Portland Press Herald
Sunday, July 4, 1999
By RAY ROUTHIER
Staff Writer
Copyright 1999 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

Lettuce Rock

He had been dating a woman for three months. On his birthday, she invited him over for a special treat -- milkshakes. While he sipped his birthday goody, the woman told Whelan she didn't want to date him anymore. And that she had decided to stop dating men altogether.

"And then we had this really awkward kiss," Whelan says.

Whelan took that milkshake and the kiss, and transformed them into "The Milkshake Song," a catchy pop tune that is starting to get radio airplay all over the country.

That shake may have been the end of a relationship for Whelan, but it could be the beginning of success for the band Angry Salad.

Whelan, who is from South Portland, is Angry Salad's singer and lead guitarist. Hale Pulsifer, a Brunswick native, is the band's drummer. They met at Brown University in Providence, R.I., in 1991 and formed the band. In 1993, they won a radio station's contest for new bands, parlayed that into more gigs and moved to Boston. They were still playing small clubs and paying for their own recording sessions in 1998 when Whelan's milkshake memories started to change things.

The song got the band a major-label record deal last year with Blackbird, an affiliate of Atlantic. The label's president, Billy Lehman, had kept an earlier-recorded version of the song on his car CD player for several days and called the band's manager. The band then signed with Blackbird, and re-recorded "The Milkshake Song" for their self-titled album.

"The Milkshake Song" has also gotten the attention of radio stations around the country -- more than 35 commercial stations are now playing it, as are many college stations. Fans who come to the band's shows often are lured by that one sweet song.

"It's been one of our five most requested songs ever since we started playing it" three weeks ago, said Herb Ivy, vice president and program director at WCYY (94.3 FM), Portland's modern rock station. "It's a fun, poppy tune. It's just a great song."

When Angry Salad played before 300 people Tuesday night at Stone Coast Brewing Co. in Portland, many of those fans showed up just because of "The Milkshake Song."

"I just heard that one song and thought I'd like to see them," said Holly Joslin, 32. "I didn't realize they were this big. It's just really happy and upbeat."

Angry Salad is riding a wave that is bringing catchy pop tunes back to rock radio. With the dark, heavy songs of grunge now passe, bands such as Barenaked Ladies and Offspring are making upbeat sounds popular again. "The Milkshake Song" fits right in.

"One of the main things for us was that song," said Alyse Daberko, director of artist development for Blackbird. "It's just such a hit-'em-over-the-head, smash-radio hit, we think. It's lyrically fun, very infectious and great to sing along with."

If you listen closely to "The Milkshake Song," you can hear the best pop-rock sounds of the past 15 years. There's a little bit of The Replacements, a little Hootie and the Blowfish, and Whelan's vibrant vocals are reminiscent of Counting Crows. During an interview this week, Whelan said at least twice that Angry Salad is "not out to reinvent the wheel."

Pulsifer's drums are energetic and strong, while the two guitars are slightly twangy. After hearing "The Milkshake Song" just once, everyone wants to sing along to the melodic chorus: "And she gave me a milkshake and a kiss; I don't need a whole lot more."

The song is not racy, except for one bit of profanity. But Whelan says many people write and e-mail the band, thinking the "milkshake" is code for a variety of naughty things. But it truly is just a milkshake.

Before Tuesday's show at Stone Coast, Whelan and Pulsifer were at Bagelworks on Temple Street in the Old Port, talking about their music, their careers and the state of pop music.

The two men, both 28, had steady, supportive families in suburban Maine communities and attended an Ivy League college.

"Things just weren't that bad for us," Whelan said, speaking of why the band's music is upbeat.

Whelan lived in Pembroke, in Maine's far southeastern corner, until he was 13. Then the family -- his father was a psychologist, his mother a yoga instructor -- moved to South Portland.

Whelan, who is 6 feet 5 inches tall, was a forward on the South Portland High School basketball team, and he made an academic all-state team in 1986. He played piano, but sports played a bigger role in his life than music until he went to college.

Pulsifer grew up in Brunswick, where his father ran Dick Pulsifer Boat Building and his mother was a martial artist. He started playing drums in grammar school and got involved with marching and jazz bands.

Pulsifer met Whelan at Brown in 1991. The music scene at the college wasn't big but had some impressive members. Whelan said singer Lisa Loeb was in one of his music theory classes and that Duncan Sheik was in another.

In 1991, Pulsifer and Whelan formed Angry Salad with two other Brown students. They had no trouble coming up with a name for the band: Whelan had come up with one years earlier. He says he got it while he was a high schooler, on vacation with his family in the Virgin Islands.

He was in a bar with his brother and started saying he needed a name for a band he was forming. From the end of the bar, a voice called out, "Call it Angry Salad." The voice, Whelan claims, belonged to Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, who died in 1991.

The band played around Brown for a couple of years, then got a break in 1993 by winning the annual "Rock Hunt" run by WBRU, a commercial radio station in Providence staffed by Brown students. Angry Salad beat out 200 other bands and won $3,000. The money eventually helped them record a CD, and that helped them get gigs up and down the East Coast.

In 1995, the band moved to Boston. The other two original members left, and the band gained bassist Brian Vesco and guitarist Alex Grossi, who both grew up in South Windsor, Conn. During the day, Pulsifer worked in the box office at the Children's Museum and Whelan worked in the psychiatric ward at Cambridge Hospital.

Meanwhile, "The Guinea Pig EP," recorded with the "Rock Hunt" money, made it onto the college radio charts and was nominated for Best Debut Album at the Boston Music Awards.

After a few years of touring and recording their own songs, the band started researching record labels and decided to try to land a deal with Blackbird. Last year, they walked into Blackbird's Manhattan offices with their self-produced CD and a six-pack of Sam Adam's Boston Lager.

The beer got the staff's attention. The CD kept it.

The band signed with Blackbird in April 1998 and started recording later that year. The album -- called "Angry Salad" -- was released this past May. "The Milkshake Song" soon began getting attention. Reviewers uniformly praised it.

In Billboard magazine, Chuck Taylor wrote that the song "successfully incorporates all the most sought-after genres" and that it "snags the listener with a barbed chorus and pulls." He ended his review: "This is one of those that won't let go, so you might as well take it on before the competition sniffs this out as the runaway hit it is. You'll have no regrets."

Whelan and Pulsifer have no regrets either, though they haven't made a lot of money yet and they spend most of their waking hours traveling and touring.

At Stone Coast Tuesday, their songs were tight and full of energy, and there were lots of goofy moments. They had their tour manager play a solo on a plastic flute on their revved-but-goofy cover of the '80s hit "99 Red Balloons." They danced and joked with the audience, too.

Catchy songs, hard work, bonding with fans -- that's what builds success in the music industry. Pulsifer and Whelan know that, and they say they'll just keep working.

"They have a great work ethic, and that's important, to have an audience you've built up instead of just one hit song," said Ivy at WCYY. "They seem really committed to the long haul."