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120 REASONS TO LIVE

120 Reasons To Live: The Cavedogs

Nothing did more to further the cause of Alternative Nation-building than 120 Minutes, MTV’s Sunday-night video showcase of non-mainstream acts. For nearly two decades, the program spanned musical eras from ’80s college rock to ’00s indie, with grunge, Britpop, punk, industrial, electronica and more in between. MAGNET raids the vaults to resurrect our 120 favorite and unjustly forgotten videos from the show’s classic era.

#18: The Cavedogs “Tayter Country”

Boston was a crowded elevator in the late’80s/early ’90s, and everyone remembers the corner-office bands: Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, Throwing Muses, Lemonheads—they’re all still active or reuniting or rehabbing getting ready to reunite and rehab. Buffalo Tom’s got one arm in that picture, too. But there were others, and they are fading fast from our collective memory. Letters To Cleo, Gigolo Aunts, the Cavedogs, anyone? If you have a cassette copy of 1990’s Joyrides For Shut-Ins and a Datsun to listen to it in, the Cavedogs are absolutely worth rediscovering. In the case of this trio, the old wives’ tale about a Grunge Steamroller coming to town and flattening all the perfectly nice power-pop bands rings somewhat true. The Cavedogs unfortunately also had a sense of humor—guitarist Todd Spahr and bassist Brian Stevens began playing at comedy clubs before hooking up with drummer Mark Rivers—and ended Joyrides with a jingle: “Scrum-diddly-dee-bop: Tayterlicious!” But the rest of the album was stocked with seriously well-crafted songs, chief among them “Tayter Country” and “Leave Me Alone.”

2 replies on “120 Reasons To Live: The Cavedogs”

long overdue props for the cavedogs. i do still own and cherish my cassette of ‘joyrides for shut-ins’. and i was listening to it in a friend’s datsun on my way to high school every day alongside ‘doolittle’ and rem’s eponymous collection and talking heads and the replacements, etc.

quick note: if memory serves correctly, the original issue of ‘joyrides’ has the above version of ‘tayter country.’ i think capitol picked them up from enigma and included a re-recorded version on latter pressings. from what i remember it was inferior to the original, but that could have just been my adolescent ears. anyway, get the record. the follow-up, ‘murder’, is pretty good too.

great little friggin’ band.

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