The Nightblooms : Butterfly Girl : Fierce Recordings : 1992
This was a Dutch band that existed from 1987 to 1996. This band blew me away because they were shoegaze to the most brutal levels of noise and static yet the female vocals were so fragile and delicate (and such a cute accent / lisp!). When I am asked to name my top 10 shoegaze songs of all time, "Butterfly Girl" is always on that list. I was lucky enough to see them play live at Maxell's in Hoboken, NJ in the early '90s but they were a bit on the sleepy side live (although loud), a common issue for many shoegaze bands (including MBV) during this time period.
Delicious Monster (Rachel Mayfield ) : Snuggle : Flute : 1993.
(Oddly this release is not mentioned on Discogs!) They have several EPs (at least 5) and I believe one full length called Joie De Vivre, none of which go for much money on Ebay. I loved the vocals for this band because they go from super darling to daggers in seconds flat.
Earwig (UK band). There isn't a whole lot to be found about this band via the web but I did find this on YouTube:
"An air of mystery surrounds the indie trio Earwig and the few records they released from 1991 to 1992 on the small indie label La Di Da, based in their hometown of Hove, near Brighton, England.
Earwig were Kirsty Yates, Julian Tardo and Dimitri Voulis.
The band released three 12" EPs and an album titled "Under My Skin I am Laughing". The album - as well as the only single taken from it, "Everyday Shines" - received reasonably good reviews in both NME and Melodymaker. The band developed and refined a quite distinctive sound during it's existence by using both sequencers and electronics with more conventional instruments, to build introvert and claustrophobic pop songs about obsessive relationships and conflicting images of the self in an intimate personal drama."
What I personally know about them is this. In the early '90s I didn't relate to Riot Grrrl deeply and my female musician idols were not outwardly feminists but rather band members who happen to be female. (Lush, Jawbox, Superchunk, Velocity Girl, Scarce, Helium, MBV, and Swirlies to name a few examples)
A sales rep from Revolver Distribution back in the early '90s (I was working at a record store at the time). turned me on to Earwig and I managed to collect a few of their records during those brief years. Earwig never seemed to gain any real momentum with the masses and when I talk about favorite bands that feature women with music geeks, this is a group that few serious music nerds who pride themselves on knowing it all, have ever heard of. It kills me because they are so good, so worth knowing about but their music is quite difficult to come by to this day so I guess that I shouldn't be completely shocked that remain a secret to this day.
Earwig as a trio are minimal but they still manage to be loud. They are filled with tension and energy but not in a predictable, overdriven theatrical way like Hole or Babes in Toyland. Think cool melodies ALA the Breeders or Velocity Girl but with an early electronic twist that remind me of modern day Morr Records artists like Lali Puna or Ms. John Soda. I was inspired by Earwig because they opened my ears to a new style of abstracted rage that that sounded completely fresh but even more importantly like something that with enough practice I might be able learn how to recreate on some level. I am terrible at naming all the band who have influenced me along the way as a musician but I can say with total confidence that Earwig is among that list. Even more exciting to me is that their songs still sound as important, beautiful, and raw as ever.
In fact, if by some stroke of dumb luck and ex member or friend to the band reads this I would kill to know more about the band and would seriously give my right arm to help reissue their catalog. (I have a small record label) These songs are too important to go unheard. I am totally serious. Calling all members of Earwig, I want to reissue you first three EPs. Pretty please? Pipe dream aside, it feels good to share a post about a band who has been important to me for not one but two decades.
Talk all you want about how exciting news of the return of At the Drive In or Refused is but Lync will always be more important to me than any of those other bands. And holy crap I can't believe their amazing final (and firey) show from 1994 at the Velvet Elvis is now on You Tube. 2012 is looking up!
This is yet another time and place I feel very fortunate to have experienced in person and I don't think bass players come any better than James B (plus I got to see bands like Modest Mouse and Sunny Day really take off)
Now all I need to do is convince Sam to let me re-release his early Love as Laughter cassettes. You mean there was music after Lync but before LAL's Greks Bring Gifts ? Yes! And here is a little note about these two brilliant tapes from Sam's web site. One day I will transfer my favorite songs and post them somewhere. People need to hear these lo-fi pop gems.
"This was two years after the dissolution of my band ‘Lync’. I had been living in Olympia, Wa months before and was just running wild and for a while living in the Martin Apartments where my girlfriend at the time, Becca Albee (still a really great friend), lived down the hall. Tae from Kicking Giant, Chris from Karp, and a bunch of other scene luminaries lived in the same building. In the two years I lived in Olympia I moved liked 5 times, couches, haunted houses, the lucky 7 house, wherever. I started recording on a friend’s 4-track (I think it was Corin Tucker’s or Tracy Sawyer’s) and eventually my cousin Layne Staley gave me a Tascam 8 track that I proceeded to go nuts on. I remember right before Beck’s One Foot in the Grave was recorded Beck came over to my apartment and my room was just packed with electronic stuff and recording stuff and video games and whatever and I think he was kinda impressed at my strange existence. Or totally weirded out. We got along off the bat, I liked him because he was so weird, I was such a wild spazz back then who knows what people thought. I just had too much energy.
Music gave me somewhere to put all my restlessness and I recorded tons of songs, which I first put on cassette compilations. The first one was called ‘Love as Laughter’ and the second one was called ‘Clear Sky = Blue Dye’. I gave these out to friends, sometimes they would pay for them because I never had money."
PS: If you can actually find me in this video (I am in there!), I will send you a prize.
A friend was asking about old Emo bands (what I still prefer to call post-hardcore but you say po-tay-toe I say po-tah-toe) and then my head went into a frenzy of bands I loved / played shows with / was friends with back in the early '90s.
In 1996 Dahlia Seed went on our one and only U.S. tour and there are certain tapes we had in the van that I will never forget. Karate was one of them and this song in particular makes me think of 1996 fondly. Even if it was 5 boys in a cramped van and me for 6 weeks.
Huh. I missed this completely. Apparently is was on their final album Nemesisters in 1995. I think I had given up on the them by that point in time but someone on turntable.fm just played this song and that led to me uncovering this video.
I have been meaning to post this forever. Here is the list of songs Kenny and I played when we did our Year That Punk Broke DJ night.
Slint - Good Morning, Captain
Polvo - Vibracobra
Pitchfork - Burn Pigs Burn
Coral - Your Reward
Jawbox - Grippe
Slant 6 - What Kind Of Monster
Vaselines - Molly's Lips
Nirvana - School
Skin Yard - The Lonely Place
Jesus Lizard - Fly on the Wall
Fluid - Black Glove
RFTC - Sturdy Wrists
Tad - Jinx
Mother Love Bone - Holy Roller
L7 - Shove
Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl
Hole - Teenage Whore
Lilys - February 14th
Shudder to Think - Chocolate
Hazel - She's Super Sonic
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Happy
Unrest - Cath Corrall
Seaweed - One out of Four
Faith No More - Falling to Pieces
Soundgarden - Outshined
Mudhoney - Touch Me I'm Sick
Sugarshack - Your a Freak
Helmet - Unsung
Melvins - Night Goat
Afghan Whigs - Hate It
Dinosaur Jr - Wagon
Teenage Fanclub - Star Sign
MBC - Honey Power
Swerverdriver -Son of a Mustang Ford
Screaming Trees - Nearly Lost You
Green Day - Paper Lanters
Jawbreaker - Chersterfield King
Pixies - Alec Eiffel
Smashing Pumpkins - Tristessa
Blur - There's No Other Way
Breeders - Cannonball
Alice In Chains - Would?
Soundgarden - Heretic (birthday request)
Pearl Jam - State of Love
Sonic Youth - Kool Thing
Veruca Salt - Seether (birthday request)
Babes in Toyland - He's My Thing
Stone Temple Pilots - Wicked Garden
Archers of Loaf - Wrong
Superchunk - Slack Motherfucker
Mudhoney - In N Out of Grace
Rage Against the Machine - Freedom
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
Dwarves - Drug Store
By the middle of January 1991 America was embroiled in the Gulf War which would quickly be dubbed Operation Desert Storm. An amateur video taken in March captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers and this trial's end result would lead to the Los Angeles Riots that lasted six days the following year. Late summer serial killer Jerffrey Dahmer was murdering a person a week and was finally arrested in July when the remains of 11 men were found in his apartment. On August 6th Tim Berners-Lee announced a little project called the World Wide Web. Nintendo that same month unleashed their Super NES giving a whole generation of kids a reason to never play outside again. And the music community said good-bye to Serge Gainsbourg, Stan Getz, and Miles Davis.
At that time I certainly could not have predicted the impact on music history by the music that was being released that year and I feel fortunate to have been involved in it in any way. In 1991 I was a record clerk and indie music buyer at a small independent record store in NJ. I had graduated from high school just the year before and like anyone at that age, was impressionable and hungry to participate in something I believed in. My passion was (and still is) for all things Indie but this would be the year that major labels started to heavily troll the independent music scene to sign them. I couldn't have possibly known the music I was stocking for our store's shelves would be revolutionary in nature but as time has shown, many of the records that debuted in 1991 changed music and people's lives forever.
Here is a little look at my 1991:
I was buying music from a distributor that I would eventually work for called Caroline. They had a gaggle of debut records that we not only carried at the store but afforded me dibbs on free tickets and guest list spots to check out these new signings. Among them were Smashing Pumpkins and Hole. I had the opportunity to see both bands at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ which is a venue not much bigger than a two car garage. Comically just a little bit later I was pushed by a different label rep to check out the new Temple of the Dog / Mother Love Bone band called Pearl Jam who had scored the opening slot in a tour with the Pumpkins. This was in a much larger venue but the moral of this story is that the Smashing Pumpkins were not much a live band and Pearl Jam crushed them, they literally destroyed the room with them vitality. They were charismatic, energetic, and emotional in a whole new direction from Dischord's hardcore version. I was skeptical of the band at first but after that one performance they won me over and I continued to see them play in places like Wetlands in NYC before radio and MTV made the band superstars. I even had a Pearl Jam promotional door mat in front of my apartment door until they got so popular that somebody else in my building stole it. I also remember when Matt Chamberlain replaced PJ's first drummer, he was talked into making promotional phone calls to record stores to hype the release of Ten and we spent an awkward ten minutes or so talking about the band and joking with me that the band was hazing into the band by making him do all he crappy promotional junk the rest of the band wanted nothing to do with.
I prided myself on being a record store employee that didn't make people feel bad about the music they were buying but at the same time I tried to champion new music that was along the same lines of other artists a customer liked but was not as well known. By 1991 My Bloody Valentine already had an established following so while I loved Loveless, I would have never guessed that this one record would create decades on knock off versions to come. At the time, MBV fans were already so protective of the group that they called any other band with a similar sound copy cats and unfortunately a lot of incredible bands were written off because of it. The Swirlies, The Lily's, Slowdive...the list goes on and on....were all bands I loved, honestly more than I loved MBV, and to this day the disgruntled record clerk in me wants to give a speech when I hear someone paint My Bloody Valentine as the only shoegaze band that matters. I feel very fortunate to have also seen MBV play at Maxwell's before their really took off but I think the thing that amazes me the most about Loveless is that 20 years later we are STILL waiting for a follow up release.
Swervedriver released Raise in 1991. Their label's big promotional idea was to send record stores a cassette walkman and headphones with a copy of Raise sealed inside it and it remains the first and only tape listening station I have ever seen at a record store. Memory two about the band is being very disappointed withSwervedriverlive. They played a big show in NYC with, let me think about this, maybe Ned's Atomic Dustbin and The Doughboys (???) and Swervedriver was sleepy and dull. Having loved their music as much as they did I was pretty crushed that live they drove into sleepytown and parked there.
Teenage Fanclub released Bandwagonesque and while at the time I thought the record was pretty good, I wasn't wild about it but I did like their promo item. Their label had made these cute hot pink promotional money bags out of balloons filled with sand (matched the cover art) and it was a cherished item displayed at the store until time had its way with it and the balloon eventually leaked sand everywhere. In 1991 record labels still had money to make promotional items and even the smallest band on a major label had some sort of kitsch item created in their name and or a massive open bar dinner meet and greet type event happening in every major city too. It boggles the mind to think of the money major labels were spending on signing bands and marketing them during this time period.
Nirvana is really worthy of a post in itself. Our NJ store was buying records from Sub Pop directly in 1988 so we were already hip to grunge and many of the bands that didn't really break into the mainstream until 1992. As a high school senior I was asked by my Sub Pop rep to see the Nirvana play at Maxwell's and make sure they had a place to stay that night. So there I was as an 18 year old living at home asking Nirvana if they had a place to crash and if not that they were welcome to stay with my family. The DIY community looks after each other this way and as crazy as it sounds now, it was the most natural thing in the world at the time.
By 1991 I was already a HUGE fan of Nirvana (but an even bigger Mudhoney fan) and was waiting with baited breath for Nevermind to come out.There were already a few tape bootlegs floating around of the demo versions of the record so I already knew the music was amazing and it felt like agony waiting for it to finally have a proper release. Their label ran a window display contest for the release and first place was a $100, a trip to Seattle for two to see Nirvana play a festival happening in our near Seattle (along with Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, and L7), meet the band, and get a tour of all the hot spots of the city. What I didn't know at the time was that many stores refused to participate in the window display contest because they were afraid the naked baby whose penis was showing on the cover art might offend some of their customers. Being a punk rock store with attitude, we didn't care. My boss gave me his blessing and in turn I created our front window to look like an aquarium or view into an ocean. I created a water line, hung fish to look like they were swimming, placed sand and coral at the bottom with a giant subway poster of the album art centered in the middle so it looked like the baby was swimming in our window. Without much competition out there from our region, we won. My boss and I went to Seattle only it turned out that the press had just gotten a hold of the news that parents to be Kurt and Courtney were using drugs and a PR nightmare began for two stars on the rise. Nirvana ended up being pulled from that festival and I didn't end up meeting with any of the members that trip. A poor label rep (who is still a friend of mine after all these years) got stuck babysitting us "winners" while in Seattle and the extra irony of this trip was nobody had ever asked my age. In Seattle you had to be 21 to go to most shows and all bars so I couldn't go very many places. In an effort to keep my trip age appropriate I toured Sub Pop, C/Z, Jack Endino's studio, a few recording studios, the Sound Garden sculpture park; all things in hindsight I feel so honored to have seen in person as a 19 year old. While Nirvana'sNevermind became an angsty anthem to a whole generation, they opened the door to Seattle for me and it was this trip that inspired me to eventually move there a few years later and work at C/Z records.
At this point in my life I wasn't completely sold on Beat Happening. My Sub Pop sales rep pushed them on me but it wasn't until I saw them open for Fugazi (once again at Maxell's + Steady Diet of Nothing came out that year too!) that I finally appreciated the band for all their cockeyed charm. Years later when I worked for C/Z and had to call K Records who is owned by Calvin from Beat Happening, a co-worker played a pretty amazing prank on me. He told me that Calvin's real voice wasn't really that deep and that he only used that voice for the band and to mess with people he didn't like. Since I was basically a kid freshly imported from NJ I had no idea that this wasn't true. He seemed like a pretty oddball guy so it wasn't totally impossible to me. I called K Records that day and was devastated that Calvin only spoke to me with a baritone rumble. As soon as I hung up the phone my co-worker asked me how it went and being new at the job and already feeling overwhelmed, I was teary when I told him he used his funny voice with me. The whole office burst into laughter at this report and that was the moment I learned that there was only one Calvin voice and it is always sounds deep and devilish.
While some bands were just hitting their peak of popularity with the masses, for those of us embedded in the indie scene, many of the hot bands were old news and no longer of major consequence to us. Babes in Toyland, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, and Mudhoney were among the list of artists who out records that year and at the top of my over it list was Dinosaur Jr. By 1992 I had moved onto other bands and I almost feel guilty confessing my lack of interest in these classic bands by this time. Most of the world was just discovering these bands and their music but for an elite group of us, these bands were old news and their records didn't alter our world or even add a ripple to it.I spent a good deal of time from 1988 to 1991 seeing these artists play tiny backroom spaces and like many fans who loose their favorite band to the masses when they become popular, I found up and coming bands that still offered an intimate live experience and were easily accessible via letter or in person at their shows. I can't explain why contact with these bands were so important then but I think at the core of this phenomena was that we were all in it together. They weren't stars and we weren't just fans; we were equals. There was an energy exchange shared at live shows. We were our own weird dysfunctional little country with a culture onto itself.
There were a whole new army of bands that had captured my attention and Superchunk and Seaweed are perfect examples of where my interest was turning towards. Both had released new albums that year (No Pocky / Despised, had toured together and represented a new breed of heavy bands that also carried a melody. I was so carried away with Seaweed that I took the time to write them fan letters (which for that time period was also a norm in the DIY world) and this began a pen pal relationship with the band. By Seaweed'ssecond or third tour we were friends and most of the band stayed with me whenever they came to NJ or NYC. They were among some of the first bands to ever stay with me and 1991 became the year I started housing bands regularly. Failure, Treepeople, Archers of Loaf, Jawbox (whose debut came out in 1991 too), Peechees, Jessamine, Karp, Fitz of Depression, Pegboy, Small 23, Red Stars Theory, Heavy Vegetable, Superconductor; there are actually too many to list or recall! I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that Seaweed will be playing a one off reunion show in NYC next month and in case it wasn't obvious, hell yeah I will be there!
While Sonic Youth did not release a record this year, they were busy touring for Goo and their European tour became the meat for the documentary called "The Year Punk Broke" that also included many of the bands I have written about here like Nirvana and Babes in Toyland. It was this movie that forever dubbed 1991 "The Year Punk Broke" and it is this VHS that has inspired me to revisit the theme twenty years later for Cause & Effect. By the end of 1991 the whole world knew about these bands that up until these artists had lived in the shadow of popular culture - not the spotlight. It was a pivotal time for music but for me too as I grew from kid to adult. So as it turns out, 1991 was an off the charts momentous time in my life too. I look forward to playing two hours of music from this year tonight and sharing some more stories about these records.
Tune in from 7PM to 9PM on WRIR at 97.3fm on your dial here in Richmond or stream the show live at www.wrir.org where you will also see the set list as the night progresses.
UPDATE: Download the full radio show here. Here is the link to the set list.
Not sure how I missed this film the first time around but first off, let's take a look at some of the cast of this 1992 film called Roadside Prophets:
John Doe (of X)
Adam Horovitz (Beastie Boys)
Arlo Guthrie
Timothy Leary
John Cusack
Flea (RHCP)
David Carridine
The Plot:
"Bizarre and surreal road movie about a biker and his unlikely sidekick. On a quest to fulfill a friend's last wish, Joe takes to the desert road on his 1957 Harley-Davidson and meets a succession of odd characters, including Sam. Sam begins following Joe, on a quest of his own, which necessitates staying in Motel 9's wherever they go. Themes such as friendship, faith, and isolation are brought into sharp relief by strange situations, the lonely road, and the stark emptiness of the desert. There are also several humorous cameos"
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