A REALLY STRANGE AND WONDERFUL TIME

An insider’s account of the 1990s music scene in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Maxwell, a former member of Squirrel Nut Zippers and a capable writer, came up in a musical milieu kickstarted by R.E.M., from not-so-far-away Athens, Georgia. The ethos wasn’t quite punk, but it was in the neighborhood, and R.E.M. represented “the first significant Southern band who weren’t Lynyrd Skynyrd or Molly Hatchet.” In no time, Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina, was sprouting bands that crafted literate music you could dance to. Like all scenes, Chapel Hill’s represented a community, which “must have not only its stars but also its own climate of mutual support, including venues of expression and inspiration, lesser known but no less important artistic collaborators, social connectors, affordability, collective identity, permeable social boundaries, and friendly competition.” The college town had all that in spades, with representative groups that included Superchunk, Archers of Loaf, and, of course, Maxwell’s Squirrel Nut Zippers. Some of the bands came to national attention: Superchunk went out on the road with Mudhoney, for instance, and the Zippers were a favorite on the college circuit. As for Southern Culture on the Skids, well, leave it to them to cook up an annual festival called Sleazefest. Some bands even hit it big, including Ben Folds Five, before the cultural winds shifted. Where the Chapel Hill scene was supported by local radio, Bill Clinton’s deregulation meant the erasure of regional differences in the place of all-corporate-all-the-time. As industry insider Tom DeSavia notes, “pretty quickly, we got Matchbox Twenty World.” Still, it was a magnificent if evanescent blaze of local glory, and, as Maxwell notes in a where-are-they-now coda, many of the players of that era and beyond still shape local culture today.

A fun treat for fans of 1990s indie rock.