It must have been very cool living in Massachusetts in the 80's and early 90's with so many great bands coming from the Boston area. Much like the scene in Minneapolis around this time, many key and influential bands emerged from Mass that have dominated my play lists and record (CD) collection. Many TDIT favs are from in and around the Boston area, The Pixies, Jonathan Richman, Dinosaur Jr, Buffalo Tom, Blake Babies (Juliana Hatfield), the Lemonheads, Scruffy The Cat, Belly, the Dogmatics, and the Breeders are just a small sample. The Volcano Suns are a band that included members and past members that were a part of other well known Boston-area bands. Founding member (and the only constant member), Peter Prescott was a member of Mission Of Burma before he formed the Volcano Suns in 1984 with Gary Waleik and Steve Michener who left the band before the first album to form Big Dipper. Michener also was in Dumptruck. The Volcano Suns went on to record six albums and the best way I can describe their sound is noisy, often compared to Husker Du and possibly Mudhoney. I have their first two albums on vinyl and their next two on cassette, and their finest moment in my opinion is their debut, The Bright Orange Years.
The Bright Orange Years sounds like a band jamming in their basement or garage, but shining through the noise is a tuneful melody that is fast, furious and a wonderful mess of audacious fun. I love this record, it's loaded with lots of really good songs that grab you and take hold more than the imitative crap available today. All the bands mentioned above that have a connection to the Volcano Suns are also in my own collection of music and in the case of Dumptruck, I recently bought the reissues of the first 3 albums on CD even though I have them on vinyl and cassette already (hmmm...possibly another post idea!). I highly recommend them as well as the Big Dipper 3-disc anthology, Supercluster which includes their first EP and first two full length albums along with demos, outtakes and unreleased songs. Anyways, these bands are more proof Boston is much more significant than just Aerosmith, Boston and the Cars.
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Buy it here: mergerecords.com/store
1 comment:
Yeah thanks for saving me the dispair of only ripping from a taped cassette copy off by buddies stereo. This is killer and don't forget the Prime Movers or the Flies from Boston that I have up at the blog I contribute to. I have a double lp on SST that I bought not long ago by the Suns and I am itchin' for rippin' that one. YEah I have the Dumptruck records anticipating a rip too. Talk at ya later and I just found yer blog so I'll have to check it out.
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