Why was any of this happening at all? Because we’d reached that point in the 80s when everybody knew everything was rotten to the core but nobody had the guts to admit it yet, and since these things run in 20-year cycles it was a no-brainer that a wave of 60s nostalgia would rain down like so much patchouli oil.

I loved it--I’d been nostalgic for the 60s since 1972. So when the acid-washed jeans and the tie-dyes began appearing in the stores, it may have been empty symbolism but it was just all right by me...Gawwwd, people act as if tie-dye was invented in 1967 and vanished from the face of the earth in 1971. It dates back to the Stone Age, and there are places in the world (even the USA, if you think they’re synonymous) where it’s as exotic as crabgrass.

I remember walking through the mall circa 1987 and seeing some bearded, ponytailed, feeelthy hippie with a shirt concession set up in the middle of the aisle, brimming with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, batiks and peace eyes and crystals and tie-dyes. And comfronting him was some yuppie mom in an ugly power suit from the Corporate Woman outlet just down the aisle, stricken, overcome and staring at him in horror.

“B-b-b-but...you’re...living in the past...!” she blubbered at him vaguely. He smiled and shook his head and reassured her that he was living very much in the present. And rightfully so. He was an entrepreneur; he’d found a need and filled it and was probably a Republican to boot. As for the fact that he had a full head of hair, being his own boss meant that (unlike Ms. Morgendorffer) he could wear it exactly as he pleased without some milquetoaste in a skinny tie telling him when to cut it off. However, I’m not omniscient; I merely appear to be. For all I know, she was appalled because she used to be his girlfriend. I should have stuck around longer and listened in--maybe they’d been to Altamont.

As enjoyable as they were, these fashion trends had very little to do with the Three O’Clock who, like the other L.A. psychedelic bands, eschewed Woodstock and favored the fopperies of 1966-all-over-again. In a way it didn’t matter--all the public knew or cared was that “the 60s” were “hot.” Which is not to slight the Paisley scene--as far as the audience was concerned it was more about clothes than music (as all post-60s L.A. scenes have been--begs the question, why do those clotheshorsies continue to glom onto bands at all?). A lot of the groups weren’t very good, only a handful of them put out albums, and of those the only decent ones were from those bands who were determined to put as much distance between themselves and the “garage music” genre as their abilities could possibly take them.

So yes, there were some inherent shortcomings to the Paisley Underground--but when you consider that the Big Thing in mid-80s L.A. music was (urrrrrrrrp!) heavy metal, these people begin to look hipper in their own place and time than they would be today. Even the Three O’Clock, a particularly hapless bunch but the one that was talked up more than any other. (The Holy Sisters Of The Gaga Dada were far more deserving, but it’s asking too much to even say the name and keep a straight face.)

Musically? They could rock, but not around the clock. They could rock when it occurred to them; they had a decent cover of “Lucifer Sam” to their credit. They tossed it onto a fan club single, but that’s what fan clubs are for. “Jet Fighter Man” on their debut LP was a fairly punchy opener as well; “In My Own Time” a pretty neat ol’ soul groove. But most of their output was that decidedly twee Pop Music that works much better in three-minute doses than on albums (for the same reason one can only eat so many gross yellow marshmallow chickies on Easter morning). Twee is as twee does, and they weren’t half bad at it; the proper critspeak here would be “George Martinesque production techniques filtered through an early-80s power-pop sensibility.” And if it ended up sounding much better than did Martin’s own collaborations with Cheap Trick, well, more power to ’em! The fact that these guys were all at least ten years younger than Cheap Trick accounted for a lot of their energy as well. (They were so jaunty and bouncy that they’d have been truly scary sharing the bill with a Goth band...like Kryptonite on Superman...“I’m melllllting...!”). Unlike the Trick, their keyboards more often tended toward the ugly Farfisa than the ugly string machine.

They had no heavy-metal sensibility; as befitted a crew who looked as if they regularly got beaten up for lunch money right there in the street by every dime-a-dozen metal band that was working without a contract and paying to play when they played at all. The best revenge, as they say, is living well, and so they often sounded more like the Monkees of “Daydream Believer.” But that was OK, the Prefab Four were on the comeback trail. In fact one of these “Tocking Heads” said in CREEM that the Monkees were the first concert he’d ever been to. “I was in the front row. I was praying to them.” To the Monkees. *sigh* What fools these mortals be! (They should have toured together!! Who would’ve opened for whom?)

So you’d think the Three O’Clock would have been good at least for one-hit-wonder status. (Far more ludicrous things have happened--remember Taco and “Puttin’ On the Ritz”? One more reason the 90s were musically superior--crap like that couldn’t get off the ground anymore.) But ’twas not to be. And why not, anyway? Their management was fairly aggressive; they were written up in all the trade papers, in greater depth than far more deserving bands of the same stripe such as Rain Parade or Plasticland, there were “we feel a need to take notice of this because it might turn out to be trendy” reviews in Rolling Stone, there were even hints of radio play on the horizon. It all came to naught. Why??

It wasn’t the material--not at first, anyway, although that dried up after their second full album. (So many of the Paisley bands were cursed this way.) This happened as soon as they realized they weren’t going to break through after all, and suffered the further indignity of winding up on Prince’s label. But back when they still had a prayer, their stuff was cute and coy and catchy, and at least as snappy as crappy. It wasn’t even their fashion sense. It was...their vocalist!

He didn’t sing, he chirped. There were Jon Anderson comparisons. It’s sad, really. You’re cruising, you’re pumping, you have a manager, you have an album, you have a fanclub, you have a hairstyle, you think your band is breaking and then--twip!--the audience is flinging Saltines at the stage and chanting “Polly Wanna Cracker?” It can ruin your whole decade.

He was too nice of a boy to flash his cock or anything; that was precisely the problem, come to think of it. Even if 16 magazine would’ve been glad to oblige, the Zeitgeist wasn’t ready for any kinda well-behaved teenybopper psychedelic-pop band. “The 60s” may have been “hot” but the 70s were over--the Bay City Rollers were tax exiles, the Osmonds were hasbeens, the New Kids On The Block were having bad luck in dancing school. The Three O’Clock tried to fuse the pop sensibilities of several decades and then found they didn't fit in anywhere. They were too tuneful for their times, and their singer was altogether too nice for his own good. Testosterone therapy could have saved his career!!! (Well if you’d dreamed up a headline like that, you’d use it too.) By extension it could have saved the Trend of which he was merely the figurehead.

I rather like this band, in theory at least, but it’s difficult to sit through more than half an hour of them for precisely this reason. Still, if you like things a bit on the fey side, rescue this from the wayside.