User:Moisejp/sandbox8

In 1994, the Breeders consisted of Kim Deal, her twin sister Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs, and Jim Macpherson. Wiggs was from Bedfordshire, England, while MacPherson and the Deal sisters were from Dayton, Ohio, USA; Kim Deal lived there with her fiancé, Jim Greer. In September 1994, when that year’s Lollapalooza music festival ended, the Breeders had been touring steadily for two and a half years, and some of the members were tired. It was agreed that they would take a break, but Kim Deal, the band’s principal songwriter, mentioned she was interested in doing a side project while the others were taking time off.

That year, Deal and Greer had become good friends and “drinking buddies” with fellow Dayton band Guided by Voices’ leader Robert Pollard. Greer had joined the band and Deal also asked to, but Pollard had not thought she was serious, as the Pixies and the Breeders were so much more successful than Guided by Voices. (Footnote details?: Deal and Pollard were attracted to each other and became close friends. In 1994, the Breeders released a version of Guided by Voices’ “Shocker in Gloomtown” on their Head to Toe EP and included Guided by Voices in the video, and Deal and Pollard recorded a cover of Boudleaux Bryant's “Love Hurts” that was released on the Love and a .45 soundtrack in 1994.)

In October, at a bar in Chicago while Guided by Voices were on tour, Pollard, Greer, and Kim Deal were discussing Deal’s side project band. A lineup was tentatively decided upon that would include Deal on bass, Pollard on guitar, and Macpherson on drums (a different account mentions the Flaming Lips’ Steven Drozd and not Macpherson would be in the group); the band would all wear black and have headsets. Deal told Pollard that he would be able to contribute a song or two to each album.

Pollard had from before kept a long list of potential band names for future projects, among which was “Tammy and the Ants”, which he suggested to Deal. Either because this was misheard, or because there was already the famous band Adam and the Ants, Deal’s group’s name became “Tammy and the Amps”. This appealed to Deal, as Tammy suggested, like Debbie, Candy, or Casey, an airhead who was only able to sing. She also considered it to be a fun band name along the lines of Josie and the Pussycats or Katrina and the Waves. For her, the name also emphasized the fact that when she wrote the songs it was just her in her basement with her amps. (Footnote details?: Greer has noted that he was also heavily involved in helping with this process when she wrote the Last Splash and Amps songs as a soundboard to replay her musical ideas for her on guitar or bass until she finalized the sounds she liked, and as such knew the Amps songs even better than the members of the group.) (When in (month) Deal began touring with the band’s eventual lineup, for the first shows they were billed as “Tammy and the Amps” but by (month) as simply “the Amps”.) Greer suggested that Deal call herself Tammy Ampersand, which she initially did.

Kelley Deal was concerned about the implications of her sister doing a project without the Breeders, and told Wiggs, who had temporarily returned to England, that they should try to be involved. In the early 2010s, Wiggs recalled offering to fly from England to be involved in a Breeders project, but being convinced that Kim wanted to “let off some steam” and work solo. In late 1994 Kelley was arrested for possession of heroin and needed to do (verify exact status). At least one of Deal’s accounts from the mid-90s has supported Wiggs’ version—Deal told Spin writer Charles Aaron in 1995 that the reason she was doing the Amps was that “...”—while in multiple interviews from 1996 and 1997 she said she had wanted the Amps to be a Breeders project, but had not out of respect for Kelley and Wiggs; in a 2013 interview Deal remembered that Wiggs had in 1995 declined to be on a Breeders album that year, offering to be on the album after that one instead; Deal noted that Wiggs recalled that conversation as having happened in 1996, months after the Amps’ album had come out. Other accounts from the mid-90s have suggested that a motivation for Wiggs’ wanting a break from the Breeders was so that she could spend time with her girlfriend, Kate Schellenbach of Luscious Jackson.

Kim Deal spent late 1995 (from Spin account...)

Pollard asked Deal to produce the next GBV album, which was to be called The Power of Suck. GBV practiced in Deal’s basement, and Deal also worked in six songs of her own. They discovered during the sessions that Deal and Pollard had different working methods, and Pollard became frustrated working with Deal. He announced that GBV was pulling out of the sessions, and that he was not interested in being part of Deal’s band.

Deal used the leftover studio time...

Other

 * — also concert announcement: April 22, 1996 at Gibson's in Tempe, Arizona with Ammonia





























-- dates to track down: https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/the-amps-33d68435.html --
 * https://books.google.ca/books?id=bs9UDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Rebels+and+Underdogs:+The+Story+of+Ohio+Rock+and+Roll&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMhNyVv-_iAhXCoFsKHct8AH0Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=Kim%20Deal&f=false
 * https://www.popmatters.com/the-breeders-2496143063.html
 * http://robertpollard.net/luna.html


 * https://www.talkhouse.com/never-meet-your-hero-unless-theyre-kim-deal/
 * https://web.archive.org/web/19981111184436/http://www.noaloha.com:80/ - select "articles" (all or almost all unusable/untraceable to original source but keep link just in case I find something good on there)