Philip Seymour Hoffman on Law & Order (February 5, 1991)

"Is he saying we did it? That's a load!" - Steven Hanauer (Philip Seymour Hoffman), reacting to a police officer's assertion that his drug dealer boss has implicated him in a rape, in "The Violence of Summer,"the fourteenth episode of the first season of NBC's "Law & Order," which originally aired on February 5, 1991).

A decade and a half before he would win an Oscar for playing Truman Capote, a 23 year old Philip Seymour Hoffman earned his first television credit - indeed, his first credit of any kind, according to the Internet Movie Database, playing a low level drug dealer on "Law & Order."

The episode begins with Hanauer, Hoffman's character, on trial for the gang rape of celebrity journalist Monica Devries (played by Megan Gallagher, who would later play Catherine Black on "Millenium" and Jillian Wallace on "24"). Hanauer's co-defendant is the equally unsavory Howard Metzler (played by Gil Bellows, who would go on to play Billy Allen Thomas, the love interest of Calista Flockhart's title character on "Ally McBeal").

Hanauer and Metzler receive good news when they learn that the charges pending against them are to be dismissed due to a lack of evidence. There is no physical evidence which link them to the crime, and the memory of the traumatized rape victim is shaky under the circumstances. By taking her to a hypnotherapist, the authorities learn that Hanauer, Metzler, and third offender who is now cooperating with police were not the only offenders. Indeed, the ring leader, Tim Pruiting (Al Shannon), had eluded capture, and even identification. Ultimately, the two detectives, Mike Logan (Chris Noth) and Max Greevey (George Dzundza) pit the perpetrators against each other and trick Hanauer and Metzler into implicating themselves as participants in the rape. Once the new inculpatory evidence comes to light, their lawyer, Louis Taggert (played by Samuel L. Jackson) accepts his clients' fate. The episode closes by noting their conviction and ultimate incarceration.

The episode offers a strange bit of trivia. Philip Seymour Hoffman is actually credited in the episode as Philip Hoffman, while the hypnotherapist, played by a different actor with the same name, is credited as Phil Hoffman (but as Philip Hoffman in IMDB).

Contraband was not, apparently, the Travelin' Wilburys (1991)

Surely, Contraband, a sort of hard rock super group from the early 1990s, worked best as an idea on paper. Comprised of Richard Black from Shark Island on lead vocals, Michael Schenker of the Scorpions and UFO on guitars, Tracii Guns from L.A. Guns and the Guns N' Roses early days on guitars, Share Pederson of Vixen on bass, and Bobby Blotzer from Ratt on drums, the band's members came from groups that were hardly first tier (save perhaps the Scorpions).

But put them together, and would they be greater than the sum of their parts?

Somewhat.

But the band would not endure. Really, it was the sort of generic and bland hard rock which was marketable at the dawn of the 1990s prior to the rise of grunge. 1991's self titled Contraband was the group's first and only album. If you remember the band at all, you might recall their cover of Mott the Hoople's "All the Way from Memphis" (which opened the album) or their version of David Bowie's "Hang On To Yourself" (which closed the album). Album track "Loud Guitars, Fast Cars and Wild, Wild Livin'" also appeared on the film and on the official soundtrack to the 1991 Richard Grieco film, If Looks Could Kill. But that was it for Contraband, the band and the album.

The music press was not kind. In fact, critics couldn't resist comparing (or contrasting) the group with the far more experienced and talented Travelin' Wilburys,which included members such as Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and George Harrison. Nevertheless, one critic in the summer of 1991 called Contraband "a sort of metallic Traveling Wilburys."¹ Wrote another: "Put together a squad of journeymen who've pounded metal for some of the genre's hardest-banging names - L.A. Guns, Ratt and Vixen - and you can bet you won't get the Travelin' Wilburys."² The Miami Herald dismissed the record as an "ill-conceived trip to the heavy-metal hinterlands,"³ while the New Jersey Record noted that "[t]he play of these seasoned professionals is so neat and restrained, a listener comes away feeling that no one wanted to stretch for fear of eliciting showboating charges."⁴ Larry Nager of the Cincinnati Post offered this praise, which may be faint:

All the cuts are listenable: The guitar work is tight, the drumming is chest-thumping, the melodies exist. The lyrics aren't Proust, but when compared to most on metal, Contraband's come off as a think tank report. The vocals kick butt.¹

Nager would be the only music critic to invoke Proust in his review.

The entire experience seems to have left a bad taste in the mouth of lead singer Richard Black In a 2006 interview with MelodicRock, Black relayed his displeasure:

Contraband? What a mistake!

I should have never agreed to that. Let me clear something up about Contraband. First of all it was a farce. In fact the members of Contraband have never to this day played together all at once.

Surprised aren't you? It's true. Never!

It was nothing more than fabricated rouse by a self-absorbed manager. The only time we were actually together was during photo shoots and video filming. The album was recorded individually. And there was never a reason to play.
Looking back it was doomed from the start, but I fell for it. I was told and somehow convinced that having opposing bands record and promote an album would somehow help my band's efforts. What a pile of crap! The day I agreed to it (with my band's support) was essentially the end of Shark Island.

I was told that well just record the album and that's that. I figured harmless.

Next we were told we needed to do a promo tour, because it wasn't moving fast enough.

Against our better judgment Share Pederson, and I did the press junket through Europe and Asia, while others stayed home with their bands.

Upon our return we learned that a tour was required, to push it along.

Keep in mind my band is home getting songs shot down for the next record by the same manager…meanwhile Ratt, L.A. Guns, are preparing for comebacks.
Now get this; first Share is not allowed on tour for some mysterious reason and who do you think gets the opening slot for the Contraband tour? Ratt and L.A. Guns of course. By the way we mustn't forget, Juan from Ratt would take Share's place to even deepen the conflict of interest...

So check it out this new line up has never played together either! And despite my constant complaining for rehearsal, none happen until sound check of the opening day of the tour! It was pathetic, and I was expected to front this debacle.

Now think about this; the opening bands featured members of the headliner! Here the conflict unfolds… Think how easy it would be to blow the headlining band away and at the same time make your own band shine. It was not only pointless but bad sense to make Contraband sound good. I was on my own, fronting a band of monkeys that could give a shit. Contraband was so bad that I could not be certain what songs were being played. I'm serious.

This went on for several nights with daily complaints from me to the manager with no improvement. It was downright embarrassing. One night I reached critical mass and decided that not matter what happened I would put an end to this cruel joke. I remember standing there in front of about 3 thousand thinking my labors and dues are worth more that this, and the people who paid to see the show deserve much more. I walked off for the very first time in my life. It was the only thing I could do to regain some control and dignity.

Well this caused a ruckus to say the least. Not only was I completely broke down, the manager freaked out threatening I would never work in this business again - under those conditions; I never want to.

Then Traci Guns runs in swinging and tries to attack me - I think he was wishing he had walked off himself first, but I beat him to it. He had a great image conflict between L.A. Guns and Contraband. Contraband was way too wholesome for his brand of Rock and Roll.

Ouch. Below, you'll find a promotional video for the band which found its way to the YouTubes:

1. Nager, Larry. "Talkin Heads' Byrne delivers odd album," Cincinnati Post, June 1, 1991.
2. "Preview: Rock/Pop," The Virginia Pilot and Ledger Star (Norfolk, VA), July 12, 1991.
3. Macklin, William. Contraband debuts with too-tame rock, Miami Herald, July 5, 1991.
4. "This News Isn't Good News," New Jersey Record, June 20, 1991.
5. Nager, supra.

"Baby, Let's Be Methodists Tonight"

What the early 1990s wrought, in addition to the Clintons and the Internets, was a plethora of satirical, acoustic alt-rock parodies of Christianity. Among them: "No Resistin' a Christian" by the litigious Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie, which appeared on the late 1991 SST Acoustic compilation and the far more amusing "Baby, Let's Be Methodists Tonight" by Fish Karma, from 1991's Teddy in the Sky with Magnets. I first heard Fish Karma's tune on a college radio station sometime in the early 1990s, although I never caught the name of the artist. Time was, when a radio listener would catch a snippet of an interesting song on the radio, he could not simply race home, Google the lyrics, and determine the tune's title or artist. I assumed though, from its refrain, that the song's title was "Baby, Let's Be Methodists Tonight." I remember laughing with a friend as we heard the following over the car stereo:

M is for the meat loaf I'll eat every Wednesday,
E is for entropy, I don't know what that means,
T is for the tempo I'll drive to work,
H is for the hours I'll spend working on my putt,
O is for oat meal, orange juice and oregano,
D is for the dishwasher singing in the morning,
I is for the ice cube maker in my freezer,
S is for the spice wracks nailed to the wall,
T is for the trump card that I'll play, when I'm doing contact bridge with all my friends and neighbors, AAAH!

We referenced the "entropy" line for weeks and weeks until it ultimately fell from our memory, as such things inevitably do. Years later, the lyrics resurfaced in my mind, and I turned to the search engines to discover the band that had years earlier released the song. The Internets offered little information on Fish Karma, but I managed to determine the album on which the song appeared and somehow found a copy on eBay for an acceptable price.

Unlike Jethro Tull, "Fish Karma" is the name of a guy in the band, albeit it an alias for Terry Owen. Produced by Mojo Nixon and released on Triple X Records, Teddy in the Sky with Magnets managed to snag a single paragraph review in the November 1991 issue of Playboy:

Fish Karma intermittently suffers from obviousness on teddy in the sky with magnets (Triple X). Anyone who ridicules working-class culture by mentioning K mart, as in Swap Meet Women, can make no claim to unadulterated originality. I nonetheless like his song titles (e.g., Baby, Let's Be Methodists) and his free association: "Love is like a large piece of cheesecloth attached to a revolving bowling ball covered with fructose and postage stamps."

(Far be it from me to correct sixteen year old typographical errors, but the Playboy review, by one Charles M. Young, misnames "Swap Meet Woman" and truncates the final word from the title of "Baby, Let's Be Methodists Tonight," oversights which were probably noticed that year only by Fish Karma himself.). In the album's very brief liner notes, he offers special thanks to Ronnie James Dio (to whom he would later pay tribute in "Poodlecide" [MP3 excerpt from Deep Shag Records] in 2001) and Jello Biafra, who would later describe Fish Karma's music as "your basic FUGS-style electric grunge folk, and his lyrics feature some of the meanest put-downs of American consumer culture I've heard in years." After two more albums in the 1990s, Fish Karma released Lunch with the Devil on Deep Shag Records in 2001 and The Theory of Intelligent Design on Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label in 2006.

Fish Karma dabbled at blogging, apparently, but his blog is now long deceased. A email to him asking about the "Baby, Lets Be Methodists Tonight" went unanswered.