For those of you who remember 1983, give the following trivia question a try: What band broke the record for most albums sold on its release date at Rhino Records in Claremont, California in that year?
Duran, Duran? The Police? The Violent Femmes? U2?
The Targets got together as a mod-ska band shortly after lead singer/trumpet player Nicki Tostevin and saxophonist John Mariz arrived as freshmen at Pomona College in the fall of 1981. Tostevin, sporting the brightest natural red hair I’ve still ever seen on a stage, convinced her high school buddy and classical
guitarist Rick DeVinck to join with Geoff Griffin, a 6’5” Mormon punk bass player, drummer Biff Sanders, and her to form the band. Many weeks of rehearsing and writing in the Smudge Pot in the basement of the Pomona College student union led to some gigs at college parties. Getting the hyperkinetic Mariz to join them gave their audiences a second focus of attention on stage to complement Tostevin’s incredible hair and smile, and before long these guys were good enough to headline at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip. They made a live recording of that show, which was their best recorded work, but I lent my cassette copy to my college roommate in 1983 and I haven’t seen or heard it since.
They only made one album, Unity Beat, a six-song EP that they put together well after college soccer star Mike Hammond replaced Griffin, who had to leave the band to do his Mormon mission work, and Perry Tolett stepped in at lead guitar, freeing DeVinck to pursue his true love of classical guitar. Hammond’s
presence officially made The Targets “two-toned”, and DeVinck’s natural shyness didn’t really suit him for lead guitar in a two-tone band while Tolett relished the role, so the turnover didn’t hurt the band. Everyone collaborated on the album, and it shattered the opening day sales records at Rhino Records. My
recollection is that it sold about 240 copies that day. I shared a cottage with Tostevin , Mariz, and two other Pomona College sophomores in 1982-83, and we spent much of the year hosting a constant stream of high school-age mods who probably accounted for most of those sales.
The real gems on this EP are found in the middle of each side and are two of their earliest original songs. I’m sure more than one guy fantasized about giving Tostevin, still one of my best friends, a fury-charged slap across the face after listening to “Perfect Guy”, in which she so gently tells us, “You have your faults . . . so I could never love you true,” and so forth, capturing the workings of the young adult female mind that so frustrate so many men. Her lyrics are juxtaposed on a lilting ska rhythm with Mariz’s shrill sax answering
the call of Tostevin’s whimsical phrasing, and Sanders playfully inserts a little marimba riff near the end. “Two-Tone Mover” on side 2 is Geoff Griffin’s perfect retort, a punk rant that pounds through the façade of a pathetic dance-floor flower – “She made for the ocean, but only got to the sand; she’s been hurt so many times, I don’t see how she can stand!”
Listen to the other four tracks for their music, not their poetry. “Don’t Stop Now”, the opening track, features all the elegant musical stylings that made this band so fun to see live. Tostevin’s trumpet and arresting presence easily upstaged her songwriting and singing; her duet against Mariz’s sax is a
thing of beauty. Tolett’s catchy lead guitar and Hammond’s superb bass riff set it all up, and it works well despite Tostevin’s somewhat hollow exhortation of “Hey, don’t stop now!” that I heard one critic diss as “Sinatra-esque” and he wasn’t wrong. The lively “Searching For a Scene” completes side one, once again
using the power of the horns to create a hopeful noise for those mods who hadn’t quite figured out where they belonged yet.
Tostevin tried out a little playful silliness to start the second side with “Sax Man.” For most of their existence, The Targets called that song, “Traveling Onward”, and I preferred that version because it had considerably more depth, but this version gives Mariz a little more freedom and it’s enjoyable enough. The title track, a ska instrumental, closes the album and gives Tolett, Hammond, and Sanders a showcase for their talents without having to compete with the horns, and the result is an appealing sound quite reminiscent of the early English Beat.
Twenty-seven years later, it still sounds pretty damn good for a bunch of college kids who did not have rock
stardom as a career goal.
--Birdman
We don't usually put out links to download albums, but this one is so out of print and the rare copy to be found on ebay (selling for $40) won't help the band. So we'd rather get the band the attention they've so long deserved. Here's a place to download the album for free.
http://toneandwave.blogspot.com/2008/07/targets-unity-beat.html
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