HUGGY BEAR - RUBBING THE IMPOSSIBLE BURST

Punk rock may turn out to be as durable as the blues. The music that marked rock's adolescent temper tantrum in the 1970's has become the idiom for disaffected youths, who accept nothing from their elders except punk rock's shouted vocals, clattering drums and choked power chords. The music's discordant noise and defiant amateurism keep it on the fringes of pop, to be rediscovered and renewed by wave after wave of marginalized fans and musicians.




Huggy Bear, calling its members "boy-girl revolutionaries," has added some Situationist (anarchic Marxist) theory to the riot-grrrl rhetoric, with lines like "They wanna make a T-shirt out of your dreams." The group's lead vocals are shared by a male, Chris Morbius, and a female, Nicki Elliot, who both sing about "my boyfriend" and about "feeling like girls, even the boys"; Mr. Morbius bawls a little louder. The band kicks up a righteous rumble, with Ms. Elliot's bass pounding alongside Karen Hill's drums, as Billy Karren and Joe Johnson on guitars churn up dissonant riffs and feedback. The songs pounded, howled and stopped short, in classic punk style.
(Jon Pareles New York Times 1993)



From Wikipedia,

During the course of their existence, they refused to be photographed or interviewed by mainstream press, nor gave their full names once they began releasing records formally. In spite of a major label bidding war, Huggy Bear stuck with Wiiija, an indie label.

“ The underground in London had deteriorated totally, there wasn't really much of an alternative . . . 'indie' just became an abstract term for a style of music, not ideas or values, 'cause they were all signing to major labels. The notion of selling out wasn't important. Punk rock wasn't important. Fanzines were seen as a sad joke, so we had to explain stuff that might have been obvious to American kids but was alien to young British kids. The reasons for being independent were snorted at.”




Rubbing The Impossible To Burst (Wiija)
1. Katholic Kunt
2. High Street Jupiter Supercone
3. Snail Messenger Loss
4. Single Bullets




The strange thing was that Huggy Bear’s musical template was hardly revolutionary. It was a relatively straightforward mix between the twee, non-macho, post-C86 bands such as Heavenly and The Field Mice, caught up in the DIY cassette and fanzine culture emanating from labels such as Calvin Johnson’s K Records, and Bristol, England’s Sarah Records, and the noise/pop experimentation of the sonic overlords/ladies Lydia Lunch and Sonic Youth…with a little Fifties beat poetry thrown in. No, it wasn’t so much the music that was revolutionary, as what they did with it. Scratch that. Huggy Bear’s deliberately naïve, anti-societal approach to playing guitar—there is no right and wrong way to play guitar, to paint a picture, to view art—was revolutionary inasmuch as it challenged accepted mores, forced listeners to re-evaluate their entire approach to music.



Kiss Curl For The Kid's Lib Guerrillas (Wiija)
1. Derwin
2. Sizzlemeet
3. Concrete Life
4. Carnt Kiss





Her Jazz (Catcall/Wiija)
1. Her Jazz
2. Prayer
3. Pro No From Now




In a way, the act of declaring oneself a revolutionary is revolutionary in itself. Despite their musical leanings, Huggy Bear with their rudimentary anarcho-syndicalism, ideas of equal ‘prime movers’ (not leaders) and impassioned feminism had more in common with mischief-mongers and Government-baiters Crass than any of the toy rabbit-clutching bands that followed. One listen to the fury threatening to devour the songs alive on their Wiiija compilation Taking The Rough With The Smooch proves that.
(The Outbursts of Everett True)




Our Troubled Youth (Catcall/Kill Rock Stars)
1. Jupiter Re-Entry
2. T-Shirt
3. Blow Dry
4. Nu Song
5. Into The Mission
6. Hopscotch
7. Aqua Girl Star
8. February 14



Don't Die (Wiija)
1. Dissthentic Penetration
2. Teen Tighterns
3. No Sleep
4. Shaved Pussy Poetry
5. Pansy Twist

All the tracks mentioned above are unavailable in the states but can be downloaded here Huggy Bear Vol.1