You Only Fix The Things That Need To Be Broke

Nevertheless were one of the Connecticut bands that I started this blog for, so I guess it make sense that it took me five years to get around to posting this stuff. Nevertheless were from the Waterbury area and existed roughly from '88-'97 or thereabouts -- I'm not exactly sure, and Damien moved to Brooklyn at least a dozen years ago so he's not around for me to ask. They made a handful of demos, released a handful of cassettes, broke up around '93 for a year and then got back together (with a different bassplayer) a year later, making one more demo which wasn't nearly as good as their earlier stuff, before breaking up for good after that. In the meantime, they moved into a townhouse on Meadow St in Waterbury-- right next to Brass City Records-- and started hosting shows in their living room as "Local 491", before the landlord kicked them out for allowing Canadians to use the bathroom. (That's a joke, grow the fuck up) I saw a bunch of bands there myself, including Chixdiggit, Farmertan, the Differents, Explodee, Farewood, Static Press 19, and I forget who else... the Chixdiggit show was mic'ed up for broadcast on the Trinity College radio station, and I still have the tape of it, which I might get around to posting eventually (it's pretty good) although probably not, judging by the way things go around here.

In any case, despite their on-again/off-again status, Nevertheless still left a measurable scar on the '90s Connecticut indie rock scene, not only as a band but also with the venue (Local 491) that they started, which was literally the first time I'd ever been to a punk show that was held at someone's house (Al Pist's old place on Wolcott St, "Panic House", was the second). After doing a music blog for five years, I've figured out along the way that the audience for this type of stuff is sorta limited-- local band, cassette-only releases, never really toured (as far as I know)-- but you can do me a favor once and check these songs out anyway, because they're all pretty good and would fit in well alongside "While You Were Out"/"Hang Time"-era Soul Asylum and "Let It Be"/"Pleased To Meet Me" Replacements. "There You Are" and "Hell Toupee" are my own tape rips, while "Braille" (from their "Out of The Nowhere" cassette, recorded at Trod Nossel and released in '93) and "Turnip Truck" are tape rips that Walt at Brass City Records made onto a full-length Nevertheless anthology CD-R many many years ago. (Let the record show that Nevertheless made one appearance on vinyl, which was the split single with Explodee that I pressed up in '96, and still downloadable elsewhere on this blog if you're willing to look.)

As for post-Nevertheless activity which you'd probably care even less about: frontman Damien Pratt released an amazingly great solo CD in 1998, "From The Tapes of Lenny Bruce"-- which was even better than any of his Nevertheless stuff-- and then moved to Brooklyn where he started The Squeaky Fromme with Nina Kyle (from Bad Dream House and Creature Did). I have a couple of Squeaky Fromme CDs and they're pretty good also, including a 3" CD single of "Lighthouse" which I'm pretty sure Damien released partly as a joke because even by then there were hardly any spindle-type CD players left to play it on.

All of these old scans and photos are from the Nevertheless interview that ran in the fifth issue of Brushback, which I managed to sell twenty copies of. Anyway, here's pretty much the best '90s Connecticut indie rock band that still no one outside of this blog has ever heard of. Dig in.


The Nevertheless -

"Braille"

"There You Are"

"Hell Toupee"

"Turnip Truck"

It Turns Out That I've Been A Jerk Forever

Here's my one lasting contribution to the 90's Connecticut indie rock scene: the Explodee/Nevertheless split 7", which came with the 5th issue of Brushback. And when I say "lasting" I mean only that I still have some copies laying around, and not "lasting" in the sense of any indelible impression this record might've made... although, to this day, I still think this record's pretty good. If nothing else, it served as a useful calling card for the style of music I most wanted Brushback to represent, that being big fuzzy indie rock with hooks.

Originally this was going to be a split between two Waterbury bands, Nevertheless and Farmertan, with the sleeve being a nod to the Hüsker Dü/Replacements rivalry-- the "New Day Rising" sunset with Farmertan written in Hüsker Dü-type lettering on one side, and Nevertheless sitting on an apartment roof, "Let It Be" style, on the other. I'd even driven around Waterbury a bunch of times, looking for the right type of roof to use for the Nevertheless photo. Farmertan took too long getting their song recorded, though, so that idea had to be scrapped. Luckily, Greg Vegas stepped forward and let me use a song from a new band of his that was just getting started, Explodee, which was fine by me because Monsterland were easily one of my favorite Connecticut bands of all time.

Explodee were a sort-of mini-supergroup, comprised of Greg Vegas (Monsterland), Bill Knapp (76% Uncertain and a bunch of other bands, now of Singing Bridges and Skipping Stones Records), and Joey Maddalena (Names For Pebbles, now of Crooked Hook and Mountain Movers). They had a home-recorded demo which they eventually figured on replacing with a better recording, so they weren't really handing it out to anybody, just using it to get shows and so forth. Greg didn't even have an extra copy of the demo to lend me; I picked which song I was going to use by sitting in his car and listening to the demo on the tape deck, and though all of the songs were good, "Novelty" fairly charged out of the speakers. Bill Knapp's drum track sounded so good that I even decided to use an extra mastering step (going to Metropolis Mastering in Chicago) in order to retain as much fidelity as possible at the pressing stage, but in the end I don't think the drums sound as good on the record as they did on the demo tape.

Nevertheless, on the other hand, had been around for a while, had broken up, and then re-formed with a slightly different lineup. The new demo they'd recorded (with Mike Deming at the semi-legendary Studio .45 in Hartford) wasn't nearly as awesome as any of the demos they'd recorded with the original line-up-- most of which I still have, by the way-- but it was still pretty good, in any case. I think it was my idea to add Brian Sinclair's phone messsage to the beginning of the song, since it wasn't on the original demo. I also took the artwork that Nevertheless gave me for the sleeve and insert and chopped it up to my own liking, though the Explodee design and insert are just as Greg had given them to me.

375 copies were pressed, but only a couple hundred saw the light of day, as the rest were ruined in a shoddy basement somewhere. I had the bright idea to use Brooklyn Dodgers baseball players as catalog numbers, so this one is numbered "Carl Furillo"; I think the next one, a pink vinyl repress of the Grand Passion single, was numbered "Erskine", or maybe "Erskine" was going to be the M.O.T.O. EP which was never finished. The "Sub Pop band passing through" on Brian Sinclair's voice message was Chixdiggit, who ended up playing a basement show at the townhouse that Damien Pratt and some of the other guys in Nevertheless had at 491 Meadow St. in Waterbury ("Local 491"). The runout groove inscriptions are actually a jab at Chixdiggit, for being Canadian; I've never been one to pass up an obscure reference for the sake of a lousy joke, obviously.

Most likely anyone who hears this record now will be one of the first people (besides myself) to have listened to this record over the last 12-13 years or so, so by all means download this to your computer and play the shit out of it, just to make me feel better.




Explodee -

"Novelty"

Nevertheless -

"The Priesthood"