The Lost Bands: Searching for... Face to Face
12/09/2005
Music Home / Entertainment Channel / Bullz-Eye Home
It was sometime in the mid ‘80s and it was a weird musical time in my life. On the one hand, I was into early MTV stuff like Duran Duran and Men at Work, “new” music like Go West and Tears for Fears, and even sugar metal like Bon Jovi and Def Leppard. So it’s not really surprising that a melodic pop band from Boston caught my attention upon hearing a mixed tape a friend made for me. The band was Face to Face. Now, many of you will remember a band called Face to Face from the punk scene of the ‘90s, but this was a band that came a decade before and was as different musically as sugar is to salt.
The first song I heard was called “10-9-8.” Do any of you remember it? “10-9-8 / I’m always counting down / Do you feel the pressure / When you’re under the gun?” This was pure pop but had elements of dance music, early new wave, and the killer voice of lead singer Laurie Sargent. The best part though, was that Face to Face could also rock hard with other tracks off their self-titled debut like “Out of My Hands” and “All Because of You” balancing the pop of “10-9-8” and the brilliant “Face in Front of Mine.”
Face to Face put out two albums on Epic Records, the self-titled effort in 1984 and Confrontation in 1985, then released one more on Mercury, One Big Day, in 1988. I have to confess I didn’t like Confrontation much but did find a few good songs on One Big Day -- especially “I Believe in You,” which was akin to the music on the debut. But then my two cassette tapes (you read that right, cassette tapes) got lost in boxes while I moved from place to place and city to city over the past 20 years.
Now, in the era of iTunes, I find myself looking for a digital version of some of the music I used to really dig so I can download those songs for 99 cents apiece. But what a bummer when I typed in “Face to Face” and only came up with the scream band of the same name, and no evidence anywhere of Laurie and company. Our music editor, David Medsker, says that he remembers Sargent playing gigs in the ‘90s on the Boston circuit, and she released two major label solo albums in the late ‘90s: Heads and Tails in 1997 and a self-titled effort in 1999. But I'm guessing she got buried beneath all the Lilith Fair hype during that time, because she never really made it as a solo artist.
And now here we are, six years later. Is she still performing and writing? And what about the rest of Face To Face? Bullz-Eye wants to know. Send us your tips. And if someone feels like putting this piece in Sargent’s mailbox, well, we’d be okay with that, too.