We're So Famous by Jaime Clarke

Again’ off their excellent album
Electric Juices
) the band reminds us of Bananarama. We have been fans since we got a bootleg of a show where Fuzzy opened upfor Dinosaur Jr. at some college. We like Dinosaur Jr. too but Fuzzy is the ultimate. Listen to ‘Miss the Mark’ and then listen to ‘It Started Today’ if you want to hear what a wide ranging talent they are.
    So it was one of the highlights of our life to actually get to meet Fuzzy. And they were cool, really down-to-earth. We were nervous about approaching Hilken and Chris but they were sweethearts (the bassist and drummer are dreamboats, by the way) and we gave Hilken a copy of
We’re Masterful Johnson
and she seemed genuinely eager to listen to it, which pumped me and Daisy up.
    What pumped us up even more was when we were backstage getting ready and this short, thick man with dark hair and dark eyes came over and said ‘Excuse me’ in a heavy accent that made me and Daisy think of Boss Hogg from
The Dukes of Hazzard
. He introduced himself as Scott Key, an A&R guy for Sony Records. Scott Key told us he thought we were terrific, just terrific. He said we were really going to be the Next Big Thing. When the floodgates open on you two, he said, the whole world is going to love Masterful Johnson. He said he’d been sent out from L.A. especially to see us and that Sony wanted to sign us. Me and Daisy and Stella just sat there with our mouths open. Scott Key asked us if we were free to sign with Sony. We said, What did he mean,
free?
He asked if we were under contract with Cactus Records for another album. It occurred to us then that as far as we had ever talked about it with Ian, we were free to sign with Sony. We thought for sure Ian would be happy that such a big record company was interested in us. Scott Key kept saying the floodgateswere going to open up on the whole world and he got me and Daisy pretty excited. He said we’d go to L.A. and shoot a video for ‘D.F.O.’ to play on MTV. Posters, T-shirts, hats, bumper stickers—maybe your own cartoon series, he said. It all sounded good to us. He gave us his card. I have to leave immediately after the show, he told us. He had to be in Texas the next day for the South by Southwest festival in Austin to check out a whole roster of bands like the Paranoids, Ramona the Pest, and Astro Chicken. We said we thought he had a great job and he said it was only great when he found talent like me and Daisy. Scott Key told us to call him that Monday, and that’s what we planned to do.
    Summers in Arizona are notoriously brutal and the first day of the SaltBed Festival was especially so. In addition to giving away free bottles of water, a misting system was set up backstage along with industrial fans that whirred like a sky full of jet airplanes. The security staff took turns hosing off the crowd from the stage and it was hard to tell who was enjoying it more.
    The heat was certainly a factor in what happened. In retrospect, the Falco story probably didn’t help either. Plus we’d stayed up all night excited about our recording future. Plus we were excited to see Stella again after such a long time. Also some of the bands before us played longer than they were scheduled, adding frustration to our nervousness. Jammin’ Jay was nowhere to be found until right before we went on and he said Ian wasn’t going to make it at all. We thought Ian had found out about Scott Key and was pissed, and we felt extreme guilt about it. Another factor—and Istill blame Stella for this—was that Daisy had found Stella’s Murder Book and found the page about Elliot and Hunter and Rick and, gruesome as she can be, Stella had autopsy pictures and Daisy’d ripped out the pages and had them in her back pocket. I found all this out later at the hospital and all Daisy said was, They don’t belong in the book, they were real people.
    Finally Jammin’ Jay