"Roving here and straying there, and good parties everywhere..." - Hip Young Things.

Despite their making at least one very solid record featuring contributions from some of the biggest names in German indie music, few talk about Hip Young Things. For example, AllMusic is mute on the subject of the band and doesn't even have a full discography. TrouserPress? Nada. Online book store Biblio (who?) will at least try to sell the band's very good Shrug (Brake Out Records/Glitterhouse Records/Enemy Productions, 1996) to you, a record for which Amazon doesn't even display cover art. As stated in an earlier post, laptop popper Schneider TM was in Hip Young Things. His notoriety, particularly for an inspired electronic cover of The Smiths' "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out," fortunately makes some information about HYT available. For real pay dirt you might try to get into the native language and check out some German Internet home pages. Here is a Google translation of what might be a pretty informative page. Unfortunately, that results in such informative declarations as "alternative skirt does not interest me any longer."

Here is what we do know: the album Shrug is universally underrated, and doesn't contain a single bad toon. In addition to Schneider, The Notwist's Acher brothers both contributed to Shrug. It contains rough-edged indie rock with marked Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement influences. We've seen Shrug in used bins more often than we've heard it played by anyone besides ourselves. The last time we heard it out and about was at Boston's Paradise Rock Club, where one song was played over the hi-fi in the club prior to the start of a Built To Spill show we saw there. That was almost four years ago.

Given that there is so little out there about the band and the album it is a challenge to pick one song that will sell readers on the band. But we are guessing "Paraque No Quiero Saberlo" (roughly translated: "because I don't want to know it.") makes the best case for the band, and hopefully some of you will turn on to it. Or maybe "Generation Wax" will do it for you. Try 'em both. We're sure the record can be had for a song from all the usual places. Dooooo check it out.

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You can now pre-order the forthcoming (6/16) Judge discography What it Meant: The Complete Discography from Revelation records. It includes "both 7"s, the Bringin' It Down LP, the infamous Chung King Can Suck It LP and a demo track." Not bad for $11. We pre-ordered ours.

We were minding our own business at the gym this morning when Stars' "Ageless Beauty" came on the hi-fi. We guess that means the mainstream can't be far behind.

That is all.