The end of the 80's through the mid-90's if you were like me (and I have no reason to doubt that you weren't half that awesome) you found the whole "grunge" think kind of dull. (Oh boy. more three chord angst filled punk rock ten years too late to be interesting anymore.) But we were in luck because if nothing else that time period was a bit of a heyday for jangly indie pop music. It just took a little more digging to find it sometimes.
There were also a bunch of reliable small labels that filled your needs. The kind with a certain and consistent aesthetic sense that you knew that even though you had no idea who the band was there was a high probability that you would like it based solely on the label. One such label for me was the Bus Stop Label (which seems to have been dormant since 2010). I snagged pretty much everything I came across up until the middle of the 90's when my musical focus shifted elsewhere.
Around this time I also became quite enamored of the Velvet Crush following repeated listenings to "In the Presence of Greatness". The two main members of the band, Paul Chastain & Rick Menck who have had a longstanding musical partnership in multiple projects going back to 1987. (Bag O' Shells is, I believe, the third such project preceded by the Choo-Choo Train & the Springfields.)
Unlike the Velvet Crush who focused more on the rock side of Rock/Pop, Bag O' Shells leans more to the pop, though not nearly as much on the wimp pop side as the Choo-Choo Train (who always struck me as too sensitive to ever get laid much.) It seems as time went on they just wanted to kick out a few more jams.
I only got to see them play once opening for Elastica (who I thought were pretty dull) and then the two of them as part of Matthew Sweet's backing band a few years later. They also apparently backed up the original Duran Duran bass player on a couple of records. (That's what I learned today.)
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