The lost late eighties college rock interzone

the interzone is everything michael azzerad left OUT

okay, i figured the interzone was the landscape in general, and the lost were what you might turn up under this or that rock. either way...

but you're not discussing the "landscape in general," you're trying to limit it to white american indie rockers everyone still thinks is cool

not at all! i'm trying to reconstitute a culture as it seemed to view itself then, in the moment, not as remembered from here.

i mean, obviously the "lost late 80s college rock interzone" is going to mean different things to different people...

no you're trying to limit it to white american indie rockers that everyone still thinks are cool

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

Nick Marsh (vocals and guitar) and James Mitchell (drums) formed the band and soon recruited Rocco (originally from Wasted Youth, guitar and vocals), and Glen Bishop (bass), taking their name from an American cult movie. They signed to Polydor Records in 1983, and soon thereafter, bassist Glen Bishop left to join Under Two Flags, and was replaced by Kevin Mills (formerly of Specimen).

The label dropped them a year later after their eponymous first album failed to find any commercial success.

In 1985, the band signed to Hybrid Records and released a mini LP, Blue Sisters Swing, which was produced with Craig Leon. The cover image of two nuns kissing resulted in the album being banned in the United States and Europe.[2] Flesh for Lulu then joined Statik records, who released Big Fun City later that year.

The following year, the band signed to Beggars Banquet Records, and their song "I Go Crazy" was featured in Some Kind of Wonderful and saw some airplay on American college rock radio stations. This allowed Flesh for Lulu to sustain a successful tour of the US.

In 1989, "Decline and Fall" followed and became a top 15 hit on the new Modern Rock Tracks chart. The next year, "Time and Space" written by newest member Del Strangefish[3] became their biggest US hit, hitting the top 10 of the Modern Rock chart, but the song failed to chart on any other US chart. The band were dropped again, and dissolved soon afterwards.

The song "Postcards from Paradise" was covered by Paul Westerberg as a secret bonus track on his 2002 album "Stereo". Unfortunately, the 'secretness' of the cover meant zero royalties for Flesh, and as the original publishers remain unwilling to provide any accounting to the band, the real extent of their dues in this instance remain unknown. The Goo Goo Dolls also covered the same song, which will be part of a "deluxe edition" release of their 2010 album Something for the Rest of Us available on the band's website.

i mean compare and contrast that list with the hang the dj comp and this: http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres86.php

i have no memory of flesh for lulu's biggest american hit time and space. but i do think its funny that paul westerberg and goo goo dolls covered the same flesh for lulu song!

no you're trying to limit it to white american indie rockers that everyone still thinks are cool

honestly, i imagine that few people these days think that all those bands are particularly cool. those that do were probably indie rockers in the 80s and/or 90s. the artists i mentioned are those that i remember reading about in option, the village voice, spin, forced exposure and smaller publications back in the day - the bands, at least, that seemed to cross over from one pond to the next. they're the bands that seemed to be treated as "prominent" or "important" by the tastemakers and scene arbiters i was aware of, and i tried hard to read and hear everything. plus they sold well. collectively, i think they do a pretty good job of describing the context in which less well-known artists operated.

also, most everything i've said here has been an attempt to answer timellison's question about the era's lost counterculturalism, so that's steered me away from college rock playlists and toward american postpunk as a culture.

for younger people i knew in philly in the late 80's the stuff to listen to that was current was industrial stuff (skinny puppy, nine inch nails, ministry and wax trax stuff was really big in philly) or grunge and amrep type bands that would play at the kyber pass. people loved when nirvana came to town before they hit it big. people loved tad and other sub pop stuff. mudhoney. this was all 89 and 90. and the hipster older record store people i knew were into their own local bands and the siltbreeze stuff and the whole grifters/thinking fellers/gbv thing as well as noisier like-minded byron coley-approved stuff and, you know, old krautrock and all the same hipster stuff that people like now.

yeah, i left off industrial music in toto, which was dumb of me. also should have mentioned the red hot chili peppers and jane's addiction, as they had so much to do with what happened in the 90s.

people probably still listen to EVOL. i don't get the idea that people listen to the butthole surfers much at all anymore. and they were cooler than cool back then. same with husker du. there is no way husker du mean the same thing to people who first hear them now. i have no idea what they would sound like to a kid today. especially that terrible album.

no you're trying to limit it to white american indie rockers that everyone still thinks are cool

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

― da croupier, Wednesday, June 27, 2012 8:05 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

honestly, i imagine that few people these days think that all those bands are particularly cool.

― contenderizer, Wednesday, June 27, 2012 8:17 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

facepalm.jpg

http://obsoletegamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/wtf-cat.jpg

hey guys remember dumptruck

I saw tad at the revival in philly, too young to get into the khyber. sat outside so many cool shows at the khyber cause I was underage. cop shoot cop snuck me into their show there once. and when I interviewed live skull at the arch st empire they offered to hide me in the dressing room until the show started but I didn't want to get them in trouble.

Contenderizer, why are you trying to needlessly complicate a thread concept that it took everyone else 2 seconds to understand?

Dumptruck was one of the bands I thought of when we first started talking about this earlier.

I was there, in the interzone

hey guys remember the bolshoi

the fact that matt pinfield is synonymous with 120 minutes these days and not dave kendall says a lot

― da croupier, Wednesday, June 27, 2012 6:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^show me a motherfucker in this world that loved swervedriver more than dave kendall

his favorite was naked raygun iirc

Dumptruck was great! But, yeah, they were the band my college radio staff were chanting when talking about bands they wanted to get for spring concert '86.

"I saw tad at the revival in philly"

i saw tad open for gwar there!

you guys really had your finger on the pulse

xp

I was at that show! I have a funny story

Contenderizer, why are you trying to needlessly complicate a thread concept that it took everyone else 2 seconds to understand?

― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 27, 2012 8:40 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

solitary posts that

bands like buffalo tom were the boring link between REM and wilco.

i know i know someone here LOVES buffalo tom and saw them open up for sister double happiness when they were 12. its okay. they were still boring.

They were super boring, you are otm.

i feel like rolling stone magazine won the war in some ways. they always wanted the blander roots rockers to carry the rock torch and they wanted the goths and freaks and weirdo europeans to go away.

good time to be a hongro though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIU7qSr72a4

there is a reason why so many indie rockers started listening to australian and new zealand bands in the late 80's. they had finally gotten rock there - it takes a long time to travel that far - and their bands were innocent and untainted. nobody had ever needed salvation from kiwis or oz people before!

where do shitty bands like the pursuit of happiness fit in here?

but Midnight Oil's beds were burning

i heartily endorse the resurgence of this sound:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C596bVFiL1o

tried to find a countdown of cmj's most-played albums of 1986, all i found was wikipedia claiming peter gabriel topped it

but not this sound presumablly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUVWT8tVKyw

plus, you know, you could totally do the flesh for lulu/john hughes thing in a GOOD way too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq2QlGVVvXo&feature=related

i mean basically a little new order/information society/ultravox in a blender and you are good to go. it ain't rocket science.

no ice house! only uh the first album. i think i liked that one.

bronski beat and joe jackson also made the top 20 of 1986, sayeth some wiki scribe

I can buy Joe Jackson as CMJ scion in 1986

I love these kinds of bands: Dumptruck, Love Tractor, Guadalcanal Diary, Slovenly, Angst, etc. etc. . . .

I found a copy of this album on vinyl recently and was really excited about it.

Every era has its second tier or "also ran" bands that are definitely worthwhile if you like that sound.

i'm totally willing to thank grunge for saving us from this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNAELH8WuXI

aw, i like dramarama, but they really made it hard for themselves aesthetically and sartorially

if you watch this its like the band had taken a time machine from 1992 all the way back to 1988! its uncanny! they were true pioneers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0K4L-6znJU&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL1189AFCDB7162981

wait that video just changed. you have to see tosd the wet sprocket 80's style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0K4L-6znJU

basically, i think we're saying that a dude in big pants, big glasses and big hair going to see Wild At Heart with Blue Sky Mining playing in the car has yet to be slotted into the pop culture narrative

i'm pretty sure this was me, let me check my photo album