There's something so beautifully honest and innocent about the breakup song “Without You,” the lead track on Foxy's tuneful eight-song self-titled CD. “I don't want to wake up here tomorrow/Without you curled around me sound asleep/Nothing I could make, steal or borrow/ Could bring that kind of confidence to me,” bassist Lisa Parker sings poignantly. But not “poignantly” like one of those crappy, sensitive, long-flowing-skirt-wearing, acoustic-guitar-playing coffeehouse warblers. No, “poignantly” like a tough rock chick being honest. “I don't want to see another month of Mondays. . . . I don't want to wake up tomorrow without you,” she continues, capturing that post-breakup moment when suddenly the whole future stretches out hopelessly before you and you can't get excited about any of it.
The true story behind the song, which was written by Foxy guitarist/singer Greg Antista, is somehow less innocent.
“I wrote that after cheating on my girlfriend, and I was sad when she dumped me,” he says with a defeated laugh. But it gets worse. The night of his flagrante delicto, Antista left a ring his girlfriend had given him in the bathroom of the woman with whom he cheated. The girlfriend began asking about the whereabouts of the ring. Her questions were answered when the Other Woman approached Antista and his girlfriend at a show and gave the ring to Antista while saying loudly, “Greg, you left this ring in my bathroom.”
“You get a couple of good songs out of the worst periods of your life, don't you think?” Antista asks rhetorically.
Apparently so because Foxy is brimming with good songs, all of them well-crafted in the vein of tight, guitar-driven pop songs and fueled by the dual vocals of Parker and Antista, who give all the famous rock duos like John and Exene, Donny and Marie, Sonny and Cher, the Captain and Tennille, Ernie and Bert, and Ricardo Montalban and Herv Villechaize a run for their money.
The idea for Foxy had been kicking around in the minds of Antista and guitar player John Maurer (who plays bass in Social Distortion) for years.
“We'd always talked about how it would be cool to do a band with a female singer,” remembers Antista. A couple of years ago, everything fell into place, including the songwriting.
“2000 AD,” a standout track from the album, which one suspects was supposed to be released quite a ways before 2000 A.D., was actually written for Joey Ramone. Antista's roommate, Steve Soto, a rock legend in his own right (having been a member of the Adolescents and a buttload of other bands), was playing bass for Ramone. Ramone asked Soto and Antista to write some songs for him. “When we wrote that song, we were doing the Joey voice in our head, and we kept thinking, 'What would Joey sing next?'” Antista says.
And if Joey comes a-calling?
“Now that's our hit, and Joey can't have it!” says Antista.
Foxy plays with Vice Squad, the Screws and Mad Parade at Club Mesa, 843 W. 19th St., Costa Mesa, (949) 642-6634. Tues., 9 p.m. Call for cover.
