Michael Quercio

Michael Quercio (born March 13, 1963) is an American musician. He is the founder, bassist and lead singer of the Three O'Clock, and coined the term Paisley Underground as the name of a musical subgenre.

Paisley Underground

Quercio is best known as the founding member, lead vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Three O'Clock, among the most successful artists of the neo-psychedelic movement of 1980s rock music that became known as the Paisley Underground. Quercio coined the name Paisley Underground for his musical subgenre in late 1982, during an interview with the LA Weekly alternative newspaper. As the event was later reported:

Quercio was close friends with Lina Sedillo who was the bass player with local punk band Peer Group, who had played on the same bill as the Salvation Army on occasion. One evening Sedillo taped Peer Group rehearsing and one of the numbers contained an improvised spoken middle section. Sedillo was wearing a red paisley dress she had bought from a thrift store and his eyes fell on the bass player and out came the line "Words from the paisley underground." Sedillo noticed the phrase while playing the tape back the next day and immediately phoned up Quercio and repeated it to him. They ran a casual 60s music listening group together and thought it a cool name for them to use. When Quercio a few weeks later spontaneously dropped the phrase into an interview when asked to describe the Bangles, Rain Parade and the Three O'Clock sharing the same bill, the interviewer highlighted it in the article as a handy label for this group of bands. And so Quercio had unwittingly came up with the name of this new movement, the Paisley Underground.