SUPER RARE 45 OHIO GARAGE BAND "ROMANTIC NOISE" "78 AFFAIR WILLIE PHOENIX

$

75

SUPER RARE OHIO  ROCK/PSYCH GARAGE BAND 45  OF   " ROMANTIC NOISE-'78 AFFAIR"
ALL SONGS WRITTEN BY WILLIE PHOENIX 1978 ACSAP 
STEREO 000074-8094S11A
SIDE A  HOLD ON/OH NO,NOT AGAIN...PAINTER   SIDE B  PAINTER/RUNNING FROM SOCIETY
THIS RECORD IS IN LIKE MINT CONDITION AND LOOKS TO BE PLAYED VERY LITTLE IF AT ALL.. SUPER GLOSSY..COVER HAS A FEW CREASES AND A VERY SMALL SEAM TEAR ON THE SIDE ..GOOD CONDITION..

BELOW IS AN EXCERPT OF THE BAND FROM A SITE I FOUND ON THE NET...VERY INTERESTING.....
The band released a 7-inch single ("I Fell In Love With A Baby" b/w "Dead Flowers") and a 4-song ep - '78 Affair - that comprised two of their best songs ("Painter" and "Runnin' from Society") and simultaneously two of their worst songs ("Oh No, Not Again" and "Hold On").  This kind of breakdown in song selection on records would unfortunately continue throughout Willie's career.  NONE of Romantic Noise's best material ever got recorded in any kind of intelligible, releasable form.  (Rumors have persisted for years that Willie has well-produced versions of that material stashed away, but I've never seen nor heard concrete proof of that fact.  And what are we waiting for?)
Similarly, two of Willie's best songs from the 1982 period when he was on A&M Records - "Champaign" and "Bowery Express" - never saw wax.  (Though that may have more to do with A&M's total mishandling of Willie's entire stint on the label than it does Willie's judgements of his material.  But more on that in part two of this tome.)   I also have a 60-minute live cassette of The Buttons (Willie's band immediately after Romantic Noise) at a Q-FM Hometown Album concert in 1980 and cassettes full of unreleased Shadowlords songs, most of which are better than anything actually released by those bands on vinyl back in the day.  Further, the three best songs in the repertoire of Willie Phoenix & The True Soul Rockers in 1990 - "Lookin' For Wendy," "I Wanna Feel What We Used To," and "Electric Folk-Dreamin' Man" - never saw the light of day.  And except for the A&M record, Willie had the final say on what material was released in his name.
It was that inability to relinquish even the most basic of control that characterizes Willie to this day.  And while I'll defend to the death Willie's defense of his artistic vision I gotta add that it would've been nice if he could occasionally have collaborated with his bandmates or producers to execute that creative vision.  The first manifestation of that singularity was when Willie announced to the rest of Romantic Noise in November or December of 1978 that come January of 1979, the band would be changing their name to The Buttons (a really pedestrian moniker after the vastly more poetic & lyrical Romantic Noise) and that Willie would be taking over all the lead vocals of said band.
In the heady days of The Summer Of 1978, my most fervent hope was that Romantic Noise would get signed to a record deal and that Nick Lowe would produce their first album.  (Lowe's production work on those first two Elvis Costello records - My Aim Is True and This Year's Model - and his production credo of "Bash it down and we'll tart it up later." would have been PERFECT for Willie & the guys.)  By the spring of 1979 Dee Hunt had been booted from the band, ostensibly over the cliched "musical differences," but actually he was the only band member who would ever talk back to Willie and (this is my purely subjective opinion) Dee's increasing popularity with the female contingent of The Buttons' audience became problematic to Willie.  I quit the road crew when Dee was replaced with Jerry Hanahan, a really good drummer in his own right.
The Buttons subsequently played a lot of really great shows - the aforementioned Q-FM Hometown Album Concert and a KILLER set opening for Talking Heads at Mershon Auditorium right when the Heads' cover of Al Green's "Take Me To The River" was starting to burn up the charts - but the band was never really the same for me after Dee got fired, ya know?  The Buttons Mark II (or Version 2.0 for you 2013 cyber-geeks) with Hanahan on drums released one single, which, true to form, contained one GREAT song - "Hey Little Girl," that stayed in Willie's repertoire until the 1990's - and one middling tune - "Blue Bicycle," which of course Willie regarded as the A-side of the 45.  (The Buttons most popular radio song - "I Saw Superman" - was recorded when Hunt was still in the band.)