Besides Asides

Today's post once again comes out of the Pacific Northwest, this time from Tacoma, Washington's Seaweed. Coming out of that region in the late 80's/early 90's with a Sub Pop connection, Seaweed was often lumped into the grunge movement but they aren't really a grunge band. I don't hear a great deal in common with Nirvana or Alice In Chains or Pearl Jam in their sound, their arrangements are less direct, they have a more clear debt to hardcore punk and a pop sensibility that differed greatly for those bands. I'd say Seaweed has more in common with DC post-hardcore and bay area bands like Fuel, Jawbreaker and Samiam.

Anyways, like many bands during the grunge explosion of the 90's, Seaweed was picked up by a major label. Their sole release for Hollywood Records was 1995's Spanaway. The rest of the band's catalog while fluctuating in and out of print is available for purchase today via iTunes, but Spanaway which (in this blogger's humble opinion) is their best release remains out of print in relative obscurity. So instead of forcing you to head down to your local used record shop to pick up a copy I thought I'd add it to the blog. If you like it, go out and pick up one of their Sub Pop albums or their Merge release. This is one of my favourite albums, so I really hope you enjoy it:

cub was an indie rock/punk band from Vancouver, British Columbia, and boy were they cute. I mean the term "cuddle core" was invented for them. They have a sound similar to Beat Happening or Go Sailor or Beatnik Termites. They are the kind of band with a huge discography but only a few major releases with the rest of it spread out amongst 7" and compilation albums. In 1997, a year after their demise they compiled a number of those miscellaneous songs into a collection called Mauler. If you are a cub fan you will find Mauler extremely disappointing in that it was extremely incomplete and it even included songs from their full-length releases. To add insult to injury Mauler eventually went out of print so these songs were once again doomed to a life of obscurity. So I've gone back and taken all the non-LP material from Mauler and done my best to go out and find all the other 7" and compilation songs the band recorded for Mauler Revisited. Sadly, I've been working on this collection for a few years and there is a few songs even I haven't been able to locate. They are their contribution to Lance Hahn of J Church's Honey Bear Record's Not Exactly Happy: A Tribute To The Smiths, "Maneaters" from the Green Light Go! compilation, and as well as "Eyes of a Stranger" from For Sher: A Tribute To The Valley Girl Soundtrack. I'm also missing a few tape releases that I'm not sure if they have exclusive songs or not. If anyone has any of these and they'd be kind enough to hook me up I'd appreciate it. Anyways for better or worse this is as definitive a collection as I could make.

Sorry for the late update.

In the fall of 2007, freshly reunited 90's pop punk/hardcore act Lifetime did a tour of Japan. Somewhere in there they played a short acoustic set in a record shop in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Someone filmed four of those songs, and I've ripped the audio from them in surprisingly good quality. It is a real treat to hear these classics and one new song re-arranged. I hope you enjoy this:

J Church might not have been the best band in the world but they were the most important to me. Lance Hahn wrote songs that told stories of that spanned the gamut of human experience, with vivid characters. While the songs weren't always overt or straightforward in their politics they lived and breathed a beautiful anti-oppression narrative. Whether they were hardcore or pop punk or something in between, they are songs that helped us remember to enjoy life.

Of all the various side projects and associated acts to come from Hot Water Music, Rumbleseat still remains my favourite. Chances is are if you you are a HWM fan but you've never actually picked up a Rumbleseat record you've heard them before as Chuck Ragan covers their song "California Burritos" both live and on his first album. If you haven't heard them at all before what can you expect? Well essentially they sound like stripped down Hot Water Music songs with leanings towards traditional folk, blues and country music. They recorded a bunch of songs from summer '98 to sometime in '99 with Rob McGregor and proceeded to release a handful of singles as well as appearing various compilations. The band's lineup was Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard on acoustic guitars and vocals and Samantha Jones (of Bitchin') on acoustic bass and vocals with Rob McGregor helping out on the harmonica. Before long they called it quits but not before they tried their hand at going electric, augmenting the existing lineup with Bill Clower of Radon on drums.

Rumbleseat didn't have that lengthy a recording history so No Idea announced they would be releasing a collection entitled Discography And Then Some in 2004. Well 2004 came and went and there was still no sign of the album when finally in 2005 it was released with an altered tracklist and the title changed to Is Dead. So I've gone and collected all the band's odds n ends that were left off of Is Dead, including 8 studio tracks only one of which saw commercial release, 6 electric band demos and 8 rough live recordings. For me the most interesting aspect of these songs is that on two of the studio recordings Samantha Jones takes lead vocal duties - something she didn't do on any of the commercially available songs. As a nice little bonus I've even included the artwork that was originally intended for Discography And Then Some as the cover for this collection:

I'm not too sure what to say about Lawrence Kansas' Kill Creek other than they are one of my favourite bands. Although they are from the other Kansas, you likely wouldn't have had bands like The Casket Lottery or The Get Up Kids without them. They have that muscular and melodic sound that the 90's seemed to produce in spades with bands like Jawbreaker and Seaweed but softer country/folk and pop moments that recall the Weakerthans or Jets To Brazil. Anyways, this is the only live material I was able to find of theirs and it is quite good quality, the first half of it is taken from a live in studio acoustic session and the second half is taken from a full band awards show performance.

The radio show set is rather cute with with renditions of "Twinkle, Twinkle" one including guest vocals by guitarist/vocalist Scott Born's son Alex. There is one really sad part to the set where Scott dedicates the final song to his daughter who passed away as she was being born just a few days prior and you can hear his voice crack up. Here you go:

With the recent announcement that Hot Water Music is going to be heading into the studio to record their first reunion LP, I thought it would be great to have some HWM related posts. This "Besides" installment focuses on Chuck Ragan's 7" and compilation appearances not including his single series/Blueprint Sessions stuff. This marks the first post on Besides Asides where Pants did almost all of the collecting and sequencing of the contents of the mix as well as the cover. Hope you enjoy it: