Tiny Mammoth Concert: Sullen Su Tissue and Suburban Lawns

Suburban Lawns, a long-forgotten cult band from the early 1980s, is having something of a revival these days, with its only album reissued in a special 40-year-anniversary edition. The band, perhaps best known for their song Janitor, played quirky light punk with a little bit of a surf tinge.

But what makes the band worth remembering, besides the sheer catchiness of many of its tunes, is Su Tissue, the reluctant sometimes frontwoman for the band and the lead singer for most of the band’s best songs.

Su was something else. I’ve seen her stage presence described variously as hypnotic, bored, childlike, awkwardly serious, catatonic, terrifying, and “like a Dickensian street urchin.” And the thing is, she was all these things, sometimes all at the same time. In the movie she would be played by a perpetually irritated-looking Aubrey Plaza.

Here’s the official video for Janitor, their most famous song. The video is very flashy, so probably skip it if you’re afraid of getting a seizure.

And here’s a video of a live performance of the same song, with its highly peculiar lyrics helpfully provided for your edification.

There’s a story behind the janitor/genitals bit, which Su added to a song that was apparently already written. She had been talking with someone in a noisy room and asked him what he did for a living; he said he was a janitor. She thought he’d said “oh my genitals.”

Well, ok, that’s not the world’s greatest story but it explains a little about Su and the band.

Here’s another video:

The band broke up in 1983, shortly after dropping their EP Baby. Various members of the band went on to join other bands, but none that had the peculiar magic of Suburban Lawns. Su went off to study piano at the Berklee School of music and ended up releasing an album of minimalist piano songs.

And it was good. Really good. Sensational, actually, obviously inspired by composers like Philip Glass and Michael Nyman but in a distinct style of her own. She could have gone on to become a composer herself, and I don’t know why she didn’t. I’ve got this album, titled  Salon de Musique, in heavy rotation right now on David Radio. And you can too because here it is:

 In any case, after appearing as a minor character in Johnathan Demme’s Something Wild, she basically vanished off the face of the earth. Some of her more obsessed fans have devoted a great deal of energy trying to track her down (when they’re not making creepy video tributes to her), but it’s clear she doesn’t want to be found. (At least one fan seems to have tracked her down, but out of respect for her privacy he’s not revealing any details.)

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, and definitely give some of the videos above a watch.

And post your own musical recommendations in the comments below.

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