CHRIS GARGES ON THE POPES
I was an avid music fan from an early age. I figured out in junior high school (on the bus, headed home from Piedmont Middle School one day,) that the possibility existed that I could make music for a living and from that moment on, I pursued every possible avenue towards that path. I became a fan of any "local" band that I could learn about at that age without having an older sibling to guide me towards REM or Let's Active or Pylon or any other slightly more mainstream bands starting to make the rounds the south in the mid-80s. I knew that I liked The Beatles and The Birds, and that "Destroyer" song that my DJ friend played non-stop on WIOS (Irwin Avenue Elementary School's closed-circuit radio station) led me to believe that I should someday investigate The Kinks. Even the guys in Van Halen were smart enough to like the Kinks! The Police and early U2 showed me the way to intelligent lyric writing and great hooks. Eventually stories from slightly older, great drummer friends at Piedmont and later West Charlotte High School about some older drummer named "Albert" showed me that leaving a mark on someone with your playing was a path to a legacy, even at an early age. (The late, great, long-time West Charlotte band director Marvin Davenport was always telling me stories about this fellow Albert-- the kind of stories I hoped he'd pass on about me in the years that followed.) Again, music was in my blood and I was ready to soak up anything, but it was the really special stuff that would make a deep impression.
My father is a CPA. A Certified Public Accountant. A math guy. He's a huge lover of music and an incredibly intelligent man. He's also a strong supporter of anything in which he believes. This all makes sense in retrospect, but he'll be the first to tell you that he does not have the specific music-creation gene, so I was baffled the day he came home from work with a record album for me, given to him by a co-worker. What's this? Some random album passed around the accounting firm? What are the chances that this is any good? But hey, I was soaking it up, so why not?
I put the album on my turntable and there it was: The jangly guitars. And nice vocal harmonies right from the top. This has promise. Maybe a goofy rhyme at the beginning, but it's intriguing. Go on. What's next? Okay, now it gets serious. The rock starts. Game-On. Voice with a vibe. Energy. Pure rock that a 15 year-old could REALLY understand. And what powerful drumming. All there and smart, but not overbearing. It served the song. Moving bass, like Sting or Paul McCartney. Again, not too busy, but the kind of thing that really impresses an up-and-coming teen musician. And the intellingent, weaving guitars and vocals. And the sound! So crisp and clean. Thick, fat drums and perfectly-balanced guitars and bass. I gotta remember this producer guy John Plymale and engineer Steve Gronback at TGS Studios in Chapel Hill! Everything about it pulled me and and made me want to listen. Hey, what's this? Some studio trickery to get me into the next tune? Well, okay! I don't even know the words yet and I want to sing along.
The record my dad brought home was "Hi, We're The Popes!"
Thus, my love affair with The Popes began.
It took me a while to start to realize just how smart those songs were, but I certainly listened to them enough times to figure it out. More feathers for the caps those guys wore. Great hooks and SMART, SMART songs. The characters all resonated and the situations all made sense, even to someone who hadn't experienced much of that stuff. (I know it sounds cheesy, but years later, many of those lyrics would help me sympathize with friends going through some tough times.)
Throughout my high school years, I would find so many paths crossing with these guys, but always in the periphery. The drummer, "Albert," that I'd heard so much about over the years was Albert Nisbett, The Popes GUY! Guitarist/singer John Elderkin was friends with the older brother of one of my younger brother's good friends and John's step-dad worked with my dad (which is how the album got to my house). My friend Andy had an older brother whose band, The Fidgets, had played with The Popes a time or two. Every time I went into a local record store, I'd look through the racks for another Popes release. How lucky I was to run across the cassette of the "Afar" EP at The Record Exchange at Cotswold in Charlotte and I snatched it right up with my latest paycheck from the ice cream shop at Park Road shopping center. The kids I drove to school were subjected to both those EPs constantly. All my friends knew all the songs and talked about them for years following. When I went to college in Florida, I mouthed off about these guys at every opportunity and exposed my roommates to all the Popes material I had on a regular basis.
Through one of our mutual friends, I found out about the later Popes incarnations while I was in Miami. I finally got to talk to John Elderkin on the phone when his band with Steve Ruppenthal, Stumble, was looking for a drummer in NC and he was nice enough to send me a cassette of some recording they had done. I loved it! No surprise there. At one point, I was fortunate enough to go see Stumble at The World-Famous Milestone Club (where I would play my first gig with John and Steve in The Public Good some 16 years later), and I was knocked-out at getting to hear the familiar sounds and sheer rock put out by John, Steve, and drummer Jim Rumley. It was a sound I'd heard on recordings for so long and it was so familar and homey and ass-kicking. Like the first time I went to see The Police or Pink Floyd or Rush or Miles Davis. Kind of surreal to be in the same room with that sound.
"Hi, We're The Popes!" was a record that truly shaped me as a musician. There are few records I was exposed to in 1988 that I have listened to as frequently or as consistently as "Hi, We're The Popes!" "Hi, We're The Popes!" was the first record in my collection that I digitized when landing my first professional recording studio job in 1997. I still remember every word of every song (except the few mysterious lyrics and every good record has a few) and they still blow me away like they have every time I've heard it since the day my dad brought that record home. Thanks, guys, for sharing that music with so many people and thanks, Dad, for doing what you always did-- passing along some magic.
Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC
