The Young Fresh Fellows and the Minus 5

Noone else during the 80s managed to interpret the tradition of Rock music with the same authority and liveliness as the Young Fresh Fellows. They first emerged with the so-called North Western "nice wave", that during the first half of the 80s proposed a "well-mannered" alternative to the roughness of punk, but they soon became liberated from any formal scene and started forging records whose main objective seemed to be to make fun of the whole history of Rock music.

The band was set up in the summer of 1983 under the initiative of Scott McCaughey (voice + bass) and Chuck Carroll (guitar). After having recruited Carrol's newly graduated cousin Tad Hutchinson (drums), the band recorded about 15 songs in just two days which were subsequently included in the first demo entitled "Big Pile Of Happiness" and the first album, "The Fabulous Sounds Of The Pacific Northwest" (PopLlama, 1984).

The trio's image is still linked to the stereotype of the crazy young American; typically like the ones in the movies with the Monkees or in a Blues Brothers' party. The sound is electric enough to render it suitable to a contemporary audience, but it actually flirts with the amateur sounds of the 60s, as many other imitators of Garage Rock do. The difference, in this case, is in the class, and - in particular - in the breathtaking, unstoppable, overwhelming parade of faultless tracks. Outstanding levels are reached in particular in frantic rock'n'roll songs like "Rock'N'Roll Pest Control", "Power Mowers Theme" and "Empty Set Takes A Vacation", which have been trasformed into ironic farces. All the genres from the 60s are somehow quoted and reinvented, from Beat ("Think Better Of Me") to Folkrock ("This Little Mystery"), from Surf ("A Humble Guy") to Texmex ("You Call That Lonely" - featuring the best melody of the whole album, sounding like a mix of Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison); the band also tries out more complicated novelty-style melodies, in the Ska/amusement park sounds of "View From Above". Hard to resist the temptation of such captivating music.

With the arrival of Jim Sangster on the bass (in order to let McCaughey focus on vocals and arrangements), the YFF reach their classic set up. After a Christmas tape called "Merry Croutons Mr Gulp Gulp" (a concentration of their comedy) and the single "Young Fresh Fellows Update/ Three Sides To This Story", their second album finally comes to light: "Topsy Turvy" (PopLlama, 1985). The band doesn't show any sign of weakening, integrating their satire with a sound even more involving and strong. "How Much About Last Night Do You Remember", "You've Got Your Head On Backwards", "Two Lives" and in particular "Where Is Groovy Town" constitute a breathtaking sequence of rock'n'roll and boogie that any garage band would envy. But the comic approach hasn't changed at all: the album actually starts with the colossal satire of "Searching U.S.A.", a mix of ska, country and texmex, that makes fun of myths and stereotypes of rural America, and goes on criticizing without mercy the contemporary lifestyle. A few signs of change can be felt, though, in the Hawaiian "Mr Salamander's Review" and in the drunken novelty of "Trek To Stupidity". The best part of the record though is "Hang Out Right", a sort of religious "dylanian" ballad that doesn't have anything in common with the rest of their repertoire.

Their masterpiece is probably their third album, The Men Who Loved Music (Popllama, 1987), which followed the very good single "Beer Money/ Fillet Of Soul/ Cruster's Theme". The sound, still powerful, involving and solid, incorporates a sort of frantic form of ska (Just Sit e Why I Oughta), and seems rooted in black music (with the almost sacrilegous roadhouse-boogie "Unimaginable Zero Summer", the ridiculously pompous rhythm and blues "Tv Dream", the sacrilegous and bellowing "train-blues" "I Don't Let The Little Things Get Me Down", and in particular the ferocious melodic gospel a la` Them/Animals Get Outta My Cave, one of their pinnacles). This sound, constantly characterized by violent instrumental moments - where the guitar and rythmic section gets as loud as hell - in this album seems to become independent from their typically comical lyrics, to form a life of its own. The band also confirms its love for eclecticism in the funky gun shots of "Amy Grant" (going to become one of their most popular songs), in the humoristic country picture "Hank, Karen And Elvis" (once again a satire of American myths), in the dangerously fast bluegrass "Two Brothers", in the unrestrained rock'n'roll "Where The Hell Did They Go", with a final dive into the swinging '50s with "I Got My Mojo Working" (another masterpiece). When they find the right refrain, their infallible cabaret/power-pop knows how to make people jump, like in "When The Girls Get Here". This album is probably, together with the first one, the best record of their career.

The group is also active on other fronts. Under the pseudonym Mighty Squirrels, starting with Ernest Anyway (Popllama, 1986), they back singer Rob Morgan, parodying the 1960s and hippie philosophy; and under the pseudonym The Empty Set they play and compose on their friend Jimmy Silva’s album Remnants (PopLlama), repeating the collaboration in subsequent years on Fly Like A Dog and Heidi (ESD).

The mini-album Refreshments (PopLlama, 1987) collects Beer Money and Young Fresh Fellows Update, along with two new classics: Broken Basket and Back Room Of The Bar.

The fourth album (strictly speaking) is Totally Lost (Frontier, 1988). The title proved unlucky, because it is the quartet’s first work to disappoint expectations: Picky Piggy, No Help At All, Little Softy and the Totally Lost Theme keep the banner of the bizarre flying, but the whole lacks memorable songs. Worse still, shortly afterwards Carroll withdrew from the scene.

In 1989 the three survivors (McCaughey on vocals and guitar, Sangster on bass, and Hutchinson on drums) released the cassette Beans And Intolerance (an authorized bootleg credited to 3 French Fellows 3). Meanwhile McCaughey also composed a solo work, My Chartreuse Opinion (PopLlama, 1989).

Guitarist Kurt Bloch of the Fastbacks decided to join the trio for the fifth album, This One's For The Ladies (Frontier, 1989). Better than its predecessor, but still inferior to the first three, it nonetheless boasts at least two classics: Middle Man Of Time (a Lou Reed–style boogie crossed with a surf ditty) and The Family Gun.

1990 was an extremely intense year, in which the group capitalized on its popularity by generously scattering songs all over the (record) world. In rapid succession came: the anthology EP Includes A Helmet (Frontier) in June; the single Divorce #9 / Halloween 247; the single Two Guitars, Bass And Drums / Someone I Care About (both in September); the cassette GAG Fah, also in September; the single Dancin' In The Moonlight / Do You Care Theme in October (credited to the Gunsharp'ners); and the single Motor Broke / Equator Blues in November. Various compilations featured We're The Best, High Time, and Sometimes I Wantcha For Your Money. Another album of parodies by the Squirrels Group (the usual assortment of session musicians for Morgan), What Gives (PopLlama, 1990), was released, followed later by Harsh Toke Of Reality (PopLlama, 1993) and Scrapin' For Hits (Poplust Audio, 1996).

Electric Bird Digest (Frontier, 1991), by contrast, is the most professional album of their career, under the banner of chart-minded power pop. The four have never sounded so serious, and that seriousness somewhat flattens the drive of their rock and roll (Tomorrow's Gone, The Telephone Tree), even if, on the other hand, it ennobles delicate ballads such as Whirlpool. The high point of the album lies in the power-pop choruses, tightly paced and counterpointed by martial riffs: Evening, Looking Around, Hard To Mention. Melodic attention comes close to beat-like tones in Once In A While and Sittin' On A Pitchfork. Although the Young Fresh Fellows clearly try to capitalize on the grunge trend (with the effect of increasing their similarities to the Kinks and the Replacements), this is nonetheless a work clearly superior to the two previous ones, relying on their undeniable performing and compositional skills.

The album was preceded and followed by the usual cloud of chaotic releases: the singles Don't Blame It On Yoko / With A Big Book, Sick And Tired Of Me / They Raided The Joint / Booze Party, Purple Sweater / Lance Rock, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah / Skyscraper Of Facts / The Teen Thing, and the compilation tracks Black Betty, Yankee Magazine, I Just Sit There / Our Last Show / Pammie's On A Bummer.

The progression toward a surreal, high-class pop culminates with It's Low Beat Time (Frontier, 1992), whose songs are composition manuals: Right Here is exemplary in blending beat melodies, folk-rock vocal harmonies, and hard-rock arrangements; the other gem She Sees Color adds punk-rock riffs and psychedelic choruses, in the image and likeness of the Who; and the arranging skills of the “young freshmen” shine even more in fantasies such as A Minor Bird, in which the theme changes constantly yet retains a paradoxical linearity. It is in this art of mosaic and superimposition that their musical philosophy is best expressed.
Thus wandering about, tracks like Snow White (with what may be the most squandered melody in rock history) use the same musical means to immerse themselves instead in the kind of fairground music-hall genre that had made them famous in the beginning. And here opens the vast space of their gags, from the instrumental Crafty Clerk, built on a little tune that sounds as if it came out of a 1930s theater, to Mr Anthony's Last, a new classic in the tradition of ironic vignette-making popularized by the Kinks and the Bonzo Band.
Unlike the previous three albums, the group takes care not to disavow its tendencies toward a “Sixties revival”: the spirit of the Sonics and the “Farfisa sound” is resurrected for the rock and roll of Whatever You Are; psychedelic airs permeate Two Headed Fight; and the wild dances of that era come back to life in Low Beat. Monkey Say also belongs in this area, a roaring rhythm and blues complete with saxophone braying and a voodoo cadence. This album, in fact, is the one that most explicitly and most fully expresses their epigonic spirit toward the 1960s.

Without ever ceasing to amaze and surprise, in 1993 the Young Fresh Fellows released the single Stewed / Something True (Who Cares), which plunges into 1960s soul and danceable “slow” numbers.

A historic institution of late 20th-century rock, as prolific and brilliant as Mozart and few others, the Young Fresh Fellows boast a vast repertoire containing countless classics: You Call That Lonely and Empty Set Takes A Vacation (from the first album); Searchin' U.S.A. and Where Is Groovy Town (from the second); Beer Money (the single); I Got My Mojo Working and Get Outta My Cave (from the third); Mr Anthony's Last (from the seventh). These are among the few true joys of this art. Half a century (at the very least) of music is revisited through a perspective that is neither mindlessly goofy nor philological, but simply brilliant.

Their early records redefined the concept of pop music, for the use and benefit of more fortunate groups such as They Might Be Giants and the Smithereens. Countless parties would not have been the same without their soundtracks.

Take It Like A Matador (Impossible, 1993) is a live Young Fresh Fellows album.

Scott McCaughey formed Minus 5 in 1993 as a side project, eventually recruiting the Posies' Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow as well as R.E.M.'s Peter Buck on bass. The quartet indulges in effervescent strings plucking, angelic synthesizers, West Coast-ian multi-part vocal harmonies, lilting piano figures, epic organ swirls, atmospheric guitar twangs and joyful guitar jangles.

Minus 5's debut, Old Liquidator (Glitterhouse, 1994 - East Side Digital, 1995 - Hollywood, 1997), is one crazy album, running the gamut from shimmering folk-rock to mildly eccentric psychedelia. While McCaughey has aged and his galvanizing verve is now mere dinner-table irony (Emperor of the Bathroom, a` la Byrds), the band concocts lay hymns of sweet surrender such as the dreamy Winter Goes Away and Algerian Hook.
The album's secret weapon is McCaughey's sonic surrealism, best displayed on All The Time, an elegant falsetto ballad, vibraphone and all, repeatedly interrupted by cacophonous harmonica, drums, guitars and trombone, on Vulture (Tom Waits meets Syd Barrett), on the psycho blues-jazz of How Many Bones (perhaps the standout, with Amy Denio on mad saxophones); a parade of subtle masterpieces that ends with the Walkabouts's Chris Eckman and Carla Torgeson turning No More Glory into a cello-driven psychedelic delicatessen.
The combo can do more than accompany the leader's demented lullabies, and rocks out nonsense garage-rock such as Find A Finger, that sounds like Hang On Sloopy with the Rolling Stones' rhythm section, and Story, that sounds like the Stooges jamming with avantgarde composer Pierre Henry.
A forewarning of things to come, the majestically senseless singalong When It Comes My Way, that blends Beatles, Beach Boys and Byrds, ends the album with maximum disorienting effect.
Hardly a pop album, this represents the quintessence of McCaughey's bizarre melodic genius.
(Bonus tracks on the CD include the prime Byrds of House Of Four Doors and the tender, waltzing Heartache For Sale).

The Posies duo remained and Buck co-write the material on The Lonesome Death Of Buck McCoy (Hollywood, 1997), that also featured Pearl Jam's Mike McCready. The line-up is therefore the same that played on Mark Eitzel's West, but the sound has bloomed into an ornate pop bouquet. Gone are the folk laments and the surreal arrangements. Melody reigns. The breezy bubblegum of Popsycle Shoppe is the standout. The country & western romps Moonshine Girl and Wouldn't Want To Care are close seconds. Paul McCartney would kill for the languid melody of The Rest Of The World Donovan would sing along the tender lullaby of Spidery Moon, and the velvety vocal harmonies Boeing Spacearium, and the Byrds are re-born wiser and bolder in Empty Room. Each Minus 5 album has enough gems to fill one Beach Boy and two Beatles albums, and make the originals look like amateurs.

The Minus 5 (now comprised of McCaughey on guitar, Buck on bass, Bill Rieflin of Ministry on drums and John Ramberg of Model Rockets on guitar) also released privately In Rock (Book, 2000), a collection of unusually (for them) powerful rave-ups that take on boogie (Dear My Inspiration), power-pop (Courage Is The Smallest Bird), hard-rock (In A Lonely Coffin), soul-rock (the savage Dr Evil), garage-rock (the epic Lies Of The Living Dead, the best song that the Fleshtones never wrote), etc. However, the standouts may well be the two exceptions on the album: The Little Black Egg, an Everly Brothers sound-alike with fantastic organ work by Chris Ballew (Presidents Of The USA), and the delicate homage to Myrna Loy. The last four songs of this album are simply divine.

For mysterious reasons, the Minus 5's Let The War Against The Music Begin and the Young Fresh Fellows' Because We Hate You were released as a two-disc package (Mammoth, 2001) rather than independently.
Except for a psychotic piano boogie a` la Velvet Underground (Ghost Tarts Of Stockholm) and a mini-suite that indulges in the vocal styles of doo-wop and of the Shirelles (Your Day Will Come, a collaboration with Robyn Hitchcock), the Minus 5 album is relatively uneventful (the band has delivered better pop than Great News Around You or One Bar At A Time in the past).
On the YFF album McCaughey is occasionally aware of being the greatest vaudeville songwriter since the Kinks' Ray Davies (Lonely Spartanburg Flower Stall, Fuselage) but too often the band wades through genre stereotypes. The thundering garage-rock of I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight and the anthemic punk-rock of Your Truth Our Lies (a cover) are not enough to redeem the rest.

Minus 5's Down With Wilco (YepRoc, 2003), which, as the title implies, is a collaboration with Wilco, is another mixed bag: the synthetic pop of Electric Light Orchestra and Alan Parsons (The Old Plantation) next to the eccentric orchestrations of Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson (The Town That Lost Its Groove Supply, Retrieval of You, That's Not the Way That It's Done); the confessional and melancholy style of Neil Young (Daggers Drawn, The Days of Wine and Booze) next to country-pop ballads arranged in Pink Floyd-ian fashion (View From Below). The same pros and cons surface in I Don't Know Who I Am (Return To Sender, 2003), another slab of classic but derivative power-pop.

Minus 5's At the Organ (Yep Roc, 2004) continued the program to assemble the most formidable line-ups in recent history (Scott McCaughey, Jeff Tweedy, Glenn Kotche, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Peter Buck, Mike Jorgensen, Rebecca Gates, John Ramberg, Bill Rieflin, Ken Stringfellow, John Moen, Jimmy Talent) to play some of the simplest and most genuine power-pop of recent history.

Minus 5 (Yep Roc, 2006), McCaughey's pop album, featured an impressive cast of collaborators: John Wesley Harding, Kelly Hogan, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, the Decemberists' Colin Meloy, the Model Rockets' John Ramberg, Ministry's Bill Rieflin, Harvey Danger's Sean Nelson, the Posies' Ken Stringfellow, Mott The Hoople's Morgan Fisher, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt and Glenn Kotche. It is hard to take Scott McCaughey seriously, but it is also hard not to enjoy this satirical concept album that thrashes the gun culture of the USA. Aw Shit Man, Cemetery Row W14, Out There on the Maroon, Rifle Called Goodbye and My Life as a Creep are the musical equivalent of a Michael Moore documentary.

The Minus 5 released two odd albums in 2009: Butcher Covered (2009) collects 17 covers, and Killingsworth (2009), McCaughey's alt-country album and de facto a collaboration with the Decemberists (The Long Hall, I Would Rather Sacrifice You).

Meanwhile, the Young Fresh Fellows returned with I Think This Is (2009), that contains the garage rave-ups Go Blue Angels Go and After the Suicide, both marked by a demented Ramones-ian spirit, and then with Tiempo de Lujo (2012), that homages the Merseybeat era in Another Ten Reasons and adds another classic in Love Luggage, halfway between the Thirteenth Floor Elevators and Them.

McCaughey collected 57 Minus 5 leftovers on the five disc box-set Scott the Hoople in the Dungeon of Horror (2014). A 12-song selection was compiled on Dungeon Golds (2015) Of Monkees and Men (2016) is a tribute to the Monkees, a song for each member and writer of the band, notably two of most eccentric compositions ever, the dissonant eleven-minute Weymer Never Dies and the nine-minute country epic Michael Nesmith. Dear December (2017), credited again to the Minus 5, is a batch of holiday songs create with the collaboration of Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie), Peter Buck and Mike Mills (R.E.M.), the Posies , Colin Meloy (Decemberists), Chuck Prophet (Green On Red), M Ward, Kelly Hogan, etc. Surprisingly, this humble concept yielded some of his best rock'n'roll numbers: See You in December, New Christmas Hymn plus old-fashioned folk-rock ditties like Your Christmas WhiskeyYule Tide Me Over.

In November 2017 McCaughey suffered a life-threatening stroke. Nonetheless, he composed Stroke Manor (Yep Roc, 2019), credited again to Minus 5 although the backing band is made of friends like Peter Buck and Jeff Tweedy. The repertory is even more varied than usual, from melodic psych-rock a` la Paisley Underground (Beacon from RKO, Pink Bag for Rip Torn) to the blues-rocker Bleach Boys & Beach Girls, from a homage to the doo-wop era My Master Bull to the waltzing singalong Beatles Forever. There is even a rocker dedicated to the MRI. Overall, the best Minus 5 album in 20 years. The stroke made McCaughey's memory of the 1960s more vivid than ever.