This is the last article from the Boylan Heights press kit, and perhaps the
best of the lot.  The fine print:  this article was transcribed from an
eye-bleeding-ly bad photocopy; it's so bad, in fact, that not only can't I
read the byline for the piece,  I can't
even tell from the accompanying photograph whether the writer is a man or a
woman!  There is also one sentence that was partially illegible, and
obscured by a
handwritten annotation. Sorry 'bout that.....

I do hope some of you enjoyed this extended living-in-the-past moment.  ;)
If anyone is interested in the transcribed BH-era
interviews/reviews/articles I had planned on posting next, please let me
know and I'll make sure that you get them as I type them up.

-caw

---------------------------------------------------------

from the (Raleigh, N.C.) News and Observer, March 21, 1986

Ordinary neighborhood guys back home after LP's release

Offstage, the five members of Raleigh rock band the Connells dress like
ordinary guys in their 20s.  Sweat shirts, oxford button-downs, blue jeans,
sneakers.

Onstage at a nightclub or party, they look just the same.  Clean-cut,
cheerful, sort of preppy young men from Raleigh's teee-lined Cameron Park
neighborhood.
The kind of guys parents like their daughters to bring home, electric
guitars or no.

In the world of rock 'n' roll, where earrings, boots, leather pants and
funky clothes have become a kind of uniform, the Connells look and act like
plain folks.  Never mind the fact that they're one of Raleigh's most popular
rock acts and playing at the Brewery Saturday night, or that they have an
album out on one of England's top independent record labels.

"I would like to think that was part of the appeal, the fact that we're just
these guys,"  says Doug MacMillan, 23, the square-jawed, broad-shouldered
swimmer who sings lead for the Connells.  "I've seen bands that are kind of
condescending."

Guitarist and songwriter Mike Connell, 27, also shrugs off the image of Rock
Musician.

"Pop music is just not that big a thing," he says.  "It's a way for a bunch
of no-talents to do something musical.  It's hard to take it seriously, the
whole thing.  Except for the Beatles."

The Connells are back in action after a brief sabbatical that allowed Mike
Connell to study for the state bar examination.  The band's first job after
the sabbatical was just-completed "Little Debbie" tour of the Northeast.
("We loaded up the van with Little Debbie snack cakes," says manager Tom
Carter) promoting its Demon Records LP, "Darker Days."

The Connells recorded the album locally, with Rod Dash and Don Dixon
producing four songs and Dave Adams and Steve Gronback acting as producers
for five others.

The finished product, which arrived in local stores last month as an import,
is a good if uneven collection of songs.  The album's sound quality is
somewhat flat, but the Connells plan to have the record remastered to
improve the sound and release a U.S. version of "Darker Days" on its own
label, Black Park Records.

Black Park is the name the Connell brothers -- four of them, including band
members Mike and David Connell, 24 -- gave years ago to the park behind
their grandmother's big white house in a road bend in Cameron Park.  The
Connell brothers and Carter live there now, and the house's garage is
rehearsal space for the Connells, a genuine garage band.

On a balmy Monday afternoon,  Carter and David and Mike Connell put down
their paintbrushes (they paint house around Cameron Park when the band is
idle) and drummer Peele Wimberley,  guitarist and keyboard player George
Huntley, and MacMillan drift in from other parts of the neighborhood to
share a few minutes on the front porch and talk about the band.

Mike and David Connell started playing together about a year and a half ago,
when Mike was in law school and David was an undergraduate at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Using Lloyd Street Studios in Chapel
Hill, they started working up some of Mike's songs.  Later, they met
MacMillan, then a (words written over and illegible) butterfly swimmer at
East Carolina University, through a friend who was the band's first drummer.

The Connells picked up a new drummer when they moved back to Raleigh in late
1984.  He was Peele Wimberley, who had been drumming since he was 6 and who
was then doing stick duty with Raleigh punk-parody band Johnny Quest.
Wimberley, 21, eventually left Johnny Quest to go full-time with the
Connells.

The final addition came when Huntley, who had a college degree in
biostatistics, came on as second guitarist and keyboard player.  Huntley,
23, says he had to beg his old school buddies to take him on.

"I would go to their shows and I would just hear something else, and I
though I could do it,"  Huntley says.  "I remember telling Mike that, and he
said, 'But you could get your OWN band.'"

The combined talents melded in a band with simple, straightforward rock 'n'
roll style.  MacMillan's light baritone voice, which didn't impress the band
when he first auditioned, has emerged along with Mike Connell's songs as the
bands stylistic stamps.  On the "Darker Days" album, MacMillan's singing is
warm and unhurried on the dreamy "Much Easier"; Wimberley's drumming, one of
the band's big pluses, and Connell's songwriting highlight "Hats Off."

Unlike many local bands, the Connells DIDN'T start out playing Rolling
Stones and Beatles songs.  Mike Connell had been writing songs through
college (under duress, he admitted his first composition was "Psychedelic
Butterfly," excused by his age, fourth grade, and the decade, the '60s) and
the Connells became a vehicle for those songs.

Characteristically, the Connells have no grand plans for the future, no MTV
video in the making, no dreams of conquering New York's rock glitterati.
Manager Tom Carter, whose law degree is sitting idle while he handles the
band, says the Connells are having fun right now just being the Connells.

"This is an ideal life," Carter says.  "We make our own hours.  We basically
have fun doing what we're doing.  You can always become a lawyer later."

In addition to the Saturday night show at the Brewery (Dumptruck will open),
the Connells are on the bill for a concert benefiting the N.C. Radioactive
Waste Watch on Sunday night at Rhythm Alley.


------------------------------------------

"Got Beatlesque song structures and harmonies?  Guitars that jangle?  Then
you're power-pop.  Get over it already." - Paul Krysiak

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