Poncier - Big In Belgium - 1992

After leaving his band Citizen Dick, front man Cliff Poncier recorded his one and only solo album. Titled after a flip comment made during an interview about his band's popularity the album sold modestly. It has been subsequently reissued many times over the years yet still maintains an obscure yet legendary cult status among the Seattle bands of the day.

Moody and introspective lyrics are paired with sparse, mostly acoustic and at times ethereal instrumentation it served as the antithesis to the current grunge rock that was pouring out of Seattle at the time. While many of the LPs released during grunges heyday are sounding dated, Poncier's album still sounds fresh and original.

Side One
01 Times Of Trouble
02 Spoon Man
03 Black Cat
04 Ferry Boat #3
05 Nowhere but You

Side Two
01 Flutter Girl
02 Missing
03 Seasons
04 Call Me A Dog

Reality Notes

I had a completely different project done, wrapped up and ready to post this week when this slapped me in the face and demanded to be built. It fell together so quickly that I decided to post this instead.

Cliff Poncier is a character in the movie Singles. A film by Cameron Crowe about Seattle in the early 90s that explored relationships, work and music, it featured stars Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon among others. According to Crowe, Dillon's character Cliff was originally intended for Chris Cornell of Soundgarden but a busy schedule prevented Chris's involvement beyond a short non-speaking cameo.

While on the set Cornell "borrowed" a prop cassette tape that was suppose to contain a five song tape that Poncier recorded and was selling while busking on the street. The tape case was created by Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament that included the fake song titles Seasons, Nowhere but You, Spoon Man, Flutter Girl and Missing. As the story goes, Chris went home and wrote and recorded songs for each of the titles then presented the tape back to Cameron.

Cameron was so impressed with the tape that he included the song Seasons on the soundtrack. Two other songs were later re-recorded by Cornell. Spoonman appeared on Soundgarden's Superunknown album and Flutter Girl was sped up a bit and recorded for Cornell's 1999 solo album Euphoria Morning. The full five song demo tape was released as a promotional CD at the time of the films release. In 2017 it was rereleased on cassette and vinyl for Record Store Day.

All five songs plus two more Cornell compositions (Ferry Boat #3 and Score Piece #4) were included on the deluxe version of the soundtrack album. I had heard the story of the tape at the time of the movie's release but never found the rest of the songs until recently. I always thought it would be cool to hear. Even better would be an entire album of similar material but sadly 7 songs does not an album make.

About the same time that the film was in production Cornell recorded and album in tribute to Andrew Wood. Wood was the frontman for Mother Love Bone and Malfunkshun and was a big part of the growing Seattle music scene. Cornell and Wood were roommates at the time when Wood overdosed on Heroin just as his band Mother Love Bone was taking off nationally. Hit hard by the loss of his friend Cornell turned to music and songwriting as therapy to work through his grief. He approached Wood's band mates Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament and formed Temple of the Dog to record the songs along with Mike McCready on lead guitar, and Matt Cameron on drums and guest vocals by Eddie Vedder. (So basically Temple of the Dog was Chris Cornell backed up by Pearl Jam, many of whom also had bit roles in the movie Singles so it all ties together.)

A deluxe version of the Temple of the Dog album included a second CD of demos, outtakes and live tracks. Most of the demos were done in the same or similar style as the Poncier demos. Could we use those to flesh out the album? Why not? The CD contained six demos - Say Hello To Heaven, Reach Down, Call Me A Dog, Times Of Trouble, Angel Of Fire and Black Cat. Add these to the seven songs from the Singles soundtrack and we have a song pool of thirteen songs. More than enough to carve an album out of.

I dropped Say Hello To Heaven and Reach Down because they were too associated in my mind as Temple of the Dog songs. Say Hello To Heaven was also maybe a bit too polished for the project. I also dropped Score Piece #4. It was short and only an instrumental and didn't really add anything to the project. I then dropped Angel Of Fire due to it being a lower quality and not sounding like Chris (why can't I find songwriting credits for this one?).

This leaves us with nine songs. I shuffled them around until I had a track list I liked that could be split evenly on a vinyl LP. Even though this is suppose to be from the CD era, vinyl at this time was still very much alive and most independent releases were released in this format.

The cover is derived from a promo pic of Matt Dillon in character enhanced with a pop-art photo filter in Word. Some WordArt and the promo sticker completes the illusion. Yea, I know the sticker says demos when this is supposed to be an official release but marketing will do what marketing wants to do.