Great Plains "The Mark, Don & Mel E.P. +4" LP
Side A: The Way She Runs A Fever, When Do You Say Hello?, Four Sides In Three Shapes, It’s Dying, Pretty Dictionary, The Night Won’t Live To See The Day
Side B: Confetti, Cave In, Seven Days All Night (Live Crazy Mamas), Cause Without The Rebel (Live Cablevision), Hamburger Boy (Live Cablevision), I Must Have Made It All Up (Live Cablevision)
Rerun Records is proud to present new issues of the first two records by Columbus, OH's Great Plains. Smartass garage pop, firmly rooted in a beer-soaked Midwestern basement. Catchy tunes with too smart for their own good lyrics from the off-kilter mind of Ron House.
The first release (this listing) is a reissue of their 1983 debut, The Mark, Don & Mel E.P. 12". We've added four bonus live tracks to make it a full LP, all performed by the same line up as the EP.
Both LPs are a limited pressing of 500 copies and have remastered audio and printed inner sleeves with discography, testimonials, reviews of the original releases, photos, etc. These vinyl-only releases also includes a free digital download code with bonus live tracks.
Read what others are saying about Great Plains:
"Neither cartoon rage-y enough for punk nor polished/affected enough for what would ultimately be called “indie,” Columbus OH’s Great Plains were an idiosyncratic outlier from conception to conclusion. That they actually forged something of a following (not to mention an impressive body of work) despite being repped by one of the era’s most inept/least-funded labels is a testament to both their genius and hard work. I know, you’re thinking “it didn’t hurt that they had one of the planet’s great front-humans,” but trust me, the other dudes were the goddamn opposite of slouchy. To know this band is to miss ‘em like fucking crazy. Though I brought virtually nothing to the table, I cannot be more proud of my association with Great Plains."
-Gerard Cosloy, Austin, TX
"As we all know, Ohio is the cradle of some of the weirdest and greatest rock ’n roll ever recorded, from Pere Ubu to Devo and beyond. Those of us who like our music raw, odd and American can have all of our itches scratched at once via the great Great Plains, who belong squarely inside that hallowed canon. Rightly remembered as paragons of lyrical excellence and crooked, drunken wit, revisiting the band’s early releases all these years later reminds us too of their snotty, garage-rocking exuberance. The Mark, Don & Mel EP fuses their groovy, jangly, post-? Mark & The Mysterians stumble-and-stomp to some of the brightest, funniest observations on both the human and local (in this case, Bernie’s Bagels, circa 1983) scenes ever recorded. What a joy to have this back in print!"
-Matthew Specktor, author of American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound
"Great Plains is a spazzoid cry from the wilderness that was my inspiration for everything Pete & Pete had to be."
-Will McRobb, co-creator of The Adventures of Pete & Pete
"Great Plains, or the sound of not staying in Vegas.
Thoughts on the Mark, Don & Mel EP (+4 bonus tracks).
I’ve just listened to Great Plains for the second time in two months. In between those listens I’ve heard many, many things, but nothing even remotely akin to the Mark, Don & Mel EP (+4 bonus tracks). For that I am truly grateful. Upon Jackie Gleason’s 2-LP set Close Up, I jotted down these few notes.
Lyrics stacked in songs like a Jenga Tower, or when at a restaurant you try to stack all the objects from the table in a tower of sorts. Knife and fork upon glass, crossed with a spoon holding the salt shaker, which is counterbalanced by the hot sauce, covered with a napkin filled with packets of sugar and Sweet & Low, maybe bridged by the catsup somehow. A balanced tower of discretionary weight and mass sustaining itself through practically the power of will. Its only demise being the return of the waitress’ disapproval. One hopes such a time will never come. That’s why this reissue is so great; it’s never needed to come to that. It’s a feeling as inevitable as a day that will never come. Provocative in spirit, direct in sound, combative in rhythm and bruise, making the sound of a passing train a boring distraction. Such is the art of dissipation, a torment relived and re-executed in passing chords of furry, like the sound of “not staying in Vegas.” A dispatch from the lighthouse of the day party brimming with bream and perch flopping about the bottom of a bass boat, only to tie up to the dock with a smile, as if to say “look what we just caught, motherfuckers!”
One wonders if their mothers ever caught their live act, or the Cablevision show featured as part of a compendium of 4 songs to the original EP. One wonders if they would admit it. What once started perhaps as dementia for a small crowd just got slightly less so with the passage of time. My guess is that they would be even prouder now as they might have been then. Thus in answer to the question posed by the band to the audience at the end of the track Seven Days All Night (Live at Crazy Mama’s, 1981). “Any complaints?” Not a one. "
-Kurt Wagner, Lambchop
