Alice Donut Liver Henry Moore
I posted the mp3 of Alice Donut’s new single, the seven-minute epic “Madonna’s Bombing Sarajevo,” on the WoJ post a couple days ago, but I recently saw the video and thought I’d share that too, because it’s pretty cool. (Unfortunately the quality is kind of shit, I think there’s a higher res version on their myspace.)
Alice Donut was my favorite band in the whole world, and pretty much the only band I listened to, from age 16 to about 18. And I still think they hold up as one of the great 90’s post-punk bands that was always sort of on the cusp of breaking really huge, but never did. They have a fiercely loyal cult following, but I think they were just a little bit too out there to break through to a more mainstream audience. Their lyrics were a bit too intelligent, and Tom’s vocals are a bit too strange. When they broke up in 1996 I was devastated, but luckily I was able to see them on their final tour, the very first rock show I ever saw, with seminal Vancouver punksters NoMeansNo and the Japanese noise-core group Ultra Bidé.
They reunited in 2004 and released a semi-disappointing comeback album, Three Sisters. Their latest record, Fuzz, is pretty awesome though. It’s nothing super new or groundbreaking, it’s no Pure Acid Park or Untidy Suicides Of Your Degenerate Children, but it is a good, solid rock album.
Fun fact: the band name was conceived on the way to their first gig, at CBGBs. They didn’t have a name yet, and drove past a donut shop and came up with the horrible/brilliant pun on the movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. The promoter at CBGBs shortened it to Alice Donut to fit on the posters.