Tru Fax and the Insaniacs -- "Washingtron" (1980)

I used to work as a waitron

In the lounge of the Hiltron

Now I work for my Senatron 

And I live in Arlingtron

I've written elsewhere on this blog about "The Mystic Eye," an eccentric Saturday-night radio show on the old WHFS in Washington, DC – I taped about a hundred hours of this program in 1980, and still have those tapes. 

Recently, I discovered my handwritten lists of the songs on those tapes (or at least the songs that were identified on the tapes).  At least half of the music on those tapes – ranging from new wave to punk to power pop to truly bizarre novelty songs – is stuff I never heard anywhere else

For example, there was "My Girlfriend Is a Rock," by the Nervebreakers, a Texas garage band, which discusses the pros and cons of having a rock for a girlfriend:

You oughta see her in the swimming pool

She swims pretty good as a general rule

But she doesn't swim quite as good

As a girl made out of wood

Click here to listen to “My Girlfriend Is a Rock.”

Another record I heard on “The Mystic Eye” is "Fifi Goes Pop," a cautionary tale about a pet owner in a big hurry who puts his poodle in a microwave after bathing her.  (Obviously he had not read his owner's manual very carefully.)

Fifi goes pop

At setting number two

Cooked from the inside out

In a Fifi barbecue

Sucks to be Fifi, huh?

Click here to listen the original "Fifi" 45.  

*     *     *     *     *

That brings us to Tru Fax and the Insaniacs, a Washington pop-punk band that made its first appearance at the legendary 9:30 Club (then located at 930 F St. NW in DC, only two blocks from my current office) in 1980, the year the club opened – and the same year I was sitting at home on Saturday nights, faithfully recording "The Mystic Eye.” 

"Washingtron" was the band's most popular song by far – they didn't record that much.  As someone who worked for the federal government back in those days, I can attest that it captured a certain aspect of the reality of life in Washington: for a lot of people, life in DC was a pretty mundane 9-to-5 kind of existence.

Tru Fax's lead singer, Diana Quinn, has a website with some information on the band's history if you're interested.  (By the way, I don't think "Tru Fax" has anything to do with facsimile machines – which were not widely used when the band got started in 1978.  Think "true facts" instead.)

The final concert at the original 9:30 Club took place on December 31, 1995.  The bands who performed at that show included not only Tru Fax but also several other "Mystic Eye" stalwarts – like the Insect Surfers, Urban Verbs, Slickee Boys, and Tiny Desk Unit.  Some of the performances from the club's last week have been released on two CDs titled 9:30 Live: A Time, A Place, A Scene.

Click here to hear a live performance of “Washington” from the 9:30 Live CD set.  (This recording doesn’t really do justice to Diana Quinn’s remarkably pure voice, but I couldn’t find the original studio recording of the song on YouTube.)

To buy "Washingtron" from Amazon, just click on the link below: