Welcome to the Mushroom Hill

Plasticland - Live in Chicago, IL (1984)

Come one, come all, children of all ages, humped and plain, straight and crooked, broken and reborn! The Mushroom Hill is open to all! None are refused!

Here's the post I've been waiting for, the first of many. I hope you all enjoy this because I'm just plain tickled to share it with you.

First Plasticland song I heard was "Euphoric Trap Door Shoes" on Mike Rock's Friday afternoon show on WORT-FM. We were on our concrete patio outside of the kitchen, perfect Wisconsin summer afternoon, shade and sun in exactly equal proportions (odd, eh?), cats and kittens running all over the place (it was a farm, eh, and we had lots of cats, ya know). I think we were taking a break from bailing hay, which if I have to explain means you didn't grown up on a farm with hungry livestock.

Have you seen That 70s Show? The Forman family has a set of white metal patio furniture with distinctively retro yellow, white and green seat cushions - we had that set! Hauled it up from the basement every year, cleaned it off and enjoyed its plasticy, scrunchy goodness all summer long. We'd sometimes bring the little b&w kitchen TV outside on an extension cord at night and watch our sitcoms in the cool of the yard.

I was sitting in one of those chairs when I first heard Plasticland. Kinda fitting. Maybe it was meant to be.

ADDENDUMBIE:

Wha? In 24-hours, only six downloads of this show! I guess I didn't do my job right, making the assumption that for you, as for me, Plasticland is a household name-band. My apologies. I get carried away by my enthusiasms sometimes.

(You can find three OOP albums and an EP by Plasticland for your tasting pleasure at my old blog. And Twilight Zone has the first album, though this is actually in print again through the band. But they don't have a website right now. Working on that, really.)

Here's a blatant copyright-infringable addition, the All Music bio on Plasticland by Steve Huey (additions and corrections by me in brackets):


Plasticland's acid-drenched neo-psychedelic sound bore some resemblance to L.A.'s concurrent paisley underground scene, but instead of drawing their chief inspiration from the Velvet Underground, the Milwaukee quartet had a greater affinity for vintage garage rock and British mind-benders like Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd and the Pretty Things. Formed in 1980 out of the ashes of prog [kraut] rockers Arousing Polaris, Plasticland included vocalist/guitarist/organist Glenn Rehse, guitarist Dan Mullen, bassist John Frankovic, and drummer Vic Demechei, who debuted that summer with the "Mink Dress" single on Scadillac. Several more singles and EPs followed, including 1982's Pop! Op Drops (whose material later became part of the band's first album); there were also several personnel shifts, as Demechei was replaced first by Bob DuBlon, then Rob McCuen. (Several tracks with the Violent Femmes' Brian Ritchie on guitar were also recorded during this era. [Included on the Mink Dress compilation])

Plasticland's first full-length, Color Appreciation, was issued on the French Lolita label in 1984; a year later, it was re-released in America by Pink Dust with two different tracks, titled simply Plasticland. The follow-up, Wonder Wonderful Wonderland, was released before the end of 1985 [pseudo-produced by Paul Cutler of The Dream Syndicate], and featured Mellotron and bouzouki, among other vintage psychedelic accoutrements. By the time of 1987's Salon, Demechei had returned to the fold. Plasticland subsequently resurfaced on the Midnight label with a pair of live albums: 1989's You Need a Fairy Godmother featured onetime Pink Fairies/Pretty Things drummer Twink [really just the band backing one of their heroes, not any kind of proper collaboration], and 1990's Confetti. In the late '80s, a German fan commissioned an album, Dapper Snappings, for his Repulsion label. The album was eventually released in 1994. Some of the band's early recordings were collected on Mink Dress and Other Cats, while a career-spanning collection [Make Yourself a Happening Machine - shit now!] was issued in 2006.

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