ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 29, 1996 TAG: 9611290069
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BAUDER ASSOCIATED PRESS
Now that he's made it, don't expect Chris O'Connor to offer tips on how to get ahead in the music business.
It's not because he's an ingrate. The man behind ``Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand'' - better known as the song where B.B. King's disembodied voice complains about being ``so downhearted, baby'' - realizes its success was nothing but a fluke.
``I just got lucky,'' O'Connor said, a shrug almost audible over the telephone line, as he spoke from his home in California.
Behind one of the year's most memorable singles is a story that illustrates the utter unpredictability of how something will catch the public's ear.
O'Connor plugged away at his music dream for years, playing in a band called the I-Rails during the late 1980s in the Santa Barbara, Calif., area. The I-Rails released four albums - independently - to general disinterest.
After the band broke up in 1990, he finished its intended fifth album on his own, recording songs by himself in a friend's garage. He made up a band name, Primitive Radio Gods, and sent tapes of the songs all over, to reporters, music executives and disc jockeys.
Few people seemed to care, so O'Connor used his Navy training to land a job as an air traffic controller at Los Angeles' airport.
``I had pretty much given up on the music,'' he said. ``I thought maybe if I went to a big airport I could get caught up in that and just be happy doing that. After three years of working at LAX I just realized it was not what I wanted to do with my life.''
He was about to give music another shot when one day, while cleaning out his closet, he came across the old tapes.
Tempted to simply throw them out, he tried again. He found a mailing list of record company executives and sent out dozens of copies.
This time, it worked.
It reached Jonathan Daniel, who had recently taken a publishing job with Fiction Songs and was still opening his mail. Daniel listened to the album and particularly loved ``Standing Outside,'' so he played it for a friend at Columbia Records.
Word spread within the company, and Columbia decided to release O'Connor's album. Key to its success was landing the single on the soundtrack to ``The Cable Guy,'' and radio stations began noticing it.
It became one of the hit singles of the summer. O'Connor's album, ``Rocket,'' has sold 326,000 copies on the basis of the song, according to Soundscan.
Now, a word about the improbability of this all.
Sending a copy of your music to a record company executive sounds like a perfectly logical way to get noticed, but it almost never works. Most of the tapes or CDs aren't even opened, both because executives are overwhelmed by volume and they're afraid of lawsuits from struggling songwriters who think a hitmaker has stolen their idea.
O'Connor told of a prankster who once made up a fictional band name, printed a biography and sent a copy of a tape - completely blank - to record companies. The person got standard rejection letters in return.
The sensible way for a musician or band to get ahead is to steadily build a local fan base so major record labels can't help but notice - like the Dave Mathews Band, he said.
So why did he even bother to send out his tapes?
``It was like buying a lottery ticket,'' he said. ``You know you're not going to win, but there's always hope. That's why you buy it, because of the hope.''
Once the Primitive Radio Gods were on the charts, his next step was inventing the Primitive Radio Gods. He called his old friends in the I-Rails, and six years after they broke up, the old band was back under a new name.
His band has spent much of the past few months on tour trying to build on his initial success, although releasing a second single with an unprintable title didn't help much.
It gives O'Connor the chance to reflect a little on his sudden step into the spotlight.
``I guess the weirdest thing is having your face on MTV and automatically becoming a vague celebrity,'' he said. ``But a real minor one, to the point where you're walking around and people say, `Oh, you're on MTV.' It's kind of bizarre. You feel everyone looking and trying to figure out who you are.''
Despite the do-it-yourself nature of the first Primitive Radio Gods album, O'Connor insists the Gods are a real band and are eager to enter the studio to record a new album.
The debut album, ``Rocket,'' was dominated by O'Connor's desire to play with what was a new toy for him at the time - a sampling machine.
``I don't have any desire to go in [the studio] and lay down sound bites like we did before and repeat myself that way,'' he said. ``Hopefully, we can find ourselves some new instruments and some new sounds and do something that's just as creative.''
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Chris O'Connor's album ``Rocket'' has sold 326,000by CNBcopies on the basis of its exposure on "The Cable Guy" over the
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