Beet

Artist: Eleventh Dream Day
Label: Collector's Choice
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Original recording reissued
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 617742021424
EAN: 0617742021424
ASIN: B00005MHV1

Release Date: 2001-09-11

Beet

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Disc Cleaners

Tracks:

Between Here And There
Testify
Bagdad's Last Ride
Awake I Lie
Road That Never Winds
Axle
Michael Dunne
Bomb The Mars Hotel
Teenage Pin Queen
Love To Hate To Love
Go (Slight Return)

Similar Items:

Lived to Tell
Prairie School Freakout/Wayne EP
Ursa Major
Stalled Parade
Eighth

Album Description

Their 1989 release included Between Here and There, Testify, Bagdad's Last Ride, Awake I Lie, Road That Never Winds, Axle, Michael Dunne, the vicious Deadhead putdown Bomb the Mars Hotel, Teenage Pin Queen, Love to Hate to Love, and Go (Slight Return). 11 tracks. 2001 release.

Customer Reviews:

Ready to rumble, punch-drunk and the better for it.......2007-01-28

This, EDD's second album and first for major A&M, is their most entertaining. You can feel their excitement at being on a big label with a "name" indie-rock producer (Gary Waliek), and they made it to the majors after only one album, their squirmy Prairie School Freakout (that and other EDD albums are also reviewed by me). This does not sound drastically different; no power ballads or poser proto-emo manifestos. No aping of REM or the rootsier bands emerging at the end of the 80s, pre-grunge. Yet, as shown in Janet Beveridge Bean's country-tinged vocals, the richer mix that distinguished EDD from its now-forgotten peers on what used to be college radio remains their trademark. This is probably, along with their next LPs "Lived to Tell" and "El Moodio", their most accessible disc.

Arguably a bit lighter and less world-weary at least in some of its tunes, this album sounds not exactly relaxed but ready for action. The band works well together, reminding me of what they must have sounded like live. The ambiance of a bar band on a tiny stage blasting away carries somehow into the songs here. It sprawls a bit less, and punches more, than some of their later, more diffuse (if lovelier!) recordings.

When I hear "Burn Down the Mars Hotel" today for the umpteenth time, I still chuckle. "No more dancing bears." The songs here swagger with a sly wink, and they present themselves a bit larger than life. They remind me of boasts from a barstool habitue. EDD captures this piss-n-vinegar strut and the false bravado behind the pose deftly, and the songs here assert themselves with all the vigor of a revved-up Camaro back of the bar ready to roar off down the neon-dimmed highway. It's that mood that permeates Beet.

Ditto........."Better gone than getting Occupied".......2005-11-14

The fact that Eleventh Dream Day remains nothing more than a minor footnote in indie rock history is nothing short of a travesty. "Beet" is a masterpiece and "Between Here and There" may be one of the top 5 songs of the 80's or 90's for that matter. This is rock-n-roll, not hype (ala--grunge) so toss out your Nirvana CD's and get this.

A criminally unrecognized band.......2001-09-11

This is one of the greatest albums by perhaps the greatest band that Chicago has produced, and yet somehow it managed to go out of print and stay that way for years. How things like this can happen is a mystery to me. Likewise, how Eleventh Dream Day remains a shockingly unknown band nationally while a huge succession of lesser bands have been cycled through the MTV music grinder is a phenomenon that I would never be able to explain. Folks, these guys can flat out rock! One of the tragedies of the Chicago music scene of the past 15 years was the failure of EDD to achieve the kind of success they deserved. The glory is the fact that they have produced a body of work unsurpassed by any other Chicago band, including the Smashing Pumpkins.

BEET was EDD's major label debut. They had produced an independent label album earlier, the excellent PRARIE SCHOOL FREAKOUT (which also needs to be rereleased) before signing with Atlantic Records. They went on to record two other excellent albums for Atlantic, LIVED TO TELL and EL MOODIO (another one that needs rereleasing). For whatever reason, EDD failed to achieve great success. They were never well known nationally, although they managed to get great write ups by rock critics.

On the Atlantic albums, EDD sounds like a lot like Neil Young meets Television meets Neil Young (OK, heavy Neil Young influence). They are primarily a grungy guitar band. If you don't like guitars, you won't like this album. (On more recent albums in the late 1990s, they have moved away from the grunge sound to a more elaborate and sophisticated sound, not unlike some of the work of Yo La Tengo.)

While LIVED TO TELL is my favorite EDD album (I think the songs are overall a bit stronger), BEET probably features more of my favorite songs. "Testify," "Bomb the Mars Hotel," "Love to Hate to Love," and "Teenage Pin Queen" are among my favs.

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