The Swimming Pool Q's - Deep End Press

Royal Academy of Reality

Royal Academy of Reality is an ambitious and successful summer blockbuster of a release...a sexy tour de force...glorious odes to the solar system. It's an anthem of the sun that would bust out in blows against the empire if anyone had the energy to launch a wooden ship, much less a rocket.

--VILLAGE VOICE

Possibly the most progressive American rock record of the new century. It sets an artistic standard few bands will be able to match.

--THE STATE

Overflowing with musical and intellectual ideas...flat-out astonishing.

--WIRE U.K.

Pocket symphonies of silvery guitar and warm-water singing: Abbey Road wrapped in kudzu.
--ROLLING STONE

A lavish record that's as cryptic as R.E.M. and as expansive as The Flaming Lips...warm and humane rather than aridly cerebral...their time may have come. 4 STARS.
--Q MAGAZINE U.K.

A gorgeous disc from a unique band that has been out of action too long.
--WASHINGTON POST

GRADE: A: Repeat listenings of Reality yield countless new pleasures.
--ATLANTA JOURNAL

A sprawling 70-minute voyage into deep space.
--CREATIVE LOAFING

The striking scale and superb craft of this album are impressive by any standard.

--ALL MUSIC GUIDE

This is one terrific album...a spectacular sound, one that overflows with sheer exuberance and invention...a strikingly original piece of work, and proof positive that in the grand tradition of Sgt. Pepper and Dark Side of the Moon, imagination and ambition are still vital ingredients when it comes to making music that really matters.
--SOUTH FLORIDA'S ENTERTAINMENT

NEWS & VIEWS

A rock and roll Gravity's Rainbow.
--AMPLIFIER

Exquisitely crafted songs [that] burst on the ear with the sudden force and electric sizzle of an August thunderstorm. Others open like furled flower buds, petal by petal, with imagery that's both winsome and passionate.
--TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT

Administration

Deep End Press > Post and Courier (1)

Post and Courier

The Post and Courier

Charleston, SC.

by Prentiss Findlay

So how have The Swimming Pool Q’s lasted all these years? The band members are back on the road supporting a reissue of their music from 1981, The Deep End. They play a show on Friday at the Windjammer.

The band’s Jeff Calder says relatively clean living and straight thinking have kept the band together. “You’re not in with a bunch of drug addicts and drinking. It’s a pretty straight bunch,” Calder said. “It’s not as though you’re dealing with people who are somewhere on the rings of Saturn all the time.”

Plus it helps that the band members have other interests such as art, filmmaking, and interior design. But what is a rock band if not a place for eccentric behavior. Calder wrote the extensive liner notes for the recently released The Deep End Years 1978-82, A Personal History of the Swimming Pool Q’s. The notes include a photo of the Jacksonville Beach Fla., police report of his arrest in 1982 for trying to stop police from arresting skinny dippers at the Ramada Inn.

While the officers were hauling away the skinny dippers, who were fans of the band, Calder said he got into a smart aleck confrontation with the authorities in the hotel lobby. The police responded by arresting him. The situation was written up in the Florida Times-Union. Calder said it didn’t help his case that he called the local police “moustachioed conch shells with pistols.”

He said the “silly swimming pool arrest” was blown out of proportion, and it was out of character for him to get into such a situation. “It’s the only time I’ve ever been thrown in jail,” he said. These days, Calder is older and wiser, but the incident lives on as part of the band’s lore. For good or bad, it’s part of his past. “I hear about this story all the time. It’s amazing the longevity,” he said. And he is amazed by the longevity of the band and how well The Swimming Pool Q’s reissue has been received at college radio stations where the audience and the music are about the same age.