Beat Happening: C or D.

but why the hell did you even click on this thread dude?

― psychgawsple

Thread is not called "Beat Happening: C! C! C! C! C!". It has room for D. Anyway, they're not overrated, cuz not that many people rate em, but I like Beat Happening. Mostly for Jamboree and Dreamy. "Nancy Sin", "Red Head Walking", "Hot Chocolate Boy", "Dreamy", "Indian Summer", "This Many Boyfriends", etc.

pinefox derby

(xpost) yea i handled that poorly but it is just counterproductive to talk shit about such an innocent, quirky band. they've done nothing but grow on me year after year, so any discouragement that could lead someone to just not trying in the first place has to be overruled

I saw them open for Fugazi on the Repeater tour. Fucking awful!

Occasionally "innocent" but if there is one thing that's definitively underrated, it's the occasional bad-assed-ness of Beat Happening. They get dirty, Crampsy, noisy, dark, evil.

this is true, maybe it's a pitfall to define them by their innocence

also lol at them opening for fugazi. didn't they open for a bunch of ill-suited bands?

Black Flag too

saw 'em with Alice n Chains

The idea of Beat Haps opening for Fugazi, Flag and phucking AIC make me think they were the punkest band of ever.

yeah i think there's a story in Our Band Could Be Your Life about Rollins losing his mind over how wimpy Beat Happening was ...

choice deadpan stage quote from Calvin at above Alice gig:
"We're not like other bands here tonight. (awkward pause) We're punk rock.(awkward pause) Fuck You."

it almost becomes performance art at that point-- i've always loved beat happening's ability to piss off aggro-punk and grunge kids

i've found calvin a bit gross and pointless for years but BH from jamboree thru to you turn me on were really fantastic, jamboree blew my mind when i first got it (i wonder if i still have that tape?). you turn me on was the only album they released after i got into them and it was so exciting hearing their new stuff on the radio. tiger trap is a monster tune.

also calvin gets major points for having the most unlikely vocal style for a "twee" band

however the next band to cover indian summer gets kicked in the jewels

what bands other than Luna do it?

^^ yes this is actually getting really annoying. a lot of modern twee bands do it

manhattan love suicides

"i can't argue with an opinion, but why the hell did you even click on this thread dude?
imo, beat happening>>>>>>>>>>>any other american band of the last 30 years"

You think only your view is allowed on the thread? Thread is about Beat Happening and, in theory, range of views on them. In practice, almost everyone on the thread is super-positive.

"any discouragement that could lead someone to just not trying in the first place has to be overruled" = anyone who disagrees with you must not post.

Believe me, there is not much danger that any view I express could affect what music the kids want to listen to.

I listened to 'Redhead Walking' again after posting yesterday and realized I didn't like it that much after all.

Best thing I'm aware of the band doing: 'Cry For A Shadow', purely because it generated a magnificent cover by The Shapiros. I've not heard a good version by BH themselves.

They're probably not totally worthless, and have probably had some positive cultural effects overall and encouraged the creativity of others; but in themselves I certainly think they're very overrated and don't sound very nice.

your opinions would be considerably more palatable if you weren't such a complete douche about expressing them

^^ yup, anyway:

Wear a pearl necklace if you think of it
I'll run the red river but not drink of it

^^ favorite

Probably mine too actually. I spent ages trying to find out where that song came from (a friend put it on a mix tape for me). Tried in vain to find it on CD then got a job where I had internet and bought the 7" off Ebay, might have been my first ever Ebay purchase thinking about it. Either that or the Avengers LP.

hey day from YTMO. TUNE!

ferget the review (spin?) that said on YTMO beat happening discovered weed. ha! so true.

beat happening came into my life at the exact same time i was teaching myself to play and got my first 4track and all that business. gave me real 'i can do this!' feelings. so always and forever C for me.

Not really sure why, but Black Candy is my favorite.

Could be because it's awesome?

You Turn Me On is their best album. Don't care if it's because of weed or not. Jamboree comes really close though.

Calvin always knew what he was doing re: performances wrt Calvin offstage vs. on stage. He's proudly a weirdo, but always plays/played a different kinda weirdo on stage.

I'm glad the band were written about in Az's book, as there were info tidbits I didn't previously know, but the implicit reason for cheerleading them in the chapter was UGH

best post Beat Happening is actually in Land Of The Loops records via Heather Lewis's guest vocals. "Patience" = winner

You think only your view is allowed on the thread? Thread is about Beat Happening and, in theory, range of views on them.

no, i just feel like it takes a pretty bored/angry person to not only decide to click on a thread for a band he knows he doesn't like, but also to go to the trouble of posting his ill-formed opinions about said band. it's not like they're on the cover of magazines these days, rubbing their immense popularity in your face, etc. i realize that the thread is C OR D but i also think the point of beat happening is that it's sorta supposed to sound like a dud if you just give it a forced or cursory listen.

anyway, just checked out 'shield around the k' last night and it was actually a pretty good watch, if only because of the incredible performance footage of calvin/bh (having a significant portion including rose melberg and tiger trap didn't hurt either).

it also pointed out the obvious re: calvin's networking skills, OP magazine as a way of exporting the northwest indie scene to places like dc, etc. i guess he even had ian mackaye work the doors at the first international pop underground fest in olympia.

oh and dean wareham also covered indian summer. he covered a lot of stuff, though

eugenius and (more recently) the manhattan love suicides have covered it too

'ill-formed opinions' = opinions you don't share

do you genuinely believe what you just wrote?

i think there are legit reasons why one wouldn't like this band but saying they "don't sound very nice" does indeed seem like an underdeveloped thought.

haha you already mentioned MLS, i r lacking in reading skills

ye someone else also mentioned luna before i said something about dean wareham

classic

Oops, I said so already upthread. Still, then.

Spectrum also covered Indian Summer

I happened to see Mr. Johnson play an extremely strange unamplified solo appearance in Eugene. This would have been post-BH, maybe 2004. 'Twas him and Tiger Saw and somebody else.

You know how sometimes a musician will drag out an intro by alternating two chords for a while and talking over it? Calvin did this, but instead of doing it for 30 seconds did it for like 15 minutes, telling a rambling and not especially coherent story about driving to Montana to buy some used shirts. And it was weirdly riveting because we're sitting there thinking "Surely he's going to begin the song now." "Okay, maybe now." "Now? Nope. How about now?"

I can't say I have listened to all the BH there is but my wife loves them. So, um, classic.

i have nearly reversed my opinion of this band in the six(!) years since I posted above. I was 18, gimme a break. I only like a few of the longer songs on "you turn me on" at this point. maybe a scattered handful of earlier tracks.

yeah i think there's a story in Our Band Could Be Your Life about Rollins losing his mind over how wimpy Beat Happening was ...

― tylerw, Thursday, January 8, 2009

Not sure if this is exactly right. Henry was from DC and buddies with Ian Mackaye who knew Calvin who had relatives in the DC area. I think he knew what Beat Happening was like and deliberately chose them to open. I met Calvin back then in DC when I was writing for OP and he came by the U. of Maryland college radio station. We used to talk about dc go-go records. I like Calvin and some Beat Happening but not all.

here are those mixtape tracklists btw: http://yarnlazer.com/calvintapes/

the disco ones do look damn interesting

from here: http://www.furious.com/perfect/beathappening.html
"But Beat Happening was also hated by their underground peers. For instance, when the band opened for Black Flag at the Tropicana, Henry Rollins famously heckled Calvin Johnson, including grabbing Calvin's crotch mid-song. "There seemed to be a lot of animosity directed towards us," Calvin says."

at least sonic youth and beck like them...

They make a lot of rules
They tell a lot of lies
If we don't wanna, we won't behave
And they can't make us 'cause we can't be made

“By disrupting the status quo concept that music must be polished, practiced, and public, Beat Happening helped crack open a world for new voices usher in a wave of cloying, obnoxious mediocrity that continues unabated to this very day”

worst band, now and forever

surprised Calvin hasn't been #metoo'd tbh

That too

Reading this thread, LOL that there was ever any question about Rollins hating beat happening... getting pissed off about a band that he perceived as wimpy/weak/meek, yeah gosh that doesn't sound like rollins at all, lol

most of my favourite Beat Happening songs are Heather songs anyway tbh

I've had a CD-R of Jamboree for a long time, but just got a cheap CD copy in the mail. There's probably a thread for this: gap between your three favourite songs and the rest of the album. I love "Indian Summer," "Cat Walk," and "Drive Car Girl" so much, and the rest of the album does nothing for me.

I've had Dreamy and You Turn Me On waiting on my computer for a while, burned them for a long car trip today. All three songs I'll save are sung by Heather Lewis: "Noise," "Sleepy Head," and (epic drone, love it) "Godsend."

oh c'mon "Pinebox Derby" rules

Nothing else made much of an impression on me, beyond that I often found Calvin Johnson's vocals annoying (which on the three songs I posted about nine months ago, I totally love--I can't explain that).

Man Tiger Trap is an all timer

All killer, no filler, tbh. (YTMO, that is. Some of Dreamy tests my patience, which seems an improbable thing to be typing given it's the later LP that drones on endlessly lol)

Burned their expanded debut...My favourites (evenly split this time between Heather and Calvin): "Our Secret," "What's Important," "1, 2, 3," "Look Around." The first, beyond sounding great, is the perfect launch for such a strange folk/post-punk band: the title, and "That's why we're running away..."

listened to this audio doc about the making of Jamboree the other day, some good insight into the record and the relationships between the band members (both then and now)
https://lifeoftherecord.com/#/beat-happening/