Someday, Someway

Marshall Crenshaw is why I never could have been a record executive.

(I just sensed a collective “huh…what?” from anyone out there reading this.  Let me rephrase that.  Nine out of ten of you – assuming ten people ever read this – have never or barely even heard of Marshall Crenshaw.  The tenth is now jumping up and down yelling, “He’s AWESOME, dude!.” or something to that effect.  So stay with me here for a moment, and this should all make some sense.)

Marshall Crenshaw released his eponymous first album in the summer of 1982.  I was 19 years old and had just finished my first year of college in Los Angeles.  I love music.  I was his target demographic.  I think I even subscribed to Rolling Stone magazine at the time.  (Does anyone subscribe to magazines anymore?  I remember just getting a pile of magazines in the mail every month in those days.) 

His album received rave reviews, and I kept hearing the catchy single, “Someday, Someway,” on the radio.  It was three minutes of infectious power pop bliss.  I had to have it.   I had just purchased my first CD player around that time, and bought it as a CD.

 (For any younger readers, 1982/83 would have been right around the time of the transition from vinyl analog albums to digital compact discs, or CD’s).

I purchased the CD IN A MUSIC STORE and brought it home.  Placed the disc in the CD player and cranked it up.  100 watts a channel coming out of four speakers.  Every song seemed catchy, yet intelligent; fresh, yet familiar; and very pop, but almost alternative.  I don’t believe a day went by that summer when I didn’t listen to that album. 

Most of my friends at college and work loved the album.  I still love that album.

“Have you heard Marshall Crenshaw’s album yet?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s awesome!  Love that album!  Crenshaw rocks!”

First off, the thing to note here, as Vin Scully would say, is that people back then would actually talk and read about albums.  ENTIRE albums.  They might even go so far as to have a party and invite people over to listen to a new album.  Sometimes, if they liked it, they’d play it again!  That just doesn’t happen anymore.  When was the last time you had a conversation with someone about a new album?  When was the last time somebody made a decent, complete album?  I’m guessing Green Day’s “American Idiot.”  Instant classic. That was seven years ago.

So Marshall Crenshaw was young and talented, looked a bit like Buddy Holly (he would even go on to play Buddy Holly in La Bamba, the Hollywood biopic of Ritchie Valens), maybe even sounded a bit like an ‘80’s version of Buddy Holly, had a nice, pleasing voice, wrote some catchy tunes, got good reviews and airplay, and seemed to get good buzz at the time.

The album showed some staying power and was on the pop charts for six months, but it never rose higher than #50.  The single, “Someday, Someway,” went to #36 on the Billboard Hot 100 that summer.  The album eventually sold a respectable, but not eye catching, 400,00 copies.  Crenshaw would never have an album or single chart that high again.

The problem is that album should have sold four MILLION copies.  Easy.  It was a great album then and it’s still a great album.  It got five out of five stars in both the All Music and Rolling Stone guides.  It was released by Warner Brothers Music, one of the largest music companies in the world, so it had some marketing muscle behind it.  But for those strange, ephemeral reasons that a new talent or sound immediately strikes a chord with the general public, or it doesn’t, Crenshaw wasn’t quite able to nail the pop bulls-eye.

Just for fun, can you guess which talented, fresh, new act won the Grammy for Best New Artist that year?  Men at Work.  The award was outsourced to Australia.  Crenshaw was not even nominated.

And that’s why I never could have been a record executive.  A kid like that walks into my office, pulls a demo tape out of his back pocket with the songs from that first album on it, and I’d be ready to bet a kilo of coke that he was going to be a star. 


Never happened, and talent had nothing to do with it.

 

Crenshaw’s first national television appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982.