Where Credit's Due
Local country-blues rockers Sweet Virginia appeared to have hit the big time when ads in December issues of both Spin and Rolling Stone featured the band's name and a small logo. Problem is, the band had nothing to do with it.
The advertisement, a Visa vehicle labeled "Netman," shows the inside of "Gabe Hoskins' " wallet. Each item is notated with Hoskins' handwriting. The notes to one item, a sticker for "Sweet Virginia's Blues Elixir," read, "My band. (Any major labels interested?)"
"I've never heard of Gabe Hoskins, but if he wants to sit in with the band for a blues song, he's more than welcome," says Billy Glassner, Sweet Virginia's manager.
Could the wily ad people at BBDL, Visa's U.S. advertising company, have invented a person (gasp!) to hawk plastic to music mites? (The BBDL copywriter could not be reached for comment.)
Glassner says BBDL failed to do its homework, since Sweet Virginia has a service mark on the name in California. So far the band hasn't sought recompense, but Glassner says he's thinking ahead. "Perhaps Visa could erase our debt in trade," he says.
Swell Hell
San Francisco's mood-rock kings Swell reprinted the lyrics "Gonna take a vow, gonna leave this place forever" in the last issue of Swollen, a communique the band releases with each album. After disappearing from the city since they tried out a short acoustic set of new songs a year ago, and having released no new record since 1994's beautiful and haunting 41, some of us were starting to believe them.
Despite rumors that they'd moved to Europe (where they are wildly successful), Swell never really left, and will put on a few shows here before releasing their new record, Too Many Days Without Thinking, next March.
But don't look for the new album on American, Swell's label for the past two records. "Much to my dismay, they were just let go," says American publicity assistant Aimee Durden. "Nobody is really saying why."
But Swell's bassist, Monte Yallier, says that the band was dumped because American is on the sales block. (American has a distribution contract with Warner Bros. that will expire in March 1998.) "They're trying to sell the label, and they want assets, not liabilities," says Yallier.
The band says they've been trying to extract themselves from the record label since July, a process that Yallier calls a "legal nightmare." Make that a nightmare with a happy ending: Beggar's Banquet signed the band last week. "It wasn't as bad for us as it could have been," says Yallier. "If we'd sold more records, it would have been different."
By Jeff Stark
