1990
By the start
of 1990 Poster Children had been playing shows around the Midwest for two
years. During that time Chris Corpora, the band's booking agent had struck
up a friendship with a fellow booking agent Ellen Stewart who worked out
of the offices of Twin/Tone
Records in Minneapolis. Ellen had taken a liking to the band and had
been talking them up to the folks at Twin/Tone. That winter, after a show
with Babes
in Toyland at the Uptown in Minneapolis, Twin/Tone approached the band,
offering to release their records. The band jumped at the chance, after
all, this was the label that had been home to the Replacements
and Soul
Asylum.
Unfortunately, Mike, Drummer #3, was on his way out, so it was time to find
Drummer #4. The available drummers in Champaign had been tapped out, so
Chicagoan Bob
Rising was welcomed into the band. Bob had drummed in Snake Train with
future Pumpkin James Iha and was a member of Repulse Kava. Rehearsals began
immediately to finish up songs for the new record. The plan was to record
demos at Steve Albini's house in the spring, go on a short tour, and then
record the album with Butch Vig in the summer. When Butch heard the demos
recorded at Steve's, he asked why PC were bothering to record with him,
Steve's stuff sounded great. The band agreed and plans were changed, the
album would be recorded with Steve at Chicago Recording Company in the summer.
But before that was to happen, the band's first tour out East had to be
planned. Chris had moved to the big city and didn't have time to organize
a tour so he asked Ellen Stewart to help out and over a decade later, Ellen
is still arranging the band's tours.
Everybody took a week's vacation from work and packed into the minivan for
their first tour of the East Coast. In Philadelphia, Rose convinced the
Khyber Pass that they should feed out-of-town bands for free, something
they had never done before. Bob made faces at a New Jersey police officer
while driving down the Turnpike, resulting in the first pullover for the
band. The whole week was built around one special show in New York. When
Thin
White Rope had played Champaign, PC opened, TWR liked what they heard
and asked the band to play with them in New York. After the show, a guy
came up to Jeff, said he was from Rolling Stone and asked for a copy of
Flower Plower. Jeff gave him one for free, which everyone else thought was
crazy, this was New York, people would say anything to get a free shirt
or record. A couple weeks later, Jeff was vindicated when a small blurb
by David Fricke appeared in Rolling Stone: "Just when you think there
are no more surprises in this rock critic game, along comes a pleasant shock
like the Poster Children from Champaign, Illinois..." It's amazing
how a such a small thing can make such a difference to people, all of a
sudden Poster Children were a "real" band, not a bunch of collegiate
goofballs. It was something your Mom could tell her friends, "they
were in Rolling Stone."
Returning to Chicago Recording Company after two years armed with a modest
budget from Twin/Tone, the band was able to spend a luxurious four days
(spread over two weekends) in the studio with Steve Albini. Again, everything
was recorded live with vocals added later, although there were some studio
shenanigans. A lemur call from a nature video found its way into Space Gun.
Bob and Steve spent at least an hour fixing a single snare drum hit on Pointed
Stick with a new fangled invention called a "sampler." Jeff's
guitar was put through what was called the "Van Halenizer." After
mixing Freedom Rock, Steve played Carvers with the same settings and everyone
agreed the mix was perfect so it was finished. On the first pass at a vocal
on Thinner, Stronger, Rick blew the second line, yelled in frustration and
Steve said it was great, and started to go on to the next song. Luckily
someone intervened and a second take at the vocals was allowed. Perhaps
the most exciting moment was when Aerosmith
arrived to record Rockline, the radio call-in show, in the studio upstairs.
Steve furiously began fiddling with the phone system trying to get a tap
into the show (which was live) until someone came down and put a big piece
of white tape over the phone saying: "Do not touch!" Bob was able
to get to Aerosmith and tell them his favorite joke at the time: "What's
brown and sounds like a bell? Dung." Brad Whitford replied with "How
do you get a nun pregnant? Fuck her."
With Daisy Chain Reaction recorded, a Sub-Pop
single of the month on the way (with two songs from the DCR sessions),
and a brewing buzz from Flower Plower and touring, things seemed to be going
perfectly. And that's when it all started unraveling. At the end of the
summer, Rough Trade USA, which distributed and helped finance Twin/Tone
(and a lot of other indie labels) went bankrupt. All of a sudden Daisy Chain
Reaction wasn't coming out in the Fall of 1990 as planned but was on hold
indefinitely until Twin/Tone could put together new sources of money and
distribution. Rick then disappeared to Indonesia for two months to work
on a flight simulator. By the end of the year the band was in a state of
collapse.