The lost late eighties college rock interzone

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

i keep picturing the singer from harvey danger.

Hang the DJ: Modern Rock 1987 (Rhino)
1. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) - R.E.M.
2. World Shut Your Mouth - Julian Cope
3. Hazy Shade Of Winter - Bangles
4. April Skies - The Jesus & Mary Chain
5. Ask - The Smiths
6. Peace Train - 10,000 Maniacs
7. No New Tale To Tell - Love And Rockets
8. True Faith - New Order
9. Birthday - The Sugarcubes
10. Heartbreak Beat - Psychedelic Furs
11. Fight Like A Brave - The Red Hot Chili Peppers
12. 4th Of July - x
13. Still In Hollywood - Concrete Blonde
14. Litany (Life Goes On) - Guadalcanal Diary
15. What's My Scene - Hoodoo Gurus
16. Seattle - Public Image Limited
17. I Heard A Rumour - Bananarama
18. Understanding Jane - The Icicle Works

It's authentically kind of freaking me out how much this coincides with my actual 1987, down to the presence of songs I think of as weirdo obscuros that no one except me in my school liked but that I was obsessed with ("What's My Scene," "World Shut Your Mouth")

lol @ Bananarama's S-A-W triumph is "modern rock"

pee stain by the maniacs definitely worst thing on there. but only cuz i have no idea what the chili peppers and icicle works songs sound like.

a beautiful sight
we're happy tonight
walkin' in an indie interzone

One thing from this period of college rock that hasn't been mentioned is the groups that had a fun/comedy angle that were pretty popular in that period.

Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper
Dead Milkmen
They Might Be Giants (although they kept on truckin' along and made some $$$ doing tunes for TV etc.)

camper van beethoven

Never heard of 'em.

80s TMBG a downtown performance act, not a comedy act! Replace with King Missile.

Not that they were a straight comedy act, but TMG was definitely 'fun'.

Kimg Missle was fun for that matter too.

yeah they were part of that post-new wave strain of ramping up the levity or 'quirkiness' of things, not necessarily in a conceptual uniform-wearing way like Devo or the B-52s but definitely more overtly wacky and silly

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 5:40 PM (2 hours ago)

dunno how my posting indie thoughts so interferes with the parade of 120 minutes memories

OK I'll give you "fun."

Yeah, definitely. Camper was really of their time and fit in with everything from late-'80s R.E.M. to the weird records that were coming out on SST and other indie labels at the time. College rock changed A LOT in the early '90s and the whole tenor of that time was lost. I don't see that it's come back at all.

― timellison, Wednesday, June 27, 2012 10:29 AM (18 minutes ago)

like i said, i was responding to tim's observations rather than ned's redirect. and sure, that's OT, so all apologies.

i do think, though, that there have been a few bands & artists in recent years who've played a kind of interzone retro: the gun outfit, milk music, some of those "shitgaze" bands from a few years back.

yeah, i agree. i'm just trying to map the interzone (or an interzone) as a product and part of american culture. in that, i'm particularly focused on "college rock", what became "indie rock" and a specifically american sort of postpunk.

― contenderizer, Wednesday, June 27, 2012 4:52 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's swell, but you can still find all that shit in SPIN best-of lists, which defeats the whole purpose of pondering what's "lost"

― da croupier, Wednesday, June 27, 2012 4:55 PM (4 hours ago)

I think I originally used the term "lost" and I was talking about the loss of particular aesthetics through time and not whether some bands were forgotten.

I own two different A Way 12"s by the Bolshoi. Guaranteed floor filler anytime i played it when I dj'd in college. All the way through 93, never failed.

thank god for rap music

hey guys remember the volcano suns

has big dipper been mentioned yet?

has/have

House of Freaks! (rip Bryan Harvey)

this seems like a college rock ZONE

it's a shame college rock doesn't exist anymore, truly a lost era

That's either missing the point or it's a parody of nothing at all.

a little from column a, a little from column b

80s TMBG a downtown performance act, not a comedy act! Replace with King Missile.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 28 June 2012 02:57 (6 hours ago) Permalink

Not that they were a straight comedy act, but TMG was definitely 'fun'.

Kimg Missle was fun for that matter too.

― earlnash, Thursday, 28 June 2012 03:06 (6 hours ago) Permalink

yeah they were part of that post-new wave strain of ramping up the levity or 'quirkiness' of things, not necessarily in a conceptual uniform-wearing way like Devo or the B-52s but definitely more overtly wacky and silly

― goonrise zingdom (some dude), Thursday, 28 June 2012 03:07 (6 hours ago) Permalink

yeah tmbg represented a turning point as far as the new york scene goes, from postpunk to college rock. compare their sensibility to sonic youth's.

another illustration of the postpunk VS college rock distinction - the "crazy rhythms" feelies VS the re-emerged feelies. it's all about the rhythms. or take a truly lost/under-appreciated band, love tractor. until about 1985 they played largely instrumental rock that was eccentric and completely original. as time wore on they added vocals and more conventional song structures and began to sound like a hundred other REM-inspired southern bands. one more example: the neats, a boston band who played vaguely 60s-ish rock with a little droney atmospere. by the late 80s they were doing bland - or blander - roots rock. the late 80s college rock interzone seems (to me) to be defined by this move toward conventionality/tradition. retromania!

by the late 80s most college or indie rockers sounded like FOLKIES whether or not they played acoustic guitars.