This gosh-darned internet thing

We live in a wonderful and bewildering world where it is possible to learn things 25 years later about a band from the early ’80s that the entire world has forgotten about (well, really, it never even knew about them.) Been playing some minidiscs I put together a few years ago before CD burning for the masses became affordable, including some great ’80s singles that I haven’t gotten back onto the turntable since. And among those songs (including the really good Bangles, the Bangles who did “I’m In Line For You,” before entertainment demons took over Susanna Hoffs’s eye movements) was a little treasure called “Lightning,” by a band called The Humans, on the legendary IRS Records. A line in it about Manhattan thumped me upside the head: “Suddenly it hit me, this whole island is open to attack.” That seemed threatening enough in the pre-perestroika early ’80s; now it’s just scary. Not the point. The point would be that I wondered if it was possible that the lyrics were available on one of the lyric services. No luck. Tried searching their “hit,” “Get You Tonight” along with “The Humans.” Hopeless. Then tried “IRS Records ‘The Humans.'” Jackpot. And lightning: In the early eighties, IRS Records signed one of the best bands to ever come out of Santa Cruz. They were new to the new wave world at large, but not to Santa Cruz or surf music. Their roots went back decades. Three members of the Humans, John Anderson, Sterling Storm, and Eric Gies had been band mates in Eddie and the Showmen, and John had been at the helm of his own Baymen before that. They moved to Santa Cruz together in 1970, and almost immediately formed the Humans. That name stuck until the late eighties, when they evolved (without Sterling) into Ed Hatch, then Ed, and finally the Ninja Nomads.

Wait a minute! “The Humans,” a bleak, hard-edged new wave band from the early ’80s, had 18 years earlier been one of the seminal surf bands? That’s like telling me the Beach Boys morphed into The Cars — it doesn’t even make sense. Everyone knows that new wave bands were all young turks, not seasoned veterans. More importantly, how could this have escaped my notice? Me, who just weeks ago was able to remember, apropos of nothing, that the completely forgotten Plugz had morphed into the barely remembered Cruzados? (Me, who really has to consult a calendar to remember birthdays and anniversaries.)

I’m too stunned by this information to continue. (But I’m a little disappointed my true musical confessions didn’t spark more vitriol . . . I know the comments function has been iffy this weekend, but I expected at least some digital vomiting over my selections. Part 2 to come, I assure you.)