Urban Verbs -- "Next Question" (1980)

I'm faced with the next question

Is this love or just a feeling?

For some reason, I always associate the Urban Verbs – yet another band whose music I first heard on the "Mystic Eyes" radio program in 1980 – with the Talking Heads.  I'm not sure why, except for the fact that the Taking Heads' drummer, Chris Frantz, was the brother of the Urban Verbs' lead singer, Roddy Frantz. 

Both were beloved by the critics, but the bands really couldn't have been more different in attitude.  The Urban Verbs were unhappy, full of angst – some might say they were whiny and their music was depressing – while the Talking Heads were quirky and offbeat and funny, and usually had their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks.

The Urban Verbs didn't last long.  Their eponymous debut album was released in 1980:

It contained a heapin' helpin' of Debbie Downer-ish tracks, including "The Angry Young Men" ("Oh no, the end is at hand"), "Subways" ("Down here I don't have to say anything/I just sit and look out the window"), "Tina Grey" ("Tina's put her fist through the glass" because "she doesn't want a baby"), and "The Good Life" ("I wouldn't take a piss on your good life").

They put out a second LP the next year, and then broke up in 1982.  Sic transit gloria.

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"Next Question" is my favorite Urban Verbs song.  The singer is willing to assume, arguendo, that he’s in love, but he’s not sure how being in love will change things:  

If this is love, how will it change us?

Make us move just a little bit closer?

Or will you call me every evening? 

This song reminds me of something A. J. Byatt wrote about modern young intellectuals in her novel, Possession:  

They were children of a time and culture that mistrusted love, "in love," romantic love, romance in toto, and which nevertheless in revenge proliferated sexual language, linguistic sexuality, analysis, dissection, deconstruction, exposure.

In Elvis Costello's "Mystery Dance," the singer is the male half of a young and very inexperienced couple:

I remember when the lights went out

And I was tryin' to make it look like

It was never in doubt

She thought that I knew

And I thought that she knew

So both of us were willing

But we didn't know how to do it

Byatt's overeducated post-docs have just the opposite problem.  They know exactly how to do it,  but aren't quite sure if they want to do it.  

Maybe they would prefer to just talk about doing it, or – better yet – write an article for a scholarly journal exploring the biological, psychological, sociological, anthropological, philosophical, or literary implications of doing it.

The narrator of "Next Question" is like Byatt's characters – he talks too much and thinks too much.  He's trying to write a script for his life rather than just letting it happen.  You really want to grab him by the shoulders and give him a good shake – maybe slap him and yell at him to GET HIS SH*T TOGETHER!

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Click here to listen to "Next Question."

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