The Goods may want to add another step to their getting-signed strategy. "I'm Not Average," a perennial audience favorite, is included in a CD and home video release from Playboy entitiled The Girls of Radio: Talk, Rock, and Shock. The package showcases up-and-coming bands from around the natiom, as well as provided the soundtrack for the 57-minute video that depicts 23 women broadcasters gyrating in various stages of undress. The CD is slated for release next week; the video will be out shortly therafter.
Could this be the vehicle that finally lands the Goods a record deal? If so, they'll have to thank WSHE morning DJ Diane Ray, one of the featured women. While Ray was in California for the Playboy shoot in January, director Vic Bullock mentioned his interest in using songs by unknown bands, and recalled "I'm Not Average" from a recent vacation in South Florida (the song had topped WSHE's Top Ten at Ten show while Bulluck was in town). Ray put him in touch with the Goods' management. Although some people might consider the project distasteful, the Goods had no reservations about participating. "Absolutely not," says bassist-vocalist Jim Camacho. "The band is totally thrilled about this. It's already opened up a lot of opportunities for us." Please note: We have resisted the urge to work double-entendres such as "national exposure" into this item. However, Camacho, commenting on the enduring popularity of "I'm Not Average," notes, "The song's definitely got legs." (Jim Murphy)
Retro Rockets
Amid the period songs (Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love," the Who's "I Can See for Miles"), composer James Horner's treacly score, and actual film dialogue that make up the Apollo 13 soundtrack lies a cut that stands out like a sore nose cone: the Mavericks' slow, elegiac rendering of the Rodgers and Hart classic, "Blue Moon," a rockin' 1961 doo-wop hit for the Marcels. Not only does the inclusion of this lone non-cover track evince an insensitivity to the integrity of the overall project, it also smacks of a record-company attempt to duplicate the Mavs' country-chart success on the pop charts. MCA, the group's label, has released "Blue Moon" as the soundtrack's first and likely only single.
With all the other songs preserved in their original form, what's with this one anomaly? A spokeswoman for Harry Garfield, executive in charge of music for Universal Pictures, says only, "There was no set formula for this particular soundtrack. You have dialogue, the score, old stuff. They [Universal,MCA] just thought it would be nice to have the Mavericks remake the song." As for the Mavs' motivation, well, the band's management referred us to its personal publicist who referred us to its MCA publicist, who never got back to us.
