Wednesday Songs, from the Back of the Vault

Today's two songs (in my hopes that quantity will make up for this week's general lack of quality, as I work to get several things done before a vacation) are enjoyable as songs (I think), but I offer them more as historical documents.

They're both by The Primitives, the band that later became Uncle Tupelo. The singer here is Wade Farrar, older brother of Jay Farrar. Jay would go on to fame as part of Tupelo and then his band Son Volt. Jeff Tweedy is not visually featured much in these, but there he is, thrashing around at age 17/18 (stage left, our right, in both clips).

In the first, from June 1986, the band plays at a bar that looks like the set of a bar for a soap opera. To me, at least. The punk-ish music with a country-ish bridge is a perfect foreshadowing of Tupelo's sound, but Wade's vocals give the whole thing a British Invasion-like sneer. In the second clip, from Halloween 1985, the band rips through a Kinks-inspired number. Tweedy appears to be wearing a dress of some type. The rest of the band seem to have eschewed costumes that year. The man who comes on stage halfway through, covered in fake blood (remember, it was Halloween), is amazingly still alive. He posted both clips to YouTube. Enjoy: