The Phantoms’ Jerome Godboo says the world is a playground

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCT. 25, 1990

By Steve Newton

The way today’s product-oriented music industry functions, it’s hard for most bands to have their cake and eat it too. But Toronto’s Phantoms are one band that’s licking the icing from its fingers these days. They managed to ink a deal with A&M Records that let them make a record on their own terms. But it took a lot of negotiating.

“The secret dream of everybody in a record company is to be in a band,” says Phantoms lead vocalist/harpist Jerome Godboo. “So when they sign a band they try and change it into their vision of a band. But too many cooks spoil the broth, you know. We’ve got just the right chemistry between the four of us, and we just believe that we’ve delivered the song in the right way. It’s a feeling thing. You just know whether you want to sing a line once or twice, and when the record company says, ‘Oh sing it twice’, you go, ‘No, I don’t feel like singing it twice.’ ”

The Phantoms will be playing unobstructed tunes from the new album, Pleasure Puppets, when they return to the Town Pump—“our kinda bar, totally”—this Friday and Saturday (October 26 and 27). The band, comprised of four 28-year-olds, came together four years ago in Ottawa, which Godboo claims was a fairly happenin’ place to start.

“It was pretty good, actually. There’s a big blues base in Ottawa—we got a lotta the Chicago influence out there. I used to live on the West Coast too, in Victoria, and the blues on the West Coast is much more padded with horns, a big, fat-sounding blues, whereas in the east it’s a hard-edged blues. It’s faster and more aggressive, and we kinda picked up a lotta that.”

While a strong blues-rock influence is evident on Pleasure Puppets, there’s a couple of tracks that lean pretty heavily towards reggae as well. The band didn’t pick that up in the nation’s capital, though.

“That comes from livin’ in Toronto,” says Godboo. “ ’Cause you don’t have to buy reggae records if you live in Toronto—you can hear it just walkin’ down the street. There’s a big Jamaican community. After living there for a few years you know all Bob Marley’s stuff.”

In concert, the Phantoms’ rowdy mix of varied influences has made them one of Hogtown’s biggest club draws. In one year alone they sold out the 1,000 seat Diamond Club seven times. And one of the things that keeps audiences coming back for more is the immediacy and freshness of the band’s live performance.

“We’re as predictable as the weather,” says Godboo. “We’re a natural phenomenon. I mean right now it’s a new moon, and it’s a real starting-up kind of feeling. And by the time we’re out there it’s gonna be a full moon and it’ll be time to just explode with everything at once.”

To call Godboo a wildman on stage is an understatement. He does what he wants when he wants, and the resulting chaos is a bonus as far as he’s concerned. But have things ever gotten a little too outta hand?

“Too outta hand?” counters Godboo. “Well, you know…this world is a playground. I mean things get too outta hand all the time. Look at all the crazy wars in the world. That’s part of living on Earth. You gotta try new things, and sometimes maybe you’ll offend people, but then other people will just think that’s the cat’s meow, because that’s what they needed to hear.

“It’s like…we were in Saskatoon the other night, and I had this sexually charged dream about one of the waitresses. I could see her there, and I thought, ‘Why edit myself?’ Just had to tell her about the dream. And certain people just walked out of the bar. But then other people thought it was the greatest thing, maybe because it was an experience that was close to one of their own, but which they’ve never heard articulated on a stage before.

“And it cleared up a lot between me and the girl,” adds Godboo, “because she knew what I was goin’ through about her. So honesty—even though sometimes it causes disruptions—is always best for me.”

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