The Best Wishes - Luckiest Love (deleted)
The Best Wishes - Can't Wait for Summer (deleted)
from Shoebox Full Of Love EP
Secret 7", 1997

The Best Wishes - I Never Wanted Any Of This (deleted)
from split single with Bella Vista
Turn Up The Treble! 7", circa 1998

Here are three tracks from one of my all-time favorite East Coast indiepop groups. The Best Wishes came from Boston, and existed for a few years in the mid to late '90s. Initially known as Shoebox Full of Love, Catherine played guitar and vocals and Josh played drums. They were part of a loose conglomeration of kids in Boston, NJ and Philly who wrote and recorded ultra-lo-fi songs for each other, and released them in tiny quantities on their own cassette labels (most often David Klein's Blue-Tounge cassettes). They used to send me tapes and 7" singles for my old zine, and I kept them all. I must have hours of these recordings in my basement.

In the summer of 1995, Shoebox Full of Love began to play live. They did a short East Coast tour with Nik-L-Nip, a duo that included Runt zine's Lara Cohen and current Pipas member Mark Powell. They played about a dozen times after that in Connecticut, NYC and upstate New York. They released a split single with Musical Chairs on Krebstar, which was run by Bjorn Copeland of Black Dice (a band whose little-known indiepop connections deserve a whole separate post). In early 1997, they changed their name to the Best Wishes, but used "Shoebox Full of Love" as the title of their only proper seven-inch single. I've taken two tracks from this single. "Luckiest Love" attains almost Feelies levels of velocity (Josh plays like Stan Demeski's younger cousin), and the shyer "Can't Wait for Summer" is a two-minute small treasure.

The Best Wishes ended sometime around early 1998, but they released a few more tracks. "The Best Sort of Wishes" showed up on the Seven Summers compilation CD, and Josh released two tracks on a split 7" with Bella Vista on his own Turn Up The Treble! label. I've taken "I Never Wanted Any Of This" from the split single.

Where are they now? Josh lives in NYC. He and David Klein are both members of Cause Co-Motion!, who have played with such fine bands as Love Is All and the Long Blondes. Catherine lives in Boston and just had a baby girl. Thanks to Catherine for permission to post these.

Labels: mp3

My last latest RFT piece is now online: a diary of sorts of Cars Can Be Blue's disastrous 2005/2006 tour. Headline apparently derived from this blog posting, in which I transcribed Esther's version of "Drive My Car." This will be the last RFT writing for awhile now that school's back in session.

Labels: rft

Riding the Famous-Barr escalators was OK, I guess. It turns out escalators don't hold much retro appeal for me. The 5th and 6th floor escalators do have tiles at each end that say "UP TO 7" or "DOWN TO 5" in art deco lettering. That's kind of cool.

As I left the store, I saw the big "M" in the top-floor "FAMOUS-BARR" metal sign coming down in two sections. Macy*s bought Famous-Barr awhile back, and I guess they're finally beginning to convert the downtown STL store to the Macy*s brand. You could see the trademark red star on signs throughout the store. I'm a little sad about that. I don't care too much about national brands, but I do like regional brands, and it's always a little melancholy when a national company buys up a beloved local name. (Or just stupid, like how Westfield's been rebranding all its malls with that awkward "Westfield Shoppingtown" phrase.)

Oh man, go download this week's WFMU Aircheck podcast right now. This week's show consists of a one-hour aircheck from WBLS-FM's Mr. Magic's Rap Attack show from December 1986. It's a fun, fascinating audio portrait of an earlier, now permanently lost era. This is hip-hop with Run-DMC as the template - big beats, shouted lyrics, relatively simple and slow rhymes, basic scratching.

It's significant that this show is from 1986. The "golden age" was still a couple of years away: DJ Marley Marl hadn't quite perfected his sampling yet, Rakim was just another up-and-coming rapper, Will Smith was still a credible MC, PE had yet to put out their first album, and the Beastie Boys had yet to overtly intellectualize their approach. No Wu-Tang (in fact not even the Prince Rakeem or Genius predecessor albums). No Nas, Jay-Z or Biggie. And New York reigned supreme: other than Ice-T, a Newark native himself, the West Coast didn't even register on the rap map yet. But there was no way for anyone - the rappers, the DJ, the callers - to know that what would happen next. It's like listening to an indie-rock radio show circa 1990, not knowing just how big the scene would blow up a year later.

There's an innocence and purity to these tracks. Rappers may have been bragging about being rich and famous even then, but the reality was that this was still a semi-underground scene. Certainly no one was making Eminem or 50 Cent money. You don't get the nagging feeling that the rapper's trying to sell you his clothing line, latest movie, branded liquor or substandard CDs by his friends. And that's a good thing, of course.

...for summer law classes. I FINALLY got an A! In Civil Practice!

This mirrors my undergraduate experience to an eerie extent. It took three semesters at Rutgers before I started pullling in the good grades. Here it took four semesters, but I finally it's happening.

I was depressed about going back to school for the fall. I'm still a little depressed about it, but that A gives me a renewed sense of purpose.

Spiral Jetty - Going to Marseilles (demo) (deleted)
Spiral Jetty - Big Downhill Racing (deleted)
Begin Responsibilities compilation CD
Hedgehog Records, 2000

I've certainly spilled my share of ink and pixels about New Brunswick, NJ's Spiral Jetty over the past two decades. This time I shall (mostly) let the music make the case. Here we have two tracks from Begin Responsibilities, a self-released compilation of album tracks and demos mostly from 1981 through 1988. (A few 1997 recordings to round out the set.)

First we have an early demo version of "Going to Marseilles," which ultimately ended up on their 1985 Feelies-produced debut LP Tour of Homes. This sums up the early Spiral Jetty ethos about as much as anything else - frantic guitar strumming, busy bass, lyrics with a literary bent and an overall feeling of nervousness. You can definitely hear the Crazy Rhythms influence - quite prescient, considering it would be another several years before they actually worked with Million and Mercer.

"Big Downhill Racing" is from second LP 1987's Art's Sand Bar. It's their best album, and marks the point where they'd begun inching away from the overt Feelieisms and nailed down their own sound. "Big Downhill Racing" opens Art's Sand Bar with a YMG-ish bass line. Its lyrics are chopped evocations of a earlier time - probably college years, with references to "your Shelley and your cigarettes" and shared drunken conversations. But it's the repeated descending guitar riff that makes the song for me. It sounded majestic at the time, and I can't listen to it now without feeling myself pulled back into time. It's their best song.

Spiral Jetty made two more albums - 1989's Dogstar, which suddenly suggested a Sonic Youth influence (you can hear Evol/Sister-styled distorto breakdowns in several songs), and 1993's Band of Gold, which had its moments but too often sounded forced. They convened for their first reunion in 1997 and continue to get together for local shows most summers.

Lead singer/guitarist Adam Potkay is currently a professor in Williamsburg, VA. Bassist Andy Gesner runs a music promotion company out of his South River, NJ home and continues to play in local bands. Drummer Dave Reynolds lives in Jersey City; he and Andy played together in the Urchins after Spiral Jetty's first breakup in 1993. Dave also runs the band's MySpace page, and he should be able to tell you how you can order Begin Responsibilities.

Thanks to Dave Reynolds for permission to post these tracks. I've got plenty more deep cuts where these came from, and will post more if anyone's interested.

Next time we'll leave the '80s behind for a couple of MP3 by The Best Wishes. At some point, I'll post something from the current century. Patience.

Labels: mp3

Proof that I am way too easily impressed: Check this out. Three different types of escalators, including some old ones, in service at the downtown St. Louis Famous-Barr store. I happen to work across the street from this store, and if it wasn't the end of my lunch hour I'd totally go see them for myself. Maybe Monday.

This post is mostly for the parents in attendance. (Those of you without children, sit tight; I'll have some more MP3s up this weekend.)

So Abby is currently crawling. This is great news for Abby (who loves exploring) and her proud parents. However, Esther is not so happy about this new developmental stage. This is because Abby now has full access to the toys and stuffed animals. It is making Esther very territorial. She will lay out the entire toy stash for her stuffed Hello Kitty or Clifford The Big Red Dog *, but screams bloody murder should Abby dare to take one for herself. (Yet Esther doesn't see the problem in helping herself to Abby's toys.)

It's not a huge issue by any means, but it is something new. We are talking to Esther about the importance of sharing and taking turns, and are sure she'll come around. But any of you other parents ever deal with this?

* Esther always says "Clifford, do you need to eat? Here you go," as she's doing this. Apparently Clifford eats toys and blocks for food.

A merciless review of the We Are The Pipettes in this week's RFT. (Sorry, Alastair.) Reading this review again, I see my own biases on display more than anything else - of course I would have preferred an updated take on Dolly Mixture, which is what the early singles promised. But I stand by my contention that this CD could have worked if only the producers made even slightly different choices, beginning with lightening up on the compression.

I've been on a writing bender this month. Can you tell?

Labels: rft

So what do you think of the MP3s so far, all couple dozen of you who've downloaded them? I don't usually beg for comments, but would really like to hear your feedback on them. Expect one or two more tracks before law school kicks up again next week.

Just online: a story up on Ruined Music (run by pals Bryan and Mary) about why I can no longer listen to Eddie Cochran's "C'mon Everybody." I actually wrote a longer version of this story for Trash Heap zine in the mid-90s, but I think it bears retelling; it's just too precious an example of teenage embarrassment.

Raging Fire - A Family Thing (deleted)
Raging Fire - You Should Read More Books (deleted)
from A Family Thing
Pristine 12" EP, 1985

This batch of MP3s come courtesy of Raging Fire, a four-piece from Nashville, TN, a city that had quite the active little indie music scene in the mid-1980s. (Purely coincidentially, Nashville Scene just published this article to shed some light.) A Family Thing was one of those random vinyl slabs that I found in the WRSU-FM new bin and began playing every show. It had amazing diversity for just four songs, from acoustic pop to straight-up X/"Hungry Wolf"-styled cowpunk. The title track alone shifts from pensive to rowdy and back again (twice!) in less than three minutes and leaves you almost exhausted. They must have been an incredible live band.

Raging Fire went on to release an LP, Faith Love Was Made Of, and ended sometime before the 1990s hit. Lead singer Melora Zaner and guitarist Michael Godsey went onto other projects, which they hint may be made available via low-key DVD or web release one of these days. Thanks to both of them for allowing me to make these two tracks available.

Labels: mp3

Some were lucky enough to be in Athens this week, eating barbecue and seeing Oh-OK and finding buried treasure at Wuxtry. But some were not so lucky. Some of us had to be at the hospital on Thursday morning to have a septoplasty. Not that I didn't need it done, and not that I would have been able to make it to Athens anyway, but the juxtaposition is depressing. Being around the Smittens and Patience Please really made me miss going to popfests.

Honestly, this has been one annoying summer. First my eldest daughter knocks out one of my front teeth; then I have to have a benign sebacious cyst removed from my back (damn you, genetics); then the power goes out in St. Louis for a week; now my nose feels dry and sore like I just had the mother of all colds. Add in the constant 90+ degree heat and summer classes, and you're looking at a blogger who can't wait for autumn to arrive.

Go Dog Go! - The Rain (deleted)
Bands on The Block compilation LP
Matako Mazuri Records, 1985

Go Dog Go! could best be described as a younger cousin to the mid-1980s wave of Austin bands that included Zeitgeist (later the Reivers), Doctors Mob, True Believers and Glass Eye. Their original bassist played in an early incarnation of Zeitgeist, in fact, and 19-year-old lead singer/main songwriter Jennifer Cook already had a band or two under her belt. They were very much in line with the period's jangly Rickenbacker sound, with intertwining vocal harmonies and a vaguely countryish twang. Jennifer's "The Rain" was their one of their only commercially-released tracks, appearing on the 1985 Bands on The Block compilation on Austin label Matako Mazuri. It sounds every bit as lonely and wistful as it did twenty years ago.

Between 1985 and 1989, Go Dog Go! released a 7" single ("The Rain" b/w bassist Kelly's "Love and Rockets"), and three demo tapes with Jennifer and various shifting lineups. Their 1986 self-titled cassette was particularly good, combining Athens/Austin jangle-pop with a few left-field surprises (some soul and R&B influences here and there, and one track that actually uses "Bela Lugosi's Dead" as its middle section). They toured the Midwest a few times and played in NYC at the 1986 New Music Seminar. By the dawn of the 1990s, however, Jennifer left to form The Wallflowers (a name that was scuttled by...well, presumably you know who). She continues to perform in Austin as a solo artist. Of the other members, Joey Shuffield has perhaps had the most success in the music industry; he is now the drummer for Fastball.

Thanks to Jennifer Cook for permission to post "The Rain." Enjoy!

Labels: mp3

Let's wander back into the mists of time and revisit May 1997 for a minute. A buoyant President Clinton had just begun his second term, expecting nothing but smooth sailing ahead. Compuserve email addresses were complicated strings of numbers and dots. And a young combo called the Spice Girls taught us that if we wanted to be their lover(s), we had to get with their friends.

One evening in that halcyon month, a group of Hoboken and NYC residents hopped in a rental car and headed north to Vassar to see the Receptionists play their last show. My roommate and I had made this trip once before; we practically idolized the Receptionists and tried never to miss a show in the tri-state area. My girlfriend - now my wife - was in the car, as was a friend who lived in Westchester. There was someone else, too: a lanky guy that I didn't know. He barely said a word all night.

Openers the New Bad Things were nicely ramshackle. The Receptionists were wonderful. We dropped Mystery Dude somewhere near Columbia University, and made it home very late.

(cue the swirling effects, fast forward to the present)

Last night I went to see the Smittens play at the confusingly-named CBGB. I was early as I always am, and I spotted band members Dana and Max sitting at the bar. We began chatting, and after a few minutes Max said, "Wait a minute...your name sounds familiar. Are you from Missouri?" No, I said, I grew up in New Jersey and spent a bunch of time in NYC. "But did you know someone else from Missouri who used to run a label...?" You mean Tami? "Yeah! She gave me a ride to see the Receptionists play at Vassar once."

Now, I enjoy a good twist of fate as much as anyone, but this was as random as it gets. When I told him I was actually in that car, hilarity ensued. Funny how small the indiepop world is, eh? You can get married, have kids, and move several times, and a decade later you'll be at a show and coincidentally have a small world experience.

The Smittens were great, by the way. Totally fun and enthusiastic. Like stepping into an air-conditioned house after being in the August Missouri heat all day.

Patience Please were really good this weekend. It was nice to talk to some Seattle friends again and get the scoop with what's going on there nowadays. As with Red Pony Clock in 2004, I think I was the only paying customer in the house. It's not really St. Louis' fault: it just so happens that everyone else the band knows here was out of town. But take heart, Patience Please - the next time RPC played in town, it was at a fun house party to an appreciative crowd. Please come back, in other words.

I hope to see the Smittens tonight, but I'm still exhausted from being out until 1 am on Saturday night, only to have Abby wake me at 6 am on Sunday morning. Such are the perils of being an indie-rock loving dad. We'll see how I feel later.

Got another MP3 just waiting to be uploaded. This one's from a mid-1980s Austin band that was a younger cousin to Zeitgeist and the rest of the New Sincerity bands. You'll like it. I'll try to have it online by tomorrow night.

In going through my old vinyl and picking out what to digitize, I've found myself drawn to the either the very good (obscure compilation tracks, EPs by regional favorites, one-off 7" moments of glory lasting three minutes or less) or charmingly dated (Central New Jersey local acts from my college years, short-lived new wave knockoffs). These are what I've really missed hearing on a regular basis. Ah, to finally have portable versions of the Trypes' The Explorers Hold EP, Raging Fire's A Family Thing, Steel Tips' post-Joe Coleman EP from 1981, and Incinerator's proto-Henry's Dress* "Lampshade." And I'm just starting to dig through the crates: I've got some amazing stuff to upload for you assuming the band members respond to my inquiries.

You know, I still support vinyl as a medium, but let's face it: a vinyl collection is only as good as your proximity to a turntable. And I'm barely ever near one. Either I'm at work, at school, asleep, or taking care of the kids. So I'm glad to have a way to listen to those old records in lieu of firing up the old belt drive.

* I acknowledge that "proto-Henry's Dress" is pretentious rock-critic speak. Just work with me, OK? It's not like I lauded their "pop sensibilities" or compared them to "(random band) on acid." I have some standards.

Two blurbs in this week's RFT:

Patience Please at Lemmon's 8/5/06
The Smittens at CBGB 8/7/06

Not my best writing by any stretch, but considering I cranked them out while preparing for finals and staying at my in-laws' house during a weeklong blackout, I'm impressed I even got them done. At the very least, they should hip you to two great shows coming to town this week.

Labels: rft

Now that I have a method of transferring vinyl to pixels, I'm going to start dabbling in MP3 blogging. Be warned that this is probably going to be an infrequent component of this blog: I'm going to take the Lacunae approach of asking the band members' permission before posting anything (or making best efforts, at least), and who knows how much time I'll have to devote to such a task after school starts again.

Here's the first MP3. Appropriately, it's from the Midwest.

Von Bulows - Summer Song (deleted)

Von Bulows were a mid-80s band from Lawrence, Kansas, consisting of lead singer Lori Wray and most if not all of the Pedaljets. They only recorded a few songs, of which only "Summer Song" was actually released. You can find it on the 1986 Fresh Sounds from Middle America Vol. 3 compilation LP on the Fresh Sounds label (same folks who released great records by the Mortal Micronotz and The The Embarrassment).

Lori Wray has recently moved back to Lawrence after living in Minneapolis for years. She continues to make music, and in fact is currently working with Pedaljets/Von Bulows songwriter Mike Allmayer. Thanks to both of them for permission to post "Summer Song;" it's one of my favorite unknown compilation tracks of the era, and I'm pleased to offer it here.

The OldKC website has a fairly complete list of local bands from that era. Lawrence had it going on for awhile. (Perhaps it still does; I haven't been.)

Labels: mp3

Could the time be right for a Spiral Jetty revival? Up-and-comers Oxford Collapse are perhaps the first band to acknowledge them as an influence, and now Perfect Sound Forever has printed this nice retrospective.

I loved Spiral Jetty. It was hard not to if you lived in New Brunswick in the 1980s. I must have seen them more than 100 times, more than I have seen or ever will see another band. Spiral Jetty are utterly indistinguishable from the rest of my memories of my teens and early 20s. It's great that the word's finally getting around about them, even if the band hasn't been full time since 1993.

Update: They've now entered the 21st century via MySpace. Archival live tracks from 1984! I can almost see Adam's right leg shaking in time to the rhythm.