This piece was prepared as a potential chapter in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), but is not a part of that book's current blueprint.
An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
HUMAN SWITCHBOARD: (Say No To) Saturday's Girl
Written by Myrna Marcarian and Bob Pfeifer
Produced by Human Switchboard and Paul Hamann
From the album Who's Landing In My Hangar?, Faulty Products, 1981
In our pop songs, some lines cut with deliberate precision, evoking a gnawing ache that echoes the desperation of watching helplessly as love slips away. I loved you, well...never mind in Big Star's "September Gurls" is an example. They say a heart's not quite a heart until it's been broken in Human Switchboard's "(Say No To) Saturday's Girl" is another.
"(Say No To) Saturday's Girl" is the lead-off track on the group's 1981 album Who's Landing In My Hangar? It was the third Human Switchboard track I ever heard, one of two Switchboard tracks ("Who's Landing In My Hangar?," plus two tracks by Alex Gibson) on a flexi-disc put out by Trouser Press magazine. A few years before that, "You're Much Madder Than Me" was my introduction to Human Switchboard, courtesy of its appearance on a 1978 sampler album called Waves Vol. 1, which also featured Syracuse's own power pop powerhouse the Flashcubes, plus 20/20, the Romantics, the Last, Paul Collins, and more.
Although the band was based in guitarist Bob Pfeifer's home state of Ohio, Pfeifer and keyboardist Myrna Marcarian first met at Syracuse University. Myrna, at least, still had ties to Syracuse after that, since I remember seeing her a time or two at Desert Shore Records up on the SU hill in the late '70s. I recall speaking to her once, complimenting her on "You're Much Madder Than Me" when the store's owner Alan Braun introduced us. (How Alan knew who I was is a mystery lost to memory. And beer.)
"You're Much Madder Than Me" didn't prepare me for the magnificent melancholy of "Saturday's Girl." Written by Pfeifer and Marcarian, sung with quiet dignity by Marcarian, the track just burns with sadmaking and regret.
They say a heart's not quite a heart until it's been broken. I think we've all been there.
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