Swinging Singles Club MN

 Blah Blah Landing Gear (2000) Following the break up of Shatterproof. Jay Hurley next appears in this band. It's only five songs, but I want to get things in the queue. It stands on its own.

 I almost forgot that I'd set this one aside for tonight. Touched (2000) Tulip Sweet and her Trail of Tears. I can't think of a better thing to post for the day after Valentine's day. Trust me on this. You'll just have to listen. There's allegedly a second disc, but I've never seen it. I want it bad.

  Weird stuff happens.  Loaded (2000) The sophomore effort by Ten Ton Bridge. It's more of the same. Stripped down pop rock. The kind where there's only like an overdrive on the pedalboard and maybe a judiciously used chorus. A bit bolder and brasher, perhaps. (I mean, they used the same name as a Velvet Underground classic lp. That takes some balls.) I'm also listening to these as I type just to remind myself about them and because I genuinely really enjoy these albums. While I was doing this I found out that what I'd originally had in the file folder as this album was actually the first one all over again and tagged wrong and has been for over two years. So if nothing else, that's fixed and I get to be reintroduced to this one.

 I need a drink. I'll be right back.... ... .... ... ... .. ... Ok, where were we. Twin Town Music Yearbook Vol. 3 (2000) Tracklist at Discogs This one is an embarrassment of riches. The Twin Cities scene was on fire around this time but all self contained and nobody outside of the area paid it any attention. Where to start on this one... You got a 12 Rods track. One by All the Pretty Horses. The Grotto song that got me to track down their disc. Other various bands that I've posted or will But for me the absolute highlight of this disc and perhaps the whole fucking series is Kruddler doing a version of Ricky Martin's "Living La Vida Loca" and just burning the whole thing to the ground. If you check nothing else out, this is the one thing. Great version. Great band. Good people. With a special mention for the Mammy Nuns because Rob Rule is an awesome human who ran the board at the Turf and playing a Tuesday night there with him and the Mammy Nuns was always a good ...

  Between both blogs I've set ten posts into the queue with it set to go out over the next couple of weeks until I'm off again and look to see if anybody's paying attention. But I'm really kind of done with doing this after several hours. I want to do other stuff for a while. But I did want to throw one more into the pot just because. It just took an extra minute to find the right one off release so I wouldn't feel like I had to keep going to queue up an entire discography. I'm committed but essentially kind of lazy at the same time.   Halfway Around the World (2000) I guess, I didn't scan this one myself. No matter. This is another sort of mystery band. They existed in an alternate musical world than the one I was in at the time this came out. I'm not sure I'd have liked it then. I'm not sure if I like it now. It's some soulful pop rock that runs a weird gauntlet between the kind of indiepop that I really do like an the sort of MOR/Cities 97...

 I miscounted somewhere along the line. Charm City (2000) The Selby Tigers. They came together from other bands and were a big deal for a few years because they got some attention outside the Twin Cities. They hailed from St Paul which had its own scene thing going on for a while. Which is nice since the downtown pretty much shuts down completely into a ghost town around 5pm on weekdays. These folks made a nice punk rock racket with girl/boy vocals and tight constructions. Not exactly stretching the boundaries of things you've never heard before, but it's some nice foot tapping kind of stuff. Probably goes nice with all the fucking pumpkin spice shit we're being inundated with if that's the kind of crap you're into. I'm not personally. But you do you. I just like the music.

  At the beginning of this century there was a number of Twin Cities bands that were as much about dressing up and being as tongue in cheek as they were about music. I had arguments with bandmates at the time because I wanted to concentrate on playing music, not dressing up in campy matching outfits. It got very contentious. (My compromise was that I'd always appear onstage as if I were meeting their parents for the first time.) Overall it was a very silly time in a very silly place. Here's one of those other bands. Pop It In (2000) Fizzy Lifter. They sound like the name. Kind of silly. Sweet. A little bit of funk, a little pop. Something you could have slipped into a party playlist way back in the day. I mean, you could probably still do it, I'm sure it counts as retro... The Cd also has a really silly video of the band which I'd found on Youtube a while back, but since their search engine is complete fucking garbage and can't find stuff even if you were punch in t...

  Getting towards the end of the year. Fuck 2020.    It's hard to underestimate the strange but deep underground influence that Alex Cox's 1984 debut film " Repo Man " had on a certain segment of the youth who saw the movie. It was very punk rock movie and absolutely hilarious and quotable and a lot of us have seen it multiple times and can ramble off half the movie's dialog at the drop of a hat. It's a cultural touchstone. You should watch it if you haven't already seen it thirty times. One scene in particular seems to have struck a nerve and inspired a plethora of bands to name themselves Plate O' Shrimp.   It seems that every city had one. In Boston that band was a ska band.  But in Minneapolis, that band was a bunch of stand up guys who made a punk rock racket and drank lots of beer.     2000 Shrimp on the Barbie I'm not going to pretend that it will change your life, but it won't ruin your day. You'll probably start singing along with ...

 More of the same. More of the same quality. 2000 - Return of the Unicorn Yeah, more heartbreak and minor chords and words and the second release in the inaugural year of the 21st Century. "This bag of weed is making me fat and lazy...." starts "Daddy Looks Dead in his Lawn Chair". Could be the theme song for 2020...

  The cat is hungry and is doing the sitting on the table beside the desk and staring, but not staring at me thing.  I also kind of want another cup of coffee. Maybe I just type less.   2000 -  Dance 'til your Baby is a Man   The album kicks off with the song "Unicorns" which is a sad tale of sexual dysfunction. (Remember the "Mezcal" single cover?)    The whole thing is otherwise all minor chords and sad tales of longing and sexual frustration.  I feel like I've lived a lot of this album. It ends with a song called "Little Leaning Tower" which bookends things. (though locally Leaning Tower is also the name of a pizza place in South Minneapolis which has a small bar that lots of people misspent their time at.) But I especially like the slow ballad "Cha Cha Cha" on this one. "... It's time to wow the two  giggly girls you've seen in your classes One is named Kitten. And one has cat's glasses..."

  I'm lumping them onto one post because I can and they're all from about the same time.     1999 - Sean Na Na/Lucky Jeremy A nice split with Lucky Jeremy (aka Jeremy Allen) who wrote "My Old France" which Sean Na-Na closed out the split with Mary Lou Lord with. He also played keys in Sean na na. So there's that too.   1999 - Mezcal More bittersweet pop songs pressed onto seven inches of black vinyl. The cover has unicorns on it. That's some symbolism. 2000 - Sean Tillman is a Fucking Star Here's a little bonus. It's a rare solo bit by Sean Tillman as himself. Lo-fi piano based for the A-side. B-side is an acapella rendition of a Boyz II Men tune . Consider yourself warned. But which could be the first inkling of his forthcoming R&B ambitions that would become Har Mar Superstar.  

 Continuing with 12 Rods.... So between the first album and the second they lost their drummer and filled in the meantime with a drum machine which lead to this live performance for a Duluth TV station. Sometime after they picked up Dave King to fill the drum throne.  Good choice. That leads us to V2 for some reason eating up their advance money to send them to Hawaii to work with Todd Rundgren to record the follow up. Separation Anxieties (2000) Pitchfork fucking hated it.   12 Rods hated making it.   “All he would do was press the ‘record’ button and go back to doing crossword puzzles,” said Ev Olcott, who, like his brother, wound up producing records for other bands. “Some of those song...

  Hold on a sec while pour myself some Irish whiskey... Fiestas + Fiascos (2000) There that's better. Typing is always easier with a bit of whiskey warming the throat and loosening the brainpan. This was the thing that first caught my ear. "Space Humping $19.99" got played a lot on the local college AM radio station. Next thing you know you're walking down the street with the line "Woke up in the grass with the assless chaps..." is running on a loop in your brain. This was the proverbial nail in the Lifter Puller coffin. Short and sweet and full on tales of the usual suspects among the seedy characters and urban drug induced shenanigans that drifts through their entire catalog. Slips Backwards (1995) Second single with different versions of songs that would eventually appear on the first two discs (self titled and "Half Dead and Dynamite") that didn't get on "Soft Rock" I think I may prefer this version of "Nassau Colliseum"...