I know next to nothing about Beat Happening other than they are the band most associated with Calvin Johnson, who is regraded as something of a god by many whose musical tastes verge towards the lo-fi end of indie pop music. He was also, of course, given more than a passing mention in the recent feature on Heavenly that was penned by The Three Musketeers.
Wiki tells me that the band formed in Olympia, Washington back in 1982 and that the other two members are Heather Lewis and Bret Lunsford. There were five albums, all released between 1985 and 1992 on Johnson’s K Records label, with the latter material also being backed by either Rough Trade or Sub Pop.
It’s the link up with Rough Trade that enables today’s quite whimsical offering:-
mp3: Beat Happening – Indian Summer
It’s a track on the 1988 album, Jamboree. But it was also included on Indiepop, a 2 x CD Rough Trade compilation released in 2004.
I’ve actually one other Beat Happening release in the collection, the Optic Nerve Records re-release of the 1987 EP, Crashing Through, which I bought on a whim last year. I’ll maybe get round to posting it up some day.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 