Juned >> Would you wait for me?

Juned - "Kyuss"

(Up Records, 1995)

Juned was an all-girl quartet from Washington, active only from about 1993 to about 1996.  They put out two LPs on Up Records, a subsidiary of indie behemoth Sub Pop.  Their name, pronounced "Joon'd" (one syllable), is skateboarder slang for learning a lesson from being fucked over.  Their second album, Every Night For You, is in my opinion the greatest album ever put out by an all-female band, and nothing else comes even remotely close.  I immediately ordered this CD after hearing their stunning song "Titanic" on an incredible 4-band promo 7" that Up put out the previous year.  ("Titanic" will be posted on here someday.)  The other three bands on it were Modest Mouse, The Pastels, and 764-HERO.  I received the CD in early January 1997, put this song on, and my jaw just about went through the floor at the genius evinced by this, the opening track.

I can say that it is one of the most life-changing songs I've ever heard, from the stirring opening guitar notes to the thunderous drum intro, to the opening "Going faster, my time" lyric, to just every miniscule detail of it, man... to the very last note.  Every note of this song has an urgent purity which most bands would kill for.  Every note of this song is necessary for world peace and for understanding of the cosmos.  Even the guitar solo (from 2:09 to 3:07) massacres anything by Slash or that satanic guy from Led Zeppelin.  The 3:08 mark is crucial because the guitars suddenly end their duel by hitting matching resonant notes one octave apart, and a mini post-punk bass part kicks in.  And then when the rhythm guitar comes back in with venomous, distorted power chords at the 3:15 mark, it knocks your socks off once more.  The vocals after this point are sung slightly higher and more desperately than in the beginning of the song, leading to the final climax of emotion: "And I couldn't bring you along / Would you wait for me?"  It's presumably the most staggeringly amazing final minute of any song, ever.

Elegant back cover of LP

I remember that this was the second most-played song on my 2002-2008 Mac's iTunes, trailing only "Until You're Forever" by The Veldt.  Part of Juned's power was the fact that all four members sang in some capacity, though they had two main lead singers, Dale Balenseifen and Claudia Groom.  To this day, I still have no idea which of them sang lead on this song, which drives me crazy.  As for the song title, in fall of 1994 Juned and Kyuss went on tour as the opening acts for Dinosaur Jr., so I guess all three bands became good pals.  In fact, Juned's bassist Leslie Hardy briefly married Dino Jr.'s bassist Mike "I'm Not Lou Barlow" Johnson.  Those crazy bassists!  I WANTED TO GO TO THIS SHOW IN NEW ORLEANS, mainly b/c Dino had an MTV hit at the time with "Feel The Pain", but I was only 17.  Anyway, Kyuss is fucking lame, and Josh Homme is a douche, so I'm always ticked off that Juned named such an amazing song after them.  What the hell is a kyuss anyway?  I guess the name refers to the '70s dueling-guitar / arena-ready aspect of the song, e.g. the same '70s territory mined so clumsily by Kyuss.  "Sisters Of The Red Sun" is a long, instrumental psychedelic (sorry, "post-rock") tour de force that is overtly inspired by Jimi Hendrix's lengthy space-fest "Third Stone From The Sun."  Remember, Jimi was from Seattle and is a huge hero to most bands up there.  Juned had already broken up by the time this album was released in early '96.

Clockwise from left: bassist Leslie Hardy, drummer Lenny Rennalls,
singer / guitarist Dale Balenseifen, singer / guitarist Claudia Groom

Dale's Facebook photo, making the same exact face as in the above photo, but with heart-shaped cleavage(?) in place of fur! 

I had an Every Night For You promo poster (as well as a promo poster for their self-titled debut album) on my diagonal attic ceiling from '97 to '05, despite its comically-Photoshopped stars.  You can see the self-titled album poster in this little clip I shot on 3/26/04:

Juned's bassist went on to join the incredibly mediocre bands Love As Laughter and Murder City Devils.  I saw LAL at a dive bar called the Hi-Ho Lounge in July '98, and I wanted to say something to her about how Juned changed my life, but I chickened out, even though she's about 5 feet tall, so I just walked right by her on my way to the bathroom.  I even remember that I wore my Unwound shirt to that show to try to impress her with my knowledge of Seattle / Olympia bands, ha.  (My white one; I now have that white one and about 4 black ones.)

As for Kill Sybil, I have two 7"s by them, but I've never gotten their full-length.  (One of their 7"s is a split with Cher, no joke.)  This is the part where I physically restrain myself from going off on the one all-female band that received all the acclaim during the '90s and beyond, while Juned remain almost totally unknown.  Yes, it's Sleater-Kinney to whom I refer, they of "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" fame and ear-rupturing vocal stylings.  The band with effortlessly catchy choruses, angelic vocal harmonizing, and accessibly melodic riffage gets ignored, while the one with primitive uh, everything, become stars.  I guess S-K's more masculine sound appealed to male rock critics and zine writers, while Juned's more feminine, shoegaze-influenced quiet storm would've made them superstars in England in the late '80s / early '90s (especially the Sundays-esque "Hearts To Bleed"), but was totally out of fashion in the boorish mid-'90s U.S., a nation which actually gave the Melvins and Butthole Surfers major-label recording contracts.
Fun Fact: Juned's song "Groovin' On You" was on the soundtrack to the 1996 flick Grace Of My Heart, but was allegedly not used in the actual movie.

May 1996 issue of Lollipop magazine w/ an article on Juned

Or you can ignore all the ravings I've just issued and listen to what an iTunes reviewer named die die my love had to say in 2007, in proto-Twitter form:

"there a graet band that all"

Planets with similar climates: Bleach - "Seeing" & "Push" (1991), Lush - "Sweetness And Light" (1990), Swervedriver - "Blowin' Cool" (1993), blueScreen - "Anon" (2002), Concrete Blonde - "Dance Along The Edge" (1986), Kill Laura - "False Dawn" (1994), The Emerald Down - "Stars" (2001), Earwig - "Everything's Just Fine" (1991), National Skyline - "Reinkiller" (2001), Ride - "Here And Now" (1990).


Worst thing I had to do today: Cut down my 10 foot tall Celeste fig tree after learning it has a fatal and very contagious fungus called ganoderma.


Worst thing I learned yesterday: "Pilots use automated systems to fly airliners for all but about three minutes of a flight: the takeoff and the landing." - From an article called Are airline pilots forgetting how to fly?