Monday, June 22, 2009

Splitting the Difference # 21 - Porcelain Boys/Marble - The Tsetsee Split (Pop Kid, 1996)

For all this time I've neglected doing a post for one of my small-of-fame favorites, Delwood, Minnesota's should've been much bigger Porcelain Boys. I will dedicate a more exhaustive post(s) to them in the coming weeks, but their split single with Marble isn't a bad introduction. Releasing but two singles and a few comp tracks in 1990 (or thereabouts), The Porcelain Boys made instant fans out of just about anyone that had the good fortune of encountering their meager, but promising body of work. Think the Descendants by way of a more conventional power-pop band. Shortly after those singles were issued, the Boys split, but reformed in the mid-90s, with a revamped lineup, and delivered their first bona fide album, the aptly titled Away Awhile (as was the case with the single, a product of Pop Kids Records). The two numbers that adorn their side of this single were recorded during the Away Awhile era, and are pretty representative of the succulent punk-pop they excelled so well at .

Don't have much info on Marble (kind of a challenge to Google), but am pretty sure they hailed from Minnesota as well from what little I'm able to glean from the inner sleeve. Pretty standard, user-friendly popcore with a definite indie bent. They go to the trouble of covering Lindsey Buckingham's classic "Holiday Road," which of course, was most notably put to good use in National Lampoon's European Vacation.

Porcelain Boys
01. Melted Shelter
02. Sick Fifteen

Marble
01. Price
02. Holiday Road

Now on Bandcamp.

16 comments:

jimmybuttons said...

great pair of bands, didn't even know this split even existed. marble were great, seen them play in the mid 90s, in mankato, mn. picked up a demo, which was on a yellow cassette tape. great stuff, very much in the ALL camp of pop-punk.

porcelain boys definitely nailed the genre on their few early releases. most of which, i do believe, were released in quite limited quantity.

nice post, thanx!

Eric said...

Funny... I was just about to "rip" this vinyl to mp3 in the coming days.

Marble was indeed from Mankato, MN. The lead singer, Jeremy Jessen, went on to sing in Align (defunct) and currently in All the Way Rider (definitely a must-listen!) He also plays guitar in The Tank.

I don't know about the rest of the Marble dudes, but they were certainly a talented bunch.

Mark H said...

wow. i have this split. great tunes on both sides. when i ordered one tim pop kid sent 2, one for me, and one for the college station i was dj'ing at.

superb blog, here

Unknown said...

from the ashes of the porcelain boys we've formed THE GIANT SLIDE.
http://www.myspace.com/thegiantslide
porcelain boys changed the name to jettison and released another full length on popkid called the search for the gun girl. if anyone has interest i can post the entire pb's collection.

jimmybuttons said...

wow, i'd love to have an mp3 collection of porcelain boys!! to where would you post it, mark?

spavid said...

Yes, would love to hear more Porcelain Boys stuff. Was thinking about sharing the singles, but would really love to hear the Plunge It and Fetish for Female tapes, the latter of which I just have a third generation dubbed copy of. Thanks.

Unknown said...

the only original member of the pb's that is in the current version of what we are doing is scott. erik, tom, barry and myself all grew up together. tom and erik originally met scott by putting up a flyer at a local music store. it's hard to believe it's been around 20 years. we were hoping to have erik sing in THE GIANT SLIDE but it didn't work out.
jimmybuttons - mark, mike, whatever... :)
spavid - ha. plunge it and fetish for female? i'll talk to scott to see if he's okay with me spreading those around, i'm sure he's fine with fetish but not sure if he'd want plunge it out there again. i can for sure put together a yousendit of away awhile and search for the gun girl. i'm sure i can throw in some of the other stuff too. scott is happy with the past staying the past and doesn't listen to any of that old stuff himself. it's cool that there are people like you guys that have interest in it, i know it is appreciated. over the years there has been many line up changes but the original three are the ones that wrote the bulk of the material, up until search for the gun girl anyway. we have recently been playing with a new singer and hope that it works out. erik is a one of a kind guy and there is really no way to replace him. barry put vocals on the first song on our myspace, STOP NO GO, and we are pretty happy with how it turned out but adding a singer/guitarist is what we would really like. i'll post a link tomorrow but the link will only be live for a week so if anybody misses it just send me an email and i'll repost.
-mike

spavid said...

I can post Away Awhile and the Jettison CD. I also have a bunch of post-Fetish demos that I received in a trade awhile ago. Would appreciate the upload Mike, but no rush. Thanks!

Unknown said...

cool. post what you have and i can fill in the gaps.
-mike

Unknown said...

I'm pretty sure I still have a Marble full length CD. Can post it if you'd like.

Unknown said...

I just found my 45 of the Porcelain Boys Relive/Squeaky Clean and decided to Google them. I'm glad there are others who appreciate them.

3plains said...

Woah, this brought back some memories.

subrec said...

linked up at MNPunk.com

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Stathis said...

Hello,
thanks for all the uploads.
Can you please upload, also, this split 7"?

Best Regards
Stathis