Going Going Gone

This week's edition of Retro Friday features the band The Posies, and the song "Going Going Gone."

The Posies are an alternative rock band which formed in 1987 in Bellingham, Washington. The primary songwriters are Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. They are best known for their radio hits "Golden Blunders" (from the album Dear 23), as well as "Dream All Day", "Solar Sister" and "Flavor of the Month" (from the album Frosting on the Beater).

The founding band members Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow met and began writing songs together in late 1986 while Ken was in school at the University Of Washington. Auer later recalled in an interview that "we first met at a Dan Reed Network show; we were united in feeling we could do that stuff much better ourselves, the two of us".

Their first performance in a public venue came as an acoustic duo that next summer while Ken was home in Bellingham. During the last part of 1987 and the first two months of 1988, Ken drove home on weekends to join Jon as they recorded twelve songs in Jon's family's home studio. These tracks were intended to be demos to attract other members and form a full band, but the recordings turned out so well that they became the Posies' first self-released album, Failure.

Interest in the Posies rose out of the numerous home-copied cassettes that began to spread around Seattle and Bellingham. Mike Musberger and Rick Roberts joined soon after, allowing the band to play its first live shows in Seattle and Bellingham. The four members then moved in to a house in the University District of Seattle, where they would develop many of the songs that would appear on later albums. Failure was released on vinyl near the end of 1988 on local indie label PopLlama with one song dropped.

Several major labels noticed the band early on and in late 1989 they signed to new Geffen Records imprint DGC Records. They chose John Leckie to produce their first album for the label and Dear 23 was released in the fall of 1990. "Golden Blunders" was the big hit off the album and reached #17 on the US Modern Rock charts. Ringo Starr later covered the song for his 1992 album Time Takes Time.

Unfortunately, following Dear 23 the band encountered much turmoil and never really achieved the success that they anticipated. When they returned from their extensive U.S. tour, the Posies thought they were ready to record their third album. They headed to Robert Lang Studio in Shoreline, Washington, in late 1991 and recorded many of the songs they had been working on over the past two years. Among the recordings were three songs written (and two of them sung) by bassist Rick Roberts. The founding band members, Jon and Ken, later decided that Rick's songs didn't mesh well with the band and subsequently asked him to leave. The entire recording session was then scrapped and is referred to by fans as "the Lost Sessions".

My favorite song from The Posies is not off one of their traditional recordings though, it's off the soundtrack of the movie Reality Bites. "Going Going Gone." If you have never seen the movie Reality Bites ... please, get on Netflix and order it RIGHT NOW!! Okay ... quick movie description!

Reality Bites is a 1994 American romantic comedy-drama film written by Helen Childress and features the directorial debut of Ben Stiller. It stars Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke and Stiller, with major supporting roles played by Janeane Garofalo and Steve Zahn. The film was shot on location in Austin and Houston, Texas in only 42 days. (42 days!!)

The plot is centered on Lelaina (Ryder), who is an aspiring videographer working on a documentary called Reality Bites ... the disenfranchised lives of her friends and roommates (Hawke, Garofalo, and Zahn), and to a certain degree, about Lelaina herself. Their challenges, both documented and not, exemplify some of the career and lifestyle choices faced by Generation X.

I guess the reason why I like this song, and the movie Reality Bites, so very much is that it was very much in my wheel house. It came out shortly after I graduated from college, and I could really relate with what the characters were going through. I myself was searching for a job, embarking on a career, making new friends, looking for Mr. Right and all the while trying to have a little fun! You may see more songs from this soundtrack in the not too distant future!

Okay, I think I've rambled on long enough ... here is "Going Going Gone" for your listening pleasure!
  Cheers!