Bigger Weeds
“In the 1980s, Beggar Weeds were Jacksonville punks sleeping under trucks, opening for X, recording with Michael Stipe, and skinny-dipping with David Berman. In a new, career-defining reissue, they’re the long-missing link between R.E.M. and Uncle Tupelo.”
Casey Epstein-Gross, PaSt€ Magazine
“Itchy and intense… the ramshackle attitude of The Replacements with a downhome Creedence-like sense of place”
MOJO Magazine
In the late 1980s, the whole of the Southern alternative scene knew Beggar Weeds as the up-and-coming speed-folk outfit co-signed by Michael Stipe of R.E.M. fame and destined for an imminent break into the big time. They spent most of their time shredding at the legendary venue Einstein A Go-Go and hightailing it from the near-constant fights in Jacksonville’s “blighted area” as fast as their wingtips could take them. Nearly 40 years after the release of their first and only EP, Sure Pants Alot, Beggar Weeds has somehow found themselves poised to take back the spotlight that so cruelly evaded them by barely an inch the first time around.
The CADETS
As the Cadets began rumbling away in 1995, Cash Carter built his frenetic, thundering drum style around Chuck Smyth’s fast-twitch searing lead rhythms and melodies fertile with nervous energy. Inside those urgent drums and angular chords came their melodic hooks, catchy and strong, laden with unexpected twists. They released a 7”,The Search for the Edible Man (1997), and their first full-length record, The Cadets (1999).
As the century drew to a close, the Cadets took on bassist Chad Matheny (Emperor X), a dynamo of creativity and sonic agitation. Also joining was Isaac Bear, brilliantly color washing in the open spaces with expertly placed keys and guitars. The result was a delicately balanced collage of daydreams and found sounds dangling on the hilt of a steel edge. This lineup toured Japan and all along the US east coast until 2007.
The Cadets’ music continues to be delightfully peculiar and full of immediacy, arriving at your ear having skidded briskly across the table yet perfectly upright and nary a drop wasted. Their sonic experiments produce songs that possess a rare energy that conjures the early days of rock & roll, sci-fi adventures, and diary entries never intended for the light of day. Lyrics filter larger themes through a tilted and tinted lens of wide-eyed fantastic reverie. Brainwashed spies, mythical chimera, desperate refugees, and jilted lovers all become protagonists and truth tellers.
