ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE

There is this alternate universe…

It is one where I followed my friend Jimmy to Athens, GA in 1987, three or four years after anyone with jangle-pop dreams had any right or reason to make such a journey…

His friend Mike, the one with clear band-management tendencies, came too. He started booking us some frat parties. Our band went through a couple of name changes and bass players, and ultimately stuck with Cobweb Yard and a girl named Teri on bass.

We played around the South for a year, got tighter, and scored a semi-regular gig back home at the 40 Watt Club. We began to think about doing an album.

We booked some studio time and laid down an EP’s worth of what we felt was our top original material. IRS came sniffing around and agreed to release it.

Cobweb Yard enjoyed some airplay on college stations up and down the East Coast. Shot a chintzy video for $350 that aired for two consecutive Sundays on 120 Minutes. There was a quarter-page writeup in Matter magazine out in Chicago…

But things didn’t really gel after that. Nothing major—our drummer was the first to decide to go back to school, while he could still do so on his parents’ dime. A couple of us hung on for another six months or so, but by and large it was a hair-metal world, and we just didn’t fit.

Our “big” song, the one that got the airplay, the one with the video, shows up on the occasional 80s comp. In fact, the last time the whole band got together was right after we gave Rhino the rights to include the song on Vol. 14 of the Just Can’t Get Enough series—we had a little party down at Ruby Tuesday’s.

The song was Spanish Wings.