PLEASE

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 Jerry 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 released their debut album in the summer of 2019. Newman went on to producing an array of artists, film scoring, music supervising and doing extensive work with Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields, as well as continuing to build the Mother West label, roster and publishing administration catalog.

Most recently the group has contributed music from the PLEASE catalog to the score for the indie feature “Millennium Bugs”, directed by Alejandro Montoya Marin which was picked up for international distribution by Indican Pictures and will hit screens worldwide later in 2022. With the resurgence of 90s songs being used in Film and TV the band has recently landed songs from their catalog in shows including “The Walking Dead World Beyond” and Julie Delpy’s “On The Verge”.

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 in the works, PLEASE is taking its’ lead from the pleasantly surprising momentum of this cult favorite and climbing out of its’ hiatus.

With Newman relocating to Los Angeles in July 2020, while Casanova holds down the Brooklyn fort, the two continue to collaborate remotely on an array of projects with plans for the first new PLEASE album in over 2 decades in the works.