When The Ocean Blue released its self-titled debut in 1988, it was my favorite thing to come out of Hershey, Penn., since those little aluminum-wrapped bundles of joy. The bass and guitar lines pogo-ed their way through my inner ear, while the keys wrapped the whole thing up in a wash of warmth. David Schelzel’s treatises on love were among the first songs I shared with a girlfriend. OK, maybe it was better than Hershey’s Kisses.
Sixteen years later, Schelzel and his band are still making music. The Sire Records veterans have just self-released a six-song EP, Waterworks. The bouncing melody lines and lyrical efficiency of the band’s first few albums pop up in places, but Oed Ronne, who replaced founding keyboardist Steve Lau in 1994, wrote half the songs, and the textures are more subtly layered on the EP. “Oed is growing constantly as a writer,” Schelzel said in one of a series of fading cell phone calls, as the band headed toward Philadelphia to kick off a Northeast tour. “It’s just a factor of what sounded good for this release.”
The last time I interviewed Schelzel, he had just returned from a video shoot in Iceland for “Sublime” from Beneath The Rhythm & The Sound, a single that found it’s way onto the modern rock charts in 1992, before the rock world became unfriendly territory for artists who weren’t angry. The Ocean Blue’s subsequent two records in the 1990s wouldn’t make nearly the splash.
“The mid-’90s seemed to be littered with loud, angst-driven groups,” Schelzel says. “But now there seems to be a more of an ear for the kind of music we like making that hasn’t been there for a while. A lot of friends of mine who are in their early 20s are listening to the same music I was listening to in high school. Things are more interesting, more eclectic and more diverse right now.”
While bands like the Pixies and Camper Van Beethoven have reunited to rock sold-out crowds, The Ocean Blue continued to periodically record and play shows on whatever scale was feasible with members scattered between Pennsylvania, Chicago and Minneapolis, where Schelzel is now an intellectual property lawyer.
“I represent small labels, producers, artists, authors,” he says. “It’s a blast to help folks who are doing a publishing or record deal because I can draw on my experience with the band.”
He may get a chance to do the opposite next year when he draws on his law experience for the band. The Ocean Blue is currently label shopping while getting ready to record its next full-length in 2005.