Don't laugh, I got this for free.
Serendipity label mogul Brian Sinclair had booked a show at the old Municipal Cafeteria in Hartford (which is no longer there-- I think it's a Subway now, or something), and he had a whole stack of these that he was handing out. Brian gave me one when I walked through the door, and-- like a stuck-up indie snob, which the standard personality that I assume when I'm out in public-- I said, "What the frig is this? Alias! They suck!"
"Wait, the Matt Keating song is great! You'll like it!"
I'd never heard of Matt Keating. "Who the hell is Matt Keating?"
"You've never heard of Matt Keating!?!" I'd never heard of Matt Keating.
In any case, Brian was right-- the Matt Keating song is pretty great, trebly as it is. Plus it's got that clever wordplay that all really great power-pop songs should have, which is why if I was making a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time, I'd probably put "Killjoy" on there, presuming I'd even bother making such a stupid list, or even be able to remember which 100 songs are my favorites anyway.
I also ended up really liking the Knapsack song that was on the sampler, which fooled me into later buying their shitty "Day Three of My New Life" CD when I found a used promo copy in the dollar bin.
Total lifetime budget spent on Matt Keating and Knapsack records: $1, which isn't too bad when you figure I at least got two good songs out of the deal.
Matt Keating -
"Killjoy"
Knapsack -
"Decorate The Spine"
(these files are now listen-only)
9 comments:
I had to download that Knapsack song just to be sure, but yup, I didn't like one single song on that sampler.
You're surprising me, Jim-- I thought the Matt Keating song would be right up your alley (especially for 1996), plus The Loud Family is Scott Miller (ex-Game Theory), which I figure should earn old-school points with you.
Knapsack just suck, no matter what the criteria.
My Knapsack story is pretty similar to yours -- someone put a song on a mix tape circa 1996 or 1997, I thought it was swell, and bought the album ("Silver Sweepstakes"), which proceeded to suck. Thus ended my association with Knapsack.
I should re-title this post, "Knapsack Has Ruined More Lives Than Just About Any Other Band".
I still think "Decorate The Spine" is pretty good, though.
Something I forgot to mention earlier-- "Fast and Unfriendly", which is a line from the Knapsack song, was briefly on the list of candidates as the name of this blog.
Though that's actually more embarrassing than interesting, I guess.
Alias must have desperate for someone - anyone - to like Knapsack - they had Alex Newport produce one of their albums. It ended up sounding like Fudge Tunnel (surprise). I still didn't like it.
(Fudge Tunnel's only good record was the first one with the Cream and Nugent covers anyway.)
I always thought it was ironic that Alias's motto was "None of Our Bands Suck." Did I ever feel sorry for Archers of Loaf for getting stuck on such a shitty label. At least Yo La Tengo had a good friend at a record label they could bolt to.
Small (or Small 23) were one decent band that Alias had-- "True Zero Hook" was one of my favorites for a long time...
Kevin from Creature Did used to have an Alias bumper sticker on his guitar that he'd rearranged to read "Our Band Sucks".
Hey, sorry, but the mp3 files on this post are now listen-only (non-downloadable) files. You can still check them out, at least, plus if anyone else still has this Alias sampler you could probably buy it from them for 50 cents....
At least I'm not the only who got suckered into buying a Knapsack album. Actually, I may have stolen the one I had, not that it makes me feel much better about having listened to it. What happened to all those people who used to swear they were good?
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