VALENTIME'S DAY 2015

It was 35 years ago today!  Blotto released its first EP Hello My Name Is Blotto What's Yours?  I took my boom box to work at the Empire State Plaza and had Q104 playing low ... Ellen McKinnon didn't play it, neither did Dan Boyle.  I was walking home to have lunch a little after noon and it happened: John Cooper played our version of Stop In The Name Of Love... and we were on the radio.  With my boom-box on my shoulder bro-style, I was mesmerized, so much so that I stepped into traffic on the corner of Hudson and Dove and nearly got run over.

We had a record release party that night at the Hullabaloo, which was a blast.   It would be months before we learned we had a real hit on our hands with I Wanna Be A Lifeguard; we were just a hard partying, silly, half cabaret, half rock band that made sure we all had a good time every time.

Anyway, one of the big regrets we've always had was that we didn't have a good live video of the band.  I have a vague recollection of a multi-camera shoot at a big Washington DC club called The Wax Museum, but nobody's ever seen any footage.  Then about a year ago I got a Facebook message from a guy named Charles Johnson that he had a copy of Tonight at Toads.  Apparently there was a television show in New Haven featuring bands playing at Toad's Place, one of our regular haunts, and there was an episode featuring us!  Who knew?

The show is from very early 1982; we'd driven to the gig from White Lake Studios in White Plains, where we were finishing up what was to become our album Combo Akimbo.  We were all wearing the embroidered bowling shirts I'd given out for Christmas a few weeks before.  The one thing I remembered from this gig was that at the time Portrait Records was trying to sign us, and a couple people from the label drove up from NYC to see us.  They brought this crazy little girl to our dressing room-- she had crazy hair and yelled a lot and clearly thought we were great.  I recognized her about 11 months later when Johnny Carson introduced her on her national television debut singing her new song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

Anyway, here it is, enjoy.  Thanks to Charles Johnson for digging it out and to Rob "Bert Blotto" Richter for cleaning it up!