Posts in general

Juliana, writing about Jeff Buckley:

Jeff was gifted with a prodigious, supernatural, dazzling talent. He could do so much with his voice and his guitar and the way he wove them together was breathtaking. He was a fan of so much music, so many kinds of music, and he absorbed it all with a quasi-photographic musical memory, integrating all sorts of disparate elements effortlessly. It must have been overwhelming sometimes to have so many options, hard to narrow down what it was he wanted to present to the world. He wasn’t as limited as some of us are, but this this freedom, this ability, to do almost anything — it could have been crippling, in a way; if you have fewer options and fewer decisions it means your task is much simpler.

Read the whole article at Tidal.

John P Strohm has selected a number of songs from Boston related artists of the late 80s / early 90s in an article for Louder Than Words.

Here's what he says about his selection of Buffalo Tom:

There was a girl who used to crash with Blake Babies sometimes who came in from the suburbs. She knew these guys Buffalo Tom and she said she was managing them. She had a bunch of demo tapes that we ignored. It just didn’t occur to us that she could be cooler than us. Then when people around town started talking about Buffalo Tom I made the connection: “Oh, that band that we have, like, 100 tapes of.” J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. took them under wing and produced their first album, so obviously they’ve got my attention at that point. We became great friends – and fans of each other’s bands. For the final Blake Babies tour, we actually chose to open for Buffalo Tom in Europe over a competing offer to open for Nirvana on the Nevermind tour. And that was before Nevermind was out. And….I don’t really want to think about that anymore. We had a great time with our friends overseas while we were in the process of breaking up.

Ahead of this weekend's ACLU benefit show in Boston, David Brusie for the The Boston Globe has spoken to a number of the artists performing including Matthew Caws and Tanya Donelly. Juliana is quoted and mentions Trump, her pride of the city and also the themes of the new album:

[‘Pussycat’] is pro-America, it’s pro-freedom, it’s anti-hatred, anti-lies. That’s what I would say. It’s standing up for the important things that the majority of the people around the world value. That’s what the ACLU is also trying to protect.

Juliana, for the The Talkhouse:

In late 1990, my band the Blake Babies set out on tour. We were young. I kept a diary. We were doing shows with Firehose, Mike Watt’s band at the time. These pages describe the scene one night, from my point of view, after we’d finished our opening set in Northampton, Massachusetts — plus what it was like to talk to Watt.

Ryan Bray, for Consequence of Sound:

Boston in the mid-to-late ’80s was a fertile, if underrated, hotbed of musical talent. The city boasted scores of bands that were poised for big things just a few years around the bend, among them the Pixies, The Lemonheads, Buffalo Tom, Juliana Hatfield, Morphine, Belly, and Throwing Muses. The talent was flowing over the proverbial brim, but it needed a hub, an outlet through which the various sounds coursing through the city’s veins could be heard.Fort Apache Studios filled that void. When Sean Slade, Jim Fitting, Paul Kolderie, and Joe Harvard officially opened Fort Apache in the spring of 1986, it was a no-frills operation run out of an industrial space in Roxbury — hardly the stuff of legends. But what started as an effort to document the local scene quickly grew into an enterprise that would produce some of the biggest guitar rock records and acts of the ’90s. The Fort Apache story is one steeped in the DIY ethos that defined the American rock underground and helped pave the way for grunge and alternative to explode into the mainstream. More than the story of a studio, this is the story of a largely unsung underground movement that helped define a musical era.

It's a lengthy 'oral history' style article, well worth your time with quotes from Fort Apache staff and musicians such as Lou Barlow, Kim Deal and Bill Janovitz.

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.

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.

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

The I Don't Cares:

Are you an aspiring film maker? Clever or artistic? Too much time on your hands? Need to make a few bucks to cover rent this month?

Then what are you waiting for?

Paul and Juliana are inviting submissions for fan-made videos for any song on Wild Stab.

If they like them, they'll pay $1 per second.

Full details at paulwesterberg.com.

The Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA has announced an event for January 8, 2016:

Harvard Book Store welcomes Freda Love Smith and her former Blake Babies bandmate, local singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield for a presentation of Smith's book Red Velvet Underground: A Rock Memoir, with Recipes.

The event is free. More info at harvard.com.

Speaking of Freda, there's a new Mysteries Of Life EP titled Bad Advice out now at Bandcamp.