Indie Ephemera

The flotsam and jetsam of my life in indiepop/indie rock from the late 80s to the mid-90s, Boston/NYC slant. Emptying one from the shoebox occasionally. Twitter: @IndieEphemera Email: [email protected]

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Photo of me at the Boston Scholastic Art Awards art show, spring 1990.

Hi, friends.

This date has been creeping up on me, and I’ve finally reached it, 365 posts and 365 days in: my one-year anniversary of re-starting this blog. It has been fun, challenging and ultimately rewarding to doggedly stick to this project, one post every day, without fail. I’ve gotten many nice notes and even reconnected with a couple of folks from my past. But I think it’s about time to draw my daily posting schedule to a close. I’ll still post here occasionally, but no longer quite so diligently.

So I’ll leave you with this snapshot of the person behind much of the material in this blog as she was experiencing it: me at age seventeen, junior year of high school. I was definitely serving up my “rock club look” (though with the black turtleneck) here at an art show where my textile piece was on display along with other artworks by teen winners of the Scholastic Art Awards. In this picture I’m staring off into the distance, as if waiting for something to happen. But as the past years’ worth of digging through old boxes and papers has taught me, that “something” already was.

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Circa-1989 computer printout of a review I wrote of Dinosaur Jr.’s “Just Like Heaven” mini-EP for issue #5 of the fanzine Writer’s Block, published October 1989.

I just got back from the debut U.S. screening tonight of Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr., a documentary that tells the story of that long-running band from western Mass. While watching it, I remembered that one of the first record reviews I ever wrote for a fanzine was of a Dinosaur Jr. single.

While I couldn’t find the relevant issue of Writer’s Block in my personal zine library (misfiled?), I did locate the printout I made at the time on our family dot matrix printer. This review is stored in a folder of computer printouts of all my early music writing. Even back then I must not have trusted the 3.5″ floppy disc technology over good old hard copy.

As a Boston-area fan of local music in the late eighties, I was definitely familiar with Dinosaur Jr., though they were a little too noisy for me to be a big fan. But when I heard they covered The Cure? Well, that was enough for me to sit up and take notice. I went out to my local Strawberries music store and bought myself the cassette single. (That’s right, even SST Records released cassingles!)

Based on this review, my 16-year-old self liked their cover, even if I was less than impressed with the b-sides. But I guess I was telling on myself about the real draw here, as I pondered a Dino Jr. version of a different Cure song of which I was more fond.

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Press kit with band photo and press release for Unrest’s 1993 Isabel Bishop EP, released by U.S. label 4AD/Reprise Records.

A fancy press kit in its own folder, complete with glossy photo, for DC DIY indie rock stalwarts Unrest? Even Mark in his varsity jacket looks skeptical. But them’s the perks when you get signed to a major label. Yes, their releases were on 4AD, but via Warner Bros-owned Reprise.

In reading the press release, I’m amused to see the joke about Simon LeBon producing their next album, Perfect Teeth, put forth here as a plain fact. Was the person who wrote the press release in on the joke? Maybe not.

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Computer printout of a catalog of my entire record collection (vinyl, tapes and CDs), as input into the family computer on April 30, 1990.

The floppy disk containing the text file onto which this was saved is long gone, but this computer printout lives on as evidence of my early-onset record collector mania. Where did all the money I made at my after-school video rental store clerk job go? Here, clearly.

I also think it’s amusing that I was this into documenting my collection at such an early age. I’ve long since passed the point where that is even remotely worth my time attempting, but this effort preceded a circa-1998 cataloging of my 7″ singles collection in a primitive FileMaker Pro database on what might have been my first laptop computer.

As for the content itself, there are many classics represented here on page one, including records by Galaxie 500, The Church, Game Theory and even a semi-obscure one on Flying Nun by Able Tasmans. Yes, I was already knee-deep in underground Kiwi pop, with subsequent pages documenting my ownership of records by The Chills (”Doledrums” 7″ single and “I Love My Leather Jacket” 12″), Sneaky Feelings (”Husband House” 12″) and that In Love With These Times Flying Nun comp on CD.

If you want to take a deeper peek into my teenage record collection, I scanned the whole thing and uploaded a PDF of the catalog here. There are plenty of other cool records (early Field Mice records, the first dB’s single) and a few embarrassments that, well, you’ll just have to click through to see.

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1993 mail-order catalog of “A to C” titles only stocked by Brookline, MA-based Throbbing Lobster, the onetime record label and business of rare record dealer Chuck Warner.

If you’re not already familiar with Boston record label Throbbing Lobster, I suggest you check out their catalog of releases. Active in the mid-to-late eighties, the label came to my attention via their very last release in 1988, a self-titled mini LP by Unattached. I had seen Unattached perform at one of those free, WFNX-sponsored outdoor concerts and bought their record shortly thereafter. It wasn’t until after I started working at In Your Ear Records a couple of years later that I was introduced to their influential 1984 compilation LPs, Nobody Gets On The Guest-List! and Let’s Breed! So many great songs on there from local bands like Christmas, Busted Statues and Dumptruck.

Label head Chuck Warner later turned his attention to the record dealing biz, as evidenced via this 1993 print catalog of “world punk and newwave.” The man had so many records that this multi-page, tiny-print catalog was only capable of showcasing titles by artists from A to C. 

Chuck also had boxes of 7″ singles stocked at my record store on consignment. I remember thinking at the time how terribly overpriced they were—most titles were over $10! Yet I yearned to own many of them, especially that copy of the first Go-Betweens single, priced to stun at $150. (Yes, it goes for much more today. But this was 1991!)

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Chuck parlayed his rare punk record collection—and accompanying encyclopedic knowledge—into a series of legally-questionable CD-R comps of rarities, self-released in the nineties under the “Messthetics” and “Hyped to Death” monikers. In a era just before the explosion of online musical discovery options, these comps helped bring some very obscure music at that time to a much larger audience. 

And it does appear that Chuck is still in the rare record game, at least as a buyer. How do I know? Well, I have a number of records myself up on Discogs, and there were two large buys in the past year or so made by a familiar name: Chuck Warner. Based on subsequent correspondence, I found it was indeed the same person who helped open my eyes to one part of my early Boston music scene all those years ago.

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Flying Nun Records 1993 calendar featuring the month of October as illustrated and designed by David Mitchell of The 3Ds, Goblin Mix, the Magick Heads, Plagal Grind, Chug and the Exploding Budgies.

Here’s an appropriately spooky (and actually kind of disturbing) October illustration from musician and artist David Mitchell. I listed most of his bands in the caption because a) relative to other bands in the Flying Nun stable, they are not well-known enough, and b) I love them all!

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Press kit issued by U.S. record label Homestead Records for Brave Words, the 1987/1988 debut album by New Zealand band The Chills.

It would take me another year or so after the U.S. release of this album for me to discover The Chills, via the magical In Love With These Times Flying Nun label comp, a foundational influence on my musical taste. But after scoring this used copy of Brave Words at my local record store circa 1990 and pulling the record out of the sleeve... out popped this press kit.

The press release itself is by then-Homestead employee Gerard Cosloy, who was an early champion of music on Flying Nun (”one of the planet’s only record labels that doesn’t rot”). His genuine enthusiasm for The Chills is flecked with bits of curmudgeonliness he honed in his 80s zine, Conflict.

“Just read the press kit and leave me alone?” Okay! The press clippings in here, reviews of the album (released in 1987 outside the U.S.) and recent concerts, provide a good snapshot of a band on the rise. A Bucketfull of Brains reviewer said The Chills put on the “best gig I’ve seen in a long, long while,” while an uncredited review of Brave Words ends by calling the album “a classic.” Who am I to disagree? 

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Flyer for the segment on Edinburgh-based band Josef K, part of the Rock Music of Scotland Orgy, presented by the Record Hospital on Harvard radio station WHRB, May 17-21, 1994.

Even though I participated in this Orgy—I was responsible for the segments on The Shop Assistants and various post-Postcard obscurities—I don’t recall who helmed the three-hour Josef K overview. (Though I have a feeling it was Mike Vazquez?)

Anyway, this band and this flyer are both tops. Love the liberal use of the “kilts” imagery from the stock Postcard sleeves, interspersed with photos of the band. And of course that Ron Regé, Jr.-designed Orgy logo grimacing at you. Though the full-color version on the commemorative t-shirt brings the full experience.

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Taped-together panels taken from the CD longbox packaging of two albums: History Never Repeats (The Best Of Split Enz) by Split Enz (front of longbox) and from Crowded House by Crowded House (back of longbox).

Freshman year of high school and wanting to decorate the inside of my locker, I somehow figured out that CD longboxes were the perfect width to fit inside the door. So I cut up the two for these Crowded House and Split Enz albums, among my earliest compact disc purchases. I actually think these were part of a triptych, with the front of the Crowded House album as the top panel, as evidenced by the paper residue attached to the bit of tape at the top of the Split Enz panel.

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Front and back of the January 1990 newsletter sent to members of the official Crowded House/Split Enz fan club.

I have a whole stack of these newsletters, dating from the late eighties, when I joined “Frenz of the Enz”: the Split Enz fan club that morphed to also cover the musical activities of post-Enz group Crowded House.

This January 1990 newsletter references the annual Christmas card—I wrote about the one that would appear later that year in this post. It also mentions the “Byrdhouse” collaboration with famed Byrds guitarist Roger McGuinn, along with that “I Feel Possessed” single with the bonus Byrdhouse tracks for which I still have the CD longbox.

And cute doodle from Tim Finn on the flip side of the newsletter. He would, of course, be reuniting musically with brother Neil as the latest member of Crowded House their third album, Woodface, out the following year.

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Part II of my “Xmas List,” a wish list of gifts I would be happy to receive, written up for my parents in advance of Christmas 1988.

The front of this list I posted yesterday promised “Assorted tapes/records” on the back. And here they are, along with a couple more things: the 1989 WBCN calendar (that I must have bought myself) and International Reply Coupons. Pre-digital commerce, these coupons—IRCs—were the things you could safely send through the mail in lieu of cash as a form of payment for postage, at least. Given that I was corresponding with multiple people at magazines and record labels in “England and Australia” even then, I needed more of this postal currency.

As for records and tapes, well... these are mostly rarities from Crowded House/Split Enz, Robyn Hitchcock/The Soft Boys and The Church/solo Church. I made sure to be very specific about which I wanted on tape vs LP, as well as the stores where they could be found, and even how to find them (”Look under ‘K’”).

The durable advice here that I gave to my parents that holds true in general: “[the] fewer copies left, the more I want it.” Baby record collector Jen already understood the game.

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Part I of my “Xmas List,” a wish list of gifts I would be happy to receive, written up for my parents in advance of Christmas 1988.

What did I want for Christmas in 1988? Oh, just all the things to support my burgeoning rock-n-roll lifestyle. Well, most of the things. I wasn’t prepared to ask my parents for a fake ID!

Some of the things on here are to be expected: AA batteries, blank audio cassettes (high bias only, please), blank video tapes (but “NOT GOLDSTAR!!!” cheap-o brand ones). A few might seem weird: Necco wafers (New England Confectionary Company regional pride!), a bottle of correction fluid (will explain that one in an upcoming post), and a black “rock ‘n’ roll hat” (if you were even goth-adjacent in the eighties, you know what I mean). And others are hilariously specific, like a guarantee I can go to the next Crowded House concert (”tickets would be nice too”) and four particular back issues of Creem magazine that I must have researched at my local library to find they featured one or more of my favorites artists (Crowded House, The Church, Robyn Hitchcock).

But sandwiched there in the middle is the most ambitious request of all:

A small tape recorder, but not micro-cassette, good quality for recording concerts, interviews, etc.

I wouldn’t get it that Christmas, but this was the first step towards (eventually) getting my beloved Sony WM-D6 recorder.

Tomorrow I will post the flip side of this list with the promised “Assorted tapes/records.”

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October spread featuring U2, from the 1989 “Rock ‘N’ Roll Calendar” issued by Boston rock radio station WBCN.

The MTV calendars were clearly missing a trick by not christening this month—as WBCN does here—”Roctober” (or the more common “Rocktober”). Guys, know your demographic!

Cover stars here are WBCN rock radio staples U2. They would be an obvious pick for any month? Why October? Well, if you know the name of the band’s second album...

As for the content I added to the calendar, it’s pretty minimal. (I suppose September was my Roctober.) Events here include a driving lesson and a note about how much hourly-billable online computer time I used with CompuServe. Though the one that caught my eye, of course, was this one on the 20th:

Galaxie 500′s new album, “Galaxie 500 on Fire” is released on Rough Trade

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October spread featuring Talking Heads, from the 1986 MTV calendar, published in 1985.

One of the cooler spreads in this 1986 MTV calendar, with a still from Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” video. That band certainly made an impression on my 13-year-old self. They seemed like nerds (like me!) but also cool (not like me!).

October 1986 happenings were almost as spare as the previous October’s, though I did have two parties two weekends in a row on the 4th and the 11th. And of course the annual commemoration of Simon Le Bon’s birthday!

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October spread featuring ZZ Top, from the 1985 MTV calendar, published in 1984.

Here we have ZZ Top, riding high on their MTV video fame as October calendar boys with stills from their ubiquitous “Legs” video featured. But the best design feature here by far is that glasses-wearing black cat peeking out from behind a pumpkin-orange MTV logo.

Looks like October was pretty uneventful for me—or I was just too lazy to note any happenings. But I did of course see fit to mark the 27th birthday of Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon. I also noted on October 16th that “The MTV rocket died today.” Did they choose that date to stop using it in their top-of-the-hour station IDs? Whatever the case, my young, MTV-obsessed self clearly thought it was worth noting.

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Pin-back badge for British musician Robyn Hitchcock, acquired sometime in the late 80s.

Back in the eighties, most people were not online. So even though I happened to be—scouring CompuServe for music-related content—to actually connect with artists you needed to join old-fashioned fan clubs.

The Robyn Hitchcock fan club (later a mailing list) was Fegmaniax, and by signing up I received occasional packets via the mail containing updates, tour info and even sometimes swag. This button was one such item I got via the fan club.

Featured is a character drawn by Robyn himself that appears on the cover of his “Heaven” 12″ single, as well as on the label of the Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians 1995 live album Gotta Let This Hen Out! I seem to recall this little guy might have been nicknamed “Reg,” from a line in “Brenda’s Iron Sledge” (Please don’t call me Reg / It’s not my name). [Edit: Thanks to a fellow Tumblr-er for pointing out his name is in fact THOTH.] But as a lapsed Fegmaniac, I can’t fully vouch for that.

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Press release and press clippings promoting the 1995 album Sealight by The Mad Scene (with Hamish Kilgour of The Clean), released by U.S. record label Merge Records.

How I met Hamish Kilgour, exactly, is lost to the sands of time that have flowed out of my head and into the ether. And yet I did meet him sometime in the fall of 1991, shortly after moving to New York City for college. And then I wanted to interview him for my fanzine, so I asked, and he accepted. Which is how I ended up publishing perhaps the first interview with The Mad Scene: core members Hamish and partner Lisa Siegel.

I continued to stay in touch with Hamish (he even played on my band’s only record), so of course I continued to cheer on The Mad Scene as they moved from a 7″ single on Homestead Records to a more durable relationship with Merge Records. This press release documents their latest accomplishment: a full-length album, their first in the U.S. and first for Merge.