Here’s two great pieces of video (one posted for the very first time earlier today!) documenting the version of Treepeople that ripped the hell outta Seattle during Silkworm‘s first two years in town (1990-91, during which the two then-quite-unfashionable Idaho/Montana transplants often teamed up for gigs), just prior to my own arrival hereabouts in July 1992.
I had the good fortune to see Treepeople’s 2nd-to-last gig with Doug Martsch, during Bumbershoot, Labor Day weekend 1992. He quit a few days later, following a reputedly desultory show in Central Washington, if memory serves, then moved back to Boise, and began in earnest on his Built to Spill project soon thereafter!
Note that the earlier footage (26 June 1990) definitively documents the fact that Doug was the very first American Indie Rocker to sport a full beard! LOL (The fallout from which he is certainly not to be blamed for, during our present era of mindless "craft cocktail"-guzzling hepsters sporting said accoutrement as the very foundation of their (allegedly) "cool" identities!)
By the second video, filmed in sainted Olympia in October 1991 (mere weeks after the release of NEVERMIND, but well before it blew up on the BILLBOARD charts), Doug is clean shaven and sportin’ a lovely, two-sided Velvets t-shirt.
I’ve said for decades now that Treepeople were one of the precious few subsequent guitar bands who ever managed to extend the legacy of the circa-1966 Yardbirds, the ones who cut "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" (with Jeff Beck AND Jimmy Page on dual/duel lead guitar!) and took it straight into the Top 40 (#30 in the aforementioned BILLBOARD, to be exact):
And yes, they COULD recreate their crazed, Psychedelic single on stage, even without Jeff, as this March 1967 clip gloriously demonstrates!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AF8yMx9SvE
My favorite of many Treepeople efforts in said vein, their fantastic, brutally-depressive "Neil’s Down" (1991), was released as the b-side of a split 7-inch (with House of Large Sizes), so it starts at the 4:12 mark of this YouTube video:
Glorious electric guitar AND vocal savagery, to say the very least!
– Tom Kipp
