{"id":10603,"date":"2011-11-30T10:30:12","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T15:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=10603"},"modified":"2011-11-30T10:44:31","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T15:44:31","slug":"mystery-date-revealed-human-switchboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/mystery-date-revealed-human-switchboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery Date Revealed: Human Switchboard"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/MysteryDateRevealed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"490\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Will Your Mystery Date Be a Dream or a Dud?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m glad people liked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/mystery-date-30\/\" target=\"_blank\">our latest <em>Mystery Date<\/em><\/a>, &#8220;I Gotta Know,&#8221; an early single by Cleveland underground band <strong>Human Switchboard<\/strong>. When I downloaded recently a 21-track collection of their first album, which I\u00a0regretted having sold years ago to support\u00a0something of an ephemeral nature,\u00a0and other releases from their late-1970 through early-1980s career I was pleased by how much I still enjoye their music. <em>Who&#8217;s Landing in My Hangar<\/em> was one of those albums a young me wore as a badge of honor. It felt really cool to not only own and dig that album but a mid-&#8217;80s solo album by primary singer-songwriter\u00a0<strong>Bob Pfeifer<\/strong>, the guy who&#8217;s voice reminded you of Lou Reed, David Johanssen, Richard Hell, and the like. Long ago I also sold that pretty decent and really obscure album to fund the same ephemeral experience. Sad.<\/p>\n<p>Anyhow, Human Switchboard was a pretty cool little band, if you ask me, that has failed to generate the hipster critical acclaim I would think they have coming to them. Check out these two opening songs from their lone studio album, &#8220;(Say No To) Saturday&#8217;s Girl,&#8221; sung by groovy organ player <strong>Myrna Marcarian<\/strong>, and the title track. Right off the bat the band did a great job of sequencing their range of &#8217;60s pop and more biting garage-punk, occupying a place smack in the middle of early Blondie and artsier NYC bands like Television.<\/p>\n[audio:http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Human-Switchboard_01_Say-No-To-Saturdays-Girl.mp3|titles=Human Switchboard, &#8220;(Say No To) Saturday&#8217;s Girl&#8221;]\n[audio:http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Human-Switchboard_02_Whos-Landing-In-My-Hanger.mp3|titles=Human Switchboard, &#8220;Who&#8217;s Landing In My Hanger&#8221;]\n<p>A couple of fun facts, some of which\u00a0I learned in my few minutes of research in preparation for today&#8217;s reveal:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Prior to the band&#8217;s &#8220;I Gotta Know&#8221; single they self-released an EP that was mixed by our unfortunate\u00a0<em>Mystery Date<\/em> &#8220;dud,&#8221;\u00a0Pere Ubu&#8217;s <strong>David Thomas<\/strong>! (I&#8217;ve also been digging those 4 songs, which I never knew existed until the other day.)<\/li>\n<li>The somewhat legendary Hoboken scenester Dave Schramm (eg, original lead guitarist for Yo La Tengo)\u00a0was an original band member.<\/li>\n<li>Drummer Ron Metz would later join Schramm in his band, The Schramms.<\/li>\n<li>Pfeifer would move from leading underground music projects to becoming a major-label A&amp;R man. He&#8217;s also made his bones as a novelist. Smart guy!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m glad people liked our latest Mystery Date, &#8220;I Gotta Know,&#8221; an early single by Cleveland underground band Human Switchboard. When I downloaded recently a 21-track collection of their first album, which I\u00a0regretted having sold years ago to support\u00a0something of an ephemeral nature,\u00a0and other releases from their late-1970 through early-1980s career I was pleased by <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/mystery-date-revealed-human-switchboard\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[468,550,2,396],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10603"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}