Poetry, Irony Of The Moment: Can You Hear It? A Review Of The Reissue Of Davy Jones' Locker By The Ocean Blue

By Berlinda Recacho

When I see myself in old school snapshots (actual prints from film cameras!) and when reading my teen journals (in spiral notebooks, written in cursive, in ink!) or looking at my high school artwork (so surreal and angst-ridden!), I recognize myself, but it's like a bizarro time-capsule version of me, viewed from a point light-years away. It's like light that has traveled a million years to get to our eyes, showing us what that star looked like then, not what it looks like now (if it even still exists). But music, that strange property, seems to shake off the bounds of physics and transcend space and time. Case in point: The Ocean Blue. Three of the four members of the band were high school seniors when I was in tenth grade. In the same relative timespan that included not getting my learner's permit in Driver's Ed, winning my region in a state writing contest, and perpetually worrying who was going to ask me to the Fall Dance, David Schelzel, Bobby Mittan, Rob Minnig and Steve Lau were crafting insightful songs and recording a demo tape which so impressed the legendary Seymour Stein that he signed them to a three-record deal. These songs were not typical adolescent musings. The music was sophisticated and the personal observations precocious and wide-angled in their accuracy, an impossible feat for most teenagers who can't see past themselves. They had a confidence tempered by a world-weariness that belied their youth. This timelessness is The Ocean Blue's trademark. Visiting any record in their catalog is like reconnecting with someone you haven't seen in ages but fall immediately into lockstep with, continuing a conversation you started years ago like it was yesterday.

After The Ocean Blue's self-titled debut (1989), Cerulean (1991), and Beneath The Rhythm & Sound (1993) became established parts of my personal soundtrack and before I returned to the fandom for Waterworks (2004), Ultramarine (2013), and Kings and Queens/Knaves and Thieves (2019), I hit pause and inexplicably took a break, drifting, falling away for almost 10 years. During this period their Sire Records contract ended, original member Steve Lau left, and the band independently released See (1996) the first for guitarist Oed Ronne; then three years later, Davy Jones' Locker (1999) would be the last for drummer Rob Minnig, who also recorded and mixed that record. Listening to these "new" old albums remastered and issued on vinyl for the first time by Korda Records in 2022 and 2023, is like seeing pictures of friends from a time that you were out of touch and being hit with a wave of familiarity and longing; this was why you liked them in the first place It (only) took 24 years for me to hear them, but I found the band in excellent form.

The fin de siè·cle-esque Davy Jones' Locker marked a strange period of time, not only the end of the century but of the millennium and a shift in outlook. Without the hit single-driven pressure of a major label, The Ocean Blue were able to take stock of their past and look ahead to their future. Self-conscious and self-deprecating in "Garden Song", David Schelzel asks "Can you sing to yourself/With an audience of no one else?/That it's over now, what's done is done/Don't look at me if you're not number 1". Penned and produced by Don Peris of the innocence mission, "Do You Still Remember Me?" is both a wish and a warning: "Think of me by the balustrade/Think of me in your park/Think of me on the road to nowhere/ that goes outside your door." The retro instrumental "Cukaloris" (a theater term for a panel peppered with irregular holes, placed in front of a light source to project patterns onto a subject) could be the lonesome theme to a 1960s T.V. Western that never was, riding off into the sunset as lengthening shadows stretch out from the horizon. "Bottle Yours" wistfully reminds the listener to stash joy away while you have it and keep it on hand for lean times, rainy days, and cruel months. Look here, the band seems to say; remember this. Notice this small detail behind the flashier note. They present canvases with pentimento (earlier decisions and past mistakes) showing through the layers. "So Many Reasons" evokes the giddy melodies and clever wordplay of Burt Bacharach and Hal David: "I remember the time/When you fought for all the reasons/That you had stacked in the back of your head/like your old record collection."

"Denmark", a favorite from the band's current live setlist, is instantly engaging. Rob Mining's drumbeat ushers the song in, followed by Bobby Mittan's spry bassline, David Schelzel's vocals and rolling rhythm guitar, and Oed Ronne's mournful lead riff, set against ghostly background singers forming a travelogue of afterimages before the song gently rewinds into itself. "Poetry, Irony/of the moment can you hear it? Stop and blink as I start to think/And I wonder will I miss this much at all?" Schelzel's voice, plaintive and true, is as much a feature of the band's sound as his use of shimmering major seven chords. In "It Never, It Just Might" he opines, "You say your love's on hold/But you can barely give it away," "Ayn" stands at the jaunty, punchy intersection of the first album's "Love Song" and "Vanity Fair" with chunky strumming riffs that set the beat. "Cake" is tipped off by Minnig's high hat, and driven by a quick and clever bassline that holds up and keeps time with the rhythm that is a testament to Mittan's agility. Ronne's melancholy and hooky riff serves as the harmony to Schelzel's vocal melody.

Oed Ronne brings to the table the talents of an additional songwriter and vocalist who takes the lead with a voice that isn't Schelzel's but still fits the sound like a glove. His considerable technical guitar skills imbue the band's sound with even more complexity. Ronne's Beatles-esque guitar breakdown mid-song lends textural weight to the gently admonishing "My Best Friend". "Been Down a Lot Lately" lays quiet misgivings over a warmly interrogative chord progression that fades out to mournful "la-la-las". In "Consolation Prize", backed by a riff that wryly echoes The Crystals' "And Then He Kissed Me", Ronne describes a romantic gesture gone wrong with painful precision: "I never thought I would see/As we wait for the credits to roll down the screen/I just will complete with three simple words/one gentle slap on my face/was all that was needed to lay that to waste/from words never whispered to my heart."

In "I Can't See You", David Schelzel sings, "This world is falling down around me/I can't tell my friends from these" but ever-constant, The Ocean Blue are a landmark to navigate by in an ever-shifting musical landscape. Schelzel and Mittan are the only two members of the original lineup remaining but Ronne and Peter Anderson (who took over from Minnig on drums) have now been in their roles longer than the personnel they replaced and have helped maintain the band's sage, clear-eyed approach. A band as a collective force is like one artistic vision made stronger by the synergy of its members. Edward Hopper, painter of scenes that walked the line between loneliness and solitude once said: "In every artist's development the germ of the later work is always found in the earlier... what he was once, he always is, with slight modifications." True to form, Davy Jones' Locker sounds as good today as if it were just released yesterday and not almost a quarter-century ago, the further proof that The Ocean Blue have always been the band they are.

More details on Davy' Jones Locker by The Ocean Blue on their official website.

[Photo: The Ocean Blue Bandcamp]