Beat Happening
Our Secret b/w What's Important
scum stats: could it be more than 1000 copies? hard to imagine
As gentle an atomic blast as you could ever imagine. The debut vinyl outing from these godheads, it's just SO perfect, from the hand-coloring on the picture sleeve to the "aw shucks" vibe apparent on both sides. The sound that launched a thousand imitators? Possibly.
Years ago a buddy of mine said, in regards to Beat Happening, "Man....don't you just wish you heard this when you were fifteen years old? Like it'd give you permission (encouragement?) to just go out there and be amateur and unprofessional and out of tune and...it's all ok."
While I wholeheartedly agree with all that sentiment, the fact of the matter is that I DID hear this stuff when I was 15 years old and it absolutely inspired me in all of those ways, providing a north star always able to refer to even as I crest into my forties.
I bought a sleeveless copy of this record in a bulk lot of 7"s on eBay back in 2000 or so. I sent an email to Calvin Johnson of the band/K Records and asked if there were any random sleeves that might just be kicking around. In all honesty he said he'd take a look and although he didn't turn up any, the fact that he'd give some punk teenager the time of day (over email) to go and try to scrounge a picture sleeve for a record from SIXTEEN YEARS earlier tells you all you need to know about the magic of taking time, of listening, of not being dismissive of the younger generation that lets this band maintain its relevance nearly forty years after their inception.
"...I had dinner with her family" as the final line of the a-side is just...carries the weight of a thousand suns both in its intonation and the meaning behind it.
All the Beat Happening LP's are newly repressed for like the thousandth time and please do buy any/all of them as you cannot go wrong anywhere in their catalog. An American band as equally as important as the Grateful Dead. Go ahead...fight me.
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