Beat Happening
Announce vinyl reissues of their entire catalogue
All six LPs available November 11th
On November 11, Domino will release vinyl reissues of the entire catalogue of Beat Happening, the seminal Olympia, Washington trio that transformed the Pacific Northwest underground music scene in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2019, the band released We Are Beat Happening, a career-spanning box set that featured versions of their albums newly remastered by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road Studios. The box set, hailed as “a monument to the spartan trio’s music and their seismic influence on the indie rock that followed in their wake” by Pitchfork, is now sold out. The remastered versions of the six albums – 1985’sBeat Happening, 1988’s Jamboree, 1989’s Black Candy, 1991’s Dreamy, 1992’s You Turn Me On, and the 2003 rarities and B-sides compilation Music to Climb the Apple Tree By – will now be available as separate LPs for the first time.
Jamboree, Black Candy, Dreamy, You Turn Me On, and Music To Climb The Apple Tree By will be available on standard black vinyl while Beat Happening will be available as a double LP.
Pre-Order: Dom Mart.
Beat Happening’s beloved single “Indian Summer” was recently featured in the award-winning FX series Reservation Dogs.
The legend of Beat Happening, and of K, the label that Calvin Johnson founded, is full of big names they worked with before they were stars (Beck! Modest Mouse! The Gossip!), and big names they influenced (Kurt Cobain! Sleater-Kinney!). Less acknowledged, however, is that Bret Lunsford, Heather Lewis, and Calvin Johnson created some of the most original and surprising music to come out of the often deliberately weird American punk rock tradition.
Working from a sonic template of the Cramps, Trouble Funk, Young Marble Giants, and messianic blues, Beat Happening confounded and often incited violence from audiences weaned on hardcore punk. In the place of macho aggression, Beat Happening confronted the all-ages scene with Heather’s low-key delivery and Calvin’s fey theatrics, topped off by his trademark dance move: rubbing his tummy. For a supposedly cutesy band, Beat Happening was adamant about asserting its right to exist, carrying itself with a punk as fuck attitude that would become a key inspirational lodestone for the generation of D.I.Y. bands that followed, including Bikini Kill and the Nation of Ulysses.
Fans only familiar with Beat Happening’s self-titled first album of 1985, or just the cat in a rocketship line-drawing on its cover, or the much-covered “Indian Summer” from 1988’s Jamboree, will be surprised at the band’s range and musicality. In the absence of a bass player, the guitar and drums had to carry more character in the songs, and alongside the de rigueur post-punk and indiepop moves, Beat Happening omnivorously shifted from go-go to surf to Shaggs-esque outsider pop to Krautrock. All this was accompanied by a sexual energy thinly veiled behind the band’s nostalgic celebration of youth. The band’s final album, 1992’s forgotten classic You Turn Me On, was a gorgeous lo-fi dream-pop opus co-produced by bedroom pop legend Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants.
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