By Susan Whitall
In 1979, fusing disaffected suburban smart-aleck attitude onto a hot funk beat was about as fresh a musical genre as there was. Don and David Was, "brothers" of different mothers (and fathers) out of Oak Park, formed Was (Not Was) to make snarky, rhythmically compelling music that hit fans in a sweet spot they didn't know existed.
Like something scary yet cool spawning in a nuclear waste pond, the band rocked the '80s with such MTV-friendly hits as "Wheel Me Out," "Out Come the Freaks," "Walk the Dinosaur" and "Spy in the House of Love."
A teasing, Detroit noir sensibility evinced itself in lyrics like: "Tara Venus, a rent-a-stripper, you could feast your eyes but you couldn't grip her" (from "Out Come the Freaks.")
And then came a 16-year break between CDs. Blame Bonnie Raitt and her 1989 Don Was-produced smash, "Nick of Time," which launched a slew of other producing projects for both men. This month, Rykodisc released a new Was (Not Was) album, "Boo!," and the group has reunited for a world tour that stops in at the Majestic Theater tonight.
"The ethos of Was (Not Was) and any music of its ilk, was that anything over a persuasive beat works -- anything," says David Was (nee Weiss) by phone from his California home. "The rules were broken as long as you hewed to this rhythmic imperative. Whenever it gets too perfect or polite, then I think your focus is gone."
He means it. Was (Not Was)'s first official gig was at the long-defunct club Nitro on Detroit's west side one day in the late '70s, and featured Don Was (nee Fagenson) on bass, Weiss on flute, soul singers Sir Harry Bowens and Sweet Pea Atkinson on vocals, plus an array of musicians, including keyboard player Louis Resto, saxophonist David McMurray, guitarist Wayne Kramer, jazz trumpet player Marcus Belgrave and members of Funkadelic.
But whatever strange lyrics or jazz changes are thrown into this Detroit soul stew, it all goes back to what David Was feels is music's primal function: Moving human flesh to a beat.
Kindred spirits
Was (Not Was) began to coalesce at a Count Basie gig Don and David attended at age 15.
The two had met at Oak Park's Clinton Junior High School, sitting outside the assistant principal's office waiting for detention. They started hanging out.
"Somehow, we got ourselves down to the Detroit Light Guard Armory for a Count Basie show," Was relates.
"It was one of those shows where you could buy mixers for the liquor you brought, and boxed chicken dinners. There was no seating, because people were either going to stand up by the band, or they were going to dance. Well, a black woman of about 34 took me by the arm and wheeled me onto the floor. I followed her as best I could, grateful for this beneficence, that she had turned me from Oak Park white boy into soft-stepping dude about town."
Was came to realize that watching music while silently sitting in a concert hall was an aberration that had come relatively late in the history of mankind.
David and Don had also been culturally stimulated by the integration of their school when kids from Royal Oak Township were brought in. "It was like having the curtain lifted on your suburban, shielded view of life," Was says. "It wasn't long thereafter that I began to fantasize about being in a blaxploitation movie, pimped out in pimp clothes and leading a parade of women down Woodward Avenue."
If you hadn't guessed, he is responsible for the more startling imagery in Was (Not Was) lyrics.
David Was moved to Los Angeles in the '70s, while Don stayed behind in Detroit to live the bohemian musician life, launching a punk band, the Traitors. The friends collaborated long-distance, riffing over the phone and leaving music on each other's phone message machines.
Primitive vs. realist
That working style has persisted over the years, even after Don moved to L.A. as well. (Both Don and David are married, with grown children.)
"Don is this super-realist who tries to get the heart pumping again in a Stax-Volt or Atlantic or Motown genre," David explains, "whereas I am studiously unstudious. I'm the primitive, the Grandma Moses of Was (Not Was). When I'm cutting stuff, I'm trying to make something I've never heard before."
The song with the most dance floor promise on "Boo!" -- "Your Luck Won't Last" -- started out as something David rapped into Don's voice-mail last year.
"When I put it on Don's voice-mail, he said, 'Oh man, we've got to cut that.' I transferred my computer file over, we added a few more parts, and right now we've got it out for 10 remixes, hoping to get back on the dance charts."
Over the years, both David and Don have pursued producing careers, Don helming projects for Brian Wilson, Bob Seger, B.B. King, the Black Crowes, George Clinton, Carly Simon and the B-52s, among others. David's credits include Roy Orbison, k.d. lang, Rickie Lee Jones and Wayne Kramer (of the MC5).
Both Was "brothers" worked together producing Bob Dylan, and wrote a song with him, "Mr. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." It appears on "Boo!"
Dylan's sensibility jibed very comfortably with the jazzy, boho zaniness of the two native Detroiters.
Or, as David puts it: "I think I endeared myself to Dylan by being such a goof."
The breakthrough happened when Dylan was in the studio cutting a vocal. "It was all right -- not bad." Weiss says. "Don says, 'Great vocal, Bob.' Bob says, 'Great? You thought that was great?' And Don hedges. 'Well, you could do it again...but yeah, some good stuff on there.'
"A silence descended," David says, "and what seemed like 100 years passed. I said these words: 'Yeah Bob, there was something special in the air here tonight. I got the feeling, while you were singing, that had Al Martino walked in here, the two of you could have created a very special magic together.'
" 'Al Martino?' Dylan said. 'Al Martino?' Then: 'Al Martino wouldn't walk into a room unless it had a ceiling fan in it.' "
It took a few years for David to appreciate the humor in the line. "Now I realize, yeah, Al Martino would be working the toilets in Miami Beach, with palm fronds and ceiling fans."
Paula Abdul connection
As for the song they wrote together, that came about when Dylan overheard Don say that writing a song for then-hot Paula Abdul was "like signing our names to a check for a quarter-million dollars each."
Dylan barked: "A quarter-million dollars? David -- get a pen. You and me are going to write a song for Paula Abdul."
They batted out a series of stream-of-consciousness lyrics, but sadly, she rejected the opus. But it pops up on "Boo!" "It's like any of our songs, so absurd, but sung with such conviction by Sweet Pea that it seems like it must mean something."
So we leave art-funk pioneers Was (Not Was) playing catch-up after 16 years away.
David thinks "Boo!" is a start.
"This album is spiritual Drano, it unclogs the pipes of the years of inactivity and retrieves the stuff that we were working on, setting the stage to make new stuff," he says. "And hopefully, reclaiming the dance mandate that motivated the band to begin with."
You can reach Susan Whitall at (313) 222-2156 or swhitall@ http://detnews.com.
In 1979, fusing disaffected suburban smart-aleck attitude onto a hot funk beat was about as fresh a musical genre as there was. Don and David Was, "brothers" of different mothers (and fathers) out of Oak Park, formed Was (Not Was) to make snarky, rhythmically compelling music that hit fans in a sweet spot they didn't know existed.
Like something scary yet cool spawning in a nuclear waste pond, the band rocked the '80s with such MTV-friendly hits as "Wheel Me Out," "Out Come the Freaks," "Walk the Dinosaur" and "Spy in the House of Love."
A teasing, Detroit noir sensibility evinced itself in lyrics like: "Tara Venus, a rent-a-stripper, you could feast your eyes but you couldn't grip her" (from "Out Come the Freaks.")
And then came a 16-year break between CDs. Blame Bonnie Raitt and her 1989 Don Was-produced smash, "Nick of Time," which launched a slew of other producing projects for both men. This month, Rykodisc released a new Was (Not Was) album, "Boo!," and the group has reunited for a world tour that stops in at the Majestic Theater tonight.
"The ethos of Was (Not Was) and any music of its ilk, was that anything over a persuasive beat works -- anything," says David Was (nee Weiss) by phone from his California home. "The rules were broken as long as you hewed to this rhythmic imperative. Whenever it gets too perfect or polite, then I think your focus is gone."
He means it. Was (Not Was)'s first official gig was at the long-defunct club Nitro on Detroit's west side one day in the late '70s, and featured Don Was (nee Fagenson) on bass, Weiss on flute, soul singers Sir Harry Bowens and Sweet Pea Atkinson on vocals, plus an array of musicians, including keyboard player Louis Resto, saxophonist David McMurray, guitarist Wayne Kramer, jazz trumpet player Marcus Belgrave and members of Funkadelic.
But whatever strange lyrics or jazz changes are thrown into this Detroit soul stew, it all goes back to what David Was feels is music's primal function: Moving human flesh to a beat.
Kindred spirits
Was (Not Was) began to coalesce at a Count Basie gig Don and David attended at age 15.
The two had met at Oak Park's Clinton Junior High School, sitting outside the assistant principal's office waiting for detention. They started hanging out.
"Somehow, we got ourselves down to the Detroit Light Guard Armory for a Count Basie show," Was relates.
"It was one of those shows where you could buy mixers for the liquor you brought, and boxed chicken dinners. There was no seating, because people were either going to stand up by the band, or they were going to dance. Well, a black woman of about 34 took me by the arm and wheeled me onto the floor. I followed her as best I could, grateful for this beneficence, that she had turned me from Oak Park white boy into soft-stepping dude about town."
Was came to realize that watching music while silently sitting in a concert hall was an aberration that had come relatively late in the history of mankind.
David and Don had also been culturally stimulated by the integration of their school when kids from Royal Oak Township were brought in. "It was like having the curtain lifted on your suburban, shielded view of life," Was says. "It wasn't long thereafter that I began to fantasize about being in a blaxploitation movie, pimped out in pimp clothes and leading a parade of women down Woodward Avenue."
If you hadn't guessed, he is responsible for the more startling imagery in Was (Not Was) lyrics.
David Was moved to Los Angeles in the '70s, while Don stayed behind in Detroit to live the bohemian musician life, launching a punk band, the Traitors. The friends collaborated long-distance, riffing over the phone and leaving music on each other's phone message machines.
Primitive vs. realist
That working style has persisted over the years, even after Don moved to L.A. as well. (Both Don and David are married, with grown children.)
"Don is this super-realist who tries to get the heart pumping again in a Stax-Volt or Atlantic or Motown genre," David explains, "whereas I am studiously unstudious. I'm the primitive, the Grandma Moses of Was (Not Was). When I'm cutting stuff, I'm trying to make something I've never heard before."
The song with the most dance floor promise on "Boo!" -- "Your Luck Won't Last" -- started out as something David rapped into Don's voice-mail last year.
"When I put it on Don's voice-mail, he said, 'Oh man, we've got to cut that.' I transferred my computer file over, we added a few more parts, and right now we've got it out for 10 remixes, hoping to get back on the dance charts."
Over the years, both David and Don have pursued producing careers, Don helming projects for Brian Wilson, Bob Seger, B.B. King, the Black Crowes, George Clinton, Carly Simon and the B-52s, among others. David's credits include Roy Orbison, k.d. lang, Rickie Lee Jones and Wayne Kramer (of the MC5).
Both Was "brothers" worked together producing Bob Dylan, and wrote a song with him, "Mr. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." It appears on "Boo!"
Dylan's sensibility jibed very comfortably with the jazzy, boho zaniness of the two native Detroiters.
Or, as David puts it: "I think I endeared myself to Dylan by being such a goof."
The breakthrough happened when Dylan was in the studio cutting a vocal. "It was all right -- not bad." Weiss says. "Don says, 'Great vocal, Bob.' Bob says, 'Great? You thought that was great?' And Don hedges. 'Well, you could do it again...but yeah, some good stuff on there.'
"A silence descended," David says, "and what seemed like 100 years passed. I said these words: 'Yeah Bob, there was something special in the air here tonight. I got the feeling, while you were singing, that had Al Martino walked in here, the two of you could have created a very special magic together.'
" 'Al Martino?' Dylan said. 'Al Martino?' Then: 'Al Martino wouldn't walk into a room unless it had a ceiling fan in it.' "
It took a few years for David to appreciate the humor in the line. "Now I realize, yeah, Al Martino would be working the toilets in Miami Beach, with palm fronds and ceiling fans."
Paula Abdul connection
As for the song they wrote together, that came about when Dylan overheard Don say that writing a song for then-hot Paula Abdul was "like signing our names to a check for a quarter-million dollars each."
Dylan barked: "A quarter-million dollars? David -- get a pen. You and me are going to write a song for Paula Abdul."
They batted out a series of stream-of-consciousness lyrics, but sadly, she rejected the opus. But it pops up on "Boo!" "It's like any of our songs, so absurd, but sung with such conviction by Sweet Pea that it seems like it must mean something."
So we leave art-funk pioneers Was (Not Was) playing catch-up after 16 years away.
David thinks "Boo!" is a start.
"This album is spiritual Drano, it unclogs the pipes of the years of inactivity and retrieves the stuff that we were working on, setting the stage to make new stuff," he says. "And hopefully, reclaiming the dance mandate that motivated the band to begin with."
You can reach Susan Whitall at (313) 222-2156 or swhitall@ http://detnews.com.
send msg 
