"It's Mike's turn to be in the zone! Mike, welcome to the zone... "
So, my first entry on South Bend Power Nineties. I am in the zone.
Imagine a time when you could load up the beat-up old Chevy Suburban, drive west all the way across the state of Illinois to a place called Galesburg, unload guitars, amps and drums, carry everything up a long flight of stairs into a small studio serving as a radio station at Knox College, set up and play a live set that was simultaneously being aired over the radio and recorded for posterity, then break everything down again, carry it back down to the truck, go eat dinner, then do it all over again that night, 'cept this time instead of a radio station it was a show at the campus coffeehouse with a crazy fast hardcore punk band called Haymarket (one of many). I get tired just thinking about it, but we're old now.
Well, we did it, thanks to two guys at Knox College, Trent and Cyrus, who heard our Finer Time 7" (see previous SBPN blog entry below), liked it, enough to invite us to their school to do the radio broadcast and live show. They were also nice enough to let us crash at their place before driving all the way back to South Bend the next day, and feed us excellent vegetarian cuisine. Oh, and allow moi a superfreakout nostalia session of Atari 2600 geekness: Yar's Revenge. If you're out there and reading this, thanks you guys.
"All right! ... I'm in a much better mood now... "
I think this recording accurately captures the intensity and range of emiLy at the time, the 1993-1994 version of emiLy. Joe had reached the zenith of his screaming-lyrics ways, the songs were getting longer and more complex, and we were still screwing up just enough to keep it punk.
According to Doug, regarding this recording, here's "other pertinent info gleaned from the insert: recorded in two hours on april 9, 1994 (FOURTEEN YEARS AGO?!?? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!?!?) in the WVKC studio at knox college in galesburg, il." That about sums it up.Thanks.
listen/download:
April '94--the month that Kurt Cobain died, IIRC
ReplyDeletei always thought this cassette was the shit. a lot of that had to do with the fact that there are a fair number of 'classic' emiLy songs here that never made it on to any other proper releases. "city of tomorrow... today," "trinity," "crawl/crow".... is it a shame that many of these tunes never saw studio takes, or a blessing that they will only be preserved live and raw like i remember them? this is a perfect snapshot of emiLy circa 1994. awesome.
ReplyDeleteActually, a lot of those songs did get recorded at Miami Street later on. Most just didn't get released.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
ReplyDeleteThis was the emiLy I first encountered, and which had the distinction of being the only band at Notre Dame my first year (1993-94) that really captured my attention. I just so frustrated that I couldn't understand Joe's lyrics at the time....
ReplyDeleteHas this been transfered to mp3s?
yes, as always, the link to download the mp3s (via mediafire) can be found at the end of each post.
ReplyDelete