The Embarrassment
The Oily Years (1983-1993)
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Stuck in Lawrence, Kansas, boyhood chums John Nichols, Bill Goffrier, and Brent Giessmann listened to the standard proto-punk outfits like the Stooges, Velvet Underground, and the Ramones but found liberation with the Sex Pistols. At art school Giessmann met Ron Klaus, who joined the inseparable trio to start the Embarrassment. The recently issued double CD Heyday 1979-83 compiles the band’s entire official output–a pair of EPs as well as several posthumous full-length collections of previously issued and unreleased material (they never made a proper album)–as well as a full disk of assorted rarities. The CD offers a potent testimonial to the quartet’s well-contained albeit herky-jerky aggression, quirky melodic skills, and humorous lyrics soaked with wordplay. The band’s provocative alloy of punk drive and pop songcraft was uncommon if not altogether unheard of at the time, but its legacy can be felt in acts as disparate as the Ass Ponys, Pavement, the Volcano Suns, and Freedy Johnston, to name a few. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that almost every loud indie band with a concern for hooks has a bit of the Embarrassment in them, even if the influence is so indirect that they’ve never even heard the group.
The Embarrassment’s galvanizing first single, “Sex Drive,” set the stage for the band’s future accomplishments. Amid Giessmann’s furious rhythmic attack and Goffrier’s raw, if a wee bit sloppy guitar shards, an arching hook delivered a clever car metaphor for sexual frustration:
Even better was the combo’s eponymous 1981 debut EP. A song like “Celebrity Art Party” conveyed their unpretentious midwest wisdom with plenty of dry humor. Over a hard shuffling rhythm and the catchy weave of Goffrier’s meaty guitar and Klaus’s limber bass, Nichols spits out “Narcissistic party, artistic party” with sardonic disgust and one great big hook. Their follow-up, 1983’s Death Travels West, a weird, somewhat loose concept album about America’s history as told on a road trip, was considerably darker both lyrically and musically. The hooks weren’t so chirpy and the lyrics were more elliptical. In the spring of 1983 they recorded seven tunes that offered more melodic verve, harmonic grace, and general musical tightness than anything they’d done before, but not long afterward they threw in the towel and decided to pursue other endeavors. Goffrier and Giessmann moved to Boston and joined Big Dipper–a less urgent and edgy but more successful Embarrassment–and the Del Fuegos, respectively. Occasional reunion gigs in their hometown eventually led to a brief comeback that resulted in 1990’s decent though somewhat uninspired God Help Us.
