After almost a decade of procrastination, it’s time to hear the three songs on the thirty-nine-year-old Wee Wee Pole demo tape.
I formed Wee Wee Pole in the autumn of 1982 with my childhood friend Todd Butler and a singer named RuPaul Andre Charles. Todd and I were 17. I think Ru was 21. Functioning adult percussionist David Klimchack – in his mid-20s – would soon join. We performed and recorded with a Roland CR-8000 drum machine. The demo is our only somewhat professionally produced material.
I have been putting this off for eight years.
Since my friend Craig Williams sent it to me in 2014, this little box containing a thin, brittle reel of tape has resided on a closet shelf alongside other reels from the pre-digital years. Dated 9/13/83 (it was a day’s work), the Wee Wee Pole tape is by far the oldest. I could’ve had it transferred to digital when Craig sent it, but I didn’t. I told myself I was “nervous about the process” (it can be dicey), but that is mostly bullshit. (More about potentially nerve-wracking tape-to-digital transfers below.) I was, quite simply, not ready.
The cardboard box fits snugly in my hand. Three titles on the label: “In My Neighborhood,” “Tarzan,” and “Body Heat.” Out of twenty or so songs, I still think those were Wee Wee Pole’s best. Tight little new wave funk pop songs.
The contours of the decades-old box, the smoothed edges, Todd’s and David’s phone numbers in my handwriting, the little logo of the humble 8-track Atlanta studio, Caribeso. A suite of rooms in erstwhile cheap-n’-cheerful Little Five Points, that address is now prime Atlanta real estate.
I’m in several places at once: the hothouse times in which we wrote the tunes and played them on stages from Atlanta to Athens to Birmingham (!!) to New York City; that September day-into-night during which kind hipster Tomas Valenti engineered our neophyte session; the years watching RuPaul’s unsurprising ascent; the painful, fitful period following Todd’s 2004 suicide; and the here and now, in which I am at long last attending to unfinished business, stories yet untold, work languishing.
Why now? What lit a fire under me?
Covid gave my wife and me a bit more time with our college graduate son, but he has belatedly headed out into the world, adulting, chasing his dreams. Our house, the life herein, is different. My energy level is still pretty high, but my body is, of course, aging. Noticeably. Some significant shifts of late. I am loath to complain; rather, I endeavor to listen. Feeling more acutely the passing of time, I honor impulses, check boxes. I’ve put some recent projects to bed. Winter approaches. Time to stoke the fire.
About the tape’s provenance: In 1983, Craig was a student DJ at WUOG, the University of Georgia radio station in Athens, Ga. We’d attended the same high school. Evidently, teenager me sent him the tape – a mixdown of an 8-track master – so he could make what was then called a “cart” and play Wee Wee Pole on the air. The band never got around to a single or an EP. Within five months of recording at Caribeso, we were no more.
Even as labels and managers were circling (we were very popular), I quit Wee Wee Pole in early 1984, and they disbanded. I was all over the place in those days, in mind and body. I did not walk away from the band with a copy of the demo. It is somewhat miraculous I have one now.
Years rolled on, life happened. So much happened. In 2014, Craig and I had not seen one another in decades, but when he came across the tape, he Facebook messaged me, asking if I wanted it. Bless him. I said Oh my God, yes. He mailed it from his Portland, OR home. Upon arrival in Phoenicia, NY, that telltale box gathered yet more dust, this time of the Catskills variety. Until now.
I was a driven 18-year-old back in ‘83. In addition to sending a cassette copy of the demo to NYC to land us gigs at Danceteria and the Pyramid Club, I’d sent a copy to Georgia State’s WRAS in my hometown of Atlanta. They made a cart and added “Tarzan” and “In My Neighborhood” to their playlist, but refused to air “Body Heat” due to the background (and foreground) moaning and sexy caterwauling of Anne Cox, David Klimchak’s then-girlfriend.
I sent a cassette copy to a pen pal who’d enrolled in NYU. She wrote back: “I love your funky plunk junk. Makes me little libido go wacko!”
I first heard myself on the radio via WRAS, in my girlfriend’s mom’s Ford Landau. I was driving us around, clueless, radio blasting. Rounding a curve, I gasped at Klimchak’s conga in the car speakers, followed by the drum machine, followed by my bass kicking off “Tarzan.” A distinctive rush, that was. I pulled over as my girlfriend and I screamed with glee. It was all happening.
I said, “I will remember this for the rest of my life.” I was correct.
It should be noted that, prior to my receipt of it in 2014, the Wee Wee Pole demo tape had not languished in total obscurity after the band broke up. In 1985, RuPaul released his first EP, Sex Freak. Without asking the rest of us, he and his micro indie label used the Wee Wee Pole demo as the B-side. I’m told this EP fetches a tidy sum on the internet. If you dig through the bowels of YouTube, you can find crappy renderings of the recordings buried somewhere.
But now you don’t need to do that.
When I recently mentioned to John Valesio of nearby Dreamland Recording Studios I had an 80s-era 1/4-inch tape I needed digitized, he enthusiastically offered to do it with a food dehydrator. Turns out, he transfers tapes all the time. This felt serendipitous. Here’s a guy I know and trust, with a sterling rep.
To those unfamiliar with the process of converting fragile old tape into digital files, here’s the deal: analog tape – reel-to-reel, cassette, etc. – degrades over time. The iron oxide in which the sound is encoded flakes and falls off the tape. It basically ages like a human, losing information, as if forgetting. The tape must be either baked in a convection oven or placed in a food dehydrator, and gently sapped of moisture. This re-seals the iron oxide – the music, the sonic data – back onto the tape. (Sadly, this does not work with humans.) You get one or two subsequent plays of the tape before the iron oxide starts falling off again, and your recorded sound is gone forever. During those plays, you capture the sound on digital equipment as best you can. (Then you just hope the grid never goes down.)
I didn’t know what to expect when I dropped the tape at Dreamland. John was optimistic. I did not stick around to witness the painstaking process.
John did a stellar job. Aside from a little hiss, the files are fat and clear, pretty much like I recall. My bass sounds great. I was on. Todd’s guitar shimmers. He was inventive, weird, funny, dark. I see him hunched over the instrument – a cheap Univox copy of a Mosrite like Johnny Ramone’s. David’s percussion, here minimal, there unchained, adds organic funk to the ticking Roland.
I am transported to little Caribeso studio, late summer ‘83. I nod at the rugs nailed to the ceiling, the hum of hot vacuum tubes. I feel at home. I can see Ru in a vocal booth for the first time, laughing, singing his ass off. Going for it. I smell that little room where we mixed it. Incense, boy sweat, weed stank in someone’s clothes. We were happy. We’d made something good, something that did not sound like any other Atlanta or Athens band. We did not sound like R.E.M.
Much credit and gratitude to Tomas Valenti. I recently tracked him down via Facebook. (His occupation: Renaissance Man.) He is very well indeed. He remembered us. He confessed he’d been freaked out by RuPaul. (That was normal, and we kind of dug that.)
“I do remember [RuPaul] being pretty wild,” he messaged me back. “But i found it entertaining, even if i didn't understand WTF was going on...”
I thanked him for nevertheless being kind and cool and doing right by us, with his good microphones and pro gear. Low tech, but not lo fi. He stayed out of our way, offered helpful suggestions for minor “sweetening,” and helped us capture how we sounded live. (Go here and you’ll see/hear I am right.) It could have gone horribly wrong, but it didn’t.
And of course, eternal gratitude to Craig Williams, for holding on to to that 80s relic as life took big swings at us, and for posting it to me from the Pacific Northwest in the middle of Obama’s second term. He recently emailed me: “By my reckoning, I lived in 12 different locations since getting custody of that demo, which means I hauled it (U-Hauled it?) every time I moved. Given my penchant for winnowing possessions, it's kind of amazing that artifact still exists. But it exists for a reason.”
Finally, please enjoy these resurrected tunes. When we created and recorded them, we envisioned strangers grooving to them, listening on tape decks, phonographs, and radios in faraway locales; fans dancing, driving, embracing. It did not happen, but I hope some semblance of that can transpire now. The 18-year-old me would love the idea of far-flung folks connecting through the ether, clicking on a button to defy time and space.
Beautifully penned. Such great writing!
Good music. Good writing. Been reading you on Substack for years, and enjoying and buying Holly’s books. It’s time for me to subscribe because the worker is worthy of his wage. Groovy 80s bass lines and RuPaul for god’s sakes! TY.