December 1993

By the second issue of the Journal in December 1993, I was hearing about more bands beyond the few I had encountered at the August 1993 Carytown Watermelon Festival and built my first issue around.

I heard from The Waking Hours – who are still struggling to make it in Los Angeles 14 years later – The Petals, Liberation, Mike Edwards and the Banned, Kyle Davis, Useless Playboys, Shadowvine, Ululating Mummies, No Small Feet, Frog Legs, Bio Ritmo, Kepone, The Seymores, Hegoat, Pleasure Astro, The Good Guys, Mick and the Moondogs, Scariens, Coral, Sketch, and the Dumm-Dumms.
 

The Seymores were considered the best bet for fame and fortune, despite the efforts of Twisters manager Steve Douglas to push Pleasure Astro, his girlfriend’s mostly girl band. The pair would be future major players in Plan 9’s Planetary Records label. Like the Local Music Store, it was another flawed business plan that provided employment for a variety of local music scene characters, without regard to business saavy.

I last saw Steve a few years ago, out on Grace Street where he had moved after leaving his family in Oregon Hill. He was going to Florida and before he left town, he wanted to write a shocking expose of his experiences in the Richmond music scene, but he never did. Some bridges are better left unburned, especially if you might come back.

Over the years, he had some strong opinions about what I was doing wrong with the Journal and when I didn’t comply, he’d withdraw advertising support if he was in a position to do so; hence, our relationship was terse. His vision was that the paper was supposed to be supportive to a fault of the local music scene. We tended to find fault. Douglas later put his support behind exactly that kind of newspaper, and it failed within a few months. I can’t remember the name of it but it was financed by members of Mr. Pink, a band I first enjoyed but then had to boycott because of their invasion onto my fragile advertising turf.

(Mr. Pink, not coincidentally, was signed to the Planetary label. Like so much of the Richmond scene, it was all interconnected and who-you-know, which doesn't always work out well. Sometimes you need who-knows-how instead of who-you-know.)

It’s hard to get out of my head some of the colorful and grimy stories of Steve’s exploits told to me by other guys. Even if they didn’t admire Steve’s music or business practices, they all took their hat off to his equipment, the punchline of many a Steve anecdote. There’s the "on the floor in Twisters in front of everybody" story with a well-known band groupie – who actually has a really good job now – and the "pull it out and whop it on the table" story, etc.

David Fera of The Seymores

The Seymores, fronted by David Fera, scorned the local music press as beneath them. I knew they were a serious band because they had 8x10 glossies. They were meant for greater things, but it never happened. They were signed by two labels, Vernon Yard and then David Lowery’s Pitch a Tent.

Remnants of The Seymores still float on the Internet, with the same publicity photo from 14 years ago, promoting the same three albums I remember, including the wonderfully titled “Treat Her Like a Show Cat.”

In October 2005, the Independent Weekly out of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill reported Fera was still an “almost famous musician.” His new band was the New Orleans-based Big Blue Marble, and there's plenty about that band on the Internet if you want to catch up with David. (photo)