The
Fastbacks
This article originally appeared in NFH #20 in
the winter of 1991.
If you've had a
chance to catch Seattle's Young Fresh Fellows in any of their recent tours around the
countryside, you may have noticed an energetic new guitar player on the sidelines playing
some pretty amazing stuff and adding a whole load of punch to the sound. This anonymous
gunslinger is none other than Kurt Bloch, a guy who's been on the Seattle scene longer
than Mudhoney, longer than Sub Pop, and longer than just about everybody. Kurt's a guy
with many pans on the burners...his Young Fresh Fellows role is just a sideline to his
main band, the Fastbacks, and he also runs his own label, No Threes records. I've been
listening to Fastbacks records since the first one in 1981, and let me tell you, these
guys are onto something different and cool...a girl group vocal sound, wild guitar that
goes way off in all directions from metal to punk, and a general dedication to speed and
energy. It's hard to believe that these guys are still this little known...
"I remember my
first guitar was a folk guitar class in high school", he muses. "There were like
20 people in it. And we learned folk guitar kind of things, but I came home and tried to
figure out songs like UFO and Judas Priest and Scorpions; kind of regular high school kind
of band songs that everyone would want to listen to in high school. That was the first
guitar playing I really worked on; Deep Purple and that kind of stuff. But when punk came
out it was like "Wow, here's music that's louder and faster than UFO or Judas Priest
or anything like that!". We were always really excited to find some fast new songs.
There were some fast Deep Purple songs, but when the first punk rock records came along it
was like "This is WAY better, this is really cool!""
Kurt's first band was
called the Cheaters. They also included Kurt's brother Al on bass and other people who
rolled in and out. Al later was the bass player for Concrete Blonde for quite a while, but
he got kicked out according to Kurt and is now playing in a band in LA. The Cheaters had
one single...a sort of basic, underproduced poppy punk record. "Yeah, that was
actually the second No Three's release", says Kurt. "The first was an Accidents
single...it's kind of a sought after punk rock collectors item. Some friends of mine are
going to reissue it finally. The label started because we wanted to put out the Cheaters
single and we thought, well, let's start a record label, because in 1979 nobody else was
going to put out a record by us. The Cheater's emblem was the No Threes sign; we had a big
street sign that instead of saying no left turn said No Threes, and we'd bring it to our
shows and hang it up behind us when we played. So we said well, why don't we have No
Three's records, and these other guys the Accidents said, hey, that sounds like a good
idea; we want to be part of that. So their single came out a couple months before the
Cheaters one did. They pretty much paid for everything; we just put our label on it and
sent it off. They got all the records, but we tried to create the illusion of a record
label."
So right out of the
chutes Kurt found himself at the helm of a record label as well as a band. But the
Cheaters fizzled out quickly, and he needed a new outlet. Kim Warnick and Lulu Gargiulo
had both gone to high school with Kurt, though he didn't know either very well until the
Cheaters, since they were friends of other guys in the band. When the Cheaters folded, the
Fastbacks started as a way to have some fun...Kurt wanted to learn to drum, so that's what
he did in the original Fastbacks. Kim had been in one other band, but Lu never had...they
practiced a while and did a few shows as a three piece. Then a friend named Duff McKagan
came by to a practice and said to Kurt, "Why don't I play drums for you and you play
guitar". So that was the end of Kurt's drumming career.
McKagan was to
eventually wind up as the bass player in Guns and Roses, of all things. "Back in 1979
and 1980 he was in just about every band in Seattle on one instrument or another",
says Kurt. "He was like 16 or 17 and just wanted to play in bands all the time. He
didn't have much of a job or anything and he could play everything pretty well. He was in
the Veins as well, he played the bass and sang one song on that single. Pretty much did
everything."
The Veins...they
would have been either the third or fourth No Threes release; the Silly Killers (another
Seattle punk band) being the other. The fifth, in May 1981, was the Fastbacks first single
with Duff on drums, "It's Your Birthday"/"Can't Be Happy". These two
tracks are a rough and ready blast of power...much more punch than the Cheaters, much
rawer than later Fastbacks turned out. This is definitely their most obviously punky
record, without the lunatic leads that subsequently became their trademark. Musically it
has almost a Generation X "Ready Steady Go" type feel. Both tracks are aces.
Says Kurt: "As much as I think Eddie Van Halen was an awesome guitar player, nothing
to me beats punk rock style rhythm guitar. If I had to have my choice between playing wild
lead guitar or just sitting there banging out rhythm guitar really loud and distorted, I'd
take the rhythm guitar any day." This first single shows this side of the band at
their best.
In November they had
the cut "Someone Else's Room" on the Seattle Syndrome compilation, and by
July of 1982 they'd struck again with the next No Three's release, the 12" ep Fastbacks
Play Five Of Their Favorites. This was another great record that was sadly ignored as
hardcore was in, power pop was out, and who knew what the hell to call this anyway? Duff
had been replaced by Richard Stuverud and Kurt was already starting to branch out in his
guitar playing, with leads that were unlike anything other people seemed to come up with.
The sound was less obviously punky and more poppy and the song structures were more
complex. It's got two great tracks...the opening "In America", which aside from
the great music has some really cool lyrics expressing doubts about the American dream,
and the closing "Whenever I'm Walking" which is sheer brilliant pop in the
Undertones class of things. In between there's a hardcore paced track called "Fast
Enough" and two other solid cuts. Energy still abounds.
"There's not too
many songs that I've heard where I think: they're playing that too fast.", says Kurt.
"It's usually the other way around, like if it was sped up it would sound way
better."
The Fastbacks next
record, the four song Everyday Is Saturday, came out on No Threes in October of
1984. This one's more poppy than their other stuff and includes a cover of a song by the
sixties bubblegum band the Grassroots. I'd rate this one slight less essential than the
others.
From here it was a
long dry spell until their great And His Orchestra lp, which was on Popllama, since
Kurt had temporarily given up on No Threes. The band always had a hard time keeping
together for prolonged periods of time. "There've been a number of times when we've
come close to folding", says Kurt. "I don't know why the Fastbacks have been
such a hard band to keep together. Never having any commercial success has it's effect on
trying to keep a band together for ten years. Weird personality problems, I guess."
And His Orchestra
provided the first hint that there might be wider interest in the Fastbacks. It's a unique
record...to me it seems like almost a parody of different styles of rock and roll. Kurt's
guitar pulls out all the stops....
"It's kind of an
odd combination of styles to have the kind of singing and the kind of music we have",
he says. "I obviously like a lot of guitar playing and stuff. I like Van Halen a lot,
and I like a lot of that kind of music a lot, but it's also really funny. I guess that's
the problem with a lot of bands, is that they don't understand...just being in a band is
pretty funny when you think about it. Definitely seeing the humor in a lot of different
kinds of music, even though if you get right down to it a lot of our songs are kind of
depressing. But you can have your humor along with it on some level or other. You don't
have to be a joke band, but you can have underlying humor in music for sure. I'll listen
to somebody else's record and the guitar player or drummer will do something that I know
is funny even though it's not words or funny voices...I can totally crack up over stuff
like that. It's not like when we do it we go "let's put a funny guitar part in
here", but obviously there's some funny parts in there. I sometimes don't even really
think about that. It just comes out like that."
With this album Kurt
seemed to have made a leap from your standard punk style player to someone with a real
unique approach that elevates the Fastbacks' songs another notch. Musicianship for the
sake of musicianship is a waste of time, but the sort of playing Kurt uses on And His
Orchestra isn't self indulgent or anything...it's just real inspired stuff where he
dumps a blender full of diced up guitar styles steaming onto your turntable. But all of it
is made to fit within the context of the songs...the song is always the key thing and the
guitar bit is an embellishment over the top. Hard to describe...you've got to hear it.
So I asked him
whether this was a natural ability or something he worked at a lot. He laughed in a sort
of embarrassed way and replied: "Well, that's a good question; I suppose that if I
really had too much of a natural ability it wouldn't have taken me so long to get to play
like that (laughs). But if I listen to a lot of these really hot guitar players that are
in Guitar Player or stuff like that, you go, boy, you would REALLY have to practice
every day to get like that, and I know guys that will sit in their room and practice three
or four hours a day...and it's like, god, I like playing guitar, but not enough to sit and
do that! Usually if I get inspired to sit down and play guitar I'll work on writing songs
anyway. Because how do you practice? I'm not going to spend an hour practicing leads and
solos or anything like that."
Richard Stuverud was
on his way out as they recorded And His Orchestra and by the end of 1987 Lulu had
left as well. The band persevered by adding Nate Johnson as a drummer and hit the stage as
a three piece. There's one song from this era on the Sub Pop 200 compilation; oddly enough
it's a cover of a Green River track. At least it seems odd to me since I think of the
Fastbacks as being part of the other face of Seattle from the Sub Pop grunge bands. But
when you're viewing the scene in another place from afar it's easy to conjure up divisions
that aren't there or rivalries that don't necessarily exist. Kurt doesn't see anything to
make an issue of.
"Well, I guess
we're kind of on a different plane from a lot of those bands", he says. "But
this grunge thing, what does it really mean? Who is the grunge band? Is it Mudhoney and
their kind of ones, or Tad? I think in the last year it's gotten a lot different. The
post-Mudhoney sort of band, maybe nobody really cares about them anymore. But Mudhoney, I
still like them a lot. I think they're really fun. But a lot of the bands that are that
style of music but newer bands, maybe like Tad a little bit, it's like, who cares? It's
kind of cool that that scene started up, and I like just about every band that's on Sub
Pop. I mean, not every one, but a lot of them. But it's just like any other kind of music
that starts up and it's in Seattle and everyone likes it, so there's a whole bunch of
other bands like that and none of them are any good. Even Sub Pop seems to be branching
out and a lot of those bands are doing different things. Like have you heard the new
Nirvana single? It's pretty great...sounds a lot different from their album. Kind of a fun
little song. Sub Pop has been putting out a lot more punk rock kind of records lately,
like the Dwarves and Derelicts and stuff like that. The Dwarves album is totally
killer."
"We're going to
do a single for Sub Pop, too. We're going to go record next week and it will probably out
early next year. It's going to be a regular release single. They kind of had a dry spell
(with the single of the month). I just got a couple of their latest ones, and the Unsane
from New York...I thought their single was really good. It's definitely grunge, sort of
more an Amphetamine Reptile sort of record. I really like it a lot, and I don't know what
I like about records like that...why I would like that one and not some of the other ones,
but somehow I thought it was really great."
But back to the
chronology...in the summer of 1988 they recorded a couple of their live shows and made a
tape called Bike Toy Clock Gift which is absolutely classic. Supposedly a deal is
in the works for the German label Lost and Found to release this in December of this year
as a record, and it's about time. This tape, which has really good sound quality...far
beyond your average audience tape (which makes sense as it was recorded to an N-track
recorded and later mixed down at a studio). What's more, it captures inspired performances
of nearly every song...all the crazed guitar bits from the studio are right there, Kim's
singing is superb, and the live setting breaths a life into the material that although
present in the studio stuff certainly doesn't manage the sort of nuclear explosiveness
captured here. In addition to their own cool tracks there's some great covers...a totally
changed version of Mott The Hoople's "Roll Away The Stone" with Kurt doing his
best Cockney imitation backing vocals, and cool takes of "Swallow My Pride"
(Ramones) and "Love You More" (Buzzcocks) both rendered more interesting by the
female vocal touch. Some US label needs to release this now! It's amazing!
A new paragraph, and
I feel much better and less hyperbolic now, thank you. Where were we? Oh, yeah, we're
almost to today. And there's a new album, Very, Very Powerful Motor, also on
Popllama, despite the fact that No Threes is back in business again.
"Yeah, actually
the basic tracks were recorded in 1988 for most of it. We had a few of the songs from that
and we had recorded some more songs when we did the song for the Sub Pop 200 album. And
then we went back into Egg Studio where most of it was recorded and recorded some more. So
the basics were recorded over a period of about a year. We had all these songs and I first
made a four song demo tape and sent it out to a bunch of record labels and tried to get
some interest in that, and slowly but surely we finished up the tracks one by one, and
then started mixing them. Then I was going to put it out on No Threes and started working
on that, and then Popllama said that they'd put it out a few months ago. So it has been
worked on over the past couple years, and for a while there we were pretty much broken up,
and everyone was doing different things, and then somehow we just started getting back
together and it seemed like people were more interested in us now than ever, and we got a
lot of support. So it just seemed like it was logical to do the album."
"The new album
is done as a three piece, though. As you can tell there's not a lot of overdubs on it or
anything. We kind of wanted to make it a bare bones sounding production. I'm really happy
with how it turned out; I think the cover came out really well, and I think the sound is
really good on it too. It's really plain sounding; not a lot of reverb or a lot of effects
on anything. We just tried to be really loud and simple."
The review's in that
chunk of pages in your right hand, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time to go into the
new lp, except to say that Kurt thinks it's their best. There's been interest overseas,
too...the UK Subway label released And His Orchestra and also did two 45s, "In
The Winter"/"It Came To Me In A Dream" (the latter previously released on a
Popllama compilation) and "Wrong Wrong Wrong"/"In America", a great
pairing of two of their best ever tracks. John Peel played the singles a fair amount, but
the Orchestra lp didn't do as well as expected, and Subway folded due to some bad
decisions about other releases. The guy who started Subway has a new label now called
Blaster which has already released Motor in the UK.
There's also a four
track single with "In The Summer" and three others (neat single set with their
first UK single, eh?) And in November they expect to have a split 45 with "Lose"
with a Gas Huffers song on the flip. So much for Fastbacks records. There's lots to search
for and lots of reason to find 'em.
No Threes was
resurrected with the release of the "In The Summer" ep, and subsequent to that
there was a great single by Pure Joy (reviewed in your left hand). More to come, no doubt.
As has been said
before, Kurt's also been playing in the Young Fresh Fellows lately. It's a little odd,
because I would regard the Fastbacks as the more substantial band by far, but the Young
Fresh Fellows pull the crowds and make some money, and they can be a good time in a live
show. I asked Kurt if he felt a little like a hired gun in that band, but he said
"No, actually not at all. When I first started out I kind of approached it like that,
but although Scott McCoy the singer writes the majority of the material, we do a few of my
songs in that band. After the songs are written and we run them in it's pretty much every
man for themselves in that band. It's way more of a democratic band than the
Fastbacks!" (laughs)
In the Fastbacks,
Kurt writes all the material including the lyrics that Lu or Kim will sing. He writes
songs by making demos on a four track recorder where he plays all the instruments, and
when either band is into learning new material he shows them what he's got, and whichever
band picks the stuff first gets it.
With any luck, the
new lp will help earn the Fastbacks a brighter place in the sun. Kurt will probably
continue happily no matter what happens...he's got the right philosophy for doing this
stuff: "You just play music that you like and that you would want to listen to if you
were buying a record", he says, "and hope other people do, too." If they
have any taste, they will.
