April 18, 2011

There was once a time in the early 90′s where MTV heavily capitalized on the whole “grunge” explosion and provided the general public with a steady diet of music videos by Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains. But for a lot of us curious & passionate music lovers, the real bulk of amazing music came post-grunge as we discovered a slew of bands emerging from labels such as Sub Pop, CZ Records, SST Records, Rock Stars Kill, Dischord and many, many more. Part of the fun was the thrill of the hunt. Hitting up various local record shops, picking up random 7 inch records and hoping to discover the next band that was going to change our life. (Or at the very least provide the soundtrack to our summer in progress.)

Welcome to our new Massive Hysteria column “This Is A Call: Music Of The 90s“, where each week we’ll be shining the spotlight on one band or artist that may not have gotten the attention of the big 3 mentioned at the top of this article, but that probably deserved it. These are the bands that the second I hear the opening notes of any of their tunes, I immediately become nostalgic and recall the period in my life when I first discovered them.

Up first is Velocity Girl, a Sub Pop band originally from College Park, Maryland. While their debut album Copacetic was a promising debut album full of beautiful clean guitars and pop melodies (sadly buried in the final mix), it wasn’t until their second full length album Simpatico! that they achieved (in my humble opinion) pop perfection as proven by the opening title track and single Sorry Again.

Fronted by singer Sarah Sharron, the band also consisted of Archie Moore (guitar/backing vocals), Brian Nelson (guitar), Kelly Riles (bass) and Jim Spellman (drums). They released one more album after Simpatico! titled Gilded Stars And Zealous Hearts shortly before disbanding. Fun fact, noted director Spike Jonze helmed the music video for their single I Can’t Stop Smiling, also from the Simpatico! record.

Enjoy our first “This Is A Call” column pick, Velocity Girl and their single Sorry Again. As a bonus, there’s also a live version of the song embedded below! -Robg.