Friday, December 26, 2014

Choose Your Band Name Carefully

In the annals of bad band names for actually quite good bands, Balloon Guy has to be really high on the list.

They existed for a chunk of the mid-90's in Minneapolis, managed to get signed to Warner Brothers in the frenzy to find the next big thing that was supposed to follow grunge, squeezed out a long player and an ep onto cd and then dissolved into nothingness.


Before they left they did manage to leave a quartet of seven inches in the pre-Warner Brothers period. It was sometime around 1994 or so that I think I first encountered them. I was heading into work by Loring Park and there was a band playing in the park. I stopped to listen. I liked what I heard. I sought out the records. The rest is as they say history.


Theirs is a fuzzy tense brand of so called "indie rock" that a lazy person might point to Pavement as  sonic brethren. I'm even lazier. I won't do that. The songs are structured. The lyrics pointedly impressionistic and leave themselves open to interpretation in multiple ways. There's layers on layers here and some really nice drumming throughout holding it all together.



As it is, I'm still a bit groggy this morning and finding that squeezing descriptive phrases for music to be rather difficult right now. You'll just have to trust me on this. Try it. You may like it. 






Someday enough people may discover this small cache of goodness and prompt a reunion show or two so that they may live out their days basking in the warm glow of vindication. Until now. There's these as well as used copies of "West Coast Shakes" & "Soundbull" to be found cheap.

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