Swinging Singles Club MN

  One of the things I've been doing this winter and as part of my recuperation has been stress buying lots and lots of Minnesota based records and Cds. Like ridiculous amounts of things because I can still find them and they're still cheap for the most part. And this is on top of the backlog of other vinyl I've purchased in the last six months and haven't digitized yet which in itself stands between me and processing the existing collection that's been just sitting there forever. So as it stands there's a huge pile of newly acquired seven inch records piling up in front of the unlistened to 12" that have been there since late Fall. No wonder I'm so unmotivated. It gets a bit overwhelming looking at the work ahead. Plus regular flavor Swinging Singles is queued up for like six months ahead with gigabytes of post ready stuff in the folder that could keep it going for a couple years already without needing to add anything new. So anyway. Here's Balloon...

  I'm feeling particularly unmotivated as of late. It's midwinter. It's cold. It's dark. I work nights and seldom see daylight. I'm back to work post-COVID. Everything just seems to require more actual effort than I feel personally up to currently expending. But here I am anyway. Lucky you.   1995 - Soundbull I know without going and actually searching it out because I'm lazy and unmotivated that the Balloon Guy singles were among the first things I posted on the original flavor Swinging Singles Club and invite you to hunt them down for yourself. It was six years ago. December. Anyway. Here's their first foray into the digital compact disc realm and one of those nebulous objects that falls somewhere in between the concept of an elongated play and a full length album. It's seven songs and the final independently released artifact. More buzzy quirk full of dead ends and lyrical mysteries. "I am Punch" is my pick. They were simply too pretty for ...

  I'm hungry. There's a bunch of shredded BBQ chicken in the fridge that I plan on turning to BBQ chicken enchiladas later. But I might just make a sandwich for now...     1997 - The Squealer Presents...Shuffle This The Squealer was a short-lived local free rag. Couldn't have survived for more than a few years. But it did release this much better than you could expect document of the Twin Cities music scene circa 1997. You got original MN punk rocker heroes, Suicide Commandos, Hip Hop, Jazz (Bill Lang was the house sax player at the bar I used to work at), Shoegaze, Rockabilly, Comedy, Folk, Rock, Pop and all sorts of stuff in between like Own who were a trio with electric cello & violin and a drummer. (the cello player was part of the quartet that played for Sunday Brunches at the original Loring Cafe) There's also a few scattered more notable names among the proceedings. The late Grant Hart's Nova Mob, Soul Asylum and Perfect, which was a post-Replacements ban...

  I got nothing.     1996 - Drop The actual debut album by Colfax Abbey . This is the dreamy shoegaze pop you're tender heart desires. The band existed for only a couple of very short years and only put out these two discs and a single (still currently on the wantlist) The band is linked on the internet as being part of a disastrous 1997 tour with Brian Jonestown Massacre . I'm reasonably sure that was the second BJM show I saw at the 400 Bar which was a tense one with some onstage fighting and the tambourine player storming offstage. Which means I likely saw Colfax Abbey that night as well. I just don't really have a memory of it nearly a quarter of a century later. So it goes.

  So it's been a few weeks since last I tossed a bunch of crap in the queue. It's easier, I suppose, with this particular specialized blog since there's a more limited pool to draw from and I'm only about a month ahead of myself as far as throwing posts together. Regular flavor is Swinging Singles Club is still queued up months and months ahead which kind of takes some of the urgency out of digitizing things. Not that I've really felt the urge lately. Late winter doldrums. However I have been pretty obsessively buying up as much local Twin Cities music as I can find which is a pretty impressive amount of stuff for a midsize Midwestern area. There's like three dozen NOS singles I just ordered about ten minutes ago. But time is running out to find a lot of it before it's swallowed by the mists of time. Pick it up now while it's cheap and available or regret it later. It's just how I'm coping with being cooped up for a year and getting sick. But any...

  Nevermind. I fixed it before you even noticed. 1997 - Tomorrow is Today So a while back I had to fly to Central fucking Florida to help with cleaning up my late mother's estate.  If I never have to go back to fucking Florida ever again I will not miss it. Not my kind of place.  Plus I went to like half a dozen record stores throughout like a 30 mile radius (because nothing is ever close) and only found one that was worth a shit, Tonevendor in St. Augustine. All of which is a roundabout way to get to this. I'm browsing through the stacks as one does and perusing the selections up on the wall where the good stuff and big ticket items are usually displayed and to my surprise I see that  this obscure Minneapolis shoegaze album by February reissued as a two lp set on vinyl. (if you are so inclined to vinyl Saint Marie Records put it out in 2016. It was initially released solely on compact disc)  This is a great fucking album. It expands on the previous effort wi...

  Blah Blah Blah. Hungry and there are pork chops to be had in the other room     1996 - Even the Night Can't Tell You From a Star February . Ethereal Dreampop/ Shoegaze There was apparently in an alternate music scene in the Twin Cities from the one I frequented throughout the middle '90s that was all about the shoegaze. I was miles away from this, but appreciate it now in hindsight. I don't think I ever came across February in the wild. I would have hated it then anyway, pretentious twat I was at the time. (Still a twat, just less pretentious about it) But it's some very sweet female fronted stuff that would probably go well with some X. (Check the pockets of that jacket you haven't worn in like 25 years.)  "That Girl" is the hit, but I'm like that.  And just to date it, the final and title track is one of those things where the song itself happens and then there's like a four minute gap and then the "hidden track" happens. In this case...