A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across a fun YouTube video of an obscure SoCal post-punk band called Suburban Lawns performing a song called “Janitor.” The song and the performance were interesting enough to justify about 20-25 minutes of Googling–I learned, among other things, that the weirdly charismatic lead singer “Su Tissue” had a small part in a Jonathan Demme movie called “Something Wild.” After a short career, the band broke up in 1983.
Today, while watching “Hannah and Her Sisters,” I noticed that someone who worked on the movie must have been a Suburban Lawns fan, because he/she snuck one of their records (or at least a name card) into this scene.  I have to believe this is an intentional shout-out for a few reasons.  One, all of the surrounding divider cards are for jazz musicians–the Lawns card is the only one that doesn’t fit.  Two, they’re all “J” records–Suburban Lawns would be filed elsewhere.  Finally, the band released their final EP in 1983 and were (relatively) unknown.  Hannah and Her Sisters was released in 1986, making it fairly unlikely that you’d happen to randomly have a placer card for an obscure band prominently stocked in a record store, three years after their last release.
According to the Internet, the scene was filmed at a Tower Records. Given that the handwriting is consistent across all the title cards, I wonder if a Tower employee did this? Â Or perhaps the set decorator (Carol Joffe) was a closet post punk fan? Â
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