Rank Your Records: Calvin Johnson Reluctantly Ranks Beat Happening’s Records

In Rank Your Records, we talk to members of bands who have amassed substantial discographies over the years and ask them to rate their releases in order of personal preference.

They couldn’t really sing. They couldn’t really play their instruments. Hell, sometimes they didn’t even have instruments to not really play. All Beat Happening needed was determination. And in 1983, Calvin (Johnson), Heather (Lewis), and Bret (Lunsford) used that determination to start a band that would go on to influence countless musicians, labels, and fans over the next 30 years. Call it “love rock,” call it “twee,” call it “indie pop,” the minimal music Beat Happening made was more punk rock than anything. To many, they were the definition of DIY culture: all they needed was a guitar, some empty yogurt containers and a mic, and the music just came out of them.

Over a decade, the Olympia, Washington trio recorded five albums, along with a handful of EPs and singles, for not only Johnson’s own indie K Records, but also bigger ones like Rough Trade, Homestead, 53rd & 3rd and Sub Pop. Disguising their work in a cute and cuddly façade, Beat Happening were as confrontational as they were fey. Live, they were ballsy and downright unflappable, surviving the heckling and belligerence of ignorant punks during gigs supporting the likes of Black Flag. Their songs were almost embarrassingly innocent and uncomplicated in structure, but what they lacked in musical ability, they made up for with lyrics steeped in sex, despair and dark humor, and effortless melodies.

After 23 years of dormancy, Beat Happening are all of sudden back in business, like it’s 1988 all over again. With a new book in the 33 1/3 series dedicated to their 30-year-old self-titled debut album, and a brand new compilation out now on Domino titled Look Around, Beat Happening has been revived for generations to discover.

Look Around is a greatest hits collection, if you will, that the band assembled the way they did pretty much everything: with heart, but also a little slapdashedly. “Bret came up with the list, mostly,” explains Calvin. “Heather and I made a few suggestions, but the thing is, we feel you could pick any 20 songs and it would be a good album. So it’s really about the order of play. We just wanted to pick 20 songs that we felt were solid and that people should hear if they hadn’t heard Beat Happening.

In 2016, their full out-of-print catalog, from their 1985 self-titled debut to the 2003 B-sides and rarities compilation, Music To Climb The Apple Tree By, will be reissued by Domino. sees this reissue campaign as a way of giving new life to their discography, which has been mostly out of print on vinyl for a while now.

“It definitely feels like a band that people reference, but do they listen to it? I don’t know,” he says. “Do they have an opportunity to listen to it? They don’t. But this will give people an opportunity to listen to Beat Happening.”

It wasn’t easy, but Noisey got Calvin to rank Beat Happening’s albums in some kind of order while he was moving across Europe on a solo tour.

6. Black Candy (1989)

Noisey: Why is it your least favorite?
Calvin Johnson: I don’t know. It’s just not that interesting.

What wasn’t interesting? Making the record wasn’t interesting?
No, it was great. It was the summer of ’88, which was a great time for Beat Happening. We went to Ellensburg and recorded it with Steve Fisk at his studio there. We had just come back from Europe, where we were touring in England and Scotland, and then we came and made that record.

You say it isn’t that interesting. When you listen to that record, is there something about it that forces that reaction?
I haven’t listened to it in a long time.

This album in particular showed a real Cramps influence.
To me the Cramps are all over all of the records. In the first reviews we ever got, they said we were like “the Cramps in junior high.”

5. Jamboree (1988)

Why is Jamboree at number five?
I don’t know. You just asked me to put them in order. There has to be a number five.

This felt a little more produced than the self-titled album. You worked on this with Steve Fisk again, but also Mark Lanegan and Grant Connor from Screaming Trees.
We did most of it in Ellensburg. The first album, we compiled various recording sessions into one record. And the second album, we did the same thing but with fewer sessions. The main body was recorded all at once. There were just a couple of additions from the outside. So that’s why it might sound more produced to you. That’s just a theory. But you’re the rock critic so I’ll let you decide that.

Beat Happening appeared to grow as a band on the second album. Do you hear that on Jamboree?
I don’t know. Again, that’s your department.

This album had a few different labels releasing it, right?
In America, it was a co-release with Rough Trade. And 53rd & 3rd released it in Great Britain.

Jamboree was one of Kurt Cobain’s favorite records. He was very vocal about that.
That was very kind of him to say. It’s nice that people listen to our music. I come from the position where I assume that no one is listening to our music. So if we find out someone did listen to it, that is a little bonus.

And Dean Wareham still plays “Indian Summer” live, be it with Luna or solo.
Well, what do you know? The first time we went to the east coast, one of our first shows was with Blake Babies and Galaxie 500, and I think it was one of their first shows. Both of them were just starting out. That was 1987, just a couple weeks after we wrote and recorded that song. Jamboree was recorded maybe a month before that show with Galaxie 500. I saw him perform it with Luna about 20 years ago. It was great! I’m a big fan of Dean. I like his last album. He came to our show when the Hive Rollers played Los Angeles last year. He’s a good egg. He and Britt [Phillips] are groovy.

4. Dreamy (1991)

You signed to Sub Pop for this album.
I’ve know Bruce [Pavitt] forever, since 1980, so I guess ten years at that point. And he had always been supportive of Beat Happening. Working with Jonathan [Poneman] and Bruce was awesome. Everyone on staff was just so supportive and a lot of fun to go there. It was a pleasant change of pace.

Can you tell me why this album is in this spot?
So all of your questions are just a variation on “How come this isn’t your favorite album?” Every time you want to know why isn’t this number one? It seems kind of boring. That must be a pretty boring job asking, “Why isn’t this your favorite album?”

Well, I’m actually interested in how artists feel about their work. That’s why I do these interviews.
Well, I really appreciate your interest in our work and you seem knowledgeable about us, so thank you. Thank you for listening. But yeah, so Dreamy is a great record. I really like it. And I think it’s what you might call our “hit album.” I’m guessing it sold the best of all our albums when it came out. It had our hit single, which was “Red Head Walking,” which was our most successful single in terms of sales and people’s attention. Just immediately people were turning their heads like, “What!!!” In a way, like nothing we’d ever done. It was like having a hit single. People knew it and paid attention, and would reference it to my face. Like, “I love that song! I love that song! I love that one part!” It was really cool and a neat experience. As a seven-inch, it sold tons more than anything else we ever did. It’s hard to put this in context, but at the time, Sub Pop was emphasizing the seven-inch and they were really good at getting people to pay attention to seven-inch records, which is great because that is my favorite format. So they wanted to do the single and then after that they wanted to do an album. So we did.

Dreamy came out around the time “the year punk broke.” Being on Sub Pop at the time, did Beat Happening have any involvement in that?
I don’t know anything about that. I doubt it.

3. You Turn Me On (1992)

OK, so this album is at number three.
It’s a classic! Another classic! How did we do it? I don’t know. We just kept churning them out. The idea of ranking the albums was not mine, it was yours. I’m just saying there is no order, you just asked me to order them. I ordered them in more or less a random way, because to me they’re all albums that stand on their own. They don’t need to be ranked. This is not the NCAA. It’s rock’n’roll. And rock’n’roll is closer to art than it is to sports. Thank god! We don’t give a shit about who’s the best. What we care about is that music has passion. That’s what matters. Not what’s the best. The best is bullshit. The best is just a way to sell sports drinks. We’re not interested in selling sports drinks. We’re interested in selling music that has a place in people’s lives.

This is actually my favorite Beat Happening record.
Well there you go. Why? I’m going to put you on the spot.

Well, most of my favorite Beat Happening songs are on this record, like “Teenage Caveman,” “Tiger Trap,” and “Godsend.”
Those are all good ones. I enjoyed playing those songs live and they were fun to record. It was definitely a fun time. That was when we toured the most, between Dreamy and You Turn Me On.

You got to work with Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants, who co-produced this record.
He had a solo album out in the US, and the label that released it talked to me about setting up some shows for him in the United States. So we set up some northwest shows that were Bratmobile, Lois, Beat Happening, Heavens To Betsy, and Stuart Moxham. It was a kind of traveling show. So we played around various cities like Eugene, Seattle, and Portland. And part of the arrangement for Stuart to come out to the northwest to play shows was to pay him to produce the first Lois album, an album called Butterfly Kiss. So he produced that and then we did those shows. And then after he was like, “Well, I have a few days and I like Beat Happening. Maybe we can do some recording together.” So we arranged a few days at the studio after the tour and did three days in the studio with him, and then a week or so later we recorded with Steve Fisk to do the rest of the album.

Was it a big deal for you to have Stuart producing?
Sure, of course! We loved it. He was really fun to work with and easy going. A pleasant fellow.

Can you hear the difference between the production by Stuart and the production by Steve?
We did songs that were less rock’n’roll with Stuart. I don’t know if it was on purpose or it just ended up that way. But we enjoyed it. He produced the second Marine Girls album, which I like a lot. And he’d worked on some other records that I appreciated, so I knew he was a good producer.

The band just stopped after Turn Me On. And Beat Happening has never broken up. Did you just agree to stop?
What was agreed on was that we were going to take a break. Bret had gotten married and had a baby, and Heather wanted to do something else for a while. So we decided to take a break, but there was no agreement on how long it would be. That’s what happened. So when people say, “Why did you break up?” I can truthfully say that we never did break up.

I love working with both Bret and Heather. I’ve worked with both of them over the years in different ways. But we haven’t done much as a trio. They are some of my favorite people in the world.

With these reissues coming out, is there a chance the band may perform together again?
I don’t expect that to happen. But if we do, I’ve always said for the past six or seven years, is that I only want to play if we’re going to do new songs. It would be a lot less exciting to not do new songs because we’d have to relearn the old ones. And the thing is, it takes up just as much time to make up new songs than it does to relearn the old songs. So we might as well make up new ones.

2. Music To Climb The Apple Tree By (2003)

So this is actually a compilation. What do you like about this album?
Well, it has some versions of songs on it, like “Nancy Sin,” which was re-recorded for Dreamy, and we just always liked the seven-inch version better because it was rawer and weirder. And the version of “Foggy Eyes” has a different feel I like. But also it has some songs on there that just got lost in the shuffle. Like “Sea Hunt” and “Knock On Any Door,” which was a seven-inch that came out on a label in England run by the McTells called Bi-Joopiter. I always used to like those songs, and they disappeared after the single. So I’m really glad they came together for the recording.

I liked putting together these bits and pieces in a cohesive way. I also like Heather’s cover art and the photos that Bret took that are on the inside. It just feels like a really good collection. You called it a compilation, which it is, but it’s no more a compilation than any of the other albums. All of the albums are just compilations of the songs we had at that moment. So this is a compilation of songs we had over a longer period of time.

You didn’t specifically write Dreamy or Jamboree as albums?
No. That never happened. That’s never happened in my entire life. It’s always just, “Here are the songs. Let’s put them down.”

I like that you included the songs from your split EP with Screaming Trees.
And that’s another thing that got lost in the shuffle. And we thought we’d make those available. That was a really fun project that we did about the same time that we made Jamboree. In fact, recording that EP was an important precursor to making Jamboree. I think that going to Ellensburg and recording with those guys before we did Jamboree was really helpful.

1. Beat Happening (1985)

Releasing this on Rough Trade must have been a big deal for you. How did that happen?
We put it out on K originally. And then a friend of ours named David Nichols, he was in the band the Cannanes and had a fanzine called Distant Violins, and we were pen pals. So he came to visit me in Olympia a couple months after that album came out. We had put out 700 copies and after five or six months, we only sold about 300, so I was like, “Here, take 15 albums and give them to anyone you think should have one.” And one of the first places he stopped in London was at the home of a fella named the Legend, also known as Jerry Thackray, who goes by the pen name of Everett True. So David went to the Legend’s house and said, “Here is this band that I really like. They have a new album.” And he gave it to Jerry, who I guess liked it because he went down to the Rough Trade shop. And he asked, “Do you guys have this record? You’ve gotta get this record.” And the woman who was working there, she apparently called Geoff Travis and said, “You should hear this record.” And then he called me. And I was totally surprised. I had no idea. But I knew who he was. As soon as he said he was Geoff Travis I just thought, “The guy who produced the first Raincoats album.” So it was very exciting. In a way it was an incredible validation because here we only sold 300 copies and the record was pretty dead at that point. It had been six or eight months and nothing was happening. And they put it out a few months later and also included the first single, which we should have done in the first place. I don’t know why we didn’t. And then when we reissued the record a few years later we just included all of the other stuff, like the Three Tea Breakfast cassette.

I always liked how you recorded that cassette while you were traveling in Japan, just so you could say you recorded music in Japan.
Yeah, the five-song cassette, which we put out a couple weeks after we got back. But the reason that that’s this album—I’m just going to go back on my word here, when you were saying, “Why are you putting this album third? Why is this one second?” —but there is a reason why this is first: This is the only real Beat Happening album. All the rest of the albums are just albums we recorded. But this album is what Beat Happening was. Because we were a band for a year that was really intense, and we wrote a lot of songs, we did all of this stuff. And this was the time when everyone was excited. After that it was more like, “Well what about this? Oh I don’t know.” Whereas that first year we were all really into it, and the result of that is this album. There were a lot of great songs from that period. And after that, it was more like “let’s play band.” Actually, that was the game we were playing and it was called Beat Happening. And after that it was more like “let’s be a band and record a record.” But the first year was fun and exciting.

So after that did it become less fun and exciting?
Not less fun and exciting, it’s just at the level of collaboration became something that we did. Both Heather and Bret are interesting people that do lots of interesting stuff. And Beat Happening became less of a priority because they had other interests. So that’s the only thing. It’s not like it was less fun. It just became less the focus.