The Cucumbers

The Cucumbers are a band from New Jersey founded in Hoboken in the early 1980s by husband-and-wife duo Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes. Their first song, "My Boyfriend", became a hit on the college radio charts, leading to national tours, a couple of videos on MTV, and reviews in Rolling Stone and People.

Fried and Shoshkes met in their freshman dorm at Brown University and first performed on campus, doing folk and jazz standards acoustically, two voices accompanied by Fried on guitar. They lived together and wrote songs together and, in the early 1980s, moved to Europe. They have been the subject of profiles in the New York Times, specifically by Jon Pareles. In the early 1990s, Shoshkes and three other musicians—Alice Genese, David Cogswell, and Frank Giannini—formed Over the Moon, an alternative rock group making music aimed at children. They released one eponymous album and performed at rock clubs, churches, and other locations in Hoboken and New York City. According to Nj.com, "...with a second child on the way, lead singer Deena Shoshkes and guitarist Jon Fried moved from their musical roots of Hoboken to Millburn. A suburban house gave them more room to raise their new family. Although the Cucumbers stepped out from the limelight of the Jersey scene they had been part for many years, they never stopped making music." They have received praise from music critic Robert Christgau.

The Cucumbers (EP)

The Cucumbers is the first release by the New Jersey new wave band The Cucumbers. It contains the single "My Boyfriend". It received a good deal of college radio play, enabling the band to begin playing out of town. In addition, "before the record was released, Tommy Dugan quit the band (gave no reason, just stopped returning calls…the band still wonders about that) and through the Village Voice (again) found drummer Yuergen Renner, born in Weil-am-Rhine, Germany, on the French-Swiss border, who came to New York in 1980 to play American rock. He was soon in six bands, but eventually left all but the Cukes.

Track listing

Critical reception

Robert Christgau wrote that the EP's first track, "My Boyfriend", "is a girl-group masterstroke for a feminist age."

References