The little producer who could
The Village Voice
By Billy Altman

The Mitch Easter story would make for a great rock 'n' roll Golden Book adaptation of The Little Engine That Could. The plot would go something like this: an idealistic, fresh-faced young pop innocent from North Carolina (the illustration on the page shows teenaged Mitch in his Winston-Salem bedroom, guitar in hand, playing along to an old Nazz album, thinking to himself, "So that's how Todd did it!") eventually gathers up enough courage to venture north to New York City in the late '70s ("Which way to CBGB's?" Mitch calls to the first passerby he sees wearing sunglasses after dark), only to find his dream of starting a small recording studio dashed by the harsh economic realities of the cruel city (pictures here of skyscrapers leaning over and laughing behind his back as Mitch dejectedly hitchhikes homeward).

Soon, though, Mitch is all happy again, polishing up the glass window in his tongue-in-cheekily named Drive-In Studio, nestled not in the pines, but in the garage of his parents' home ("Golly, Mom! It's finished!" cries Mitch as he bangs in the last nail). Before long, all kinds of new and wondrous East Coast bands like the Individuals, Pylon, and R.E.M. start coming to Mitch's house to make demo tapes and independent singles (we see all the groups together in the studio thinking of those mean skyscrapers while shaking their fists and vowing "We'll show them!") with whiz kid Mitch at the controls. By 1981 some of these bands have begun actually to get real record contracts with real record companies, and Mitch himself gets so caught up in the fervor that he even starts up his own band, Let's Active ("No, Faye, like this!" says Mitch as he shows bass player Faye Hunter how to play the bass line for his "hit" song, "Every Word Means No"), and they sign with a real record company, too. On the last page, Mitch is grinning from ear to ear, waving to an adoring crowd from a medium-sized dance club at the conclusion of another smashing gig. The thought balloon over his head reads, "Not bad for a guy pushin' 30, eh?"

Of course, to really appreciate what Mitch Easter and Let's Active is all about, it doesn't hurt to be a true believer in the sanctity of the kind of big-chorded, neatly structured guitar-based rock that traces one jangling, harmonic line from Buddy Holly through mid-'60s British Invasion and the more lush day-glo colors of psychedelia to such early '70s "aberrations" as Blue Ash and Big Star and the newer bittersweet pop resurrections of the Bongos, the dB's, and the Shoes. However, it's not a prerequisite; like his producees, R.E.M., the harking-back-to-glory-days- never-to-be-heard-from-again- but-if-we-try-hard-enough- well-maybe-for-a-moment is there mainly in the attitude and underlying consciousness of Let's Active's music and not so much in its physical identity. When—on the band's new album, Cypress—Easter layers guitar hook upon guitar hook and sonic texture upon sonic texture in such floating, dreamy soundscapes as "Crows on a Phone Line" or "Flags for Everything," Let's Active reaches the same timeless state that R.E.M. and scant few other pop/rock bands have hit in the last five years. Ultimately, nuance and mood are what Let's Active is all about, as Easter's mixed-up and confused musings on relationships spinning out of control ("Ring True," "Counting Down") are articulated not so much by the lyrics themselves—though he does pen a good line when he wants to, like "Ring True" 's "10,000 chances/We break the record every day" or "Waters Part"'s "Waters part when our eyes see together"—but by the intricacy of his well-thought-out guitar passages and the passion of his lean, spare leads. And while both Easter and Hunter's reedy vocals might give one a false sense of soft focus, the ferocity of the music underneath (especially sadly departed drummer Sara Romweber's flurrying stickwork) provides Let's Active its undercurrent of unresolved tension, and helps a nonhit like "Blue Line" lurk eerily around your head for days on end.

At the Ritz November 10, Easter, Hunter, new drummer Jay Peck, and keyboard/guitar player Tim Lee almost casually cruised through a high-gear set (producers' bands are nothing if not precise and efficient) that had me won over by the second song—a note-for-note- how-did-he-figure-out-that-guitar-sound? rendition of Big Star's "Sitting in the Back of a Car" that I'm sure no more than 50 people in the surprisingly large audience knew was not an original. Using a new guitar for yet another sound on almost every other tune, Easter certainly looked like a master craftsman merrily showing off all the neat tools of his trade. Let's face it—new wave's "triumphs" have been all too few and far between. In a world where Billy Idol equals punk, Duran Duran equals teenybop, and Ratt equals hard rock, I'll give a sigh of thanks that guys like Mitch Easter get to see their simple rock 'n' roll dreams come true.

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