various artists - Insound Tour Support Collection Vol. No. One

It seems weird that I've only written about the Insound Tour Support series once, for how many of them I ended up with and how many times they got me onboard with a band or an artist. The Kind Of Like Spitting release, in particular, is the thing that got me listening to Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and Leon Redbone. I heard the Canyon EP before I saw them live, even though they were based in DC and were dudes from emo bands playing Neil Young-style country rock...a genre engineered to grab my early-20s interest.

A lot of this is now hitting the quarter century mark, which explains why the original records are being revisited (s/o to Numero Group and Solid Brass for their ongoing reissue programs). So I thought it was a good opportunity to finally post this one up. It compiles a fair amount of the bands who appeared in Volumes 1-19. And like a lot of what I share here, it's a good snapshot of indie rock in the years around 9/11. Bright Eyes, Ida, and the Faint are the biggest names here, although relistening to this makes me wish I had held onto my copies of the Lion compilation EP and the Very Secretary release.

Discogs

Click here to download.

The Rapture - Insound Tour Support Series No.19

Photo by Will Oliver

It was really nice when they gave us punks permission to dance back around 2000. It had been such a sexless existence in the late 90s, so when we figured out making out wasn't going to kill us, and we could repurpose our ADHD meds, well, things became a lot more fun. The dorks among us began to embrace New Wave and rhythm and every week there was a Britpop or soul night at the same clubs we'd been moshing in. Apparently, that book Meet Me In The Bathroom captures the spirit of those times pretty well, even with its focus being on New York City.

Insound.com, for a few years, at least, was THE spot on the Internet to mail order indie releases from. Along with Tiger Style Records and early Pitchfork, Insound was shining a light on the cutting edge of what was happening in American music right then. They had this "Tour Support Series" of limited edition CDs that highlighted what was on the road. If memory serves, you could order a specific release, or they'd throw one into your order if you bought more than $25 of records. These still serve as a pretty awesome snapshot of what was worth paying attention to, yet were inexpensive enough to feel sincere and real.

Throw the Rapture into this mix, and you have a grade A, pre-9/11, dance punk banger on your hands. They were already on the edge of that transition from 90s post-punk to indie dance, having released records on GSL and Gravity that were well reviewed and I remember liking a lot. But this...phew, this was like if Factory Records had recorded everything on a boom box in a basement. It was revelatory. It got us ready for "Losing My Edge" the next year, for DFA to blow up, to dance because the goddamned world was otherwise falling apart and we needed something unimportant to pay attention to.

Three of the six songs on this were otherwise never released. I believe these songs come from the same session that gave us "Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks"; one of the first DFA productions, if memory serves. If nothing else, I think this is worth having because the version of "House Of Jealous Lovers" is just intense.

Discogs

Click here to download.