― brooke, Saturday, 22 November 2003 02:37 (twenty years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 22 November 2003 03:02 (twenty years ago) link
― Chris B. Sure (Chris V), Saturday, 22 November 2003 03:07 (twenty years ago) link
― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Saturday, 22 November 2003 03:28 (twenty years ago) link
Oh, there's far worse bands out there. I saw Duster and Hovercraft play an in-store in the mid 90s and they were pleasant enough.
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Saturday, 22 November 2003 09:56 (twenty years ago) link
― the surface noise (electricsound), Saturday, 22 November 2003 10:00 (twenty years ago) link
How 'bout Creation era Telescopes....amazing.
― cs appleby (cs appleby), Sunday, 23 November 2003 10:08 (twenty years ago) link
― cs appleby (cs appleby), Sunday, 23 November 2003 22:54 (twenty years ago) link
― cs appleby (cs appleby), Sunday, 23 November 2003 22:57 (twenty years ago) link
Is there a decent book or article out there that gets into how shoegaze came about, where it came from, etc.? Or do I just have to prepare a list of questions for Ned to answer?
― scott pgwp (pgwp), Thursday, 14 October 2010 04:30 (thirteen years ago) link
HI THERE
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 14 October 2010 04:37 (thirteen years ago) link
Something like Blissed Out gives a sense of some of the rhetorical claims at the time, but only from one person, after all. Even so, Simon Reynolds did help codify a lot of the language used to discuss it so you can't quite escape him on that front.
A larger perspective would have to go into a lot more -- that MBV in 1988 were synthesizing everything from Sonic Youth to Public Enemy to the Beach Boys to etc. etc. gives a sense of it, but at the same time it's not like they were the only band interested in those performers, and they certainly did not set out to go 'oh yeah let's create a genre called shoegaze,' any more than Bauhaus formed by thinking, "So, let's create goth." You'd have to also include other contemporary bands seen as allies or fellow travellers or what have you.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 14 October 2010 04:42 (thirteen years ago) link
David Cavanagh's My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize talks about Creation more than shoegaze-as-such but there's a huge overlap by default. Mike McGonigal's 33 1/3 entry on Loveless goes into MBV's history. Again, too limited by half in terms of a truly encompassing study but still...
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 14 October 2010 04:44 (thirteen years ago) link
I know you asked about books but I want to recommend a lost shoegaze classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GJ9IhY6BpE
― doo doo frown :( (Stevie D), Thursday, 14 October 2010 04:50 (thirteen years ago) link
Ah, good starting points. Thanks Ned. I didn't know there was a Creation book.
― scott pgwp (pgwp), Thursday, 14 October 2010 05:04 (thirteen years ago) link
Oh yeah, read that one immediately -- Alan McGee hated it, calling it the 'accountant's story' or something similar, but he is so ridiculously wrong (and also is completely trying to hide any take on his former label that can't be summed up as 'yeah I was this wild and crazy RAWK guy trashing the man every chance I get!' -- I mean god bless the guy for doing what he did at all, obv., but he's long been caught up in his own mythmaking).
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 14 October 2010 05:06 (thirteen years ago) link
I will!
The reason I'm even thinking about it is I started thinking about the aesthetic of obscured or effaced vocals. It didn't exactly start with shoegaze (and definitely didn't end with it) but that seems to be the genre that really embraced it. I've been going through my collection thinking about the antecedents to the style.
― scott pgwp (pgwp), Thursday, 14 October 2010 05:11 (thirteen years ago) link
the aesthetic of obscured or effaced vocals
FYI this is a totally different subject than shoegaze!
Kinda like saying, "Is there an article about how shoegaze came about? I started thinking about the aesthetic of distorted, woozy guitar sounds..."
― more than ever convinced ilxor is a sock (ilxor), Thursday, 14 October 2010 05:35 (thirteen years ago) link
Which would be another perfectly apropos line of inquiry. But pgwp's topic seems like the more interesting one.
― Waldstein Sinatra (Paul in Santa Cruz), Thursday, 14 October 2010 05:43 (thirteen years ago) link
Yeah I recognize it's a bigger subject than shoegaze and thought I said as much. There are lots of avenues to go down and shoegaze is definitely one of them.
― scott pgwp (pgwp), Thursday, 14 October 2010 05:54 (thirteen years ago) link
the just-reissued ashrae fax 'static crash' ep has some pretty special moments
― electricsound, Monday, 1 July 2013 06:57 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyXicOwLriI
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 23 June 2017 23:29 (six years ago) link
Really looking forward to this, as are the other 5 or 6 of you that bought the Still In A Dream box set!
https://thirdmanrecords.com/news/third-man-records-announces-southeast-of-saturn
― henry s, Saturday, 12 September 2020 22:31 (three years ago) link
https://third-man-records.imgix.net/d7eb161a-9098-4296-ad82-0a29e344dae3/unnamed.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&q=80&rect=0%2C0%2C1200%2C1137
― henry s, Saturday, 12 September 2020 22:32 (three years ago) link
This looks really cool, thanks!
― Maresn3st, Sunday, 13 September 2020 14:56 (three years ago) link
Here's one, a bonus Teenage Filmstars track. Hits the spot!! Amazing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec9RQrUAOYU
― Evan, Thursday, 10 February 2022 22:38 (two years ago) link
Just been listening to All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors (of whom three members guest on the incredible Dalek track Forever Close My Eyes) - Turning Into Small is a lovely album!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG4u0LR8nzo
― imago, Thursday, 10 February 2022 23:15 (two years ago) link
I love that album and the band comes from a very middle of nowhere wooded town in a part of north New Jersey that you would only expect to hear dueling banjos. I was so flabbergasted that a top tier shoegaze band of all things came from there. I grew up a town away.
― Evan, Friday, 11 February 2022 01:35 (two years ago) link
I love that band, & I had no idea they were from rural north New Jersey. That endears them to me even more, having grown up in Warren Co.
― feed me with your chips (zchyrs), Friday, 11 February 2022 14:14 (two years ago) link
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ce/09/bd/ce09bddec81ad6e0540aa1c59eda5090.jpg
[faint sounds of shoegaze in the distance]
― Evan, Friday, 11 February 2022 14:42 (two years ago) link
aw <3
― imago, Friday, 11 February 2022 14:45 (two years ago) link
Not 100% gaze, but very much classic and perhaps a little overlooked -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA1qeKFQMIg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOOxUz7sXBY
― Maresn3st, Friday, 11 February 2022 14:54 (two years ago) link
Love Straightjacket Fits! What was the 2nd one supposed to be?
Maresn3st have you heard that Teenage Filmstars track I posted? Scratches an early Lilys / Drop Nineteens / Swervedriver itch for me.
― Evan, Friday, 11 February 2022 16:14 (two years ago) link
Yea!!! Love it, I got kinda Swirlies top notes from it too
― Maresn3st, Friday, 11 February 2022 16:18 (two years ago) link
The second YT? It's just another SF tune, Down in Splendour, Andrew Brough was def the gaze end of the band.
― Maresn3st, Friday, 11 February 2022 16:19 (two years ago) link
Ah OK cool; it's broken on my end.
Yeah definitely Swirlies too but they were always so focused, and to me this track has that zoned out feeling the bands I cited had the tendency to do, where it sounds like they're lost in the bliss of the chord changes and aren't guaranteed to snap out of it.
― Evan, Friday, 11 February 2022 16:28 (two years ago) link
don't know their catalog well enough to know if they pulled out more like this one, but...
outrageous cherry, "if someone loves you"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32hDKDkSLOw
― andrew m., Friday, 11 February 2022 17:34 (two years ago) link
It's been awhile since I listened to anything else by them but I LOVE that album in particular
― Evan, Friday, 11 February 2022 18:05 (two years ago) link
always loved the first smashing orange album. it is very derivative but all the same, it fucking rocks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNOeXDHDaU
― o shit the sheriff (NickB), Friday, 11 February 2022 21:50 (two years ago) link
Me too. Someone taped stuck a few of their songs on the end of bootleg tape of a Ride concert for me in the summer of 91. I then spent a few hopeless months going into record shops trying to find anything by them and repeatedly being asked "Don't you mean Smashing Pumpkins?" until I gave up. I eventually found an album of theirs in 1993 which had at least one of the tracks from that tape on it (Not Very Much To See), but mysteriously had a very different version of My Deranged Heart on it. Another year passed and then I finally tracked down another album that had the 'proper' version on it. I don't actually know which of those albums came out first and I assume the group had split up long before I actually finally managed to buy them.
― Nasty, Brutish & Short, Friday, 11 February 2022 21:58 (two years ago) link
(A quick visit to discogs later) Weirdly it seems that both the albums I bought were released in 1991, but that the four songs originally taped for me were the A-sides and B-sides of two singles also released in 1991 (that also featured on the albums).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeSvPNFe6bg
― Nasty, Brutish & Short, Friday, 11 February 2022 22:05 (two years ago) link
john peel used to play 'my deranged heart' and 'only complete in you'. they did actually survive until 1995-ish, they got signed to MCA in the big clamour for alt-rock bands and put out one last album that totally stiffed afaict. all their stuff is supercheap on the cogs now
― o shit the sheriff (NickB), Friday, 11 February 2022 22:07 (two years ago) link
Love Smashing Orange! Everybody is pointing out my favorite bands this is great
― Evan, Saturday, 12 February 2022 15:52 (two years ago) link
This feels like something Ned would like?
Anyway, this was circulated for years on blogs but I recently stumbled on this OFFICIAL download complete with the cassette artwork and this was exciting for me.
FREE DOWNLOAD, too!
https://washperth.bandcamp.com/album/wash
― Evan, Monday, 16 January 2023 15:11 (one year ago) link
Huh, wonder what their deal was.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 16 January 2023 17:04 (one year ago) link
Obviously I don't have much info, but I heard they once opened for Swervedriver (in Australia where they're from). I do wonder why they didn't happen...
― Evan, Monday, 16 January 2023 17:16 (one year ago) link
This tape is great though. Glad it exists. More people need to hear it.
― Evan, Monday, 16 January 2023 17:19 (one year ago) link
Bumping because: see above post
Also I crave engagement (needy as usual) and am currently hopped up on music discoveries
― Evan, Tuesday, 17 January 2023 14:43 (one year ago) link
Like this incredible one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjIzmQ1BGYM
― Evan, Tuesday, 17 January 2023 15:28 (one year ago) link
This one kind of a Lorelei mixed with early Lilys, early Swirlies & early Polvo sound! Winner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uoCdmGIouw
― Evan, Tuesday, 17 January 2023 17:08 (one year ago) link