The
Magnolias
This article originally appeared in NFH #19 in
the summer of 1990.
I was a bit slow
getting tuned into the Magnolias, but now I'm seriously hooked. It started when Twin Tone
sent me their third lp, Dime Store Dream, which was reviewed in the last NFH. This
winter the band swung through San Diego on their west coast tour, and just before that I
picked up their first lp, Concrete Pillbox. Their show here was one of the best of
the winter, and that convinced me that I better be talking to these guys. I've
subsequently picked up their second lp, For Rent, and I can assure you that when
you're in the shops, all you have to remember is Magnolias, because all three lps
are super.
Out of Minneapolis,
the Magnolias started in December of 1984 with a lineup of John Freeman (guitar, vocals
and formerly of Minneapolis band the Outpatients), Tom Lischmann (guitar), Ron Anderson
(drums) and John Paul Joyce (bass). For John Freeman, being in a band wasn't something he
consciously planned: "I dunno, I had a guitar, and I thought, what the hell, I could
put a band together. It's just fun, something to do, to get on stage and play your
songs."
They played their
first show about four months later, got signed to Twin Tone and by 1986 they had released Concrete
Pillbox which was co-produced by the Magnolias and Husker Du's Grant Hart. I think
it's a great record, though John isn't happy with it: "I think it's a pretty bad
record", he laughs. "I think it's just kind of weak. It didn't really capture
our sound. I've listened to live tapes around the same period, and there's much more
energy. I think Grant Hart really didn't capture our sound very well. There's not a lot of
power in the record, and we were a lot more powerful."
Maybe it's the fact
that he knows what he wanted it to sound like, and all I have to compare it to is records
by other bands, but I find the songs on Concrete Pillbox to be consistently catchy
with good hooks both musically and lyrically. I especially love the lines from "Reach
Out" where it goes "I gotta go some place else new / Even though there ain't
much else to do / It stinks there like it stinks here", and the rest of the songs
feature many more similar moments.
After the release of
the first lp the band did a tour to the east coast, after which John Joyce left the band
and was replaced by Kyle Killorin. With this line up the band record what John thinks is
the best Magnolias record, 1988's For Rent. I remarked to him that it was unusual
to hear someone say that an earlier record was better than their current one, but he
replied: "I like our new record, but I've always liked our second one. For us it was
a perfect record, you know. And the new one has flaws. There are things that could have
been done better, whereas with For Rent I'm pretty much happy with everything on
it."
For Rent is
certainly a kick; the recording is a lot more live sounding; the snare drum in particular
is mixed unusually loud and rough and it makes all the songs sound just a little wilder
than they might otherwise. As with the first lp, the band came up with a batch of songs
that feature both interesting lyrics and great music. Try to resist the guitar hook in
"Glory Hop", the bass line in "Down And Out" or the vocal chorus in
"East Coast, West Coast Girl"...you can't; these are just classic punky pop
songs. For Rent also includes a couple more introspective tracks like "Gangs
In My Town", whereas the first lp was primarily full on rockers.
Another eastern tour
followed For Rent, and after this tour drummer Ron Anderson left and was replaced
with Tom Cook, affectionately called "Cookie" by the band. John credits the
departures of both Ron and John Joyce to the difficulty of touring. "Plus they just
couldn't cope with it", says John. "It's frustrating not making a lot of money.
It's not easy, but I like it a lot."
The new lineup
recorded 1989's Dime Store Dream, and again went off on tour, this time for a
longer spell hitting the west coast as well. Although Kyle hasn't left the band he was
unable to make the west coast leg of the tour, so a temporary replacement was found. John
found the west coast a little harder to do; there's a lot more driving between shows than
on the east coast where everything is packed closely together with lots of college towns,
but it was fun playing some new places to new faces. They also found that their
preconceptions about what crowds would be like in different towns were somewhat off.
"It's hard to play a town you've never been to", says John, "because you
don't know what to expect. Like we played Bozeman, Montana a couple of weeks before San
Diego, and we thought it was going to be the biggest dive and the worst show of the tour.
You figure, Bozeman, oh, shit, there's 30,000 people in that town. But the place was jam
packed; it was probably the most packed gig on the tour. So you never know. There was
punks there and stuff; it was really weird. Really scary; mohawks running around in
Bozeman, Montana."
"When we played
Mizzou, Montana it was my birthday. I thought it was going to be another dive bar, so I
went bar hopping; there's tons of bars in this little town because it's a university town.
And I got all these free drinks. So I walked in the bar where we were going to play and
the place was totally packed and I was kind of out of it, and I had to try to play...but
we played all right."
Dime Store Dream
again has a slightly changed production style. It also powers, but now the power comes
from a hotter, rawer guitar sound. John's singing gets progressively better on each
record; he's got a great, bratty voice and sings against the grain of the music in a lot
of places in a way that makes his voice be almost more like another instrument than just a
source of words. Yet the lyrics are one of the reasons that the Magnolias are
special...they've got catchy songs, but there's always more to discover in the words.
Moreover, although the songs are usually pretty bright and snappy, the lyrics have a lot
more depth than many bands playing in a similar style.
"I dunno",
says John, "I don't really like to talk about the lyrics and stuff...they're just
lyrics. I just kind of look on the dark side some times. But the music, I always like to
keep the music pretty up beat and kind of poppy. I don't want to scare anybody or anything
like that (laughs). But I like to look at things and see things that are wrong with
society in general, but not political...just about social values and stuff."
Are the lyrics harder
than the music to write? "The lyrics are harder...yeah", he replies. "It's
easier to write a song when you have the lyrics. Then you can hear the melody in your
head. When you write the music first it's a little bit harder to put the lyrics to it.
Sometimes the songs are similar subjects, but you try to express them in a different way.
I don't like to repeat myself, but I think it's happened, you know. I can only write about
so many things. I try to take a story and the next time I'll maybe add to it. I dunno,
it's really not a conscious thing."
Although reviews of
Magnolias records most often compare them to other Minneapolis bands, John thinks the
comparisons are a bit off the mark. "It's always 'Soul Asylum' or
'Replacements'", he moans. "That comparison kind of gets old. I think I was
maybe inspired by them to play but I don't know if I'm heavily influenced by them. I think
we'd still sound the same if they'd never existed. When someone writes a review, they
always want to compare you to somebody so the reader will get an idea what you're like,
and it's so easy for them because we're from Minneapolis and on Twin Tone...it's so easy
for them to do that. I think if we were from some other city and on some different label
there really wouldn't be that many comparisons. I think we sound more like the Buzzcocks
or the Undertones than we do like Soul Asylum or the Replacements."
Johns roots in music
obviously go back a bit further than 80s Minneapolis bands. "I was really into the
Clash back in the late 70s", he says, "and I was into buying all this English
punk stuff, buying as much as I could possibly find, and that was before I could play
guitar."
I'm sure you've heard
as much as I have about the scene in Minneapolis, but for me it might as well be
Australia...in fact, it could be further since I've been to Australia but I've never been
within 500 miles of Minneapolis. So is the scene as big as it's made out to be there?
"In underground music?", asks John. "Oh, yeah, it's huge. There's little
cliques all over the place. There's a pretty big scene in Minneapolis music wise. There's
a lot of clubs, although not a lot of them cater to underground music. There's two or
three clubs that you can play. The 7th Street Entry downtown, and then uptown there's a
place called the Uptown Bar, and there's a bar called the Caboose, but we got 86'd out of
the Caboose and we can't play. And then there's a college, the University of Minnesota,
which is in Minneapolis. We play in their little student union thing. There's plenty of
places to play, and occasionally there's warehouse parties going on. The bars close around
here at 1:00 in Minneapolis, so for everybody to get together again someone usually throws
a party somewhere with a couple of kegs, and you pay a couple of bucks to get in. In the
warehouse district of Minneapolis sometimes bands will bring in a whole PA and there'll be
two or three bands that'll play from 1:00 until 4:00 in the morning, because the bars are
closed at one. So everybody gets together and parties. That doesn't happen every night,
but maybe once a month, usually."
They got
"86'd" out of the Caboose? What the hell does that mean? John has to explain it
to me. "They tried to unplug us and our guitar player threw his guitar at the
promoter; just missed him, but broke the guitar. It was closing time and we didn't know
it. They said they put the houselights on, but we couldn't tell. And we kept playing and
all of a sudden they're taking the microphone off the stage and trying unplug us, and we
kept grabbing the microphone and then he's leaning down trying to cut the power, and
that's when the guitar player threw his guitar at him. Our other guitar player had a habit
of breaking guitars; he was always throwing his guitar around, and he can't afford to buy
another one. We've probably gone through eight guitars in this band in five years."
So now there's three clubs in Minneapolis where anybody can play, except for the Magnolias
there's only two. That's what it is to be 86'd.
But it's OK, because
they only play about every six weeks around there anyway, and they can get enough shows in
the remaining venues to keep their schedule as full as they want it to be. Those dates, in
addition to the occasional four to six day excursions out into the surrounding
countryside, constitute most of their live activity in between records. For now, with
their Dime Store Dream tour over, it's back home for a summer of writing new
material, occasional shows and short tours, and then recording a new lp in the fall. If
you're as far behind as I was, this gives you about six months to catch up. What in
heaven's name are you waiting for?
