There was a public service announcement (PSA) in rotation for years at the undergraduate station that featured a young wispy-voiced individual that spoke of being timid and unsure of himself – “girls wouldn’t give me the time of day. Hey, Julie! Do you have the time?” A valley-girl-like voice chimed back, a clearly delivered and aloof, “SHUT UP!” What made an already an oddly amusing and memorable PSA even more so was the “boy” changed once he signed up for Selective Service. Overnight his voice lowered an octave or two and he said he felt more responsible and mature. Plus, Julie had time for the kid, whose name was revealed to be Brad. Needless to say, Brad’s frequent encounter with Julie ran for many years and for many reasons – partly because the PSA had no set termination schedule and partly because “young Brad” sounded like some of the DJs. Also thanks to its longevity came various attempts to parody its simplistic two-voice approach at humor.
My part in this came in the form of a promo for the station’s modern rock programming featuring a nervous, wimpy-voiced kid who admitted he used to listen to far inferior music before “overnight” switching to a more mature voice and level of musicality. Of course we needed “inferior” music for “Brad” to reference and I came up with an unlikely trio: Whitesnake, Europe, and Seven Mary Three. Why?
Let’s see: I had found an old Whitesnake 12” single in the music library archives earlier in my career at the station and made a point of annoying others by hanging the sleeve (featuring an unsettling tryin’-to-look-tuff photo of the band) on the office wall. This probably paved the way for my short-lived usage of David Coverdale as a punch-line (see Escher Sketch (A Tale of Two Rhythms)). Europe hadn’t been lampooned in a while and I’m not sure why they popped into mind, but I would later use their popular Final Countdown album for another humorous bit at the station.
Seven Mary Three was a Virginia-based band that formed in 1992 by Jason Ross and Jason Pollock. After signing on a full-fledged band, the group migrated to Florida where they soon had a fluke hit that caught the ear of a record company big wig. Soon thereafter Cumbersome went from a regional hit to the national airwaves as featured on their 1995 album, American Standard.
I’m pretty sure the reason for naming them in my promo had to do with my observation of how people I worked with felt about the band – a very love-them or hate-them attitude. Some people thought the song was okay and liked the band’s sound, while detractors loathed that sound, especially when featured in a 4-minute song appropriately named Cumbersome. Maybe that was part of the joke, an inadvertent way for people to poke some fun at the band. I do know one of the reasons I chose them was that for all the fans who spoke so highly of them, the station never heard anything other than Cumbersome from them. We never got another song from them, much less any sort of album, and so we all thought of them as nothing more than a glorified one-hit wonder.
My only other memory was thinking that at some point it would be funny to redo the song as a disco tune. Yes, I envisioned Cumbersome sung to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. Can’t you hear it: “And I’ve become – cum-cum-cumbersome.....”
Maybe not.
No clue, either, as to the status of Brad and Julie, or even the PSA. I would like to think it graduated long ago (and it probably has) but you sort of wish they'd have a reunion some time.
Right. Maybe not.
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Cumbersome
(Pollock, J./J.A. Ross)
Seven Mary Three
From the album American Standard
1995
She calls me goliath and I wear the David mask
I guess the stones are coming too fast for her now
You know I’d like to believe this nervousness will pass
All the stones that are thrown are building up a wall
I have become cumbersome to this world
I have become cumbersome to my girl
I’d like to believe we could reconcile the past
Resurrect those bridges with an ancient glance
But my old stone face can’t seem to break her down
She remembers bridges, burns them to the ground
I have become cumbersome to this world
I have become cumbersome to this girl
Too heavy too light, too black or too white, too wrong or too right, today or tonight
Cumbersome
Too rich too poor, she’s wanting me less and I’m wanting her more
The bitter taste is cumbersome
There is a balance between two worlds
One with an arrow and a cross
Regardless of the balance life has become
Cumbersome
