Providence is small and grey even when the sun is shining. It's beautiful and ripe with good restaurants and a massive amount of untapped potential. It's a noisy, arty garage rock town. It's a diverse scene that developed in the early nineties with the tripped out grooves of Six Finger Satellite, the heavily Replacements inspired rock of Backwash and the relentless grindcore thrash of Drop Dead. It was fortified with killer low-down-dirty-rock acts Boss Fuel and Von Ryan's Express and the subsequent birth of A-1 indie rock label Load Records. Somewhere in the mid nineties things got noisy with the development of bands like Thee Hydrogen Terrors, Arab On Radar and the most well known export, Lightning Bolt.
That's the extra brief version, a teaser really. There's so much more I'm leaving out, check the resources listed below for more info. Take some time with Lots Of Noise. It gives a pretty comprehensive view of the scene, past and present as well as listings, photos and mp3's galore. Be absolutely sure to download the Laurels cover of "The Immigrant Song" recorded in my father-in-law's garage. Back in the day.
This soundtrack is admittedly a little dated, but these are the bands I knew well. Literally. I went to school with some of them, hung out with others, bought sandwiches from some and just knew the rest.
- Providence rock links:
- Lots Of Noise
- Load Records
- Armageddon Shop
- Lupo's
- as220
- Pitchfork interview with Load founder Ben McOsker
Notes:
As a bonus treat, I'm going to post the songs from the Fall River Overdrive demo tape here for download once I can get them into mp3 format. They were an amazing band that just never really got it together so they could get their due. Everybody needs to experience the power of F.R.O.D. I think Matt would be cool with that.
I'm sure Cap'n Misanthopic will have something to add to all this and he'll give me some guff if I don't mention the awesome metallic HC of Skinned Alive. They were the Providence answer to Rorschach circa 1990-ish.
When I make my first million, I'm going to buy back Club Babyhead (currently transformed into some shitty dance club) and restore it to it's former beer, spit, sweat, whatever else soaked glory. I'm not kidding about this.
Next 'Soundtrack: City to City' - Welcome to Boston...Now Go Home.
Tomorrow more tansparency talk.