Friday, October 12, 2012

Baxters - Era Buffet (1986, Press)

What can you say about an obscure, long-defunct group that have a Myspace page without a shred of biographical data?  In the case of New York's Baxters, not terribly much, as that's the only corner of cyberspace that appears to reference them. A tad non-descript and anti-climactic for their own good, Baxters' stripe of power pop bears a pedestrian tilt.  Era Buffet succeeds however on the strength of competent, appealing songs with "Cliches," "I Won't Bite," and "We All Need Sleep" slowly but surely winning me over on repeat run-throughs.  If anyone can shed a little more light on this quartet, please do.

01. World's Too Small
02. Long Way Home
03. Generation
04. Bend in the River
05. I Won't Bite
06. Lifetime
07. Tears Come Down
08. Beer Theme
09. Cliches
10. Bare Burden
11. We All Need Sleep
12. Goin' Nowhere Fast  

Hear
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6 comments:

  1. Rolo TomasiOctober 13, 2012 at 3:03 AM

    Nice one, thanks.

    In the myspace appear as "The Baxters"

    ReplyDelete
  2. bglobe313October 24, 2012 at 11:16 AM

    "Slowly but surely winning me over" happened to me today.

    First listen, no big deal. Same for second.

    But today when I put it on to make the final cut, I recognized a bit of it and then "Cliches" hit. Great, little song. The other two you mention are also my two other "bests" on this.

    Not an "essential" disc, but if you are reading this site for the more pop oriented stuff (as opposed to the more noise oriented stuff) give this a listen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. loloJanuary 6, 2018 at 11:00 AM

    Hi,

    would it be posible a re-up of this one?

    thank you very much

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bill WikstromSeptember 3, 2018 at 10:55 AM

    The Baxters existed from 1982 to 1989. The bassist, Baker Rorick, was previously in the downtown New York band Cool It Reba. He later formed The Scarecrows with Baxters' guitarist Steve Arnold, who existed from 1989 to at least 1995 or so. Baker is now in surf rock band Purple K'Nif with Chris Butler (ex-The Waitresses and Tin Huey).

    ReplyDelete
  5. ukulele ladySeptember 23, 2018 at 4:48 PM

    John Lopinski started the Baxters in the very early 1980s. Alot of the songs on Era Buffet were written by him. He sings on the album (basically trading lead vocals with Steve) John doesn't play nearly enough music now, as far as I'm concerned. I have a copy of the album, and whenever I hear it I think about how it perfectly embodies the era when it came out, and how solid it is, even now.
    Steve Arnold lived very close to John in lower Manhattan in the late 1970s. I know that he died a few years ago. They played at CBGB's and (I'm pretty sure) Gildersleeves in the East Village. There are some youtube videos of them playing at CBGB's.
    The album was produced by Doug Epstein. Unfortunately, typically, the record company went belly-up and nothing ever happened with the album.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownJuly 29, 2019 at 5:07 PM

      Steve is my brother. Miss him everyday. Wish I could get era buffet on cd. I spent alot of time in NYC early 80s. Everything on line seems distorted. Would love to have something from them a little more clean. Great group of guys . Little know fact we were in the studio mixed this the same night mick Jagger was next door doing dancing in the streets

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