After the Game Theory's MRBQ lineup fell apart in 1990, Scott Miller and Joe Becker carried on with a new lineup and a new band name, the Loud Family (after the 1970s PBS documentary). I remember seeing an ad for "The Loud Family" at one of their early shows at the DNA Lounge, and thought it might be Lance & his Santa Barbara siblings, and was confused to see "(ex-Game Theory)" under the billing.
I thought maybe it was Lance Loud backed up with Gil & Shelley or something, but it was Game Theory with a new lineup and a new name. This was sometime in early 1991, and it took a couple of years before the Loud Family to release their first album, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things (from the lyrics to "Horse With No Name").
After Scott & Joe joined up with bassist Rob Poor (who'd played on the final Game Theory album), guitarist Zach Smith, and keyboardist Paul Weineke, the sound changed to something more "rock-oriented", so they probably wanted to find a name that wasn't stuck in the previous decade. They signed with Alias Records (then the home of AMC, YLT, and other respected acronyms) and recorded Plants with producer Mitch Easter.
When the album came out in early 1993, it was greeted with rave reviews in Rolling Stone and other national rags, and it seemed like the Loud Family had taken up right where Game Theory left off. I'd spent two or three years essentially waiting for the album to come out, and was excited to have any new Scott Miller, so I had the album on repeat play for the entire first half of 1993.
Many fans consider the album to be the high point of Scott's career (legendary rock writer Steve Simels recently called it "the best album of the 90s" on his blog), but I'd probably put it somewhere near but not at the top.
It starts out super strong out of the gate, but tends to tail off at the end, and always seems like it would be better limited to 15 songs or 45 minutes. Lolita Nation and Interbabe Concern are better start-to-finish albums, but the first half of Plants is as strong a collection of Scott songs as the first side of Big Shot Chronicles.
It's hard to imagine now, but Alias promoted the Loud Family quite heavily early on. As well as reviews and profiles in RS, and Option, and other mags, they released an EP called Slouching Toward Liverpool and a promotional cassette called Never Mind The Camera Crew that riffed on the "Loud Family" name with a series of fly on the wall band rehearsals and cover songs. Here's some video footage that would go really well with that tape -- Mitch Easter and the Loud Family in the studio recording Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things.
2 comments:
Although I'd heard and liked Game Theory back in the day, P&B&R&T is the album that did the trick. LF quickly rocketed up to "favorite" status and there was no turning back...
For the record: After the 5-piece Game Theory broke up, Game Theory continued on for ~1 year with Scott, Gil, Joe Becker and Michael Quercio, performing Sword Swallower, Jimmy Still Comes Around, Idiot Son, Some Grand Vision of Motives and Irony, and Inverness. Demos were recorded of Inverness and Idiot Son.
As some of Paul McCartney's and George Harrison's solo work were originally Beatle's songs, the songs listed above were originally Game Theory songs.
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