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UNDER-APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH FOR SEPTEMBER 2012:  CODE BLUE 

 

 

Dean Chamberlain was born in San Francisco and grew up in the nearby city of San Mateo.  After the Motels (the original band that is) broke up, he ran an ad looking for other musicians; out of this, a trio called Skin was born in 1978 that also included Michael Ostendorf (bass) and Randall Marsh (drums).  They started playing gigs in the L.A. area, and scouts for Warner Bros. Records signed them the day after they heard one of their shows.  Ostendorf left the band, and after Gary Tibbs replaced him on bass, they changed their name to Code Blue, hospital-ese for a patient requiring immediate resuscitation.  (There are a lot of other hospital codes, but TV medical shows only ever seem to use the blue one). 

 

Code Blue recorded in Van Nuys, California and also in London; changing producers along the way, their first album, Code Blue was finally released in 1980.  I only have a promotional EP for their first album as shown above (also called Code Blue), but it is such uniformly excellent music that I had to include them as a UARB.  Code Blue mounted a national tour, opening for Thin Lizzy (with yet another bass player on hand, Joe Read); but it was reportedly not well-received.  A second album called True Story came out in 1982 on a different label, and shortly afterward, the band broke up. 

 

The opening cut on the Motels’ breakthrough album, All Four One is called “Mission of Mercy”, and that might not be a nod to their earlier name, Angels of Mercy.  However, the lyric “skin to skin” from Code Blue’s excellent song “Face to Face” could very well reference their original name Skin. 

 

After Code Blue’s demise, Dean Chamberlain played and toured for a while with the L.A. country punk band Tex & the Horseheads (though he was evidently not a bandmember) and then formed a trio called Resurrection.  With three members of a latter incarnation of punk band T.S.O.L. – Joe Wood (vocals), Mitch Dean (drums) and Dave Mello (bass) – and another guitarist from heavy metal shock-rockers the Mentors, Dean Chamberlain was next in a band in the early 1990’s by the name of Orange Wedge that played what he called “southern fried acid-speed-blues”. 

 

After leaving Code Blue, Michael Ostendorf was in an all-star line-up called Toni and the Movers that was formed by singer-songwriter Toni Childs in 1979.  The other bandmembers were Jack Sherman, who has had an active career in music and is best known for being an early member of Red Hot Chili Peppers and playing on their debut 1984 album, The Red Hot Chili Peppers; and Michael Steele, who was in two different all-female rock bands, the Bangles and the Runaways (she was known as Micki Steele in the latter band).  Toni Childs herself played and recorded with numerous musicians in the ensuing years and released two successful solo albums beginning in 1988; her first national tour was opening for Bob Dylan.  The title track “House of Hope” from her 1991 album House of Hope was featured in the film, Thelma and Louise. 

 

The man who replaced Michael Ostendorf in Code Blue, Gary Tibbs was in a host of bands at one time or another, including Adam and the Ants, Roxy Music, the Vibrators and (most recently) the Fixx, where he played on their 2003 album, Want that Life. 

 

The other original member of Skin and Code Blue, drummer Randall Marsh was in a band in 1970 with a then 17-year-old Tom Petty called Mudcrutch that was the direct forerunner to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  Marsh also took part in a reunion of Mudcrutch that released an acclaimed album in 2007 called Mudcrutch. 

 

After taking about 15 years off from the music scene, Dean Chamberlain formed a new roots-rock/blues band called The Honorable DHC with fellow Code Blue member Randall Marsh on drums and Ted Russell Kamp (also with Shooter Jennings’ band) on bass.  Their debut EP, Welcome to Wonder Valley came out on CD in 2011. 

 

I picked up the album for this month’s UARB at the same time as that of Wild Blue, and not surprisingly, I was confusing the two bands in my mind for quite a while before I learned my way around their albums.  I thought it would be kind of fun to include two bands with such similar names in the UARB list.  In the beginning, I wasn’t really sure about Code Blue, but Wild Blue was an obvious choice.  While their album was released toward the end of the wave, they were totally invested in the new wave movement, from the sound to the hair to the clothes.  That is not a bad thing; new wave is still one of the most interesting eras of rock music to my way of thinking. 

 

Meanwhile, the Code Blue EP was insinuating itself into the part of my cerebrum where my favorite songs are stored; after just a few plays, I was really starting to love these four songs – “Whisper/Touch”, “Face to Face”, “Hurt”, and “The Need” (all written by Dean Chamberlain).  They were even starting to play inside my head, as all four of them have been doing regularly while I have been putting this post together.  That is pretty rare actually:  Once again, I have been reminded that I do not consciously pick the music that I love.