Flight Of Mavis – Self-Titled

It’s late ’89 or early ’90. I arrive at the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 45 minutes before the start of a twin bill featuring Philly’s Flight Of Mavis opening for Austin’s the Reivers to find the club at capacity and a waiting line spilling out onto the sidewalk. A European music magazine has reported (falsely) that R.E.M. is playing in smallish clubs under the name Flight Of Mavis to warm up for their next tour, a rumor that hits Chapel Hill hard. The entire town appears to have turned out, filling the club with people who don’t know the Reivers from the Residents, or Flight Of Mavis from, well, R.E.M. I’m never able to get in.

There are reasons for sharing that story beyond mere self-indulgence — chiefly that R.E.M. is the band Flight Of Mavis most often recalls on the self-titled debut they were supporting on that tour, with the hyperactive jangle of “Gardening At Night” serving as a popular blueprint. Spearheaded by gifted songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Frank Brown (who, among other musical pursuits, went on to lead Buzz Zeemer through two sparkling pop albums), Flight Of Mavis also had enough Young Fresh Fellows spunk and NRBQ reckless spirit to prevent them from being the Grapes Of Wrath. Record Cellar — somewhat amazingly, the same label behind the album’s initial release fourteen years ago — has reissued the album and appended five bonus tracks produced by dB Gene Holder. The result is a charming and hooky hour that without fail lures me into a state of pleasant reverie.

The punchy, jittery groove of “You Got It”, the centerpiece of the Flight Of Mavis disc, brings to mind another band whose debut showed up in 1989, the Vulgar Boatmen. I don’t have a Vulgar Boatmen story, which is just as well because theirs is compelling enough. Formed in 1981 in Gainesville, Florida, by Walter Salas-Humara (later of the Silos) and two fellow University of Florida art school students, the band eventually came under the dual leadership of Robert Ray and Dale Lawrence. Ray, a Floridian by way of Memphis, headed the southern branch of the Boatmen, while Indiana’s Lawrence did the same for the northern arm.

Out of this long-distance collaboration, with the occasional road trip thrown in for recording purposes, sprang some of the most durable and subtly astonishing music of the first half of the ’90s. Wide Awake collects the best from the group’s three albums (’89’s You And Your Sister, ’92’s Please Panic, ’95’s import-only Opposite Sex) and supplements that motherlode with a half-dozen remixes and previously unreleased cuts.

“Change The World All Around”, “Heartbeat” and “Cry Real Tears” are, on first listen, a series of dandy enough riffs backing up first-person laments and longings. But by the third trip through, you’re likely to be convinced you’ve just witnessed several musical and lyrical miracles. And coming off like the Velvet Underground recording a Stax tune in a honky-tonk, “You Don’t Love Me Yet” — not the Roky Erickson song of the same name — does the best job of crystallizing the Vulgar Boatmen sound; in my book, it’s one of the finest songs of the ’90s.

In one of two Wide Awake liner-note essays (the other is by Greil Marcus), Michael Jarrett describes the Vulgar Boatmen listening experience: “And sometimes, I think I hear only myself — my history, my listening habits, the stuff I love.” Yep, both of these discs are enough to give nostalgia a good name.