new band Crash, helping him put into practice (in a practical manner) his idea for a band that’d somehow combine The Associates with The Mary Chain, he encouraged me to write and record songs in his apartment. And that’s how ‘Narcotics Day’ and the songs that ended up on the first Nothing But Happiness album came about.
One day Mark walked in while I was recording and said Dave, look at this record! It was the ‘Better for Domeheads’ Creation compilation LP. He said ‘If these guys can have their own label and put out bands, so can I!’ And that’s how Justine Records came about. So of course he wanted to put out his own Crash single, and he wanted to put out my track ‘Narcotics Day’.
In the meantime, I’d advised him to get my erstwhile Florida friend Bill Carey into Crash on guitar, and Bill brought along Kurt Ralske, who was a Long Island wunderkind, probably 16 years old, who’d played free jazz until he’d been brought into the last version of King of Culture. Not only did that solidify the Crash sound, it was crucial to get Bill involved, as he’d built a professional 8-track studio in his apartment, and that’s where all of the Nothing But Happiness (and Justine) stuff was recorded. I played all the instruments and sang on the single – on the album I had Kurt play bass and provide noisy guitar when I needed it, as I wasn’t yet a competent ‘lead’ guitarist.
Mark released the first two Justine singles himself and, once again, a mysterious benefactor from the UK heard them somehow. David Whitehead was a higher-up at Rough Trade distribution who wanted to start a label. He liked Mark and he liked the records. So the first two (and only) releases on his Remorse Label were albums by Crash and Nothing But Happiness. The Ultra Vivid Scene and Woods singles were put out by Mark on Justine a little, but not too long, after those albums came out. Crash moved to London to promote the album; my personal history repeated itself as it had done with the Stick Figures – I couldn’t commit to staying in London and just scraping by, so I was replaced by Adam Wright in Crash. And Nothing But Happiness, although we played live two or three things, was never going to be a live band.
- Both “Narcotics Day” and Retour feature quotes on their covers – from Zora Neal Hurston, Jean Rhys, Greil Marcus, Nawal El Sa’adawi… This places the records / songs within quite a particular ‘intellectual’ framework. Can you explain this in more detail?
I always had an inferiority complex about being a college dropout. Greil Marcus? Really? No comment.
- Tell me about the recording of “Narcotics Day” and Detour. Like the records by Crash and Ultra Vivid Scene, it seems very much like the manifestation of one person’s very distinctive vision.
Well, as far as Kurt and Ultra Vivid Scene goes, he did exactly what I did: he wrote pop songs and recorded them by playing all the instruments himself. The working method ensures that the result seems like ‘one person’s very distinctive vision.’ Of course, he had the support of a record company, both during the recording process and for promotion. Like myself – and like Mark – all three of us, I’d say, we were obsessed with making albums: the record was ‘The Point’. Playing live was a problem for Kurt and eventually led to 4AD dropping him.
The whole premise of the music industry back then was being a live band that also made records. I would never have succeeded in the field. Thinking back it seems crazy that I even considered it. I’m afraid of flying! And who wants to tour year-round as a support band to The Breeders or Nirvana? And play a side-tent someplace like Glastonbury?
Nevertheless, when I finally abandoned ‘Retour’, at the ripe old age of 31, I still hoped to make a ‘career’ of music. The final straw was an audition I did as guitarist for a new band. A guy who’d had success with an ‘indie’ band. He’d broken up that band and signed with a major and my friend Byron was drumming with them. I wrangled an introduction to this ‘cult’ star, had a promising chat with him. He wanted Jason Pierce to produce his new band’s debut, but the record company wasn’t keen. We discussed our mutual admiration for Mr. Spaceman’s recordings and he agreed to let me ‘sit in’ on a rehearsal. Unfortunately, on audition day, he’d had a wisdom tooth pulled and was in a bad mood. And the bass player didn’t show up. I played and it sounded great to me, but it quickly became obvious it wasn’t happening. I realized as soon as I played a few ‘hot licks’ that I’d made a mistake. Also the guy was about a foot shorter than me. He never called me back, thank God.
Back to Ultra Vivid Scene: Kurt made three good albums that were released and found an audience, so now they are a part of ‘rock history’. I made one good record in the same period and it’s only coming out in 2017. So it’s a sort of historical conundrum. A variation of Bishop Berkeley’s ‘to be is to be seen’ (or heard). Or if you’d prefer, that Helen Keller metaphor about a tree falling in a forest, although I can never remember how that one goes. All I know is that I didn’t have a copy of the first Nothing But Happiness record for years and years until I got one off Ebay recently, where they are cheap and plentiful – the copies are helpfully annotated ‘Kurt Ralske! Pre-Ultra Vivid Scene!’
- …and what would that vision be, if you had to put it in words?
Well I don’t really think I have a ‘vision’, which seems like an odd word for music in any case … there are certain chord changes, riffs and ‘feels’ that I love, that I’ve heard on records over the decades. I simply wanted to make a record that had all those things I liked and none of the stuff I could do without. And that’s what I did.
- You were also a member of Crash, with Mark Dumais. Mark seemed to be quite an inspiring figure – certainly, from other conversations I’ve had about him, he had a strong impact on everyone he met, musically and otherwise. What are your fondest memories of playing in Crash, and making music with Mark?
Probably in rehearsal doing over-the-top covers of ‘Metal Guru’ and ‘Cinnamon Girl’. And recording the ‘Don’t Look Now/International Velvet’ single. Besides playing bass, I talked Mark into letting me add some piano and mellotron strings and that experience was exciting and crucial for the ideas that went into ‘Detour’. It gave me confidence that I could do the kind of studio overdubbing I had been planning.
As for Mark, he was a wonderful guy and he certainly informed and/or confirmed my musical taste. He was also difficult at times, and unhappy … like all of us. An odd paradox about Mark was that he wanted to be a big star but he was really shy and not particularly comfortable on stage. If he hadn’t died I still don’t know if he would have ‘made it’. Another thing he and I had in common was that we were both easily swayed by current fashions in music. So when he came to do the ‘Tangerine’ album for Creation with Pete Justons of Sudden Sway, he’d gone back to doing dance music, hoping to ride the wave of acid house, Manchester, Shoom, rave.
Most of my memories of Mark are non-musical – just hanging out, going with him and some friends to Atlantic City to play the slot machines. All the different places he lived in London: Camberwell, Barking … making tea, watching bad movies … going to see the shows Jeff Barrett put on in Camden, the club Bobby Gillespie had in Tottenham Court Road, the Creation records ‘Doing it For The Kids’ thingy at the Town and Country Club when My Bloody Valentine unveiled their ‘new sound’. Later on, as his health worsened, he admitted that AIDS was a problem – he’d been in a kind of denial before – and he got some nice government housing, first across from Euston Station and then just north of Oxford Street near Centrepoint, and we’d all hang out and listen to records. For some reason the memory that is always clearest of Mark is the night the Great Hurricane hit London in 1987 – we’d been planning on seeing the Sugarcubes but the weather was bad so we stayed at Dave Whitehead’s house in Crystal Palace. When we woke up the next morning, the streets were full of trees and debris and we couldn’t get back into London.
- Crash dissolved in 1987/1988, I believe, and Retour was recorded in New York in 1991. What were you doing in the meantime?
I didn’t have the money to keep making records but I ended up being asked to play ‘lead guitar’ in a couple of bands. I played in an early version of Hamish Kilgour and Lisa Siegel’s band ‘The Mad Scene’. And then I did a lot of live playing and recording with my friends Tim and Lori Prudhomme in a group called ‘Bobbo’ that eventually (after my time) became ‘Fuck’ and released a few albums on Matador. This period turned out to be really important: I’d played guitar for years but was put on the spot and asked to deliver wild, bluesy, distorted proto-grunge solos. I was a much more versatile guitarist by the time I made ‘Retour’.
- The title of Retour clearly delineates some kind of conceptual relation with its predecessor. Can you discuss this?
To be honest, it was the first thing that popped into my head. It was so obvious. Later, I realized that ‘retour’ isn’t an English word at all … I’ve been reading and thinking in French for so many years that it hadn’t occurred to me. Some of the definitions of the words are interesting in the context of the record, none of them had occurred me before:
- A ‘retour’ from exile, a journey etc
- ‘en retour’ : to be past one’s prime
- A beauty or a Don Juan ‘sur le retour’ = an ageing beauty or Don Juan
- The backfire of an automobile engine
- Back to square one or the drawing board
- A flashback
- Return after a long period of time to a former occupation
- To ‘go back’ over one’s life
- ‘Change of life’ aka menopause!
- You returned to Retour in 2016, after 25 years (and, also notably, 30 years after Detour). How did it feel to find your way back to these songs? Have the songs changed for you, through the intervening years, or are they the same beasts – do they place you back in their time, or do they move forward into our time?
In Spring of 2016, I heard that you and Mike Schulman were planning to release the Justine singles on Slumberland. I hadn’t thought about the stuff in a long time. And it took me awhile to dig up all the songs --- three of them were missing altogether and I have Bill Carey, an impeccable archivist, to thank for rescuing them. Once I had everything together, the running order of the record was obvious: it would begin with the finished stuff and end with the unfinished stuff. It tells a story that way.
As for whether they ‘place me back in their time’ or ‘move forward into our time’ – I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at, but there is a spooky quality to the feel of the songs and especially the lyrics. The songs document a fairly traumatic but exciting year in my life: I’d turned 31, I was suddenly unemployed, I’d left a steady relationship with somebody for a series of young crushes. You can actually hear that as the album plays, the singer goes from an extrovert and rather silly person to locking all the doors and rolling around on the floor of his apartment. But actually my 30s turned out very well – I wrote a couple of unpublished novels, got into a very close relationship that is still going on today, got a ‘real job’ at The New York Times, which made my father proud before he died.
My 40s on the other hand – (laughs.) My lost decade and a half, from 2000 to 2015 … it’s all there on ‘Retour’! ‘Pre-cog! Pre-cog!’ as Mark E. Smith would say. So that’s a little bit unnerving. But interesting!
