Indian Summer

by Rob White in Editorials, Opinion Posts

I noticed a fellow blogger tried desperately to categorize emo music in three paragraphs, this is not a good idea. Emo is difficult, its hard to understand. With all the bullshit press and hype around emo bands these days, its hard to really know when anything began or (in most peoples opinion) ended. Sure, you can say that Weezer’s “Pinkerton” is the most defining emo album of the nineties, and once you drink your cherry coke and sit back and agree that Rolling Stone is still relevant, you can bob your head to the new Death Cab for Cutie album on mtv’s “leak”

For my money the most defining moment in emo (or as civilized people refer to it, MUSIC) is Jawbreaker’s Bivouac, which through countless hours of research i have determined to be the greatest record ever released.

But this isn’t about a defining moment in music.

This about when music was literally destroyed and rebuilt.

Indian Summer. The name alone makes fans of obscure music cream there collective jeans, and for a damn good reason. Indian Summer was together for a very short time, by some accounts a year, by others closer to two. They released a couple splits and had a few songs on compilations, all of which were gathered on the Future records release as a discography. This album is amazing and all, and displays a great time in underground music when people didn’t give shit about getting into trash magazines or getting there single into hot topic, it was about making music for the sake of making music. It wasn’t about pushing boundaries because there wasn’t any to be pushed, and it wasn’t about pleasing an audience, it was about what the audience would walk away with.

Hidden Arithmetic is they live bootleg that lives on snobby collector shelves everywhere. I had heard bits and pieces of it from mp3’s floating around the Internet (they never named songs, thus making Internet searches slightly difficult). This past Christmas i purchased a copy of the vinyl for myself and one for my brother as a present, he was thrilled as was I.

I put it on as a background to clean my house, but i ended up sitting on my couch and listening to the whole thing from start to finish. I had a dirty house, and my mind was blown.

Recorded for a college radio station broadcast at Stanford University, and sometimes called the “Live Blue Universe” bootleg, it is a face melter. From the the first song’s outrageous build, to the point where my knuckles were clenched so tight they had turned white and I twisting with anticipation, ready to scream at my record player “Just let it come!” to the harrowing conclusion of the 12 minute fan titled “Angry Son” this record destroys everything most people think music “should” be. Whispering over single note guitar lines to the all out havoc breaking loose just seconds later, not enough can be said about the dynamics of this record. Not to mention the haunting Bessy Smith record playing on stage in the background of all this.

The record sleeve provides some information on the mysterious record, Apparently a guitar went through the ceiling at the end of the performance, and sadly only two people “witnessed” this recording. The record itself comes in probably the coolest packaging ever, filled with odd slips of poems and a small story by spoken word artists Eric De Jesus. It sums up this odd Oakland based band that had an infinite amount of influence on the underground music community.

For emo, some people take Pinkerton, I’ll gladly take Indian Summer. I think anyone wanting something different would agree.

To check out the band and order the records please click here, and help the good guys.

-robwhite