The Nation of Ulysses: Classic or Dud?

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"What The Nation of Ulysses have is beyond talent. Smashed instruments... Smashed faces... Smashed lives."

Anyone dig these cRaZy early 90s jazz/bloooze rich kid racket-merchants?
Comtempories of and influence on the Riot Grrls (esp Huggy Bear) as well as the like of Gallon Drunk, David Devant, Gold Blade and also - probably - the New New Yorkers: Str*kes, ARE Weapons, Moldy Peaches as well as The Wh*te Str*pes et al.

I've been listening to 'Plays Pretty For Baby' today. In the sleeve notes they go through that 'we're going to topple the old order' thing - which is always GRATE! They go: "We stand poised on the edge of history, awaiting the end of music with optimism. On the rubble of that dead city we shall erect a futurist construction of noise... " = ACE!
BUT! A million mouths have said that too. What happened? To that attitood, to their 'Hickey Underworld', to them?

So. Now. Were The Ulysses a buncha niave, ramshackle chancers = Good thing!
Or! Were they a buncha naive, ramshackle chancers = Bad thing!
?

― DavidM, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Total classic. A far greater band than their later incarnations. However, Search Cupid Car Club. I think they only released one single (which I've only heard on someone else's tape)before members changed into the Make Up. Not that the Make Up doesn't have some good stuff, but their whole act gets tired. Nation of Ulysses is far superior. 50,000 Watts of Goodwill is my favorite

― hans, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hickey Underworld=classic

Valley Girl Intelligentsia=dud

I have that Cupid Car Club single and it is absolutely brilliant with its "grape juice plus" and its Rapture references, I love it.

― Arthur, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Plays Pretty For Baby is Classic. I heard they used to play under different names in D.C. to avoid the conspiracy that was after them. 13 Points . . . never really did much for me, too much of a second-rate Fugazi.

― bnw, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

S: sleevenotes to 13 pt plan = hilarious (not something Fugazi managed v.often).

D: Music = lame, mostly.

― mark s, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Eh, since they were mentioned, Gallon Drunk smoked the Nation's asses (and still do, I just found the Black Milk album and mighty fine it is). Something about NOU always bugged me, and it wasn't always the image or the music.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Eh, since they were mentioned, Gallon Drunk smoked the Nation's asses"

I agree actually.

― DavidM, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

david candy is a disaster. someone is telling him he is smart.

― keith, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

They thought sleep was evil = they are classic.

Actually, no, they weren't all that great. Some of Plays Pretty For Baby was pretty damn cool (fugazi w/trumpet = great idea) and all the manifesto stuff was marvellous ((brushing teeth = wrong) = excellent), but they were alarmingly plodding for much of the time.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I saw Gallon Drunk live in Brussels (k-exotic, no? Actually, I was FOH engineer for The Sunflowers, o ye indie obscurists. Also on the bill, Earwig (v.good live, but don't know abt rekords) Awesome belgian spacemen 3 type band w/hot chix0r singer were best band on the bill. Er, where was I? Oh yeah - I always got the impression that GD were a Birthday Party knock off band (this certainly was very much the case w/their live set in belgium. The drummer was excellent, but the rest of the band = sux0r) Duffest thing EVER written in the NME - "Gallon Drunk are the most important band in Britain right now" at the beginning of a live review. Oh yeah, sez who, I wonder? One of the band;'s drinking mates, I always suspected. Nation of uselesness were grate, btw, BUT ONLY in *very* small doses.

xoxo

― Norman Fay, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Now, forget DI, that Earwig album is my true holy grail. I've never heard it but sucessor band Insides were so good I'm convinced Earwig must have had some of the same magic about them.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

With Mark S on this. Very funny, but the music was feeble. Once had "A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid" (or something) 'dedicated' to me by Peel on R1.

Richard: would you like a tape/MD/CD-R of that Earwig LP? I can bung the 12" on there too.

― Michael Jones, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Why Michael, you beat me to the punch, for I too have the Earwig album, and quite good it is. What I'm looking for is that compilation Past, which put together all three of their EPs before the album. Damned if I can find it, though.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I saw them live in DC. It was painful.

― Josh Eyre, Friday, 24 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

three months pass...

I saw them live too and to be honest it was 1991 and they were the opening band for jawbox and volcano suns. They stole the show. Maybe ten people there but it was pure energy...guitars thrown into walls, drum set toppled. I have to say most "harDCore" bands at the time were fat insecure trust fund kids with high top sneakers talking only about how hard as steel they were. Ulysses made them out to be the phonies that they were(and still are). Prancing around like little pre-madonna self important heavy metal jocks was really getting old. It was a great relief to see them and they were very LOUD. Considering the acoustics of a church basement. Despite all the hoopla about how "ironic" they are nowadays...nothing seemed ironic about that performance. Too bad not many took them seriously in their attempt to wash us clean of our punk rock laziness and sins of forgetting our origins.

― Joseph Peterson, Wednesday, 19 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one year passes...

Classic.

I listen to Plays Pretty For Baby pretty religiously, and Thirteen Point Program is really good as well; I've got a tape of it in my car, and it's perfect. The specifics may have been BS, but the spirit was certainly not, and that's what makes their music so important.

― Ian Johnson (orion), Monday, 17 March 2003 00:13 (twenty-three years ago)

We don't go to their parties, yeah, because they're the enemy!

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 17 March 2003 14:44 (twenty-three years ago)

Doesn't anybody remember that Ian Svevonious was the SASSIEST BOY IN AMERICA?! Sassy loved them = they are perfect. Anyway, I saw NoU in an all-ages club at my college on the "13-Point Plan" tour, and thought they were freaking great.

― J (Jay), Monday, 17 March 2003 15:13 (twenty-three years ago)

and then Sassy revoked the title because he was too old, like 21 or something. 1993 I think it was. Maybe '92.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 17 March 2003 15:52 (twenty-three years ago)

nine years pass...

goddamn these guys were good. revisited the first record yesterday, so much joy in it

― the alternate vision continues his vision quest! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 16 July 2012 21:37 (thirteen years ago)

yeah. I've been going back to this and I like it even more now.

― Will Chave (Hurting 2), Monday, 16 July 2012 21:37 (thirteen years ago)

Amazing band.

A redundant post, but still

― www.gbokchoymail.com (admrl), Monday, 16 July 2012 21:40 (thirteen years ago)

They were a great live band. As much as I like the records they don't hold a candle to them on stage.

― EZ Snappin, Monday, 16 July 2012 22:02 (thirteen years ago)

never saw em :(

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Monday, 16 July 2012 22:34 (thirteen years ago)

nine years pass...

Wish they had traveled further down this road https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NtHY4PYv4I

― JacobSanders, Tuesday, 1 February 2022 01:23 (four years ago)

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