During the end of an era of disco and the height of Punk a Washington, D.C. art-poppers the Urban Verbs merged from the rubble. They have often been stuck as taking most of their musical cues from early Talking Heads, which made sense, since lead singer Roddy Frantz was the brother of Heads drummer Chris Frantz. But, to me, they were more than that. They were a group ahead of their time. They helped lead the 80's into the New Wave scene as well as the dominance of college radio. The members included Robert Goldstein (guitar), Danny Frankel (drums, ) Linda France, and Robin Rose. The quintet recorded two albums, 1980's Urban Verbs and 1981's Early Damage. Then they disappeared. Nothing was heard from the group until 1996 when they performed live once again here is an interview at that time...
When the 9:30 club opened 15....years ago, the Urban Verbs were Washington's leading new wavers (no one ever accused them of being punks), about to release their debut Warner Bros. album. Although the venue has flourished, the Verbs became inactive after two albums; Thursday's show to mark the club's move to larger quarters will be the band's first gig in 13 years.
"This may be the fourth time we've considered doing it," says guitarist Robert Goldstein, who notes that the band almost regrouped to play the club's 10th anniversary five years ago.
"Each time it was a different reason" why the quintet didn't get back together.
This time it's more convenient than before. Singer Roddy Frantz, who's worked in the film and video business since leaving the band, and synthesizer player Robin Rose, an..
abstract painter, both spent some of their post-Verbs years in New York, but now live in the Washington area again. Bassist Linda France, also an artist, and Goldstein, currently a music librarian at National Public Radio,.
have lived here continuously. Only L.A.-based
drummer Danny Frankel, a successful session
musician, lives outside the area.
One of the first Washington bands to be seriously courted by major labels in the late '70s, the Verbs were a sensation and an inspiration on the local scene. They were one of the first local bands to reach a broad audience
and inspired other arty outfits (like Tiny Desk
Unit, who have also reassembled for the final
farewell to 9:30's F Street location on New Year's Eve) as well as teenage fans who later turned to harder forms of music.
"Those were heady times", remembers Goldstein,"It really was like our own San Francisco. It was our summer of love. There was something happening here."
There was also something happening in New York, where Roddy Frantz's brother,Chris, played drums for a band called Talking Heads. When Heads producer Brian Eno recorded live and then remixed two Verbs tracks, the band had both a demo tape and powerful endorsement. In a memo to the group, Eno said that the Verbs' music offered "a whole new set of ideas about how to
structure sound."
Those new ideas may have been a little ahead of their time. The quintet's two albums, 1980's "Urban Verbs" and 1981's "Early Damage," didn't sell well, and the band was dropped by Warner Bros. "Sort of feeling it wasn't happening any more," according to Goldstein, the Verbs did an Italian tour without Rose and France (local space-rock veteran Billy Swann played bass), which was complicated by the guitarist's need for regular dialysis
(He subsequently had a kidney transplant.) The band split soon after.
"Urban Verbs" and "Early Damage" did lose some of the immediacy of the band's live performances and played up the music's artiness, thus disappointing fans of Verbs' earlier, rougher sound. The recordings' atmospheric
sound, however, was not that far removed from the lushly textured styles of British post punk groups that were received enthusiastically by Americans in the early- and mid-'8Os. (Indeed, "Damage" co-producer Steve Lillywhite
was responsible for some of those British atmospherics, producing U2, the Psychedelic Furs and others.)
Never a flashy hard-rock lead guitarist, Goldstein
attributes the band's sound to a melding of diverse
skills and backgrounds."One could never convincingly
play that stuff," he says of Chuck Berry-style riffs,
" had to make it up as I went along."
That, however, suited him fine. "That had
always been my intention," he explains, "to get
a band together that had its own sound. It
didn't happen overnight; it wasn't manufac-
tured. At the end, we were able to put on a
really powerful musical show."
Received mostly with indifference outside
the area, the Verbs were both loved and hated
locally. Some resented their Talking Heads
connection or saw them as insufficiently punky. "When we started, it was a bad word to say you were a professional," says Goldstem. "We wanted to get a recording contract. We didn't have any emotional conflict over that."
Still, he emphasizes, "we weren't out there to make money. We were out there to make music."
Today, Goldstein still composes music for soundtracks and museum installations, "but it's not like playing in a band. It's a different process. It's a lot more work."
"We loved what we did. We really did," he stresses, and he's pleased when he hears that others appreciated it too. The Verbs were called "tragically overlooked," Goldstein notes,in the first edition of the Trouser Press Re-
cord Guide. "When I read that," he says, "You'd thought it could be my epitaph."
Though Rykodisc once discussed reissuing
the Verbs albums, they remain out of print. The only one of the band's songs available today is "Acceleration," which is included on a recently released Razor & Tie compilation of circa-1980 art-punk, "Totally Wired." 'We'd love it" if someone reissued the Verbs albums,says Goldstein.
The quintet's reunion "comes out of a sense of fun, just to see what it's like to play together again," explains the guitarist. It's weird hearing the sound again, revisiting the period of getting our sound together.
"You don't think we have any sense that something's going to come out of this," he adds.
Indeed, Goldstein doesn't seem entirely sure he has the stamina to be an Urban Verb anymore. When the reunited band started rehearsals, he marvels, why he was blown away by how fast the songs were. I thought, "These are
the tempos of 25-year-olds."
And where are they now?
NPR directors, producers and reporters often elicit the help of Robert Goldstein, NPR's music librarian, harborer of about 5,000 CDs and 3,500 LPs, searchable in a database by artist, song, instruments and keywords, such as emotional states.Goldstein's a good source for just about anything a director doesn't have.His role, Goldstein says, is as "music consultant," making suggestions for particular segments or shows. "Talk of the Nation" needed something on memory, and Goldstein handed over four or five selections, including the pan pipe version and the "schlocky cocktail version" of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Memory." He's also producing the on stage performance of "Bettys."
Robin Rose still does poetry and some music. His stuff can be found on CD collections like "Traditional Australian Poetry and Songs" and "British Pub Songs." He has also done photography for albums as well. Some of these have been "Bout Time" and "History (2002) - The Penguin Cafe Orchestra."
Danny Frankel is still playing drums and is well known among famous artist. His latest release, The Vibration Of Sound (Transparency), is a collage of organic percussion sounds. As he explains it, "I hike every morning and listen to things like hawks and woodpeckers. They are natural percussion." The CD is a collection of moods generated by percussion and other instruments layered on top of tape loops and drones, which were inspired by his walks. "I had the idea of making percussion groove strongly, like a drumkit groove," Frankel says. Frankel’s busy schedule has found him working with such diverse artists as Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, and Fiona Apple. "I’m open to anything," he asserts. He's known to call his friends "citizens" and loves green tea.
Roddy Frantz is still doing sound scores for movies and has done some collaboration projects with other bands as well. Some of his musical scores have been on such movies as "Driving Miss Daisy" and "Bye-Bye Birdie('94)"
Linda France has recently put out a new collection of her art, as well as her poems and stories.
As of 2003, Urban Verbs first album has been released for the first time on CD through Wounded Bird Records. Rumor has it that the second album will be on CD sometime next year.
Closing.....
As I write this I wonder where the band would have gone if they would have been seen in the true light and not shadowed by Talking heads. Some saw the problem with Roddy as seeing him more as a poet and not a singer. His lyrics were pure for the time and can still relate to todays world. They may have never burned brightly for anyone to notice but they left a largemark on todays music more than they think. Hopefully we can see them perform once again or even see another album in the future. This may not happen but we are left with 3 great albums to remind us of what was.
