Soul city

The Crybabies' formula to happiness

by John O'Neill

It isn't that surprising that the Crybabies are so far out of step with popular music; consider their collective pedigree. Both guitarists belonged to the first wave of Wormtown punk bands, and the singer not only walks on the Stax side of the tracks but also remembers firsthand what many younger than him often speculate -- Woodstock sucked.

"I lost my sandals in the mud. There were thousands of people walking down this road," relates Artie Sneiderman. "It was raining and I got bored. [My group] went off to this friend's bungalow and blew it off."

Thus began an unlikely odyssey that took Sneiderman from California, where he lived inside a tree stump for two weeks, to the Midwest, where he wandered around virtually broke except for a hunk of hash in his pocket, and finally to Wormtown where he landed just in time to witness the punk explosion as doorman-by-default ("The original doorman was an old prize fighter who couldn't count change") at the famed nightclub Xit 13.

"I was really 10 years too old for the punk thing, but I was out of touch with my own generation," Sneiderman recalls. "People had forgotten what rock and roll was all about and [then] it came to people all at once -- why be bored? Rock and roll was about sex and movement, not sitting on the couch stoned listening to the Eagles with headphones on. It was a new thing -- people rediscovering rock and roll."

Sneiderman went on to front two of the city's premier rock-and-roll outfits, the rough and raucous Actions and later the more refined and soulful Belmondos. There were also stints with the incredible but short-lived Shambles and finally the Stags. After that, there was a four-year retirement for Wormtown's king of swing. "By then, I was sick and tired of it, there were too many come-downs. It was one upsetting thing after another."

Cut to 1998 and a converted barn-as-rehearsal-space in Fitchburg. The sound leaking out from inside suggests not a whole lot has changed for Sneiderman as the band chug out a mid-tempo number that is ripe with hook, and crackles with a soulful energy. It's refreshing and sharp and would be quite revolutionary if it were 1965. Today it has as much a chance for commercial appeal as syphilis.

"It's like cryogenics and Walt Disney," says guitarist Steve Aquino, when asked to explain why anyone would want to play this out-of-fashion style of music. Aquino may qualify better than anyone, having pulled duty in both the Actions and Odds as well as being the main catalyst responsible for yanking the once desperately floundering Lyres out of the crapper, restoring them to World's Greatest Garage Rock Band status. "When [Disney] was frozen it was Jiminy Cricket and Mickey Mouse. But the Beatles and Stones and Turtles were around too. I'm like him. My brain was cryogenically frozen in time, and I don't know anything else but this."

"We do it to be contrary, like shoveling shit against the tide," deadpans guitarist Jeff Crane, who, along with wife, Cheryl, on bass and drummer Joe Sheehan round out the band, who debut on Saturday, August 22, at Ralph's. "It's a masochistic thing. You do it and do it and don't get paid or get royalty checks. But at least we're doing something we like."

The Crybabies' sound reaches back to a better and brighter time, that innocent couple of years right after the Beatles first broke and just before Kennedy was the recipient of his Texas-style lobotomy. Featuring the chiming 12-string guitarwork of Aquino offset by Crane's straight-ahead raunch, the band come across like a stripped-down mix of the Byrds, Beatles, and Stones -- which, of course, would actually make them potential heirs-apparent to the throne recently vacated after nearly 30 years by their ultimate influence, the Flamin' Groovies. Playing polished and endearing pop, eschewing the original wave of you-dumped-me-now-fuck-off punk, which reverberated throughout mid-sixties suburban neighborhoods, in favor of the open-hearted what-will-I-do-now variety of folk rock, the Crybabies have a name that couldn't be more fitting. But they won't be crying if the world doesn't beat a path to their door.

"If you do what you do good enough, you'll make it happen," says Sneiderman. "It seems to me that, despite poses to the contrary, people want to be spoon-fed. If it doesn't come from a supposedly hip critic or body of people no one will buy it. Me, I do it for the money and the chicks. I wanna be the next Leif Garrett."

"Rockin' out is a fun thing to do, that's the motivator" says a momentarily serious Aquino after what seems a 10-minute running monologue about music and audience in relation to his . . . uh . . . manhood. "It gives you a good feeling when everything goes right. And sometimes everything does."