Return of the Nugget of the Every So Often - White Sisters

Jangle-pop from Madison, Wisconsin

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I freely admit that this is not anything I found via my own research - it's straight from the Captured Tracks Strum and Thrum compilation. I just wanted to post it to see if anyone else besides me thinks it sounds a heck of a lot more like Aztec Camera than R.E.M. or any other band in the American jangle underground.

Anyhow, Jeffrey Borchardt of the White Sisters went on to be in Velvet Crush.

I think only one band from Strum and Thrum made it into the Nuggets of the Day series way back in the olden times before I quit doing it as repentance for summoning Daswell the Mining Spambot into our midst, and that would be Great Plains. Just goes to show how much great stuff is still lingering out there underdiscovered.

Went to see who else was on this comp, and I get: "The mid-1980s are generally perceived as bleak, barren years for the American underground." "Generally perceived "? By who? Er, this was the heyday of the mighty SST Records catalog, the Paisley Underground, Beat Happening and the K Records crew, Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers and other Homestead acts like Big Black, Slash Records was still hittin it with the likes of the Violent Femmes and The Gun Club... and weren't there some fellers from Athens GA that were pretty good in the '80s? Perhaps they need to explain what they mean by "underground."

ANYWAY. Sorry to derail your thread, Brad, i love your Nuggets. Keep your miners helmet on and digging them up.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2021 05:07AM by MrFab.

Yeah, those liner notes are weird. I'd been under the impression that the mid-80s were actually considered to be a golden age for American underground music, for the reasons you stated above. Gina Arnold and Michael Azerrad would be pretty shocked by that statement, also, given that they both wrote very well-regarded books covering that reasonably beloved time frame (Route 666 and Our Band Could Be Your Life.) But I've learned that there's no point getting in between a music scribe and their pet thesis with pesky things like facts when they have a point to make. Hell, I've been guilty of it plenty of times myself in my limited forays in the field.

But that definitely is a SAY WHAT??? bit of business in the Strum and Thrum notes.

Who wrote the liner notes? The Bandcamp page for this compilation quotes Johan Kugelberg calling this period "the Dark Ages of indie rock."

The Pitchfork review of this comp also fingers Kugelberg as the source of that quote. The liner notes themselves are by Captured Tracks honcho Mike Sniper, and what he actually says there is "However, though some consider 1983 - 1987 to be the 'Dark Years' of American indie rock, something special was indeed bubbling up in the smaller cities and college towns throughout America." Dollars to doughnuts that the "some" Sniper refers to is this Kugelberg hoser, who is the only person I've ever heard of who holds that opinion and appears to be the only person ever quoted as saying it.

Given that he was the general manager of Matador beginning in 1990, one has to wonder if what he's really saying is "American indie rock was in deep trouble before I arrived and set things right." Whatever.

I also see online that a Johan Kugelberg was married to Maren Jensen, who played Athena on the original Battlestar Galactica and was foxy AF despite only ever having about five lines of dialogue in the entire series. I can't cipher out if it's the same Kugelberg, but respect if it is, despite his pulling his opinion of mid-80s American indie rock wholly out of his own rectum.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2021 11:09PM by breno.

Funny you mention Aztec Camera, breno. I bought that comp a while back and was listening to it in the living room one day and my wife walked through the room and looked up and said "Is that Aztec Camera?" The similarity hadn't crossed my mind, but you both damn sure nailed it.

There's a lot on there that's way more new wave-y than jangle-poppy, but it's fun stuff. Just don't bother trying to find any of the albums on Discogs, 'cuz there ain't much of it out there....