Suburban Lawns

Suburban Lawns emerged as an art-tinged new wave outfit whose witty, off-kilter tunes and the alternatingly flat and manic delivery of frontwoman Su Tissue caught on quickly in late-seventies Southern California. Tissue, born Sue McLane, and bassist-vocalist William Ranson, who performed as Vex Billingsgate, first teamed up while both were enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts; the pair launched the project in Long Beach in 1978. Guitarists Frankie Ennui, whose birth name was Richard Whitney, and John Gleur, born John McBurney, plus drummer Chuck Roast, born Charles Rodriguez, soon completed the lineup. The quintet quickly established itself on the regional club circuit, issuing its debut single, “Gidget Goes to Hell” backed with “My Boyfriend,” on its own imprint in 1979. The A-side’s satirical bent earned rotation on adventurous independent-minded stations, and director Jonathan Demme’s low-budget clip for the track reached a national audience after Saturday Night Live aired it. That exposure helped land the band on the cover of the influential punk publication Slash. A follow-up 45, “Janitor” coupled with “Protection,” arrived in 1980; its A-side stemmed from Tissue mishearing a party guest’s occupation as “oh, my genitals.” Steady regional success prompted I.R.S. Records to sign the group, resulting in the self-titled full-length issued in 1981 through the label’s A&M distribution network. Sales remained modest, and guitarist Gleur exited during the sessions for the subsequent EP Baby, which finally appeared in 1983; shortly afterward the band dissolved. Ennui and Billingsgate briefly continued as the Lawns, while Tissue pursued formal studies at the Berklee College of Music and recorded the solo piano album Salon de Musique before leaving the music industry. She resurfaced only once on screen, in a minor part in Demme’s 1986 film Something Wild. In 2015 Futurismo Records compiled the complete 1981 album and 1983 Baby EP on the anthology Suburban Lawns.