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I
don’t buy it when they say that had luck never been averse to
Tad they would have been huge. Maybe they should have because
their music was that good, but truth be told, even with the
right push from a financially stable record company that
actually believed in them, there was always little opportunity
for the masses to latch onto their music. Tad’s art was quite
acerbic, super thrashy and clanky metalized rock music. It
reeked of unpolished punkness and it degenerated from music with
no commercial appeal. In great part, it was good because of
that. But let’s be real; Tad did not have any of the easily
recognizable hooks of Nirvana, nor was the band fronted by a
screen friendly photogenic vocalist. But what they lacked in sex
appeal they more than made up in quality. In great part, Tad was
great also because of that.
What’s
important is that albums like Inhaler and Infrared Riding Hood
kick so much ass you’ll need a cushing afterwards. Nowadays,
everyone loves them. The underground as usual is in the know,
and as they claim, they were always into Tad. Ooohh yeah! But
back then the only human being sporting around a Tad t-shirt was
that blond kid from that horrible Australian band Silverchair.
Kudos to him.
The documentary
Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears limits itself to telling the
Tad story. That’s it. Which really, isn’t all that much
different than any other story of a great sounding band that
never made it big. But still, it vividly tells the happenings of
the band from beginning to end on the words from Tad the big
man, all the members of the band with the exception of guitarist
Gary Thorstensen who declined inclusion, and the two guys who
founded Sub Pop Records and first signed Tad (Bruce Pavitt and
Jonathan Poneman), along with producer Jack Endino, Soundgarden
guitarist Kim Thayil, the first drummer for Nirvana, a dude from
Mudhoney and a dude from Zeke and shortly, Kris Novoselic, the
bassist for Nirvana. That’s ok.
Tad himself
sports a Yob t-shirt, which is really cool and does indeed seem
like one giant ‘teddy bear of a man’ as he is described by some.
And along the way we learn that contrary to the typical course
of rock bands; for Tad there was first an album and then a band,
we learn that Tad isn’t a dumbass idiot savant redneck as SubPop
first marketed him, that there were drugs being consumed by the
band, there were problems with their major label dealings
because they were too difficult to market. I know, plenty of
spoilers there but that’s all stuff you’d expect from any band
worth checking out. The best thing about it is that Busted
Circuits and Ringing Ears shines, perhaps for the last time, the
spotlight on a great band that should, even a couple of decades
late, get your attention at last. |
