What if the gaudiest, roaring-est, most muscular guitar record of the post-grunge era was released, and nobody heard a thing? That’s the story of Poster Children.
Cast your mind back to the slender, faraway mists of 1995. Late spring / early summer… Fond trips to the beach with a particular special someone long since vanished. A provocative, utterly captivating single started making the college radio rounds, with bristly lyrics like “Summer’s here and the coast is clear / The ocean’s not as calm as it appears.” The song was “He’s My Star”, the band was Poster Children – and if we dare point out for the thousandth time that it was written about Baywatch star David Hasselhoff, then Rick Valentin will get really mad.
“I brought the riff to the studio and wrote the lyrics. That song captured my perfect vocal performance,” says Valentin of the cut today. “The Hasselhoff thing wasn’t a joke, and it wasn’t a trick. Famous characters can have a real impact on your life. ‘He’s My Star’ still makes me wonder, ‘How the hell did we record that?'” Apparently, Sire Records’ A&R guy was seriously unimpressed with the subject matter. Yet 30 years later, it’s nothing short of astounding – and so is the track.
In some ways, Poster Children’s fifth LP, Junior Citizen, plays like a send-up of the very styles it apes so successfully. Camouflaged amid the wild power chords and spaced-out lyrics lurks a refreshing, barely-polished masterpiece of unassuming high-school angst, one without a hint of pretense or shallow affectation. Perhaps this hit-and-run epic’s most impressive quality is just how well its cartoonish sagas of love, mayhem, and lowbrow television have held up over the past three decades.
There’s an irrepressible petulance to Junior Citizen’s 11 tracks, like garish late-night anime on steroids. Yet the record is also supremely focused, both by the tune and in aggregate, to an extent rarely found outside 1992 Copper Blue-era Sugar. AllMusic’s Ned Raggett considers it 1995’s most underrated US release. Even 30 years later, Junior Citizen occupies a truly special place in these parts, crashing our esteemed playlist at least twice per month.
Now that the fanboy stuff is out of the way, let’s see how it got made.
When future spouses Rick Valentin and Rose Marshack first met at the University of Illinois, they formed groups with eclectic names like Penguin Dust, Cries and Whispers, and the Evidence. Around Labor Day of 1987, they finally chanced upon a moniker that stuck: Poster Children. Valentin’s guitarist brother Jim joined in 1991, forming Poster Children’s basic trio. “It just seemed like every time we changed drummers, we changed band names,” Valentin says today. “Howie [Kantoff] was our sixth drummer and played on Junior Citizen.“
Like many Gen Xers, Valentin’s early influences sprang from the AM radio dial before it switched over to talk and sports. He mentions the local Illinois station WOS-AM, which played New Wave back then. Next came the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, and 1980s staples like Bauhaus and Butthole Surfers. Unspecified Paisley Underground acts spiced up his collection as well.
One ironic refrain common to many of these retrospectives: Unlike us, the demigods who forge our favorite records barely listen to them, three decades removed. Valentin last heard Junior Citizen two years ago, before a recent tour, and even then, he only cued up a few tracks. “It’s difficult to maintain perspective from here,” he says. “All I see are the flaws.” As stated above, “He’s My Star” is a glowing exception. “Perfect vocal performance,” he marvels yet again. “I still try to figure out how I sang so well on that song.”
After some gentle prodding, other distinct memories flood back as well. Valentin reveals an aspect of the biting, faux-violent “New Boyfriend” that we never quite picked up on. “I try to write misleading songs, where I paint part of the picture, and you paint the rest,” he says. “The line ‘Really hate your new boyfriend’ sounds superficially angry, but my intent was to slowly reveal that the narrator himself is a jerk. That’s why there’s a new boyfriend. Duh!” Fans still request the song in concert, rushing the stage and dancing to it.
The lyrics for the desperate, pleading “Revolution Year Zero” derived from the Situationists, an Italian movement founded in 1957. Rose and Rick recount a fascinating, centuries-long back-and-forth whereby avant-garde art somehow led to punk rock. “It was all about exploration, rejecting the status quo,” says Rose. “These guys would do wild things, like use a map of London to explore Paris and see where they ended up. Eventually, they quit because the system would just absorb their attacks and co-opt them.” As always, today’s rebellion becomes tomorrow’s culture.
At this point, we crash headlong into one of this columnist’s most adored indie rock songs ever. The first time we heard “Drug I Need’s” buzzing tenor and pummeling kamikaze coda, it took our breath away. Does anybody still write cray-cray rock anthems like this anymore? “For the first time, on Junior Citizen, we actually had time to layer our guitars in the studio,” says Valentin. “We just kept going and going. How many layers and variations can we pile on?” The sessions got quite hairy for drummer Kantoff, too. “We started experimenting with long codas on [1994’s] Just Like You EP. ‘Drug I Need’s’ intense ending came from that.”
As for Poster Children’s established writing style, no one ever came in with a finished track. “Everybody brought their own riffs and progressions. We got into lots of jamming to create the music,” says Valentin. “Then I wrote the lyrics.” This invigorating DIY approach bursts through on Junior Citizen. “We were pretty much playing live in the studio, then layering our guitars as much as we could.” A patient music-industry mentality also played a role back then. “Record labels were different before 1997. They were willing to nurture and build an act, win them an audience,” he says. “Now, if you sell less than 150,000 copies, they drop you cold.”
We’ve overheard some nutty road stories on this beat, and Rick and Rose don’t disappoint. “We loved playing with Fugazi. Every show had some kind of problem. But they were never the instigators,” says Rose. “One time, their own promoter pulled a gun on them!” Poster Children also split a show with Public Enemy in Lawrence, Kansas, of all places. “We loved P.E.,” says Rick. “Those were big ‘genre mash-up’ days. We saw Sonic Youth playing with them and said, ‘Hey, why not us?'” There were some hiccups with the middle-America crowd, however. “They were there to see P.E. They’re yelling, ‘We don’t wanna see these punk rockers!'” Poster Children also played at 1995’s Lollapalooza festival, along with Pavement, Sonic Youth, and Yo La Tengo.
Since 1991, this has been a family band – vocalist/guitarist husband, bassist wife, husband’s brother, and various drummers. They still get along, unlike many families, and Poster Children is an ongoing concern. “We’re not full-time, so we aren’t in the crucible. We’re not in a van on tour for months anymore,” says Valentin. Time transforms even the bad stuff into tender memories, like a tour van on fire. “We’re so lucky to travel around and play music and talk to people. The alternative is to sit in a cubicle all day, right?” Ouch! A pointed reference to this writer’s prior career, no doubt.
These days, Rick and Rose are both college professors at Illinois State University near Bloomington, teaching students to make art and music with computers. “Junior Citizen was on the cusp of interactive entertainment and the internet. So that’s what we talk about,” says Rick. “How do you tell stories with this new technology?” In addition to Poster Children, he records instrumental synthesizer rock with Howie Kantoff as Salaryman and builds songs from looped guitars, vocals, and electronics as Thoughts Detecting Machines.
Final question from a Hi-Res music buff. Is there any chance for a deluxe Junior Citizen reissue, perhaps in remastered HD or (gulp) 5.1 surround sound?
“Like many albums, Junior Citizen is caught in industry limbo. Not big enough for a reissue or remaster,” Valentin says. “The label still owns the record, so we’d have to lease it back from them with our own money.” But hope springs eternal. “The good news is, our waiting period is almost over. It transfers to copyright after 35 years, and we get our masters back.
“Then, who knows?”
