David Arvedon

Arvedon is one of those idiot savants so beloved of "Incredibly Strange Music" aficionados. Well, it would be too harsh to call Arvedon an idiot, or even a disturbed mind on the order of Wild Man Fischer or Daniel Johnston; he attended graduate school at Boston University's school of education, for one thing. As a musician, he specializes in nonsequitur songs -- about, say, rotten peaches, whether to play basketball or call a girl, or freezing in an unheated apartment. These are sung in a voice that sounds like an off-key collision between Sparks and Brian Wilson in his deteriorating '70s phase. To make the music even weirder, Arvedon recorded his material in the early 1970s with pay-to-play session musicians. The lyrics are outlandish, but the music is almost determinedly normal-sounding, even loungish at times -- which makes the total effect yet more outlandish. Much of the material ended up on vanity releases, to be excavated by Arf! Arf! for a two-CD (yes, two-CD) set in 1996. Arvedon has other stories to tell as well: he was in a Boston-area garage band that made a single in the late '60s (the Psychopaths), had a quasi-audition to sing with the Modern Lovers, wrote a rock opera about teeth that was performed with hard rock musicians, and almost got a contract with Sire Records in the mid-'70s (he has said he was passed over in favor of the Ramones). After a long absence from recording, he began to issue material -- again on way-out-of-the-way small labels -- in the 1990s, and also plays live at Karaoke bars. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide