Skooshny

Skooshny formed in Los Angeles in 1971 as a psych-folk-pop trio whose timing singer-guitarist Mark Breyer later described as “too late for the Byrds, too early for R.E.M.” Mark Breyer and drummer David Winogrond had previously played together in the Chicago-area group Brevity and relocated to the West Coast in the early seventies. After answering an advertisement placed in a local music periodical, they were joined by guitarist-keyboardist Bruce Wagner, whose participation remained intermittent. Because none of the members owned a vehicle, rehearsals depended on public transit and proved difficult to schedule. Consequently the trio, whose name reportedly means “boring” in Russian, performed no concerts during their initial six years, although they later appeared at a benefit for Arthur Lee. In that period they committed several paisley-inflected jangle-rock pieces to tape and, in 1978, released a four-song EP on their own Alien imprint; they also accompanied glam-punk vocalist Page Croft on his Dragons EP for the same label. Encouraged by modest sales, the band issued a single, yet the absence of major-label offers prompted them to disband in 1979, an extended pause comparable to that taken by the Green Pajamas. Renewed interest in jangle pop during the mid-eighties, particularly among Los Angeles acts associated with the paisley underground and drawing from sixties folk-rock sources such as the Byrds and Love, prompted Skooshny’s return. Into the early eighties they recorded new demos, several of them produced by Michael Penn at his home studio. Although occasional rehearsals continued, the musicians never coalesced fully and soon pursued separate endeavors. Breyer and Winogrond first joined the psychedelic outfit SS20; Winogrond subsequently played with To Damascus and, throughout the nineties, served as drummer for Davie Allan & the Arrows. The growing appreciation for Skooshny’s scarce early recordings eventually reached Bill Forsyth, proprietor of the Minus Zero record shop near Portobello Road in London. In 1991 his label compiled the band’s first output—six tracks from the two Alien EPs plus eleven previously unreleased late-seventies and early-eighties demos—on the CD Skooshny. Minus Zero followed with the four-song vinyl EP Holy Land in 1992 and the album Even My Eyes in 1996. Co-produced by Beach Boys engineer Jeff Peters, the latter contained three freshly written 1996 songs together with material dating from 1992–1994, including the Holy Land tracks. Water appeared on the same imprint in 2000. Breyer and Winogrond still convene sporadically to document additional material when inspiration arises.