 Previous  ÂNext  UNDER-APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH FOR JUNE 2012:  WILD BLUEÂThis month's entry, WILD BLUE is another band that had a hard time settling on a name.  I guess that this is something of a sequel to the article on last month's UARB, Tina and the Total Babes, since this band is a part of the scene that T&TB's were saluting in their 2001 album.  The Wild Blue album showed up just as the New Wave was ebbing, and that might have been the reason that it was overlooked.  Wild Blue grew out of a Chicago group called Jinx that toiled in the local club scene beginning in the late 1970's.  The core members of this band were Joe Zanona (keyboards), Terry Curtin (bass guitar), and Frank Barbalace (guitars).  They had been looking for a female vocalist, and they found one in Renee Varo; Mike Neff was also added as the drummer.  A few years later though, they got a dreaded call:  There was a cabaret singer from California who had been using the name Jinx for some 15 years.  They tried to work out a deal with her, but to no avail, so they started calling themselves Wild Blue.  Thus, the name of their first LP, No More Jinx is basically an inside joke.  The band had already been signed to a two-album deal with Chrysalis Records, and they began laying down the tracks for their first album in 1985.  Chrysalis caused unnecessary friction in the band, however, by flying Renee Varo and Joe Zanona over to London to record half of the album with other studio musicians.  (They were also the only two bandmembers to make the front cover).  About this time, Terry Curtin and Mike Neff quit; they were replaced by Mike Gorman (bass) and Ken Harck (drums), two members of a late 1970's Chicago power-pop band called Off Broadway (Mike Neff had also been in that band).   Also, Chrysalis decided that they wanted to try to find a new name for the band – they had liked Jinx, but not Wild Blue – and they delayed the release of the album until early 1986, leaving the band in limbo for several months.  By October 1985, it had been over a year since their last live date.  Frank Barbalace is also a member of a well-regarded progressive-rock band (also from Chicago) called Trillion.  I won't say anything more about that for now, because they will likely be a future UARB before the end of the year.  Anyway, Frank Barbalace is ambitiously advertising on his website a two-CD collection of most of his recorded works – Wild Blue, Trillion and other material, including some that he did with who I gather is his wife Rebecca Barbalace in a band called Ondavon – for a $50 tab.  Oddly, there are only three tracks from the No More Jinx album that are listed.  He was one of the bandmembers who was left behind when most of the recording was done across the pond; and these are the songs that he co-wrote, though he also played guitar on one of the best songs on the album, "Fire with Fire".  But what is interesting about this offer is that this is the only reference on the Internet that I have been able to find of a second album by Wild Blue called Primitive Prayer.  Primitive Prayer is evidently the new name of the band as well, since the name Wild Blue had been dropped according to several newspaper and magazine articles about the "upcoming album", and it was to come out on a different label called Pasha Records.  Besides these various articles though – and there were quite a few of them, which tells me that Wild Blue had a lot of fans, at least in the Chicago area – I could find nothing else about the album other than what is available on his website.  Whether the album was actually released or not is unknown to me.  Allmusic does list a second album called Above and Beyond, but it is a 2004 release by a band called Wild Blue Yonder; as far as I can tell, there is no connection with Wild Blue.  The band that comes to mind when I think of Wild Blue is a long-time favorite of mine called Face to Face (not the punk rock band of the early 1990's also called Face to Face), which released several albums in the 1980's and had a minor hit with "10-9-8".  While not part of the Christian contemporary music scene, they were instead a mainstream rock band that soft-pedaled their Christianity.  Their eponymous first album, Face to Face (released in 1984) features a song called "Under the Gun" that – like Blondie's early foray into hip-hop, "Rapture" (from 1980) – includes a long verse that is spoken rather than sung.  I can't prove it, but from what I can tell, this qualifies as the first Christian rap song.  After many years of hunting, I found two later albums by Face to Face, plus a 12" single for 10-9-8.  *     *     *  *     *     * Â
 Flashback:  The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for June 2012 – WILD BLUE  Once again, I mentioned the Flashback band, Wild Blue in the write-up of the current UARB; this sure has happened a lot.  YouTube has a music video for "Fire with Fire" by Wild Blue at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGpO-2gr6PU .  The person who posted the video said that this was included in the soundtrack for a 1986 film, Fire with Fire.  The video intersperses color clips from the film with both color and black-and-white shots of the band in performance.  Wikipedia has an article on the film, whose cast include Virginia Madsen.  Based upon a comment that was posted with the video, bandmembers Renee Varo and Joe Zanona married and raised a family.   A better-quality audio-only version of the song is at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiY1p2cNF0c .  Unfortunately, "Fire with Fire" is the only song by the band that I could find on YouTube, but this is probably their best song.  (June 2014)   *    *    *  Picture Gallery:  The Under Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for June 2012 – WILD BLUE  This is their first album, No More Jinx:     This is a photo (a blend of two photos actually) on the back cover of the album that shows all five bandmembers:      This is a photo of Frank Barbalace, who played guitar in another UARB, Trillion:     (June 2015)  *    *    *  Here is a rundown of the past year’s (2011-2012) Under-Appreciated Rock Bands and Rock Artists:      April 2012 – 1960’s folk-rock singer-songwriter LINDA PIERRE KING (several songs on two compilation albums)   June 2012 – 1980’s new wave rock band WILD BLUE (2 albums, though 1 might be unreleased)       (Year 3 Review)  |
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