Earwig (1989)

Blake Babies

  1. Cesspool
  2. Dead and Gone
  3. Grateful
  4. You Don't Give Up
  5. Your Way or the Highway
  6. Rain
  7. Lament
  8. Alright
  9. Loose
  10. Take Your Head off My Shoulder
  11. From Here to Burma
  12. Don't Suck My Breath
  13. Outta My Head
  14. Steamie Gregg
  15. Not Just a Wish

The sound of a band finding their feet and a leap forward from Nicely, Nicely. Guitar pop with a female singer sparked obvious comparisons in the late 1980’s to The Bangles and Go-Go’s, but the inclusion of The Stooges song Loose gives a hint as to the bigger influences. Nods to other Boston based bands such as Dinosaur Jr can be found in some arrangements. The Strohm tune Rain stands out – a deceptively simple tune and use of male / female harmonies.

Personnel

Juliana Hatfield - vocals, bass and guitar
John P. Strohm - guitar and vocals
Freda Boner (Freda Love Smith) - drums
Evan Dando - bass and backing vocals
Andrew Mayer - bass

In Europe, an EP titled Slow Learner was released in 1989 featuring 7 of the recordings from Earwig.

  1. Lament
  2. Grateful
  3. Your Way Or The Highway
  4. Take Your Head Of My Shoulder
  5. Rain
  6. From Here To Burma
  7. Outta My Head

2024 Vinyl Reissue

American Laundromat Records reissued the album on LP vinyl in May 2024:

We are stoked to reissue "Earwig" on vinyl for the first time in over 30 years! This label-exclusive reissue is limited to 1,000 units worldwide and available on three variants. It even includes the two additional tracks that had appeared on the CD but not the original vinyl pressing.

Reissue artwork prepared by Aaron Tanner at Melodic Virtue from the original Mammoth art. Our good friend Sean Glonek at SRG studios handled remastering, and Scott Hull at Masterdisk cut lacquers. The vinyl was pressed by our friends at Gotta Groove Records in Cleveland, OH.

https://www.alr-music.com/collections/out-now/products/blake-babies-earwig

There’s a couple of t-shirts too:

https://www.alr-music.com/collections/misc/products/blake-babies-earwig-tee

https://www.alr-music.com/collections/misc/products/blake-babies-band-tee

Rain, performed by Blake Babies in Cambridge, MA in 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

'Cesspool' performed by the (reformed) Blake Babies in 2001

YouTube vid uploaded by coolrockboy

A now deleted tweet from 2012:

strohm just reminded me that we almost titled blake babies' "earwig""a faggot is a bunch of sticks"

— Juliana Hatfield (@julianahatfield) November 13, 2012

In a post from her 2013 PledgeMusic campaign, Juliana expanded:

We were going to call the Blake Babies’ second album (“Nicely, Nicely” being the first album) “Beauville Caliente”. When we commissioned the original art/painting for the album cover, this was the title the artist was working with. The Blake Babies van--our first van, my first van--was a dark blue 1979 Chevy Beauville and I guess that was how I/we got the “beauville” in our heads. I don’t remember where the “caliente” came from. (We had some goofy/dada ideas back then; at some point the album was going to be named “A Faggot Is A Bunch Of Sticks” [really]. Also I had been a serious fan of The Police when in high school and maybe it was following their lead [“Outlandos D’Amour”, etc]). In my head the loose translation of this sort of French and Spanish amalgamation was “beautiful hot town”. Meaningless, really. I just liked the sound of it,,how it rolled off the tongue and teeth: “beauville caliente”. So the artwork on the cover of what came to be titled “Earwig” is a depiction of some sort of beautiful, hot town..