Dr. Michael Pemulis

Dr. Michael Pemulis was a critically well received but commercially unsuccessful singer/songwriter in the 1980s.
Pemulis recorded two albums for the Phoenix based Placebo Records label in the mid-eighties and performed live throughout the decade as a solo artist and also with bands such as The Entire Desert, Poet's Corner and Woody and the Peckers.
Pemulis' debut album - a folk sounding, four song set entitled The Expert Says-was actually one side of an album. The other side contained music from the afore mentioned Poet's Corner, a band Pemulis played guitar, drums, congas and harmonica for at various times during that band's many incarnations. Pemulis did not sing or write songs for Poet's Corner although he did collaborate on many compositions. Pemulis recorded three of the songs on The Expert Says with a local country band that called itself Whiskey Straight. The fourth song, After the Ocean is Gone, was a Donovan type solo effort with Pemulis playing acoustic guitar and harmonica as well as singing. The other songs are titled The Lost and Found, The Expert Says and Dreamed it I Suppose.
Pemulis' second, and last album to date, was a more eclectic mix of songs called Priorities. This album featured scorching, garage band rockers like the title cut and a song about the death penalty called Fry Me along side slow motion acoustic ballads like The Brutal Heat. For the most part critics gave Pemulis very good reviews and compared him to a wide ranging list of artists as varied as John Prine and Lou Reed. Spin Magazine thought Pemulis sounded a lot like Bob Dylan and called Priorities "An unsung classic." On The Brutal Heat Pemulis sings, "No such thing as time and there is no such thing as space. They reach for me but I disappear without a trace." And disappear is just what Pemulis did.
Shortly after releasing Priorities Pemulis disbanded his backing band, The Entire Desert, and has not performed or released a recording since. The name Michael Pemulis did re-emerge, however, as a character in the late author David Foster Wallace's masterpiece Infinite Jest. Wallace borrowed the name without permission after hearing it from a friend who had traveled with Pemulis and seen him perform. Pemulis only became aware of this after being contacted by a college student who was doing research for a story on Wallace after his suicide in 2009.
Dr. Michael Pemulis continues to live in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife and family.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu