![]() For me, it’s mostly generic psychedelia and what came to be called grunge. ![]() Then they recruited Hiro Yamamoto into the band – that’s Soundgarden’s original bassist – so Quinn switched to guitar. It initially featured himself on drums, Chris Quinn on bass, and Robert Roth on vocals and guitar. So, Pickerel formed a new band called Truly. Sometimes you just need a new environment, new influences, new ideas to consider. ![]() It’s that these guys had known each other since they were kids, so you know how it is. It’s not that they’d been a struggling band for five long years, with a lot of time in close proximity, sharing strong opinions, and with increasingly higher (and more stressful) professional stakes. Speaking of Pickerel, once he laid down his drum parts for Uncle Anesthesia in late ’90, he bounced, the only member of the Screaming Trees to ever leave the band. And while that doesn’t seem to be a particularly distinctive title, three years later Dinosaur Jr released the album Where You Been. Wanna hear something weird? The name of that Solomon Grundy song is “Out There.” It’s the album’s leadoff track. Incidentally, those drums fills are courtesy of Sean Hollister, who’d briefly join the Trees after Mark Pickerel quit the band later in 1990, roughly around the same time Van left to tour with Dino Jr. A little samey after awhile, it probably would’ve been a perfect EP. ![]() Those prodigious influences noted, this is very much a first record. The other influence I hear in the band is Grant Hart, not just in the drumming, but also in some of the songwriting. That song is totally Dinosaur III, from the opening riff, to those distinctive Mascis drum fills, to the way Lee McCullough’s lead guitar leaps out of the arrangement, going heavy on the tremolo bar. In retrospect, maaaaybe we should’ve seen the Dinosaur Jr hookup coming. That’s Solomon Grundy with Van Conner on lead vocals and rhythm guitar. That said, Mystery Lane also has moments where you’re reminded, “Oh yeah, this motherscratcher’s in the Screaming Trees, isn’t he?” Lee is a way better singer now, in his 50s, than he was in his 20s, not because he can hit more notes, but because he has the artistic maturity to know where his voice needs to sit inside of an arrangement. Mystery Lane is a proper homage to psychedelia, but Lee isn’t the strongest singer and his voice is way up in the mix singing LOTS of words. Those last two albums are relevant to our story because Purple Outside was Lee Conner’s side project and Solomon Grundy was Van Conner’s side band. We get a couple fIREHOSE songs, brilliant spoken word from Watts poet, Wanda Coleman, and Screaming Trees covering Cream’s “Tales Of Brave Ulysses.” Most of the tracks were recorded 1986-87, but the two D Boon tracks were recorded in ’83 and ’84, respectively. Taste Test #1 – A double vinyl compilation of live performances from Loyola Marymount’s radio station, KXLU. Jack Brewer Band (singer/lyricist from Saccharine Trust) - Rockin' Ethereal Anyway, I cracked open this mysterious package and inside were four albums: After D’s death, Watt and Tamburovich sold the label to SST and Greg Ginn turned it into an experimental subsidiary. The label was started by D Boon, Mike Watt, and Martin Tamburovich when they were all still in The Reactionaries or had just switched over to calling themselves the Minutemen, at which point Martin dropped out of the band, but still helped run New Alliance. I remember it being late spring/early summer of 1990 when KCSC received a package from New Alliance Records. Obviously, Mark Lanegan’s solo debut, The Winding Sheet, was the most significant of the 1990 releases, but I wanna start with the Conners. In fact, 1990 was a weirdly productive year FOR the Trees, just not AS the Trees. It’s gonna be huge! So, while Epic was poking the Screaming Trees with a stick, trying to figure out what their new toy did, the individual Trees worked on their own projects. We were on a compilation called something like Blazing Metal with bands like Winger." "She's Only 17." “Yard Trip #7.” It’s math metal, guys. We were in the Epic Records heavy metal department. In Spin's “Oral History Of Screaming Trees’ ‘Nearly Lost You’”, bassist Van Conner says, “When we first signed, they didn’t know what to do with us. That changed in late spring when they signed to Epic, but the label wasn’t exactly an acid rock think tank. Three albums on SST and a double 7” on Sub Pop established the band as modern avatars of psychedelic rock. This is Lance Uehara Davis and when we last left them, the Screaming Trees were exiting the 1980s like a bullet wound. Welcome to Don't Call It Nothing, the podcast dedicated to the lost history of '90s roots, rap, and rock 'n' roll, and now officially based on the book of the same name. “If he sang about pain you believed it and if he sang about love you believed it.”
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