I remember listening to an advanced cassette of Roger’s Moog Cookbook album with some friends on Sunset Blvd after a show, when I saw Luke walking down the street and pulled him over to giggle with us.
Between their singer Luke Tierney and another friend of mine who was working for Imperial Drag’s management, I was getting plenty of insider info. At my short-lived job at a management company in Hollywood in the summer of ’95, their label was courting a band called Silverjet that was friendly with Roger Manning and his new glam-pop band, Imperial Drag. How did we hear about these things before the world wide web? I do not recall. I’m not sure when I heard that the band broke up. Of course, it didn’t help when the Russians got involved…. The animated duo called them “like a cross between Stone Temple Pilots and Nelson” (among other body parts) in this video from the show’s fifth season. Hey, why won’t you talk to me?” It’s that timely quarter-beard that might’ve help prompt the third main cause of their demise: MTV music critics Beavis & Butthead. “The worst thing is the photos from that era, it’s so grotesque and there’s things in it, bits of food. “My god what was that doing? It was kind of like a chin strap,” he confessed in a 2008 Art Into Dust interview.
Maybe if they’d sung about puppies, kitties and rainbows, things would’ve been different. Hell, Jon alone brought “Not Long For This World”, “Nothing Between Us”, “No One Can Hurt Me” and “Not Ready Yet” to the pity party. Singing songs with titles like “Nothing”, “Oh Well Maybe” and “Oh Nevermind” is not a recipe for success. Why did the Grays split up so soon? Artistic differences? Personality clashes? Did the band really leave Jon asleep in a restaurant while on tour? Who knows? Several things sure couldn’t have helped.
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