Two bands in my heavy rotation right now: Beat Happening and Lync. With our late autumn here, until the cold hit this morning, what better songs to celebrate the warmth than those of Beat Happening’s “Indian Summer” (and the excellent cover of this song by Spectrum, aka Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3) and Lync’s lovely album These Are Not Fall Colors, also on K Records many years ago. Plus, Calvin Johnson, indiedom’s Barry White (for the baritone, not the love songs), founder of K Records, member of Beat Happening, the Halo Benders, and Dub Narcotic Sound System, is playing in town tomorrow night with Tender Forever. Sure, some of the offerings below are a crappy 56kbps, but with music this good and already this lo-fi, who cares?
Sharing the sharing.
It worries me a bit that Angel Gone reminds me of the Crash Test Dummies of the early 90’s. Thanks for all the good tunes.
raff
They still exist?? BH was one of those bands that was barely on the East Coast radar back in the 80's. Now they show up on so many compilations, retrospectives, etc. I feel like I shoulda known more of their work back in the day. Oh well, in those days I was broke & there was no internet, not my fault!
once, long ago, I was in this groove where I would listen to nothing but beat happening. then calvin johnson came to my town and was DJing at a club. I just about peed my pants when I found out, and was consequently heart broken when the show was 21+. I would kill to see him live… daaaaang.
One more thing. The first time I heard Beat Happening was at my friends Charlie’s house. We sat on his floor and listened to the song “This Many Boyfriends Club” for about an hour straight. No joke. So good….
holy crap, what a flashback, I had a mix tape back in high school that I think I stole from a friend, that I wore out I listened to it so much, I've been tring to figure out some of the songs for years. Cross off bad seeds from the beat happenings.
That same tape started out with waiting room from fugazi , and 3/4s in the person making the tape messed up and recorded some fast old lemonheads song for about 5 seconds and then stopped it, and it went back to fugazi. Still to this day when I hear waiting room, when it gets to that point, It just sounds odd to not have the lemonhead there for a second.
ahh, good times..
I had a two-minute exchange with Johnny Temple (of GvsB, after their show) in Omaha. He needed a ride downtown to see Dub Narcotic Sound System. When I got over being star-struck, I asked “Dub who?” “Calvin who?” Mr. Temple politely advised to check him out.
Years later I finally got to see the spectacle of Calvin Johnson in Minneapolis. I about died when I saw this gangly white guy swinging his arms and bouncin’ all over the stage on his tiptoes. This? This was the guy whose voice challenges manhood, melts butter, ice-cream and all the DIY girls I’ve ever met? I loved him even more. And the Sound System was good enough to touch a fan twice.
Great post. Thanks!
I have this compilation cassette of SubPop music called The Grunge Years…some of it sucked like L7, but there was this one song that stuck in my head for the 10 years I’ve had the cassette…it was red head walking by beat happening.
Now I realize they have made more than one song and I can enjoy them all.
thanks- C.A.