![]() They entered the ’90s wielding rock essence far more forthrightly via the Butch Vig-produced Americruiser, perhaps a little too much so, as the record can be hard to differentiate from some of the newly rock-centric but second tier outfits of the time. Really, it was a harbinger of things to come.ġ989’s Jesus Urge Superstar, also recorded with Albini, was the first of three full-lengths that coincided with the band’s gradually rising alternative rock profile, but it’s also the final entry in Urge’s “noise-rock” period. ![]() At the time, some lumped in the disc’s a-side handling of the Jimmy Webb chestnut with the cover tune fun and games of their labelmates Killdozer, but it was somewhat nearer to the more stone-faced tactic as employed by Big Black. The “Wichita Lineman” b/w “Eggs” 45, the band’s first release on Touch and Go, came out the next year. His studio touch on the record is considerably felt, but even at this point, in contrast to some of their subterranean scene peers (a handful of them also from Chicago), it didn’t connect as if they were brutalizing rock forms, but rather just kicking things up a few notches in accord with the u-ground moment. Indeed, early on they were occasionally tagged as noise-rock, with their debut EP for Ruthless Records, 1986’s “Strange, I…” recorded by Steve Albini. And as they barreled forth into the upside-down musical landscape of the 1990s, the band progressively cultivated an image as exponents of the highlife, to the point where gazing upon their sharp threads and soaking up the air of confidence they exuded, one could reasonably expect them to offer a sound in the neighborhood of neo-loungsters Combustible Edison. Its 25th anniversary reissue is out now through Porterhouse Records in a clear blue vinyl edition of 1,000.Īs a byproduct of a scene where the band t-shirt became an increasingly common signifier of “regular guy” bona fides (to the point where it was almost a uniform), Urge Overkill oozed panache. That is to say, in 2018 Saturation holds up fairly well. While a certain Neil Diamond cover endures as their most popular song, the band’s first album for Geffen did make some waves, and if they didn’t capitalize on its success, it remains more than a footnote or a relic of an unpredictable era. I didn’t want to stop them from going to Geffen I just wanted to be fully reimbursed for what I’d spent.Of the bands that transitioned from the late ’80 US indie rock scene to the early ’90s major label lifestyle, few if any embraced hitting the “big time” with more vigor than Chicago’s Urge Overkill. It was a special exception, based on something extra we did for them. It was the first time a Touch and Go band had ever owed us an album. Says Rusk in response: “I don’t recall mentioning a figure of what I was going to sue them for. They are not going to occupy the moral high ground on this.” We had nothing, and he was ready to see us fall. He has a business, he has a life, he has everything. Which stopped our record in its tracks for a few months. He thought that Geffen would pay him a hundred thousand dollars. He was going to sue us for a hundred thousand dollars, more money than we’d ever fucking seen in our lives. ![]() Roeser: “And because it was an EP, do you know what he wanted to do? He threatened to fuck our career entirely up with Geffen. That got the studio mad at me, and ended up costing other bands that came after them money.”īlackie: “The second-best EP for the year in the Village Voice.” The amount of time they said they needed to make the record turned out to be a lie. “On the last record I worked with them on, they took advantage of a deal I got them on studio time. “I have to admit,” he says, “that my hatred of them is slightly irrational, in that special way that you feel hatred when people who were once good friends turn into pieces of shit.” Urge, he says, are “scheming, careerist, and manipulative.”Īsked for specifics, Albini provided two. I asked Albini why he’d fallen out with the people he describes as having been his best friends for ten years. Hitsville is currently in the process of profiling Urge for Request magazine on the eve of its bombshell debut, Saturation, on Geffen. On the other: principled and hard-line defenders of the indie-record way of life. On the one side: an uncompromising, ambitious, and talented band that has never hidden its desire to sell records. The ongoing feud between Urge Overkill and their former partners in crime–producer Steve Albini and Touch and Go Records nicely illustrates the intense pressures that independent bands and labels are feeling as the majors embrace what was once the most uncommercial music imaginable. Whenever They Call You “Friend”: Urge vs. 7/28: Lawyers for Social Justice Reception.Sommelier Series (paid sponsored content).
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