Retro Crush: The Fibonaccis

I love Turner Classic Movies. I especially love that they show supremely odd stuff on Friday nights (technically Saturday mornings) and around Halloween time. Recently, they showed Terrorvision, which I had somehow never seen (despite growing up on USA’s Up All Night). Based on the description, I knew I had to. Gerrit Graham (Beef from Phantom of the Paradise)! Mary Woronov (Miss Evelyn from Rock ‘n’ Roll High School)! Diane Franklin (the French exchange student from Better Off Dead)! There was also a plot description about satellite TV and aliens, but nothing worth putting in italics.

The movie itself was typical 80s sci-fi horror cheese, but it was a hoot. What really grabbed my attention, though, was the theme song. It was the kind of obnoxious New Wave song that tugs at my soul. It sounded like Lene Lovich fronting Devo. I thought about how cool it would be if I could claim I had the theme to Terrorvision in my music collection? I thought about how I would be the only one who thought that would be cool, ever. But the search was on.

Checking the credits, I discovered that a band called The Fibonaccis was responsible for the theme, and they had contributed other songs to the soundtrack, which had actually been released at one point. Rather than plunk down $30 for a vinyl copy, I opted for a $4 used CD of their best-of. I mean, I had to have it, but I didn’t necessarily HAD TO HAVE IT.

I was expecting some truly dire, so-bad-I-hope-it-approaches-good synth-pop. What I got was a crash course in L.A. art rock (not every art rock band went to design school in New York—who knew? “Me.” Oh, shut up, Oingo Boingo). Some of it is New Wave, some of it is Emily Dickinson poetry read over creepy ambient music, some of it is circus music, some of it is Italian soundtrack music, all of it is strangely compelling.

As I fretted over how I was going to track down all their songs scattered across two EPs, one LP, and many, many compilations (all out of print), I stumbled across the official website of the Fibonaccis(!) (http://www.fibonaccis.com/). It’s run by John Dentino, the keyboardist/primary composer. And damned if he hasn’t put the band’s entire output on the site as individual mp3s.

I’m keeping the CD. It’s handy to have around. And I’m preaching the gospel of an odd little band from L.A. that was only around for seven years and whose biggest claim to fame was performing the theme song to a Charles Band-produced movie that no one remembers.

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