Star Maker Machine recently spent a week profiling songs from 1989. I failed to contribute, despite the fact I had a song picked out, and fought for the theme. What can I say? My jackasseritis flared up. In fact, 1989 had a profound impact on me. That was the year I started DJing at KCSC, Chico State's campus radio station (see flyer below), and discovered so much greatness in the vast American rock 'n' roll underground. It was like seeing in color for the first time. Music didn't suck, popular music sucked. Worst. Drum. Sound. Ever. My arch-nemesis, the synthesizer. Always with the synthesizer. And that horribly compressed production style best described as Footloosey. Lies, damnedable lies.
KCSC showed me that living, breathing, cursing, laughing, traveling 400 miles to a gig rock 'n' roll was alive and well and possibly drunk in localized niches throughout the country. Our band could be your life. The unheard music. I got it and lots of other people got it, in lots of other niches, like a web, or perhaps a net of interconnectedness. It was 1989, the calm before the swarm. Life was good.
Joq Blox: A week when DJs spent an hour featuring a single band. Pretty eclectic list of artists. Impressive. (Click to enlarge.)Chico was an underrated hub in the west coast's network of punk rock venues and college towns. Bands from Seattle and Portland could play to a good crowd in Chico on a Thursday, and then go to the Bay Area and/or Los Angeles for the weekend. We were a much better option than Sacramento (Excremento, ugh), and a half-day's drive from the Bay Area. The Burro Room (aka Hey Juan's, aka Juanita's) was Chico's premier venue ... and by "premier" I mean a pair of conjoined dives. One side served decent Mexican food and cheap beer, the other side had music, and the whole building is in the pantheon with The Chukker and Sam's Town Point. The constant influx of touring bands helped nurture Chico's music scene into a kind of "Athens West," led by bands like 28th Day, Vomit Launch, and The Downsiders.
Read Chico Rock City: The News & Review's look at 30 years of Chico music, from 1977-2007. Good stuff, accessible even to outsiders.What follows are the 13 songs that best sum up my 1989. Experiencing a lot of this music at the grassroots level obviously made an impact. These were acts I played on the radio and were among my favorites to see live. If the list seems overwhelmingly young, male, and guitar-driven, I plead guilty. That's how 1989 sounded when I was young, male, and guitar-driven. For the record, the list is unranked and I didn't limit myself to 10. I thought having the songs flow together was more important than the ranking, which could change by day's end. Also, 1989 was too good a year to have only 10 cuts, and this way I get to make a clever segue to my first band.
PS - Songs will be available for a limited time. Enjoy and feel free to post your own list.
13 SONGS: 1989 RECONSIDERED
Fugazi - Waiting Room [purchase]Technically, this first appeared in 1988 on Fugazi's self-titled debut EP. However, I didn't hear it until the following year when 13 Songs was released. Consider it a transition piece between 1988 and '89. The opening sequence is like the Jaws theme, mainly due to Joe Lally's Hall of Fame bassline. Fugazi's first song remained a kind of template for the rest of their career: Lurching, undulating rhythms, intense dynamics, and feather-sledgehammer vocal parts (Ian MacKaye's hammer leading the way here). Fucking epic.
Fugazi wiki
Fugazi on Dischord
Fugazi videos
Public Enemy - Fight The Power [purchase]
The Bomb Squad at the height of their powers. Brutal, abrasive, and cacophonous, and yet swings with that hard, late '60s James Brown funk. Seriously, does any hip-hop act have a better 4-year peak than PE from 1988-92? Doubtful.
PE wiki
PE website
PE videos
Operation Ivy - Unity [purchase]It might help to be 20 years old, but I still love this. One of the few bands to master the perilous ska-punk freefall zone.
Op Ivy wiki
Op Ivy discography
Op Ivy videos
Beastie Boys - Johnny Ryall [purchase]
Of all the albums released 20 years ago, Paul's Boutique stands tallest. It's a tour de force of sampling, song construction, pop culture deconstruction, rope-a-dope imagination, and having more rhymes than JD's got Salinger. And it couldn't even be made today because of legal mumbo v. jumbo. All I'm saying is, any album that has me considering the $130 "20th Anniversary Commemorative Package" has to be top shelf.Paul's Boutique merch
Paul's Boutique Samples and References List
Beastie Boys videos
Maria McKee - Drinkin' In My Sunday Dress [purchase for 1 cent!]This is the Maria I want cloned and kept in a vault. The Voice, plus her spirited appreciation for roots music from Hank Williams to X, is a potent combination. Unfortunately, the woman who could've been the punk rock Patsy Cline was knee deep into her Stevie Nicks phase in '89. Thankfully, "Sunday Dress" escaped the industry's lacey, twirling subterfuge. It pays stylistic homage to the heady early days of Lone Justice and looks ahead to 1993's outstanding You Gotta Sin To Get Saved album.
Maria McKee wiki
'Sunday Dress' at Fleadh, 1990: Maria rocking out at 2:30 is like circa '84 Lone Justice, an all-time what-might-have-been at their absolute best.
'Sunday Dress' on European TV, 1991: Wonky vid, flawed band execution, but still conveys the power of Maria when she has a good song to tear up.
Elvis Costello - Deep Dark Truthful Mirror [purchase]"I had encountered the Dirty Dozen Brass Band a couple of years before (Spike), and it was the first attempt to use people--to use horns on a record in other than a quite typical R&B pop way. They were a jazz ensemble that came out of the marching band tradition."
--Elvis in Jazz Times
The Dirty Dozen backup is inspired as Elvis channels Van Morrison channeling Sam Moore (from Sam & Dave). A soulful gem from an underrated album. If Spike was 11-12 songs instead of 15, it might be a classic.
Elvis Costello wiki
Elvis Costello videos
Flat Duo Jets - My Life, My Love [purchase for $40!]
God bless the Flat Duo Jets. Fans of rockabilly, surf music, punk rock (both the music and DIY philosophy), '50s music, Sun Records, lo-fi recordings, and The Cramps ... the line forms to the right.
Flat Duo Jets wiki
1998 Interview with Dexter Romweber
Flat Duo Jets videos
Thelonious Monster - For My Lover [purchase two-fer CD] [purchase LP]In Tracy Chapman's hands, "For My Lover" was a haunting, cryptic love song. Under the Monster's supervision, "Lover" becomes a junkie's lament like a stowaway from Neil Young's Tonight's The Night. Two weeks in jail, $20,000 bail, metaphorical mountain climbing, psychoanalysis, and the things you won't do for love ... I'm looking at you, dope. Bob Forrest and Mike Martt share vocal duties, Martt coming in at, "Everyday I'm psychoanalyzed."
Thelonious Monster on MySpace
Bob Forrest home page
Nirvana - School [purchase]
Great riff, great vocal, great song, great excuse for wanton destruction. Am I crazy or do I hear, "You're in high school again," "You're on acid again," and "You're an addict again"?Nirvana wiki
Nirvana's 1989 tour dates
Nirvana videos
Pixies - Debaser [purchase]
The leadoff track from Doolittle, the album many consider their masterpiece. I like Steve Albini's dryer, more abrasive production on Surfer Rosa, but Doolittle is a classic and almost a self-contained Greatest Hits.
Pixies wiki
Pixies videos
fIREHOSE - Some Things [purchase]
Archetypal fIREHOSE. Everyone gets time to shine musically, but the various moving parts all support Ed Crawford's great anthem. Like many of Ed's best tunes, the song is heavily tinged with nostalgia, which gives many of his songs their country-ish (or country-rock-ish) feel.
I've been thinking recently about how the fIREHOSE legacy seems undervalued They were a great band, a step down from The Minutemen, sure, but who can't you say that about??? Flyin The Flannel is a desert island disc, Ragin' Full On and fROMOHIO are filled with great songs, and the Live Totem Pole EP is an out-of-left-field treat. Great band, a near-flawless catalog, and almost uniformly brilliant (and fun) on stage. They deserve more love.fIREHOSE wiki
'fIREHOSE's fROMOHIO Turns 20'
fIREHOSE videos
Mike Watt Hoot Page
Superchunk - Slack Motherfucker [purchase]Superchunk in the way early days, with Chuck "Chunk" Garrison on drums and Jack McCook on guitar. "Slack Motherfucker" sounds like a young band doing an impression of Soul Asylum doing an impression of MC5. Awesome song from a band still about a year away from finding its sound and entering its prime.
Superchunk wiki
Superchunk website
Superchunk videos
Mudhoney - You Got It (Keep It Outta My Face) [purchase]"You give it away like free samples,
But I don't want what anyone can have."
The forgotten band of the "Puget Sound," Mudhoney wrote dozens of anthems, toured seven galaxies, were instrumental in breaking Sub Pop in England (opening the floodgates to world domination), and were the legit heirs to both The Stooges and The Sonics, two pillars in the grunge exoskeleton. That said, I feel like they're little more than a historical footnote. Every good boy deserves Mudhoney. Let's make it happen ... for the children.
Mudhoney wiki
'Touch Me I'm Sick' video, 1989
Lamestain revisits 1989 Seattle
7 comments:
God damn this is in my wheelhouse....the Burro Room as a whole needs a tribute page. It's amazing the bands that rolled through that narrow pit that probably only met fire code since the walls were non-combustible brick.
I had more written about the Burro Room, but thought it might've been too "masturbatey." But damn right, we saw a ton of legendary shows there. Fugazi, which was stopped cold when someone got kicked in the face; fIREHOSE and Primus a few times each, both bands in their prime; Scream, the night before they played in SF and the Nirvanas met Dave Grohl, what a show, helluva band; Flaming Lips in 1989-90, arc-welding 'Five Stop Mother Superior Rain' into my synapses; the mighty twin guitar assault of Guy Kyser and Thin White Rope, totally underrated band, a better version of Television; Screaming Trees opening for Redd Kross and destroying them with bad Ellensburg mojo, Gary Lee Connor rolling around on stage, wailing on guitar; that rap group Matt Brown brought to the joint who inexplicably began destroying the house mics, fucking hilarious; Superchunk on what had to be their first tour; Flat Duo Jets, also on one of their early tours out west; and didn't Mudhoney play there a couple times? I know I'm leaving out hundreds of other bands, shows, and personalities ... like Ted Shred and Sideshow Paul, wherever they may be ... but there weren't many better places for a young kid to cut his teeth. RIP Burro Room.
Let's see....other Burro Room alumni...Smashing Pumpkins ( an obscure midwest band that never really made it bigtime), the legend that is TAD, Overwhelming motherfuckin' Colorfast ( hands down the best band to come out of Antioch since TRAK ), Mr. Bungle in their pajamas, Mordred, the Rev Horton Heat, M/16, Beat Happening...Didn't we sneak in through the back door to see Field Trip for a 21+ show? I know Mudhoney played the Blue Max, not sure if they did the Donkey. I know there's gotta be a vintage original t-shirt with the burro skull logo out there somewhere, I gotta find it.
I need to pay some MFin respect to the Colorfast. What a band. They were like Sabbath huge when they wanted, but Bob could also throw down the crazy good pop hook.
That Bungle show was epic. I seem to remember Mike Patton hanging from the ceiling. Is that a false memory?
Ugh, Smashing Pumpkins. My arch-nemesis. They were great in 1990-91, I admit. But they quickly hit the Suck Lane at top speed. I don't think anything will ever top Corgan getting nailed in the head by a water bottle at Lollapalooza. Whining for a half-hour about how Mountain View wasn't a proper venue for a rock concert, nevermind that it didn't bother P-Funk or the Beasties any. Someone ... and I'm pretty sure it was Jim Plunkett ... lofted an unopened water bottle about 35-40 feet in the air and it doinked that shitwaffle right in his encephalitic dome. Brilliant.
the Hell? Get outta my record (er, tape) collection! Good to see the love for fIREHOSE, esp. the EP that nobody remembers
Burro Room: Mudhoney (twice), The Fluid, Seaweed, The Jesus Lizard, Helmet, Surgery, Helios Creed, Cop Shoot Cop, Afghan Whigs, Cows, Melvins, Neurosis, Tragic Mulatto, Victims Family, Coffin Break, Skin Yard, Killdozer, This is what I could come up with off the top of my head.
Ted has been in NYC for a couple of years---I think he's still here.
Limey Paul---should be deported after attacking a girl with a fork in SF several years back.
I always figured Paul would end up stabbing someone, I just didn't think it would be with a fork.
Man, I forgot how many of those loud-ass AmRep bands came through town. Good times.
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