“Some of our best songs were written on one string.”
- The Edge/U2 (1987)
A question a few days ago was to name a great band from the 70s that the average person would not know of. I named UFO as my unknown pick from that decade. Friend Chris dropped Nazareth as his suggestion. That was a great choice. Some small number of people might know them from their cover of the Everly Brothers' song Love Hurts which got some airplay around ‘75/’76. The album it was from, Hair of the Dog, was a banger. It and the band were most worthy of praise.
Well, that was the 70s; we might as well do the same thing from the 80s. Who was somebody the world should have known about back then?
On February 13, 1987, shortly after I'd moved to Memphis, a girl and I drove over to Jonesboro, Arkansas to see .38 Special. Have you ever checked the internet for a band's tour history? I did that for this, looking for the exact date of that long ago show. What really hit home as I scrolled through pages and pages of their years on the road, was the blur and grind it must be for all involved to do that job. They'd been on the road since their inception in 1974. I'd seen them in 1980 in California and between then and this show I'm talking about, they'd played thousands of dates. Hannibal, Missouri, Myrtle Beach, North Carolina, Lansing, Michigan, El Paso, Texas, Vancouver, BC, night after night for years and years. I can't imagine the toll it would take. It's not laying asphalt, but still, I'd think you'd become a zombie. “Where are we, again?”
Anyway, February 1987, .38 Special had an opening act on the bill as you’d expect. I know we've all seen openers that are mostly unknown to the majority of the gathered crowd and don't leave much of an impression. It's a tough gig. People tend to be, at best, indifferent. “Wrap it up” is usually the collective mood of the audience. Every once in a while, though, a diamond shows up. This night it was a band called The Questionnaires. They came out and played a tight and memorable set of songs. People seemed to pay attention. I took note. I read up on them as best you could back then. They were a Nashville outfit making some waves and getting solid reviews. I caught them again at a show in Memphis and they were still, as a Brit might say, “Brilliant.”
Their first album, Window to the World, came out in ‘89 and I sure enough wore it out. They put out a second record in ’91, just ahead of the grunge tsunami of flannel, depression and out of tune guitars that was on the horizon. They were a little too polished, too melodic, too Big Star, for the zeitgeist of that new age, and soon they were gone.
It bummed me right out. In 1994, I bought a cd by an artist I was just getting to know, Shawn Colvin. It was called Cover Girl, and it was just that, her interpretations of a wide array of songs by musicians and songwriters she admired. One of the songs was Window to the World. She said in the liner notes:
A group called The Questionnaires was called to my attention by Martin Crutchfield
from Nashville. Martin was also the first person to insist that I listen to Steve Earle.
The whole summer of 1989 this song was my personal soundtrack. Then, that fall, all I did
was listen to the next song…
So, there it is, my pick for best unknown 80s band. How about you?