Quote Originally Posted by Slosh
Been listening to Eleventh Dream Day - Beet a lot lately. I don't quite know how I went sixteen years without hearing this album. Better late than never I suppose. Did these guys ever have any mainstream success and I just wasn't paying attention?
Wow, gotta make sure I catch that Spoon show this weekend. What a great band!

Made a Eleventh Dream Day post awhile back someplace else that went like this ...

Beet. Great stuff for fans of that Crazy Velvet Horse Underground sound. Man, it's a shame one of the best Chicago bands of the last 15 years is so unknown. Just did a search and only a few posts by the usual suspects. But here's one for a personal top 20.

Just listening to Beet myself from 1989 and these guys were great, and still are. Very nice mix of Neil Young and Television and Lou Reed and maybe a bit of Sonic Youth. Not sure which one I would call their best. Rick Rizzo learned well from the Neil Young songbook, and Doug McCombs on bass (also of Tortoise) and Janet Beveridge Bean on drums (also of Freakwater). Being late to the party in about 1999, the first one I got was Eighth...and I loved it immediately. And then they released a new one in 2000 called Stalled Parade that easily became one of my favorites of the year. Wow, what a great, raw, sloppy, turmoil filled album! Can't think of any other album in recent memory that so well captures that Neil Young/Crazy Horse/Lou Reed/Velvet Underground sound I like so much.

And some of the older ones were a bit harder to find, but they were reissued in 2001 so should be easier now. And one of the reasons for this post, besides having a very good time lately with Beet, was that I also remembered this article on DOA from a couple years ago on the band and looked it up and it's still there and it's some good reading ...
http://www.adequacy.net/reviews/uam/uam-sept03.shtml

Anyway, back to the present, our Ex Lion Tamer buddy is quite the fan too I believe, although he doesn't seem to check in anymore. The Eighth that I mention above is somewhat different than the more straightforward sound of the early stuff, primarily I think because John McEntire and John McCombs were well entrenched in Tortoise by that time and brought in some of that sound to the mix. And Janet had her Freakwater project with Catherine Irwin well established. I like it a lot, but it's very loose and open. Almost free-form at times. Just has a feel about it that I find very appealing, although to be honest some of the songs are a bit under developed. Nice cover art too. The next one, Stalled Parade, may be my favorite. More aggressive and direct, like Beet, but also more Velvety Underground, and more sinister and dark. Great record.