Idaho >> Give it all back to me

→• Idaho - "You Are There" •←

. (Caroline Records, 1993) .

This is from Idaho's debut EP, The Palms.  A nice trove of information about it can be found on this page at the excellent Idaho fansite Sliding Past.  Make sure to click on the "reviews" link, which shows that for a moody, completely unknown band's debut EP, it got near-universal acclaim from all corners.  Even Sassy liked it!  Also click on the somewhat amusingly-written "press release biography."

The cameraman said "Uh, guys, I realize 'You are there,' but the camera is over here, so if you could just..."

This song appears with alternate lyrics (but identical music) as "End Game" on the band's essential, genre-defining debut album Year After Year, released later the same year, which is not coincidentally my favorite year in music history.  The singing on "Endgame" is more restrained, and you can actually make out most of the lyrics, but it lacks the wallop of "You Are There."  Idaho's first three albums are actually all essential purchases, though they are all out of print and are not even up on iTunes.  Starting with the third & fourth ones, Idaho's sound changed dramatically, becoming much quieter and eventually relying mainly on piano and whispered vocals.  I personally think the band name Idaho should've been retired ca. '97, but that's another story.  So now you know why "You Are There" stands out in the band's canon so much.  If you like it, you are guaranteed to like Year After Year, and are guaranteed to hate almost everything else by Idaho in the last dozen or so years.

Check out the evocative video for "God's Green Earth" off of Year After Year:

Despite their name, Idaho have always been based in a slightly different state, as this t-shirt of theirs humorously reveals:

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Martin has always been Idaho, with varying levels of help from various dudes he's dredged up, most notably John Barry and Dan Seta.  Being based in Los Angeles has its perks: Martin was said to be dating Naomi Watts at one point in the early '00s, but I think it turned out that they were just friends.  He also was the musical director for a short-lived soap opera in the mid-'00s, which I'm pretty sure was on NBC.

I bought this CD in '02 or '03 on eBay.  It turned out the seller was Brandon Capps of the Arizona shoegaze band Half String, which had toured opening for Idaho in '93.  He mentioned that the two bands had gone bowling in New Orleans, presumably at the "world famous" Rock N' Bowl, before their show here.  TMI, I know, but I think it's pretty cool that such "serious," artsy bands would cut loose and go bowling rather than take in the seedier side that NOLA has to offer.  I also know that Idaho and ethereal U.K. dream-poppers Cranes played at Jimmy's in spring '95 on their U.S. tour together.  A very strange bill, especially since just 2-3 years earlier, Cranes had been the openers on The Cure's arena/stadium tour...  Well, now you know a bit about the strange musical entity known as Idaho.  By the way, for a great live rendition of this song, recorded in '93, check out the band's live album People Like Us Should Be Stopped.

Okay, now to a real-world tragedy that is about to unfold over the next few days: The opening of the Morganza Spillway in Louisiana.  I had never even heard of the Morganza until a week ago.  CNN just posted a story showing how dire the situation is.  Tens of thousands of people will lose their houses in the central part of the state, in order to ease an overload of water coming down the Mississippi River due to ice that fell and then melted up north in last winter's "Slowpocalypse."  The overall goal of opening this spillway is to save the New Orleans / Baton Rouge area.  This will surely make the rest of the state resent New Orleans even more than it already does, but N.O. got flooded a few years ago in Katrina, and it pains me to say it, but it's now someone else's turn.  Imagine being the Army Corps Of Engineers and having to decide over the next few hours which part of an American state to annihilate.  One part has to be annihilated to save the other; both areas cannot be saved.  It's that simple.  Ominously, I heard on WWL radio today that part of the levee protecting my town, Vacherie, is leaking; I live a few blocks from the river.

The decision to open the Morganza could come literally any minute now, but will probably come tomorrow.  It is obligated to be opened when the river's water volume reaches 1.5 million cubic feet per second; it is currently at about 1.42 million cfps.  My grandfather was the head of the Army Corps Of Engineers' Georgia / South Carolina district, meaning he designed lots of the levees / roads / bridges / harbors there.  I wonder what he would think of all this...
(Update: While I was writing this, the decision was made to open the Morganza.  So while I'm glad that N.O. and B.R. will be spared, my thoughts obviously go out to my compatriots upriver, since this will surely be the biggest natural disaster in Louisiana history, dwarfing Katrina.  This flood's overall destruction, from Illinois down to the Gulf Of Mexico, and its rebuilding costs, will probably make it one of the top natural disasters in U.S. history.)

Planets with similar climates: American Music Club - "Sick Of Food" (1991), Codeine - "Realize" (1992), Failure - "Golden" (199?), Hush Harbor - "Sunflower" (1995), Lowercase - "Floodlit" (1998), Alice In Chains - "Dirt" (1992), Joy Division - "Dead Souls" (~1979), The Chameleons - "Soul In Isolation" (1986).