Reunited Blake Babies revisit demo days - The Boston Globe
Reunited Blake Babies revisit demo days - The Boston Globe
It’s not a journey Hatfield is altogether comfortable taking. “I haven’t listened since we made them,” she confesses during a telephone interview covering the album’s arrival, as well as two concerts the Blake Babies will play in Boston on Saturday for small, select audiences who crowd-funded the LP’s production.

“I know I have to listen to them at some point,” she continues, laughing softly. “I haven’t. . . . I’m afraid to go back. I’m listening to the album recordings so I can re-learn the songs for the shows. But I actually have not listened to these demos that we’re promoting.”

Up until around a year ago, neither had anyone else, probably. Strohm, speaking by telephone from his home in Nashville with Love — now Love Smith — on the line in Evanston, Ill., described how the tapes had come to be.

 

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Juliana Hatfield Battles with Herself over Whether or Not to Sell a Personal Note from Kurt Cobain - The Talkhouse
Juliana Hatfield Battles with Herself over Whether or Not to Sell a Personal Note from Kurt Cobain - The Talkhouse

Juliana, writing for The Talkhouse:

I had written a song, “Nirvana,” about my big love for Nirvana’s first album, Bleach, specifically for the song “Negative Creep,” which had inspired me so much. Also, we knew a lot of the same people, including Danny Goldberg, who had signed me to Atlantic Records and who worked with Nirvana in management. After Kurt died, I gave a copy of the letter to Danny, who had it framed and hung it on his office wall.
A couple of days after the Nirvana show, my band and I met up to fly to the U.K. to start our own tour, and my drummer gave me the note. He had been hanging out in private with Kurt in New York in the days after the Roseland show and Kurt had then given the note to him to pass on to me.

The article includes an image of Kurt's note.

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John P Strohm : Here’s What It Was Like To Make Music Before the Losers Won | The Talkhouse Music
John P Strohm : Here’s What It Was Like To Make Music Before the Losers Won | The Talkhouse Music

John P Strohm writing on the early Blake Babies days at The Talkhouse:

So when I moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music in the fall of 1985, I’d had a tiny taste of success in music, and that gave me some ambition — if not for school, at least for making a band. My girlfriend Freda moved out a few months into my first year, and together we very actively pursued our goals. Freda generously gives me credit in her recent Talkhouse piece for being the one with the confidence and relative musical expertise, but as ambitious as I may have been, Freda had the bigger vision. I wanted to crack the local scene and impress the local venues; Freda wanted to be up there with our heroes — even if our heroes (such as the Replacements and the Minutemen) were probably still touring in vans and crashing with friends and parents between tours. As proof of this, I will note that our famous first meeting with Juliana Hatfield — who we approached cold in the Berklee dorms to ask her to join our non-existent band — was all Freda’s idea. And she did all the talking. Neither of us thought of ourselves as potential stars — so we needed to find one. Freda spotted Juliana just as Juliana spotted us, and there was no question in any of our minds that we should make a band.

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Video - Blake Babies - Rain (Live 1988)
Video - Blake Babies - Rain (Live 1988)
Blake Babies "Rain (live)" Nightstage; Cambridge, MA 1988

How does that Bob Dylan lyric go? "Ah, but I was so much older then. ....." Here is "Rain (live 1988)"- part of the Exclusive DVD in our Earwig Demo Vinyl Bundle-> http://bit.ly/BlakesVinylDVD

Posted by the Blake Babies on Tuesday, 15 March 2016

Via the Blake Babies Facebook account, a video of Rain from Cambridge, MA in 1988.

The clip is taken from a DVD available as part of an exclusive bundle in the Earwig Demos PledgeMusic project.

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Freda Love Smith : How Is a Song Like a Time Machine? | The Talkhouse Music
Freda Love Smith : How Is a Song Like a Time Machine? | The Talkhouse Music

Freda Love Smith, writing for The Talkhouse about the Blake Babies Earwig demos:

But if we were glued together by John, we were utterly defined by the sound of Juliana’s vocals. Listening to her young talent hits me all the harder for the years. I didn’t fully recognize this back then, but now I hear the intensity of a twenty-year-old singer and songwriter who had been waiting and waiting, often despairingly, often impatiently, for the stars to align, for an opportunity to do the thing she was born to do. And here’s that moment! She has a band, a producer, a studio and a crack engineer, and after all those years of singing in her bedroom, she takes the microphone and she nails it. She throws down harmonies and they are amazing. She is the real deal.

The article also has a premiere of the Take Me demo (originally titled Take Me, Take Me) from the project.

A reminder that the demos collection is the main item in an ongoing PledgeMusic campaign.

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Paul Westerberg: Throwing Out the Past | SPIN
Paul Westerberg: Throwing Out the Past | SPIN

Drew Fortune, interviewing Paul Westerberg for Spin:

My next question follows naturally. “Do you wish you were more popular?” Paul pauses in consideration. “No,” he says definitively. “I say that and I’m still a human being. The I Don’t Cares record charted at No. 150 and the next day it dropped. I’m trying to be cool and think it doesn’t matter. Then I spend the day kicking s//t. Any time I put something out I’m afraid and I want people to like it. This record was not meant to sell.”

The interview (which was originally planned to include Juliana and drummer Josh Freese) confirms what has been hinted at in Instagram posts and Westerberg's site - The I Don't Cares are working on new music beyond the recent Wild Stab album.

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Trouble Boys - The True Story Of The Replacements
Trouble Boys - The True Story Of The Replacements

For those of us interested in the work of Paul Westerberg through Juliana's current collaboration and long term fandom, today sees the publication of a new book on The Replacements by Bob Mehr.

Da Capo Press:

Based on all-new interviews and including 72 rare photos, Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements is the definitive biography of one of the last great rock 'n' roll bands of the twentieth century. Written with the participation of the group's key members, including reclusive singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, and the family of late guitarist Bob Stinson, Trouble Boys is a deeply intimate and nuanced portrait, exposing the primal factors and forces—addiction, abuse, fear—that would shape one of the most brilliant and notoriously self-destructive groups of all time.

Based on a decade of research and reporting, hundreds of interviews (with family, friends, managers, producers, and musical colleagues), as well as full access to the Replacements' archives at Twin/Tone and Warner Bros. Records, author Bob Mehr has fashioned something far more compelling than a conventional band bio.

You can read an excerpt at Rolling Stone.

For ordering info and other background to the book, there's an official site:

replacementsbook.com

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Blake Babies Launch Earwig Demos Project at PledgeMusic
Blake Babies Launch Earwig Demos Project at PledgeMusic

Blake Babies have launched their PledgeMusic project today!

John, Freda & Juliana:

In early March of 1988, we entered Fort Apache Studios in Cambridge, MA to capture our live set in a studio setting. We recorded 12 demos of songs for what would become our debut full length on Mammoth, Earwig. The master tapes from those sessions have been sitting on a few basement shelves since then and pretty much were forgotten about.

In 2015, we rescued the recordings and had the tapes remixed and remastered. And to our surprise, the demos turned out sounding better than anyone remembered.

They sounded so good that we had to do something special with them for you, the fans! We’re happy to announce that the Earwig Demos will finally be heard as intended, on vinyl ONLY here on PledgeMusic. While in our archives, we found some other unique and rare items to add to the pre-order. We hope you find something you will like.

There are vinyl, FLAC and MP3 ordering options plus other PledgeMusic exclusives.

3 private reunion shows are planned in the US - 2 in Boston, MA (on the same day) and 1 in Evanston, IL. Tickets for these limited shows are available (via PledgeMusic). Other than the possiblity of up to 3 extra acoustic house concerts available for $20,000 (!) each, the band "do not have any touring plans".

Exciting!

pledgemusic.com/projects/blakebabies

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