sounds to me like you're calling your dog

OK, now that my digression with the rest of the East Seventh Avenue Diaspora is done with, I'd really like to give a big old Caulfields Blog thumbs-up to that Deli interview with Cindy -- easily the best article about her that I've ever read (sadly, there have been too few, although here's an older one that turned out pretty OK).

Among other relevations, Cindy talks about:

1) the meaning of "Phoebe's Song," especially the line "erase profanity's trace" (I swear, I had thought she was doing some stilted pronunciation of "the faintest trace"), and the role that The Catcher in the Rye played in forming her early imaginings about the Northeast;

2) what prompted her to write the song "Cash" (which I never would have guessed is about Johnny and June Cash -- d'oh!);

3) and the absolute, gobsmack-me-with-a-2-by-4 insanity of Polygram signing Pee Shy within a year of them recording their first $1-a-copy demo tape ("Are you you insane?! Are you crazy?! I mean, c'mon it was hilarious. It was like: joke's on you.") Though I suspect that the spread on them in Interview magazine probly had something to do with it. Plus they did rock.

4) also, the answer to that bizarre Robert Altman mystery, which had perplexed me ever since I'd read that his ballet movie The Company was going to have "Mr. Whisper" in the soundtrack. Now I'm very glad I didn't run out to see the movie just to hear seven seconds of one song ... but man, the stupidity of Universal in not letting Altman use it, even after Cindy had forfeited her fee. Grrrrrrr. (Coolest line in the whole article: "I don't care: Robert Altman actually listened to one of my songs!!")

5) plus stuff I hadn't even guessed, like her working in the amusement park at Opryland one summer.

But my absolute, absolute, absolute favorite part of this was Cindy's explanation for the most inexplicable lie in the history of Pee Shy's short but glorious career -- the falsehood, printed in endless college newspapers, zines and websites, that Cindy was a national poetry slam champion. Yes, she's a wonderful poet. Yes, she brought the slams to Tampa. Yes, she competed in the 1993 national slams in San Francisco (and, if I recall correctly, rather charmingly forgot the words in the middle of "I Wanted to Go Out Dancing But the Music Was Lame"). But I couldn't imagine the women just deciding to make shit up like that.

So it's a great relief to find out that the culprit was, yes, the record company. And that Cindy tried to put a stop to it. And then the company tried claiming that Pee Shy had played the second stage at Lollapalooza? Strange.

(Now can somebody please track down that marketing genius who came up with the phrase "thinking woman's favorite"? As if Pee Shy were the musical equivalent of The Bell Jar, or Four Weddings and a Funeral, or something?)

Anyway, I don't want to ruin the rest of the story for y'all. But Cindy's very funny, very real, very down-to-earth about her own foibles and those of that wacky rock 'n' roll world of hers. Enjoy!


P.S. Yeah, that Eagles thing didn't work out too well. But Andy, Donovan, T.O. and the gang will be back!