Bare Minimum >> Marking the unmarkable pristine sea

Bare Minimum - "Night We Streak, Divine Failure"

(Sub Pop Records, 1995 / Rx Remedy Records, 1996)

Here's one of the most intense songs I've ever heard, by a band that is tragically unknown.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of bands with this name, so be sure to demand the real one (born in Cali, raised in Seattle) at your best record store.

The intensity is ramped up masterfully over the course of the song, with a fairly astonishing ending section.  This song was recorded in March '95 by Barrett Jones and released as a 7" single by Sub Pop later that year:

Mediocre pic taken from an eBay auction; evidence of olden days when indie labels were apparently not prohibited from using black vinyl by arcane guild rules.

Amazingly, this single didn't turn them into the new Nirvana or even the new Dickless or Cat Butt.  Despite this, Sub Pop obviously dug the song, because it was included on the band's Night We Streak EP the following year, on a short-lived Sub Pop imprint called Rx Remedy.  I think this label was some sort of minor league where Sub Pop's less-commercial bands could develop for a while, but none of them ever gained any notoriety.

I once read an interview with Bare Minimum in which they talked about being the Foo Fighters' opening act in summer or fall of '95.  (This is possibly related to the fact that Barrett Jones also produced the Foos' early stuff, and previously had done some production for Nirvana.)  The thought of a few thousand teen grunge fans being subjected to Bare Minimum's angular chaos when all they really wanted to hear was "Big Me" or some Nirvana covers is really amusing.  I would kill to hear some live recordings of B-Min from this tour.  Props to Dave Grohl for taking them on the road.

I first got into this B-Min when I bought a promo CD* of their proggy opus Can't Cure The Nailbiters in January '99 at the Mushroom on a whim.  (I'm pretty sure I also bought my promo CD of Drive Like Jehu's Yank Crime there on the same day.)  I then tracked down all their other stuff, including a very rare self-titled EP from '93 that I recently downloaded.  But I have yet to corrall the "Night We Streak" 7", or the split 7" with post-hardcore icons Angel Hair.

Bare Minimum had some quirks: Singer Brian Speckman sang about eyeballs a lot, e.g. "Cursed with black widow eyes" in this song.  Their two guitarists are credited as "left guitar" (Brian Speckman) and "right guitar" (Mark Pinkos).  Their song titles were generally complex and impenetrable: "Star Raise Iodine Failure Drainpipe To The Bottom," "Substitute Genius For Jesus And Poke His Eyes Out," "Zero Discuss", "Waterfight Or Firefight, Sand Or Baking Soda," "Swim In Anxious Moment," "A Dime's Body Makes Him A Diver," "Platinum Eyes Three Quarters Open."  Definitely one of the artiest and most oblique of all the so-called "post-hardcore" bands of the '90s, often treading into abstract realms that their apparent idols like Unwound, Fugazi and Sonic Youth seldom did.  Their dense, dueling guitars have been was compared by All Music Guide to those of early Glenn Branca orchestras.

The lyrics from the Night We Streak CD booklet:

They are mostly accurate, though he does not actually say "on the outskirts of" or "when I've sunk back into the sea"; I think he says "emotional" instead of "motion"; and he substitutes "their" for "black widow" near the very end.  And the line "marking the unmarkable pristine sea" is ominously intoned by a different, lower voice while Speckman shrieks "Marking! The pristine sea!"  It's probably Speckman doing both voices via overdubbing.  After about 10 years of thinking this song has something to do with drowning or dying, today I realized it's pretty obviously about sex and the guilt related to it.

Drummer Joe Plummer went on to play in mediocre-to-dismal pop bands like The Black Heart Procession (mediocre), Modest Mouse great to mediocre), and The Shins (dismal), and participated in the Boredoms' 88-drummer performance in 2008.  Of course, his shoddy Wikipedia page makes no mention of the words "Bare" or "Minimum."  I don't know what the other members have been up to, but if anyone knows, please leave a comment.

Discography:
Angel Hair / Bare Minimum - split 7" EP (Titanic Records / Gold Standard Laboratories [GSL], 1994)
"Night We Streak, Divine Failure" 7" (Sub Pop, 1995) ✇
Bare Minimum CD (Rx Remedy, 1996) ♨
Bare Minimum LP (Rx Remedy, 1996) (alternate cover) ♨
Night We Streak CD EP (Rx Remedy, 1996) ☠
No Cure For The Nailbiters (promo CD) (Rx Remedy, 1998) ✈☂
Can't Cure The Nailbiters CD (Rx Remedy, 1998) ☂
Can't Cure The Nailbiters 2xLP (Rx Remedy, 1998) ☂

Incredible Notes:
✇ - Translucent paper sleeve
♨ - Recorded in '95
☠ - Mostly recorded in '95; one song in '96
✈ - The promo CD for their last album is titled No Cure For The Nailbiters and has slightly different titles for several songs
☂ - Recorded in '97

How bots seized control of my pricing strategy - "...a computer program, pretending to be human, hawking a book about computers pretending to be human, while other computer programs pretend to have used copies of it. A book that was never actually written, much less printed and read."

Video clip of a mind-boggling collection of Mammillaria cacti in Russia:

Due to their small size, toughness, abundant flowers, crazy spines, etc., Mammillaria is the main genus of cacti that I, and most other cactus fanatics, collect.  But this collection rivals that of any big-time botanical garden, and this clip proves there's a new Cold War, or dare I say a new Hot War, brewing.  So we need to develop a nuke that can kill all the male citizens of Russia, but spare all the women and cacti.

Planets with similar climates: Unwound - "What Was Wound" (1993) & "Petals Like Bricks" (1995), Bleach - "Headless" (1991), Fugazi - "Sieve-Fisted Find" (1989), ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - "Homage" (2001), Drive Like Jehu - "Here Come The Rome Plows" (1994), Helmet - "Murder" (1990).