Well Every Time I See You, I Wanna Thank You, More and More Each Time -- Reubens Accomplice and Long Waits

About five years ago, I stumbled onto a promotional CD at my former employer, the now defunct Borders. It had a peculiar kind of pastel cover art, with little description. I don't have the disc anymore, having passed it to someone else (with whom I've lost contact), but it was an album called Dog Problems, by a band called The Format. It rapidly disseminated itself with some effort from me, spreading "virally" even to people I don't (or at least didn't) know via those that I do and did. That band no longer exists, having broken up shortly after that very album, and reformed into the solo artist Sam Means and combining with members of Steel Train and Anathallo to form fun., who have achieved a pretty high level of success at this point.

However, I managed to catch The Format before they broke up, when they played a show at the local major independent venue, the Cat's Cradle. It was August 26th, 2007, and it was one of the larger lineups I've seen in my time. The Format was backed with Limbeck, Piebald, Reubens Accomplice and Steel Train. The overall highlight of the night was certainly all of the bands coming together to play Van Morrison's "Caravan" at the very end, but this was definitely a show that helped encourage my policy of checking into opening acts. There's a good chance I'll talk about Piebald another time (a very good one!) and Steel Train as well, but right now, there's a reason I'm talking about the band I'm here to write about.

Yesterday, I made the excited purchase of a number of items, from an album someone almost got me as a present ten years ago (but skipped on as it was apparently nowhere near gift quality in its used state), to two albums I've been searching for intently at every store I enter, to a well-regarded album that influenced a number of bands I like or love, to a difficult-to-find band of less known status--and even a few others. And yet, I came home and found a link in my e-mail, began my download, and those two albums I'd been searching for finished ripping to my computer and have remained untouched since. Indeed, the trays of my optical drives are sitting outside my desktop with the discs still in them.

That download was a link to the new Reubens Accomplice album.

I left that show five years ago with a rather large selection of merchandise:

When Lightning Strikes and We Are Sleeping...

In case anyone is wondering where I might have been with my ramblings and random musical selections, you may note from the Last.FM widget over to the right that I have been happily continuing to listen to music, not including my vinyl and compact disc rotations (the latter being in-car listening). Mclusky's Mclusky Do Dallas, in all its vulgar glory, has occupied my turntable of late more than anything else in its white vinyl re-release form that appeared briefly in the collage of images that represented my collage of Record Store Day purchases this year. My car CD player has rotated endlessly, as it often does, based on where I am going, when and the whims of the moment.

What has interrupted my posting, however, was a recent influx and an attempt to catch up a backlog of complicated reissues.

To put this in a kind of perspective, here is an image of the purchases I've made in the last week, which is not totally out of character and should clarify any concerns about what on earth keeps me from focusing on a single release or artist to discuss them:

You can click to enlarge that sucker, and in the process see the sheer volume of stuff I just inundated myself with. For those who cannot make things out, here's a brief rundown:

It's in the Past...And Now, We Toast -- At the Drive-In

While I can't say that mixed emotions, hormones, and a bit of over-thinking weren't at the root of the final outburst, there was only one band's end that brought me to tears. Yeah, it was high school. Yeah, it was one of the rougher years of high school (though my years in it were not all that bad, to be honest). Still, I never saw them live, and I likely never will, unless their reunion turns into something more than a handful of festival shows. I've known other fans without having to seek them out, converted various friends, and even know someone from their hometown--with all of this, no one has ever (if I recall correctly, at least) recognized my (rather minimalist, to be fair) shirt advertising them. That's not an exclusive claim, of course, but for a band that got this big--even if it was a flash when they were big--it's a bit surprising all the same.

They basically had one, one-and-a-half big hits that went around the country and the world openly. They were both off the same album, and it came out twelve years ago. The band has faded to a footnote (similar to how The Skids--see poll on the right, if you haven't--are mentioned, despite the impression I've gotten that they were well-thought of during their existence) in many ways, to the acts that followed in their wake from the splintered elements they left behind them. It's weird, really, as they feel more lost and faded than a lot of the much older (and also defunct) bands I listen to. Not in the sense of ingenuity, so much as the feeling that their impact on the public conscious, even the "indie" one, was minor, and more of a name than an associated music.

Doubtless, at least a few people who know me could guess exactly who I am talking about right now. It's possible, too, that some people will guess with some semblance of dread, though I don't think one ought to. Still, tastes are tastes, and there's no accounting for them, etc., but I ask--as always--that you approach this music, new, loved, old, hated, with an open mind and listen to it to hear what there might be in it to love for those of us who do, if you don't know already.

Here's that seemingly unrecognized shirt: