The Lemonheads

performing “It’s A Shame About Ray” in it’s entirety

 88.1 KDHX Presents:

Saturday, January 28 • Doors 7pm • Show 8pm • $17.50 Advance • $20 Day of Show • All Ages • Buy Tickets

w/ Meredith Sheldon

Evan Griffith Dando formed The Lemonheads with two high school buddies in late winter ’86, in their senior year at Boston’s tiny Commonwealth School. A few months later, they spawned what is now one of the most sought-after punk relics of the 80s, the indie EP Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners. Boston-based Taang! Records immediately picked up on The Lemonheads, with three college radio pleasers to follow: the LPs Hate Your Friends (1987), Creator (1988), and Lick (1989). In 1990 Atlantic Records took notice of the massively expanding Lemonheads fanbase in Europe (where they toured in 1989) and America by signing the band and releasing their well-received (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) fourth LP, Lovey.

Mainstream media hype of The Lemonheads shifted into high gear, with lots of wild speculation as to the exact nature of the relationship between Dando and long-time friend Juliana Hatfield (who played bass and sang on Ray). Atlantic released a smash follow-up, Come on Feel The Lemonheads, in October 1993. The album brought Dando a genuine charting single (“Into your Arms”) as well as instant classics such as “Great Big No”, “Down About It”, “Being Around”, and “You Can Take it with You.” In winter 1993/1994 Evan Dando was in your living room, thanks to live appearances on the Letterman and Leno late night network TV shows. Inevitably, in Warrington, Pennsylvania, a 20-something named Jeff Fox published the first issue of his backlash ‘zine Die Evan Dando, Die.

Two years of brutal touring for The Lemonheads followed, which Evan punctuated with some high-profile personal meltdowns on various continents that caught the imagination of a press ever eager for negative copy. Still The Lemonheads (now with Boston friends John Strohm on guitar and Murph on drums) managed to crank out a defiant 1996 release Car Button Cloth, with some of their best melodic pop/punk to date: “It”s All True”, “If I Could Talk I”d Tell You”, and “Tenderfoot”. After a year promoting the record, Dando announced at the 1997 Reading Festival that he was disbanding The Lemonheads. Atlantic released a Best of The Lemonheads album in 1998, and a lot of geezers surmised that that was that.

“I just decided to duck out for a while”, explains Dando of his self-imposed exile from the scene. “I didn’t have it in me. It took until I met my wife in 1998 until I got back into making music.” That would be Elizabeth Moses, Newcastle-born English supermodel and musician. Once married in 2000, Dando started to come alive again like Frampton, first with a 2001 live album Live at the Brattle Theater/Griffith Sunset, and then in 2003 with a well-received solo LP, Baby I”m Bored.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Past Shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.