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Unbunny - Black Strawberries 180g LPVideo: Brainiac, 1993
Our friends over at Nashville Cream just found some awesome footage of one of my favorite bands of ever, Brainiac. It’s from January 1993– the band was only a year old (Enon’s John Schmersel had yet to join the band), and this was just a few months before their debut LP, Smack Bunny Baby, came out. This video was shot at Lucy’s Record Store in Nashville, TN, but I gotta tell you, it brought back a flood of memories for me. Having spent the better part of the nineties in Columbus Ohio, I had the good fortune of seeing some amazing bands on a fairly regular basis — GBV, the Afghan Whigs, Gaunt — just to name a few. But I honestly think I must have gone to *every* Brainiac show that came through town. Every show was a “Must See.” It was devastating to hear the news when Brainiac frontman Tim Taylor was killed in a car crash in May of ‘97.
Brainiac’s records soundtracked a substantial portion of my 20s, but I haven’t really put them on in awhile. But I just spun Smack Bunny Baby this afternoon, and the feelings all came rushing back to me. I never missed a show because I always knew: this was great band. An important band. And though it’s hard for me to imagine them ever just “fading away,” I still can’t help but think that the “burn out” they experienced just came way too soon.
From their first album, side one, track one:
2 Responses to “Video: Brainiac, 1993”
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January 9th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I think a fairly good indicator of how much mainstream music journalism has changed in the past 15 years is the fact that I discovered Brainiac in SPIN’s Dec. 1993 issue, which featured a list of The 20 Best Albums You Didn’t Hear. Smack Bunny Baby was described as a cross between Nation of Ulysses and Sonic Youth and 13-year-old me was sold.
I fell deeply in love with that record and wrote to Brainiac the only extensive fan letter I have ever written anyone in my life. They responded equally extensively, and, introducing myself as their correspondent, I met them when they played with Chokebore and Girls Vs Boys at The Troubadour in LA where I was growing up. This small episode of personal contact with a band I deeply admired was disproportionately meaningful to me. I think it was significant in the development of my relationship to independent music precisely because it demonstrated to me the almost complete lack of social distance between a small band and their fans, at least at that moment in time.
I can’t say I knew Brainiac in any real way, but it was certainly very sad to learn of Tim Taylor’s death. It’s no consolation, of course, but I do think that Brainiac are one of the most influential, yet strangely least talked about, bands of the 90s. They were about a decade ahead as far as the creative use of electronics in independent pop music goes, and Electro-Shock for President could have been retrospectively retitled Electro-Clash for President.
Thanks for posting this.
January 10th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Wonderful story, Cary, and I’m in agreement 100%– integral and influential, and 10 years ahead of their time.