Unrest Classic or Dud?

Also, Bridget Cross = minimalist bass genius.

I may even like Flin Flon better than Unrest, just on the strength of "Swift Current" and _Boo Boo_ (the first album isn't as good).

He does it by listening to a lot of "What Goes On" and '89-90 Wedding Present? j/k

Unrest must haves:

• Imperial f.f.r.r - UK version on Guernica (confusing US version contains lyrics for the UK bonus tracks not included?) dreamy pop, wine glass drone, kraut-fixations, rhythmic interludes.
• Isabel Bishop EP - there are several versions of this... i think the tracklisiting is all the same... "Heathers" joke, compiles some earlier single tracks
• A Factory Record - 1991 Sub Pop single of the month... covers of ESG, Miaow, Crawling Chaos and Fin.
• Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl - K Records... features the kraut- jam "Hydroplane" in truncated form... also available in half hour full format on various Cath Carroll promo CDs along with the track from the Stereolab split.

further covered "isabel" on their sometimes chimes 2xLP. really strange evocative version. speeded guitar/sample sounds like a harpsichord.

David is OTM, except I wouldn't really know. Well, I have the experience of sudden shock and joy, dragging myself up those imaginary stairs. The recognition component is high. Tom, in the chapter of your book on the tension between rhythm and recognition, anonymity vs. eye contact, in (not) dance music, you've got to mention Unrest! (The rhythm component isn't bad either, but I suppose glorious=not cool.)

I prefer Perfect Teeth to Imperial f.f.r.r., 'Make Out Club' and 'Six Layer Cake' to 'Suki' and 'Cherry Cherry'. It's better when Bridget sings the songs that are not supposed to be glorious, e.g., 'Light Command'. Her version of 'Winona Ryder' is also better than Mark's.

I have to agree with Douglas on the "imperial f.f.r.r." being the "Another Green World" of indiepop bit. Thankfully, it was this record that got me into indie rock, and not something more uniform and less minimal. My favorite pieces on this album are, as David mentioned, the more warped difficult ones, like "Firecracker" and "Imperial". Tom, "Isabel" and "Cherry Cherry" don't exactly describe this album as a whole. If anything, this record kinda approximates the feel of a Tall Dwarfs record. "Imperial f.f.r.r." is a stunning record.

And over time, so is "Perfect Teeth", though it's more of an indie- pop record. "Angel I Will Walk You Home", "Cath Carroll", "Soon It's Going To Rain", "Food and Drink Synthesizer" (maybe getting the titles wrong here), "Stylized Ampersand" are all amazing songs.

"Malcolm X Park" and "Kustom Karnal Blackxploitation" are amazing in completely different ways. Then, they seem like a band that's sorta poking fun at Dischord while really drunk... though I think they serious... maybe. Is this where the whole punk-embracing-soul thing started? Seriously... the Make*Up must have listened to "Disko Magick" and ran with it, sans humor.

FYI, "Disco Magik" rips off the Red Hot Chili Peppers ("True Men Don't Kill Cayotes"). They staggered around a lot and could be smartass/obscurantist in the worst way--I hate Fuck Pussy Galore, most of Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation, most of Perfect Teeth, and all Air Miami. (I noticed Christgau hates Imperial but he seems to have no facility for trancing.) Unrest influencde much crap, too.

Still, they made a new kind of jam minimalism that built on Sonic Youth without copying. They heard what was beautiful about Beat Happening and applied it to what they took from Joy Division. They had a mystery about them that made mail-order pop seem fun for a couple years.

Classic: "Teenage Suicide" off Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation (cover of the tune from Heathers), Malcolm X Park LP, Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl EP, Cherry Cream On EP, that Sub Pop single of covers, Imperial f.f.r.r. (American version), BPM compilation CD, "Nation Writer" off Isabel Bishop CD, "Where Are All Those Puerto Rican Boys?" off promotional Cath Carroll CD, "Angel I Will Walk You Home" off Perfect Teeth. Also: The Olympic Death Squad CD (Robinson solo) and Flin Flon live.

On a side note, what do you all think of the 24 Hour Party People flick?

unrest never did a damn thing for me, except one song off fuck pussy galore that i can barely remember. (i want to say track three, but that'll be some horrible shambling indie pop thing and i will look the fool.)

102 Beats that publication date = 26th September by the way, i.e. six months after part 1.

I get the feeling it needs to be thought of somewhat in context to be appreciated. American indie rock coming through into the nineties was pretty much deplorably rock: the 80s models were bands like the Replacements or Fugazi, big shouty crunchy-chord American rock bands, and just before 93 -- when Perfect Teeth was released -- a great grungy shot of even rawkier influence had been injected and toppled the whole thing over toward the mainstream. Meanwhile the UK was seeing stirrings of a less traditionalist indie approach -- Too Pure, roots of post-rock or what-have-you -- but while plenty of American bands were following this, they weren't really impacting the overall course of American indie, and even the American bands flogging that stuff in the UK, like Th Faith Healers, still had heavy doses of very American grit.

Perfect Teeth was not only an antidote to that but an advancement on it. It was entirely clean-lined: Robinson's big guitar blasts pretty much lacked distortion -- in America! in 1993! -- and instead gave us that frantic sped-up jangle that's distinctively his contribution to the lexicon. The record was also spacious, and spacey. At the point Stereolab was still working its wall-of-sound drone, but a lot of the tiny blip-tone melodies Unrest were constructing pointed ahead to the stuff Stereolab would be doing during a much later phase of their career -- the backing vocals at the end of "Angel I Will Walk You Home," for instance, this sort of concrete tone-placement approach that's all over the record. They managed to turn the foreground of their music into something like a Mondrian painting, the clean-lined blocks of particular tones, in a way that seemed to turn away from most of the other things going on at the time, and the sort of techy spaciness of those tones combined with Robinson's vague leaning toward some image of a 50s-style pop combo to create and probably surpass what would, four or five years later, become a major theme in indie internationally, even though no one connected that with anything Unrest had been doing.

It seemed cleaner and spacier and more friendly and cerebral than the highly-emotive rock idiom of the moment, and more bedroomy, and more personal: "Back when I was twenty / I didn't think anyone liked me." And it managed to set all of its most fascinating impulses in context: it functioned terrifically as a rock album, as a pop album, and as an "experimental" album. Which is, I think, a lot of why it gets praised so often, but also a lot of why it gets slated as a run-of-mill record: it certainly seems continuous with most of what else was going on at the time, but really it's quite difficult to come up with anyone else who sounded quite like them, or even anyone else who's particularly followed the techniques that were actually uniquely theirs.

Well, I probably shouldn't have used the term "indie-pop" so loosely, as I meant it colloquially, and not as any sort of "pop" at all. Ooops.

Don't get me wrong. "Make Out Club" and maybe "Cath Carroll" had at least some potential for radio play, IMHO. But as a whole, "Perfect Teeth" is certainly not a 'pop' record.

Nabisco did a GRATE job of his summation of said record. Though, I'll add that since listening to a heavy dose of early Factory record bands since, I can now definitely hear those elements in almost all of Unrest, unique they may be, in the 90s. Mark Robinson would be the first to admit it. (Well, "A Factory record" is pretty much an admission right there)

Also I think their post-Unrest projects do a good job of pointing up what was uniquely theirs: the minimalist concrete rock of Flin Flon is really quite intriguingly assembled, and deserves credit for feeling more like the propulsion of let's say Gang of Four than most of the bands actually imitating Gang of Four; and I still think the Air Miami record is lovely, a perfect showcase for the side of Robinson that's obsessed with arranging these clean hypnotic tones into breezy beachy pop songs. It also gets at his weird habit of taking Factory-style sounds but swinging them toward punchy major-key pop (the Stockholm Monsters are maybe the only precedent I can find for this, and it's still sort of different) -- as generally "new-wave" as they sound, it's tough to find very good analogies for the approaches of "Sweet Little Heartbreaker" or "Neely."

I saw them live at Maxwells after Perfect Teeth and they did this long a capella bit that was beyond goofy. Bridgid Cross started to crack up in the middle of it, which was cool.

The bonus tracks aren't hugely revelatory (and fans probably have 'em already, except for the demos), but do buy it for the nice remastering job.

this is the truest statement on this thread. as a guitar player, "cath carroll" makes me jealous. as a songwriter, "isabel" makes me jealous. as a grammarian, this paragraph is loaded with problematic sentences, but i'm too lazy to edit it.

There are a million things about the album I love, but I particularly love the double-tracked vocals on "Blushing" and how they diverge into non-obvious, amazing harmonies. Or on "June" where Bridget sings a pedal note for the "How did it feel to be 26 degrees?" part along with the main vocal melody.

...or how they put two instrumentals back to back, as if to say, "These are not throwaways" - and they are indeed essential! (On the other hand, I wouldn't have cared if they had left off "Food & Drink Synthesizer" from Perfect Teeth.) You have the drum machine precision of "Champion Nines" followed by the kinda-sloppy-but-in-a-good-way drumming of "Sugarshack".

Mark's guitar sound is just perfect. I mean, when I listen to the opening notes of "Goodbye," I'm practically in tears.

How does ILX rate the Phil Krauth solo albums? I only have Silver Eyes - it's okay, didn't really inspire me to buy more, though. That Panax song that was on one of the TeenBeat samplers was great. Do they have anything else?

http://64.224.76.125/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=KRAD&Product_Code=KCD016&Category_Code=IJ

The Panax 7" is so so so so great. Their entire output is that 7" and the comp track which is also great.

i'm gonna have to top and say completely fucking classic! i love this band so much.

I totally love their cover of "God Gave Rock and Roll To You". After being blown away by that in the early 90s I picked up Perfect Teeth and never really got into it. But that one cover was amazing.

And right you are for it! xpost

After not listening to them for a year or so I random-shuffled onto "Imperial" the other day and was elated all over again. What a great band.

Yeah, to me they are just undeniably fantastic. Its so easy to call them one of my all time favorite bands.

The comparison to "what goes on" way up thread is very otm

Was just thinking about them a bit yesterday. Very glad to have caught them twice, both times great.

I saw them the night Bill Clinton was elected! They were great.

Was just reading Matos' "great out-of-print albums" column on Perfect Teeth in Idolator the other day.

'I do believe that you are blushing'was always a favourite of mine
Beautiful. That album (Imperial...) on the wonderful and badly missed Ajax records for a while?

I have an album by Unrest in my loft that sounds more like I thought Unrest would sound - punk. And it's not the one with the girl on the cover.I've just done a fruitless, probably lazy, google and not found it. Any ideas?

Sorry - talking to myself here - think it was their first album

Malcolm X Park?

One of my favorite bands of all time.

Fortunately, I was visiting friends in DC and was there for this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQbUIgn7PIs. You find crazy shit on the internets.

Hmmm, I just noticed that the two Air Miami demo cassettes are available from Teenbeat on CDR. I have mp3s of one of them...not bad. May have to place an order.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndlZ3NJfZSE&feature=youtu.be

what was that supposed to be?

oh wow is it gone already? Unrest live at the Khyber in Philly 1992

https://youtu.be/ndlZ3NJfZSE

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ea-MgTUWkAAFAqL?format=jpg&name=medium

A new radio programme debuts tomorrow morning at 11AM on
@wmbr
. Mark & Evelyn's American Top 41 starring
@evelyn0909
and Mark Robinson. http://wmbr.org

Cool! They do a lot of kitschy station identification jingles for WMBR, and every now and then pop up here in town (Cambridge/Somerville, MA) in their Cotton Candy guise, so this show should be a lot of fun.

that's very good

also, this is not really related, but I'd like to post it here anyway, just for fun

https://cdslimspine.com/assets/photo-img.png

Terry Tolkin (R.I.P.) did a lot more besides release Imperial, but that’s where I know his name from. Mark tribute from earlier today:

Terry, me, Richard. Teenbeat 173 with Teenbeat 178 on the table. Teenbeat Banquet 1995. pic.twitter.com/JoRm4u16sO

— Teen-Beat / Mark Robinson (@Teenbeat463) January 22, 2022

I need to look back at that Teenbeat item re to Tolkin No. 6 label .

In an email I just got

Party Milk
Your Problem as a Mountain
35-song single LP
The new album from the duo D. Trevor Kampmann (hollAnd) and Mark R. Robinson (UNREST). Originally dubbed FANG WIZARD, this dynmaic group of two changes their moniker with every release.

Pop experimentalism like you've never heard before. An electric, eclectic, and electrifying duo from Washington, D.C. Their unique, (mostly) lyric-less instrumentals are created by combining old school melodies with futuristic beats and bizarre, fractured howls.

AIR MIAMI
Me. Me. Me.
Double LP gatefold
2 x 45

All 16 tracks from the session remastered — three not on the original album. On Miami orange and sea blue vinyl. New jacket design.

A Teenbeat / 4AD co-release. Comes out July 28.

PRE-ORDER NOW:https://t.co/b32MQ5lSJt pic.twitter.com/y2esqpCygP

— Teenbeat / Mark Robinson (@Teenbeat463) June 7, 2023

the really expensive one that I still don't have is the UK LP release of Perfect Teeth, it's like $80 or more

― sleeve, Monday, 8 January 2018 21:25 (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

sleeve, i will keep an eye open for that one for you

― faust apes (NickB), Wednesday, 10 January 2018 17:24 (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

<3 thank you!

― sleeve, Wednesday, 10 January 2018 17:29 (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

is a sleeve still in need?

no, but thank you! I found an autographed copy a while back. much appreciated!

oh good stuff! finally found a copy for cheap today, guess I'll just sell it for £££ instead :)

yah ebay that sucker!

actually... if ilxor Johnny Fever is around, I think he was also looking fwiw

Here's a pretty good new interview/article about Air Miami, from the 4AD website: https://www.4ad.com/news/1340

Regarding the break-up of Unrest, it says: Unrest broke up in the winter of 1994, giving only “exhaustion” as the reason. Nearly three decades later, Cross is still vague: “The best I can say is that we were just kids and didn't know what the hell we were doing.”
Then later on in the article: “But I’m still not sure what happened with Air Miami, why Phil wasn’t on it, why it wasn’t an Unrest record. And I don’t know if that’s something we even want to talk about because it’s painful, you know?”

Thanks for sharing that. Nice Royal Trux detail

yeah that's great, thank you!

The new LP reissue of imperial f.f.r.r. is really elegant.

When all the dust settles (well it's been 30+ years), this may be one of my top 10 LPs of all time. Curious to hear what Cross is referring to regarding to the breakup. Mark seems to be coy about talking about late-era Unrest as well.

aside: Mike Fellows (the ersthile Trux member referenced in the interview) was pretty much the Drag City house drummer at that point. A couple years later he drummed on American Water.

Well I went to an Unrest show circa 2010 so whatever interpersonal issue there may have been at the time wasn't bad enough to prevent that joyous reunion show.

The Fellows aspect is interesting, b/c it draws a connection btw. these very different bands with DC-area roots (Rites of Spring, Unrest, Trux)

This discussion of the Unrest breakup reminded me of a small detail. I worked at Teenbeat (Mark’s house) over two days during the summer of 1994 folding singles and doing mail order. I remember at some point Mark taking a phone call and talking with the other person for a bit about their respective bands breaking up. I don’t remember any real details from the call other than after he hung up, he just said to me “That was Calvin Johnson.”

I've just started listening to this from Discograffiti:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jrXyJVQpw
From the description: "Welcome to Part 1 of the longest (16 HOURS), most definitive (every single release covered), and objectively the best interview ever conducted with Unrest/Grenadine/Air Miami/Flin Flon man and Teenbeat label head Mark Robinson."

!!

The full, sordid backstory of the several weeks leading up to our summit meeting, as I admittedly totally overdid it with my 204 pages of notes and endless, ultimately alienating texts and calls to him;The growth steps that had to happen for Mark to develop into one of the greatest pop songwriters of all time;And over a half-hour just on Imperial f.f.r.r. alone

Wow, so 4 hours of the 16 are available to all, but it appears you have to donate to the podcast guy’s Patreon to hear all 16!

wtf I demand at least 2 hours on Imperial, unless he means the specific song and not the album as a whole

j/k I will never listen to this

that guy (podcast host, I've never heard Mark Robinson on a podcast) is unsufferable

Yeah honestly seems weird to only spend 30 mins. on that particular album, out of a 16-hour(!) convo

Maybe they run thru every numbered Teenbeat release (including the T-shirts, events, etc.)

Would only be interested if he talks about Arlington in the 80s-early 90s

Hmmm so I finished listening to the 90-min edition linked above. For some reason, I'm picturing "pushy hot dog cart street vendor" when listening to the podcast host's voice.

204 pages of notes, and the fellow didn't know that "Winona Ryder" was a cover of Family Fodder's "Debbie Harry"? And it sounded like he wasn't familiar with the original songs that were covered on "A Factory Record." He was complimenting Mark on all the melodic details in "When It All Comes Down" and Mark was like (paraphrased) "Well, we covered it exactly like the original."

Still, it's nice to hear Mark talk about these songs, and there were some factoids that stuck out in my head, like:
* Mark's first electric guitar (Epiphone Genesis), obtained in 1981, was apparently the ONLY electric guitar he used for all Unrest recordings. (I took a look at the "Make Out Club" video, and yup, it checks out.)
* The title "I Do Believe You Are Blushing" comes from a quote from the movie "Mermaids"! (Which starred...Winona Ryder.) The "Miss K" in the lyrics refer to a real person, with whom Mark had a sort of "Before Sunrise"-esque experience, hanging out and sleeping in Central Park.
* "Isabel" and "Champion Nines" were solo Mark (bass, bells and a sample - apparently the section where the sample slows down was unintended). On "Suki" and "Cherry Cream On" it's just Mark and Phil (Mark played the bass on those two). I thought I had read somewhere that Mark played the drums on "Sugar Shack" (which would make sense, since the drumming isn't very precise), but Mark said it's Phil.
* Mark said "Cherry Cream On" is just a remix of "Cherry Cherry" (I thought "CCO" was a newer recording of "CC", not a remix.) Apart from that, Mark said it took just a total of about 4 days to record "imperial f.f.r.r."!

Oh yeah - the podcast host thought "Cherry Cream On" was about a blow job (?!?!). After he said that, there was a long pause, and then Mark said it was most definitely not about that. (He didn't say what it was about, but it's pretty obvious what the song is about, right? I mean, come on, dude.)

Thanks, those are some nice details (lol at the host not having checked out the Miaow song…?).

I’d be interested to hear Mark talk about making Twister with Kramer, and KKB (with Wharton Tiers)… and, yeah, just the early Arlington days.

I encountered Mark some years ago at a street fair, manning a table where he was hawking Teenbeat product, in addition to his own musical ephemera. I gushed over Imperial and bought a couple of things, and as I was walking away he came running after me with an armful of CDs from his own collection. What a guy!

He always comes back to DC from Massachusetts for the holidays. Saw Mark back in DC hawking Teenbeat stuff at a reunited Tuscadero gig opening for reunited Velocity Girl. He dj’d an event another night recently, showed his Butch Willis doc Amateur on Plastic, and then on another night his own Cotton Candy group played.

Yeah, Cotton Candy are regulars at these street fairs in Somerville, Mass. Always fun to see.

I only know Mark a tiny bit, but a band I was in was on Teenbeat, and we were really excited to use the Air Miami (or maybe Flin Flon?) snare in the studio.

guessing at the band, but holy shit u played in a band with Kevin Barker?!? I play D&D with him every week!

small freaking world

Tell Kevin I say hi! He's such a good (guitar) player.

Dang Josh, you buried the lead... gonna listen to your guys' stuff now

Another ILXor was in a band with Kevin out here in SF, but he doesn't post here anymore (I don't think).

Agreed that this podcaster is a challenging listen, his voice is if you were to describe what cocaine abuse sounds like.

I love Mark and someone I know pitched an oral history of imperial to him and he was not very enthusiastic so this is a start! 4 days wtf!

So Discograffiti also did an interview with Mark and Jenny Toomey, discussing the Grenadine catalog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPdAiHiTRPE
This is a pretty fun listen. I'm actually comforted to know that someone out there loves "Goya" as much as I do.
I even made a cocktail in tribute to them (which, of course, contains grenadine) named "Pinky Tuscadero."