AMG All Music Guide
Review
"Much of the U.S. new wave scene was as much garage/psych revivalism as anything else, but so long as the music was good fun there wasn't any reason to complain. And thus arrived the Prefab Messiahs, who besides having a great name and a proto-college rock dress sense clearly loved many things acid-ridden and more than slightly spaced out. Devolver, a late-'90s reissue that captured most of what the band recorded via live sets and rehearsals and the like, shows the band -- notably featuring future Abunai!/ Lothars member Kris Thompson on bass and backing vocals -- merrily careening through a series of mostly brisk, ramshackle joys. It might be a bit limiting to say that their contemporaries were probably the Three O'Clock for the sweetness and the Fleshtones for the mania -- if anything, though, songs like "The 16th Track" sound a bit like the Damned in their Naz Nomad guise, while others would fit in well on a Syd Barrett album or two. In any event, the trio plus various assisting performers -- including Ringo Casiotone, cousin to such legendary drummers as Echo and Doktor Avalanche -- manage to nail a good blend of lightness and merry insanity. "Franz Kafka" is a great example of how the band could turn things into a great full-on rave-up. Humor was always core to the group's approach -- while not a comedy band as such, the fact that some song titles included "Prefabedelia" and "Rice 4 a Sheik" says it all. Lead singer Xerox Feinberg's singing is in ways the secret weapon of the band, both beautifully disaffected and snotty in a classic Nuggets sense. Meanwhile, various minute-long songs interspersed throughout are mostly off-the-cuff bizarro dialogues and rants, thus "Got a Hole in Me" (addressed to "Mr. Donut")."
--Ned Raggett
[from Brian Goslow's liner notes to the album]
In the first half of the 1980s, in the post-industrial
landmine known as Worcester, Massachusetts (a.k.a.
"Wormtown", a city whose two industrial complexes made
it number one on the Soviet Union's hit list in case
of war), three wise men -- accompanied by an equally
strange entourage of followers and inventors --
ignored all the rules of how to become successful
musicians and created a unique legacy of their own,
and with it, the era of "Peace, Love and Alienation."
The journey began at Clark University, where two
devotees of Dada terrorism, Seth "Xerox" Feinberg and
"Egg" Al Nidle postered its campus with posters
announcing "talentless guitarist and drummer seeking
bassist and lead guitarist to form post-new wave pop
pseudo-psychedelic band." It drew the attention of
Kris "Trip" Thompson, a new member of the Church of
All Things Psychedelic and
guitarist-without-a-working-guitar Mike "Doc" Michaud.
They began practicing at the local community radio
station, using only pizza boxes for a drum kit, and
were not so politely asked to leave by half the
station. The other half demanded they play on the air,
and soon afterwards, the Prefab Messiahs were on the
airwaves asking the question, "Whatever happened to
Cousin Artie? / He blew his mind out at a '60s
party...", and intended or not (thanks to the fact the
local underground club's doorman was indeed a popular
scenester named Artie, and still scarred from having
been forced to attend Woodstock), the residents of
Wormtown took it as a celebration of one of their own.
With its Betty Crocker-like instant success, and fame
(or at least a good used clothing store) just around
the corner, "Egg" Al decided to leave the performing
line-up and like Gepetto and Malcolm McClaren, pull
strings from behind the scenes (he attempted to bring
Ronald McDonald into its lineup - but alas, failed by
a single screw of pulling off the artistic coup of the
century). He was replaced by Ringo, a Casio instrument
whose existence irritated serious music fans, but
delighted music lovers.
In the spring of '82 the group entered the "Spring
Rock Showcase" at the city's largest nightclub
[Sanctuary]. Heavily promoted by the region's biggest
radio station [WAAF], it attracted a large hard rock
crowd, most of who were beyond stunned to see the
Prefabs take the stage with Ringo - but not as
horrified as when they learned the group had won its
preliminary round enroute to the semi-finals.
The Prefabs' belief in their music earned the respect
of Nebulas drummer Tony Serrato, who volunteered to
replace Ringo. They took their prize and recorded "The
16th Track" and "Desperately Happy", and with a real
drummer, rapidly became one of the city's best live
acts.
Time constraints eventually forced Serrato to leave
the band, and he was replaced by Billy Brahm, from
Bobb Trimble's equally mythical Crippled Dog Band.
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