At some point we all stopped caring about the rockin’ enchilada that makes the best eating in rock ‘n’ roll–good drumming, killer guitar riffing, shimmery melodies, hooks galore. These things were all just stock-in-trade for some bands, bands like the Beatles, the Kinks, the Hollies, the Rolling Stones. There are still groups like that out there, but the music business has evolved so that we don’t hear them in the same way–sure people listen to a lot of classic rock, but the way we hear pop music has grown more sophisticated and demanding with the times. When we stopped caring is open to debate, but I think it came around 1970. Before that, if you could transfer a slice of the rock ‘n’ roll zeitgeist onto a pop tune, you could rule the world; after that, you could be, say, the Flamin Groovies, and write songs as good as the Beatles, and look forward to an unmarked grave.
The Young Fresh Fellows are at once the court jesters and kindly paters of the Seattle music scene; though somewhat overshadowed now by the mildly interesting but much less diverting Sub Pop crowd–which tends toward the monster guitar rock of Soundgarden–the Fellows and their record company, Popllama records, owned by the Fellows’ longtime producer, Conrad Uno, have produced a lot more compelling material over the years. A recent story in Rolling Stone described the Fellows as “extremely talented and extremely unfocused,” which may be true but kinda misses the point. The Fellows really honestly believe that their job is to write good songs and make good records and put on spectacular live shows. That’s what they’re focused on. That’s what they think all rock bands should do. They’re not so much subscribers to the indie ethic of indifference to major-label success as personifiers of it. The band, but McCaughey particularly I think, understands that major record companies are somewhat extraneous to what a lot of groups, including the Fellows, do. This doesn’t mean that big record companies are necessarily bad, or that the Fellows, after six or seven years of sleeping on couches, might not like success; it’s just that they never lose sight of the fact that that’s all secondary.
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Since This One’s for the Ladies, the group has been goofing off. McCaughey recorded a nice solo record, My Chartreuse Opinion, nicely timed to interfere with Ladies’s release. The Fellows put out a two-song single with Scruffy the Cat earlier this year, their contribution being “My Boyfriend Is in Killdozer,” and are planning the release of no less than six other singles in the next few months, one of them on Chicago’s own Pravda. The shows in Chicago were a one-shot; the band will probably go on tour again later in the fall.
The hanging from the ceiling incident came during the NRBQ’s “Ain’t It All Right?” This was another dumb move–the reason this was only Bloch’s first visit to Chicago with the Fellows was that during the 1989 tour he collided with Sangster and nearly fractured his arm; a few nights later the arm ended up on the bottom of an onstage pileup and was severely broken. Of course, putting Evan Johns, a hellion in his own right, onstage with the Fellows was just asking for trouble; during all of it, Johns just grinned wickedly and kept up his lightning-fast runs. It was almost frightening to watch Bloch bash away upside down–you felt sure he was going to slip and break his neck any minute. But Bloch kept up with Johns all the way, and McCaughey finally took pity on him and lifted him down. Drunken carousing in Chicago is fast becoming a Young Fresh Fellows tradition. Last year, after the Chili Peppers show at the Riviera, they ended up at Lounge Ax quite late, only to find the Insiders playing. Chasing the localites off the stage, they played dumb covers until McCaughey passed out in a heap on the floor.
