About The Ocean Blue
The Ocean Blue is an American indie pop band formed in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in 1986. Its original members included David Schelzel on lead vocals/guitar, Steve Lau on keyboards/saxophone, Bobby Mittan on bass guitar and Rob Minnig on drums and vocals.
The members of the Ocean Blue first met in junior high school. They cut a series of demos while in high school, with Scott Stouffer sitting in on drums. They managed to get two of these earliest recordings, "On Growing Up" and "Wounds of a Friend", included on a local radio station compilation in late 1986. The compilation also included very early work from noted local artists the Innocence Mission, who were friends and mentors of the Ocean Blue. Rob Minnig would join as permanent drummer in 1987, and the classic line-up of Schelzel/Lau/Minnig/Mittan would continue through 1994.
The Ocean Blue's members were still in high school when they signed a three-album deal in 1988 with Sire Records, at the behest of Sire founder Seymour Stein. Their self-titled debut album was recorded in London with producers John Porter and Mark Opitz.
The band's busy calendar included U.S. touring and an appearance on one of the first episodes of Club MTV, with Downtown Julie Brown. The first single, "Between Something and Nothing", peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, while its follow-up, "Drifting, Falling", peaked at No. 10. Two videos were made for the songs and both received rotation on PostModern MTV. The band joined the Mighty Lemon Drops and John Wesley Harding on an extensive tour of the U.S. and Canada. All of this promotion helped the band sell well over 150,000 copies of the first record.
After recording in several New England studios with Pat McCarthy engineering and co-producing, the band released their second album, Cerulean, in 1991. The singles "Ballerina Out of Control" and "Mercury" both charted on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, at Nos. 3 and 27, respectively. Drummer Rob Minnig began to hone his song production and mixing abilities, which would be reflected on the next album and its single B-sides, which the band chose to produce themselves.
The final Sire Records release came in 1993 with Beneath the Rhythm and Sound, which sold over 100,000 copies. The single "Sublime" peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart.
The band contributed songs to the 1994 Martin Scorsese film Naked in New York. For the duration of their 1993-1994 tour in support of Beneath the Rhythm and Sound, they toured as a five-piece group, with newly-added second guitarist Oed Ronne. Westwood One Radio Networks recorded the group's June 20, 1994, concert in Ventura, California and released it as a promotional-only CD, the band's only official live album.
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