Seduction of the Innocent (the band)

Originally published February 27, 1998, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1267

I miss Seduction of the Innocent.

Not the famous book that served to trash the entire comic book industry. I’m talking about the band.

I was reflecting on my con-going life the other day and came to the surprising realization that Seduction was a part of an amazingly large number of fond memories, both in terms of personal stunts and also things that I witnessed.

For those of you who don’t know—and it has been several years since the group played, which in comic book terms (presuming a rough turnover of four years in readership) is practically a generation—Seduction was/is a rock band composed which played such conventions as the San Diego Comic Convention and WonderCon. The group’s members include Max Allan Collins (noted mystery writer and creator of Ms. Tree and Nate Heller—and boy, wouldn’t I love to see them team up), Bill Mumy (“Lennier” of Babylon 5 who was not, despite what you may have read in People magazine, angling for the Matt LeBlanc role of Major West—although, let’s face it, given the choice, who would you rather see in the part?), Miguel Ferrer (best known as the incredibly obnoxious forensics expert, Albert, in Twin Peaks; in fact, whenever the group was about to launch into their set, the first thing they’d say is “She’s dead…wrapped in plastic”), noted comic book artist Steve Leialoha with credits too numerous to mention here, and John “Chris” Christensen whose background is primarily in the music business and who was also involved with the production of the album Xenozoic Tales (I think, I hope, and I know if I’m wrong I’ll hear from somebody about it) not to mention the Seduction’s greatest hits CD.

I might be taking a chance writing about the group; the last time I did was some years back, and it was in a column that described a falling out that they’d had with the SDCC. San Diego reps immediately wrote in to say I’d gotten it all wrong, and Seduction promptly wrote in to reply that, no, I’d gotten it exactly right. The upshot was that Seduction was eventually invited back to SDCC, although my name was mud for a while (and may still be, for all I know) in committee circles.

My own limited experience in singing in public (putting aside David Seidman and I once spontaneously bursting into selections from Aladdin and my occasional ghastly weakness for laser karaoke) has been on stage with Seduction. I swear I don’t recall whether it was Mumy’s suggestion or mine, or some bizarre blending of both, but I wound up one year singing “Secret Agent Man” and the audience seemed to get a big kick out of it.

At first I thought it was because they appreciated my song stylings, but someone came up to me moments after I left the stage and said, “Don’t quit your day job; you can’t sing.” In terms of unsolicited slams it stood as a highlight of my life, surpassed only by the woman who came up to me at Mark Gruenwald’s memorial service and said, out of the blue, “Oh, you’re Peter David? Your writing sucks.” Thanks for sharing. In any event, I was quickly disillusioned of pretensions to talent (although the advice came slightly too late in that I already had quit my day job; that’s how I became a full-time writer) and decided that the audience simply enjoyed watching me make an idiot of myself. So okay, fine. In subsequent appearances I did increasingly goofier songs, including “Monster Mash” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

But oddly enough, despite my egocentricity, those aren’t my fondest memories of Seduction.

Probably one of the best was when Seduction played at one San Diego convention during which it was Roz and Jack Kirby’s wedding anniversary. The floor cleared out as Jack and Roz took center stage and danced to the original Seduction tune, “King Jack.” Everybody loved it, and it was probably one of the most special moments of the entire convention.

“King Jack,” by the way, is one of several Seduction songs that are loving testimonials to comic book pros, the other most notable being about Julie Schwartz. Crooned by Mumy in consummate Rudy Vallee mode, the song has one line that embarrasses the heck out of Julie. I can’t really print it here, although I’ll simply mention that the lyric line talks about certain endowments and rhymes “Schwartz” with “racing horse.” You figure it out from there.

My favorite recollection of Seduction, however, was at the now-legendary Golden Apple party at the Santa Monica Pier.

Bill Liebowitz, owner of the famed Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles, usually throws a party after the San Diego Convention. It’s well-timed, in that creators from all over the country are still in the general vicinity for a couple of days, and make it a point to attend these unofficial official post-convention activities. Nowadays the party is generally held right at the Golden Apple store and tends to spill out all over Melrose Avenue.

But some years back, Bill held the bash at the carousel building at the Santa Monica Pier. As nice as the current get-togethers are, they can’t compare to that one. One of the single greatest parties it’s ever been my fortune to attend. Absolutely everyone was there, good talk and junk food was in abundance, and Seduction was the party band, playing music to dance to and shout over.

And there was this guy there.

He was rather unassuming, really. Jeans, jacket, reasonably young looking, tufts of blondish hair sticking out from underneath a baseball cap. As the music pounded and people danced or talked or laughed, no one gave him a second look.

I spotted him immediately, having met him before, and was surprised to see him. “Are you gonna sing with the band? Tell me you’re singing with the band,” I said.

He half-grinned. “Maybe. Probably not, but we’ll see.”

Well, we saw.

At one point between songs, Mumy gestured to the guy, indicating that he should come up to where the band was playing, saying, “C’mon up, cousin.” The guy walked to the front, still not attracting any notice, and after a quick, whispered conference, the guy took the mike. The band immediately blasted straight into “Light My Fire,” and the guy started to sing.

Understand, the guys of Seduction certainly have their rock ‘n’ roll chops. No one can take that away. Mumy alone has a singing career stretching back decades, and sure, Mick Jagger isn’t losing sleep over Max Allan Collins, but Al’s no slouch.

But when this guy in the baseball cap started singing, something changed.

His voice was deep and strong, as finely tuned an instrument in and of itself as anything that the band was playing. The song began to build, his delivery increasing in power and intensity. And the dancers and other people in the place began to sense it, sense that something had changed. The quality of what they had been hearing from the band, as good as it was, had suddenly just jumped exponentially. This guy wasn’t singing like a rock singer. He had the pipes of a rock star.

People on the dance floor began to slow down, coming almost to a stop, as they simply listened. People who had been standing outside the carousel building started to come in, checking out the surprising change in the band’s sound. I heard people nearby saying, “Who the hëll is that?!” I just stood there, grinning, because I knew.

And as the blond guy built to one final crescendo of “Come on baby, light my fiiiiire!” his voice was so powerful that he practically blew out the back wall of the carousel building. The place erupted in applause, cheers. No one quite knew what had happened; they only knew that it was really cool.

The blond guy shook Mumy’s hand, took a quick bow, and very quietly faded back into the crowd, leaving a puzzled but happy crowd aware that something special had just happened, but they weren’t sure what. Nobody followed him and nobody mobbed him, which was fortunate since he’d certainly been through that enough in his life.

One can’t blame the party-goers for being confused. After all, in the 1970s, the only way you could hear the guy was either to buy his records or to get tickets to one of his concerts. What reason did the folks at the Golden Apple party have to suspect that Shaun Cassidy would show up at the Santa Monica pier and jam with Seduction? They didn’t know he was a pal of Mumy’s and would put in an unannounced and unexpected appearance.

Boy, I wish American Gothic had lasted. What a cool show that was.

In any event, it’s been a few years since Seduction made an appearance. Me, I’d really like to see the group get back together again. Be nice to see them back in action, maybe with some new songs. I don’t expect Cassidy to show up again—that’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing—but you never know what the guys might produce next. I just think it’d be a kick, and I hope that it happens.

And if it does, I promise I won’t sing. Well… maybe I’ll stand in the back and hum.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. He wants to mention that Backlash: Oblivion II, will be airing on Cinemax this month. Backlash is the impossible-to-find-at-video-rental-places sequel to the science fiction western Oblivion, and aside from the fact that he wrote it, it also features the screen debut of his father, uttering his immortal line, “I think I’ll come back later.”)