Marie Caso has a lot of opinions. For years, she's dutifully recorded them in cassette letters to her grandson, Julian Koster.
Now, grandma's introspective snippets are radio fodder, providing commercial breaks between pop songs on her grandson's first CD.
"OK, that’s all the complaints I have right now,"’ Caso said in a chatty Lone Island drawl during one of her many between-song guest appearances on Chocolate U.S.A.'s spunky debut, All Jets Are Gonna Fall Today. "So, uh, I'll talk to you again later. I'll put on Tommy Dorsey again, and maybe if he's got some nice music, I'll let you hear it.”
She also talks about contentment vs. happiness (‘'...Yes, you can be content. I've taken happy out of my vocabulary. I never say that I'm happy! I say that I’m content") and how she's waiting for ‘God to water my garden," offers piano accompaniment to vocal exercises (presumably for Julian to practice with), and tells us when to turn the tape over.
"She's the real deal," said Julian's bandmate, Keith Block, in a mid-tour interview from Granny Caso's Amityville, Long Island, home.
"As we were recording the album, it just kind of dawned on him that he had all these tapes. So he sat down and listened to them, and he realized pretty quickly that this was something we could use. Bits and pieces seemed to relate to our songs.
"Most of the songs were written when Julian was 14 or 15, and recorded when he was 18. At the time, she was the voice of comfort as he was going through all that turmoil of having parents or teachers or whoever bouncing you back and forth and telling you what to do and basically scaring the hell out of you. His grandmother was one who saw things in the long run and put things in a comforting way.'’
And does granny like the all the between banter stuff - the songs?
"She thinks some of it's pretty interesting," said Block, adding that
grandma agreed to be sampled. "She thinks that’s cool."
Granny won't be part of the show when Chocolate U.S.A. stops by for a gig tonight at New Haven’s all-ages club, Tune Inn. But the band's quirky blend of King Missle meets They Might Be Giants pop-rock promises to be entertaining anyway, touching on topics from television teen doctor Doogie Howser's love theories to the desolation of missing Feelies Show.
Formed in Florida and based in Athens, Georgia, Chocolate U.S.A. actually started out as Miss America — that is, until they started getting publicity and drew threats from the real Miss America people (inspiring a "We're getting Sued by the Sexist, Fascist Corporate Pigs" re-naming party and the grandiose single, "100 Feet Tall" about Miss America status).
They realised Jets on their own, recording in dribs and drabs as money trickled in. Less than a year later, Bar None signed the band and rereleased the album. Already, the band's moved past the old material and is preparing to record a second release with more contributions from other band members.
Before finishing the interview, Block asks, ‘‘Don’t you. want to know our influences?” responding to his own question with: "Definitely They Might Be Giants and Sonic Youth and all that. Also Simon and Garfunkel and Three Dog Night. And Jackson 5, big time, back when they were just another Motown act they were great."
He seems eager to dispell the notion that the band's spoken-word "Wash My Face" ans stream of consciousness lyrics may have been inspired by Kin Missile's success; the two bands played together once and are friends, but the songs predated Missile's success, he notes. And though Chocolate U.S.A. has a "Chocolatey Good Smash Hit of the Month Club," in which the band offers non-album ditties on cheat cassette newsletters "to all the little chocolatey good folks in America," that also developed before the band knew about They Might Be Giants' phone line for fans.
And what of the band's new name. Is there any significance?
"No, basically, it's something that everybody loves," Block explained. "It's something that's childish and not very good for you but you can't help yourself. But beyond that, it's something that was kind of taken offhand. As far as I'm concerned, the band will always be Miss America. If not, then I just said, 'Screw it, we'll name it Fred.' "
For information about Chocolatey Good Smash Hit of the Month Club, see a band member at the show or write to Bar None Records at P.O. Box 1704, Hoboken, NJ, 07030.
