It was 1995 and Andrew and I had a few issues of our local music zine “Movements” under our belt.  In issue #3, we’d had the pleasure of interviewing Vess Ruhtenberg who at the time was about to release the first CD from his new band, The United States Three.  Within the few houses surrounding Vess’ place on College Avenue, a new local music scene was thriving.  Sharing a rental with Vess was Michelle Marchesseault from the band Sardina, Paul Mayhern was recording in the house next door with bands flowing between the two houses frequently.  While Andrew and I conducted the interview in Vess’ living room I pitched the idea of putting together a poster or two for the band to help promote their upcoming shows.  Generously, Vess said “go for it” and my short stint on the periphery of the mid-90s Indianapolis/Bloomington scene began. 

Around the time I started putting together these posters, the band El Nino was recording at Mayhern’s house next door.  El Nino and United Stated Three had recorded a single together (“Same House”) and frequently played gigs on the same bill, so Vess introduced me to El Nino’s bassist and front man, Glenn Hicks.  Both bands had been signed to Flat Earth Records, who at the time was the newest local label on the block and were scooping up acts right and left.  Flat Earth frequently used The Patio in Broad Ripple as their main venue for featuring their new acts, which was great for me because I lived less than a mile from the club.  I’d seen El Nino live only once by the time I met Glenn, and that show had a big impact on me.  Their songs were more or less simply, catchy pop tunes infused with Glenn’s pleading vocals, the drums of Paul Karaffa, guitar by Michelle Benninghoff, and the master of reality himself, John Hicks.  Not to take anything away from the song writing, vocals, etc. but John Hicks was quite frankly, the shit.  John played a guitar that appeared to have been thrown into a wood chipper and bound back together with duct tape with a stalk of effect pedals hanging off of the guitar itself like a sonic tumor.  Any time John would rip into a solo the listener would be treated to a trip through space-rock with Ace Frehley and Thurston Moore as your pilots.  Hicks would reach down and slam his fist onto any of the pedals dangling from the guitar, shifting the course of the solo into even trippier territory before returning us back to the safe poppy confines of the song itself.  At least that’s how I remember things.

So, Vess introduces me to Glenn, I offer to do a poster for El Nino, and things start to roll.  At the time, I was working on an old Macintosh computer, barely understanding how Photoshop worked, and wrestling with the pen tool in Illustrator.  I’d been drawing mini comics off and on over the years, and was the creative end of Movements, but never had any real idea of what I was doing.  Fortunately for me, the image I produced for El Nino (a man with his hands on two live Tesla coils while his electric rainbow colored hair shot in all directions) went over well with the band.  They also liked the work I was doing for United States Three, and offered me a shot at doing the CD cover of their first release.  Cool.

I quickly drew up a couple of concept sketches, Glenn picked the one he liked, and I returned home to figure out how in the hell to execute the vision I’d hastily scrawled onto a scrap of paper into a professional looking CD cover.  Luckily, this one came together easily enough (not to be confused with my later effort on the Flat Earth compilation CD “Galileo Was Wrong” which turned into a total mess).  With the El Nino storm system being the obvious inspiration, I simply juxtaposed a photo of tress bending to the pressure of a hurricane, with the swirling surface of Jupiter as the backdrop.  It ended up being an effective image, but in retrospect I wish I’d have done a better job on the cover font.  For the back cover, we needed some pictures of the band.  Pretending that I knew what I was doing, I quickly arranged for a photo shoot.  Margo Patterson – an amateur photographer and drinking buddy of mine, agreed to have the band over to her house for a shoot.  The photo shoot went off without a hitch and we ended up with enough images to complete the CD and cook up some nice posters as well.  I remember the band being funny, easy going, and Paul Karaffa was just about the nicest guy you could meet.  I laid out the whole CD, including the inside CD booklet spread which featured a bizarre image of an old man that Glenn insisted be in the CD “somewhere”.  All in all, it was a good package and far more exciting than most of the local (non-Punk) releases I’d seen over the years.

The CD itself was really just “ok”.  The self-conscious production played it safe, and failed to capture the sonic essence that blew me away during the live shows.  While researching this article, I ran across this site: http://www.musicalfamilytree.org/band/el_nino  where you can download tracks from a live performance at The Second Story circa 1995.  A simple comparison between the studio version of Lipstick and the liver version does a much better job of making my point than I ever could in writing.  Glenn screams his verses nearly beyond his point of is ability to keep it all together while John injects pure LSD fury into his 6-string.  If that doesn’t sell you, try the “Warm Hands” solo on track 7 from the same live show. 

After the CD was released, I attended a few more shows, talked to John about doing some posters of just him playing that crazy guitar of his, heard about the sad passing of Paul Karaffa’s mom, and just generally enjoyed the scene.  And what a scene it was.  You have to remember that the previous “scenes” included the likes of hairbands like Why on Earth, Snakeskin Cowboy, Sweet FA, and the Why Store. And then suddenly we had bands influenced by the Velvet Underground instead of Motley Crue, playing sets full of original songs instead of endless metal covers.  And man, this new scene was given every chance those hair bands never had.  Billboard magazine ran a front page article on the exploding Bloomington music scene; with the El Nino CD cover featured on page one.  In response to the national attention, both Nuvo and the Indianapolis Star ran similar articles, with the El Nino CD cover featured on the front page of the Star.  Those were good times, but they didn’t last.  Despite the buzz, the scene fell apart almost as quickly as it began.  United States Three disbanded, El Nino replaced Paul and Michelle and recorded a second full-length release that never materialized, and Flat Earth Records all but disappeared.

Over the years I’ve occasionally Googled El Nino and the band to see if there’s anything new to learn either in terms of a reunion, an official break up, or just anyone who remembers these good times in general.  There’s not much to report.  The Musical Family Tree is a valuable resource that offers the live show I mentioned, as well as the complete Convenient Ave recordings that have otherwise never seen the light of day.  Glenn Hicks apparently toured with Lisa Germano for a bit while she was riding her brief wave of success.  About a year ago I stumbled on John Hick’s website.  It was clear that he’d moved out of state and was still writing songs.  As far as I could hear, the work Glenn was making with Germano and John’s solo material didn’t compare to the brief brilliance of El Nino.  Those were great times indeed, and I’m lucky to have witnessed just a brief portion of it from the periphery.  The tangentially happy ending to this story is that with bands like the Thin Fevers, We Are Hex, Beta Male, and many others, a new scene is rapidly forming in Indianapolis.  Here’s to this wave lasting longer than the last.