Squirrel Bait's "Kid Dynamite"

Image from Ultra Magazine (via the Southern Records website)

Here’s my weekly reminder to tune in to Sinking with Sylvia and Todd on Little Radio Friday from Noon – 2:00 PM PST. Tomorrow they won’t have a musical guest, but funnyman Matt Dwyer will be joining them in the studio.

Each week on the show, they feature an official You Set the Scene pick, which I eventually write about here. On May 8th, my pick was Squirrel Bait’s “Kid Dynamite.” I picked Squirrel Bait that day as a tie-in to their musical guest, Bobb Bruno. Bruno spent time in bands in Louisville, KY (including the For Carnation) and you can trace a lot of those great Louisville bands back to Squirrel Bait.

If you went to college in the early to mid 1990s and got really into indie rock, then you probably, at some point, traced your favorite bands back to Squirrel Bait. They’re one of those bands whose influence extends far beyond their initial record sales. They only released one EP and one LP in the mid-80s, but the members (Peter Searcy, David Grubbs, Brian McMahan, Clark Johnson and Ben Daughtrey) went on to play with: Slint, Bitch Magnet, Bastro, Gastr del Sol, the Lemonheads, the For Carnation, King Kong, Palace Brothers and many more.

The music’s impressive given that the guys were in high school when the band formed. It’s fast, melodic, post-hardcore (Husker Du), pre-indie rock. “Kid Dynamite” is probably their best song but most were good. I never liked them as much as Slint, but I still pull out the albums every once in a while.

Stream “Kid Dynamite” on their Myspace page