This is about The Pins from Minneapolis.
Dreamy melancholy space age pop laden with more infectious guitar breaks per song that on their own are worth some dream-pop bands entire careers. It would be easy to prattle on about this lot, but I doubt I could top the passionate blurb below from kindred spirit John Kass, so let’s just jump right into the fire, shall we?
Beth Van Dam: drums
Jim Boulware: Bass
Rich Barlow: Guitar
Steve Shaskan: Keyboards
The Pins Live at 7th St. Entry on 1996-06-29
Bill:
Colfax Abbey
Lotus Crown
Overblue
The Pins
The overall theme of the evening might have been variant mutations of dream pop, running the spectrum from the avant-garde to lunar soundscapes.
Alternating tracks between hazy, spacious psychedelia and uptempo head-over-heels yet strangely subdued pop that wouldn’t sound out of place on the Three Lobed or Flying Nun labels, The Pins previewed nearly half of their forthcoming album Radar, along with a couple of unreleased tracks for good measure.
Per an e-mail w/ Rich in 2024, track 13 is a Steve Shaskan song – possibly titled “Pillow Talk”.
It seems that this same bill took place on both Friday June 28th + Saturday June 29th. Not sure why I only recorded the second night then, but possibly my work schedule at First Avenue got in the way, and I wasn’t able to juggle recording on Friday with whatever else I was supposed to be doing at the venue. Most likely either fetching beer for the punters, or carding patrons at the door, to be sure they were mature enough top appreciate this sort of thing.
Download or stream The Pins Live at 7th St. Entry on 1996-06-29 from Live Music Archive
The Pins Live at 7th St. Entry on 1996-07-17
Bill:
Bardo Pond
Brother JT + Vibrolux
The Pins
It was as though someone read my mind by putting this bill together – although guided by divine prescience perhaps, given the presence of Bardo Pond, since Three Lobed wasn’t a thing yet. Ah, but I digress… even before Brother JT had deep-fried our grey matter and passed it around rolled in banana peels waiting for carcinogenic bliss, The Pins had already laid the groundwork for the evening with their gentle but somewhat disconcerted moody atmospheric pop, and it was going to be a long climb out of that rabbit hole.
Download or stream The Pins Live at 7th St. Entry on 1996-07-17 from Live Music Archive
The Pins Live at 7th St. Entry on 1997-03-15
Bill:
David Thomas And The Two Pale Boys
The Pins
Gusto Busto
The Jewishesses
This was one of the longest days I ever spent in the Seventh Street Entry, and I might go so far as to suggest that three of the bands who played that night – none of whom were afforded the luxury of a soundcheck, and especially the sound person, would be inclined to agree with me. But that’s what happens when a headlining act takes four plus hours for their own soundcheck, I reckon. It had been arranged with the label (Cooking Vinyl) that I would record Two Pale Boys, in the hopes they might use it in a future live release (they didn’t), so I showed up super-early for this one. By the time the doors finally opened close to 45 minutes past schedule, the patrons freezing outside in the brisk March temperatures could finally come in and thaw their bones, the atmosphere inside the club felt no less chilly.
Retrospectively, I’ve often wondered if I should have recorded that soundcheck for posterity, but alas, I did not. It was the second time I had seen The Pins’ set time get cut short, which is really a shame, all things considered, but they did manage to bring a sense of grace to the stage, between the grueling aforementioned soundcheck of 2 Pale Boys, and the wackiness of the two acts which preceded them. By the time the final crescendos of Slide had faded, I think they had managed to sonically smudge the energy of the room back to something bearable, and they seemed to genuinely be enjoying themselves in the process. And in doing so, they made the evening that much more memorable than it might have been otherwise.
Download or stream The Pins Live at 7th St. Entry on 1997-03-15 from Live Music Archive
It is well worth your time to track down any of the band’s releases which are listed on the discogs site
There is still a terrific little piece about The Pins from John Kass on the Go Johnny Go! site
In the process of putting this together, I discovered a cassette containing an interview with The Pins guitarist, Rich Barlow, which had appeared in an early issue of The New Puritan ReView, and although time has destroyed the printed matter from my archives, it may be possible to resurrect the original interview in our lifetime, so just hang in there, and we’ll see what spirits we might be able to conjure here.
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Download or stream all sets by The Pins from Live Music Archive
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