Joel Ferguson was ten years old when he bought the devil's music. He made the purchase after seeing Kiss on television and becoming enthralled by their Kabuki look and fiery stage show. "I had grown up in a very religious Christian household," recalls Ferguson, "and I had never seen anything like that before. I went to the store the next day and bought Kiss' Alive! behind my mother¦s back. She found it a few weeks later and threw it out. It was okay though, I was more into the album cover than I was into their music."

Twenty years later, Ferguson is making slightly less hellacious sounds of his own as the chief songwriter/frontman of the Michigan-based quartet known as Papa Vegas. Despite a name that suggests a finger-snapping, zoot-suited sound, the band (rounded out by guitarist Pete Dunning, bassist Mick Force and drummer Scott Stefanski) is anything but. The quartet's RCA debut, Hello Vertigo, is an album filled with bittersweet ear candy and melancholy pop melodies with songs that evoke influences ranging from the Police and Depeche Mode to Led Zeppelin and Queen.

As for their moniker, Ferguson says, "In the early days of the band, we were playing under different names each week. A friend suggested the name Pablo Vegas, which we changed to Papa to make it sound less serious. We decided to try it out at a local 'Battle of the Bands' show and, after our set, all the judges agreed that they liked our songs, but that we literally had the worst name they had ever heard. No one had ever commented on any of our previous names, so we figured this one was a winner because it caused a reaction. We decided then and there to keep it."

In the audience during that name-affirming show was Brian Vander Ark, frontman for the Verve Pipe. Vander Ark had just launched his own label, Sid Flips, and expressed interest in Papa Vegas -- the band, not necessarily its name. He wound up signing the group and producing their five-song EP, released in 1997. When RCA bought Sid Flips, Vegas became an RCA act.

Last January, the label sent the band to England for three months to write and develop material for the debut. "Prior to that trip, we really hadn't spent much time on the road or done any of the things that bands need to do together," says Dunning. "Amazingly enough, we wound up rehearsing right next door to a farm owned by Paul Weller. I'm a huge fan of his, especially all the stuff he did with the Jam. I got to meet him and we'd see each other here and there and wave to one another. I couldn't believe that we were next door to Paul Weller working on our music."

Dunning, however, is careful not to imply Weller was a guest on Hello Vertigo. "I don't want to sound like a dick, but I wouldn't want him to play on the album," he says. "After all, it is our record."

MICHAEL MOSES
(May 6, 1999)