Box Of Chocolates

Box of Chocolates was an indie band formed in Brooklyn, New York, United States in 1990.

This is not a CD. It is a story–but not the usual story of a hardworking band. It is a story of friendships, some old, some new, some to last a lifetime, some just a brief time.
Someone wrote of Fearful Symmetry, "it arguably ushered in the lo-fi movement, and Palace fans will dig it." This is looking through the wrong lens. First off, Box of Chocolates was not a Palace release–it was quite different. Secondly, Box of Chocolates was not about changing the course of Rock n' Roll, nor music history.

Rock n' Roll is such a bankrupt term–like most pompous and outspoken histories, it is rife with perversion. And who wants to be a part of that. This CD is a story that you can take to bed with you like a teddy bear, or a dear friend. It will whisper in your ear comforting thoughts, as you take shelter from the night. It is not one that will plant visions of electric guitars and fame and sex in your head, and make you wonder whether someday you will take your rightful place in the succession of pop dramatists. It is a story from left field about a group of people who found themselves together and toward the end of the arrangement decided to record the experience in the form of songs that they had written whilst at 140 Plymouth.

The arrangement started when Brut and Arnie needed a place to live after their old warehouse space in Red Hook burned to the ground, the victim of a resident welder's drunken antics. They went looking and found a space under the Manhattan bridge that met all their needs quite adequately. Shlomo, the local property baron's equivalent of Quasimodo, quickly set up the 1,000 square foot loft with a patio of an additional 6,000 feet. They needed help with the rent so they got Mickey Hawaii to give up the expensive lifestyle of Manhattan for the Brooklyn setting. Then Arnie's sister called and said her friend Bobby needed a place to crash for the summer–she insisted that he was really quite nice. No walls had been set up. The boys figured that Bobby could make himself a place alright. Bobby arrived, and he didn't arrive alone. In tow was a friend, Marco, who turned out to be Bobby's lover. As it would turn out, Marco was much more suited to live in the squalor. So after realizing that they had two new roomates instead of just one, the boys went to work on building the walls for a room that would house the new roomates. But Bobby and Marco would leave there door open, and kept Brian up to all hours of the night firing his imagination with their slap and tickle sexcapades. Though these sounds were an indication of much pleasure, they didn't guarantee a happy ending as Mickey often found one or the other on the couch in the common space in the morning as he prepared to go to work. At first, Mickey found either Bobby or Marco on the couch, but as time went on, Marco became the dominant partner and Bobby was always the one found asleep on the couch when the sexcapades went awry.

The next member to join the cast was Raphael Riviera. Arnie's friend, Jose from Peru, befriended Raphael on their ride from Atlanta to New York. Jose was on his way to visit Arnie and New York. Raphael siad he was trying to make big dollars in America–in New York–he had a cousin who would help him get set up. In Grand Central, the supposed cousin hung up on Raphael saying "I don't know who you are" (Hey, New York is a great place, but it does have its cold side). Jose invited Raphael to 140 Plymouth. The boys said he could stay there while he found a place to live and work. They envisioned a two stay. Raphael proceeded to live there for two years, taking up residence in the sound isolation booth that the boys had scavenged together from the scraps of a fancy sound isolation job Mickey had done down on Broad Street in Soho. The jokes directed against Raphael of "when are you moving out?", eased after four months.

Raphael didn't speak a word of English, and by the time everyone went their separate ways two years later, he could say only one thing–"My name is James Dean". This was all that the boys taught him, and probably because it made them laugh everytime he said it. If they had ever bored of this, they might have taught him something else. As it was, they would take Raphael to parties, and non-Spanish speaking people who hadn't see him recently would ask him if he had learned any english and all he would say was "My name is James Dean", and invariably the boys would double over in laughter.

Most of the time Raphael was happy and pleasant to be around. His campesino upbringing had instilled in him a wonderful disposition–he came with no attitude, at least as far as work was involved. He would get involved in anything the boys asked him to. If they dragged him up in the middle of the night to do some cockammamy stunt, Raphael would rub his sleepy eyes and like a good soldier move out. Women were a different story–when it came to women, Raphael had a rampant machismo attitude, though the women who didn't speak Spanish would never have known. To these women, especially the blondes for whom Raphael harbored a latin worship, Raphael was a sweet, gracious and cuddly man. But to the women who could speak Spanish, and especially those who themselves were hispanic, and who Raphael didn't place on a pedestal (for lack of blonde hair), Raphael was an operator. He hit on everything that came through 140 Plymouth's doors. He even hit on Gala whom Arnie had been seeing for six months. When Gala said, "Raphael, I am going out with Arnie", Raphael responded, "Oh, he'll never find out". But this is America, and Arnie found out in bed that night. Arnie had troubles with sweet' Raphael for awhile, but Brut and Mickey found this hilarious, partly for its stark contrast to his sweet persona.

One day Raphael got off the phone in a forlorn state. He told the boys that his younger brother who was 24 years old had died of a heart attack. The boys were stunned and didn't know what to say or do. When they were at a loss they took Raphael to a chinese restaurant for it had been at a chinese restaurant that their first real bonding with Raphael had occurred. About a month after Ralph Rivers (his gringo moniker) had arrived, they took him to chinatown. With friends there were about six people in the outing. As was their modus operandi, they ordered a spread of dishes that would be shared by all. When the food arrived, Brut noticed that Raphael was quiet and seemed to be taken aback. He asked Raphael if something was wrong. Raphael looked up and said he had never seen such a display of food. As tears welled in his eyes, he said it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. Everyone suddenly realized the extent of the disparity of their lives from Raphael's. In front of them was a spread of food that they had come to take completely for granted. It was the first time of many that Raphael's perceptions grounded them, and helped them to appreciate what they had, and too often overlooked.

After Raphael's brother died, he started taking more interest in the plethora of guitars that lay around the space like domestic animals. He asked shyly if he could play and he was given free reign. Of course, he knew absolutely nothing about guitars, but he slowly taught himself to play, at first plinking single notes and then figuring out chords. As with english, the boys showed him almost nothing. In the wake of his brother's death, Raphael was often melancholic–it seemed to trigger off a sense of homesickness that would hit him at night. The guitars helped provide an outlet. He began taking a guitar out onto the immense roof deck that looked out on the bridge, the east river and lower Manhattan across the way, and he would emit what can only be described as wailing. To the boys, it was magical and the genesis for "Fearful Symmetry". It lacked any technique, for Raphael really had no idea what he was doing, but they had never before heard such pathos. They knew that one day, that wailing needed to be captured.

Then Brut went away to shoot a movie in Montana, a PBS feature about the chinese migration surrounding the building of the railroad. He came back two months later, and in tow he had a young scraggly actor who had worked on the film, Wane Olephant. This actor took up residence in their tone-room, sleeping between the drums and guitar-amps. Over the course of the next few months, Mickey, Brut, Raphael, and Arnie started playing together and writing songs. Wane started straying from his acting, letting his contract with Creative Artists lapse, and Mickey started straying from his other band, The Despicable Gut Squid. Without missing a beat, Wane jumped into the fray of songwriting as well. With his beautiful clear tenor, he was the last piece in the bizarre puzzle known as Box of Chocolates.

Mushroom Baby
Marshfield, VT
"Peak" 1998