Welp, here we are leaping into the future just in time! Come watch us fumble around with the NEWEST CRAZE….tik tok! Woooo
@pusaband there, just like here wooo
This Monday @davedederer@chrisballew and Jason Finn of @pusaband join Lithium hosts all day — sharing stories and spinning favorite ’90s alternative and grunge.
PLUS: 🎶🔥 Exclusive world premiere of their live Paramount Theatre performance (Seattle, January 1998) Monday night at 8PM ET.
Only on Lithium. 📻
🎙️ @altmadison 7:30–8:30AM ET
🎙️ @grantrandom 12:30–1:30PM ET
🎙️ @kat_corbett 6:30–7:30PM ET
#PUSA30 I did not create a single lyric in this song! It all came from a section of the local music arts and culture rag here in Seattle called The Stranger. There was a column called "I Saw U" where people who had seen someone they were attracted to but had not acted in the moment could post their story in the hopes of finding that person again. All I did was take some of the juicy phrases and tidbits from that section of the paper and collage them into a song! I wonder if anybody is out there that is the original author of these fragments?? Musically this is a perfect example of the quiet loud quiet loud form that was a hallmark of the times.
#PUSA30 Three random moments of wonder and mystery from the 90s!
1. Here we are playing in the back patio outdoor seating area at Pinks Hot Dogs to promote the debut. we had good times and delicious dogs!! I think the very fragile and aged original owner was on hand for this show and dug our silly sounds!
2. I don't know who all of these people are but there is Dave and Staci our manager and me and some other girl that I don't know and Roman Coppola who made all of our videos back in the day and good old Jason Finn. I guess I knew all but one of them! Roman was a real hit and miss video director, but when he hit, he hit hard!
3. This is our very first promotional radio station visit to promote the debut. We had no idea what this kind of numbskull dynamic was like. This guy insisted that we say the name of the radio station while pumping our fist in front of us. We had to say, "The Flash!" and do the fist pump, and we all rolled our collective eyes so hard we almost broke our heads. Just a preview of what was to come for years and years and years!
#PUSA30 I remember the moment this song came into focus out of the blue. I had a micro cassette recorder that I used to fill up with song ideas and lyric fragments. Once a tape was full I would put it on while I cleaned up my room or did the dishes and half listened to the parade of ideas waiting for something to pop out and grab me. I still use this technique to this day! So there I was alphabetizing my cassettes in 1994 when my voice came on the singing "It's lump, it's lump, it's lump it's in my head". There was no verse or solo just that fragment. Unlike all the other bits on the tape I had no memory of the moment of creation of this little bit. I immediately changed it from "it's" to "she's" and burst out with all the verses and a solo idea immediately. And by the way, if you are wondering what this song is about all I can tell you is that it is about exactly what the lyrics describe! WHY?? I DON'T KNOW!!! 😂
#PUSA30 I was a little late to the party and discovered the MC5 and the stooges around the same time in 1991. The raw force behind both of those white hot fountains of distorted joy knocked me over and over and over! I especially loved Kick Out The Jams by the MC5. I wanted to play it live with PUSA but I couldn't understand what they were singing, and this was before the Internet could tell me, so I made up my own lyrics! The details of the journey to get the original authors of the song to approve the changes is a story that's too long for this format, but needless to say that Wayne Kramer and I became good buddies after the dust cleared. In a nutshell, we were refused the right to change the lyrics at first, but then cooler heads prevailed. Wayne and I would talk later on the phone and get to know each other after I sent him a gold record to commemorate the sale of 500,000 copies of our album. He called me on the phone and was super touched and let me know that his decision to let us change the lyrics also changed his relationship to the legacy of the MC5. He realized that if he refused to let us play with the song that he would be "the man" so to speak. It all worked out, and this song became an absolute staple in our live show for the entire duration of our time as a band! Wayne passed away, not too long ago, and I miss him.
#pusa30 This little tune has a rich history! The story starts with me and my childhood friend Dave Thiele and my art school buddy Phil Franklin going to see the very last show by Steve Albini's band Big Black at the Georgetown Steam Plant on August 9th, 1987. At that show, we met a DJ from Los Angeles (foreshadowing). I don't remember her name, but we told her that Phil and I were about to start off on a cross-country driving trip, and we wondered if we could stay with her when we went to L.A. She said yes! Phil and I ended up staying with her and it's in her apartment where I wrote this song after driving around Los Angeles and seeing billboard after billboard populated by people with barely any clothes all hoping you would notice them and go see their movie. Phil and I were making a project out of busking as much as we could on our driving trip, so we worked the song up over multiple performances on sidewalks. We ended up in Boston and formed a band called Egg, and we performed the song many times at the Middle East and on subway platforms and sidewalks. Later, when we were putting together a live set in the early days of the Presidents, I put this song forward even though it existed before the band formed and Dave and Jason loved it and it became a live show staple. Tricky ripped off the chorus wholesale in the song, "Tricky Kid,"which I always took as a compliment). There's a jean company called Naked and Famous and there's a drink called the Naked and Famous. I think there's also a band called Naked and Famous! Thanks again to that DJ in Los Angeles, who let us sleep on her floor and write songs in her living room! OH, and thanks to Kim Thayil for shedding the solo on this thing!
#PUSA30 This trio of snapshots is dedicated to my first born 2 string guitar! I bought it at a pawn shop in Boston for 75 clams and shifted 5 million records thanks to it's odd twang. I found out later that it's a pretty rare Kawai model from the 1960s. I never named this little guy so shoot me your ideas for a name in the comments!
1. A great shot from a live show at Moe in Seattle taken by Lance Mercer. I rarely touched the ground during those early shows! I had an excess of PEP in my STEP back then!
2. Probably the first picture of the guitar ever. I think I had bought it a couple months earlier and was still mesmerized by its dulcet tones. This shot features a great angle on the original babypants! I'm still holding out hope that I'll find them someday.
3. Probably the first photo of the guitar in action at a live show. This one was taken at the Romper Room in Seattle in late 93. I'm pretty sure this was the first show where Jason had joined us on drums.
