I Do Not Like Mondays

Man, I do not like Mondays. So to refocus, here’s something I do like — from waaay back in the day.

This is “So This Is Heaven” by Yolk. For many, this would be an introduction, but if you were in the right place at the right time and you were one of us, believe me when I say it was more like mainstream.

I used to have the album with this cover artwork shown in the YouTube video, but sometime over the years it was lost to the abyss. It had a lot of good info I no longer have. This would be circa 1992-93, back during my mid-high school days.

These guys were as legit a Binghamton, New York band as ever was. They were hometown heroes. From what I know, they toured for years, I believe playing the university scene and other venues in New York state as well as elsewhere throughout the Northeast.

We would go to see them in Binghamton joints like The Taz (Tasmanian Embassy, I think, long gone?) and Cheers (which moved to a new location as “New Cheers” years ago now). From what I remember, I was there with a longtime best friend (whose older brother was in the same class as Yolk bassist Jim Lomonaco) and possibly the likes of our friends Steve Gustafson, Mark Peters and Chris Corwin, all three of whom are no longer with us.

Yes, we would have been too young to get into those venues, but we got in nonetheless (with many others, I’m sure).

It was before computer generated/ enhanced music dominated, and these guys played live — and they could play tight, which was something, given there were seven band members. They could also jam about as long as they liked. I mentioned Lomonaco, and we all knew of singer/lyricist Jimmyjohn McCabe, and there was Dave Fitzhugh, Adam Ash, Jeff Pettit, Mike Murphy, and… Pete Carvelas, I think, was there at that time? The band changed over the years.

“So This Is Heaven” is a song we knew and would wait for at the shows. I guess it would be closest to funk or funk rock; from the start, it’s built on a melody I would call playful and lively. Imagine a cartoon jack-in-the-box springing up and down, and you’re pretty close.

A few things I’d point out. In the first verse:

“Surfin’ the ocean
Till the tides stop turnin’
An interesting ride, but
It’s over for now
Scalin’ the mountain
Till it no longer ascends —
I’ve come to find there’s nothing different
Since it all began”

This always confused me, because I swear I remember that’s what the lyrics were, but Jimmyjohn doesn’t say that last part on the ’93 recording. He basically says, “I’ve come to find there’s nothing different began.”

Call it a mystery. But something important comes next:

“Spelunkin’ the caverns
That are buried within my heartfelt importance
And never got very far…
Look to the outside
And dream so far beyond canopies of gray clouds
Blanketing”

That last word is harder to make out, and I think sometimes Jimmyjohn would instead say, “Just hanging out.” But I will tell you this: anyone from the “Greater Binghamton” area — I’m talking Binghamton, Endicott, Endwell, Vestal, Johnson City, Apalachin, probably Owego, Conklin, out to Candor, Catatonk, even Whitney Point and northward and maybe Brackney, Pennsylvania and other surrounding towns — knows exactly what it means to “look to the outside and dream so far beyond canopies of gray clouds.”

Binghamton, I guess by its geography, has an unusually high percentage of overcast days — not necessarily gray but often a blearily bright, white-grayish cover that engulfs the sky. The place has about 49% or lower sun showing annually compared with, for example, around 58% sun typically each year in New York City’s Central Park.

We who’ve lived in the Binghamton area are well aware. I used to say it forced us to have great imaginations; always wanted to thank Yolk and Jimmyjohn for capturing that. That’s how I took the reference, and it meant something to me.

Getting back to “So This Is Heaven,” if you listen through, I will note there’s an interesting change at 03:10 in, leading into a bending musical interplay at 03:28. Be patient.

In those years that followed, many musicians in the area interacted with these guys. Where are they now? As I said, the band changed and years rolled on, but I bet you can find many of them if they want to be found; you’d have to look. Some are still playing, I will say, such as in the current Binghamton band Honker.

With the perspective of the years that’ve since passed, I wonder how they would respond to these lines in the song’s final verse:

“I feel a oneness —
Now could it ever be?
Finally, a chance to
See the self I truly am?
Am I, or did I,
Not give my life a chance
To smell all the flowers
Withering?”

Content © Aaron G. Marsh