Club Membership Is Free!
Bill Goffrier of The Embarrassment.
Late in 2022, I got the chance to speak with Bill Goffrier about his trailblazing band The Embarrassment. I had never heard of the band and got pointed in their direction by the generous Mark Lipsitz at Bar None Records.
At the time, the documentary We Were Famous, You Don’t Remember: The Embarrassment, was making the festival rounds.
The Embarrassment are one of those bands that you should know, but may not. And if you do know them, you feel part of a club. I suppose it’s kind of like being a fan of The Replacements.
With one club you might drink beer, watch Monty Python, and play D&D in the basement of a split level, and with the other you might drink beer, black out, and find yourself in the county jail.
I’ll let you, dear reader, figure out which is which; but the odds are if you’re a member of one club, you’ll want to be a member of the other - if you’re not already.
To be honest, regardless of the music you like, if you’re a music fan (nerd) I suggest that you do two things, post haste:
Watch this documentary - We Were Famous, You Don’t Remember: The Embarrassment (finally available on Amazon Prime to rent or buy). I just finished watching it, and it’s worth the time and three bucks.
Listen to my interview with The Embarrassment guitar player Bill Goffrier (convienently located below - shameless self-promotion).
The Embarrassment was:
John Nichols and Bill Goffrier on guitars, spitting vocals like they were shedding their suburban blues
Ron Klaus hammering out bass lines that could shake your soul
Brent Giessmann laying down beats like a heartbeat on speed
Like a Ginsu knife slicing through a tin can, The Embarrassment sliced through the American heartland's flatness with their jagged post-punk anthems from their home base in Wichita, Kansas.
These guys were the real deal.
The band was a combustible mix of punk rock fury and pop sensibility the blended punk, new wave, and rock into something that wasn't just music, it was a manifesto for the bored, for the disaffected.
The Embarrassment were a beacon in a blanket of blandness.
Not everyone can write a song about patio furniture, “Patio Set,” or the bewitching Elizabeth Montgomery, “Elizabeth Montgomery’s Face.” They called their concoction "Blister Pop." It was a sound so distinct it could have only sprouted up from the cracks of those Wichita sidewalks.
Despite being the best-kept secret outside their Midwest stomping grounds, and with a cannon of just a few EPs, singles, and the posthumous gut punch, "Death Travels West," The Embarrassment's ripples were felt far and wide. They were an underground tremor that forecasted the indie rock explosion of the '80s.
By 1983, and despite praise from everyone, including The Village Voice's long-time chief crank and music critic Robert Christgau who called The Embarrassment a "great lost American band," they called it quits.
Perhaps the world wasn’t ready for The Embarrassments brand of quirky, nervous, post-punk, power-pop, “blister pop,” I don’t know. However, the band’s reluctance to debunk from Witchita, or become road warriors like their contemporaries R.E.M., didn’t do them any favors.
Yet, like true rock 'n' roll phoenixes, they rose from the ashes in the late '80s and then again in the 2000s, reminding us all why their blend of wit, melody, and irreverence never really faded.
Their music lives on, and now with We Were Famous, You Don’t Remember: The Embarrassment their story is told and their legacy cemented.
Friends, The Embarrassment weren't just a band, they were a rebel yell for all the weirdos and misfits.
I encourage you to heed the call.
My Interview with Bill Goffrier:
I’m embarrassed that I had never heard or heard of them. Thanks for writing about them and spreading the word!