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120 REASONS TO LIVE

120 Reasons To Live: The Breeders

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.

#71: The Breeders “Shocker In Gloomtown”

For a hot minute in the mid-’90s, Dayton, Ohio, was not the center of the musical universe. But it was on the map, thanks to Guided By Voices and the Breeders, whose Kim and Kelley Deal, along with drummer Jim Macpherson, are also Dayton natives. The Breeders’ 1994 cover of GBV’s “Shocker In Gloomtown” is no “Cannonball” in terms of recognizability, but it’s a neat artifact of the pervasive hat-tipping in the glory days of indie rock. Incidentally, the Breeders’ 1994 EP featuring “Shocker In Gloomtown” also sported a cover of Sebadoh’s “The Freed Pig”; GBV’s Bob Pollard and Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow had a fairly benign but real rivalry around that time based on who was the better songwriter.

One reply on “120 Reasons To Live: The Breeders”

The Breeders blasting away under shelter while Guided By Voices watches through hazy glass from the outside before wandering off. That’s a metaphor for something, anyway.

I watched it twice in a row.

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