Identified, Detained & Inspected

Song written by Zander Schloss and performed by Low & Sweet Orchestra

What are the odds I was born where and when I was? I got a remarkably good deal pretty much any way that you look at it. The alternatives run the gamut from unceasingly difficult to short-lived (as I likely would have died near to birth under most circumstances). The tiniest of possibilities suggest a better life than the one that I have enjoyed. My only point is that the odds seem stacked against good stuff happening, but it does.

The fact that musicians get together and give birth to bands that don’t suck is not much more unlikely. Just watching Let It Be or Some Kind of Monster or I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, it becomes apparent that collaboration moves quickly into the danger zone. These movies all document groups that have a shared history. Only one of them found a way forward with all parties involved.

The Low & Sweet Orchestra was a shooting star that existed for a moment in time. I no longer recall the circumstances that led us to see them in a small nightclub in Pittsburgh. I knew next to nothing about them other than some members came from other bands that I liked. One of them was a famous actor. (Or maybe he would become famous after that.)

They played almost all original music, which can be deadly for a new band, but song after song was fantastic. Stunned, I bought the cassette that they had on sale. I should have bought fifty so that I could give them out as presents.

In my ignorance of the ways of the world,

I expected them to be on the radio the next day and the next. They were on my stereo all the time, so I played the tape to bits. I assumed the rest of the world was hearing them just as much. I waited a reasonable period of time for their next release. Life happened… la-la-la…

Finally, the internet arrived with a search engine. As it turned out, information was not readily available, though that seems to have changed. They don’t appear in Wikipedia, but I gather that they dissolved sometime after that first tour. No one made a movie about it.

I don’t know why some bands last any more than I know why some marriages end in divorce. Both are small miracles while they exist, though it is an otherwise false analogy. The act of creation by groups of artists is never a lifetime commitment. We don’t expect the performers in a stage show to necessarily make up the entire cast and crew of the next show. Some return while others leave. Maybe it is just the number of people involved.

The weirdest aspect may be the way the audience, as outside observers, want there to be a story. We require that narrative of the formation and dissolution. Searching the web, I just wanted to know what had happened. I imagined all sorts of possibilities. The lurid truth was that the band simply petered out.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 137 more to go.

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