The Fastbacks

They really enjoy playing their music, everyone else is lying

Wow, the Fastbacks have released a new record!  While I let that one marinate in my ears a bit, I thought it would be fun to revisit some of their older tracks–songs that are all time favorites of mine and made indelible marks on the way I think about music.

“Impatience” (1992)

My high school buddy Joe Kim put this on a tape in 1993 which was a wild coincidence; I recalled reading a glowing live show review of the Fastbacks in the Boston Phoenix earlier that summer (the writer remarked how Kurt played guitar better airborne than anybody - I think the argument could be made he is just straight up better at guitar than anybody), and was bummed at the time that I couldn’t find their records in any of the Cambridge, MA record stores that I pretty much spent all my free time flipping through.  I never asked him how or why he came to own their The Question is No CD, but when I heard this song it was like the world opened up.  

I love their …and His Orchestra (1987) and Very, Very Powerful Motor (1990) LPs, and it helps to acknowledge that the FBX had, by 1992, already been a band for more than 13 years, plugging away and perfecting their craft of hook filled, poppy punk in relative obscurity.  They seem to have been 100% of SEATTLE, being solid community pillars through the first waves of local punk and hardcore of the late 70s-80s and sustaining well into into the grunge days and 2000s; they knew and probably pal’d around with everybody (eg bringing several infamous persons or soon-to-bes into their bureau of a dozen drummers, including a teenage Duff McKagan, Dan Peters, Jason Finn, etc), although it seems they sounded like no one else in town.  Paying attention to interviews with all of the other great not-particularly-grungey or grunge-adjacent Seattle musicians, all of them mention the Fastbacks with reverence.  Somewhat related, I can recommend Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music as one of the more entertaining and interesting regional scene histories, along with the documentary Hype! (lots of great moments, like Art Chantry destroying priceless flyers in a paper cutter, Dead Moon live footage, Kurt and Conrad Uno working with Flop at Egg studio),  and the follow up, Hype: 20 years later.  Duff Mckagen’s autobiography is also pretty great for the Fartz/10 Minute Warning fan (and I suppose the GnR ones too).  I’m not even that particularly interested in capital-G “Grunge,” but for whatever reason I am drawn to all of the smaller corners and musical satellite scenes of the pacific NW.   

Back to the FBX, there seems to have been a sonic leap for their recording activities moving into 1991, as heard on the tracks that make up the first half of The Question is No.  It sounds like the final pieces of production and engineering know-how were finally in place to round out the edges and make everything really pound.  The liner notes say they had to ditch the studio and fire up a basement 8-track to print these tunes. As someone that has torn their hair out trying to mix a loud rock recording or two, what’s going on in these tracks is not a higher fidelity (actually the opposite on that particular variable, to these ears), but a sonic signature that makes the whole thing sound more alive.  Nate Johnson’s (my preferred of the FBX drum lineage) kit work never sounded so dynamic, the intertwining guitar parts and Kurt’s high gain tone never so articulate yet meaty, and Kim and Lulu’s vocal toughness and vulnerability never so present.  In my own imagination (and subjective perception), Kurt took a similar tack with all of his subsequent productions with other bands. Just seeing his name in the credits or reading about his involvement was enough to get a record into my collection, as he had a way of working that seemed to bring out the best in many like-minded groups.  Here’s a few examples:

Anyway back to this batch of songs (essentially the The Answer is You 2x7”, Run No More/Really single, and “What’s It Like” from the Seattle Syndrome comp) - here’s the question I’m wrestling with at the moment:  did the Fastbacks paint the Sistine Chapel of pop-punk here, years before the genre’s surge in popularity and practice?

Arguments in favor: 

• Skill and execution:  I’ll often listen to and appreciate a thing more when I can imagine doing it - I think the defining character of some of the best punk is that it begs you to try it.  I can’t picture a reality of approximating the role of a Fastback, as everyone is so good at what they do.  I can’t shred like Kurt, I can’t play drums like Nate, I can’t sing like Kim or Lulu.  Compositionally, I can’t write a song like Impatience. Despite being insanely catchy and anthemic, it is highly sophisticated in melody and sound.  I’m not even certain how to reproduce the palm mute parts during the verses - if you listen closely, it’s not really even regular palm muting, more like loose hand-gated chording?  Never mind the divebombs and harmonics in the song turns.  There is nary a 1-4-5 progression to be found here.  As a dabbler in audio engineering, I can’t replicate a sound like this (and I tried!).  There’s conventional musician wisdom that in the studio, you should have some reference material around to calibrate your ears, and Impatience was one of my go-to’s.  There’s a bus compression on the mix, or maybe just on the drums, that has really stuck with me as an ideal punchtastic rock drum sound - gated and eq’d just right. 

• Imagination/Affect:  the lyrical voice of Fastbacks songs have an unmistakable confessional, heart-on-sleeve quality, yet I don’t think this band ever authored a conventional love song (though they have covered several - among them cuts from the Ramones, Buzzcocks, and Raspberries).  In my reading of Impatience, it is an emotionally charged, heart to heart talk with a neighborhood cat (see if you agree).  There is something really beautiful about devoting so much of one’s efforts and artistic reserves to this kind of endeavor.  I cranked this song in the car the other day, and maybe it just caught me in an emotionally labile moment, but I experienced a crazy rush, akin to being thrilled to near tears.  I can’t be the only one with this song in their Mt Rushmore, yet it doesn’t even chart in their own Spotify list!  This brings me to:

• Recognition: undecided here.  There’s an insiders-only character to FBX fandom, and within there is plenty of strong fanaticism - this band is the proverbial reward for deep digging by conscientious parties.  Intrepid listeners from the indiepop underground found them on the mid 80s K Records cassette comp Let’s Sea or their In the Winter 7” with the Flatmates’ Subway Organization label; late 80s black jeans and flannel indie rockers heard them on the Sub Pop 200 comp.  Ben Weasel for a period was singing their praises in his 90s MRR columns (an odd thing coming from a guy that hard-lined a philosophy that musicians must not be too skilled), which maybe turned a few studded belts and spiky jackets their way.  San Francisco had their backs, as they played every Noise Pop fest from inception (1993) until 2002, at which point the band went on hiatus.  In the late 90s, they tried the stadium rock thing, opening for Pearl Jam globally on tour for a few months, but I don’t know that that moved many units.  The Fastbacks are a band many people are aware of, but peculiarly, I don’t think these songs get defined as all-timers for many (or any?).  

“In the Winter” (live - 1989)  “In the Summer” (1990)

I was so profoundly affected by the Fastbacks’ music there in ‘93 that I had it in my mind to write them a fan letter (something I’ve only done a handful of times in my life).  I was shocked to receive in response, an outrageously generous package from Kim that included the “Live in America” 2x7”  Therein is a great live version of half of their dyad of seasonal themes, “In the Winter.”  “In the Summer” is somehow beyond the “everyday miracle” category of a pop song - it’s goddamn perfect.  Kurt’s guitar virtuosity is given plenty of leash here with the leads, and again so many hooks and compositional tools are employed to fill the audience to burst point over excitement for the hot months.  The term Power Pop has increasingly come to mean something really specific for musicologists and collectors, but to me “In the Summer” is the exemplar and what it should mean.  I was quite pleased with myself when I could finally play guitar along with In The Summer from start to finish; it might be for me, pathetically, a top 3 guitar player accomplishment, number 1 being surviving as a sheet music-illiterate, complete novice orchestra guitar player for a university theater production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” (a truly weird experience). 

I couldn’t find the right version of In the Winter, but here’s a sweet cover of Mott the Hoople’s “Roll Away the Stone” from the same record.

“Book of Revelation” (1998)

I wish I could get the story on how this cover of a Mr T. Experience standout happened. Or maybe the better question is how did Kim Warnick end up doing backup vocals on the MTX original?  The song has uncharacteristically complex guitar lead parts for MTX material, almost Kurt Bloch-like, so it makes all the sense in the world that it would be good grist for the FBX.  The song asks many cosmological questions, and it has inspired me to ask a few of my own: are all bands that are appealing to me, appealing to each other?  Do most bands of a certain stature that I like, all know each other?  Could I have possibly pulled some extradimensional threads in willing these relationships into existence?  One wonders!  Well we are all blessed that this happened.