Please – Noreally Thanks (1994)

It was an introduction in a Boston basement apartment that led to the formation of an ambitious duo, that would end up on the streets of New York and ultimately evolve into its’ most significant incarnation as PLEASE.

By that time co-founder Paul Casanova had picked up his first real Big Apple gig coordinating and booking the CMJ convention while Charles Newman built a studio doing production work that would lead to the foundation of the Mother West studio and label where they made their first demos, and three college charting records; Noreally Thanks, The Electric Living Room, and Sentimental Watermelon.

As luck would have it in the early days the internet, Newman connected via an AOL listing with a music supervisor that was assembling the music that would become the platinum selling Empire Records Soundtrack. It was to their astonishment that PLEASE’s music was being considered alongside radio toppers of the day like The Cranberries, Toad The Wet Sprocket, and The Gin Blossoms.

Ultimately, their song “Here it Comes Again” was chosen for the proper soundtrack and they entered NYC’s Soho studio The Magic Shop with Talking Head Jerri Harrison, Mixer Tom Lord Alge, current GnR drummer Frank Ferrer and band members, Peter Sabla, Hadley Kahn, and Bassist Michael Bergman to record the single.

Following the swirling momentum in anticipation of the soundtrack and film’s release, the group continued to tour clubs and colleges across the US and play the local NYC circuit, sharing various stages with artists like Blind Melon, Manic Street Preachers, Peter Murphy, and most notably Radiohead’s CBGBs debut during their Pablo Honey tour.

After the film’s release being scuttled straight to video in the 11th hour, and with the times changing rapidly, the group went on unofficial hiatus while Casanova contributed music to MTV shows including The Osbournes, The Jessica Simpson Show and Meet the Barkers, recorded two albums with the band “Of Earth” formed by Joan Jett, Sebastian Bach, Spread Eagle and UFO bassist Rob DeLuca, started his own Rock Music School The Rock Underground, toured with Disco Royalty Gloria Gaynor, and formed his most recent group Supercel which just recently released their debut album in the summer of 2019. Newman went on to producing an array of artists, film scoring, music supervising and song placements, while doing extensive work with Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields for the past two decades.

Most recently the group has contributed the PLEASE catalog to the score for Millennium Bugs, directed by Alex Montoya Marin, a participant in Robert Rodriguez’ “Rebel Without a Crew” TV series on the El Rey Network.

With the Empire Records Soundtrack and film having achieved a cult status as the soundtrack to a generation, and, plans for a Broadway version of the film coming in 2020, PLEASE is taking its’ lead from the pleasantly surprising momentum of this cult favorite and climbing out of its’ hiatus for another bite of the apple.