I’ve spoken before of ESDMusic.com, one of the blog sites connected to my full-time employer, Bullz-Eye.com, to which I contribute. These days, ESD Music exists predominantly as an alternate haven for Bullz-Eye’s quick-take CD reviews, but once upon a time, we tried valiantly to make it into a regular stop for music fans a la Popdose; it never really took off the way we wanted, which is why it’s currently little more than a ghost town, content-wise, but we did occasionally produce work that caught the eye of ‘net surfers. I continue to remain surprised by one of my postings, however, if only because it was an entry from a short-lived feature called “Lost Bands.” I mean, you’d figure that something about a lost band wouldn’t score much love. But I wrote it in September 2006, and as of last month, it was still getting the occasional response from people who were accidentally stumbling upon it as a result of an internet search.
It just goes to show you: just because a band is perceived as “lost” doesn’t mean they don’t still have fans out there…and that’s clearly true for the Gunbunnies.
Here’s what I wrote of them at the time:
Like so many disaffected teens with a jones for new music, I spent some time working in music retail…and one of the many bands I discovered during this era (1989 – 1994, with some time off to attend college) was the Gunbunnies. Signed to Virgin Records back in the days when the label was flooding stores with promotional copies of albums by their new artists, we scored both cassette and CD promos of their debut album, Paw Paw Patch, and it’s clear Virgin had high hopes for these guys. Their single, “Stranded,” was picking up quite a bit of college radio airplay, and the critics were loving the fact that the album was produced by the legendary Jim Dickinson (Big Star, the Rolling Stones, the Replacements). Plus, the band’s lead singer and songwriter, Chris Maxwell, had put together 10 songs that could hold their own with bands like Guadalcanal Diary, House of Freaks, and the like…and although he had a highly competent band behind him, Maxwell was practically a one-man band; he played guitar, harmonica, trumpet, and electric sitar on the album! Poised for success…? Yeah, not so much. The Gunbunnies disappeared after Paw Paw Patch…and I mean really disappeared. Not only was there no follow-up album on Virgin, there was no follow-up, period. Maxwell didn’t even go solo; he just vanished. Well, okay, he didn’t vanish vanish; if AllMusic.com can be trusted (and they usually can), he left music altogether for about five years, then returned to play bass for They Might Be Giants and to do some production work for artists like the Lunachicks…but, of course, that’s if this is the same Chris Maxwell. Can anyone confirm or deny…?
Okay, first off, I was younger and more naive in 2006, because I feel quite strongly now that AllMusic.com is no more trustworthy than IMDb.com, which is to say that it’s only as accurate as its researchers. But even now, their entry on Chris Maxwell is sorely lacking. Don’t bother writing in to say, “Didn’t you know that he was in Skeleton Key?” And don’t waste your time asking, “Don’t you know that he and Phil Hernandez make up the production duo known as The Elegant Too?” Granted, I didn’t know either of these things when I wrote that piece, but I certainly do now. Indeed, I actually found Mr. Maxwell via The Elegant Too’s MySpace page, where he thoughtfully answered a few questions for me. But before we get to those, let’s talk about the album itself a bit more.
