Feedback

And now it’s time for a startling revelation: It’s not easy to find innocence in rock and roll. I know–I recently thought I’d located this rarest of commodities right here in the Queen City of the West, only to discover that just beneath its surface lurked emotions, passions and conflicts of a considerably less guileless sort.

This cautionary tale begins a little over a month ago, when I was at long last plowing through the enormous reservoir of local recordings that had been sent my way since my previous slew of review columns. Perhaps a hundred rough demos, polished cassettes and/or full-blown CD projects awaited me, and in listening to them, I found that they fell into the usual qualitative categories. Some were excellent–so good, in fact, that several of them wound up on my roster of local favorites from 1996 (see “Get Local,” page 59). A larger number prompted me to apply to them more cautious, less enthusiastic adjectives, such as “solid,” “competent,” “listenable,” “average,” “modest,” “well-played.” Most of the rest ranged from terminally dull to actively offensive.

There was, however, an exception–a recording that did not fit into any of the ordinary pigeonholes. The Collective Works of Shitbox, by (yes, it’s true) Shitbox, was a true curveball: weird, sloppy and indescribably amusing. A product of an organization called Stupid Records, the tape itself was of the ultra-cheap variety (the type that are used for dictation) and came packaged in a flimsy, yellow-paper sleeve. The handwritten liner notes included a couple of fine illustrations–the first was of a toilet with musical notes emanating from its bowl, the second a sketch of the “Shitbox Core”: Cindy Wonderful, Amy Fantastic and Cynthia Cool. Also included was a list of Shitbox “studio musicians”; a claim that all of the songs on the package were written by Shitbox with the exception of “Oooh-Oooh Man,” by the GTOs; and a special thank-you to someone named Christian McIntire “for not appearing on this album.”

More typical information–like, for instance, a list of the tunes on Collective Works–was entirely absent from both the recording and a Cindy Wonderful cover letter that accompanied it. But this missive, scribbled in a childish scrawl on a sheet of lined notebook paper, did contain a couple of additional, and intriguing, details. First and foremost was the fact that Wonderful and her friends had recorded the entire package on a karaoke machine.

For many of you, this description might have left you expecting Shitbox’s music to constitute a form of torture outlawed decades ago by the Geneva Convention. But I was immediately filled with a keen sense of anticipation–and I wasn’t disappointed. Even though it was virtually impossible to determine where one cut ended and the next began, the music as a whole was so spirited, buoyant and downright zany that such minor details rapidly became completely unimportant. In short, this collage of sound effects, guitar racket and off-kilter wisdom (“I like cops!/Cops are cool!”) put a smile on my face that didn’t fall off for hours.

Unfortunately, Ms. Wonderful had neglected to enclose a contact number on her off-the-cuff Shitbox biography–but she did include a Stupid Records address: 865 Northridge Road, Highlands Ranch 80126. This suburban locale completed the picture for me: I imagined Shitbox as a trio of affluent high-school girls rebelling against their parents (and society in general) by recording the most chipper brand of racket they could cook up between episodes of Melrose Place and Party of Five. In short, it sounded like a swell story that you, gentle reader, might find amusing and heartwarming. So I wrote a letter to Wonderful expressing my fondness for Collective Works and asking her to phone me if she had any interest in my writing about her combo.

Inside of a week I received a return call–but I could tell from Wonderful’s replies to my questions that the image I had of the outfit wasn’t quite accurate. For one thing, Wonderful implied that Shitbox wasn’t a real band or even a going concern. But when I asked her directly if this was the case, she hedged her bets in a manner that struck me as oddly vague and indirect. Her tone was much the same when I recommended that she contact Amy Fantastic and Cynthia Cool in order to determine what day might work best for an interview. She said she would do so, but I got the sense that there was more going on behind the scenes than I realized.

My suspicions were confirmed a few days later when I received a long, very well-written letter from Cool, who referred to herself as “author of ‘Let Me Be Your Alien,’ ‘Shitbox Kitchen’; co-author of ‘Hi-Fashion Hobo,’ ‘Luna,’ ‘I Like Cops.'” In the missive, Cool revealed that Shitbox (a slang term for the karaoke machine suggested by Damien Cooper, the drummer for the punk band Four) was born in the summer of 1995 at a warehouse that Wonderful shared with Amy Fantastic and Amy’s boyfriend. The three of them were part of a so-called serious band dubbed S-FRO-7, and as the Shitbox sessions began to proliferate, Cool claimed that Amy’s boyfriend began pressuring them to devote their energies to their main group rather than to a “joke.”

In Cool’s narrative, Shitbox nearly came to an end at that point. But because of her confidence in the material (which she describes, accurately, as “pure audio fun”), Cool continued to make tapes and send them to friends and industry types. Some months later, Wonderful became re-enthused about Shitbox and asked Cool to contribute $50 to the cause of making some new tapes. As she tells it, Cool pled poverty. In turn, a miffed Wonderful financed the duplication of new cassettes herself. (Apparently, I received one from this batch.) Around the same time, Wonderful left S-FRO-7 and moved back to her folks’ home in Highlands Ranch–but nothing happened with Shitbox until shortly after my phone call. It was then that Wonderful contacted Cool and Fantastic (she hadn’t spoken to Amy in six months) and invited them to participate in a Shitbox profile. Fantastic agreed, but Cool said she would do so only if the band was formally reactivated. Days later, Wonderful called Cool again to tell her that she was going to start playing bass for Fox Force Five (soon to be renamed Starhustler) and planned to do the Shitbox interview by herself.

This last statement didn’t prove to be quite accurate: When Wonderful next dialed me, she said that she and Fantastic would eagerly participate in a Westword article. My response was to read Cool’s letter to her. After I finished, Wonderful declared Cool to be “crazy” and picked at several of Cool’s assertions regarding requests for money, the quality of the cassettes she’d used and her relationship with the members of S-FRO-7. Then, after touting a previous seven-inch she’d released, she told the Shitbox story from her perspective. “See, Shitbox has always been me,” she said. “I mean, I’ve had so many people do it. Cynthia Cool was not on every Shitbox recording, and even Amy Fantastic was only on about two-thirds of them. But me–I’m on every single song. I edited it all and recorded it all and duplicated it all and made the covers. To me, Shitbox is me and whoever wants to do it with me.”

Surprisingly, one of the people who’d like to participate given the right conditions is Cool, with whom I spoke after my second conversation with Wonderful. “The chemistry was unstoppable,” she noted, “and it was something that other people felt, too. There were probably thirty or forty people who helped with one Shitbox song or another.” She adds, “It would be nice if we could do it again, but I don’t think it will probably work unless Cindy has some kind of epiphany and realizes that Shitbox wasn’t just her. It came together because of the magic between everyone.”

What’s going to happen next in the saga of these three former (and possibly future) friends? I don’t have the slightest idea–but I can tell you this: While typing these words, I listened to The Collective Works of Shitbox again and was pleased to find myself enjoying it just as much as I had the first time around. But somehow, it didn’t sound so innocent anymore.

–Michael Roberts

Backbeat’s e-mail address is Michael_Roberts@westword.com. While you’re online, visit Michael Roberts’s Jukebox at www.westword.com.