Beat Happening is the debut studio album by the American rock band Beat Happening, released in November 1985 through K Records. After the end of their previous band, guitarist Calvin Johnson and drummer Heather Lewis formed Beat Happening, and guitarist Bret Lunsford joined them soon after. Between November 1983 and February 1985, the band recorded several tracks that appeared on different versions of their debut album. Greg Sage of the Wipers produced two of the recording sessions, which occurred at the studios The Firehouse and Yoyo, both of which are in Olympia, Washington. Other tracks were recorded at Johnson's residence at the Martin Apartments and with friend Pat Maley in a recital hall at Evergreen State College.
The album has been described as indie pop and jangle pop, and was compared to the work of the Cramps with its simplistic guitar work. The artwork for Beat Happening has a basic design and was used on gig flyers Johnson printed. Photographs of the band for the album sleeve were taken at Capitol Lake, Olympia. In 1984 and 1985, before the album's release, the band issued two cassettes of songs from the album's sessions. Johnson personally sold copies of the vinyl LP to record stores while traveling across the United States. With the help of journalist Jerry Thackray, Rough Trade Records issued Beat Happening in late 1986.
Beat Happening was met with positive reviews; contemporaneous critics praised the songwriting and retrospective reviews focused on the album's production. Melody Maker included Beat Happening in its list of the best 30 releases from the year. Tracks from all of the album's recording sessions are included on the compilation album 1983–85. Beat Happening has been issued several times, alone and as part of box sets. Musicians including Ian MacKaye and Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie have expressed admiration for the album; and artists including Ben Gibbard, Scrawl, and Seaweed have covered tracks from it.
Background In early 1983, vocalist and guitarist Calvin Johnson, and drummer Heather Lewis performed with guitarist Laura Carter as Laura, Heather and Calvin.Parker 2015, p. 16 Johnson and Lewis had met the year before at a college party where Lewis's band The Supreme Cool Beings were playing.Parker 2015, p. 59 After seeing them perform, guitarist Bret Lunsford booked Laura, Heather and Calvin for a show in Anacortes, Washington.Parker 2015, pp. 17, 20 By the time of the gig, Carter had moved to Olympia, Washington, and Laura, Heather and Calvin had stopped playing together.Parker 2015, p. 63 Consequently, Lunsford was brought in to play alongside Johnson and Lewis.Parker 2015, p. 17 It was the first occasion all members of Beat Happening were onstage together.Parker 2015, p. 20
Johnson invited Lunsford to join the band, saying "We should call it Beat Happening and we should go to Japan". He explained that Japan was "the last place on earth where it's still cool to be American", and that this would make it easy to "become teen idols overnight". Lunsford said he would only join if they made the trip to Japan.Parker 2015, pp. 20–21 In September 1983, Lewis relocated to Seattle, Washington, and Lunsford moved to Olympia. Beat Happening had minor local success when one of their tracks appeared on a Sub Pop cassette compilation, and when they opened for the Wipers.Parker 2015, pp. 62–63 Around this time, Wipers' frontman Greg Sage visited Johnson at his home in the Ray Apartments in Olympia; Sage showed Johnson newly-written Wipers songs and said he was constructing his own recording facility in Portland, Oregon, and was scouting for acts to record there. Beat Happening was still newly formed so Johnson did not accept Sage's proposal to record the band.Parker 2015, p. 49
Sessions The ten tracks on the original release of Beat Happening came from a combination of several recording sessions, a live show, and a home boombox recording.
1983 recordings In November 1983 at the Ray Apartments, Beat Happening recorded their song "Fourteen", their first recording.Parker 2015, p. 99–100 The following month, the band decided they had enough rehearsed material to record and contacted Sage about his recording offer. Sage was still building his studio but said he would visit Olympia to record them there. At Olympia's Evergreen State College, students were permitted to use a former firehouse for band rehearsals to prevent noise in dorms.Parker 2015, p. 47 Beat Happening's first sessions with Sage occurred in the firehouse. They were assisted by Bradley Sweek, frontman of the Young Pioneers, who also used the rehearsal space, and had become friends with Johnson and Sage.
Sage had a reputation for helping to record acts without wanting any money in return. He was supportive of Beat Happening's experimentation, having worked similarly with the Wipers' on Youth of America (1981).Parker 2015, p. 48 On December 11, 1983, Beat Happening recorded "Down at the Sea", "I Love You", "Our Secret" and "What's Important". They followed this with a live performance of "Run Down the Stairs" for campus radio station KAOS.
Shure SM57 microphones were used to record the guitar and drums as they were played live. Sage used a Neumann tube microphone to record the vocals on reel-to-reel tape using a four-track machine borrowed from another college student.Parker 2015, p. 50 While the band was sometimes unable to play a song all the way through, multi-tracking helped them overcome their lack of technique. While recording "Our Secret", Johnson watched Lewis and Lunsford record their parts, and gestured to them to stop when he felt there was enough to sing over. When Johnson tried to record his vocals, the tape ran out partway through, ending the session and leaving out two verses from the final recording.Parker 2015, p. 52
1984 and 1985 recordings In January 1984, Sweek organized an event called "Olympia Goes to Portland" at Portland venue 13th Precinct. The lineup featured Young Pioneers, Beat Happening and Rich Jensen. Jensen, who was known as a documentarian of the local community, used a Panasonic recorder to record Beat Happening playing "Bad Seeds".Parker 2015, p. 122 When they were in Japan, Beat Happening recorded the tracks "Don't Mix the Colors", "The Fall", "Honey Pot", "In My Memory" and "Youth" using superior boombox models that were unavailable in the US.Parker 2015, pp. vii, 77
In November 1984, Evergreen alumnus Pat Maley re-recorded Beat Happening performing "Fourteen". He borrowed equipment for the session using a media loan, and moved the gear from the college's library to a recital hall on campus. Maley used a reel-to-reel tape recorder and dubbed the track on to a cassette. He lost the master reel before he was able to edit the recording, meaning the version on the finished album has been equalized for balance but has not been fully mixed.Parker 2015, p. 43
The same month, another five tracks were recorded in sessions at Maley's Yoyo Studio, which was located in a chicken-coop-turned-communal housing building in Olympia.Parker 2015, p. 145Parker 2015, p. 147 These tracks comprised the first side of the original LP release of Beat Happening LP; the fact the tracks were recording together means they have a consistent production tone. Maley invited Beat Happening to record at his studio after being impressed with Johnson's music knowledge at an audio class Maley started teaching at Yoyo.Parker 2015, p. 29 Maley preferred psychedelic music but enjoyed "strange music" enough to want to work with Beat Happening.Parker 2015, p. 146
Maley was displeased when the band arrived with Sage, having been under the impression he would be in charge of producing and engineering the session at his studio.Parker 2015, pp. 146–147 The session used a TASCAM 38 eight-track recorder running half-inch tape and a TASCAM mixing board with eight output slots and twelve inputs. Digital reverb which is heard most prominently on the finger snapping on "Bad Seeds", was used. Lewis performed vocals on "Foggy Eyes", "I Let Him Get to Me" and "Run Down the Stairs"; and Johnson sang vocals on "Bad Seeds" and "I Spy". On February 13, 1985, the record's final track "In Love with You Thing" was recorded in Johnson's room at the Martin Apartments complex in Olympia using a portable cassette recorder.Parker 2015, p. 90
Composition and lyrics
AllMusic reviewer Nitsuh Abebe described the sound of Beat Happening as "indie pop in its purest form: fuzzy bedroom recordings of simplistic, cutesy songs, with intentionally innocent and juvenile lyrics, which Calvin Johnson belts out with one of the most endearingly bad voices in music history". Pitchfork contributor Quinn Moreland commented the album's material switches between "barely-there lo-fi ballads and ’60s jangle-pop ditties".
In Bryan Parker's book 33 1/3 about the album, he compared it to the works of the Cramps, a band Johnson cited as an influence. Parker said while the Cramps "embrace a more overt darkness and sexuality in their sinister psychobilly songs, Beat Happening frequently traffics in double-entendres, and both bands thrive on simple, distorted guitar lines",Parker 2015, p. 139 He also said the sequencing of side one "embodies an Olympian egalitarianism"; Johnson and Lewis alternate as lead vocalist on the tracks.Parker 2015, p. 149
Lewis said of Johnson's lyrics: "Things are articulated in these unusual and creative ways. They're layered, and it can be interpreted in different ways. My songs are much more like the open wound. He's more guarded. I'm more spilling out."Parker 2015, p. 64 According to her, on her tracks, "My emotions are right there on my sleeve".
Songs on the original LP
The album's opening track "Foggy Eyes" opens with Johnson counting for the guitar and drums to come in. Parker thought it was the first track because it "unsurprisingly ... showcases the band at its most mature to date".Parker 2015, p. 148 According to Parker, after 20 seconds, Beat Happening distinctly "delineate their practice of challenging conventions and reevaluating the world" in the lyrics, and continue this sentiment in "Bad Seeds".Parker 2015, p. 4 Parker said of the tracks from the second session with Sage, "Bad Seeds" has the "fullest instrumentation", and noted it is the sole track on the album to include cymbals. Bongos, performed by Maley, can be heard on the song but are drowned out by the cymbal and tom hits. On "I Spy", Johnson's voice evokes those of musicians Lee Hazlewood and Scott Walker. Parker said between the music and the lyrics, the song comes across as a child's version of a theme song to a lesser-quality spy film. He said with the last line in the track, the average "listener might miss the indictment of conventional masculinity, those in-tune heard it loud and clear". Similarly, Michael Azerrad described it as seeming like a "corny espionage spoof" until its last line "hurl[s] a parting barb at machismo". Journalist and musician Alan Larsen of K Records act Some Velvet SidewalkParker 2015, p. 87 said the song's narrator laments typical masculine roles into which young males fit.Parker 2015, p. 88 Larsen said the lyrics spoke to him about being older and manhood, saying: "That was what culture was doing to you as a male. That was your archetype. I thought of that work as something that could talk to me about gender."Parker 2015, p. 89