Sunday, August 12, 2007

My New Favourite Band?


I guess I must be living in a cave somewhere up in Canada as I had never heard of this band called Grand Champeen. A guy I met in St. Paul introduced me to this Austin quartet (thanks Mike!) with by supplying me with cuts from their 2nd album, Battle Cry For Help, their 3rd, The One That Brought You and their most recent release, Dial T For This. Their sound echoes bits of early Soul Asylum (back when they still kicked ass), Superchunk, Flop and even Wilco. Since I love all those previously mentioned groups, Grand Champeen has that "sound"I really enjoy, kind of a power pop type of thing. Apparently they've been around for over ten years and it's funny how a band this great (well, my opinion anyways...) can stay under my indie rock radar for so long.

I can't gush enough about Grand Champeen, the best thing I can do is recommend you have a listen to Grand Champeen and according to my friend Mike (he saw them in Mpls) they are awesome live. I'm looking forward to hearing more, they seem to get better with each release and if anyone has some live recordings from one of their shows, please let me know!

Dial T For This (2007)
Wounded Eye
Cities On The Plain
Raul Yela

The One That Brought You (2003)
The Good Slot
Paid Vacation
Thats Never Why

Battle Cry For Help (2002)
Cottonmouth
Paper Rock Scissors

I think the songs should work now. I'm experimenting with MP3PRO which is a smaller file, but supposeably isn't as compressed sounding as a regular MP3. When I click on the song it plays on the my default MP3PRO player, but I need to know if it plays on the Windows Media or Realplayer. Someone please tell me if it works!

3 comments:

Todd Camplin said...

I must be living in a cave too, because I just heard of them as well. I will check them out, thanks.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Unfortunately, they are one of Austin's best kept secrets. As far as I know, they've worn down the I-35 trail from Austin to MLPS, but haven't branched much beyond that (other than a tour with Richmond Fontaine?). I got sick of rarely seeing them and finally just moved to Austin about 5 years ago...They're that good live.

There are/were some live shows floating around in the internet - They played an all Soul Asylum set at a benefit in MLPS, a couple of "Covers Nights" at The Parish in Austin with Lil Cap'n Travis & Moonlight Towers (2 more great Austin Bands - LTC more psych-country & MT Beatle-esque pop)...and a couple of sets from Twangfest. I might be able to dig these some of these up.

I found their 1st out of print CD on another blog: http://wilfullyobscure.blogspot.com/search?q=grand+champeen - Much more Uncle Tupelo influenced than their current stuff.

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