Throwback MP3 of the Week: Lushbox, “Thin Walls”
Once a week, Wayward Blog brings to you sounds of the area’s musical past.
When the Touchdowns’ “Drunk and Loaded” was the Throwback MP3 at the end of September, I said that I’d met the Touchdowns after the Klammies in 1999. I also happened to offhandedly mention that I’d met them at Lushbox‘s house. What I failed to mention was that in 1999, Lushbox was named “Best New Band” by the Pitch’s readers.
This is important, because I had literally never heard of them before that night. However, by year’s end, I would not only be intensely familiar with the band’s live show, and the interplay between the Grimmer sisters Brianne and Heather, but with their five-song EP, Despues de la Operacion Sere una Niña, as well. The title means “After the operation, I will be a little girl” in Spanish.
The band played a special kind of power pop that could’ve easily found the band sharing bills with the likes of That Dog or Liz Phair. However, the band managed to avoid getting pigeonholed as a “girl group” and played out with the area’s power-pop stalwarts like the Creatiure Comforts, Ultimate Fakebook, and Danger Bob and held their own.
The group was supposed to have released a second EP, I Hate This Bus, but that never seemed to come to fruition. That’s a damned shame, as the track from which the EP drew its name, “Stephen On the Short Bus,” was an insane gallop of drumming and riffing that was one of the most propulsive songs I’ve ever heard.
Brianne was part of Fifteen Minutes Fast, with Rob O’Toole, who replaced original second guitarist Brad Huhmann, which moved to Arizona, and kept playing shows and doing well out there. They broke up in 2004, and Brianne moved back to Kansas. Heather Grimmer had left Lushbox well before the band broke up and FMF formed, and was replaced on bass by Brit Smith. I have no idea what happened to drummer Wil Plunkett.
Interesting fact: Brianna Grimmer was also the drummer for the Main Street Saints. She was known as “La Pucelle Brianne.”
