Page 10
Daily Nebraskan
Monday, October 18, 1982
Arte 5 Emtertaiiiment
Cody knocks out packed house
By Pat Higgins
As Commander Cody still sings, "There's no such
thing as having too much fun." The good Commander
knocked out an overflow house at Judge's with his
boogie-woogie piano and good-humored approach last
Thursday.
Cody ran through all the tunes that made him semi
famous back in the '70s. "Hot Rod Lincoln," "Seeds
and Stems" and "It Should Have Been Me (With That
Real Fine Chick)" drove the crowd to a near frenzy.
It was a bizarre sociological mix of urban cowboys,
rural cowboys, Greeks and Deadheads there, all united
in their allegience to the party guy.
Cody's tale is kind of a traditional decline-and-fall
record-biz story, though.
Once upon a time, Commander Cody and the Lost
Planet Airmen were a passel of hippies who played
wired-up country music and made a bunch of records.
"We were ripped off for literally hundreds of
thousand of dollars," the Commander, a.k.a. George
Frayne, said in an interview during a technical screw
up Thursday night. "But what can we do? Try to sue
Warner Brothers, who hide everything behind 19 layers
of their corporation?"
To start the show, Commander lurched onstage
and belted out "Too Much Fun." He made many
references to mood-altering substances, such as
alcohol, but claimed that he had cleaned up his own
act.
"I hate to ruin my image, but "I don't drink
anymore," the Commander said, waving a Budweiser,
"I mean, except at gigs. Believe it or not, I'm into
health now." (
As part of his physical fitness campaign, the Com
mander has taken to the gridiron. Back home in the
Bay Area, he plays football on the beach with the likes
of John Matuzak and Ted (the Mad Stork) Hendricks
of the Los Angeles, Oakland, Raiders.
"Matuzak and Hendricks are pretty wild guys to
hang out with. I've always been a Raiders fan, but
it's kind of disgusting that they moved to LA," Cody
said. "Don't even ask me how much I'm losing by not
betting on the card because of the strike."
Cody had shared the spotlight with the Lost Planet
Airmen. Now he pretty much is the whole show. It
took him a while to adjust, and it cost him his solo
contract with Arista.
"Arista and I parted company several years ago,"
he said. "I'm on Peter Pan records now and they don't
have any money to support records very well. It took
me years to improve my singing. The Arista records
really don't have good vocals."
Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen used
to play baseball stadiums with the likes of the Grateful
Dead.
Nowadays, he's nervous about a club date. He was
visibly angry about the technical hassles.
"This is a big gig for me - a full house on a Thurs-;
day night," Cody said. "The music industry is already
in a depression. Clubs are closing all over. There's
no money out there."
As long as the Commander is around to do songs
like "I'm Going to Put a Bar in the Back of My Car (and
Drive Myself to Drink)," there's going to be an
audience for his shenanigans.
7T
it
till CBI
Staff photo by Craig Andresen
7 hate to ruin my image,
but I don't drink anymore,"
- Commander Cody
Motels singer turns words of hurt into hitiyrics
By David Wood
I chatted with a dream lover last week. Life is good
sometimes.
The Motels will be at the Warehouse in Omaha on
Tuesday, and Martha Davis, the band's beautiful singer,
songwriter and rhythm guitarist, was reached by phone
Friday. Everyone should know who she is; anyone who
has been near a radio has heard her sing "Only the
Lonely" and "Take the L."
Take the L out of lover and it 's over.
Less than a year ago, the words were no more than
the sad state of an.affair for Davis. Her four-year romance
with the lead guitarist was coming apart; the band threa
tened to fall to pieces.
Instead, Davis made the words of hurt into the lyrics
of a national hit. The album the Motels put out went
gold a few weeks ago. "All Four One," the band's third
album, has been in the Top 100 for almost a year, kept
aloft by the two hits.
"I was this close to throwing in the dishrag," Davis
said. "It was . . . very emotional ... 1 had to sit back,
take a deep breath, count to 10."
The "All Four One" effort has transformed the Motels
from a mildly new wave band with an OK following
into a national smash. The Motels are a band in transi
tion in many ways. Having concluded three weeks on
a J. Geils tour, the band is off on a tour that will take
them all over the United States and ultimately to Aus
tralia. It will keep them busy until almost Christmas.
"It's better to go to the clubs," Davis said. "I prefer
small places to huge places, because you can pack them
in and it's - what do I want to say? - unintimidating."
When I called her in Evanston, III., she had woken
minutes before from napping after a 60-hour bus ride
from Vancouver, British Columbia.
"I think we've eaten in every Husky."
How could life on the road be any less stressful than
earlier problems?
"There's no one involved who isn't a complete angel
and a joy to work with ... the crew, the bus driver,
they're all wonderful . . . We've really been getting into
something we call bus-dancing. We dance and fall around
to old R A. B stuff while we're traveling. It's good for
balance and coordination."
Davis seemed Instantly friendly, alert and cheery.
She has a rich, warm phone voice. I should confess I have
been particularly taken with her since a couple of years
back when I taw the Motels open for the Cars in Omaha.
I remarked she had smoked a lot that night, then went
on to admire her singing.
"I've never had any problem with my voice, and I've
never had any problem with smoking," she said and
laughed. She isn t a big smoker, she said; the cigarettes
tic mostly a stage prop for effect.
I asked the standard "What is the single biggest ob
stacle you have overcome in your career?"
"Fear," she said.
Davis first performed in 1971, she explained, "at a
totally nutty gig in San Francisco on Halloween nigh).
There were a couple hundred people ... a naked man
painted blue ... I was afraid when I went out on stage
but, all of a sudden, it was fantastic. It was the best
thing that's ever happened to me."
Photo courttty of Capitol Record
"Music is its own growth process.
You can sit down with a guitar
and thank it afterward."
- Martha Davis
She had been invited to sing with the band, which
included two later members of the Motels, only three
days earlier, when she was asked by "a girlfriend who
was the bassist."
The appearance must have made a good impression
that led to many engagements, I said.
"Eight years as the Motels," she replied.
What has been her single biggest achievement?
"My children," she said without hesitation. Davis,
31, has two daughters, 14 and 16, and recently has
adopted a 16-year-old nephew.
Has music been her sole, lifetime dream?
"Well, it has been my soul, and it has been much of
my life. I started playing guitar when I was 8; I started
writing songs when I was 15 ... It was a very solitary
thing, a kind of personal therapy . . . Mom had a fa
bulous record collection, and my dad brought home
that guitar. He played it for a while and sang.'"
When she was 18 and 19, she thought she might
want to be a painter, but eventually she destroyed her
work in frustration. Music has been her chief drive since.
"From the music on the radio I heard growing up,
I thought rock 'n' roll was . . . minimal ... and boring.
It wasn't till I heard Bowie and Roxy Music that I started
thinking it was something else and got into rock 'n'
roll."
The three .Motels albums all have come out on a
major label - Capitol. That is a coup for even a Los
Angeles band. -The first album was displayed well in
stores, 1 remember, and I initially bought it for its great
cover. The poster for the album hung for a while on
Johnny Fever's wall in "WKRP in Cincinnati."
It was nominated as both the best and the worst al
bum cover of 1979, Davis said. She also said that her
"daughter's girlfriend's father" was a producer on
"WKRP."
"Capitol has a' particular love for this band," Davis
has had complete control over the music and graphics,
but the first two albums sold only well enough to re
cover most of their cost. "When we started on our last
record, they came in and said, 'This is going to be it,
kids.' "
Davis wrote "40 or 50" songs from which 10 were
chosen.
"I lock myself in a bedroom with an acoustic guitar,
a bottle of red wine, cigarettes and a cassette recorder . . .
I play the tape to the band, they can't make it out and
1 plug in my Les Paul ... I only bring the best songs.
I've been doing this long enough to know which they
are."
Where does she want to go with her songs in the
future?
"Music is its own growth process . . . You can sit
down with a guitar and thank it afterward."
For now, the Motels are a boom band, destined to
stay on the playlists for a while. A third song will be
released from the album - "Forever Mine," which would
have been my radio pick from the start.
Maybe fust a place in timeMy forever mine.
"It's the first happy song I've written without a hint
of dismay and despair in it . . . We end the show with
it now " my dream lover said. "It's a good song, and to
hear it live is something special."
