Artist: Beat Happening
Genre(s):
Indie
Discography:
Music To Climb The Apple Tree By
Year: 2003
Tracks: 15
Dreamy
Year: 1991
Tracks: 10
Jamboree
Year: 1988
Tracks: 11
Beat Happening
Year: 1985
Tracks: 24
Beat Happening was among the truly seminal and influential American bands of the post-punk earned run average, a nonpareil of pop minimalism, rebellious whiteness, and indie defiance. The anchor of the Olympia, WA-based International Pop Underground, they adopted a posture in direct resistance to the accepted norms at the eye of rock music; ignoring all notions of dissembling, professionalism, and stardom, Beat Happening created an irregular, raw sound which democratically revolved vocal, guitar, and tympan duties between members patch jettisoning sea bass altogether. Dropping their last names to further stress their everyman approach, members Calvin (Johnson), Heather (Lewis), and Bret (Lunsford) expressed unsubdivided truths and uncomplicated emotions with simple music, favoring off-key, tuneless vocals and three-chord primitivism over slick, refined packaging; inexplicit in their put to work was likewise a rejection of major-label trappings, as the group steadfastly remained with K Records, Calvin's self-owned imprint and a poser of D.I.Y. indie success.
Stick Happening formed in the early '80s; Calvin, a longtime fixture of the Olympia setting wHO also helped found the original Sub Pop fanzine (the basis for the subsequent mark), had already founded K, to begin with a cassette-only project started to release music no other caller would touch. An graduate of the fugacious Cool Rays, Calvin teamed with Heather and motley friends in the low incarnation of Beat Happening, acting shows whenever and wheresoever they could as long as the performances were held at all-ages venues; his canyon-deep barytone quickly became as much a group hallmark as their sardonic, even juvenile songs. After Bret joined in mid-1983, Beat Happening issued their debut five-song cassette a year by and by; a rubber-necking trip to Japan followed, and while in Tokyo, the trio recorded its minute attempt, 1984's Three Tea Breakfast EP. Their 1985 eponymous uncut debut, produced by the Wipers' Greg Sage, brought Beat Happening their showtime widespread exposure, as well as a number of comparisons to the burgeoning British prim pop scene spearheaded by the Pastels. A long layoff followed prior to the discharge of 1988's remarkable Jamboree, co-produced by Mark Lanegan and Gary Lee Conner of the Screaming Trees.
The four-song juncture departure Stick Happening/Screaming Trees surfaced a few months later, trailed by 1989's Black Candy. With the release of 1991's Languorous, Beat Happening's influence on the indie community became increasingly pronounced; not exclusively did the florescence cuddle-core movement owe the tercet a vast debt, simply in the summer 1991 Calvin masterminded the International Pop Underground Festival, a now-legendary concert spotlighting over 50 bands -- among them Bikini Kill, Fugazi, Scrawl, the Fastbacks, L7, and Mecca Normal -- all aligned in their opposition to corporate music. The high-minded You Turn Me On followed, just apart from "Not a Care in the World," a rail contributed to a 1992 Sub Pop sampler given by relieve to readers of Sassy cartridge, Beat Happening played out a lot of the decennary in limbo as Calvin focussed on his Dub Narcotic Sound System project as well as the Halo Benders, a band founded with Built to Spill's Doug Martsch. Despite its absence seizure from the stage and the studio, the triad maintained that it had not disbanded, and reportedly continued practicing on a monthly ground. Ten age subsequently its last dismission, the striation became the improbable focussing of a box set, Bloody Through.
