Please Panic

Play Loud! Productions present a reissue of The Vulgar Boatmen's Please Panic, originally released in 1992. In the early 1990s, The Vulgar Boatmen's first two albums, 1989's You And Your Sister (PL 079LP) and Please Panic, garnered accolades from virtually every major music publication in the country, despite being barely available on the tiny Record Collect and Safehouse labels. The group's unique working arrangement (two distinct lineups, located 800 miles apart, fronted separately by songwriters Robert Ray and Dale Lawrence) received a lot of attention - but so did their style, a melodic hypno-R&B, compared to everyone from Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers to the Feelies and the Velvet Underground. The band toured extensively in the US and Europe. Their songs were heard on both college and commercial radio - especially "Drive Somewhere", a surprise hit on Chicago's WXRT. In the 1992 on Option Magazine Readers Poll, Please Panic placed fifth in the Best New Album category. In 1995, critic Bill Wyman called You And Your Sister the best record of the last ten years. The following year, his colleague at Salon. Com, Charles Taylor, named Please Panic his all-time favorite album. In 1995, the Boatmen made their major label debut with Opposite Sex (PL 081LP), released in Europe on Blanco y Negro/EastWest. It too received glowing reviews from the British press, but label politics at Elektra kept the album from ever getting a stateside release. In 2003, No Nostalgia issued Wide Awake, a 21-track anthology chronicling the band's career. Partly re-mixed and re-mastered. Includes liner notes by Charles Taylor, accompanied by photographs. Original artwork; Edition of 500.