The cover letter accompanying the Wondermints' Mind if We Make Love to You
by Luck Media & Marketing
Let's say you're a musician. If you're at all serious about trying to make money from the fruits of your artistic endeavors, chances are you will at some point work with a public relations firm. And, at another point, the PR firm will mail out review copies of your album to critics, radio stations and friends of the PR firm's employees. (If you're keeping it real or doing it on the cheap, you'll do this part yourself.) Included with those review copies is a press kit, which, unless the interns mess up, will be led off by an occasionally read but often-discarded cover letter.
In the interest of fairness, music industry PR people have their work cut out for them. They need to get their client's product into the hands and eventually the CD players of jaded music critics ranging in stature from Greil Marcus to, well, that guy from Flak Magazine. But the thing that really makes writing a cover letter tough is that music critics really like music. And, for better or worse, most of them think they have better taste in music than any of their friends (unless those friends also happen to be music critics, or work in a record store); they'll be damned if they're going to take seriously (or even read) a PR firm's press-kit cover letter, which was probably written by some journalism-school dropout who thinks the MC5 were a hip-hop outfit from the Bronx who tore up the scene after they signed to Death Row.
So you need to write a piercing, insightful cover letter that cuts through the bullshit but doesn't look like it's trying too hard because to try too hard in the music business is to fail. And it's all further complicated by the fact that you may not personally like the band you're trying to promote. If you're a full-time music PR rep, you only get about two "I've been listening to this album nonstop, you should check it out," a year, and you'll lose all your street cred if those albums are not, in fact, good. Instead, you're better off going the cover-letter route, which has a lot of turnouts, forks and dead ends.
Which brings us to Luck Media & Marketing Inc.'s cover letter for Mind if We Make Love to You. (Note the lack of a question mark. As if the band is saying, "You don't want to have sex with us.") There's really no way to segue into this other than to let tepid prose stand on its own:
Mind if we make love to you?
Ah, use the title of the album to introduce the press release. What's more, ask a highly personal question right off the bat. I mean, how many cover letters start with a variation on, "Wanna fuck?" And this intro addresses the band's unfortunate omission of a question mark in the album title. Two birds, one stone.
It doesn't sound THAT obtrusive when you consider how long Wondermints have waited to ask it. Four years is a long time for any band. For Darian Sahanaja, Nick Walusko, and Mike D'Amico, it's been a period of intense creative and personal growth that found Wondermints develop from a highly-touted L.A. band idolized by fans of the town's thriving pop music scene to being revered by world class musicians such as Brian Wilson, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, and members of S Club 7.
Wait? What kind of transition is this? What if I've never encountered the Wondermints before getting this press release? Then the band hasn't waited four years to proposition me, they've waited only a few seconds. I couldn't introduce myself to a woman at the bookstore and say, "Excuse me, I've been waiting almost 27 years to ask you if you'd mind if I made love to you." It just doesn't work that way. Still, because I've "known" the Wondermints since they did an admirable job on a Burt Bacharach tribute album back in the mid '90s, I'm prohibited from bailing on them just yet.
The rest of the workmanlike second paragraph establishes who the boys in the band are and attempts to demonstrate the band's worthiness of listening time by touting its longevity. The PR rep behind this letter is smart to establish coolness by association, touting the band's reverence by Brian Wilson, Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney. But wait, aren't all those guys kind of old? Better throw a teen pop band into the mix to chase away the scent of Old Spice and mildew.
Like most groups, their beginnings were the result of a collaboration between a pair of enthusiastic music fans — keyboardist Sahanaja and guitarist Walusko. Following a collection of self-recorded/self-released cassettes of their brilliant homespun confections (and the crucial addition of drummer/vocalist D'Amico), the group inked a deal with Japan's Toy's Factory Records who released their debut album — an assemblage of tracks from the aforementioned cassettes — in 1995 and contributed to an endless stack of compilation albums as well as penning the title track to "Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery". Interest from Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson and other elders of the pop music world elevated the band to a near-mythical status, and although their sophomore effort — 1996's "Wonderful World Of Wondermints" — was merely a collection of cover songs (albeit the most unique collection of cover songs since Bowie's Pin-Ups), they bounced back in 1998 with their true "debut" album, "Bali". Since the album's release, Wondermints have become the toast of the international rock scene, performing worldwide as members of Wilson's band, a gig that exposed them on several late night talk shows, found them being invited to weddings by ex-Beatles, brought them acclaim from shrieking Japanese groupie girls, and eventually thrust them onstage performing in front of the Queen Of England. It's a long way to the top, but it's even a longer way from the Astro Family Restaurant in Silver Lake to Buckingham Palace.
Now that we've got the appeals to the mainstream rock crowd out of the way, we'll set up the Wondermints' indie cred, by boasting about their music fandom, self-released cassettes and love of a good cover tune. Hey, these guys are practically the Mountain Goats! Hopefully those hip kids reading our cover letter won't stop to think about how a band with such non-commercial legitimacy could afford to hire the same PR rep as Billy Ray Cyrus, Yoko Ono and that Steve-O guy from "Jackass." Even if they do wonder about that, we close with the Brian Wilson connection. And damn if the Beach Boys aren't cool once more. Did you see that Pet Sounds boxed set?
Hmmm... Kind of unfortunate their "true 'debut' album" is called Bali. Will the band go back and change the title now, like the way Hollywood eliminated the World Trade Center from their movies? Hey, isn't the 'mints naming an album Bali kind of like the Brian Wilson-less Beach Boys coming up with "Kokomo?" Remember that limp tune?
On their highly anticipated fourth album and most collaborative effort to date — "Mind If We Make Love To You" — Wondermints guide us through a stunning song cycle in sensual surround sound, a jet setting romp through inner space by the proven masters of the aural massage. Music this divine isn't inspired by tense boardroom meetings or uptight A&R clowns, but by such otherworldly realms as that playground of plastic 'n' fiberglass known as Tomorrowland and endless summer nights spent at the purple-hued, U.F.O.-like cocktail lounge The Encounter that towers high above LAX.
So not only is this band worth checking out, they've just put out their best album! Even if you were lukewarm on their other work, Mind if We Make Love to You is worth a listen. All that old shit is as obsolete as that computer you bought last year.
Wondermints have always been light years ahead of their peers, and their music has always been inspired by an affection for a superb palate of sonic architects, a fusion of such unlikely bedfellows as Brazilian psychedelic mavericks Os Mutantes, soundtrack svengali John Barry, Elvis Costello, and sophisticated '60s pop stylists like the Zombies and the Left Banke effortlessly blended with a liberal dosage of West Coast studio wizardry and deceptively tolerant elements of prog rock.
This visionary outfit is so far ahead of its peers that the band has been thrown backward into the '60s. Remember that scene in Superman when Christopher Reeve flies around the earth several times really fast and goes back in time just enough to save Lois Lane? It's like that. This album comes to us from the goddamn future just in time to save us.
"Mind If We Make Love To You" only reinforces this, combining Wondermints past affinity for musical experimentation with a newfound sense of sincerity that instantly encourages the listener to ponder whether this is the same group who introduced us to "Little Miss Puppet Grrrl" and a certain "Global Village Idiot," and lured us "In And Around Greg Lake." Is it all just one gigantic attempt to gain acceptance in the world of adventurous radio programmers, or is this simply one big scheme designed to get critics to proclaim that Wondermints have "reinvented" rock 'n' roll like every other band who put out a new album this year? Perhaps the point of their mission can best be summed up by Sahanaja (the one with "that hair"): "Our last album 'Bali' seemed like sort of an artificial trip, hence the wave 'machine' and all the electronica undercurrent. We were definitely taking the subversive angle and perhaps 'trying' to be clever. I don't know what it is exactly, but being around someone like Brian Wilson these past few years, you definitely become less concerned with being "hip". There's far less intellectualizing on the new album, we just sort of went for the gut reactions. We must be in a sentimental zone these days because some of it borders on sappy, which is always cool when it's real. I suppose we could have ventured further off into experimental space but it just wasn't where were at these days. We obviously went inward, towards something more natural and organic ... the true inner space."
What better way to launch an album in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world than to stumble across a "newfound sense of sincerity?" Remember all those nudge-nudge-wink-wink ironic rockers from a few years back? Yeah, well fuck them. Brian Wilson's brain may be putty at this point, but the man has shown us the way, baby!
Out of mind and completely off the map, "Mind If We Make Love To You" is nothing less than a tour de force through Wondermints' kaleidoscopic range of eclecticism and durability, as much an homage to the past is it is to the unexplored universe of pop music's future. (Plus, it's got a good beat and you can, well ... the title kind of hints at what you can do. Really. It's been done.)
Mind If We Make Love To You? I thought you'd never ask.
What if the critics don't take the time to read all the stuff in the middle? We'll recap it at the end, just to be safe, and create the illusion of coming full circle by repeating our lame rhetorical-question lead, and then responding to it. Pure gold. Print it. Mail it. Pat yourself on the back.
— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)
