This is probably one of the coolest things I have come across in quite some time. To say the Nation of Ulysses were an important band in the cannon that is my growth from adolescences in to adulthood, is an understatement. When I first heard them in high school it really changed everything that I believed punk rock was, could, or should be.
At the time I heard them pop punk and the entire world of Lookout! Records was ruling the nations teen punk underground. I mean, there was more to the underground than just the pop punk thing, but the pop punk thing was just under the radar of what was considered mainstream “alternative” rock music, thanks largely in part to the popularity of bands like Green Day, Rancid, and Offspring. So for kids like myself and my core group of friends growing up in the culturally oppressive area of western Michigan, those bands were our entry point to a musical culture we latched on to. Naturally because of this we gravitated toward the Epi-fat-lookout records sound, but for some this as far as they dug, but for some of us true dorks we began digging deep. This deep digging led us to things like Dischord Records, SST Records, Alternative Tentacles, and bands like Fugazi, The Nation of Ulysses, Lungfish, Hoover, Black Flag, The Dead Kennedys, and zines like Maximum Rock n Roll, Heartattack, Flipside, Punk Planet, etc. I would say more than any of the pop punk bands, everything listed above radically changed our scope of what punk rock could be.
Also around this time in the United Kingdom a record label was shaping their nations popular sound, and that record label was Creation Records. Run by an enigmatic drug fueled maniac, Alan McGee brought the underground sound of a nation to the masses, there by reshaping not only popular music in the United Kingdom, but also the world over. Alan brought us the likes of My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride, Oasis, and for the importance of this piece of writing, Primal Scream. Primal Scream was massive in the early ‘90′s and had multiple number one records in the United Kingdom, but over here in America they were still small potatoes. So when they came over to record in Memphis, Tennessee, and play some shows, they just happened to have a serendipitous meeting with one of Americas greatest underground secrets, and as they say, the rest is history.