Thinking Fellers Union Local 282: Sister Hell
Saturday is lost classics day. The world of independent rock music is littered with hundreds of influential groups that most people have never heard of. Everybody knows about Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Flaming Lips, but that is because they found success on major labels that were able to promote and distribute their commercialized music to a mass audience. However, those bands started out on small independent labels in the 1980s with hundreds of labelmates that never achieved that success. While The Pixies and Pavement were able to last into the present, there are many artists who were just as critically acclaimed on the indie circuit in the late ’80s and never made it to the 21st century. One of these lost bands is Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. The band is best described as experimental noise rock. They were masters of off-kilter rock composition, with guitar noodling, bursts of unexpected energy, and wonderful lyrics. They found some success in the ’90s, but my favorite TFUL282 has always been their 1989 album Tangle. The album pulls together the sounds of cowpunk, post-hardcore, The Minutemen, lo-fi, audio experimentation, and experimental noise into an entirely unique vision. The group has a strong cult following that continues to find new listeners 35 years later, and the group still stands as one of the best of the college radio era of the late ’80s.
To learn more about Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, check out their Wikipedia page.
To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.
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