By Michael Barron
how did tdu come into being? i’ll start with the spring of 1979. bill warrell, one of the founders of dc space encouraged me to start a band. he had heard me play guitar and piano and he knew i had played in a couple garage bands that never made it any further than the carport at my family’s home in suburban virginia, playing covers of neil young, the velvet underground alice cooper and the rolling stones. bill was the one who suggested that i should ask susan mumford to sing. susan had never sung (in a band anyway) but she was (and still is) a fantastic writer and quite striking. so i was writing songs, susan had somewhat skeptically agreed at least in theory to being the singer, and i had in mind the name of the band ("tiny desk unit" is what bill called this wooden desk-drawer organizer that held paper clips, rubber bands, pencils and glue-sticks.) carol blizzard, who was then dating urban verbs singer roddy frantz, and working the lunch shift at dc space, told me one afternoon that i should call bob because he had just gotten an arp synthesizer (the same kind that robin rose of the urban verbs used) and he was kind of interested in being in a band. the urban verbs were the biggest influence on me at that time. they had an amazing sound, which was both spare and huge. i also got a lot of support and encouragement from roddy frantz, who listened to me play a few of my tunes on my acoustic guitar, and told me i should keep writing. i first met bob in passing when i unlocked a door for him so he could pick up some posters that the silk screening studio above dc space did for a concert he produced with david howcroft. the dc new-wave music scene was pretty tight-knit, so you’d see the same 100 faces everywhere you went. it was our validation that we were at the right place. anyhow, bob said he knew a bass player and a drummer and over the independence day weekend of 1979, bob, joe menacher, who became tdu’s first bass player and drummer josh schiffman (i hope i spelled his name right) all got together in the loft at dc space and played versions of "breathing," "nobody’s fool," "happy families on the mall" and "i tried" for a few hours. (maybe bob will post some excerpts!) we got together at least a couple more times before josh told us he wasn’t really into the music we were doing. bob knew chris thompson, who had played drums in a couple of other dc bands with musicians that went on to form other landmark dc bands, the urban verbs and black market baby, to name a couple. i knew him as one of the djs at wgtb, the georgetown university radio station, who played the best new (and old) rock music. anyway, chris came to play with us and he totally got what we were trying to do with our sound. i was thrilled when chris agreed to join the band. we had a few weeks of rehearsal and then we did our first show at dc space in early september of 1979. i was completely terrified and swilled down half a dozen beers right before the show in order to calm myself down. the loft was jam-packed, as we had all of our friends and 75 of those 100 people who went to everything new wave. we started playing where we could; mostly dc space, but i remember an art gallery on north capitol street and a bookstore somewhere between farragut square and georgetown. then dody disanto created the famous 9:30 club out of the wreckage of the old atlantis club. dody gave us a rehearsal space in the basement of the club and booked us to play at the club on opening night in may of 1980. a couple months prior to this, bass player joe menacker left the band and was replaced by terry baker, who had been one of our sound engineers. terry jumped right in and helped further define the tdu sound. terry and chris made a much stronger rhythm section, which opened up the possibilities of what bob, susan and i could do musically. tdu were off and running; we went into no evil studios in late spring/early summer of 1980 and recorded a bunch of tracks, but somehow we decided to scrap the studio stuff and go with a live recording from the 9:30 club. this was all made possible by no evil studios co-owner nick koumoutseas and entertainment lawyer larry singer, who fronted the studio time and the cost of pressing the records. we formed our own publishing and record company (9 1/2" x 16" records.) tdu continued to develop, and we played more out of town gigs. sometime later in 1980, drummer chris thompson left the band and lorenzo "pee wee" jones joined in his place. pee wee’s drumming was rock solid; gone were the subtle flourishes and shifting tempos that were chris thompson’s milieu. the terry baker/pee wee jones rhythm section enabled bob, susan and i to experiment a lot more and we were writing totally new kinds of songs. "take me to paris," "napping in japan" and "wave at the nice man, suzie" are examples of this different sound. the studio ep "naples" that we released in 1981 is a record of which i’m very proud. while things were looking up for tdu, they were not so much for me personally. i was drinking more and more and taking all the drugs i could get my hands on which made me late or missing completely from rehearsals, late for shows, and the worst sort of friend. my alcoholism & addiction ultimately led to the breakup of the band but even worse i was so ungrateful for and ungracious to the people who had done so much to help tdu along; our fans, bill, nick, larry, dody, the former and current members of the band, my family. it took me nearly six more years of floundering around with the booze and pills and powders before i found recovery in 12-step programs in new york city, where i moved with 5 garbage bags full of clothes and $250 in november of 1986. in may of 1987, i put down the drinking and the drugging and i have stayed sober ever since. tdu reunited in may of 1990 and again in december of 1995, at the invitation of seth hurwitz, who after producing many shows there, had bought the 9:30 club from dody in the mid-eighties. we were the first and the last band to play on the stage of the 9:30 at its original location at 930 f street nw. i am immensely grateful to still have bob and susan as friends and as musical collaborators. the rpm challenge of 2007 got us back together making music; i could never have imagined how well it would turn out and how much fun it would be. i am also immensely grateful to my partner josé, bob’s wife laurie and their son julian for giving up some of their family time with us so that bob and susan and i could work on this project. february 25, 2007