August 2001 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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August 2001 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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Great Plains retrospective comp CD: garage rock treasure 15 August 2001
The album in question is a double CD containing 50 songs that document the entire life cycle of a band whose existence, in all honesty, shocked me to learn about a few months back. Great Plains came together in 1981 in Columbus Ohio under the direction of singer/ songwriter/ guitarist Ron House—who later formed Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments. During their six year run, Great Plains released three albums plus four EPs and singles and appeared on some compilations—all the time creating definitive rock music, all the time managing to fly well below the radar of mainstream media and major labels. So much so that, in my experience, their obscurity is one of the most striking examples of misdirected attention in the history of pop. Even today, after much more successful bands such as Yo La Tengo have covered their songs and cited them as an influence, you can surf on over to CDnow or to the All Music Guide looking for Great Plains and get information... not on them but on some ’90s country band by the same name that you do not want to know about. Great Plains’ Length Of Growth 1981-89 came out on tiny Columbus indie label Old 3C on 1 August 2000, with help from distributor Nu Gruv Alliance. It tracks the band’s progress more or less chronologically, from the cassette-recorded The Way She Runs A Fever down through their last recordings in 1989 for the Homestead label. With Great Plains we have one of those exquisitely rare bands whose members are intrinsically confident of their personal vision, musically and lyrically—and rightfully so. Like any of their kind their expression is familiar yet new to the point of defining something unique, and includes genuine humor and a capacity to laugh at themselves. They are magically, invisibly, implicitly tapped in to the universal muse. You ask what the hell am I talking about? Recent examples might include Le Tigre, Chris Connelly, Alec Empire, and Garland Buckeye. So, as far as musical points of reference for these guys, they’re easy: The Swell Maps, The Feelies, Jonathan Richman, The 13th Floor Elevators, and early Devo. That is: garage, psychedelic, off-kilter, lo-fi, sardonic, lyrically startling yet subtle, and stunningly original. A tasty mix indeed. House has a lot to say and a knack for framing universal themes in new ways. Because this is such a fucking cool record, and because it redefines my view of the ’80s, it easily garners five bites out of five. Rockbites ratings 5: life changing, 4: stunning, 3: captivating, 2: amusing, 1: annoying. | Great Plains on Old 3C Records | | Fan site | | CD | | top of page | |
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