Banditos — The Refreshments

#365Songs: May 16

My old friend Andre texted me yesterday because a particular song lyric popped into his head. It happens every so many months and I always imagine him furiously typing the text, if he hasn’t already saved it as a note on his phone.

Everybody knows
That the world is full of stupid people
So meet me at the mission at midnight
We’ll divvy up there

The Refreshments might best be known for playing the King of the Hill Theme or because they’re often confused with the band that did the Friends theme (that would be the Rembrandts). I always imagined people buying tickets to see “I’ll Be There For You” live and being heartily disappointed. Although, honestly, these people would watch the entire set before realizing their mistake. Or maybe not at all. Because these are people who’d spend money to hear the Friends’ theme song live.

Everybody knows
That the world is full of stupid people

The Refreshments released two albums in 1996 and 1997 and then rode off into the sunset of mainstream mediocrity — but that’s not exactly their entire story. I first read about them just before they released their major debut album, Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy. A Tempe, AZ post-grunge local favorite on the verge of stardom — a far more popular local act than the Gin Blossoms. Of course, the Gin Blossoms’ New Miserable Experience would go on to sell more than 4 million records, and Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy, well, would not.

“Banditos” had just hit the radio waves and in this moment I was deep into the Los Lobos catalog. I don’t think Kiko had left my car for more than a year. The idea of another southwestern-influenced rock band — mariachis and horns and songs about beer and the border patrol — fueled an undeserved passion for this record.

This passion that lasted for a few months before I realized that the record had all those things, but they weren’t put together with any real gusto or flavor and they more closely resembled every other merely okay rock band of the 1990s. It sounded like the label neutered the Tempe in the Arizona band.

But the song just sticks around. I can’t purge it. Andre can’t purge it. And maybe we don’t really want to. This journey through life requires truly great songs — because without the great songs I’d have a hard time getting up in the morning. Honestly. Music is fuel, our sustenance, and I can’t trust anyone that doesn’t need it in their life, that doesn’t crave it during the good times, the bad times, and everything in between. But we also need those utterly, objectively average songs (and even the bad ones) that trigger memories of our old selves and old friends, old friends who might slip out of our busy modern lives if not for a song lyric or guitar riff that places back in a moment, as if it were yesterday.

We are not who we once were; we are also exactly who we were.

Now I don’t know if Andre first put me onto “Banditos” or if I forced it upon him — but those lyrics rattle around in our brains, a call and response, a memory of sitting on Andre’s bedroom floor listening to CDs and bullshitting about everything we knew little or nothing about. And this is what we do when he texts, slip right back into our roles, kicking back and spewing nonsense about nothing at all.

So just how far down do you want to go
And we can talk it out over a cup of Joe
And you can look deep into my eyes
Like I was a super-model

Well it’s just you and me baby
No one else we can trust
We’ll say nothin’ to no one
No how or we’ll bust
Never crack a smile or flinch or cry
For nobody

When The Refreshments couldn’t duplicate the crossover success of “Banditos” on their second album, Mercury Records dropped them like a hot tamale. (In fairness, The Bottle & Fresh Horses was a better record, more reflective of the Arizona that birthed the band in the first place.) The Refreshments’ frontman Roger Clyne regrouped in Tempe and formed the local supergroup Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers featuring the Gin Blossoms’ guitarist Scott Johnson, and Dead Hot Workshop’s Steve Larson. It’s more country, more bluesy and more Tempe. And maybe that’s where Roger Clyne always belonged — in Arizona… and stuck in my head for more than 30 years and reminding me that some part of me will always be that awkward, too smart, too insecure, too obsessive teenager.

So give you ID card to the border guard
Your alias says you got John Luke Picard
Of the united federation of planets
’Cause they won’t speak English any ways

And everybody knows
That the world is full of stupid people
So meet me at the mission at midnight
We’ll divvy up there

Well everybody knows
That the world is full of stupid people
Well I got the pistol so I get the pesos
Yeah that seems fair

So, thanks (I think) to The Refreshments and every other forgettable band that forges memories, that makes us eccentrically, uniquely, utterly ourselves.

~

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