Into the Buzz Bin With Veruca Salt
Nina Gordon first heard Louise Post sing and play guitar over the phone, from one Chicago New Year’s Eve party to another. Post was playing for guests at her house; a friend of Gordon’s called her and held the phone out to let Gordon hear. When the pair finally got together in person, “I felt like I’d met my mirror,” says Post. “We both immediately thought that we wanted to take this very seriously right then.” That was almost two years ago.
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They woodshedded for a year, working their way through to a crisp, dynamic pop rock. “We didn’t want to get a band together until we’d decided what we wanted to do,” explains Gordon. The result, named for the spoiled rich girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory who goes down the bad-egg chute, boasts a potent and dramatic two-girl vocal ‘n’ guitars assault and some rapidly evolving songwriting. All they’ve done is record a four-song demo and play a handful of gigs, but they’ve already managed to get themselves buzzed all over town and in New York and LA as well. And they’ve quickly found themselves in the middle of a cordial but tense battle over who will get the right to record them.
Itching to play out after their long months of practice, the band began doing shows last summer. Minty Fresh Records’ Jim Powers heard their tape and booked them in the music festival accompanying Around the Coyote. Powers, a onetime A and R rep for both RCA and Zoo Records, has thus far used his label as a vehicle for seven-inchers by local artists like Stump the Host (now Dolly Varden) and Liz Phair. But he approached Veruca Salt with a plan to record them for the label’s first full album.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Philin Phlash.
