In MKE Music Rewind we revisit notable Milwaukee music that was released before Milwaukee Record became a thing in April 2014. This week: Slurr’s Mime Bash from 1993.
For folks of a certain age, “What was the first record/cassette/CD you bought with your own money?” is a common musical question. (Me: a cassette copy of Def Leppard’s Hysteria.) But here’s a tougher one: What was the first local record/cassette/CD you bought with your own money?
For me, that’s easy: a cassette copy of 1993’s Mime Bash, a nine-song album from West Bend/Milwaukee pop-punk/emo band Slurr.
Why do I so easily remember this 30-year-old purchase? Well, because I loved that album. And, until very recently, I thought I would never hear it again.
All photos: Discogs
Slurr was just one of dozens of regional bands I encountered in the early ’90s—most often in West Bend, Wisconsin; and most often at an all-ages venue called the Teen Factory. “Big” regional bands like Compound Red and Alligator Gun regularly played the Teen Factory. Zillions of smaller bands like Sandbox, The Lost Toothbrushes, Us Things, and my own band, Holy Mary Motor Club, also played. Slurr, which formed in West Bend before relocating to Milwaukee, fell somewhere in the middle.
And yet I don’t think I bought Mime Bash at a Teen Factory show. I’m pretty sure I picked it up at a big outdoor fest called Eco Jam, held in the summer of 1993 at West Bend’s Regner Park. It was a benefit for the environment, you see, and I’m sure Greenpeace or whoever appreciated the influx of dozens of Eco Jam dollars.
But I kid. Back to Mime Bash. I lost my cassette copy at some point over the years, and I could never find it online. The indispensable MKE Punk has long hosted two later Slurr releases—1995’s No Jon, and 1998’s So Easily Fooled—but no Mime Bash. What gives? Maybe the omission has something to do with lineup changes? Hmm. Maybe that’s what the title No Jon refers to? Let’s see…
Yep, there’s a Jon listed in the credits for Mime Bash, but not for subsequent releases. That explains No Jon! (Other post-Mime Bash Slurr members: Brady Pierzchalski, Joe Horvath, Kevin Zeitler, and Brian Janssen.) And that Jon is…hahaha, Jon Ziegler, a.k.a. WMSE “Chicken Shack” DJ and longtime Exotics member Jonny Z! And he was the lead singer?! What?! I HAD NO IDEA.
Okay, really back to Mime Bash. It finally popped up online! On YouTube! Earlier this year! Holy crap! Here it is!
Yep, it’s exactly how I remember it: a lo-fi proto-emo banger filled with big hooks, big guitars, and songs about pining for the lost days of youth. (The band members couldn’t have been older than 23 or so.) Opener “Dawn” has a top-shelf “OH OH OH OH” sing-along (ditto the equally catchy “Ode”), and “Kitchen” has a chorus that has been lodged in my head for three decades:
“I wish that this would never end / You said you’d be my best friend / I wish I could be / Seventeen again.”
Indeed. Nothing more to add. I’m so happy I found this album in 1993. I’m so happy I found it again in 2024.
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