***the biography continues***

04 Claire (the girl with boofy hair) (Folks, Rock! re-issue, 1997, Track 1)
The song that set everything in motion -- though the version you hear here was not the ukulele-driven, vibraphone-heavy satire on high-school popularity contests we originally recorded in Doug’s Dad’s church (see notes to Bonus Track 13). This is the sanitised, radio-friendly version.

Barry’s college radio following in the US was growing by the week and we were enjoying the tour circuit across the West Coast. He fed off the exuberance of these crowds, and he grew more and more sure of himself and of his gift with each passing week. The BS Show was selling CDs at each gig of our independently produced Folks, Rock!, along with t-shirts and homemade art works, and we were actually making ends meet while having the time of our lives. (I didn’t actually get to play on these early shows as my vibraphone (see notes to Track 1) was still crossing the Pacific Ocean in its packing case).

Claire was always one of the more popular live tunes. We often opened with it and the beat really got the crowd going. Our simple indie acoustic groove was a panacea to grunge’s distortion-fuelled anger and disappointment. But while our sound comes across as folksy on the record (see Track 13) the live shows were anything but. It was in these halls that Barry invented himself as a performer, his growing confidence in his musical powers injected the shows with a self-belief that was infectious for us in the band and for the kids who came to see us. Just as the early songs radiate a sense of shared worth in the value of human existence, all these kids came to feel the warmth that emanated from the stage. Don’t get me wrong, this was no post-grunge, second-Woodstock love in. We didn’t take ourselves too seriously. We were laughing but at ourselves and each other.

This was the halcyon period for Barry and for us. But it was all about to change.

In early 1997, one night at the Aladdin Theatre in Portland, this woman came up to Barry after our show. Pushing right past me, in a low-cut floral print chiffon blouse and tight leather mini-skirt, she clearly didn’t fit in with the rest of the crowd in their vintage gear. She introduced herself as Raychell Steel and said straight up: “I want you,” she paused for dramatic effect, “for my record label.” None of the rest of us heard what else she had to say, as they went out the back, though we would all know soon enough. She told him he was great, his songs were great, but the indie folk thing would have to change if he wanted mainstream success.

It was the beginning of the end for us as we had been and as we had grown up musically together. Evidently she said that the brushes would have to go, the acoustic would need to be replaced by electrics and the vibes were definitely the wrong look and sound (we’d just got them from off the container ship about two weeks before). Barry was seduced figuratively and literally by Raychell. Over the course of the next few months, Bet, Doug, Tina and I left the band one by one. Artistic differences.

Raychell told Barry that Claire was the song that would make him a household name but that it would need an electric makeover. And she said you couldn’t have a song on mainstream radio that had words like “beatific,” “chastise” and “dyke” so they needed to be re-written. And so Barry re-recorded Claire, under Raychell’s watchful eye. The new version explodes out of the blocks, with Bet’s limber brush-work gone, replaced by drive and power of Dave Grohl, whom Raychell brought in as a session drummer. But the big change was Barry putting down the acoustic and switching to a Fender Strat, along with a Vox tremolo pedal, which was to become something of a signature sound for the next album, The Barry St*rr Show, and beyond. And on this record he played his first guitar solo, where my vibraphone had sung out so clearly on the original (see Track 13).

Raychell’s label put out a hurried re-release of Folks, Rock!, exactly the same as ours (see Tracks 1 - 3) with the exception of Claire, with the new version being the key to airplay and the fame that Barry now felt was within his reach.