Let’s discuss any and all music here. Got a new artist who’s rocking your boat that you want to talk about? Post a video! Found out about that unearthed Coltrane album that has the jazz freak in you losing your mind? Lay it out for us! Have a theory about what your favorite band might do for their next album? Let’s hear it! Anything and everything music-related goes here.
This week’s discussion prompt comes courtesy of The Avocado’s very own Glyph:
What are some good examples of “B Teams” – i.e. “those artists that aren’t the best-known (or best) exemplars of their genre, but if you’re a fan of that genre, are still worth exploring”?
To use the examples from Glyph’s original post, “for postpunk, your A Team is Joy Division, Banshees, Bauhaus, Bunnymen, U2, etc. But if you like those bands, you should give a try to The Sound and The Chameleons and the Comsat Angels and these guys. Or like if you’re a Sonic Youth and Mission of Burma fan, you should try Versus – they aren’t QUITE as good or groundbreaking as those bands, but they certainly can help scratch that same itch, if you like those other bands.”
In the year 2000, shortly before leaving Canada to start my new job teaching English in Japan, my good friend Spiffy gave me three CD-Rs filled with Pavement B-sides and rarities that he’d gotten off of Napster. Not included with the plain silver discs1 were the track listings for any of the CDs – while I already knew what at least half of them were (having heard them before while hanging out with Spiffy) there were quite a few other tracks I was unable to identify (and whenever I talked to Spiffy I never did remember to ask if he remembered what they were either).
Fast-forward to 2014: after moving over a dozen times within a ten-year period (including two more times halfway across the world, and my CD collection subsequently being split between two countries for a while) I was finally able to relocate the “Spiffy discs”. I ripped them to the computer and then proceeded to attempt identifying the songs, and while I was able to get most of them by typing “pavement” and lyric fragments into Google, there were still a handful of tracks I was unable to find titles for. Then a few years later I found out about some thing called Shazam and decided to try and fill in those blanks – only to find out that one of those Pavement songs wasn’t a Pavement song at all!
Bright is a music group formed in Boston in 1993. Guitarist/vocalist Mark Dwinell and drummer Joe LaBrecque created songs with “minimal vocals, extensive Krautrock-influenced improvisation and repeating measures”, recording on a 4-track and adding overdubs later. After bringing in a bassist (Jay Dubois) and second guitarist/trumpet player (Paul LaBrecque) to facilitate live performances, Bright released their self-titled debut in 1996. The following year they released The Albatross Guest House, which consisted of the 4-track demos recorded by Dwinell and LaBrecque during their initial sessions. And it’s pretty good! Though not as reminiscent of Pavement as that one mislabeled track had initially led me to believe, for anyone who enjoys lo-fi and/or post-rock and is looking for something they might not have heard before, Bright may well scratch that itch.
As always, any and all music-related posts are welcome. Have fun, and rock out with yr guac out!