The lost late eighties college rock interzone

(was super into 50s rock)

^^^ totally this for me. Late 80s was when I stopped listening to The Replacements and started listening to Smiley Lewis.

Retromania!

Actually with that in mind where do the Chickasaw Mudd Puppies and the Spanic Boys fit in?

How you know this interzone existed in no uncertain terms? Drivin' N Cryin' actually achieved popularity—something akin to standing thigh deep in the shallow end.

sounds like a Minutemen song

Also if Tim is talking earnestness/seriousness, hard to ignore Michelle Shocked, the Indigo Girls, etc.

I was surprised a few weeks ago to find that Michelle Shocked is still at it. Good for her.

hey jack white made a lot of money ripping the 80's retromania of gun club and flat duo jets.

and 10,000 Maniacs!

hey i heard that michelle shocked is still alive. good one, michelle!

Ha! He actually talks about that in his interview with Marc Maron a couple weeks ago (shamelessly acknowledges doing so, but respects them a lot). xps

to be fair, pixies ripped the retromania of gun club before jack white. so there was already an 80's rip of an 80's retromania act.

I think I was first talking about seriousness because of the discussion of Camper Van Beethoven as whimsical on the other thread. Just wanted to point out their seriousness from the beginning (i.e., not just on the Virgin albums) - musical seriousness and, to some extent, topical as well.

Musical seriousness was kind of key, I think. Like all those groups and artists that were on the SST No Age compilation.

Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith and Steve Fisk and Universal Congress Of fitting in with the scene.

i'm not sure i buy the basic premise of this thread, but i will note that this period is also when a lot of classic amerindie bands made their first shitty records: replacements, husker du, meat puppets, x, etc etc. and though it's easy to make fun of rem in the '90s and beyond, it's also worth remembering that a lot of murmur fans had already given up on them byt he late 80s and accused them, too, of selling out and/or sucking.

every band mentioned in this thread is like the anti-Adam Ant: Serious But Not Desperate

You know, Live Skull's Positraction is a desperate record. Maybe one of the most.

TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

i will note that this period is also when a lot of classic amerindie bands made their first shitty records

Talking Heads arguably fit here.

xpost
randy travis made better records than everybody in that thread title

You know, Live Skull's Positraction is a desperate record. Maybe one of the most.

no doubt but i wouldn't categorize their junkie scumfuck blare - or any sonic youth derived band - as college rock

xpost
so did george strait. and clint black. and ricky van shelton. and...

yeah i'm not trying to be snobby w/randy travis but these threads remind me of losing interest in the college rock/indie scene in the mid 80s, turning toward R&B rap and country. the "new traditionalist" moment in nashville made country radio very listenable for a few years, even in new york city.

george strait ruled. don't forget keith whitley, reba mcentire and rosanne cash. these were also the years i bought old conway twitty albums for $1

don't forget keith whitley, reba mcentire and rosanne cash

God for a horrible second I thought you said "Roseanne Barr" and I was all 'um.'

Anyway retrocountrymania!

haha ned remember her rendition of the national anthem

i'm not sure i buy the basic premise of this thread, but i will note that this period is also when a lot of classic amerindie bands made their first shitty records: replacements, husker du, meat puppets, x, etc etc. and though it's easy to make fun of rem in the '90s and beyond, it's also worth remembering that a lot of murmur fans had already given up on them byt he late 80s and accused them, too, of selling out and/or sucking.

― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, June 27, 2012 3:44 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I gave up on REM by 87, New Order by 87, Replacements by 87, Meat Puppets by 89, Buttholes by 90. Some of these I have since changed my mind about, of course. Seems like there was a while when young me did nothing but by new records by my favorites and hate them.

haha ned remember her rendition of the national anthem

All too readily.

I guess maybe this period was when college rock started to commercialize but before it became a brand ("alternative") and a recognizable radio format, so bands had to sneak onto mainstream rock or pop radio, each in their own way. Also some of the early scruffy pioneers were starting to become more professional, which wasn't always a bad thing (e.g. REM). Also the Smiths broke up.

oh man i've been getting into 80's rodney crowell records i had no idea! so wonderful. and way better than anyone in that twangrock tread title.

i like this cover too where he looks like eddie van halen mixed with rosanne cash.

http://www.countryuniverse.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Rodney-Crowell-ST.jpg

i had one of his early 80's albums in the store for like two years and i finally played it and found out how wonderful it was and as soon as i do someone says hey this is great is this for sale? and i said NO! i was THAT record store guy. in my store for two bucks for two years. you had your chance.

"ain't living long like this" !!

rodney crowell was great until he got too singer/songwriter-y in the early 90s

going back to college rock, crowded house was where i got off the bus. i liked that petrol emotion. for a minute. until i got paid for the review (j/k)

i've only skimmed this thread with half an eye, but maybe a good example of the arty bohemian independence that tim was talking about persisting into the 90s is thinking fellers who had their jangly moments but mixed it all up with post-ubu dada weirdness and a little light noise music

I'm gonna be lazy and just repost something from the rolling punk thread here:

being as old as mr contenderizer I agree w/ his take on indie starting out as a broad umbrella term. in the 80s it just meant bands on independent labels getting college radio airplay, which could be anything from black flag to yo la tengo. the distinction was mainly economic/distribution related, similar to the way any weird bands used to get thrown in a bin called "imports" at the record store no matter where they were from.

if I think about the evolution of the term, the roots go back to late 70s punk bands flirting with major labels - after the labels figured out they didn't know how to sell it and the punk scene discovered it could thrive without big capital requirements, they moved down separate paths. punk got extreme and unmarketable as hardcore emerged. then hardcore bands discovered pot and started getting weird (black flag, dinosaur, husker du, butthole surfers). what I dismissively called "jangle rock" was getting big as well (REM and their progeny - tho in truth I do like a lot of that stuff), a wing of the underground more influenced by the velvets 3rd album and 60s folk rock than the stooges and no wave.

by the mid 80s major labels started coopting the scene. I know that's a loaded term but eh, sympathies are sympathies. husker du signing to warners in 85 was the big turning point, once they went over the wall many followed. this excerpt from wikipedia sums up the cycle for the next 25+ years:

Flip Your Wig became the first album released on an independent record label to top the CMJ album chart, and at year's end, both New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig ranked in the top ten of the Village Voice annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll.

During the recordings sessions for Flip Your Wig major label Warner Bros. Records approached Hüsker Dü and offered the group a recording contract. The band felt it had hit a sales ceiling that it could break through only with the help of a major label. The promise of retaining complete creative control over its music convinced the band to sign with the label.[13] Mould also cites the distribution problems with SST as a reason for the move, mentioning that there would sometimes be no records to sign when the band would show up for promotional events.[14] Hüsker Dü was not expected to sell a large amount of records. Rather, Warner Bros. valued the group for its grassroots fanbase and its "hip" status, and by keeping the overhead low the label anticipated the band would turn a profit.

things got strange in the post-nirvana 90s as major labels snapped up anybody with indie cred, and this was when indie became a code word in certain circles for "biding your time until a major signs you". bands with no hopes of getting signed in the 80s (the wall keeping the rabble out was huge + insurmountable) were suddenly commercially viable. a lot of indie labels were now major label fronts, the same way huge beer companies started putting out pseudomicrobrews. I guess I could've saved a lot of typing and just posted this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwzxH1c3yk0

then the alternative/grunge wave crashed and the scene limped back to its basements and warehouses, and that's when things started getting interesting again to me. indie nowadays is a loaded term with a patina of aspirational baggage. from an 80s perspective pissed jeans and bon iver and sic alps are all indie bands. but if I was headed out to a pissed jeans show and a casual music fan asked me where I was going, I'd be doing a disservice by replying "going to see some indie band". cause they'd probably expect deer tick or arcade fire. you know, that jangle rock stuff. now beat it kid, grandpa's leg is asleep.

― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Thursday, March 15, 2012 1:21 PM (3 months ago)

george strait ruled. don't forget keith whitley, reba mcentire and rosanne cash. these were also the years i bought old conway twitty albums for $1

Dwight Yoakam!

Boylan Heights by The Connels is a great album.

there are still bands around who are "bohemian" in bent, to use tim's word, like deer tick. they would've been college radio darlings in the late 80s, and they just curated a music fest in PVD that included bands like doomsday student, so they at least appreciate + support stuff that's deeper underground than they are.

but I'm not even sure what we're talking about when green on red, live skull, helios creed, and camper van beethoven get mentioned as examples of a "zone". I mean, they had records next to each other on a college radio shelf in the 80s I guess.

imo there was a period from '78 - '86 where weird postpunk and indie rock flourished, that wave slowly grew and crested and broke. as scott points out, by '87-'88 there were just confused wet ppl left on a beach sifting through broken pieces of things and waiting for the major label lifeboats to save them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_1D-h1aFWg

I'm not even sure what we're talking about when green on red, live skull, helios creed, and camper van beethoven get mentioned as examples of a "zone".

Read fanzines a lot in those days and could totally see someone reviewing records by all of the above in the same issue.

ew -- that Jeffries thing sounds like Iggy Pop meets Bill Callahan

this is kind of silly, and i apologize for all elisions and dubious inclusions, but the list below tries to map out what i think of as the terrain in question: specifically american college-rock-into-proto-indie-into-alternative as defined by some of its most "important" or at least well-known bands and artists. musically, it runs the gamut from audience friendly jangle pop to hairy post-hardcore noise rock and describes the progress of a culture more than any specific sound or approach. i arbitrarily set the start date at 1982 - though it doesn't really kick in until 1984 (not coincidentally, the year i started college) - and let it run up through 1994, by which point alternative rock and indie were starting to seem like separate animals.

1982:
The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses
The Gun Club - Miami
Mission of Burma - Vs.
X - Under the Big Black Sun

1983:
R.E.M. - Murmur
The Replacements - Hootenanny
X - More Fun In the New World

1984:
Black Flag - My War
Black Flag - Slip It In
Butthole Surfers - Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac
The Dream Syndicate - Medicine Show
The Gun Club - The Las Vegas Story
Husker Du - Zen Arcade
Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II
Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
R.E.M. - Reckoning
Scratch Acid - s/t
The Replacements - Let It Be

1985:
Black Flag - Loose Nut
Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory
Dinosaur - s/t
Husker Du - New Day Rising
Husker Du - Flip Your Wig
Meat Puppets - Up on the Sun
Minutemen - 3-Way Tie (for Last)
Mission of Burma - The Horrible Truth About Burma
R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction
The Replacements - Tim
Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising
X - Ain't Love Grand

1986:
Big Black - The Hammer Party
Big Black - Atomizer
Butthole Surfers - Rembrandt Pussyhorse
Camper Van Beethoven - II & III
Camper Van Beethoven - s/t
The Flaming Lips - Hear It Is
Husker Du - Candy Apple Grey
Meat Puppets - Out My Way
R.E.M. - Lifes Rich Pageant
Scratch Acid - Just Keep Eating
Sonic Youth - EVOL

1987:
Big Black - Songs About Fucking
Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician
Dinosaur Jr - You're Living All Over Me
The Flaming Lips - Oh My Gawd!!!
The Gun Club - Mother Juno
Husker Du - Warehouse: Songs and Stories
The Lemonheads - Hate Your Friends
Meat Puppets - Huevos
Meat Puppets - Mirage
Pussy Galore - Right Now!
R.E.M. - Document
The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me
Sonic Youth - Sister
X - See How We Are
Yo La Tengo - New Wave Hot Dogs

1988:
Butthole Surfers - Hairway to Steven
Camper Van Beethoven - Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
Dinosaur Jr - Bug
The Lemonheads - Creator
Pixies - Surfer Rosa
Rapeman - Two Nuns and a Pack Mule
R.E.M. - Green
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

1989:
Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie
The Flaming Lips - Telepathic Surgery
The Lemonheads - Lick
Meat Puppets - Monsters
Mudhoney - Mudhoney
Nirvana - Bleach
Pixies - Doolittle
Pussy Galore - Dial M for Motherfucker
Sebadoh - The Freed Man
Shudder to Think - Curses, Spells, Voodoo, Mooses
Slint - Tweez
Yo La Tengo - President Yo La Tengo

1990:
Babes In Toyland - Spanking Machine
The Flaming Lips - In a Priest Driven Ambulance
Fugazi - Repeater
The Jesus Lizard - Head
The Lemonheads - Lovey
Pixies - Bossanova
Pussy Galore - Historia De La Música Rock LP
Sebadoh - Weed Forestin'
Shudder to Think - Ten Spot
Sonic Youth - Goo
Yo La Tengo - Fakebook

1991:
Babes In Toyland - To Mother
Dinosaur Jr - Green Mind
Drive Like Jehu - Drive Like Jehu
Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing
Hole - Pretty on the Inside
The Jesus Lizard - Goat
Meat Puppets - Forbidden Places
Melvins - Bullhead
Mudhoney - Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
Nirvana - Nevermind
R.E.M. - Out of Time
Sebadoh - Sebadoh III
Shudder to Think - Funeral at the Movies
Slint - Spiderland
Smashing Pumpkins - Gish
Pixies - Trompe le Monde

1992:
Babes In Toyland - Fontanelle
The Flaming Lips - Hit to Death in the Future Head
Guided By Voices - Propeller
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - self-titled/Crypt Style
The Lemonheads - It's a Shame About Ray
Melvins - Lysol
Mudhoney - Piece of Cake
Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted
Sebadoh - Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock
Shudder to Think - Get your Goat
Sonic Youth - Dirty
Yo La Tengo - May I Sing With Me

1993:
Bikini Kill - Pussy Whipped
Built to Spill - Ultimate Alternative Wavers
Butthole Surfers - Independent Worm Saloon
Dinosaur Jr - Where You Been
The Flaming Lips - Transmissions from the Satellite Heart
Fugazi - In on the Kill Taker
Guided By Voices - Vampire on Titus
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Extra Width
The Lemonheads - Come On Feel the Lemonheads
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
Melvins - Houdini
Nirvana - In Utero
R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
Sebadoh - Bubble and Scrape
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Yo La Tengo - Painful

1994:
Beck - Mellow Gold
Built to Spill - There's Nothing Wrong with Love
Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime
Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Hole - Live Through This
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Orange
Liz Phair - Whip-Smart
Meat Puppets - Too High to Die
Melvins - Stoner Witch
Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Shellac - At Action Park
Shudder to Think - Pony Express Record

I'm not even sure what we're talking about when green on red, live skull, helios creed, and camper van beethoven get mentioned as examples of a "zone".

Read fanzines a lot in those days and could totally see someone reviewing records by all of the above in the same issue.

― timellison, Wednesday, June 27, 2012 5:19 PM (6 minutes ago)

pitchfork could cover deer tick, lightning bolt, blues control, and the shins in the same week, I'm not sure that's proof they're related somehow, or that the 80s were particularly evocative of anything. imo it was just a lot harder for indie bands to break into the mainstream in the mid 80s, so creative ppl just festered in their own backwaters until somebody decided they were a "scene".

there's a career path now for indie bands on the jangly/dreampop/rootsy end of the spectrum, and a lot more avenues for them to connect with a broad audience. a band like warpaint prolly would've been a rolling stone footnote in the 80s, like salem 66 - nowadays they can rack up 2 million views on youtube.

1989:
Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie
The Flaming Lips - Telepathic Surgery
The Lemonheads - Lick
Meat Puppets - Monsters
Mudhoney - Mudhoney
Nirvana - Bleach
Pixies - Doolittle
Pussy Galore - Dial M for Motherfucker
Sebadoh - The Freed Man
Shudder to Think - Curses, Spells, Voodoo, Mooses
Slint - Tweez
Yo La Tengo - President Yo La Tengo

1990:
Babes In Toyland - Spanking Machine
The Flaming Lips - In a Priest Driven Ambulance
Fugazi - Repeater
The Jesus Lizard - Head
The Lemonheads - Lovey
Pixies - Bossanova
Pussy Galore - Historia De La Música Rock LP
Sebadoh - Weed Forestin'
Shudder to Think - Ten Spot
Sonic Youth - Goo
Yo La Tengo - Fakebook

The before/after of when I checked out, p much. (Except for Priest Driven Ambulance)

1990 was painful. By the end of 91 I had heard Laughing Stock and Soul Discharge and didn't miss the interzone at all.

pitchfork could cover deer tick, lightning bolt, blues control, and the shins in the same week

Yeah, but it wouldn't be the same writer!

Anyway, you could do a 'degrees of separation' thing to connect all of those bands. Green on Red started as more of a psychedelic band - add roots and Camper Van Beethoven is clearly in the same ballpark. Psychedelia links them up Helios Creed. Roots doesn't, but once I saw him play as the guitarist in Nik Turner's touring version of Hawkwind and he was wearing a Sun Records t-shirt...