Pond

It's probably a good idea to explain a little about the background of this website to provide a degree of context for anybody who is reading that doesn't know us personally. As it stands right now, Radish White Icicle is the product of three people: Matt, Dylan and myself. It couldn't exist without the town of Fredonia, NY. Fredonia is a small college town about an hour southwest of Buffalo. The Bills used to have their training camp here, if that helps you find it on a map. Matt and Dylan met while attending SUNY Fredonia. I got to know them from this being a small town and having a mutual interest in many of the same bands. Matt finished up college in May and moved to Chicago. Dylan is in the final stages of getting his degree. I'm the older local guy who tells them what albums from Chavez and Guided By Voices they need or that I saw the Archers Of Loaf back in 1997.

All of that brings us to Pond. Dylan posted their video for "Spoke" on Facebook a couple weeks ago. I was like, "Wow. Pond. There's a name from the past. They played Fredonia with the Screaming Trees and Poster Children in 1993 or 1994." After digging through my tickets stubs, I found the one for the show. It would have happened my freshman year of college at Allegheny College. I came home often because there weren't many shows going on there and Fredonia has always had some degree of a relevant music scene.

This tour featured the Screaming Trees, Poster Children and Pond. The Screaming Trees were riding their big MTV hit song "Nearly Lost You." It almost seems hard to believe today that heavy airplay of a video could make or break a band. Nowadays you have to hope your video goes "viral" on YouTube. And that just sounds lame. Things like that along with the radio and actual written press coverage mattered. I'm not saying that to be judgmental, but merely to point out the differences. Both the past and present have their positives and negatives without either one necessarily being better or worse.

As for the show, I don't remember all that much about it. The Screaming Trees were awful. I wasn't familiar with Pond or Poster Children, but I seem to recall that Pond were the best band of the night. My friend Dan bought their self titled debut album on Sub Pop and I taped it from him. (Side A of the tape has L7's Smell The Magic, in case you were wondering.)

I listened to the Pond tape again recently out of curiosity. They definitely fit the Sub Pop "grunge" sound of the time. It's a style that I have a rather low tolerance for and I generally find anything grunge to be about the most painful thing ever to listen to. Their album is decent and veers more toward the indie/post-hardcore side of things. After checking out their website, I'm sort of inclined to investigate the Poster Children's back catalog a little.

Now everyone knows some background about this here website and about one show that happened in Fredonia a long ass time ago.

Pond:



Poster Children:



Screaming Trees (I won't feel bad if you don't watch this.):



Note:

If you look at the bottom of the ticket, the location given is the Campus Center. This is the building now named the Williams Center. Since I grew up in Fredonia and spent a lot of time at the university because my dad worked there, I will always call the building the Campus Center out of force of habit.