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The Rentals were a staple band on the scene in the late 70's...that's "1970's" for you Y2K fanatics). They eventaually relocated to New York City, where they disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Well, at least I didn't hear anything about them again. Perhaps the height of their Boston career was their opening slot at the Clash show at the Harvard Square theater. Anyone who saw this show- and I was lucky enough to have been there that night -remembers the other-worldly blend of acts: the Rentals opening, Bo Diddley in the middle, and the Clash headlining. Yowsa! Taking the "it's all one world" credo to it's beautiful-but-twisted extreme, the night was a suitably bizarre distillation of the stylistic complexity of that time and place. I think it marked me for life ... anytime I've had the chance to put a show together, even when I have to pick music to play between acts when I'm mixing in a club, eclectic is the order of the night. mix up styles on a night. And anytime I work for a club owner or promoter who insists that all the bands on a bill have to be indie or metal or funk, and the canned music between acts has to be the same as well, it just plain pisses me off.

UPDATE, June '05 : Jane Hudson got in touch to announce the unveiling of a long-awaited web site covering the careers of herself and husband Jeff Hudson. Checking it out I discovered that the Rentals formed in fall of 1977 in Boston, releasing their first single "Gertrude Stein' b/w 'Low Rent" the same year. The single was produced by Oedipus, whose show at the time was a groundbreaking staple for all punk and underground afficionados. Far from vanishing in a puff of smoke, their relocation to NYC resulted in signing with Beggars'Banquet Records "at Max's Kansas City in 1979 at four in the morning in their dressing room." Now that is super, super cool -- even better than the Sex Pistols' EMI signing in front of Buckingham Palace, at least in my book [hey, maybe the Palace had the Queen, but Max's had the Queen Bitch: Lou Reed]! In 1980 -- the same year the band broke up -- the Rentals released the cult single, "I Got A Crush On You", which charted in London's prestigious NME [New Music Express, y'all]. For details on Jef and Jane Hudson's subsequent formation of Manhattan Project and Jeff and Jane, go the Jeff and Jane Hudson web site. By the way, Jane wrote:

It's great reading about the old days, and especially about Carol, our brilliant partner in crime. When we got to New York in '79 we played hard for about a year and then Carol was going to go out on her own. So the band broke up, and we formed the Manhattan Project, and then Jeff and Jane. Carol never did do anything solo which is too
bad. She was such a star!

I couldn't agree more! The Rentals were fronted by Pseudo Carol, one of my all-time favorite local figures of the time. I just dug that woman. I remember seeing her out one night with a bra on that was made of two baby-doll's heads connected by dog chain, one white and one black, each of them covering one of her boobs. She was a genius. The first time I met Ric Ocasek of the Cars we had an animated conversation after I noticed that his Gibson SG, which had a dune buggy mirror on it, also featured a Pseudo Carol stamp. She had made them up, with the same perforations as a regular postal stamp, and distributed them as personal promo items. Later on, when I saw her at Cantone's (Carol lived above the place...she once invited me to move in with her there -- no romantic implications -- but that's another story), I asked for and received a block of four of these stamps, on which she was pictured wearing the self-same "baby-doll" outfit (NOTE: this is not what you get if you order a baby-doll nightie from Victoria's Secret). I carried them with me in my wallet for almost ten years, until they were stolen along with the wallet.

As you can see from these posters, the Rentals were an "item" around town, playing with all of the most popular acts. I would love to find out their exact line-up. I know they had a keyboard player (Jane?) who used a Farfisa, and somehow I think that their guitarist may have een Billy Bacon, who also played with Nat Friedberg before Nat put the Flies together. Correct me if you know better

.Ask and ye shall receive: Before Jane Hudson wrote to me in July, '05, I was reasonably certain that she and husband Jeff played a lot of post-Rental shows, possibly with a group based out of NYC, and billed simply as "Jeff and Jane Hudson". In May, 2005, Peter "Pebey" Mork sent me an email including this info:

"The Rentals were Jeff and Jane Hudson, guitar and bass, teachers then and now at the Museum School. Pseudo Carol played drums for half the set, if she dropped her sticks she'd just keep going with her fists. I remember hearing somewhere that before the band started Carol would hang out at the Rat and jump on stage between bands and play air guitar. The high point of any Rentals show was when Jeff would change places with her and she'd do her extremely original songs, "I got a crush on you", etc. Unforgettable. Billy Bacon joined later on organ. I talked to Jeff and Jane a few years ago and they said Carol's a housewife in NJ with kids (by now grown). They heard from her when a different Rentals put out a record and she thought it was her old band doing it without her and got pissed. I more or less lost my virginity after seeing the Rentals at Cantone's one night, so I always hold them dear to my heart."

Thanks Peter. This prodded my memory. Below is a photo showing counter-clockwise from bottom, Judy from the Maps, Pseudo Carol, a girl I saw at a thousand shows and cannot now recall her name, though it's even possible she gave me this picture, and possibly Jane Hudson.

http://officialjeffandjane.com

THE GIRLS: