Pink Kross performs at the Boat Race in Cambridge UK, probably in 1997. A Sweet Pea Records band, Pink Kross (Vic, Jude and Jane) toured with Number One Cup on at least one British tour. These days, the three still live in Scotland. Jane performs with Glasgow band The Amphetameanies.
Check out Pink Kross‘ 7″ Tension Toy, which we released about 20 years ago!!!
It’s a sneak peak of the cover art for the next Tough Solar album, Puke’s Last Stand. Expected in early 2018. We’ll keep you posted.
Tough Solar’s second release, “Weren’t There” is being assembled in our dining room right now. It’s our 21st release!
Here’s the cover. You can buy the 12-inch vinyl record here.
Pitchfork conducted a Q&A with Michael Lenzi a few months back. The wide-ranging interview touched on his musical career and history with the bands Number One Cup, The Fire Show, Resplendent and others. Here is the interview in full. When you’re done, check out Michael’s newest project, Tough Solar, out now on Sweet Pea Records.
Q: In addition to your music, what would you consider to be your job, i.e. what keeps the lights on?
A: I left Washington, D.C., and drove to Chicago in early 1989 in a snowstorm, without a job and pretty clueless. The only thing I could think to do as a job, besides waiting tables or working in a store or something, was to try to become a teacher. I didn’t have a teaching certificate and hadn’t ever taught other than tutoring kids.
I found a job working at an adult literacy not-for-profit called Literacy Council of Chicago. Since then, that is the only type of professional work I have ever done. It is good work for my personality, and I have met many great people and have been to some very out-of-the way places in the city.
Music has never really made me any money. I did have a phase from around 1995 to 1999 where I didn’t work much and devoted myself to touring and recording with Number One Cup. There was a brief little period there where it seemed like an indie rock band might be something you could do, at least temporarily, as a job.
But in the end, I had to go back to teaching because it is the only thing that ever felt like a career. At the end of 1999, the first job I got after Number One Cup broke up was working as a GED teacher in the Cook County Jail. I did that for five years. That was a very illuminating experience. It showed me how the world really works.
After the jail, I worked at a school for children with emotional and behavioral disorders and then I returned to literacy work and have worked since then in Rogers Park at the Howard Area Community Center.
I did the Fire Show with Seth Kim-Cohen, my band mate in Number One Cup, from 1999 to 2002. He went to graduate school in London in the fall of 2002 and the band ended. After that, I did Resplendent by myself. So making money doing the Fire Show or Resplendent never seemed like a possibility.
Q: In an interview I saw in 2006, you had mentioned a teaching gig where you worked with developmentally challenged and at-risk children. Is that something you still pursue? How did you get into that field?
A: I was an aimless young man like so many others. I knew that I was not going to be a corporate dude or a salesman or a lawyer or whatever. I have always been someone who didn’t want to do what others did. Working to help people who didn’t quite get a fair shake is something that appealed to me and still does. I grew up in D.C. in the ’70s and ‘80s and was raised around politics and hippies and liberal-minded people. I was not interested at all in politics, but helping people seemed cool. Yeah, and I was into D.C. hardcore, and that whole social justice streak made sense to me.
Q: In the time since the Fire Show disbanded, indie rock, while still not a lucrative field by any means, has gone overground, abetted by festivals, the O.C., movies, soundtracks and the like. What was the Fire Show’s idea of success back then? Were there certain scene principles?
A: Hmmm. I didn’t think that we had a chance at a career with the Fire Show. The music’s appeal seemed very insular to me. I can’t comment much about the scene at that time. We became friends with the Perishable records crew of Brian Deck, Tim Loftus, Ben Massarella and Tim Rutilli. Things started from there.
Seth and I thought we made it just by being asked by Tim and Ben to record albums for Perishable. I still am very proud of those records for what they were. We made what we wanted to hear. The music made sense to me and is inspired. That is all I ever wanted to do. I have no regrets.
As for what indie rock has become, I have no idea. Everyone has a theory. It seems like people still make music because they love it. I don’t think that has changed.
Q: Did The Fire Show or Resplendent ever feel like a sustainable career to you?
A: No. Even though the Fire Show broke up in 2002 and the Internet was a force at that point, I still felt like we were in the previous era of the Yellow Pages and phone booths and paper maps. We missed that wave.
Resplendent was my thing, and I did it for myself. I love making music. I have taken breaks now and again but I always come back to it. Whether anybody notices, I can’t control that. I have isolated myself sometimes because I don’t really participate in the game, but so be it. So pushing to have a music career seems beside the point when I have a job that I like.
Q: Was there a certain point where you realized that you had a career that put music to the side?
A: Music never seemed like a job path to me. It is not like I am some gifted musician or something. I taught myself how to play drums at 23 or 24. No one told me I should do it and that it was a good idea. The notion of a career at it seemed absolutely far-fetched. A glimmer of hope appeared in the 1990s then disappeared again fairly quickly. It is cool that people can do it and sustain it, but I have the wrong personality for that kind of life. In the past, I broke a lot of instruments out of frustration. Doing it professionally would eat me up.
Q: The Fire Show appeared posthumously on our top 50 LPs of 2002 list, do you wonder what might’ve happened had the band been able to capitalize on the recognition of that LP?
A: I think that record is strange, baffling and bracing. I cannot however imagine what might have happened if we’d stuck around. It seems like an impossible idea right now from this vantage point. Sometimes bands are not well known or even known in their time.
I grew up loving Dischord bands that would last only a year or so. Some of the records, like the Embrace LP, came out after they broke up, yet the music they made sticks with me still. It is incredibly influential.
Void released a split LP with Faith and had three tracks on the Flex Your Head compilation. That is the only music they put out in their time. They were a band that had a fairly short but potent life. They left behind insanely good stuff. I still listen to them to this day.
Ending the Fire Show with Saint the Fire Show seems somehow appropriate. The other stuff about career and money … I don’t know.
Q: What were some of the main takeaways both good and bad that came from the early 2000s? What was your greatest success, and subsequently, your greatest regret?
A: It is hard to keep going if you run out of steam. I think Seth and I knew that something had to change. We did the final tour for Saint the Fire Show as a duo with looping pedals, a guitar, a bass rig and a drum set. We couldn’t keep a band together. But it was a pretty hard experience, and I was relieved when we got home. What we were able to do is make music that we were enthralled by. We did it on our own terms.
I like where I am now and do not regret anything. Perhaps, if pushed, I would have liked our last Fire Show gig at the 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis to have been a bit more momentous. But it was suitably cathartic, and we destroyed our gear on stage. That was great. We needed that release. I like breaking stuff.
If something is over, then fuck it. Destroy it. Time to move on.
Michael’s new project, Tough Solar, will be released on Sweet Pea this fall! So stay tuned for more info on that. Until then, here is a picture story telling the tale of Tough Solar.
Seth Kim-Cohen sent us some vintage photos of Number One Cup. He thinks they may have been made by Jim Newberry around the time of ‘People People Why Are We Fighting” album.
Q: How did the band come together? (Who found whom, where?)
A: Tart started around 1992 or ‘93 when I first heard Laura Eason, one of my fellow members of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company, playing one of her songs on bass after a rehearsal. It was called “Roses.” I lit up 
with the idea that, instead of dating guys in bands (who turned out to be unreliable heartbreakers in general), I could get together with another friend and start our own band. I asked Laura to start playing each other our songs and it turned out we harmonized well together on each other’s material, and egged each other on to write more and write better. After a few months of living room practice sessions, we played a few casual shows for our friends with another Lookingglass member, Temple Williams, on drums. We made a four-song cassette demo called “Grumpy” and tried to get gigs. But soon after, Temple moved on to what would become his next career in television production in Los Angeles and New York. Thankfully, Michael Lenzi somehow heard about us while I was living in Hyde Park — he played with another guy in the H.P. scene and I think that’s how we crossed paths — and offered to play drums for us. To have an outsider who wasn’t connected to Lookingglass and wasn’t our friend hear us and express support and interest was just the encouragement we needed. I felt we became a real band only then. We had some happy months as a trio and started getting shows in town. Our two singles on Sweet Pea Records came soon after, produced by Rick Karr who would later join the band on guitar and additional vocals. Eventually Michael Sankowski replaced Michael Lenzi on drums.
Q: Where were some of the places you played live shows?
A: I think we knew we were starting to get somewhere when we played our first gig at the fabled and now departed Lounge Ax on Lincoln Avenue on a Sunday night. When one of the co-owners got a series of calls about our gig, I overheard her call someone to come in to do last-minute lighting for the show. That was the first time I panicked a little on stage about not being able to see my fingers on the fret board, but the lighting was awesome and we felt quite pro being up on the same little stage where I’d recently enjoyed seeing The Wedding Present, Jeff Tweedy and a host of local favorites. Lounge Ax and Empty Bottle continued to be our “A list” spots, along with Phyllis’ Musical Inn in Wicker Park and one really fun gig at the Fireside Bowl. The Beat Kitchen was “B list” — good sound (despite the always cranky sound guy there), but not a hip place, somehow. Maybe it was the remote location. We also had one memorable gig at Metro but never did make it to the Double Door. I’d say our highlight was a gig at The Empty Bottle with opening support from an awesome power-pop trio from Knoxville, TN called Superdrag. They continue to be one of my favorite bands from the era and I can’t quite believe they opened for us.
Q: Who were the band’s influences?
A: The Breeders, PJ Harvey, The Fastbacks. Maybe Kate Bush for giving me the courage to go Totally Girly and trusting we’d find an audience. I always remember one of our fans, a girl named Tamara with dark hair that covered half her face, would find me before a show and ask very seriously if we were planning to play a song of ours called “Ophelia.” When I said yes (we almost always played that song), she’d nod very seriously and walk away. Girls needed our shit at one point.
Q: When and why did the band break up?
A: Just like I knew we were getting somewhere when Lounge Ax had to call someone at the last minute to light our low-stakes Sunday night slot, I knew our time was on the wane when Bruce, the owner of The Empty
Bottle, had to ask me if we could really fill the place on a Saturday night for our one and only record release party. That was a Truth Bomb. I wrote a line in a play once; a kooky record producer says to the mother of a sister group who’s concerned that her girls might not be ready to record yet: “The thing is, music has its moment, and you usually don’t know it ’til it’s over.” I didn’t know we’d had our brief time in the sun until that sun was setting. I remember driving around Chicago the winter of ’96 and avoiding listening to the radio because I used to listen to it with hope and now that hope was circling the drain. “Champagne Supernova” fucking sucked. But finally it ended by degrees — Michael Lenzi, our original drummer, had long since moved on to focus fully on Sweet Pea label-mates, Number One Cup (we always used to joke that Tart was Michael’s Number Two Cup), then we had to leave our practice space, then the gigs stopped coming so easily. Recording sessions for our only full-length release, “Start,” were hampered by creative differences between our chosen producer, Rick Sims of the Champaign, Illinois punk band Didjits, and Rick Karr who was the band’s de facto producer. Lack of communication and clarity of roles led to an implosion, which was probably the death blow, though we did complete Start and release it and I’m still really proud of it. Finally, for a lot of reasons, I moved to Los Angeles to go to grad school in 1996 and that was the official end. We all moved on. We’d had our moment.
Q: Recount an amusing Tart story.
entire theater company appeared in a small movie together, directed by one of the ensemble members. There was some kind of party, either to celebrate the launch of the filming or maybe a wrap party, I can’t remember. But naturally, Tart took the stage. It was a movie about a 10-year high school reunion, so I found a cheerleader costume from the fictional high school in the movie lying around and threw it on, feeling quite sassy. Anyway, during our last year together, we’d started branching out a bit musically and I’d noticed that the moment before our band practice really “started,” when we were supposedly just tuning our instruments and warming up, had started to morph into a long, aimless, occasionally really cool jam. We never dared to try it on stage, for fear that it might turn into something flat-footed and clumsy, but this private gathering must have seemed like a safe place to try it out. I can’t remember if we planned on doing this amorphous jam that night or if we spontaneously cruised into it, but there I was in my cheerleader costume doing this long, droning, wandering, noisy exploration on stage. Somehow, without talking about it, the jam turned into the eight bar intro of the first song on the set list, a cover of Blondie’s “Dreamin’”. I stepped up to the mic to sing the opening line “When I met you in the restaurant…” and right at the moment of the first syllable, someone above the stage somehow knew exactly what we were doing and slammed a spotlight onto me the moment I started to sing. It was an impossible moment of synergy never to be recreated and I still don’t know how it happened. But I do have a photo from that performance, me in my silver platform shoes and cheerleader costume, and I treasure it.
Our newest release, “Ballads of Lost Son” by LENZI, is truly special. It’s a 3-record vinyl LP box set, featuring clear-yellow, clear-pink and clear-clear vinyl.
The packaging is hand-screen-printed by Steve Walters at Screwball Press. This is an extremely limited pressing, so if you want one, you need to act fast.
I found some photos of Number One Cup playing at the Taste of Lincoln Avenue in Chicago in 1994. They were on the Lounge Ax stage, or at least on a stage a few doors down. Hmm, I wonder who the sponsor was?
Michael Lenzi: m.lenzi@att.net OR Seth Cohen: seth@kim-cohen.com
Today, Michael is assembling his three-record LENƵI box set, which we will release in the next few weeks.
This isn’t the first Sweet Pea release that we’ve hand assembled with screen-printed pieces from Steve Walters. Back in 1994, the band and friends of the label assembled Number One Cup’s Indie Soft-core Denial 7-inch single (containing “Divebomb”) in Jane Hirt’s living room at 1515 W. Hollywood Ave. in Chicago.
It was quite the process. First we had to fold and glue the die-cut cardboard covers. Around those, we folded and glued a black screen-printed label that carried the record’s information. Into that, we inserted the 7-inch, whose label had four images (like the shoe above). The record was rotated so one of the images showed up in the little window.
It was summer, it was hot, we were all a lot younger and thinner. This is what I remember. That and the prodigious amounts of rubber cement that was used.
