American Music Club   Bottom Of The Hill,San Francisco,CA                                         April 13th 1992
	An eleventh hour message on my answering machine from totally tapped-in Pat Thomas of Heyday Records clued me in to the fact that "big happenings" were scheduled tonight at the Bottom Of The Hill, San Francisco's Comfiest new club. Billed only as Twee, the American Music Club,ink still wet on their recent contracts with Reprise/Warner Brothers in the US and Virgin in Europe, were about to uncage the dogs - a set of all-new material from the next album. And, according to Thomas, we were about to see a "radical change in musical direction". I parked directly in front of the club - which resembles something from the "Cabinet Of Dr Caligari" in mauve - scattering a couple of stray seagulls, the only AMC devotees in the queue so far. Mark Eitzel had threatened to scrub the gig if too much word had leaked out - a croud, okay, but not too big a crowd. And that's just what he got. Hannah Marcus, sometimes keyboardist for Viva Saturn, pried the lid off the evening with her Leonard Cohen seasoned omelette of angst - accompanied on guitar by Mark Kozelek, the vocalist from Red House Painters (a band that Eitzel's been touting for years which blends elements of AMC with the clean sound of Felt). The place began to fill as Eitzel & Vudi, both hidden under Greek fisherman's caps - Eitzel further disguised by a goatee - lugged the goods onto the stage. Rumour was about to become fact. The new material sounded extremely confident and direct, and, dare I say, even more accessible than last year's hard-charging "Everclear" on Alias. And tonight might just have heralded the the return of storied "Mean Mark Eitzel", well known in these parts for tossing beer glasses at women and substituting meat for veg in his roommates' dishes. Gone was the "Aw shucks" stage attitude. It was no-nonsense (well not much anyway) Eitzel who expressed the tenderest sentiment of the evening, the echoing refrain, "God, I loved you/ I should have killed you when I had the chance." And, if you can believe it, the song was titled "Mark Eitzel Is The Most Hated Singer On The Local Underground Scene." Well, Mark looked leaner, anyway, an obvious upside to altering his liquid intake. As for the "new direction" - I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Sounded suspiciously tried and true to these ears. As they say in the Deep South, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Especially if you've just signed a major label deal. Afterwards, Eitzel, true to form, was waffling about the quality of the set. "We'd only had two rehearsals, and all those songs were new - so it was kind of a rough show. Oh yeah," he added, "and Twee stands for Trans World Entertainment Enterprises." Somewhere along the line I cornered the "Mean One" into an ironclad commitment to record his favorite pop song, "Don't Sleep In The Subway,Darling" as a Bucketfull exclusive. "Sure," he smirked, "I'll do it for you guys in two years when my career's gone down the toilet. I'll be begging you to do it then." By Jud Cost for Bucketfull Of Brains  May 1992                                                             Return To Touring Page Here